The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (10 page)

“So why Raven’s Glen?”

“I guess it’s because last name of the guy who founded the town was Raven?”

“Was his first name Glen?”

“I don’t know you, Danny, but no one likes a smartass.”

Daniel grinned a wicked grin and halted abruptly.

“Is this it?” I asked.

We had been walking along a quiet sidewalk for a short while. The sun had now completely disappeared, and with it so too had much of the ambient heat disappeared. I was wearing a long black cardigan over my black top and dark skinny jeans, thankfully, but that was coincidence more than forethought. I made a mental note to buy something warmer tomorrow as we came to a stop in front of a storefront with a big green sign above the door that read “Absinthe” in wild and quirky font.

“Your powers of perception astound me, Amber,” Collette said in a sardonic tone.

“Oh hush,” I said.

Daniel readjusted his backpack and turned to us, smiling. “Yeah, this is it. The Absinthe they serve here isn’t the hallucinogenic type Hemmingway used to drink, but it’ll get you pretty wasted if you aren’t prepared for it.”

“It’s alright, we ate before we came here.”

Then there came an awkward pause, like the awkward before someone decides whether to invite another person in for a night cap. And in that pause I heard the rustling of leaves, the distant screech of a train in a tunnel, and, the whisper of the cooling wind as it whooshed gently past my ears. They were the sounds of silence.

My eyes went to Collette, and I found her looking at me; equally lost.

Then the door to the bar abruptly opened, and Daniel’s face lit up.

“Well look who the fuck it is!” said the guy—another American—who had just opened the door. “I thought you were in Turkey, man.”

“Came back yesterday,” Daniel said.

The guy in the door looked at us, then back at Daniel.

“Oh,” Daniel said, “These are Amber and Collette.”

“Hey,” I said. Collette nodded in acknowledgement.

“Well howdy,” he said, with a noticeable southern drawl to his voice, “I’m Cliff, and I’d be happy for you two lovely ladies to accompany us for a little bit of the green monster. Whaddaya say?”

His offer seemed kindly enough, and I could see the eagerness in Daniel’s eyes, but I shook my head.

“If you don’t mind, I think we’ll take our drinks alone. Thanks for bringing us here, though, Daniel. Your first drink is on us.”

Daniel nodded, accepting my rebuke, but Cliff stood blocking the door as I made my way toward it. “Are you sure I can’t change the little lady’s mind?”

I could feel the tension worm into my muscles and my body stiffened like a board.
Little? Who’s he calling little?
Did this greasy haired, unshaven, nomad of a man think he was some kind of cowboy? Collette must have sensed the rapid build-up of Power inside of me, must have felt the wind picking up speed, because she pulled up behind me, placed a hand on my shoulder, and declined Cliff’s offer with words instead of Magick.

Cliff moved aside and let us head into the building, but as the sobering heat of the controlled environment hit me I became immediately aware that I had just done something stupid.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Collette once we found a booth at the back of the bar to sit in. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Collette nodded. “Nothing happened, ma cherie,” she said, “Are you alright?”

“I think so.” I was shaking. “I just… I got so mad at the guy. I wanted to hurt him.”

Collette frowned, then nodded. “Don’t dwell. We have been through a long ordeal to get here. You are tired, that’s all.”

I returned her nod and felt the tension fall away from me like flecks of dead skin in the summer. The bar we were in was low and dimly lit, and had an old English kind of tavern feel to it. The bar was black and made of oak, I guessed, and behind it—stacked next to each other—were colorful bottles, some red, some blue, many green. On the other side of the building from where we were I saw Daniel, Cliff, and his friends sitting in a bay booth overlooking the street. When his eyes caught mine I looked away.

He had been nice to us and I had been kind of a bitch to deny him. But I hadn’t denied
him,
exactly; it was that southern friend of his. Was he Texan? Or did he come from one of the Carolinas? I didn’t know. I only knew that his aura tasted like stale beer and that I didn’t like it.

Stale, warm beer.

Luckily, the menu—which was a colorful flyer pressed between the glass upper layer of the table and the wooden lower layer—stole my attention away with its little green fairies and the promise of a drink I had not yet tasted.

“This all looks good,” I said. “And cheap too.”

I had re-acquainted myself with the Euro pretty quickly. Absinthe was served on its own, never mixed, and always came in the same volume, so the menu quoted prices in terms of the brands of Absinthe you could drink instead of quantities or what other soft drinks you could mix it with. A serving of Absinthe, about five fingers, would set you back only 2.50 Euros.

Pretty cheap.

We chose to drink the regular Absinthe so we went to the bar, put our orders down—as well as an order of a single drink for Daniel—and the barman came to our table a few moments later with two glass cups half filled with green liquid, two spoons, a simple red lighter, two cups of water, and a bowl of sugar cubes.

I stared at the green liquid in the glass like it was going to leap out, transform into a real fairy, and strangle me with its tiny hands. Collette seemed equally hesitant.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“C’mon, just try it. For me?”

“I don’t normally drink.”

“I know you don’t. It’s like your
thing
. You don’t drink, don’t cuss, and you’re always so… flawless.”

“Iz zat a confession of attraction?”

“Maybe it is, but it’s also an observation… why?”

It hit me then that Collette had never been open about her sexuality. She hadn’t shown an interest in Damien, although I suspected that the barrier there was my rocky past with him and not a physical attraction. They were both good looking people. But in all our friendship she had never spoken about a boy from her past… or a girl… and I hadn’t pressed. But after a few drinks?

Collette’s lips curled upward into a light smile, and the smile disarmed her. She sighed and deftly went about the process of putting together this science-project of a drink as if it was second nature to her; melt a sugar cube over the glass until it dissolves into the spoon, pour water over the spoon with the sugar into the drink, stir it, then knock it back. I watched for a moment, perplexed at the ease and quickness of her movements—and annoyed that I had forgotten entirely—and followed her steps until the liquid was ready to drink.

It didn’t burn, didn’t force my face to twist in the same way Tequila used to do, and tasted a little like candy. All in all the experience was anti-climactic; like a firework that shrieks into the sky and doesn’t explode. It tasted fine, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be.

“Zat was… nice…” Collette said. “A little on ze sweet side for me, though.”

“Yeah… I’m not even going to ask how you knew how to do that. Instead… another?”
Maybe I hadn’t done it right.

Collette nodded and I smiled, but neither of us got a chance to get up to order. Before we could even flinch, the barman arrived with a tray and two more cups on it as if he had read our minds. Then he pointed at the table where Daniel was sitting and the traveler was waiting with a thumbs up. I returned the gesture and instantly regretted doing so.
Who thumbs up anymore?

“Looks like you have an admirer,” I said.

She shook her head. “It iz you he is smitten by.”

“Well that’s too bad, because I’m spoken for.”
Or at least I would have been, had I not been such an idiot.
“Anyway, so, back at the hotel you were about to tell me about your passport…”

“Ah, yes… zat.” She trailed off, but I was determined to pull it out of her.

“C’mon, you know more about my private life than I do about yours.”

“Perhaps zis is because you choose to make your private life public.”

“Not public; but I believe in sharing with friends. We’re friends, right?”

“Sisters,” she said, correcting.

“Sisters share more than friends do.”

“I suppose.”

I had her.
“Then? You know you can talk to me about anything right?”

She nodded.

“I would never violate your trust.”

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“Alright, so… start from the top. You were telling me it belonged to your mother? Was she a witch too?”

Collette nodded again. She sighed, smiled like someone recalling a fond memory, and said, “My mother wasn’t only a witch; she fought for ze French Resistance during ze Nazi occupation of France in World War two.”

“Holy shit; for real?”

“Yes. In fact, her coven was a vital part of ze resistance. When ze Germans invaded, her Coven split up and scattered across all of France but not until after engaging in a ritual to allow zem all instant telepathic communication with each other. Zis way zey could keep tabs on ze invaders and relay important military information to other freedom fighters in ze area to coordinate attacks.”

“That sounds really amazing.”

“Of course, zis meant maintaining her cover was more important zan anything. Ze occupying army could and would frequently stop anyone and everyone zey wanted to and demand to see zeir papers. My mother noticed zat French citizens were looked at with more scrutiny than Germans who had moved to France previously, so she created a passport zat could change shape and show the reader whatever ze owner wanted zem to see. Germans, then, saw not a French baker, but a German one.”

“I can’t believe your mother was alive during the World War. I mean, she wasn’t just alive, she was
in it
. She lived it.”

“Oui. And when she… passed… ze passport came to me.” Her gaze fell to the table.

The hesitation in her voice clanged hard against my ears. I couldn’t shake it. “Collette?” I asked.

She made an “mm?” sound and looked up.

“How did she die?”

“I want to tell you,” Collette said.

“Then why don’t you?”

Suddenly the mood in our little corner of the bar took a turn for the grim without as much as a warning. The air felt heavier and my lungs responded by asking my brain to take longer, deeper breaths. “It was her, Amber,” she said, gravely.

She didn’t have to clarify who
“her”
was. I knew. In my heart of hearts I knew. Now it was my hand that reached for Collette’s. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

Collette shook her head. “You don’t have to be. It was a long time ago. I told you zat zis witch spared none who crossed her, if she could help it. It happened on ze year ze war ended, in 1942. I was in London at ze time, hiding as per my mother’s orders. My mother had been left weak after a final engagement with a German werewolf, ze officer who had tormented so many of her friends and comrades. Linezka had been zere all along, watching, and controlling ze werewolf.”

“Wait…” I said. Numbers started to fly around in my head but they were all jumbled up, as if someone had opened a box of numbers and was throwing them all over the place while I tried desperately to grab them. To make sense of them. But it didn’t work. Finally, I asked, “Collette… how old are you?”

She too took a deep breath. “I will be one hundred and thirty nine zis year.”

“I’m sorry, it sounded as if you just said you would be one hundred and thirty nine this year.”

“I did.”

Her answer sent me reeling. Without saying another word, I lit the Absinthe before me in the same way I had done before and poured the warm liquid into my throat. It tickled as it went down and I felt it all the way to my belly, the sensation somehow sobering me instead of inebriating me further.

Collette, I saw, had done the same.

“One hundred and thirty nine,” I said, “I’m not… I won’t even ask you how that’s possible. But I will ask how the hell you still manage to look so damn good.”

Her face brightened, and her smile seemed thin the atmosphere some. Enough for us both to breathe a little easier, at least. “I should have told you sooner,” she said.

“Told me what, exactly?”

“About my age. About my history, about my mother.”

I shook my head. “If there’s one thing I know about you is that you do things exactly when you mean to. Tonight, it was time. I know it was. Only…”

“Oui?” Collette asked.

“When we first met… I don’t know, maybe I was too overwhelmed to pick up on exactly everything you were saying, but you made it look like your Shadow…”
that thing that snatched a part of her soul away and stole off into the Underworld
“… you said it took off on the new moon, as in the new moon before we met.”