09 - Return Of The Witch (25 page)

“Nooo. That’s why I asked.
”

“You see, Lilith, this is exactly why you’re in the predicament you’re in now. You’ve not kept up with your studies. Your witchcraft is lacking. I’ve got you in a simple
check-bind spell. Same as with your little friends over there.”

“Of course. A
check-bind spell. I’ve played with that one a bit. I thought it didn’t work on witches.”

She laughed. “You think a lot of things don’t work on witches. The truth is
that the best spells work on witches because witches inadvertently channel their energy to the source of the spell’s hold.”

I saw the trolley make a track correction and then continue its glide path toward me.

“Huh, I never knew that. Guess that explains why the asshole spell someone put on you stuck so well.”

She was not amused. She stepped out into the open just ten feet from me.
The steel container came to a stop directly overhead.

“Last chance to show me what you got before I squish you like a bug,” she said.

I shrugged, or tried to. Couldn’t. “Damn. Guess shape shifting into a bug wouldn’t be such a good idea right now then, eh?”

She shook her head at me. “You’re pathetic.
How did I ever spawn such an embarrassment?”

“Me? You’re the pathetic one. Look at you. You’re a disgrace to the coven. You know there hasn’t been a dark witch in our lin
eage for over five hundred years.”

“Five hundred and fifty-two,” she said.

“Yeah, whatever. But you know the sad thing is that you could have been one of the greats, Gypsy.”

She laughed, and the
malefic resonance in the tone of it shrouded the room in the imminence of death. “I am one of the greats.”

S
he snapped her fingers and produced the oddest little zip ball I had ever seen. Unlike a traditional zip, all sparkly and dancing inside with nervous electric blue veins, this one was a solid ball of intense white light. A White Dwarf, which until then, I thought only a product of the cosmos. It must have burned like the sun, for surely I felt its heat from ten feet away.

I watched
Gypsy’s eyes roll toward the ceiling and settle on, I assumed, the cable suspending the container over my head. She hadn’t noticed Ursula stepping through the broken window of the supervisor’s office. I wanted to shout to her to get back inside and hide, but I knew that would give her away for sure.

Gypsy eased back another six feet, whether to gain a better line of sight of the cable or to remove herself from the
fallout zone, I couldn’t know. Maybe both.

I
used those few seconds to look at Ursula one last time. I hoped our eyes would meet and share a final goodbye. Sadly, I didn’t even know if she could see me. She appeared to be in a zone all her own, caring little if Gypsy saw her or not. Shock and fear had paralyzed her. Tears welled in her eyes. A simple blink gave them life.

I watched her steeple her hands below her parted lips and draw a staggered breath.
My heart was breaking for her. Hers, I feared, was already broken.

Then something strange happened. H
er expression changed. Her brow furrowed. Her lips drew tight. Her chest swelled. I had never seen it in her before, but I knew instinctively what it was.

Anger.

No, I thought, or maybe I said it. Don’t try something stupid, Ursula.

I looked at Gypsy again. She had finished assessing her angle of attack.
I watched her put the witch’s key to her lips and blow. At the same time, she flicked her fingers, firing the little white ball directly at the cable.

What happened next happened so fast I can hardly keep the sequence straight
in my mind. My eyes followed the comet-like trail of light upward until the container blocked my view of the eventual impact. The sound of the ball hitting the cable surprised me, though, not because it was loud; it wasn’t. It sounded more like a snap than a bang, but it echoed among the rafters and along the tin roof.

I tried one last time to move
out of the way but couldn’t. The check-bind spell had me frozen stiff. The container jerked slightly after the cable blew and then quietly, almost in slow motion, began its freefall.

At that moment,
I saw Ursula through the corner of my eye. Her steepled hands parted abruptly. A quick shudder wracked my bones. The deafening sound of cracking wood filled my ears as the floorboards beneath my feet splintered like toothpicks. The floor opened up. I felt my body move with a forceful tug as the building suddenly split in two.

T
he container dropped in front of me and kept going, crushing into the pilings below and splashing into the bay. Only then did I realize that I was no longer on my feet, but on my ass. I could move again.

I looked across the gaping hole, past the conveyors, half of which were still bolted to the floor, the other half sticking out of the water. I was on one side. Gypsy was on the other. I knew from the surprised look on her face that whatever happened, she had nothing to do with it.

Ursula withdrew from the shadows, her eyes seething with hate and burning with anger. Her movements seemed effortless, for indeed they were. She came to me not on foot, but floating on a cushion of air. She lifted me up with a mere thought and guided me away from the hole on a wish.

I looked again at Gypsy. She had
already figured out what I was still processing in my mind.

Ursula possessed the quintessential
.

Gypsy twirled her wrist over her head and transformed into a funnel-shaped spout of water and wind.
She started across the floor towards the door when Ursula gestured a swipe of her hand and sliced the funnel in half. The two sections collapsed into separate puddles, migrated back into one and then reformed into a human again. Ursula wound her hand back for a second swipe, but before she could deliver, Gypsy snapped her fingers and was gone.

I ran to Ursula and
grabbed her by the arm. “What the hell just happened?”

She turned with a jerk and pulled away as if startled. I fell back, splaying my hands to
show her I was friendly. She blinked and smiled as if only just then recognizing me. A wave of relief seemed to wash over her then. I approached and took her arm again.

“Ursula.
” I pointed at the gaping hole in the floor. “Do you see what you just did there?”

She seemed surprised at my question. “I did that?”

“Yes, you did that! Look. You split the building in two. Do you know what this means?”

She gazed out over the
splintered ruins. “Where is my Dominic?”

“I think he’s over by the—”

“Ursula?” Dominic and Carlos came crawling out from beneath the stairs, the hold Gypsy had on them apparently broken. “Ursula!”

We
hurried to them and helped them back on their feet. Neither seemed badly injured, though Dominic had a bruise on his left cheek and a cut above his eye. Carlos, who I suspect fell on top of Dominic, had nary a scratch.

“What happened?”
asked Dominic. He grabbed Ursula around the waist and hugged her tightly. “Are you all right?”

“All right?” I said. “Are you kidding me? The girl is fantastic! Did you see what she did?”

I saw Ursula shaking her head and waving for me to shut up. Dominic saw it, too. He placed his hands on her hips and held her at arm’s length. “What did she do?”

I shook my head at her. “
Sorry, Urs. I have to tell them. This is too big to keep secret.”

“Keep what secret? Lilith, tell me.”

Carlos, who only then noticed that the cannery building was now a split duplex, asked, “What the hell happened here?”

I started to tell him, when the sound of approaching fire trucks stopped me. “I’ll tell you later
. Right now, unless we want to try and explain to the authorities what happened, we should, as Ursula would say, get thee gone and quick.”

Chapter 22

After the chaos at the cannery, we retreated to Carlos’
estate. We thought it best to regroup there for two reasons. One, because we figured Gypsy wouldn’t think of looking for us there if she hoped to launch a surprise attack, and two, if we decided to travel together again, we’d trade in Carlos’ monster truck for something more comfortable, like his Mercedes SUV.

From the sunny poolside patio, we sat, sipped iced tea and discussed everything we knew or thought we knew about Gypsy, the four guardians and the
quintessential.

I started by telling the
guys what happened after Gypsy blasted their asses off the observation deck. I told them about Gypsy’s incomparable powers over mass and energy, how she made my zip ball look like a 4
th
of July sparkler.

“And that check-bind spell
,” I said. “Madonna mi! I sure could use that little spell next time the cops pull me over.”

“Lilith.”

“Dominic, I’m joking. The point is that Gypsy is incredibly powerful. She can do things now that no other witch can do.” I looked at Ursula. “Except maybe this girl.”

“Me?” said Ursula.

“Her?” said Dominic.

“Yes.” I reached across the patio table and took
her hand. “Urs, don’t let this scare you. You’ve had the power all along, ever since you came back from the Eighth Sphere. You just didn’t know it. None of us knew it.”

Dominic
said. “I don’t understand.”

“
It’s the quintessential, Dominic. She has it.”

“Ursula?”

“Yes. I don’t know how, but Paige knew that one of us returned from the Eighth Sphere with it. Hell, every witch in the underworld knew it but us. The funny thing is, if I had paid attention to the clues I would have seen that it’s been staring me in the face all along.”

“How so?”

“Well for instance….” I turned to Ursula. “Last week you called me, all excited because you learned a new trick. Carlos, do you remember that? We were at Gloucester Beach out on the jetty at the time.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, and what did I do?”

“You blew her off.”

“That’s right. I blew her off. I figured it was some stupid card trick Dominic taught her.”

“Hey!” said Dominic.

“Chill, Houdini. Ursula, I’m sorry I did that. And I’m sorry I did it to you again later that night when you called me at home. I should have listened to you. Instead, I asked if you learned the trick from the Grimoire, if it involved a spell or witchcraft of any kind, and you said no. Remember that?”

“Aye, for the trick made no use of magick that I knew.”

“Yes, but it was a good trick, wasn’t it?”

She shrugged lightly. “So I thought.”

Dominic said, “Lilith, what does this have to do with—”

“I’m getting to that. Ursula. Do you want to tell me what that trick was now?”

“`Twas a small trick.”

“That’s okay. I want you to share it with us anyway.”

“No, I mean `twas a trick where I could make things small.”

“
Show us.” I set my glass of tea in front of her and asked her to demonstrate.

She wasted no time, and merely by eyeing
the glass between her finger and thumb, she pinched it down to something smaller than a thimble.

Carlos and Dominic fell back in their chairs, stunned, yet grinning like fools.

“What the….” Carlos picked up the tiny glass and tipped it upside down. A single drop of tea and four bitty ice cubes spilled out. “I don’t believe it.” He handed the glass to Dominic. “Feel that. It weighs the same as the bigger glass.”

“That’s because it’s the same mass,” I said. “It’s just compacted into tighter clusters of atoms.
I did the same thing to a statue in the great hall back at the Eighth Sphere.”

“You can do this, too?”

“Not here, I can’t. No one should be able to do that, not unless they’ve acquired the quintessential.”

“Can
Ursula do that to Gypsy?”

“I suppos
e, but I’m not sure what good it would do. A tiny Gypsy is no less dangerous than a full sized Gypsy.”

“
I still don’t understand,” said Dominic. “How is it Ursula can do this?”

“
I told you. It’s the quintessential. Ursula has it. She’s been demonstrating it all along and neither of us realized it.”

“
I have?” said Ursula.

“Yes you
have. Don’t you remember what happened at Terri Cotta’s place? I got into an argument with her neighbor and he threw that crucifix at me. I backed away to put some space between us, and what happened?”

“The ground opened up.”

“Exactly. You made that happen. You can’t tell me you weren’t subconsciously wishing there was an impenetrable divide between him and me when that occurred.”

“Aye, that I did. I wished he could not reach you.”

“Of course, and your mind simply presented us with the most logical defense.”

“Wait,” said Carlos. “Are you saying that Ursula created her own little earthquake?”

“On demand.”

“Incredible.”

“I know, but Terri Cotta had a hand in it, too. See, Terri was the true guardian of the element earth. It was her essence that triggered Ursula’s response to the danger.”

“I see,” said
Dominic. “That’s why it was an earthquake and not some other phenomenon like a lightning strike.”

“Precisely.
Before now, I thought the guardians’ residual energy was causing spontaneous anomalies around their homes associated with their elements.”

“
So, it’s happened more than once?”

“Yes. It happened at
Russell Burns’ place.”

“W
ho’s Russell Burns?”

“
Amber’s husband. We went to her house and her husband let us in. As we walked past the fireplace it spontaneously ignited.”

“
You think that was Ursula?”

“
Of course. She employed Amber’s lingering energy to start that fire.”

“Could have been a coincidence.”

“Sure, just like the coincidence at April’s house with the waterfall flowing uphill. The point is that Ursula possesses the power of the quintessential, and at every instance when she was around the guardians’ residual energy, she absorbed some of it.”

“
Are we talking about the same powers over the elements that Gypsy has?”

“Yup.” I turned to Ursula and smiled at her. “
She just doesn’t know how to control it yet.”

Carlos said, “How did she know to use it at the cannery? You can’t tell me that was an accident.”

“You’re right about that. It wasn’t an accident. Yet it wasn’t exactly controlled, either. It’s seems to only work for her when brought about spontaneously. It’s event-driven, at least until she learns to master it.”

“That’s not good,
” Dominic said. “Because I’m assuming that Gypsy knows it now, and if Ursula can’t use it at will to protect herself….” He trailed off in a shudder.

“Don’t worry
. We’re going to figure out how she can do that. The fact that Ursula has it, means Gypsy won’t be so bold from now on. She has weaknesses. We just have to find out what they are.”

“How do we do that?” asked Carlos.

“We ask someone who knows.”

Dominic said, “
I bet Paige Turner knows?”

“
Bet you’re right.”

“But she and Gypsy are
working together. She won’t help us.”

“You mean she won’t knowingly help us.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Dominic,
Paige doesn’t know that we know she and Gypsy are in cahoots. She’ll talk candidly if we ask the right questions.”

“
I get it,” said Carlos, “reverse psychology.”

“No, Carlos. It’s not reverse psychology. It’s called manipulating the interview. You should know that. You’re a cop.”

“Oh sure, I know that. It’s just that when I do it, I usually throw in a little reverse psychology. It keeps them guessing.”

“Carlos, you keep me guessing.”

He smiled proudly. “Thanks.”