Bitch Witch (34 page)

“I threw it out. It was just some old twigs. No glass or anything.”

Please, no.
“Are they still in the trash in the house somewhere? Or did someone throw it out?”

“I’m not sure. Do you want the picture?”

Sarah put her hands behind her back. The picture was covered in dark matter and she didn’t dare touch it. “Not until it is back in the frame. Can you do me a favor and put that picture on the table in the dining room? Or somewhere you don’t go?”

Paul didn’t ask or argue. He headed for the dining room. Sarah went back to his bedroom and crawled into bed, trying not to think about what might happen if they didn’t find that frame.

PAUL WOKE SARAH sometime after dark and turned on the lamp by the bed. The light made her blink, but it didn’t hurt her eyes. He set a tray with a bowl of soup on the edge of the bed and sat on the recliner.

“It’s probably better if we don’t talk, until we find the frame for that picture,” Sarah said.

“It got thrown out. I’m sure of it. I searched everywhere. I remember tossing it into the trash in your mother’s room. Henry took the trash out every evening I think. Smells made Kathleen throw up more.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at Paul.
After all of this, old dark matter is going to claim me?

Paul looked like someone had told him his dog died.

Sarah sniffled, grasped the tray, and slid it onto her lap. She picked up the spoon and plunged it into thick potato soup.

Paul slid off the chair and onto his knees beside the bed. “So it’s when I yell or get mad at you?”

She nodded.

“I won’t get mad.”

“Have you met me?” She managed a smile, but he didn’t.

“Can we make another frame? Were those twigs anything special?”

“I don’t know what they were, but they were made using dark matter. I got rid of most of the stuff that could be bad—after my family died. My mother and aunt drowned themselves in the grist mill pond about three years ago.”

“Oh, God, Sarah. I didn’t realize.”

“They’d been getting really bad. They were casting awful things, and using people to pay for it. There was a little girl…” Sarah’s voice trailed off and a few tears rolled down her cheeks, landing in the soup. She put the spoon down and wiped her eyes. “She’s in a wheelchair now. It could have been worse. I made them stop. And they…and they…used me instead.”

“Sarah, what?” Paul reached for her. She leaned away.

“Don’t touch me. It’s not a good idea.” She took a deep breath. “They only did it that once. Used me, I mean. They were mad that I’d interfered. Anyway, I was out cold for a while afterward, and I could tell when I woke up that they’d cut me, so I knew they’d made a spell with my blood.” Sarah picked up the spoon and stirred the soup, watching bits of bacon and cheese swirl.

“Eat a couple spoonfuls, Sarah,” Paul urged.

Sarah was lost in her thoughts. “Of course you know me, I confronted them about it. Mother told me about the picture and said I’d stay out of their business from then on. Aunt Lily came to me later that night. She told me about the frame, and said it would contain the spell and keep me safe. She said not to worry too much, and behave myself. So, I told them I was leaving, to go ahead and do whatever they wanted with the fucking picture.” She looked at Paul again. “I honestly didn’t care. After what they’d done. It didn’t matter anymore.”

“I can feel that,” he whispered.

“I didn’t think they could hurt me any more than using me as a human sacrifice. But they could.” Sarah stopped there, unable to talk about the police coming to the door. She didn’t want to remember the ride in their patrol car to the mill pond. Blinded by a sudden onslaught of tears, Sarah jammed the spoon into her mouth.

Paul moved his hand so it was close to where her leg lay beneath the blanket and left it there, not quite touching.

Regaining control, Sarah pulled the spoon out. “I looked for the picture. Spells are really weird. They can make you walk past something you see every single day, and not be able to see it. I thought maybe Lily—my aunt—had destroyed it. I hoped. Where was it?”

“It was on the dresser next to the jewelry box.”

She had looked on the dresser countless times and never been able to see it. “I wouldn’t have known how to get rid of it anyway. I think I could have burned it as long as it had the frame on it. Maybe.”

“We’ll make a new frame.”

“I can’t without using dark matter.”

“Could we just bury it in the attic?”

“No. The spell’s got you now. It’s not as strong as when you have the picture on you, but it’s there. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I hate when you say you can see dark matter in me. I feel like I’m being invaded.”

“That’s because you are.”

“Can you touch my eyeballs and chase it away?”

Sarah smiled briefly. “It’d only go deeper.” She studied Paul’s eyes. There was very little dark matter in them, only a few grains dotting the golden sparks in his brown irises. Her scrutiny seemed to make him nervous and he moved his hand to toy with the pendant on his necklace. The dark matter shrunk so small she couldn’t see it. She moved closer. “Let go of your necklace a minute.”

Paul obeyed.

It came back.

“Now hold it.”

It vanished.

“That pendant chases away dark matter too. I wonder why.”

“What if I make a frame for your picture out of this?” He tugged the pendant out and fingered the heavy pewter chain.

“I’m not sure what good that would do.”

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Come on, Sarah. We can’t do nothing.”

“Nothing might be the smartest thing to do.” She didn’t want to tell him it was only a matter of time. Without the protection of Aunt Lily’s frame it was inevitable that type of spell would get her. Somehow she’d gone from furious at him, to the reality of what she faced. There was no anger in her, not even for her family.

At least when it does get me my soul won’t be consumed by dark matter in the end.

“Do you want me to leave, Sarah? Is that what you’re not saying? If I go, will you be safe?”

“It’ll just follow you, or rebound. It could even go after Henry. The love spell did. I told you before that dark matter is smart. It’s found a way back into my life, and yours. It’s not going to give up easily.”

Paul frowned. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“We’re fixing this. We’re not letting it win. Get out of bed. Come on. Now, Sarah.”

SARAH TUGGED ON the ends of her long t-shirt as she entered the dining room for the first time in years. Dust coated the surface of the dining room table, and thick cobwebs hung from the chandelier. Even Paul had avoided cleaning the room. This room held echoes of generations of Archers. If they were going to battle dark Archer magic, it was best done right here.

The picture lay on a corner of the table, inches away from a long tapestry embroidered by her grandmother’s grandmother, Susannah Archer. A thick candle, handmade by Aunt Lily, sat in the middle of the table. A hand blown glass hurricane lamp covered it. Sarah’s mother had been the glassblower, Lisha Celeste, known as “Sissy” to both Lily and their mother. Sarah had no pleasant memories of her grandmother, Blair Nisha, and she doubted that her mother or Lily had either.

Sarah darted her eyes around the room. Hand painted wallpaper—Kalonice Archer. Paintings—Ruby Archer. Thrown pottery—Sarah and Daisy Archer. Sarah quickly turned her eyes from the exquisitely decorated bowls. She knew who had made every item in the room and didn’t want to remember a single one of the witches.

Paul leaned across the table to reach into the glass lamp and light the candle inside. The flame burned low and dark. Sarah averted her eyes. Paul glanced around the room and picked a shallow bowl. It was painted yellow and black with white calla lilies decorating the rim.

“This?” he asked, and tossed it onto the table without waiting for a reply. The faint dark specks in his eyes answered the question for him. He took the photograph of Sarah and dropped it into the wide bowl, pausing only to swipe a gentle finger across the face in the photo. Sarah could swear she felt it and shivered.

“Do you think you could invoke your new skills and cast with light to do this?”

Another shiver rippled through Sarah’s body. “I don’t see how. I don’t even know how to use it really.” She glanced at the chandelier casting a faint, shadowy light around the room.

“Sit down.” Paul gestured toward a chair.

Sarah hesitated. It was her chair. She knew the stains on the cushion: berry cobbler from one summer when she was nine, and red wine spilled the night she’d lost her virginity in that very chair. She knew why the right front leg of that chair wobbled a bit.

Paul waited until she sat. The right front leg wobbled slightly.

Sarah crossed her arms and squeezed them.

Paul nodded approval and slowly unclasped his necklace, leaning his head over the bowl as he did. Dangling the chain over the bowl, he closed the clasp on it and slowly lowered it in, taking care to center the photograph inside the chain. “You’re my friend, Sarah. Of all my friends living on this earth I would call you my best next to Henry.” He glanced at her. “And only next because tradition demands I put him first.”

A lump formed in her throat and she wondered if he had any idea how much those words meant to her.

Paul poked a finger into the bowl and moved the pendant over her face in the photograph. “I would give everything to protect my family and friends.”

Sarah watched as he picked up the bowl and balanced it on top of the hurricane lamp. He walked around the table, tugged the chair out beside hers—Sarah tried not to think of whose it had been—and sat down in it. He laid his hand in her lap, palm up, and Sarah relaxed the death grip on her arms and put her hand in his.

Paul leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs under the table, and waited.

For a moment Sarah thought that the flame would go out on the candle. Surely the bowl covering the lamp kept oxygen out of it. Universal laws had to be obeyed, even by dark matter. A wisp of color drifted through her mind, a wordless rainbow thought. Sarah squeezed Paul’s hand, inhaling and exhaling slowly out her mouth.

The flame inside the glass shot up to touch the bottom of the bowl.

Sarah felt a flash of heat on her neck. She squeezed Paul’s hand tighter.

Fire spread along the bottom of the bowl, and Sarah knew she wasn’t imaging the heat against her back. She leaned forward. Paul tightened his grip on her hand and elbowed her to sit back against the hot chair. She looked into his eyes.

They were black with dark matter.

Sarah tried to let go of his hand but he held hers in a death grip.

“Trust me,” he said, and turned his attention back to the candle.

I trust Paul. I trust Paul. I trust Paul.
Sarah repeated the mantra to herself.

Inside the hurricane glass the flame burned hot and soot blackened her view.

Beneath her the chair grew warm, as if the back legs rested inside a campfire. The backs of her calves were too hot and she moved her legs further under the table. The heat followed.

Smoke curled out of the bowl, and Sarah could taste the acrid smell in her mouth.