Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (91 page)

But what’s that going to solve?
I asked myself, still staring down at my shoes. Obviously her grandmother thought I did it. That seemed apparent. Would her grandmother listen to reason, listen to my heart? I didn’t know, but we had to see. Her grandmother had to call off the mice and use her magic to find the real killer.

And the kid. I tried to picture its chubby little face, wondering if it had Amanda’s eyes and my nose.

I stood up, suddenly dreading the thought of a mouse army waiting outside. I took a deep breath. Tabitha was glaring at me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, no hiding the alarm that suddenly filled my voice, squeezing my vocal chords tight, until I was almost squeaking like a mouse. I had to fight an urge to turn around to look for the mice that might be scuttling my way. After all, Mead magic probably worked best in a Mead house.

“There’s no taking back a curse, Albert. Once a curse is in motion, it must be fulfilled.”

“Shit.”

“At least, that’s what Nana once told me. She hasn’t told me much, but that much I do remember.”

“Well, let’s talk to her anyway. There has to be a way. And maybe along the way, you can tell me everything you do know about these curses.”

She nodded slowly, her eyes seemingly fastened onto an object a million miles away. She pulled on the coat and my eyes about bugged out of my head. In the jacket she looked so very much like Amanda, for the bulkiness of the wool hid Tabitha’s hard, wiry frame. I had the illusion again that Amanda was standing before me.

What a cruel curse it would be if this were really Amanda and she was made of cold spirit stuff, something I could long for but never wrap my arms around.

“Are you okay?” Tabitha asked.

“God, no.”

Before stepping outside, I put my helmet back on. Tabitha refused to wait inside while I made sure everything was fine.

She shoved past me, muttering something about not being the one who was cursed. Maybe she was immune to the threat of the mice, or something, and that they would only attack me.

God help me. This was all so very insane. All of it except for the murder of Amanda.

However, the mice were a very real threat to me. You know how deep a phobia can get. It had been in my head longer than any other fear I could remember, not that I had that many. Even my fear of Gerda wasn’t as strong as that of creepy little furry rodents with white stripes.

“Why couldn’t my greatest fear have been Gerda?” I said aloud, mostly to myself. “Then we’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“Nana doesn’t work that way,” Tabitha said. “What good is a curse if it gives you what you want?”

As we made our way down the winding cement path through Amanda’s front yard, I was greatly relieved to see that there wasn’t a horde of killer mice waiting for me. At least, as far as I could tell. I still had the horrible image of mice running up my legs and then swarming over me, finally forcing myself to my knees from their sheer weight, their powerful little jaws making short work of my jeans and leather jacket. And then I saw them crawling over my naked body.

Jesus Christ, that gave me the willies. I had to stop walking and catch my breath. I felt Tabitha’s hand touch my shoulder. It was a reassuring feeling. I continued down the path to my bike parked on the street.

Tabitha insisted on riding on the bike with me, even though I had assumed we would take her car, the Honda Accord I had parked my bike behind. Not once could I talk Amanda into even a short ride on my motorcycle. Tabitha was different from her sister, and I had to keep reminding myself of that fact, despite their shared features.

I had a spare helmet latched to the tail bar, and as I began unlatching it for Tabitha, I suddenly feared that a mouse would come shooting out of the helmet. Nothing moved in there, but I was a nervous wreck.

“You want me to drive?” Tabitha asked.

“You can handle a bike?”

“I had some CHiP’s training,” she said, with confidence and a little disdain. “Or does that threaten your manhood?”

I kicked the bike to life, and Amanda stepped from the curb to the small seat behind me. She could have held onto the tail bar behind her, but she put her hands at my sides. Despite myself, a warm shiver of pleasure ran through me, originating from where she touched my waist.

God, if I wasn’t a grab-bag of emotions right now. If I wasn’t quaking with fear, I was laughing hysterically. I told myself that I was only seeking comfort, a natural reaction to the death of a loved one. We were family, in a weird way. But I tried not to let my mind wander down that road, because there was a real road—a hard, dangerous one—rolled out before us.

“You don’t mind me holding onto you, do you?” she asked loudly, leaning forward, her whole body pressed against my back. “It’s just that I feel safer holding on to you rather than that little bar behind me.”

I eased the bike forward, and Tabitha’s grip tightened. I wondered what Gerda would think if she saw me now, snuggling up to another Mead woman not 16 hours after she’d killed one. I had the feeling Tabitha would be a little tougher to victimize than Amanda had been.

Someday, Al, you’re going to have to be strong and divorce that woman and begin a new life. Someday. Like maybe when she’s safely locked away in prison.

+ + +

Since we ended up using the bike, I knew that whatever story Tabitha had of her grandmother’s curses in action would have to wait. Her mysterious “I’ve seen it before” plagued my imagination, and I desperately wanted to know what it was that she had seen before. Most importantly, I wanted to know how that one had turned out.

I had no real stomach to meet the old lady again, for by now she had been elevated in my mind to rivaling the Wicked Witch of the East. Her dark mojo was real. God, did I know it was real. But we had to see her. I had to explain to her that I was innocent, that I could have in no way killed her daughter. This nightmare had to end.

Because I couldn’t find Gerda and save my child if I was obsessing over little critters that wanted to strip me to the bone.

We cruised at a moderate speed down Chapman Avenue. Probably because it was a better grip, Tabitha’s hands slid forward, closing the gap at my naval. I took a deep breath, slightly light-headed from her strong grip. A few lights later, driving along the quiet street, Tabitha touched my right shoulder and directed me to turn left at Raymond Avenue. I did so.

Raymond Avenue reminded me of the time I had decided to be environmentally correct and had saved my newspapers, bags, and junk mail for months. Along this street was the recycling center for North Orange County. Proudly, I had loaded the Mercedes with my month’s collection, feeling at one with the Earth, and drove to the recycling center. They weighed the car before taking out the paper, then they weighed the car after I took out the paper. The difference was sixty-five pounds.
Wow
, I had thought.
I actually saved sixty-five pounds of paper
.

I went up to the cashier and asked for the money owed to me. She had laughed and asked if I was serious, looking at me as if I was putting her on. Feeling as if I had missed something, I said sure. She gave me fifteen cents.

I never recycled paper again. Was it because of the money? No, though I felt one should be rewarded a little more than that. Because I had been laughed at? Probably. Here I had made an effort to help a little and I had been ridiculed. There was a bigger message there, maybe something like “Why worry about saving the world when you can’t even save yourself?”

I was so absorbed in self-pity that I hadn’t noticed Tabitha tapping my right shoulder. Finally, she slammed her hand down on my shoulder as a judge would a gavel. I turned right on a dark residential street. I didn’t catch the name of the street. We passed under the lonely hanging wisps of weeping willows, and I discovered that my skin was crawling again. I briefly wondered if I would ever be normal again, and concluded that I was probably never normal to start with.

God, I’m going to see that face again.

Hell, Nana was probably going to spit a hex on me right then and there when she saw that her precious mice hadn’t done the trick.

Sweat formed on my brow. My stomach was roiling and scorching with acid from the booze, and when Tabitha touched my left shoulder, I was thinking that I was going to have to quickly get my fucking helmet off if I was going to puke. Well, thankfully I didn’t puke. This time.

To the left was a big house. Very big and as spooky as they come, an Addams Family terror tower straight from a Stephen King wet dream. I pointed, while slowing down. She gave me a thumbs up. This was the place.

I stopped the bike and Tabitha got off first. I booted the kickstand into place. My watch beeped suddenly, and I looked at it, pushing the Indiglo button. Midnight. The witching hour.

Just perfect.

My mouth was dry and I could have used another beer.

Or a dozen.

The weeping willow’s whip-like branches swayed in the wind. The tree could have been a giant witch-head, its long and narrow branches the tangled and dirty hair. The branches reached down to my face, and I moved them away a little nervously, my imagination turning traitor. I could see the branches as claws, brought to sinister intent by an old bag’s curse.

We moved past the huge tree and before us was an iron fence. The fence encircled the big piece of property and was shaped in a crusted, antique design. The fence was topped with iron spikes shaped like fancy arrowheads; the message was clear:
Stay out!

Trust me, I would have. But I had no choice.

And on the heels of that thought came another, that maybe the fence was designed to keep people
in
as well.

There was cultivated grass beyond the fence, with scruffy hedges and sagging flowers and a long driveway, but the house itself was set back and enshrouded in darkness. I could only make out the fact that it was huge and nothing more, and what I couldn’t see, my imagination more than happily filled in.

“This is straight out of a horror movie,” I whispered to Tabitha, who was in the lead. “All we need is a sudden thunderstorm.”

I could have talked in my normal, rather impressively rich baritone voice, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. Whispering felt right. It felt safer. Plus, God only knew what could be lurking in that house.

She stopped and when I walked up, she said: “It’s an old folk’s home. ‘Home’ really fits in this sense. This place was once the mansion of one of the founding fathers of Fullerton, and when he died, he stipulated in his will that his home should be made to house the elderly in their final years. Notice how this is the only house of its kind on the street.”

“Yeah. One of a kind, all right.”

“Well, that’s because the city of Fullerton has made the former owner a hero, and the house has become a local landmark, but they keep to the will and are constantly restoring the house.”

“And your grandmother lives here?”

“One of six other guests.”

“How did she manage that?”

“Well, you have to know the right people and have a lot of money. One gets more attention here, you could say, than in most old-folk’s homes. Plus the founder liked to...”

“Tell me. I can handle it.”

“Dabble in the Dark Arts.”

“Great. Not only do I have to deal with a witch, but I have to do it in a haunted house full of Harry Potter wannabees.”

The joke didn’t do much to cover my fear. As you could imagine, my nerves were frayed, like the unraveling end of a rope. I was on alert for any signs of mice, expecting them to swarm from the creepy old mansion at any moment, spilling from every window and crack.

“Don’t think Nana is the only one who plays with forces beyond human understanding,” Tabitha said. “That would be a big, big mistake, and I don’t think you can afford many more mistakes.”

“What do you mean?”