The Stargazers (31 page)

Wait for it. Too soon, and she’ll get the drop on you. You’ve underestimated someone for the last time.

When the door opene
d, she leapt out and grabbed Iris
around the neck, sinking her teeth into the thin flesh as they fell to the ground. Oleander drank in the
other woman’s blood and screams
as she chewed away at s
kin that smelled of dusty old roses and some sort of mentholated
ointment. She pulled back and spit out a piece of the woman’s flesh.

“I bashed Ivy’s
head in with a rock before I ripped out her heart and ate it. I don’t think I’m going to do you the same mercy.”

Iris balled up a wad of saliva and mucous and spit it in Oleander’s face. “Go suck on a diseased cock, you pathetic hag.”

The two rolled around like
fighting dogs. The
n Oleander felt something hard hit the side
of her head
and she flew
into a thorny bramble. The dry barbs ripped into her skin, but she was too infuriated to feel it.

“That’ll leave a mark!” Iris yelled, and the woods filled with her harsh cackles. She was leaning against a tree, one hand pressed against the bleeding wound in her neck.

She looks a little pale, but there’s plenty of life left in her. What the hell are you waiting for
?

Oleander growled and
ripped
free of the bramble. She was clumsier by far, but she decided to use her lower center of gravity to her advantage, like a charging rhino. Hunkering down, she ran at the rotted old crone, intent to stop her laughter in her throat. 

But then Iris did something completely unexpected. She
raised her hand, palm out, fingers
slightly hooked. A chrysanthemum of
blue light bloomed before and thrust outward toward Oleander
.

The impact was like a thousand fists hitting her at once, and
she flew over the thorny brambles
, colliding with a tree and splashing in a puddle of rainwa
ter at the base
. The ground shook beneath
her,
and the skies crackled with thunder
over
her as the force of whatever Iris had hit her with rippled away.

For a moment, she was too stunned to think, but then it became clear.

Old Magic.
The old bitch still had it.

“
So you want to play that way, do you?”

Iris looked even weaker than before, but her smile was triumphant
. “I’ve been holdin’ onto that my whole life.
I was probably waiting for you, but didn’t know it at the time.
I bet you don’t even have your anymore, do you? And not a damn thing to show for it.
Just look at
you.
You’re spent.”

“I don’t need it for the likes of you, bitch.” Oleander’s hands searched for a rock, and then she
struggled to her feet again as another blue flower opened on Iris’s palm.

“A rock, huh? T
hat the best you got? There’s p
lenty of this left. Maybe I’ll just cut off your arms and legs. Make you
an easy stump of flesh for Aster to carry back to Ellemire.”

Another car approached from their left. Headlights cut th
rough the rain and illuminated them both. Aster
was
in the pas
senger seat, and her little girl
friend was behind the wheel. Oleander
gritted
her teeth.
No
thing had gone as she’d planned it. N
o
matter. Her moment would come. It always did.

Oleander caught the barest flicker in
the ball of
blue light in Iris’s hand. It was the minutest diversion of attention, all thanks to dear Aster.
Oh niece, how you’v
e helped me without even trying
!

She
threw the rock
, hitting Iris just above the ear
.

Blood sq
uirted out from the impact, and the meddlesome crone dropped like a sash weight, her light extinguished
forever.

Aster
’s hysterical
scream
s filled the woods
. It was a beautiful sound.

-28-

Aster noticed the blue light before she saw the two women silhouetted against it in the pouring rain.

“What the hell is that?
Am I losing my goddamn mind
?” Ruby’s vo
ice was bordering on shrill
.

Aster didn’t know how she knew it, but she’d never been more certain of anything in her life. “It’s Old Magic. Oh god, hurry!” Ruby stopped not far from Ivy’s red truck. Aster climbed out just as the stone had collided with Iris’s head. She screamed in fury as Mama Iris went down. “
No
!”

The person who threw the rock staggered
and
turned to face her. Aster didn’t know the old and decrepit woman at first. Most of t
he hair was gone from her head and
the rema
ining clumps and strands hung i
n her face like Spanish moss. Tumors bulged from her forehead and cheeks, and her eyes were like slivers of jade engulfed almost completely by flesh.

It was the hate that Aster recognized more than the flesh.

Oleander
.

She bent down to Larkspur and pressed her forehead against his. “Go to Ellemire and get the others.
Hurry
.” The cat dashed off in a gray blur toward the Tree of Doors, which at first looked like a normal tree, but changed form as Larkspur neared it. Its gnarled roots spread out
like living tentacles digging into the earth. The Door of All Doors yawned open like a great wooden mouth, and colored light from the clearing on the other side filled the woods here, mimicking daylight. Larkspur jumped through the Door without slowing and passage snapped closed, draping them all with just the light from the motor
carriages to see by. 

Ruby
ran to Mama Iris
.

“What have you done?
” Aster cried at the hunching
ogre. “
Why
?”

Oleander laughed. “All of this? I’ve come to set you free of their frau
d. You should be grateful to me!
”

Aster’s jaw dropped. “Grateful? But you killed nearly everyone I cared about!”

“Everyone you cared about? Did I kill your mother? Your precious little kitt
y cat? I see your little she-loving
friend is still breathing. Oh the
drama
! If I’d raised you, I would have made you a mute.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Why, I just want my potion girl back. Don’t you realize that I’m the only one who ever understood you? You and I, alone in the worl
d against those old bats
who wanted to control you like a puppet. But I knew that
the
prophecy was all lies. I saw it with my eyes
, and I vowed to make them pay, to make you mine
!”

The words whirled through Aster’s head.
“What
…what lies? What did you see?
”

“
It doesn’t matter now! It can’t be fixed. Nothing can. Lichen is dead
.
All that matters is that they feel what I felt, that they pay for their lies!
”

Lichen? Who’s Lichen?
Did it matter?
She was attempting to reason with
a woman who had lost her mind, and that was not part of her plan. That plan didn’t really become clear until she saw that rock hit Iris in the head. Then her mind became as clear as the woods after the opening of the Door.

“
Nanny Lily said
I
was meant to save
the world from you.
What do you think of that
?
”

Oleander’s eyes widened. “She never said that!”

“She did.
She saw the signs from the moment you were born
. Of course, she lied about some things
, but not all of it.
I’ve learned a lot since I’ve come here.
I
plan to return the Old Magic to Ellemire and make sure you never
have the chance to hurt anyone again.
”

Oleander shuffled forward a few steps, and Aster backed up accordingly.

“You don’t have the power you think you do. But what Magic you do have will soon be mine.”

“You’re done, Aunt O. You don’t have anything left.
If you come quietly back to Ellemire, I will make sure they show you mercy.
”

Aster felt herself opening to the light of the O
ld Magic
.
Or maybe it was more like surrender. Everything she could see was surrounded with a glowing blue nimbus. The dark shadow that had been over her heart was beginning to wane.

“Child, I always have something left.”
Ole
ander
reached d
own into her dress pocket and
pulled out a vial
. It contained a black fluid
swirling with veins of purple light
, and Aster didn’t recognize it
.
More of Oleander’s dark magic.
She tipped the bottle’s contents into her
nearly toothless maw and then vanished
in a puff of black smoke.

Aster jumped. “Where did she go?
Ruby, w
atch for her!”

Ruby, who had been tending to Mama Iris, looked around in a daze. “What?”

“Miss me?” Oleander whispered from behind her, her voice little more tha
n a whisper. Aster
whirl
ed around to see Oleander’s face hanging before hers like a nightmarish
apparition before
. It disappeared into a fine black mist and her m
irthful cackles echoed through the forest, chilling Aster’s blood.

She ran to Ruby. “Oleander’s taken some kind of vanishing potion. We need to hit her with something when she reappears.”

Ruby’s eyes searched the forest floor for a second before she leaned down and grabbed a rock. “Got it.”

“Got what?” Oleander’s face popped into view
again only inches from them both
.
They
screamed and jumped back, colliding again with Oleander, who appeared immediately behind them. She felt the old crone’s hand tangle in her hair and a second later, Aster’s head collided with Ruby’s.

Aster hit the ground in a stunned lump. After the all
the knocks on the head earlier in the evening,
she was now seeing the wor
ld through layers of gauze. Only by the power of the Old Magic did s
he
manage
to hold onto consciousness.

Ruby was out completely.

She slowly
staggered
to her
feet, fighting the urge to vomit
. “You’re a coward,
Oleander. If you’re so much better than me, why don’t you fight me hand to hand?”
 

A
gnarled and liver-spotted
hand flashed out, slapping h
er across the face before it vanished again. “Like this
?”
The
hand appeared again, this time slapping across the other cheek. “Or this one?”

Aster screamed with fury and snared the assaulting appendage before it could disappear again. She bit down as hard as she could on the finger, tasting dirt and blo
od, until she felt bare
bone against her teeth.
Her
jaw cramped with the force.

Oleander’s cries were immense. H
er full body appeared before Aster
, the effectiveness of her potion lost in the agony
.
Aster jabbed her in the face with her fist, connecting
w
ith Oleander’s bulbous nose and
squishing some of the pus-fi
lled lumps that covered it.

The hag
stumbled backward, arms pinwheeling for balance as her calves fetched up against a log. Aster grabbed her by the front of her dress and delivered another blow to her face. She had never p
unched someone
before, but the padded flesh of Oleander’s cheeks and forehead made it easy and painless. However, her next swing landed in thin air as Oleander managed to vanish again.

Aster screamed in frustration
.
H
er pulse was redlining, causing he
r vision to narrow to a point. S
he lurched around the clearing
, arms swinging in the hopes of snagging the beastly woman again
.
“Come… back…
here
!”