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chapter thirty-seven

We walked back into the kitchen.
 
Joe was ahead of me and even though we were a ways from them, I could hear Patty and Linda still going at it.
 

How long had I been away?
 
Fifteen minutes?
 
And still they were arguing?
 
Did Price want to work at McDonald’s so much that she’d put up with this kind of bullshit to stay?
 
Or did she just enjoy a good fight?

It was pathetic.
 
But their presence here was critical, so I was happy that the shouting continued.

I sealed the exit doors shut.

Joe went over to the fry machine and turned up the oil temperature as far as it would go.
 
He dropped four baskets of fries into the searing liquid and then stepped over to the grill, which he also cranked to its highest point and started placing down rows of frozen burgers, which immediately sizzled and caught the blob’s attention.

“Joe, what are you doing?
 
We ain’t got no customers.”

But Whitehill didn’t speak.
 
He just kept slapping down the burgers until the entire grill was filled with them.
 
The sweet smell of manufactured, bleach-treated meat wafted into the air.
 
Delicious.
 
Then we went to the fish station and dropped several frozen fillets into the hot grease.
 
Fantastic.
 
He turned to the chicken station and in went the crusty cutlets that always tasted to me like they were made of chicken beaks, eyes and assholes.
 

The blob came into the kitchen and just stared at him, her arms resting on her impossibly wide hips.
 
“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cooking.”

“Cooking for who?”

He looked up at her.
 
“I’m cooking us.”

She could see that something wasn’t right with him.
 
His movements were clipped, deliberate.
 
He was working with a purpose she hadn’t seen in him before.
 
She chose her words carefully.
 
“Cooking
for
us, you mean.”

“No,” he said.
 
“I’m cooking
us
.”

And then Joe Whitehill did exactly what I instructed him to do.
 
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of matches.
 
He held them up in front of her and smiled a smile that had chilled dozens of those who ever had crossed his path.
 
It was a crazed smile, the sort of smile you saw on someone who badly needed to be on medication.
 
It was broad.
 
It showed his rotten teeth.
 

She looked at the matches but didn’t seem to comprehend the implications of what he was going to do.
 
“You put them down, Joe.”

“Why?” he said.
 
“I’m a pyro.”

“Look,” she said.
 
“I don’t know what that fancy word means, but I think I got a good idea.
 
So, you put down those matches.
 
You do it now.”

Price came into the room and stopped just behind Patty.
 
“What’s he doing?”

Patty shoved a finger in her face.
 
“You shut up.
 
You’re fired.
 
You’ve got no business being here.
 
You’re trespassing.
 
You’re disrupting justice.
 
I’m in control.
 
I’m handling this.”

But Price shook her head.
 
She was looking at Whitehill, who was striking a match.
 
“No, you’re not.”

All of us watched Whitehill as he dropped the lit match onto the griddle and ignited the grease.
 
A blue flame hovered over the meat for an instant before oxygen sucked under it and it became a full, roaring flame that reached the grill’s cover and rolled over it toward the ceiling.

Whitehill walked over to the three fry areas.
 
He stepped back and tossed matches into each one.
 
There were several small explosions.
 
Fiery grease flew out, down and upward, where it charred the ceiling and set it on fire.
 

That was it for Price.
 
She ran for the doors.
 

I imagined a bucket of water near the blob’s feet and made her look down at it.
 
Without thinking—or maybe without even knowing the consequences of what she was about to create—she picked up that pail of water and threw it on top of the fiery grease, which made the fire exponentially worse because the flames spattered into the room like some sort of liquid, meteoric confetti from the underworld.
 

The restaurant hadn’t been properly cleaned in months and the fire licked out like darting tongues, sheeting across the greasy floor.
 
It sank beneath the cooking area, where the griddle already was roaring.
 
Beneath it was a gas main.
 
Eventually, the restaurant would either be fully engulfed by fire or it would explode because of that main.
 
Probably, both.
 
Gas mains are funny that way.

“The doors are locked!” Price screamed.

The blob ran to an extinguisher attached to the wall opposite her and started spraying the griddle.
 
But she was only fooling herself and she knew it.
 
It was becoming difficult to breathe.
 
The fires were now fully out of control.
 
The burgers popped up and down, some hopping so high, they flipped over themselves.
 
And then flipped again.

“Why?” the blob asked Whitehill.
 
“Why would you do this?”

“It’s not like I haven’t done it before,” he said.
 
“I’m one of the eight who set fire to the Moore trailer.
 
You read about that, didn’t you, Patty?
 
I helped to kill Seth Moore’s parents.
 
Unfortunately, I missed out on killing him, too.
 
And guess what?
 
I feel cheated by that.
 
So, because I didn’t get what I wanted to then and because you’re such a fucking bitch to me here at work, I thought I’d take it out on you.”

She swung the extinguisher at him, but he was quick.
 
He smacked it out of her hands and it fell on top of the griddle, where it started to roast in the flames and soon also would explode.
 
The blob looked at it with such horror, she held her hand over her mouth and started backing away until she was running for the doors, which I unlocked.
 

My work was done.
 
Two witnesses watched Joe Whitehill not only set this place on fire, but it was clear that he did so with the intent to kill them.
 
He’d serve time for that.
 
He’d be locked away in prison for years for that.

I looked at him.
 
The fire was twisting in his eyes.
 
It was so close around him that it framed him to the point that the heat was probably burning him.
 

“Everything’s about to blow,” I said.
 
“I want you outside, now, away from the building but waiting for the police.
 
When they question you, tell them what I told you to tell them.
 
Say you have no regrets and that you wished they had died, just as you’re glad my parents died when you helped to kill them.
 
But remember, Joe—you’re not to say a word about the other seven.
 
Got that?
 
I’m taking care of them.”

He nodded.

The heat was becoming too much.
 
I kept the smoke away from us as we hurried outside.
 
I looked over my shoulder at the building before I left and the extinguisher blew.
 
Almost all of the building was on fire now.
 
Windows were bursting from the heat.
 
The PlayPlace, filled with its cheap plastic toys and the stink of too many filled diapers, was melting in a clutch of unhappy blues, reds and yellows.
 
Amidst the tinkling glass, I could hear the sound of sirens growing closer.
 
Cars on the street slowed to a stop.
 
People got out and started to run toward the building in an effort to help.
 
And then, emerging just above the restaurant’s flames, I saw something I didn’t expect.

It was the witch, her hands were held out at her sides as she looked down at the damage I’d created, and then she looked straight at me in spite of the fact that I was still invisible.

She came for me.
 
She could see me.

I looked down at my hands and saw the faint glow.
 
Depending on her strength, I was still protected by the shield that surrounded me.

From the throes of the flames, she danced and swirled within them until the flames funneled around her in a fiery tornado that spiraled up her body.
 
She stopped and crooked her finger at me.
 
She was challenging me.
 
She wanted to take me on.
 
Fine.

Game on, bitch.

Like a bullet, I lifted myself high into the air and tore straight toward her.

chapter thirty-eight

She was quick and moved fast through the woods behind the McDonald’s, just as I knew she would.
 

I tapped into the amulets and told them to seek her out for me, which they did.
 
She was just ahead of me, darting between the trees, laughing as I followed, but ready for battle the moment she decided to stop and face me with God knows what.

I prepared myself for that moment, dodging between the branches, knowing what needed to be done when she did stop and the consequences that would come my way should I succeed in killing her.

If I crushed her—if I did kill her—it would send a message to her master, who would send more witches my way.
 
But as Jim said, he would only send so many from his coven.
 
He’d only go so far.
 
I had no question that he was watching us now to see how well I held up against her.
 

I was close enough to her now that I could see her in the dark.
 
Her brown hair was a wild tumble of waves fanning out behind her.
 
She was wearing what appeared to be a black leather dress.
 
I turned each of my fists into stun guns and pumped them at her, but she deflected the energy with a mere swipe of her hand.
 
I turned my hands into machine guns, but the bullets bounced off her.
 
I looked ahead of her and made dozens of thirty-foot-tall trees fall in her path.
 
Nothing.
 
And then I uprooted one of the trees and swung it at her.

Finally, success.
 

The tree slammed so hard against her forehead, she tumbled to the ground, falling to the dark forest floor in a heap.
 
There was no time to waste.
 
I shot down as fast as I could, but already she was recovering.
 
She shook her head and made an effort to stand.
 
She sagged against one of the felled trees and looked up at me, but in a way I wasn’t expecting.
 
The moment I collided with her, driving my fists straight into her face, I saw that she was smiling.
 

When my fists struck, I might as well have been striking a rock, which is exactly what she intended.
 
My hands collapsed against her face, but nothing broke.
 
I still had the shield around me.

On the ground, we fought and given the swiftness of her moves, it was clear that I hadn’t hurt her at all.
 
She wanted me down here.
 
This is where she was most comfortable.
 

So be it.

She was whirling around me, skipping with impressive speed off the trees I’d toppled.
 
“Why don’t you just give them to me?” she said.
 
“It would be so much easier.”

I kept pace with her, turning and flipping as she created her dizzying circle.
 
“Easier for who, Anna?”

“For you, silly.
 
Give them up or die.”
 
She reached out a hand and let loose an electric rope of coiling blue light that hit me in the shoulder and sent me reeling backward.
 
And then she did it again, and again, with such force that my shield started to flicker, then waiver.
 

She was cutting through it.
 
She was getting close to taking me out.
 
She swung out to strike again and this time she sent me down onto my back.
 
I tried to get up, but she was relentless.
 
As she walked over to me, she kept the beam boring through the shield and for the first time, I thought that with even four amulets, I was no match for her.

Concentrate.

I fed on the amulets to the point that they scalded me.
 
I had a choice—lose my focus and attack her.
 
Or retain my focus and strengthen the shield.

There was no choice.
 
Eventually, she’d get through the shield and so I gave the amulets my full focus while she slinked around me, letting loose blast after blast until she was upon me and leaning over me.
 

She was pretty.
 
Her brown hair fell loose around her face.
 
She smiled at me, cocked her head slightly to the right and I thought she was as terrifying as she was beautiful.
 
Her left hand was out at her side fueling the blue beam with everything she had.
 
Then, slowly, I saw her right hand descend as if she was about to rip the amulets from my neck.
 

Giving it all I had, I pushed the shield out to the point that it engulfed her hand.
 
There was a flash of white light as she tried to pull back, but she couldn’t.
 
Her hand now was within the shield.
 
Her fingers crackled within it like fireworks and folded in on themselves as she howled in pain.

I grasped her hand, drew her inside the shield and wrapped my arms around her while she writhed against my body as the shield electrocuted her.
 
I punched my hand through her back and was about to rip out her spine when she arched back so fiercely, she popped out of the shield, bellowing in pain as she did so.

She slammed hard against a tree, said something in a language I didn’t understand and looked up at the sky.
 
I could see she was bleeding profusely from her back.
 
Smoke wafted off her face, which now looked older, blistered and broken.
 
It was the face of a hag.
 
It had the shape of something demonic and evil.
 
She looked down at me with a mixture of hatred, pain and surprise.
 
Obviously, she was hurt.
 

Still, she could be mine.

I expanded the shield as if it was a bubble.
 
I did it with such speed, it caught her off guard to the point that she couldn’t move away from it fast enough.
 

The shield smashed against her chest, causing sparks to fly up into her face and catch her hair on fire, which illuminated the dark for an instant before she waved a hand over her head and put it out.
 
“Morieris!” she shouted.

I pressed down harder on the shield, at one point forming a hand at the end of it that I used to slug her in the face.
 
The force of the blow caused her to jaw to go slack, as if I’d broken it.
 
I reached out the hand and went for her throat.
 
I’d strangle the bitch if I had to.
 
But when I did, she ducked, rolled, righted herself and soared up and away from me.

I went after her and as I did, I threw the shield out toward her and missed when I tried to grab her foot.
 
I went for it again, but I was too late.
 
She was gone.
 
Or at least she appeared to be gone.
 

I hovered above the woods, looking for her.
 
There was only the sound of sirens, the glow of the fire as the McDonald’s burned, and the smell of smoke and burned meat, which was everywhere.
 

I must have stayed in the air for fifteen minutes waiting for her to attack, but when she didn’t—when I felt the amulets cooling against me—I teleported myself back to my apartment, which already was sealed.

I dropped myself into the living room.

I put my hand on the amulets to check if they were still cool.
 
They were.

I fell back against the couch and closed my eyes.

I’d just beaten my first witch.
 
I should have felt elated, but I didn’t.
 
Instead, I was filled with a sense of foreboding.
 
I almost lost my life because of her.
 
What would happen when more came?
 
I punched a hole in her back and still she lived.
 
If I’d gotten to her spine and pulled it free, would it have killed her?
 
How vulnerable was she?
 
How vulnerable were they all?

This was just the beginning.
 
I got lucky this time, but she was hurt and she was pissed.
 
She’d come at me again, harder this time, with everything she had.
 
But what was worse is what I knew in my soul.
 
The next time she came, she wouldn’t be alone.