Charmed, page 6
Mom would lose her mind if she knew I’d taken money out of the fund she’d worked so hard to save. For a brief moment I consider trying to find another way to come up with the cash, but then I think, Oh, who am I kidding? Mom’s dead. And anyway, she would have been okay with it if she knew what I was using it for. Not to mention I’m almost halfway through the school year and I haven’t even glanced at an SAT prep book.
So I’ll do it, I decide. Borrow the money.
The thought crosses my mind then that maybe this lady is swindling me. What does a witch needs money for? Bishop has a mansion funded entirely in money he magicked into existence. Surely she could do the same.
“Why not just conjure money?” I ask.
“I can’t.” She doesn’t elaborate.
Has the Family punished her too, I wonder? Is that why she looks so prematurely old? I want to ask but decide that it may be taboo.
“Are you sure it will work?” I ask.
She glances up for the first time since I came down here, and then goes back to her work. I guess that’s a yes.
The enormity of it hits me. I found a way. A real way to get to Paige. If only Bishop were here to see how much I’d accomplished on my own, all without his help.
Jerk.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
She gives a terse nod at my big announcement.
I shift my weight to my other foot. “Aren’t you going to warn me about how dangerous this is? How I probably won’t come back, and yada yada yada?”
“Do you want me to?” she asks.
I think about it, then shrug. “No, I guess not.”
She lays her pestle down again and uses the funnel to add more ground rock to the jar. “Come back when you have the money.”
“I want to do it now. Can’t I pay you later?”
“No.”
“Why not? I’m honest. I’ll get you the money.”
I realize right away the answer to my own question: because I might not come back.
I chew the inside of my cheek. I want to do it now. I’m worried that if I leave, rational thought might take over and I’ll be too scared to return.
An idea strikes.
“I’ll give you my car,” I say, fishing my keys out of my pocket. I hold them out in front of me; the metal glints in the candlelight. “As collateral. If I don’t come back, you can keep it.”
Her hands pause. I jump on her hesitation.
“It’s a good car. Parked right in the lot. A green Sunfire. A little old, but definitely worth more than three grand.”
She considers for a moment. Finally, she holds out her hand, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
She snags the keys. Suddenly she’s all business.
“This spell will send you to Los Demonios for a short time only. The exact amount of time is unknown and changes with each attempt. You will arrive at an unknown location. The location changes with each attempt. You will have pain in your head, which can vary from mild to excruciating. I am not responsible for anything that may happen to you on your visit. You will not be refunded if you find your experience unsatisfactory.”
My stomach churns.
Her little speech has me seriously questioning my decision, and I might even have backed out if she weren’t leading me firmly by the shoulder through a dark, narrow tunnel so small we have to crouch to fit through, all the while holding the swinging lantern out in front of her.
Where is she taking me?
I wish Bishop were here. As soon as I have the thought, I remember the way he took Aunt Penny’s side, and my anger comes flooding back. I don’t need Bishop’s help. I got by sixteen years just fine without a man in my life. I’m sure I can get through another day.
Just when my back is starting to get sore from crouching down at an unnatural angle, the tunnel mercifully opens up into another room. It’s round, smaller than the last, with five black entrances carved into the rock walls. It’s furnished with only a wooden chair that has cutouts of roosters on its back. I wonder whose grandma she robbed for it.
“Sit,” she demands.
She takes my candle, then gestures to the chair as she looks around for someplace to hang the lantern.
I cross to the chair and sit, my hands gripping the armrests. She crouches back into the hole we came through and disappears.
I’m alone in a cave. This day hasn’t turned out at all the way I’d imagined.
I wait for what feels like forever. A drip sounds somewhere in the distance, but otherwise it’s completely silent.
After a while, I hear a shuffling sound in one of the tunnels behind me—not the one we entered through. My body shifts into panic mode and I picture a cave monster ripping me to shreds, but then the witch emerges. She has her apron full of supplies, which she dumps unceremoniously onto the ground. As she tinkers, I peek over and spot a dirty chalice, a rusty dagger, and a rabbit’s foot, to name only a few things. Just what does she plan on doing with all this?
“Give me your hand,” she says suddenly, gripping the rusty dagger in her palm.
I white-knuckle the armrests.
“Give me your hand,” she repeats impatiently.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.
“Cut you.”
Well. Don’t beat around the bush or anything.
“That thing looks like it has hepatitis,” I say, eyeing the dirty blade.
She doesn’t respond.
“Haven’t you got a cleaner one? Or some bleach to disinfect it at least?”
She glares at me, what’s left of her patience rapidly evaporating.
I take a breath of courage and thrust out my arm. She catches it around the wrist, and I recoil at the surprising coldness of her hand. She poises the blade horizontally, just below the crook of my elbow. I look away before the metal makes contact with my skin, trying not to focus on the lifetime of treatments I might require after this ceremony is done. I gasp as the blade slices into me, then bite down hard on my lip as heat spreads across my arm. I can’t help looking as the first pricks of pain burst from my arm, where bright red blood spills from a three-inch gash at an alarming rate. I was not expecting her to cut me that bad.
My instinct is to curl my arm against my body and try to stanch the blood flow, but the witch holds the dirty chalice—which now contains the rabbit’s foot, the black-rock crystals she was crushing earlier, and what appears to be a peacock feather—right under the wound, filling it with my blood.
In just moments, the crystals are completely dissolved and the brown fur of the rabbit’s foot is nearly fully covered in my blood, but still the witch holds my arm over the cup, staring into it with an unblinking gaze.
A damp sweat breaks out on my forehead. My head spins, though I’m not sure if it’s due to the blood loss, my revulsion, or a combination of the two.
After my last complaints, I’d decided to shut up and just go with it, but the way the witch is staring into the cup, I’m starting to get worried that she nodded off to her special place.
“Isn’t that enough?” I ask.
Instead of her usual nonresponse response, she deigns to speak. “No.”
“Well, how much do you need?”
“Enough to open your mind.”
“That’s cryptic.” I realize I’m hyperventilating. I bite down on my lip again. It’s okay. This will get me to Paige. I need to do this. It’s for a good cause.
“The portal to Los Demonios lies in all of our minds,” she continues in a rare display of chattiness. I guess she feels bad for draining my lifeblood as well as my bank account. “But few people can access it. Only when your mind is in a fragile state can you see it. Even then most need help passing through.”
“How…” Black spots dance in front of my eyes when I try to speak. I focus on the words, wetting my lips. “How do you open the—”
And then everything goes black.
7
I blink my eyes open and find myself lying flat on my back, two tall buildings rising up on either side of me into a sky thick with smoke. The air crackles with electricity; the scent of something sharp and dry fills my nose.
Where am I?
Hot pain radiates down my arm.
In a flash, I remember the witch. The ceremony. My blood in a cup.
I look down. Sticky streaks of red have dried all down my forearm, and fresh blood still oozes from a nasty gash below the crook of my elbow. Vomit rises up my throat, and I have to look away before I hurl.
I’m in Los Demonios.
Holy. Crap.
How long have I been lying here? How much blood have I lost?
I roll over and flatten my palms against the gravelly sidewalk, letting out a little grunt as I struggle to my feet. I cradle my arm against my body and, after a wave of nausea passes, take cautious steps toward the street.
It takes me a moment to realize where I am. Gone are the charming boutique shops, hipster bars, and outdoor terraces pushed up against luxury high-rise apartments, the towering palm trees and massive billboards stacked one on top of another, fighting for every inch of available retail space, but I’d recognize the wide, twisting street, with its Hollywood Hills backdrop, anywhere: Sunset Boulevard. Only it looks more like a war zone than the iconic street I know.
Fires blaze on nearly every rooftop not yet blown clean off, cracking and spitting as they send huge tunnels of smoke into the sky. Some of the buildings are nothing but a heap of bricks, while others look like they’ve recently been used for target practice, small holes peppering their char-blackened facades. Most of the billboards have holes ripped through them, save for one of Jennifer Aniston, who smiles at me as she holds a bottle of water.
Something red flashes across the sky. I duck low just as an explosion sounds, so violently it rockets me off my feet. I land on my ass, a barb of pain shooting up my back. A shop across the street erupts in a huge ball of fire. Screams come from inside, and a victorious battle cry sounds above all the other noise.
My blood curdles.
There are people in that building. And someone is trying to blow them up. And seemingly enjoying it.
What have I gotten myself into?
I consider my options:
1) Run. I could probably make the Olympic team what with all the adrenaline pumping through my veins, but I don’t know which direction is safe, and with my luck I would run straight into enemy hands.
2) Fly. Considering the fireballs, this option doesn’t seem appealing, not to mention that I’m hidden right now and flying would definitely put me on a few radars.
3) Hide somewhere while the battle rages on and hope no one finds me and I don’t get blown to smithereens.
Not exactly the best options.
There’s a flicker of movement in the sky, and then a pair of boots crunch onto the roof of a car parked next to the curb across the street. I gasp as a man stretches up to his full height, his back to me as he scans the street. I scurry against the building, my heart a jackhammer.
The man ducks just as a ball of flame whizzes past him. It smacks into the side of the building across the alley from me. My ears ring as a shower of stucco shards sprinkles down on my head. I’m too shocked to scream.
The man on the car drops to one knee and extends his hand up. A bolt of lightning shoots from his palm, rending the sky as it strikes a shop across the street. The building lets out a low groan before it crumbles, sending a huge puff of dust and smoke into the sky. More screams pierce the air. I just catch the man’s smile before he springs back into the sky.
Option #3 seems considerably less sucky all of a sudden.
Adrenaline courses through my body so intensely I no longer notice the pain in my arm as I dash back through the alley. Where is a large garbage bin when you need one? I sprint to the back of the building and sweep a glance down either side of the lane.
Empty.
Voices bellow from the street. I quickly turn the corner before anyone sees me.
The ornate cast-iron back door of the building swings open in the breeze.
I’m gripped with indecision. There could be baddies in that building. But when footsteps crunch in the alley I just came from, I can’t rush through the door fast enough.
I enter a large room that looks like it used to be the lobby of a boutique hotel for trendy Hollywood types. The flowered wallpaper is ripped halfway down the wall so that a yellowed corner curls back on itself; I can see mold growing on the drywall beneath. The reception desk and the banister leading to the second floor are made of rich carved wood, and a crystal chandelier hangs crookedly from a single remaining chain over an antique carpet caked with boot prints and dust and random garbage, like the place has been used recently for squatting.
A closet behind the receptionist’s desk beckons to me. I cross over to it and whip the door open, nearly shrieking when a pair of green eyes set in a dirty face stare out at me. I leap back from the girl in the closet.
“Get out of here, this is my spot,” she spits, before pulling the door closed. I swallow, but my heart doesn’t move from its spot in my throat. I hadn’t expected to see another teenager in this place, let alone one in a freaking closet.
“Get out of here!” the girl hisses between the door slats. “You’re going to get me caught.”
I step backward, nearly tripping over a stack of yellowed phone books, then spin around. A silhouette moves past the back door. I need to hurry. I scan the lobby and spot a door with a small pane of frosted glass. I dash to it, and nearly cry with relief when it’s not locked: a set of stairs winds down into the dark basement.
My pulse races as I step inside and let the door quietly click closed behind me, plunging me into darkness. I think about the girl in the closet and wonder if the basement will hold more fun surprises. I hesitate, but then a set of male voices echoes through the lobby and a bolt of fear goes through me. I want to run, but I force myself to tiptoe down the stairs.
My feet finally hit the floor. The scent of musty cardboard and gasoline fills the chilly air. After a moment, my eyes adjust to the dark, and the silhouette of storage crates and boxes set against a brick wall comes into view. I dash over and shove aside a stack of boxes, then climb behind them. I sink to my butt and wrap my arms tightly around my drawn-up knees. My whole body shakes, but not from the cold.
Someone screams.
The girl’s voice is so loud it’s like she’s right in front of me instead of a whole floor up. There’s the sound of a struggle, and then, just as quickly as it began, it’s over and the eerie quiet is back.
The girl in the closet—something awful has happened to her. And if she hadn’t been hiding there when I came in, that awful thing would have happened to me.
The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. I slap my hand over my mouth, stilling my breath even as my heart races. A shaft of light slants onto the basement floor. I shrink into the wall, trying to make myself invisible in the dark. Boots clomp down the stairs, then across the concrete. Through the space between the boxes I see someone pass by just feet from me, cracking his knuckles loudly. He stops. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re going to explode. A silent tear trails down my cheek. This is it. This is how it ends.
Then the footsteps begin to retreat.
I don’t want to breathe, don’t trust myself to breathe until he’s clear of this room, but when his boots stomp up the stairs, my face grows so hot that my cheeks prickle with lack of oxygen, nausea overwhelming me until the need to exhale is too much. The air puffs out of my mouth in one huge rush.
The footsteps pause.
Shit, shit, double shit.
In a flash, a man’s face appears above the boxes. His mouth pulls into a grin when he sees me. The guy looks wild, feral, and ready to rip me apart with his bare hands.
I scream.
8
With one sweep of his forearm the guy shoves the heavy boxes aside and then yanks me up by my wrist.
“Let go!” I pull and twist against his grip, but his fingers clamp my arm like a vise. I dig my heels into the floor as he marches steadily across the basement, but he doesn’t so much as glance back at the girl he’s dragging behind him.
I drop to the ground, so it’s like my captor is a mom dragging a screaming toddler through a grocery store. He grunts and takes a few labored steps with my dead weight in tow before swinging me easily over his shoulder so that I’m upside down. Blood rushes to my head, my face mashed into his dirty canvas jacket.
My stomach warms with the promise of magic. I call it down to my fingertips only to come to the realization that moving objects and flying aren’t going to help me out of this particular situation. I try to summon the wind power I used on Jezebel in my room, but no matter how hard I concentrate, my body doesn’t react.
Panic takes over, and I give up on magic, straining instead to grab on to the banister as he carries me up the stairs. All I get for my effort is some serious palm burn. When we reach the top of the stairs, I try to latch on to the doorframe, but my fingers can’t catch purchase. The lobby carpet flashes beneath me, and then we burst into the pale outside light.
“Help! Somebody help me!” I scream.
“Quiet,” he orders, a hint of a Spanish accent coming through.
“Screw you!” I shout back.
“Have it your way.”
I open my mouth to scream again, but this time, no sound comes out. I scream at the top of my lungs. I scream until my face is red and hot and I can’t scream anymore. But the only sound is the distant crackle of the fires. Icy fear shoots down my spine.
I beat and pound against his back even though I know it’s a waste of effort, until he unceremoniously drops me into the back of a van. The wind is knocked out of me when I land on my injured arm, my mouth yawning open in a silent scream.
