Anna Dressed in Blood

*   *   *

After I get dressed, I call Thomas and ask him to pick me up and take me to the shop. He’s curious, but I manage to hold him at bay. These are things that I need to say to Morfran too, and I don’t want to have to say them twice.

I’m bracing myself for a lecture from my mother about missing school and some grilling about why I needed to call Gideon, which she no doubt overheard, but as I walk down the stairs I can hear voices. Two female voices. One is my mother’s. The other is Carmel’s. I tramp down the staircase and they come into view, thick as thieves. They’re sitting in the living room in adjacent chairs, leaning toward each other and chatting away with a tray of cookies between them. Once both my feet are on the ground level, they stop talking and smile at me.

“Hey, Cas,” Carmel says.

“Hey, Carmel. What are you doing here?”

She reaches around and pulls something out of her schoolbag. “I brought your assignment from bio. It’s a partner’s assignment. I thought we could do it together.”

“That was nice of her, wasn’t it, Cas?” my mother says. “You don’t want to fall behind on your third day.”

“We could get started on it now,” Carmel suggests, holding out the paper.

I walk up and take it from her, glance over it. I don’t know why it’s a partner’s assignment. It’s nothing more than finding a bunch of answers from the textbook. But she’s right. I shouldn’t fall behind. No matter what other important, lifesaving stuff I’ve got going on.

“This was really cool of you,” I say, and I mean it, even though there is some other motive at work here. Carmel doesn’t give a crap about biology. I’d be surprised if she went to class herself. Carmel got the assignment because she wanted an excuse to talk to me. She wants answers.

I glance at my mom, and she’s giving me this creepy once-over. She’s trying to see how the bruises are healing. She’ll be relieved that I called Gideon. When I came home last night I looked beaten half to death. For a second I thought she was going to lock me in my room and dunk me in rosemary oil. But my mom trusts me. She understands what I need to do. And I’m grateful to her for both of those things.

I roll up the bio assignment and tap it in my hand.

“Maybe we can work at the library,” I say to Carmel, and she shoulders her bag and smiles.

“Take one more cookie for the road, dear,” Mom says. We both take one, Carmel a bit hesitantly, and head for the door.

“You don’t have to eat it,” I say to Carmel once we’re on the porch. “Mom’s anise cookies are definitely an acquired taste.”

Carmel laughs. “I had one in there and almost couldn’t do it. They’re like dusty black jellybeans.”

I smile. “Don’t tell my mom that. She invented the recipe herself. She’s totally proud of them. They’re supposed to bring you luck or something.”

“Maybe I should eat it then.” She looks down at it for a long minute, then lifts her eyes and stares intently at my cheek. I know there’s a long streak of black bruise across the bone. “You went back to that house without us.”

“Carmel.”

“Are you crazy? You could have been killed!”

“And if we had all gone, we would all have been killed. Listen, just stick with Thomas and his grandfather. They’ll figure something out. Keep your cool.”

There’s a definite chill on the wind, an early taste of fall, twisting through my hair with ice-water fingers. As I stare up the street, I see Thomas’s Tempo puttering toward us, complete with replacement door and a Willy Wonka bumper sticker. The kid rides in style, and it makes me grin.

“Can I meet you at the library in an hour or so?” I ask Carmel.

She follows my gaze and sees Thomas coming closer.

“Absolutely not. I want to know what’s going on. If you think for a minute that I believed any of that nonsense Morfran and Thomas were trying to tell us last night … I’m not stupid, Cas. I know a diversion when I see one.”

“I know you’re not stupid, Carmel. And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll stay out of this and meet me at the library in an hour.” I go down the porch steps and walk down my driveway, making a little rolling gesture with my fingers so Thomas won’t pull in. He gets it and slows down just enough for me to open the door and vault inside. Then we drive away, leaving Carmel staring after us.

“What was Carmel doing at your place?” he asks. There’s more than just a little jealousy there.

“I wanted a backrub and then we made out for about an hour,” I say, and then cuff him in the shoulder. “Thomas. Come on. She was dropping off my bio assignment. We’ll meet her at the library after we talk to your granddad. Now tell me what happened with the boys last night.”

“She really likes you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, you like her better,” I say. “So what happened?” He’s trying to believe me, that I’m not interested in Carmel and that I’m enough of a friend to him to respect his feelings for her. Oddly enough, both of these things are true.

Finally, he sighs. “We led them on a royal goose chase, just like you said. It was a blast. We actually had them convinced that if they hung sacks of sulfur above their beds, she wouldn’t be able to attack them in their sleep.”

“Jesus. Don’t make it too unrealistic. We need to keep them busy.”

“Don’t worry. Morfran puts on a good show. He conjured blue flame and did a fake trance and everything. Told them he would work on a banishing spell, but it would take the light of the next full moon to finish it. Think that’ll be enough time?”

Normally I’d say yes. After all, it’s not a matter of locating A

“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I went back last night and she kicked my ass all around the room.”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“I spoke to a friend of my dad’s. He said we need to figure out what’s giving her all this extra strength. Know any witches?”

He squints at me. “Isn’t your mom one?”

“Know any black witches?”

He squirms around a bit and then shrugs. “Well, me, I guess. I’m not really that good, but I can cast barriers and make the elements work for me and stuff. Morfran is, but he doesn’t practice much anymore.” He makes a left turn and pulls up outside of the antique shop. Through the window I can see the grizzled black dog, its nose up against the glass and its tail thumping against the ground.

We go inside and find Morfran standing behind the counter pricing a new ring, something handsome and vintage with a large black stone.

“Know anything about spell-craft and exorcism?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says without looking up from his work. His black dog has finished welcoming Thomas and moves to rest heavily against his thigh. “This place was haunted as shit when I bought it. Sometimes still is. Things come in with their owners still attached, if you know what I mean.”

I look around the shop. Of course. Antique stores must almost always have a wraith or two swirling around. My eyes fall on a long oval mirror set onto the back of an oak dresser. How many faces have stared into it? How many dead reflections wait there and whisper to each other in the dark?

“Can you get me some supplies?” I ask.

“What sort?”

“I need chicken feet, a circle of consecrated stones, a banishing pentagram, and some kind of divination thingy.”

He gives me the stink eye. “Divination thingy? Sounds pretty technical.”

“I don’t have the details yet, okay? Can you get them or not?”

Morfran shrugs. “I can send Thomas down to Superior with a bag. Pull thirteen stones from the lake. They don’t come more consecrated than that. The chicken feet I’ll have to order in, and the divination thingy, well, I’m betting that you want a mirror of some kind, or possibly a scrying bowl.”

“A scrying bowl sees the future,” Thomas says. “What would he want with that?”