Rhymes with Witches

I peered inside.

A litter of kittens nuzzled against their mother, kneading her torso, butting their heads on her abdomen, suckling her belly.

No.

Not suckling.

A kitten shifted its body, and I saw a flap of the mother’s fur. Another kitten tugged at the flap, and it came off way too easily. Tiny teeth dug into the flesh below.

My eyes strayed higher, and I spotted the incision across the mother’s neck. I must have cried out, because a snow white kitten lifted its head and looked at me. Its pupils were vertical slits. It returned to lapping the clotted blood, and a littermate nosed closer, eager for its share. The cradle rocked harder. A thump and a thump. And under the thumping, something else. A growl, low and menacing. It seemed to come from the walls.

I stumbled back the way I had come. “Let’s go,” I said. “Now.”

I fled Lurl’s temple and retreated through the outer office. I knew I should go back and put everything in order, but all I wanted was to be gone. Gone, gone, gone—and away from what I wished I’d never seen.

“Could you maybe speed it up just the tiniest bit?” I said. I jiggled from foot to foot. Camilla was too far behind me.

“Could you maybe relax?” she retorted. “This was your idea, in case you’ve forgotten.”

She flipped off Lurl’s light and followed me into the hall. She slammed the door behind us.

In the Range Rover, the reality of what I’d done sunk in.

“You can’t tell anyone,” I told Camilla.

She pressed down on the accelerator. “Who would I tell?”

“I’m serious. What you saw is, like, top secret. I will be in so much trouble if you blab.”

She didn’t respond. I hadn’t articulated what I’d seen in the cradle, and I wasn’t about to. But the rest—the goddess figures, the offerings, the low growl which Camilla must have heard—that knowledge alone was enough to make Camilla dangerous.

My fingers found the ripped part of my vest and closed around it. I tried to think without freaking out. I tried to think how to make this all be okay.

“And don’t worry about … you know,” I said. “Because I’m going to fix things. Fix them for you, I mean. I’ll tell Bitsy that she can’t steal from you anymore—but only if you promise not to mess things up.”

She glanced at me skeptically.

“Plus, now you know to be on the lookout, so she wouldn’t be able to steal from you even if she tried.” I lifted my chin. “So you pretty much owe me.”

She pulled up in front of my house. She gazed out the driver’s side window.

“Why does she hate me so much?” she asked.

“What? She doesn’t hate you. She just …” A prickle of heat spread on my neck. “She doesn’t hate you.”

“You don’t have to lie. Anyway, I hate her, too, so we’re even.”

I fidgeted. They were hardly even.

“When you hate someone, you think about her all the time,” Camilla said. She traced a faint white line of bird shit on the other side of the window pane. “You become obsessed.”

Oh, just shut up, I thought. But what I said was, “Well… that’s all over, because like I said, I’m going to make it stop. It’s all going to stop.”

She turned to face me.

“So do you promise you won’t go tattling to the whole school?” I said. “Not that anyone would believe you.”

An opaque look appeared in her eyes, then slid away. She released her breath in a slow letting go. “I won’t go tattling.”

I felt a tremendous gush of relief. Gratitude, even, despite the fact that she was the one who should feel grateful to me.

That night I dreamed of a mouthless kitten. As in, no mouth where the mouth should be. Just a knob of fur. I reached to pet it—poor little thing—and a mouth yawned into being with a terrific snap. It latched onto my hand with tiny sharp teeth, and I couldn’t shake it off. Its body was warm and pulpy.

I awoke with a gasp and knew I had to go back. I didn’t want to, more than anything I didn’t want to, but I knew I had no choice. I had to return to Lurl’s office and straighten everything up, and hopefully Lurl wouldn’t notice that Camilla’s things were missing, at least not right off the bat. Then I would leave, and it would all be behind me.

So after breakfast—during which Mom asked if I had a good time at the Fall Fling, and I answered, “Uh-huh”—I dumped out the contents of my backpack to find my key. But the key wasn’t there. My pulse accelerated, and I riffled through the contents again. Kleenex, a smushed Mike and Ike box, a couple of tarnished pe

I must have left the key in Lurl’s lock, where it would be sitting in what was now plain daylight. Yet another reason to get over there before anyone else came along.

I dragged my bike out of the garage and pumped hard all the way to school. I used the basement door, same as before, and rushed up the stairs to the third floor. It was easier with the sun streaming through the windows. It was easier, in the light, to push aside thoughts of cats in the walls.

I opened the heavy door that led to the rarely used corridor, and by the baseboard I spotted my teddy bear. I scooped it up and sca

I approached Lurl’s office, and I felt a sudden hollow rush in my chest. No, I prayed. Please, no.

The door was locked. My key was gone.

My first thought was Bitsy. She’d one-upped me again, and now she was going to hold it over me to make me sweat. Or maybe it was Keisha? Maybe she’d sensed something was up and trailed me for the sake of damage control. Good ol’ Keisha, always the worrywart. And in this case it had paid off.

Or shit, maybe it was Lurl. Maybe she’d made a midnight jaunt to her shrine, maybe only minutes after Camilla and I left. I got the heebie-jeebies thinking about it. What if she’d lurched in on us? I couldn’t imagine what she’d have done.

My bike jounced over a bump, and I tried to focus on the road. But my mind was too busy conjuring up possibilities. Lurl with the key. Mary Bryan with the key, which wouldn’t be so bad. Everyone yelling at me. The kittens’ frantic hunger.

Bottom line, I’d screwed up. Bad Jane. Naughty, naughty girl.

But whoever had my key would have to give it back, even if they punished me for it first in some stupid way. Because for the Bitches to exist, there had to be four.

“Keisha!” I called out when I saw her the next morning. I jogged to her locker. “Thank god. I ran into Mary Bryan on the front stairs, and she cruised by me without even saying ‘hi.’ I mean, obviously she must not have seen me, but it made me paranoid. But everything’s good, right?”

Keisha’s eyes flew to mine, then away. She focused on filling her backpack.

“I know I pissed her off,” I said. “I maybe, you know, said some things I shouldn’t have. But she’s not ignoring me, is she?”

“Jane …” Keisha said.

My muscles tightened. Still, I pulled my mouth into a smile shape. “What? Are you pissed, too? I’m sorry, okay? Throw me in the chokey. Feed me to the dogs.”

Keisha closed her locker. The look she gave me was sad, not angry, and she said, “I wouldn’t have let anything happen, you know. At Camilla’s.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I totally know. And I guess I was, like, overreacting or whatever. But that doesn’t—”

Keisha walked away, leaving me talking to nobody.