5 Beewitched (34 page)

“Nemesis, yes. How else could I have gained that horrible murdering woman’s trust? And after our wonderful virtual friendship she was more than enthusiastic to finally meet me. I really surprised her!”

The gun in her hand scared me silly.

“Wait! Don’t shoot me just yet,” I pleaded, realizing that she could pull the trigger any second. “First tell me, why did you set up Al? One of the witches would be a more obvious choice.”

“If that leader hadn’t been so alert, you mean. I couldn’t get near their camp after they went on high alert, let alone get one of their prints on the pentacle.”

“How in the world did you get Al’s fingerprints?”

Joan gave me a sly grin. “Ever since he sprained his ankle, he’s been self-medicating, doping himself into oblivion. It was easy, actually. He never even budged when I cupped the pentacle in his hand.”

While we’d been having this friendly little conversation, I’d been thinking about how Eleanor must’ve surprised Greg when she’d shot him up close, and judging by his position, she’d fired into his back. Not nice and grandmotherly at all.

Unless I wanted to end up in the same mess, I had to make a move.

At least I was wearing sturdy shoes instead of flip-flops. And I was a fast runner. That is, if I got the chance to run.

I considered my limited choices. I could continue to stand here like a sitting duck and take a bullet, but that wasn’t my favorite option. I thought about jumping Joan. I had the advantage of youth, but she had the deadly weapon, so I rejected that choice and went with the only other possibility.

I bolted for the living room, heading for the front door.

A shot rang out. Then another.

Had she hit me? Nothing hurt. I was still on my feet, so maybe not.

Then I was out in the yard, with her closer behind me than I’d anticipated.

No time to get to my truck. She’d shoot me before I got the door open.

I ran for the corn maze.

And disappeared inside.

Forty

I hadn’t been inside Al’s corn maze for several
years—not that it would’ve helped, since Al changes the design annually. Besides, a maze is a maze, confusing as heck, and as fast as I had been able to make a run for it, that ability was offset because I have absolutely zero directional aptitude.

Another frightening realization was that my pursuer not only had the huge advantage of holding a gun, which was scary enough, but she’d been the one to actually design this maze. She knew the twists and turns and which paths led to dead ends and which pointed to the way out.

Hoping to throw her off, I decided not to follow labyrinths or look for corridors leading to exits.

I’d simply focus on a direction and force my way through the stalks until I arrived outside the maze. Let’s see. That way? Or that way?

The sound of crackling, treading, something, came from behind me. I cut through a corn wall, only to discover that thrashing and hacking my way through had one serious disadvantage:

I was creating enough noise to warn Joan of my location.

A shot rang out, too close. I swear it zinged right past my head, stirring up a few strands of hair.

That certainly was incentive for me to get moving faster.

Except it was so dark.

But that’s okay
, I reassured myself.
It’s dark for her, too. And she’s older. Her eyesight has to be worse than mine, right?
I changed my mind and decided to stay within the maze’s paths, placing my left hand on the left wall. I’d follow every left turn. At some point it would lead me out. Or so I hoped.

Every minute or two, I stopped and listened. The first few times, I didn’t hear anything unusual. Maybe she’d given up, decided to run for it instead.

Then I heard something, a disturbance of dried corn husk, faint like a light breeze.

Eleanor was still hunting me.

My hand on the left wall led me into a dead end.

I crouched and listened as hard as I could.

She was moving, and not very far away.

My breathing was ragged and labored from fear more than exertion. I cupped a hand over my mouth and nose, squeezed my eyes shut, and forced myself to stop and think.

What did I know about guns? Hunter had taken me shooting. I had terrible aim. Hunter, though, was a real professional; he could place his shot dead center in the target. Eleanor hadn’t looked confident like that. She’d held the weapon more like I had. Amateurish. And she’d missed when she’d shot at me in the house.

I opened my eyes.

Okay, stay calm, because she can’t shoot straight.

And another thing. Didn’t handguns only carry six bullets? How many had she fired? At least one at Greg, two at me when I ran, another inside the maze. She couldn’t have more than two shots left.

Okay, she’s almost out of bullets. Plus she’s a very bad shot unless she’s right on top of her target.

So don’t let her get on top of you!

Then, out of the darkness, a small flashlight popped on, its glow shining through one of the cornstalk walls. She was headed directly toward my hiding place. I wanted to slink lower and cover my eyes, but then I’d be a motionless target, an easy kill. This would be a dead end in more ways than one.

The only way out was back toward the woman with the weapon.

I forced myself to jump up and started zigzagging toward the light, making all kinds of racket.

Eleanor fired.

Instinctively I hit the ground.

Number five.

I was up again, moving, first left then right.

The light swept up, blinding me momentarily. I dove again. She didn’t pull the trigger this time, saving her last bullet. Joan had been counting, too.

She was really close, not five yards away, coming steadily forward, when the light suddenly went out.

I didn’t waste time trying to run away. Instead, I rushed the spot where she’d last been standing in the glow of the flashlight.

And connected with her body. We went down. For a moment I was on top, straddling her. Then she bucked up, wrenching away.

The gun went off, deafeningly loud.

I waited for the impact of the bullet, for a searing pain, for something.

Instead, Eleanor slumped back, no fight left in her.

That’s what I thought at first. That she’d given up.

But she had gone so limp.

I fumbled for her flashlight, found it on the ground a few feet away, and turned it on. The beam found her.

Eleanor must have turned the weapon on herself.

I stood there for a moment, shocked and panicked. Shocked that someone like the Joan I had come to know and befriend could do the things she had done. Panicked because time must be running out for Greg and I didn’t have any idea how to get out of here and get the help he needed.

I heard a sob and realized it came from me.

I had to make the effort.

What direction had I come from? Where in the maze was I? The middle? Farthest from the house? Where?

Should I continue along the left wall? Or the right? Or lurch along randomly?

My mind threatened to go numb.

Later
, I told it.
Get moving.

Then when I was just about to give up on ever getting out, I heard a new sound. The call of the wild. Well, maybe not exactly that. But close enough.

It was Ben.

Howling.

Hunter must be here.

I started shouting their names and running in the direction of Ben’s call.

Another howl, then a yip.

I started to cry.

Then suddenly I felt Ben brushing against my side, taking a nip at my pant leg as if to say, follow me. I grabbed his harness and held on for dear life.

I finally stumbled out of the corn maze and into Hunter’s arms. “The twins told me where you were,” he said. “I hadn’t expected to find this scene, though.”

“Greg,” I gasped.

“It’s okay, sweet thing,” he said. “An ambulance is on the way. He’s still breathing. Are you okay?”

Was he joking?

I’d never been so okay in my life.

Forty-one

Mom was determined to have an orderly,
structured, traditional wedding, which wasn’t a big surprise since that’s totally Mom.

The bride and groom came down the grassy aisle, which was bordered with ropes of flowering black-eyed Susan vines. She wore an ivory satin lace knee-length sheath with a cropped, three-quarter length jacket, the epitome of refined and elegant.

At least someone was.

Because she was framed by her two daughters in our puke . . . I mean puce-colored bridesmaid dresses. Hunter still wore the same amused smirk on his face that he’d had earlier when I appeared in our living room wearing the thing.

Grams fluttered around wearing a dusty pink mother-of-the-bride dress and taking pictures with her point-and-shoot, getting in the way of the professional photographer whom my sister, the wedding planner, had hired. But he didn’t seem to mind.

The most surprising thing to me was that the service was attended by exactly the guests whom Mom had put down on her invitation list. No more, no less.

Right before the minister went into the kissing-the-bride part of the ceremony, I even got to offer up the bride’s honey on a little silver tray with two tiny spoons and fresh rose petals scattered on it. Mom and Tom each sampled a taste, and I said a little bit about their union being sweet as this honey. Then they were kissing, we were clapping, and the music started up.

Only the music wasn’t coming from the three musicians who had agreed to play certain traditional songs at the beginning and end of the service, starting, of course, with “Here Comes the Bride.”

Now, at the end of the ceremony, instead of the “Wedding March,” I heard the beginning of “Walk Like a Man” by the Four Seasons. What the heck . . . ? We all stopped to consider the source, since the three musicians were putting away their instruments.

I was pretty sure Mom didn’t have a thing to do with the disc jockey who had apparently been setting up where none of us noticed, because the stage was hidden under a big white canopy tent that we just assumed was the reception area. Party helpers were now drawing back and tying the canvas walls, exposing the long tables inside that had been filled with all kinds of serving dishes, all colors, all shapes, and more tables than we should need, each decorated with Carrie Ann’s roses floating in crystal bowls and more rose petals scattered everywhere.

“It’s a potluck,” Grams whispered to me after she took a picture of Mom’s surprised face. Then she shouted out to Holly, “Tell the guests to come out of hiding.”

As it turns out, the entire senior citizen community had been hiding behind one of the outbuildings. And we hadn’t suspected a thing!

When Mom saw what was happening, when it finally sunk in, which seemed like forever but really was less than a minute or two, she started crying.

We all stood around, staring at her, not sure what to say or do. Somebody must have stopped the DJ, because even the music died.

Tom put a protective arm around his new bride and muttered something inaudible from my position. Then Mom shook her head and said loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m so, so happy. Thank you all for coming.”

And she smiled, a big beaming one that was so bright it competed with the sunshine from above.

Hunh? Those were tears of joy? After all the bickering that had gone on between Grams and Mom?

• • •

“It’s like when someone has a birthday,” Grams explained to me later while we were chowing down on the wedding cake. Milly had made the best red velvet cake I’d ever tasted. “If the birthday girl tells you not to go to any trouble, not to do anything, no party, no frills . . .”—here my grandmother took a bite of cake and washed it down with a sip of a lemon drop honey martini, which had been another of my contributions (although in my opinion, cake and martinis do
not
go together, even if honey is one of the ingredients). Grams continued, “Your mother protested too much. That meant she really wanted all the extra fuss.”

We glanced over at Mom. “Look how happy she is,” I commented. “You were right, Grams.”