Barely Bewitched (22 page)

Chapter 37

When I woke, I was facedown on the carpet with Mercutio licking my cheek. My head throbbed, and I squinted as a face appeared next to mine, owlish eyes blinking.

I tried to draw back, but I seemed to be stuck to the floor, and trying to move made my head and my side hurt. I realized that the face was Charlie Buckland’s. He normally wears a suit and tie to his accountancy job, but he seemed to be wearing a rainbow tie-dyed shirt at the moment.

“Dude, what happened to you?” he asked.

“Is that a marijuana cigarette?” I mumbled as he raised it to his lips. He took a puff and offered it to me.

“Want a toke? Go ahead. We’ll call it for medicinal purposes, dude.”

“Real sweet of you, but no thanks. Why are you talking like that?”

“Trying to get back to my roots. California. The Haight, man, good times.”

“What is all this?” I asked, flicking bits of colored flakes off my hands.

“That’s potpourri.” He ran a hand through spiky, uneven hair that was clearly a “do it yourself ” haircut. Johnny would not have approved one bit.

He said, “Looks like you or your cat knocked over the pewter bowl and spilled it all over the place.”

The sudden pounding on the door startled us both. I tried to push up, but couldn’t, feeling a sharp pain in my side.

Charlie hurried to the door. “Shit, it’s your ex, the cop! Man, I can’t deal with this.”

“What?” I asked as he fled the room.

I heard Zach’s voice outside the broken window. He said, “I am going in. Keep your beads on.”

Who’s he talking to? Jenna? She wasn’t wearing beads,
I thought hazily. A few moments later, I saw Zach’s boots.

“What in the hell?” he said.

I felt him raise my shirt to look at my back and then I felt something sharp skim my skin.

Suddenly, I could move, and I rolled onto my good side. Zach clutched one of my iron arrows in his hand. My blood stained the tip, and I curled to look at the spot on my side that burned. A bloody groove had scabbed over where the arrow had grazed me on its way to pinning my shirt to the floor.

I picked up the pewter bowl and saw blood on the edge.

“She hit me with this,” I told Mercutio. “But I guess I’m lucky, all things considered. She could’ve got me a lot worse with that arrow. Good thing it was dark.”

“Who shot you, Tammy Jo?” Zach asked.

I looked around. “And she stole my crossbow! Lousy little thief.” My head spun and I swayed. I grabbed my head and tried to steady myself. “Wow, I think one concussion’s gonna be my limit from now on.” I thought I might throw up so I lay back down.

Zach touched my face. “What happened?”

“I need help. Will you?”

He nodded.

“Abby Farmer. I’ve got to find her. I know she looks all cute and sweet, but she’s a bad seed. I’m telling you. I’ve got to get my hands on her. Lives depend on it.”

“Whose lives?”

“Mine for one.” I hedged on mentioning Bryn because I didn’t feel that would be properly motivating for Zach. “Or if you don’t want to help me find her, I’ve got other stuff that really needs doing. Like Johnny Nguyen Ho and his friend need to be picked up.” I struggled back to a sitting position, rubbing my temples. “I wonder if Charlie’s got any aspirin.”

I wobbled, and Zach caught my arms to steady me. I said, “You know what? My house is only a few houses away, and I’ve got aspirin myself.”
And my gun with the iron bullets.
“Will you help me up?”

Zach was really quiet. Too quiet given that I’d been hit in the head, shot with an arrow, and now claimed that a child was to blame for it all. Not cross-examining me was very un-deputy-like, but I wasn’t going to complain about it.

He stood and picked me up.

“You don’t have to carry me. I just need an arm to lean on.”

He ignored my advice and walked over to the door, shifting my weight so he could open it, and then walked out. He looked over his shoulder.

“You comin’, Spots?” he asked Mercutio.

Merc padded along behind us. I rested my head on Zach’s shoulder and closed my eyes, trying to conserve my energy.

“Hey,” Zach said, jostling me. “Don’t go to sleep.”

I heard the worry in his voice and knew I had to reassure him. I was banged up plenty, but I sure wasn’t planning to waste time in a coma.

I opened my eyes and offered a weak smile. “I’m okay. I’m just real tired.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s four thirty on Halloween morning and you haven’t been to bed. Seems like you’ve had a rough night—hey,” Zach snapped, looking down at his leg. Merc was swiping it with his paw and then pushed it with the top of his head.

“Mercutio wants us out of the street,” I said.

Merc yowled.

“Now!”

Zach jerked forward, and the world twirled like a merry-go-round. I groaned and grabbed my skull as a car two feet from us burst into flames. For a split second, I spotted Incendio behind the blaze.

If it’d been me, I would have been frozen to the spot, but Zach’s got reflexes I can only dream about. He flung me over his shoulder and ran across the street. I felt us fly over a row of bushes, and a couple seconds later I was lying on the grass behind a hedge. Zach was next to me on one knee facing the street with a gun in his hand.

“That’s the biker? Maldaron?” he asked.

“Yeah. How do you know his name?”

“We can’t get to my truck.” Zach’s gaze darted toward my place a couple houses down. “That’s Lyons’s limo over there. You have the keys?”

“On the bureau in the foyer.” I rolled onto my side and threw up, which made my head feel like an exploding Fourth of July bottle rocket.

I panted and gagged twice more. Then, except for the headache, I felt better. I sat up.

“If you keep him covered, I can make it to the house.”

“Hang on,” Zach said, rising up to look.

“Look out!” I yelled as a fireball blew through a hibiscus plant. Zach tumbled backward, slamming into a tree. I stumbled to him and smothered the flames that left big, charred holes on his T-shirt and jeans.

He coughed as I pried the gun from his fingers. I spun around and popped to my feet. It was a split-second decision. I could see Incendio’s eyes glowing in the darkness. I dropped the barrel slightly and squeezed the trigger.

I saw his leg jerk, and he toppled with a howl. I dropped down and crawled back to Zach. He peeled off his shirt with a hiss of pain.

“Did you hit him?” he asked.

“I fired a warning shot.”

“You missed him on purpose?” Zach frowned, regaining his feet and his pistol.

“No. Fired a warning shot into his thigh. Next time it’ll be his head!” I shouted, hoping that Incendio would take the hint and go someplace that wasn’t Duvall.

“How far away was he?” Zach asked, pulling me by the arm toward my house.

“About forty feet.”

“You always were a helluva shot.”

A huge fireball lobbed over us and landed on my front sidewalk. “Hey!” I complained. “Gimme back that gun.”

“C’mon,” Zach said. We ran across Jolene’s lawn to my door. I opened it, and we fell inside. I slammed the door just in time to escape another fiery blast.

A wave of hobgoblin warriors rushed down the hall toward us.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” I yelled. I grabbed the broom and swung it, sending them sailing through the air.

“What in the hell?” Zach said, just before the front windows exploded.

Fire licked the walls, and I cried, “My house!”

Smoke billowed around us. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed things down as best I could.

“Get the keys. Let’s get out!” Zach yelled.

I snagged them, and Zach pulled open the door. There were flames outside, too.

“Just a second,” I said, coughing, and ran to the living room.

I pulled the throw blanket from the couch and tossed it over us. Zach had grabbed the extinguisher and pointed it forward. We rushed out, spraying foam as we went. We reached the limo, and Zach flung the flaming blanket off us as I climbed in. He pushed me to the passenger side. Mercutio hopped in and landed on my seat with me.

Zach started the limo. I spotted Incendio about fifty feet away. He was leaning against a tree. He stretched his hand out and flames ate up the space to the car. Zach swiveled the wheel, and the fire hit only the front bumper.

We careened down the middle of the street, passing Incendio and a lot of burning cars, trees, and bushes. If he didn’t stop, my neighborhood would be toast, but I knew that once I was gone, Incendio would probably leave, too.

I hoped people weren’t asleep in their houses. I reached over and blasted the horn. I watched some lights flip on at the end of the block. A limo’s a pretty expensive fire alarm, but it’ll do in a pinch.

My hand slipped off the horn to Zach’s chest, and I felt blisters. He’d gotten second-degree burns from Incendio. Fierce anger rocked my body, and I was sorry I’d only shot Incendio in the leg. Next time, I might decide to do things differently.

Zach brushed my hand away from his chest. “Don’t touch it.”

“Hurts bad?”

“Bad enough. You all right?”

“Right as rain,” I mumbled, thinking that there were only about two inches of my body left that didn’t hurt, and I didn’t have high hopes for them staying pain-free, all things considered.

I rubbed the top of Mercutio’s head, and he licked my face. “We have got to find Aunt Mel’s emerald earrings. That’s the only way I’m going to survive his fire magic,” I said to Merc. I was past trying to shelter Zach from the truth. If he thought he was hallucinating everything, that was his problem. But to my surprise, he didn’t yell that the town had been poisoned with LSD, and he didn’t claim that magic didn’t exist.

Instead, he said, “The earrings you pawned?”

“Yep. Jenna Reitgarten bought them, but then she sold them back to Earl. And Earl was going to sell them to someone else or did sell them to someone else.” I remembered the night that Earl attacked me in the woods. Incendio had been there. Had he been the buyer? Boy, that would be lousy luck.

“Turn here,” I said, pointing. “I want to pick up Johnny and Rollie.”

Zach turned south on Hickory like I asked. I found his silent obedience really weird. Zach had seen Rollie dressed up like a lady, and it had shocked him down to his country-bred bones. Zach might have lived in Austin for two years, but he wasn’t what you’d call cosmopolitan.

“What’s going on with you?” I asked.

He glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re sure taking this ‘flamethrowing foreigners, town’s come unhinged, and Zach’s been in jail’ day like it’s touch football in Magnolia Park. Why is that?”

“What should I do, darlin’? Have a fit?”

“No, but I just figured you’d be tryin’ a little harder to make sense of things and tryin’ a lot harder to get control of them.”

“Well, it’s been a long few days, and it’s going to hell despite what we deputies have been doing. Since there’s another nineteen hours of Halloween, I decided I’d better pace myself.” He gave his head a slight shake. “Especially since whatever’s gone wrong with the town is affecting me now, too.”

“You’re seeing things you can’t explain, and this time you don’t think you’ve been drugged?”

He shrugged, frowning. “I honestly don’t know anymore,” he said.

A thrill roared through me. He was starting to believe! It could change everything for us.

“Listen, we can talk about—” I stopped speaking when the limo’s headlights lit up a sight you don’t see every day. I cocked my head.

A second later, Zach asked, “What was the name of that man-eating plant in
Little Shop of Horrors
?”

Chapter 38

“This is so not what I had in mind,” I grumbled as we got out of the car.

The bushes, vines, and trees had engulfed the road and the deserted cars. The foliage climbed over itself, roots tangled together in hopeless knots. The enormous green mass looked about the size of a two-story house.

Johnny Nguyen Ho was on top and hanging upside down. His head and arms were trapped in an azalea bush that had grown sideways from the branch of an oak tree, and his legs were entwined in vines of climbing roses. Hundreds of blooms choked every bit of space, making it look like he was sprouting flowers.

“Johnny!” I called.

“Tammy Jo, help,” he said as the vine wrapped around his head.

“Do you have a knife?” I asked Zach.

He pulled a huge serrated hunting knife free from his belt. I stared at him.

“Sh—someone told me I might need a big knife. We’ll talk about that later.”

“Give it to me,” I said.

“Tammy Jo, hurry! I not breathe well.”

I looked up and saw Johnny struggling against the vines that were winding around his throat.

“How am I going to get through there?” Zach muttered, moving closer to several massive sago palms whose fronds whipped from side to side like the spinning brushes of an automatic car wash. Except the fronds were sharp enough to slice through flesh. “I’ll ram the car in closer and then climb out the sunroof with the knife,” Zach said and tucked it back in the holder on his belt.

“No. Give me the knife. This is my doing and I’ll fix it.”

“I don’t think so.”

As he sat back in the driver’s seat, I grabbed the knife and pulled it free. I dove to the ground and crawled under the fronds on my belly. There was an opening behind them. If I could get inside, maybe I could climb to Johnny.

“Tammy Jo,” Zach yelled.

I ignored him, trying to think up a spell to help me. It would probably go wrong, but a nuclear holocaust in the middle of the plant explosion could only be an improvement:

Make this knife aim true
And help me to cut through.
Let me save my friend,
And let this nightmare end.

My heart hammered as a tangle of vines and roots twisted around me. Honeysuckle had my right leg and morning glory, my left.

Zach yelled my name again.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I lied. I hacked at the plants, muttering, “I command you to turn me loose! Right this instant.”

They ignored me, but Zach’s knife was Texas-sized, and I did my share of damage. I got to an oleander tree and hugged the trunk to pull myself to a standing position.

“Your cat’s going right over the top!” Zach called.

“Good for him. This is his territory. Let me know if he gets Johnny loose.”

“Come on out of there before you get hurt,” Zach said.

I felt something grab my knee and was ready to give it a fast slash, when I noticed the odd white color.

Spindly fingers! Rollie!

“Lemme go, Rollie. I’ll free you.”

His fingers released me, and I climbed up onto a branch. Vines wrapped around my waist and torso like an organic corset. It was a little hard to breathe, but it anchored me so that I could slice through the thick canopy over Rollie. It was so dense that it was like sawing through a pineapple, but finally I punched open a small square.

Rollie grabbed my branch with both hands and pulled himself up. He tore through the canopy and I saw his head, which was wrapped like a mummy’s in green leaves. I heard clumps of dirt raining down as he uprooted himself.

I cut the ivy that had stuck me to the branch, and Rollie ripped the vines away from his mouth and eyes.

“You know,” he snapped. “Landscaping is hell. This is exactly why I live in a condo!”

“We have to get to Johnny,” I said, pointing upward through the green mass.

“Let’s go,” Rollie said, dragging his body onto my branch. “Hold your knife over your head,” he said.

Suddenly he hissed and retracted his lips so I glimpsed his fangs. He sliced through the vines around us, spitting out strands as he did. He created a small space for us to maneuver and then grabbed me and lifted me above him, propelling me through the din. I hacked and climbed the rest of the way to the top.

The canopy was as thick as a hammock, and I lay across it on my belly to reach Johnny and Mercutio. Merc had clawed the vines around Johnny’s neck to help him breathe, but had left bleeding scratches.

“Stop, kitty. Stop now,” Johnny garbled.

I carefully sliced the remaining vines from around his face and chest and was gratified to hear him take in a big gasp of air.

“Rollie trapped below,” Johnny said.

“I know, but since he can’t suffocate, let’s take care of you first.” I climbed along Johnny’s small body to his legs. The roses smelled sweet as perfume as I hacked them to bits. When I got him unbound, Johnny tumbled free and we both rolled backward end over end. We fell off the canopy and landed hard on the roof of the limo, which Zach was driving straight into the grabby green tangle.

The car’s engine revved, but it didn’t make any forward progress. “Back up!” I yelled through the windshield. I didn’t want the plants to get around the limo and us.

Johnny and I each grabbed the upper edge of the hood where it met the windshield and held on as Zach backed up sharply.

I slid across the slick hood, but managed not to fall off as Zach came to an abrupt stop. I caught my breath and rolled to the ground, spitting out bits of Texas bluebonnet. Rubbing my aching muscles, I watched Merc spring off the canopy and come down a tree trunk, nimble as a . . . well, as a cat. Determined, I stood and squared my shoulders, pointing my knife straight out, ready to charge back in to free Rollie.

I got only two steps before an arm circled my waist, stopping me. Zach had come around that car like a shot.

“Lemme go. Rollie’s still in there.”

“Girl, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” He pried the knife from my hand. “I’ll do it.”

“But I’ve got the hang of things now,” I said.

He ignored me and strode toward the teeming mass of foliage. Just as he got to the sugar maple tree, a snapping sound alerted us to Rollie’s escape. He tore through the lunatic landscape like the Hulk through his T-shirt and britches.

Rollie glanced down and brushed himself off, then he sauntered up to the car.

“Are you all right?” Rollie asked Johnny.

Johnny nodded, and Rollie hugged him. “I told you it was dangerous! If God had wanted us to live in the jungle, He wouldn’t have invented concrete.”

“I know, but I thought I see Edie’s green light circle, and Tammy Jo and I are looking for her. It my duty to check.”

“That ghost, missing again,” Rollie said with a roll of his eyes, then he glanced at the car. “Nice limo. Or it used to be.” There were two dents shaped like Johnny and me on the hood and a bunch of scratches to the paint on the sides where the fronds had done their worst.

“Rollie, is it true that vampires can’t be out in the sunlight? ’Cause it’s almost dawn,” I said.

“I’ll be fine behind tinted windows,” Rollie said, climbing into the back. “Come on, lover,” he said to Johnny.

When Johnny was inside, I closed the back door before turning to Zach.

“Thanks for coming to find me tonight and for bringing a knife,” I said. “I couldn’t have saved Johnny without it.”

Zach nodded. “Yeah, that was something. Seems like if you’d had your own knife, you wouldn’t have needed my help at all.”

I heard the edge to his voice, but I had way too many monsters left to battle to waste energy fighting with a human being, even one I liked to fight with as much as Zach. I blew the hair out of my eyes. “I need help, but it’s maybe not the kind of help I used to need.”

“Meaning I’m not the one to give it?”

Exactly.
“I didn’t say that.” My nerves were unraveling like a sweater with a snag. “Don’t go putting words in my mouth,” I said, opening the passenger door for Merc to hop in.

I couldn’t let Zach distract me. Bryn’s life still depended on my finding a certain churlish changeling. And my duffel bag full of iron ammunition was at my house. “Can you drive me back home?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said.

“I bet there’s more than one thing.” I joined Merc in the passenger seat. “Can we talk about it while we drive? I’m sure that Incendio will have left my neighborhood by now, but Abby Farmer will probably still be around there. It’s real important that I find her.”

He sighed. “Are we just gonna talk to her or are you planning to add kidnapping to the list of things they can charge me with?”

A ripple of anticipation went through me. He was going to help me get her? Or maybe he was just kidding? I hoped not. It wasn’t fair to tease me when my hours might be numbered.

“Well, I really couldn’t say at this point, Zach. These days, I’m kinda flying by the seat of my Levis.”

“So I noticed.”

“No one said you had to come with me,” I pointed out.

“Right, but I’d hate to miss all the fun,” he said wryly. He gave me a sideways glance, and his voice softened. “You know how I feel. If you wanna get rid of me, you’ll have to tell me to go.”

I leaned toward him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I don’t want you to go.”