Black Magic Bayou (25 page)

Two days ago I might have growled or prepared to attack it physically. It was strange how being around all this magic was bringing the witch part of me right to the forefront again.

When I’d left Maurepas and come back to St. Francisville, it had been a tough adjustment, learning to live more as a werewolf than a witch. Shifting gears in reverse was a lot more comfortable as it turned out.

My fingertips were tingling, though I hadn’t cast a spell yet. I was at the ready if something needed to be done.

In high-tension situations I found it was usually best to let the magic decide for itself what to do. Rather than pick a specific spell or enchantment, I’d let my instincts be the guide if it came time to act.

With Santiago beside me now, I felt oddly calm. Wilder was on my left, the witch on the other side, and it all felt very
right
. Like I was standing precisely where I ought to be, with the people meant to be along for the ride.

I felt a level of confidence I hadn’t known since this whole ordeal had begun.

I approached the mirror and pressed my hand to the glass.

For a moment, nothing happened, and I worried this had been a mistake. Then the glass thumped again, this time softer, and a small picture frame on the mantel fell to the floor. An electric buzz popped along my spine, and I spread my fingers out wide on the glass, not thinking just…feeling. My fingertips began to glow a faint blue, the same shade I’d seen the runes on Santiago’s head turn when we were inside—

Oh my God.

“Santiago, give me your hand.” I didn’t look back at him, just held my free hand out to my side and waggled my fingers for him.

He took hold of my hand without question. A spark shot through my palm into his, and I felt him tense and curse beneath his breath.

The glass on the mirror wavered.

“Holy shit,” Wilder said. He moved a little closer, careful not to bump or interrupt me in any way.

Like ripples of water unleashed by a dropped stone, the mirror’s surface dimpled and waved. I squeezed Santiago’s hand, and my entire arm started glowing bright blue.

Whoa.

“
Please
.” The voice was louder this time and so close I thought she might be within reach. Another picture frame dropped to the floor. A vase fell off the nightstand next to Laura’s bed. The white Christmas lights over Heidi’s bed turned on, flickered, and flared far too bright for normal string lights, then exploded one at time.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop
.

I winced and closed my eyes for a half-second, then opened them again, not wanting to miss a single moment of what was happening.

My hands were shaking, both the one against the mirror and the one clinging to Santiago. Wilder stood nearby, his focus drifting from the wall back to me.

“Please. Please. Please.”

“I’m
trying
,” I said through gritted teeth.

And then my hand passed through the mirror.

It was like walking on an ice-covered lake and then suddenly being underwater. I was cold all over, when the heat of the room had recently been wrapped around me like an invisible sweater.

The wall spread apart, forming a black hole in the fabric of space. I squeezed Santiago’s hand harder, maybe too hard, but he held tight, and I pulled from his magic. When I glanced back to make sure I wasn’t hurting him, the runes along both sides of his head glowed the same bright blue as my arm, and he was grimacing but holding it together.

“Just one more second.”

I pushed, finding nothing solid to resist me, but the extra surge of power opened the hole wide enough for half the wall to disappear.

On the floor, in a space no bigger than a refrigerator box, two girls were huddled together, shaking.

“Please,” one whispered.

Wilder, ignoring any possible risk—or maybe because he trusted me not to let anything bad happen to him—ducked into the small space and offered his hand to the smaller girl, the blonde I’d seen in the photos over Heidi’s bed. She stared at him for a second, hesitating, then lunged at him, hugging her arms tightly around his neck and holding on to him for dear life.

She had such a ferocious grip on him that when he stepped away from the hole, she was fully wrapped around his body, and he had to keep an arm around her so she wouldn’t slip.

The other girl, a taller redhead, blinked out at us but seemed frozen in place.

“Laura?” I met her timid gaze and tried to appear as nonthreatening as possible, a difficult thing to achieve when you’ve opened up a magical space between dimensions and your arm is glowing. “Laura, you’re free.”

“No.” She shook her head and pushed herself back into the corner. “That thing…that thing will come back.”

“You’re safe.” This was a lie, but hopefully a kind one. If we hurried this up, we might still get the girls to safety before Gamigan showed its ugly face again. “Trust me.”

I couldn’t offer her a hand without risking a breach in the opening. As it was I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it. I opened my mouth and tasted blood in the back of my throat.

“Laura, please.” My voice was raspy, and each word hurt, like the syllables had teeth and were trying to chew their way out of me.

Heidi, still holding tight to Wilder, looked at her friend. Tears were streaming down the blonde girl’s face. “We’re out.” Her voice was little more than a whisper, and I had to wonder how long and how hard she’d been screaming to be heard.

Heidi’s words were the secret touch for Laura. The taller girl hesitated, then crawled towards us, stumbling out across the fireplace and immediately wrapping her arms around Heidi and Wilder.

“Oh God. Oh…oh my God, I thought we were going to die in there.” Both girls were sobbing now, hugging each other and Wilder by extension.

The moment I knew they were both free I dropped my hand, and the hole in the wall sealed itself with a sucking
thwip
sound.

As I watched the girls cry and hug, a smile spread across my face.

Then the room spun, and the last thing I remembered before going down was Santiago’s expression as he caught me.

He looked so pretty when he was scared.

I woke up on the damp, cold grass to someone slapping my face.

“Fuck off,” I slurred, shoving the hand away.

“Well, it’s nice to see your personality remains unchanged after the blackout. At least I know the spell didn’t scramble your brains.” Wilder came into focus as I blinked away the fuzzy dregs of unconsciousness.

Overhead, the stars shone faintly against a purple-black sky, and I wondered how long I’d been out.

He placed a hand under my shoulders and eased me into a sitting position so I could see we were in front of the Delta Phi house—the lights all still ablaze but otherwise empty—and Santiago was standing near Laura and Heidi. He didn’t seem particularly interested in comforting them, but he stayed close enough for them to remain protected.

The last thing I wanted was for something to happen to them now that we’d gotten them out.

Laura had gotten a phone from somewhere and was talking to someone in rapid-fire French. French I knew a lot better than Latin or Spanish, and based on her pronouns and familiarity, I got the sense she was talking to a boyfriend or girlfriend, not her family.

Tansy had said the girls didn’t have great home lives. That no one cared they were gone.

God, they’d been such perfect targets, and they were right under her nose, waiting for someone to take advantage.

I waggled my fingers at Wilder, and he wrapped his big hands around my wrist, pulling me effortlessly to my feet. I’d like to say I was graceful and totally back to one hundred percent, but the second I was standing I took one step and my useless, Jell-O legs betrayed me, sending me sprawling into Wilder’s waiting arms.

“Saw that coming.” He held me by my waist and looped my arm around his back, so I was doubly supported, then helped navigate me to the rest of the group.

“Sleeping Beauty decided to join us again,” Santiago said.

“Hilarious.” Most of my body weight was being managed by Wilder, which meant I was barely putting any effort into walking at all. I must have looked like a drunk sorority girl being helped home by her date.

At least I was in the right place to carry that off as a cover.

“H-how did you do that?” Heidi asked. Her voice still sounded raw, and she had dark smears around her eyes that might have once been mascara.

The girls were both gaunt and pale and had each polished off a bottle of water by the looks of the empty plastic containers in their hands. I was honestly surprised they’d lasted the week in there without anything to sustain them. Perhaps the space had been covered by some kind of enchantment that helped keep them alive.

The demon must have had a future need for them.

Heidi was still staring at me expectantly, waiting for my response.

“It’s a trick a friend showed me.” I let my gaze flick to Santiago briefly before looking back at the girls. “Do you remember how you got in there?”

Laura shook her head. “I went to sleep normally and woke up in there. Same with Heidi.”

My heart sank. “So you have no idea who did it to you?”

“
Who?
” Heidi croaked the one word out, her fists balled at her sides. “It wasn’t a
who
. Didn’t you see that thing? We could see it even inside.
We could see it no matter what
.” I think she was trying to scream at me, but her voice couldn’t manage the volume anymore.

The next question was one I didn’t relish asking, but I needed to know for sure. “Where’s Alexandra?”

Laura made a shaky, wailing noise and buried her face in her hands. Heidi was obviously distraught as well, her whole body trembling as she fought against the urge to weep like her friend.

“Alex is dead. It got her first, before it even took us. It showed us how she died and said…” She glanced over at Laura, who was shaking. “It said we’d be next.”

I thought of the basin filled with blood in the basement. Suddenly it made a lot more sense why there were only two survivors standing in front of me. I felt sick to my stomach, and it had very little to do with all the magic I’d been performing tonight.

Wilder, feeling me go extra gelatinous, held tighter so I didn’t turn into a human noodle and fall to the grass.

I was trying to put all the pieces together, but my brain couldn’t manage it. Alex had died first, either as an offering to the demon when it arrived or as the death that opened the doorway. Lots of demonic ceremonies I’d read about required a sacrifice, so the demon knew whoever was calling to it meant business and could open the threshold.

Really, you’d think demons would gravitate towards shittier witches, because they’d be a lot easier to control. But I wasn’t here to give the demonic hordes any life hacks.

“Did you see anyone else while you were in there?” I asked.

Laura shook her head, but Heidi’s expression took me by surprise. She looked…not guilty, but nervous.

“Heidi? Did you see something?”

“I…” She fiddled with the hem of her shirt and shifted her gaze away from me. When she didn’t see anything comforting on Santiago’s face, she glanced directly at the ground, like she was afraid he might be able to read the answer from her expression.

“It’s okay. We’re trying to help.” If I had any strength at all, I’d be shaking the answer out of her right now. On a patience scale of one to ten, I was at absolute zero.

“We didn’t see anything,” Laura insisted.

“I think Heidi saw something.” Santiago had his hands in his pockets and was rocking back and forth on his heels, his attention fully focused on the petite blonde. “I think she’s just afraid to tell us what it is.”

She glanced up at him again, her face pale and expression wan. I figured I’d be the first one here to puke, but now it looked like she might beat me to the punch.

“Nothing else can hurt you. We’re here now, you’re safe.” When had I gotten so good at telling these comforting lies? And what happened if I couldn’t protect them? Would my promise come back to haunt me?

In this case, literally.

Heidi chewed on her lower lip until I thought she might have nothing left, then she grabbed Laura’s hand for support. “It was Tansy.” I wasn’t sure if she was saying this to me or explaining it to Laura, but I found myself leaning closer anyway. Wilder had to take a step to account for the moving weight of my body. “Tansy came to see us.”

Laura’s mouth hung open, and she fidgeted with her hair, like the tangled red waves might help her make sense of what she was hearing. “What are you saying? We never saw Tansy.”

Heidi paused, and then the story fell out of her like bees leaving a hive. “She came when we were asleep. I thought you woke up when you heard her, but you didn’t. She
knew
we were in there, Laura. She came up to the mirror one night and said she was sorry. She said she hadn’t meant for us to be involved.”

I dug my fingers into the back of Wilder’s shirt, my vision going foggy for a second before refocusing. Hopefully my heightened healing abilities would kick in soon, because I wasn’t enjoying this whole helpless-victim thing. It was making it very difficult for me to listen to what Heidi was saying, and I needed to know what part Tansy played in this whole mess.

I had to know how much danger Cash was in.

Cash.

Shit, he’d be on his way to Fort Pike by now. If Tansy
was
behind all this and she’d tagged along, I’d just sent them to the most idyllic place to hide a body in the entire city.

“What did she mean?” I asked. “What was she sorry about?”

“I don’t know, she just kept saying how sorry she was and that she hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt. And then, I…then she…she said something else.”

When she didn’t say anything else for several seconds, Santiago asked, “What did she say?”

Heidi looked up, her eyes locked on my face, her hand still holding Laura’s. “She said if I saw her again, not to trust her. If she came for me and Laura, it wasn’t going to be to help us.”