Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (25 page)

Finally, she slept.

When Shari Martin awoke the next morning,
the first thing she looked at were her hands, which no longer looked like the
smooth, silky ones from a week ago. They were extended, almost hilariously so,
and more pale and tough. She rubbed one hand along the other and tried not to
scream at the paper-thinness of the skin. She remembered saying goodbye to her
grandmother when she was a kid, and feeling that rough skin on her hands and
arms; here Shari was, just forty-three, her skin feeling exactly the same as
her dear departed grandmother all those years ago.

She sat up in bed, looked around the
room, and focused on her dog Cinder in the back corner. Cinder, always so
gentle and friendly, was cowering in the corner, staring up at her like she
didn’t recognize her anymore.

“Hey you,” she said to the dog. “Are you
OK?”

Cinder started whining, and Shari knew
she had to let her outside to go potty.

Shari made her way over to her bathroom,
herself feeling the urge to urinate. “Just a minute, Cinder,” she said. “I get
to pee first.”

She did her business in the bathroom and
made her way over to the sink to wash her face. She splashed water up a few
times, the coldness of it refreshing against her warmer-than-normal dry skin.

Shari wiped the water off with a small
towel, and as she set it back down on the rack, she took a good look at herself
in the mirror.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She
just smiled, subtly, exuding a deep breath that confirmed her deepest, darkest
suspicions.

The lines were there. The bags were
there. Shari didn’t look like herself any longer. She looked like her own
mother. She looked
older
than her
mother. Shari was forty-three years old, but this morning, a few minutes past 8
A.M., Shari presumed she was eighty years old, maybe even eighty-five. In the
blink of an eye, with no warning, with no time to prepare, the second half of
her life had disappeared. She knew she was having problems with Stephen, and
she knew she still had a long way to go to make her life a happy one, but Shari
thought she had time.

“It’s all but run out,” she said to
herself, running her fingers along her cheeks.

She turned to see Cinder wandering into
the bathroom, looking up at her owner like she was seeing a complete stranger,
or, worse, a ghost.

Shari took one last look at
herself
in the mirror and headed back to her bedroom, and
the adjacent hallway.
          

“I’m in the mood for something sweet,”
she said to herself, “and I’m not going to stop this time.”

She walked downstairs and past the
entrance hallway toward the kitchen, stopping herself when she saw Kimber at the
table, eating Cheerios. Shari was happy to see her daughter eating something,
anything. She knew she had raised a strong young woman. She knew she had done
the best she could.

“Kimber?” Shari asked, stepping to her
left so Kimber wouldn’t have to see her.

“Mom?”

“Hi honey.”

“Where are you?”

“I just… I have to do something real
quick,” Shari said, trying to think of a lie.

“Mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“It smells weird in the kitchen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Kimber said. “It smells
like eggs. Rotten eggs. I can’t explain it. I don’t know where it’s coming
from.”
 

“I’ll figure it out, sweetie,” Shari
said, calmly. “But could I ask a favor of you?”

“What?”

“Could you go out front and let Cinder go
potty? And could you grab the newspaper, too?”

“Oh, uhh… sure…”

“Thanks,” Shari said. “Give her a few
minutes.”

Shari hid in the corner, behind the
entrance hallway cabinet, as Kimber passed by and called for Cinder, who
replied promptly with loud barking. Shari only caught the right side of her
daughter’s face, not believing her eyes, but having to. Her daughter looked
late forties, maybe fifty. She was a few inches taller, too. Shari, again,
wanted to scream. But she kept it all inside.

“This is a nightmare,” Shari whispered to
herself. “This isn’t real life. This is a nightmare that I need to wake up
from.”

“Come on, Cinder!” Kimber shouted. “Let’s
go outside!”

Her daughter opened the front door and
waited for Cinder to run by her. She looked back once, not seeing her mother,
before closing the door as she made her way out to the front driveway.

“Good girl,” Shari said. “Good, good
girl.”

Shari stepped into the kitchen, opened
the refrigerator, and pulled out the cupcake. It still looked delicious as
ever, just waiting for somebody to take a bite. She ran her fingers through the
frosting and enjoyed a lick off her finger. The taste reminded her of Heaven;
similarly, she hoped Heaven would have tasty treats like this one.

She brought the cupcake down to the
kitchen island and smelled the buttercream frosting. It was nice. It masked the
awful smell that was wafting through the giant kitchen, and, likely, the entire
home. She could already feel herself becoming light-headed. She needed to move
faster.

Shari unwrapped the cupcake and set it
down on the same dining room plate from last night. She smiled, trying to
remain calm, as she reached into the drawer to grab the candle and box of
matches. She placed the pink candle in the center and let it sink down into the
cupcake.

She took a deep breath, wiping the tears
from her cheeks. The crying had started up yet again. She was relieved that
this would be the last time.

She looked outside the kitchen windows to
confirm Kimber’s faraway location. Her daughter was all the way across the
driveway, in a small field, the newspaper in her hands, the dog jumping up and
down and peeing more times than she could count.

“I’m praying for you, Kimber,” she said.
“I hope you make it. I really hope you make it.”

Shari walked back over to the kitchen
island, and the cupcake. She smiled and stared at the candle in the center.

She closed her eyes. “Please, God…
please…”

She reached into the box and pulled out a
match. She looked at it, examined it. She knew keeping the gas on all night had
been a smart idea. She knew now what she had to do.

She struck it once. Nothing. She struck
it twice. Nothing again.

The smell was unbearable. She turned to
her left to see Kimber clapping for Cinder, and starting to walk across the
street back toward the house.

Two more tears fell as she once again
brought the match to the box.

“
Please
…”

The third flick of the match ignited the
house explosion. Shari didn’t feel any pain. Unthinkable heat struck her, only
for a second, before blackness swept over every cell in her body.

14.

I woke up to a different world that
morning. Even though Liesel and I were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in an
empty parking lot, I could feel it inside.

I sat up in the back of my car and turned
over to hug my wife, but she was nowhere to be found. Neither was the bag with
the paintball guns.

Where
the hell is she?

There was some ominous fog in the area,
and I looked out the back window, not seeing her anywhere around.

“Liesel?” I opened the door, stepped out
into the cold, misty air of Portola, and shouted: “LIESEL?”

“Over here, Cam,” she said from across
the way.

I walked up to see an awesome, unexpected
site. She had all the guns laid out on the ground, all the cans of silver paint
piled high. It looked like she had been working on this project for the last
few hours, while I tried to get some, if any, sleep.

“You did it,” I said.

“Yeah, I did,” she said, looking proud of
herself, as she should. We had six deadly weapons, each filled with a witch’s
ultimate kryptonite—wet silver paint. “Can you help me bring these back
to the car?”

Liesel stood up, wielding the largest of
the six weapons, but she stopped when she noticed my hesitance.

“What?” she asked.

“Leese… if these weapons are the only
things that can kill Hannah, because she’s a witch… isn’t it possible they can
harm
me
, too?”

She shook her head. “No.
Only if it’s fired against you.
The paint is well hidden.
Touching the guns, getting close to them. It won’t bother you.”

“But what if Hannah gets a hold of one of
the guns and fires it our way? Won’t that kind of defeat the purpose of what
we’re doing?”

She brought her chin down and just stared
at me for a moment. “Cam, it’s going to be fine.”

“Easy for you to say,” I said, bringing
my gaze down to the guns. “If Hannah strikes you with one, you’ll get a bruise.
She hits me
,
I’m dead
.
Sayonara.”

Liesel took my hand. “Cam, you and I…
we’re survivors, OK? We’re the main characters in this story,
not
Hannah, you understand me? We live…
she dies… and that’s as simple as it gets. If you just think positive, and
stick with me, in a few hours, this is all
gonna
be
over. Don’t lose faith in me, OK? Don’t lose faith in us.”

I kneeled down, picked up two of the most
commanding weapons, and struck a pose for Liesel. “I would never,” I said. “Is
it noon yet?”

Liesel smiled, grabbed the other guns,
and tossed them in the back seat of the depressing brown Jeep. I did the same
and let Liesel get in the driver’s seat. Even though Graeagle was just an hour
outside of Reno, I had never been there. I wouldn’t know my way around, and I certainly
had no idea where the secret hiding place would be.
 

“Do you know where you’re going?” I asked
her.

“It’s been ten years,” Liesel said,
putting the car in reverse and speeding down a dirt road to get back to the
highway, “but I’m pretty sure I remember. If I get a little lost, though, it’ll
be OK. You heard Hannah yesterday. We still have time.”

“I should have shut my mouth,” I said,
shaking my head and slamming my foot against the dash. “We could’ve ended this
by now.”

When my phone started ringing a minute
later, I opened the glove compartment and flipped it open to see that Kimber
was trying to get a hold of me. I went to accept the call, when Liesel grabbed
the phone from my hands.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“Give me the phone back! It’s Kimber!”

“No,” she said, rejecting the call with
her left hand, her right hand awkwardly handling the steering wheel. “We can’t
have any interruptions, Cam. Not today. Once Hannah’s gone, you can chat with
your sister on the phone for hours. But right now, we can’t have anything or
anyone distract us from our mission. I’m sorry.”

She dropped the phone in the glove
compartment and closed it tight.

“But what if she needs me?”

“The world needs you more,” she said.

We drove for ten minutes, twenty minutes,
thirty
. We passed through sad nothing towns like
Quincy, Greenhorn, and Cromberg, before finding the outskirts of the similarly
unremarkable Graeagle. There didn’t seem to be much in this lowly populated
town, except for golf courses, motels, and lots of dirt. After passing a
vacated Foster Freeze, we started speeding down another highway, this one
taking us to a place called Whitehawk.

“It’s in Whitehawk,” Liesel said. “I
think I know the turn-off, but we’re gonna have to go part of the way on foot.”

“How far on foot?”

“Two miles, maybe three. Not that far.
We’ll just put the guns in that bag.”

“And you’re
sure
we’re not stepping into a trap,” I said.

“Trust me, Cam. I know Hannah. And I know
she’s not
gonna
let us go that easy, especially after
everything she’s put us through. She’s got the strength of seven witches. She
could’ve killed us days ago if she wanted to. She’s toying with us. She yearns
for the challenge, the fight—”

“
Look
!”
I pointed at the sign up ahead. It said that the town of Truckee was
thirty-seven miles away. “We’re close to Reno. We’re almost home, Leese.”

“Almost,” she said. “One more vital stop
before life goes back to normal. Come on. Let’s get ready. We’re almost there.”

A few minutes later Liesel pulled our
beat-up old Jeep off the main road, into a posh neighborhood complete with
condominiums, an Italian restaurant, and a pristine eighteen-hole golf course.

“I thought you didn’t have a lot of money
growing up,” I said, as Liesel started speeding, looking anxious to get us to
the secret getaway. “This place looks expensive.”