Mind Games (33 page)

I patted my purse, which held several tiny vials of flame retardant potion, wondering if I would need one.

Angie shook her head, as if throwing off a bad memory. “I didn’t go to church for years, you know. I only came back in June after…”

“You decided we couldn’t be friends anymore?” I sounded bitter, even to myself. I suppose her defection had upset me more than I’d realized. “Besides, you went to church while we were friends.”

“On Sundays, most of the time,” Angie said. “It’s not the same. In this church, you’re either fully committed or you’re not. You don’t make friends with outsiders. You come to church Sundays, Wednesdays, and do activities with the group on Friday and Saturday nights.”

“All or nothing, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way with me. I’m not sure we could ever be good friends again, but if you need a lifeline out of this place…”

She shut her eyes. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. The scary thing is, it would be so easy to buy into it all.”

Strangely, I knew what she meant. “Why aren’t you buying into it?”

“They’re threatening you. I know you, and we used to be friends.”

“So you know I’m not evil?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly a declaration of friendship, but I felt strangely touched.

Then she threw me a curve ball. “You killed my boyfriend.”

“He was a vampire. He would have killed you.”

It took her a long time to answer. Finally, she went back to the original subject. “I’m not really ‘in’ anymore, if you know what I mean, because we were friends.”

“Oh.” I felt somewhat less warmed by that notion. I didn’t even feel angry, just sort of cold and empty inside, but I didn’t want to leave Angie without protection. Reaching into my purse, I extracted one of my backup vials of fire resistance potion and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Magic. Prevents burns. Just in case you want out and they’re not so keen to let you.”

She stared at the vial of red liquid and swallowed, hard. “If I believe in this, I might also have to believe in vampires.”

“Why is it so hard?” I’d always wondered.

Angie pocketed the vial of potion and bit her lip, thoughtfully. “It’s harder to believe in something if you can’t do it yourself. You figure, if it’ll work for anyone, it ought to work for me, too. So you stare at a coin or something, trying to make it move with your mind, and when it doesn’t you think, that’s it. It’s not real.”

It was probably the most she’d ever told me about herself, and it amazed me that she would choose to do so now, with all that was happening around us. “I stared at the coin, too,” I told her, even though I knew it was different for me. I’d grown up with magic shoved in my face. Angie might have grown up amidst rumors, but there’s a big difference between rumor and proof.

“Yeah, well, I imagine your parents would have been thrilled if it moved. My mom walked in on me and asked what I was doing. When I told her, she made me go to counseling.” Angie shuddered.

“You can still leave, you know.” I moved my hands in a circle. “This doesn’t have to be you. Redefine yourself.”

Someone pushed in on the bathroom door and Angie jumped away, dashing into a stall and closing the door behind her. Two older women came in, talking in low voices. They shot me the same suspicious glances I’d been receiving since I arrived, but I barely noticed. I made my own way into a stall and, deciding to have my protective potions closer at hand than my purse, shoved two vials of flame resistance into my bra.
Ready or not
…

* * *

The lively praise and worship music had a sinister edge to it that day. Oh, the words were the same as usual, but the inflections were off. Singing “
Our God is an Awesome God,”
the congregation put undue emphasis on the
our
, as if staking their own personal claim on the deity to the exclusion of anyone else.

Pastor Roberts’s sermon only made things worse. This time, I was far more prepared for what he had to say. I didn’t react, not even when he called out my sister by name for the destruction of the school, and urged retaliation. I calmed myself with the fact that she was safe at home, behind wards and powerful sorcerers. They couldn’t get to her.

Others on their list weren’t so lucky. I thought of Jennifer Adams, young and eager, her life cut short by willful ignorance.

If my face reddened at the thought, I’m sure my neighbors mistook it for anger at the witches themselves. Many of their faces were red, too, especially when Pastor Roberts read each and every name on his precious inquisition list. If any more of them died, I swore I would find a way to make him pay, whether the law would hold him liable or not.

By the end of the service, I fully expected him to bring out a witch to burn right there in front of us. I imagined him forming a pyre somewhere, perhaps behind the church, or maybe in a secret sub-basement, but he didn’t. With a gleam in his eye, he dismissed everyone, bidding them to go serve the lord.

I didn’t linger after the service, but I didn’t drive off right away either. Sitting behind the wheel of Madison’s borrowed car, I rested my head against the steering wheel, trying to shake away the filth of the past two hours. I’m not sure how long I sat there, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before someone knocked on the driver’s side door.

With a start, I looked up to see Angie on the other side of the window, her grim face cast in an orange glow against the lights of the parking lot.

I opened the door a crack. “What?”

“I, um, don’t suppose you could give me a ride home?”

My mouth fell open slightly. “How did you get here?”

“My dad. He, um, left already.”

“Without you?”

“Well, I was supposed to stay and supervise a girls’ sleepover here with the youth group, but I might have said something negative about the sermon and they decided they didn’t need me after all.”

“If you want out…” I began.

“I don’t know what I want,” Angie snapped. She took a deep breath and started over. “This place is insane right now. I just want to go home.”

“Get in.”

I closed my door, and unlocked the passenger side door for her. A minute later, we were on our way to her parents’ lakefront resort, where she and her family lived on the top floor.

The last time I had visited that resort, Angie had been under the influence of a vampire’s hypnotic suggestion. She had lured me out to the pool where her boyfriend, the vampire, had attacked and nearly killed me. The only thing that had saved me was my pretense that I was under the vampire’s spell myself, and that I enjoyed the agonizing feel of his razor-sharp teeth tearing away flesh. That I enjoyed his licking and slurping my life’s fluid.

My stomach clenched at the memory, but I managed to push it aside. Thankfully, my cousin had forced me to drink a special potion afterward to allow me to remember the event without reliving it. At the time, I had resented his intrusion into my psyche, but I now appreciated it. I didn’t think I could have faced Angie’s home again otherwise. Too bad that same cousin had apparently turned into a vampire himself.

Angie seemed more than a little agitated and restless as we drove. I had always likened her in my mind to a willow tree because of her lean, bony frame, and because she gave the impression that a strong wind would bend her. I could almost feel the wind that night, though the car windows remained closed.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

She jumped. “Yeah. Fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

She started to speak, but instead ended up laughing, almost hysterically. “What’s wrong? Come on, Cassie, you’re the detective. Figure it out.”

The insult stung, but I caught her meaning. She’d already confided in me that night as much as she would, and she had already confessed that she hated the things going on around her. What more was there to say? The situation had, literally, exploded the day before when my sister had lost control at the school. The resulting fires still raged.

We rode in silence after that, down the long, winding road that led to the lakefront properties. Her family’s resort was east of town, like most of the touristy haunts. The node, along with the practitioners who clamored for proximity to it, lived to the west.

It took fifteen minutes to get from the church to the resort, a lone beacon lit up against the moonless night. The tourism season was waning, but there were half a dozen cars in their lot, so they must have still been pulling in a brisk business.

Something didn’t feel right, though. I rounded the small canopied driveway before the front doors, trying to shake off the feeling – or at least identify it. Beside me, Angie didn’t move, but her face looked ghostly white, even beneath the golden tan she usually maintained year round.

Two of the nearby parked cars revved their engines. The sound startled me, but before I could react one pulled in behind me, the other in front, effectively blocking me in. I reached into the back seat for my department-issued gun, fully prepared to use it against whoever emerged from those vehicles.

“You set me up,” I said to Angie.

She shook her head.

“You told them it was me, didn’t you?”

“They already knew.” Her voice was so faint, I barely heard her.

My old partner, Rick, stepped out of the car in front of us. He drew a gun. I tightened my grip on mine but he didn’t threaten me with his. Instead he went to the backseat of his car and opened the door. He reached inside and violently jerked someone out.

A woman fell to the ground, landing on her knees and eliciting a startled cry. Rick showed no mercy. With his free hand he jerked her upward by the hair, making her scream.

It was Bethany.

“Drop the gun or I’ll shoot her,” Rick said. “Drop it out the window.”

“I could have let your boyfriend eat you,” I said to Angie.

“You should have,” she said, her voice softer than a whisper.

“No, I shouldn’t have.” I practically snarled the words at her. “I would never have done that to a friend.”

“Drop it!” Rick shouted. “I know you’re armed.”

For a second, I toyed with the idea of threatening to shoot Angie if he didn’t lower
his
weapon, but he’d see through the ruse. Besides, I had other weapons. Weapons he didn’t know about. With a deep breath, I lowered the window and let my sidearm clatter to the pavement with a loud crack. I half expected it to discharge. I even felt a moment of satisfaction at the idea of it accidentally shooting Rick in the foot, but it didn’t.

“Come out, slowly, with your hands up.”

I thought about the vials of fire resistance stuffed into my bra, and wondered if he’d frisk me. He probably wouldn’t be smart enough to think of it, but it didn’t mean I could risk shoving my hand down my shirt with him watching so intently.

I opened the door a crack, but before I had a chance to move, Angie pressed something into my right hand – something small and warm to the touch. I ran my thumb over the top, realizing she had handed me her own vial of fire resistance, uncorked and ready to drink.

I threw a look her way that she couldn’t have mistaken for anything but abject mistrust.

“Why would I poison you?” she whispered. “They’re planning to kill you anyway.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Move!” Rick yelled. “No tricks.”

Just one trick
, I thought. In one quick, lightning-fast movement, I raised the vial to my lips and drank the potion down in one gulp. I threw the vial aside before Rick had a chance to question my movements. He almost did – he had an uncertain frown on his lips. But when I came out, empty handed, my arms in the air, he seemed to decide against second-guessing his fortune.

Two men emerged from the car that had pulled up behind me. They reached me in a few quick strides and twisted my hands behind my back. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of crying out, or even offering much of a struggle. I didn’t take my eyes from Rick’s face, allowing him to become the focus of my rage.

“If looks could kill,” said a voice from just inside the door to the resort. I recognized it as Pastor Roberts’s, but I didn’t look his way.

“Rick,” I said instead, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Practically since the day you nearly got us both killed in the diner by being such an idiot.”

“You tried to surrender. I got him to drop his gun.”

“How do you suppose that happened?”

Rick’s face darkened with rage and, perhaps, confusion, but before he had a chance to respond, Pastor Roberts intervened. “Take them around back,” the pastor said.

I didn’t fight them when they took me around the back of the house and deep into the nearby woods, the same woods where I had once sat in wait for a vampire. I believed in biding my time and waiting for the right moment. This, I knew, wasn’t the right moment. There were six men in all, including Rick, Pastor Roberts, Pastor Mueller, and three others I didn’t know.

I felt calm and collected, even when the men shoved and kicked me. I didn’t know if I would get out of this alive or not, even with the fire resistance potion, but the calm infuriated them. I took some pleasure in that.