And then — like before, when swamp witch had come out of the pharmacy, the glamour fresh upon her, two smooth pebbles in her pocket and the knowledge that she could do anything — anything! — then, the town would set upon him.
Swamp witch had been faster than tea-drinking man would be. Swamp witch had also known the town, known it like her own soul practically, and she’d cut down the alleyway between Bill’s and the Household Hardware and muttered “glycol,” and vanished from their sight, leaving them all hopped up and pissed off with nothing they could do.
Slow, sick old tea-drinking man, who’d swapped his dreaming sickness for snake sick, wouldn’t have the same advantage.
They’d do to him what they couldn’t ever do to her.
And that would be the end.
—Think, she asked dragonfly, once they got that out of their system, tearin’ themselves up a witch, actually beatin’ one — think it’d cure them of all the regret that fellow’d stoked ’em with?
Dragonfly pondered the question and finally said:
—You don’t ask a question like that unless you know the answer.
—You are a wise bug, said swamp witch.
—Not wise enough to know where you want to go next.
—Hmm.
Last time this had happened, swamp witch had figured she’d head straight for the wetlands and wait it out. Then, she’d been sidetracked by a game of checkers and the promise of certainty. This time, as she directed dragonfly down toward the mist of the wetland and past that to her tiny hutch, swamp witch vowed that she would not pause on her way there. She would spend the next six days in the swamp, thinking about what she’d do on the seventh. It would take a lot of careful thinking leading up to Saturday, because for the first time in her life, she’d be free that night.
The Delilah Party
Mitchell Owens spent much of his seventeen years a quiet boy, sitting very still in the darkest part of a very dark room. Most people could not figure him out, and as far as Mitchell was concerned, the feeling was mutual.
But his older friend Stefan wasn’t most people. He picked up on Mitchell’s vibe right away, as Mitchell was still squeezing into the back of Stef and Trudy’s Explorer in the parking lot of the Becker’s convenience store where they had met three times now. Stefan looked over his shoulder, looked again with his eyes a little narrower, then turned around so his knees were on the seat and his skinny chest was pressed against the headrest.
“Looks like you ate a bug, Mitch,” he said.
“Didn’t eat a bug,” said Mitchell.
“Just an expression,” said Trudy, eyeing him herself in the rearview mirror. She was haloed in the light of the Becker’s sign so from behind her blonde hair looked like the discharge off a Van de Graaff generator — black as midnight in the middle of her skull, leaping bolts of yellow on the rim. The rearview mirror told a different story: her eyes were in full illumination, a blazing rectangle of light.
Mitchell stammered when he spoke up:
“Th-they took away my laptop.”
“I see you don’t have it with you,” said Stefan. “By they I assume you mean the police.”
“Yuh.”
“Bummer,” said Stefan.
“You’ll get it back,” said Trudy.
“Did they follow you?” asked Stefan.
“No.”
“Why would they follow Mitch?” Trudy put the Explorer into gear, and tapped the gas so that Stefan lurched against the seat. “Fuck, woman!” he said, and Trudy said, “I’ve got a name. Sit forward. It’s more comfortable.”
“Fuck,” said Stefan again, and he winked at Mitchell. “Do up your seatbelt, Mitch. Woman — Trudy’s — in a mood.”
“Fuck you,” said Trudy as they pulled out of the parking lot, and at that, Mitchell felt himself smile. He would get the laptop back. Of course he would.
The Explorer pulled right onto Starling with only a little room to spare before it joined the early evening traffic and subsumed itself to its pattern: drive a bit and stop awhile. Watch the light from red to green, red to flashing green, red to red while the other side got flashing green. Wait and go. Go and wait. Mitchell was feeling better and better. The laptop would be his again. It was part of the pattern.
“So they treat you okay?” said Trudy.
“Why wouldn’t they?” said Stefan.
“Cops are fucking fascists. They get a kid like Mitch here and they’ll just be pricks to him.”
“They got your laptop,” said Stefan. “You have anything on the hard drive?”
Mitchell didn’t know what he meant and said so. Stefan and Trudy shared a glance, and Trudy pulled into the left lane so she could turn onto Bern Street when her turn came.
“We’ve got some friends coming over,” said Stefan conversationally. “From the news group. I think you’ve met some of them. Remember Mrs. Woolfe?”
Mitchell thought about that. He put the name to a tall woman with glasses and a dark tattoo that crept over the edge of her turtleneck sweater like foliage. “Was she the one who was always sad?”
“Lesley?” said Trudy. “She wasn’t sad.”
“She just wasn’t smiling,” said Stefan. “But that doesn’t mean she was sad.”
Mitchell nodded. Those were two expressions that Mitchell was always mixing up. “Not sad. Just concentrating.”
“Right.”
The Explorer swung vertiginously through the intersection about a second after the light switched to amber. Mitchell glanced back sceptically. Sure enough, it was red before they’d cleared it. He was sure someone was going to honk.
“So what did they ask you?”
Stefan was half turned around in his seat, so only one eye looked back at Mitchell. The skin of his forehead was puckered up over his raised eyebrow. He was either being worried or casual.
Mitchell said: “They asked me how well I knew Delilah. They wanted to know if I ever emailed her or knew her in this chat room that I guess she went to.”
“Our chat room?”
Mitchell shook his head. “Another one. Not like the one we have. Hers was for wrestling. They asked if I had any pictures of her on my computer or anything.”
“Which you don’t.”
“Pardon?”
“You don’t have any pictures of her on your computer,” said Trudy. “Right?”
“Oh. Right. I don’t.”
“And you didn’t bookmark the chatroom.”
“I use the computer at the library for that.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“Why would I be worried?”
“No reason,” said Trudy, and Stefan said, “You might have something to worry about if you did something. I mean—”
“No reason,” said Trudy again.
“Okay.”
Mitchell leaned back in the Explorer’s seat so that Trudy’s eyes were gone from the rear view mirror and all he could see was the dark roof of the Explorer. He unzipped his jacket because the heat of the car was getting to him. The Explorer turned right at Sparroway Circle, and then turned right again at the entrance to Number Five Sparroway Circle’s parking garage. Mitchell did a little cha-cha thing on his left thigh with the first two fingers of his right hand as the Explorer made its way through Level One of the garage, which included most of the guest parking, then his fingers made their way to the lock switch as they prowled across the slightly better-lit Level Two. He locked and unlocked the door three times then made himself stop when they pulled into Space 152. Trudy and Stefan pretended not to notice — just locked up the car for good using a button on Trudy’s keychain, took him to the elevator which they opened using a card on Stefan’s keychain, and got on board. The door closed on them and the elevator started going up.