I didn't count."
"You were called, too," May said. She looked intently at Miles.
"So what's the plan?" Garden asked. "What do we do now?"
May turned to face the young man. "We will hunt her down," she said.
Claire felt peach fuzz hairs prickle at the back of her
And we' will kill her once and for all."
Miles stared at the homeless woman, who had suddenly stopped talking and was twirling around with her arms out and her eyes closed, like a little girl trying to make herself dizzy. From where he stood, the immobile FBI agent was directly in front of her, and the sight of the two together hit
May began screaming crazily, looking up at the dark sky and shouting out non sequiturs.
"I was surprised she held out for as long as she did," Hal whispered.
"In the car, she couldn't go two minutes without spouting off some loony nonsense."
Claire gave Miles' hand a small squeeze, then let go and moved forward, trying to quiet May and calm her down.
May.
Lizabeth May.
He remembered the whispers in the night and wondered who had been telling him that name. And why.
He had heard his father's name whispered, and his father had died.
Hal turned to face him. "You should've brought me in earlier, man.
Tran, too. We could've helped you on this. I thought your dad was just missing, I didn't know all this... shit was going on."
"Would you have believed it?"
"Not at first, probably. But I go where the facts take me. You know that." He leaned in, lowered his voice. "And I'd feel a lot better with Tran here than Claire and these other civilians."
Miles had to agree with that.
Except... Except this felt right, and once more he was confronted with the unfamiliar sensation of trusting his feelings rather than facts.
Although, under the circumstances, it didn't seem quite so strange.
"Isabella, huh?" Hal shook his head.
"Yeah."
"Does this super witch have a last name?"
"Would it matter if she did?"
"I guess not." Hal looked over at Rossiter, sighed. "You know, I can't help thinking about the fact that this bitch con trois an army of zombies and turned an FBI agent into a
brain-dead lobster within a matter of minutes. I don't like the odds here." He quickly held up his hands. "But I'm in,
I'm m, I am not complaining. You are just scared. Damn right I'm scared. Vales grmed. "Wuss boy."
"Not ashamed to admit it. And you're glad I'm here, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Miles admitted. "I am."
"That's a start, bud. That's a start." May was suddenly silent.
Claire was standing before her, holding the old woman's arms at her sides, when she pulled away, blinking as if she'd just emerged from a trance. "How long ago did Isabella leave?" she asked.
Miles looked at Garden, at Janet.
"I don't know," Garden said. "Fifteen minutes." 'Ten or fifteen,"
Janet said. vales nodded in agreement.
"She's far enough away, then." May mumbled something to herself before looking up again. "Talismans, spell casters, potions. Your families were witches, they all had the makings. Did you bring them? Do you have materials with you?"
Miles nodded dumbly. He wasn't sure how he felt about relinquishing authority to a woman who obviously had severe mental problems, but crazy as she was, she'd been involved in this longer than any of them.
He had no choice but to listen to her. 'there a box in the car from Janet's uncle's house."
I'll get it." Obviously happy to have something to do, Janet headed over to the rental car to fetch her uncle's witchcraft paraphernalia.
"May told me to bring your stuff, too," Claire said. "Thank God you didn't put it back in that safety deposit box or
there's no way I would, have been able to get it out. It's in the trunk."
"I have the keys," Hal said. go. May turned to look at Garden.
He shrugged. "I never saw those things. I only heard about them. I don't know what happened to them."
The old lady frowned, mumbled something to herself. Hal and Janet returned with the materials. Miles took his father's stuff from Hal, who then offered to carry Janet's box. Janet shook her head, held on to the carton, and following May's lead, they all walked down the slope to the water's edge, leaving the unmoving Rossiter behind.
By this time the strange sky looked downright fierce. The clouds were not stormy gray but black, deep black, like the water. Though it was difficult to detect movement in so much darkness, shapes seemed to be forming and un forming and reforming in the roiling currents of air.
Feeling his chest tighten, Miles put the box down on the sand, Janet following suit. May crouched down, quickly sorted through the jumble of items and, smiling as if she'd found some long-lost treasure, drew out a rusty spoon. The spoon from his dream.
The tightness in his chest increased.
She picked out a large covered jar, a porcelain doll with painted breasts and pubic hair, a kerosene lamp.
He'd dreamed about all these things, and he felt a cold coil of fear wrap around his heart. Sure, the spoon had come from his father's batch of items, and he might have dreamed about it because he had seen it. But that did not explain the jar or the doll or the lamp. Those things had belonged to Janet's uncle. There was no way he could have known about them.
May set those items aside, then begn sorting through the things he did remember. She drew out the necklace of teeth, the plastic bag containing the dried, flattened frog.
"Wear these for protection," she said. She ran her hands above the necklace, tracing patterns in the air in a manner that seemed oddly sensual and that, in some strange way, spoke to him, though he had never seen such a thing before. She held the necklace out and he took it gingerly. He had no intention of ever wearing such a thing, but she held his gaze and refused to continue until he put it on. Shivering with revulsion, he obliged.
She performed similar hand movements over the frog, took it out of the bag, and handed it to Garden. "Keep this in the left front pocket of your pants."
Garden looked like he wanted to object, but he did not and pocketed the frog.
Janet received a ring of bone, Hal a carved wood fetish, Claire a bracelet made out of some type of dried weed. May herself opened one of the bottles and ingested a pinch of some foul-scented powder.
"Now--" May began. But she never finished. From the dark, swirling sky came a bright yellow lightning bolt that was not accompanied by thunder and did not flash instantly to earth but descended slowly and deliberately through the charged atmosphere and struck May atop the head. She watched it come for her, made no effort to move out of the way. When it touched her hair she fell, the features of her face hardening into an agonized rigidity. She collapsed forward onto the gravel, her arms flailing spastically, her legs jerking in furious counter movement even as the muscles of her face froze.
"Somebody do something," Claire said, but no one moved forward, and Miles grabbed her around the waist and held tightly to keep her from approaching May's electrically charged form.
The lightning retreated as leisurely as it had arrived, heading back up into the roiling sky like a fishing line being reeled in. Claire broke free from his grasp and knelt next to
the now still old woman, putting her hand on May's neck to feel for a pulse. She is dead." '"Miles pulled Claire back. "No mouth-to-mouth."
She didn't object, and Miles understood just how frightened she was.
Claire was a congenital do-gooder, always helping people, always giving of her time and money, doing anything she could to assist someone in trouble. She was also well trained in CPR. If Claire was so easily dissuaded from trying to help May, Miles knew that she had to be truly terrified.