“That’s not fair, Holly.”
“Do you think I’m abusing my powers?”
“Yes-don’t you?”
She moved closer to him on the couch. “I only planned to watch you after you left my aunt’s apartment Friday night to make sure you were safe. But once I started watching you, I couldn’t stop. I guess you could say it’s become an addiction.”
This was bad. Holly could make his life far more complicated than it already was and there wasn’t an earthly thing he could do to stop her except get on his knees and plead with her. Only that would probably be taken the wrong way. Damn it, what was he supposed to do?
“Please stop this,” he begged her. “Please.”
“I’ll try.” She paused. “But I won’t make any promises.”
“Not even to me?”
She put her hand on his knee and left it there. “Not even to you. Want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I know who you are, and what you are. That’s why. You’re not normal, and neither am I. But we pretend to be. That’s the lie we have to live in order to fit in. But it doesn’t work all the time. Like you’re learning now.”
“You mean with Liza.”
“Especially with Liza. She can’t change you, no matter how hard she tries.”
Holly was making it sound like his relationship with Liza was doomed, and would end like every other relationship he’d ever had. He shook his head in disagreement.
“It’s not like that between us,” he said. “Liza’s trying to help me.”
“Peter.”
“What?”
“Look at me.”
Holly pulled herself close, and moved her hand to his stomach, where she rested her palm. Her eyes danced across his face. Every inch of her skin looked radiant. Before his eyes she had changed from a girl into a ravishing young woman. Or had she been that way for a while, and he just hadn’t noticed? He did not resist as she climbed into his lap.
Witches were strange creatures. Their powers were linked to their imaginations much differently than other psychics. If they imagined something vividly enough, it would become their reality, as well as the reality of those in their presence. They were dangerous that way.
The candles sparked to life. As they did, the walls expanded like a movie set, and the apartment was transformed into a high-ceilinged boudoir with a four-poster bed in its center. Over the sound system, the violin solo turned into a romantic ballad.
Holly climbed off his lap. She motioned for him to rise, and he did. She offered him her hand, and he took it. They started across the room together toward the bed. He tried to pull away, but it was too late. She had cast a spell on him, and there was nothing he could do.
They stopped in front of the bed. She put her hands on his shoulders, and gazed longingly into his eyes. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. He had to escape.
“No,” he said, the word taking all his strength to utter.
“No?” She acted amused. “Don’t tell me you never considered it.”
Of course he’d considered it. Holly was beautiful, and the thought of having sex with her had entered his mind more than once. Each time it had, his conscience had shouted it down.
“It’s not right,” he whispered.
“What’s not right? Our falling in love?”
He nodded stiffly.
“I beg to differ. You’ve had plenty of girlfriends, and they’ve all left you, and broken your heart. We were meant for each other, Peter. You have to know that.”
“Let me out of this spell.”
“Not on your life.”
She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her fingertips across his hairless chest. He could not deny the powerful effect it had on him. He was becoming aroused, and would soon be lying in bed with Holly. But if he let that happen, his life would never be the same. He’d lose Liza, and start down a road with Holly whose ending was totally unclear. He was not ready for either of those things to happen. Somehow, someway, he had to make her stop.
Holly leaned in close, and kissed him on the mouth. A painful spark jumped between their lips. The boudoir disappeared, and Holly’s student furnishings returned. Around the room, the candles spouted flames that caused the textbooks and magazines on the coffee table to catch fire. Peter stamped them out on the floor.
“Check to see if anything else is on fire,” he said.
Holly was in a daze. She checked the kitchen and the bathroom.
“All clear?” he asked.
She nodded dumbly. He hated to be a party pooper, but it was time to go. He removed the five-pointed star from the gift bag he’d brought, and made her put it on.
“Don’t take that off until I tell you to, okay?”
Utterly embarrassed, Holly stared at the floor. He wanted things to go back to the way they used to be, and gave her a hug.
“Can’t we just be friends?” he asked.
She started to cry. He hated when she did that. He got a paper towel from the kitchen, and wiped away the tears. She looked vulnerable now and more than a little afraid. He grabbed the bag with the remaining necklace and went to the front door. She followed him as if blind.
“Good-bye. I’ll call you in a few days,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to explain?” she blurted out.
“Explain what?”
“You were under a spell.”
He waited, certain there was more.
“No one can break a witch’s spell. It’s not possible.”
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
“Be serious, Peter. How did you do that?”
There were certain things that even Peter didn’t understand about himself. Like how he moved objects with his mind or set off car alarms or made cups of coffee boil or flames jump off kitchen stoves. At the most unexpected of times these things just happened, and he never knew why. His temper was partially responsible, but there was another reason, and he had yet to fathom its meaning. Now he had another strange power to add to the list. He could not be kept under a witch’s spell. It pleased him to know that Holly could not make him her prisoner, and he hugged her before going out the door.
25
Ray was freaking out.
What if someone came, and saw Jucko’s headless body lying on the ground? They’d most certainly call the police, and he and Doc Munns would be arrested and sent to jail. He could not let that happen, not unless he wished to anger the Order of Astrum.
Ray was more afraid of the elders of the Order than he was of the police, or of going to jail, or just about anything else he could think of. He’d seen the kind of horror the elders were capable of wreaking upon people in their service who did not perform up to their standards. They were brutal, and he had made it a point to never make them angry.
Ray made Munns get into the passenger side of the van. Munns had calmed down and was reverting back to his old self. The transformation was as startling as it was remarkable One moment, he was the embodiment of a beast that had guarded the gates of hell for over two thousand years; the next, he was a pudgy slob, and easily the world’s biggest loser.
“Stay here,” Ray said.
“What’s going on? What happened?” Munns asked, sounding bewildered.
“You don’t know?”
“No. Did I kill Jucko?”
“You cut his head off. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Ray went about cleaning up the mess. He dragged Jucko’s body into Munns’s storage unit, near the footlockers that contained Munns’s previous victims. Then he threw in Jucko’s head. Keeping the victims in airtight footlockers had seemed like a good idea, until now. The bodies were a liability, and Ray wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them, or with Jucko. He’d think of something, it was just going to take a little time.
Ray had known that Munns had problems when he’d first recruited him. Men who killed had troubled pasts, which was why they killed. It was sweet revenge for all the terrible things that had happened to them growing up.