“You don’t have to come, but it would be a huge help if you did.”
“Right now?” Peter asked wearily.
“Afraid so. I’ll drive. You can sit in the passenger seat and sleep on the way up.”
Peter looked at Liza. “You cool with going home by yourself?”
“Not really. How about I come with you?” she said.
“You sure?”
“Positive. We’re a team, remember?”
His whole life he’d been facing the unknown by himself. He hadn’t minded, but it had gotten lonely at times. Having Liza by his side was going to make his life a lot nicer. To Garrison he said, “Give me five minutes to get out of these clothes.”
“I’ll be waiting outside in the car,” the FBI agent replied.
Peter went to change. Opening the door to his dressing room, a cry escaped his lips. The room was trashed, his props and clothing scattered across the floor.
He’d been burglarized. It happened all the time in New York. The question was, how had the burglar gotten in? Certainly not through any of the theater’s entrances. There were only two, the front and the back, and they were watched 24/7 by surveillance cameras.
That left the window in his dressing room. It would have been hard, considering the room was on the second floor and there was no fire escape, but burglars were a resourceful lot, and would go to any means to enter a building if there was something worth stealing.
He went to the window to check the latch. To his surprise, it hadn’t been touched. So how had the burglar gotten in? He pulled out his cell phone, planning to call Snoop and ask him to check the surveillance videos, when a movement stopped him cold. A curling wisp of black smoke was seeping out of a crack plaster in the wall. Before his eyes it took shape. He had seen the shadow people enough times to differentiate them by their sizes. It was the same shadow person who’d dropped her antique watch into his hands a few nights ago, Barbara Metcalf.
“What have I done to upset you now?” he asked.
No response.
“You know that I’m trying to help you, don’t you?”
Nothing.
“I’m going to Pelham to track down Munns. That’s what you want from me, isn’t it? To stop this crazy guy before he kills Rachael.”
Still nothing.
“I’m getting tired of you messing with me,” he blurted out.
She made an angry squeal. Across the room, five black wisps came out of their hiding place to join her. They swarmed around Peter like a hive of angry bees, threw him into the chair in front of his dressing table, and held him down.
“Cut it out!” he protested.
A pair of scissors on his dressing table were crawling toward him, its blades snapping like an alligator’s jaws. His left hand was pinned to the table; as he watched, the shadow person that was Barbara Metcalf began to snip off the tip of his left forefinger.
“Not my hand,” he howled.
The scissors were dull, and it took tremendous effort to break the skin and cut into the bone. Before his disbelieving eyes, the tip of his finger fell to the table. Bright red blood spurted from the wound, and he struggled not to pass out.
“Peter, let me in,” Liza shouted through the door.
“They’re back,” he gasped.
“What are they doing to you?”
“Bad stuff.”
“Tell me!”
“Cutting off my finger…”
Metcalf wasn’t done with him. Grabbing his hand, she brought his bleeding finger up to the three-way mirror on his dressing table, and used his blood to write a message. Peter thought he would be sick, and shut his eyes. The next thing he knew, Liza was standing beside him, shaking his arm with both his hands.
“Peter-don’t let them kidnap you!”
His eyes snapped open. The dressing room was back to normal, all the broken furniture and scattered things returned to their rightful places. It had all been a trick of the mind.
He stared at his severed finger. It had miraculously healed itself. No blood, no missing tip, he flexed it several times, found it in good working order.
Liza knelt beside him. “Oh, God, are you okay?”
“I think so.”
One thing hadn’t gone away. His dressing mirror was smeared with blood. He leaned forward to make out the single word left behind as a memento:
HURRY
Grabbing Liza by the arm, he ran from the dressing room.
PART V: PELHAM
56
Witches were not supposed to fall in love. Nor were they supposed to get married and become soccer moms. It was not how being a witch worked.
It wasn’t written down anywhere. Most of the rules which dictated a witch’s life were not written down anywhere at all. But they were passed down to each generation of young women who were born into the coven of spells and sorcery. And those rules were clear.
True love and witches simply did not mix.
Of course, they could have partners, and engage in sex, and be all things that women could and should be. There were no laws against that. But they were not allowed to lose themselves with a partner and forget who they were, which was what happened to most people who fell in love. They forgot who they were, and became someone else for a while. Witches were not supposed to do that. They had to remain true to themselves throughout their lives, and never forget who they were. It made relationships with the opposite sex tricky, to say the least.
Perhaps this was Holly’s problem. She had gotten crazy over Peter before the rules of the game had been properly explained to her. By the time Milly had gotten down to spelling out the rules, Cupid’s arrow had pierced her heart, and nothing would ever be the same.
Peter had been such a logical choice. Cute, clever, with one foot stuck in the dark side, what more could she want from a boy? They had grown up together, and always been fond of each other. Falling in love had been a natural progression, and Holly didn’t think the world would fall off its axis because of it.
She poured the magic herbs into the water-filled vase sitting on the coffee table. The water grew cloudy, with lifelike forms swirling about.
Oh spirits from above, show me Peter, the boy I love.
The water grew clear, and there Peter was, slumped in a chair in his dressing room while lovely Liza shook his arm. Clearly, something was amiss, which seemed almost routine for poor Peter these days. He’d become a poster boy for the problems that came from being psychic.
Peter woke up. Soon he and Liza were in a car racing out of the city. At the wheel was a grim-faced man whom Holly recognized as an FBI agent of Peter’s acquaintance. The FBI agent was driving one-handed while talking on a cell phone and to Peter at the same time. It was like watching a silent movie, and Holly tried to make out what they were saying.
“Holly!” a familiar voice called out.
Holly looked up in alarm. The voice had come out of nowhere. “Aunt Milly, is that you?”
“Who do you think it is, the Girl Scouts of America?”
“You have no right scrying on me, if that’s what you’re doing.”
“Au contraire, I have every right to be scrying on you. You must leave Peter alone.”
“Why should I? I’m in love with him.”
“I fully understand that. But love doesn’t give you the right to invade his privacy. Peter must not be disturbed. Do you understand me?”
Holly glanced at the vase of water at the object of her desire. “Certainly.”
“You’re not listening to me. Peter is not like us. He’s different.”
“I know.”
“Much different.”
“I’ll agree to that.”
“Damn it, Holly.”
A framed photograph fell off the wall and crashed to the floor.
“Please stop destroying my things,” Holly said.
“Not until you do as I say.”
Holly had never won an argument with her aunt, and doubted she ever would. Clicking her fingers three times, she made the water grow cloudy and the images disappear. Rising from the floor, she found her aunt’s ghostly image in the oval mirror over her water bed.