Fangtabulous (22 page)

Bobby!
my heart cried, and as if he heard me, his arms tightened.

I knew we had company, and that this wasn’t really over yet … but none of it mattered right then. I was afraid to stop for fear of losing him again.

“Uh, guys … ”

It was Olivia. “Uh, can we get out of here before everybody comes around?”

I laughed. It was one of those stress-relief laughs where nothing’s actually funny, but you just can’t hold in the joy. I had Bobby back, at least for now.
I’d
brought him back. He came back because of
me.
I took Bobby’s hand in mine and hung onto it for all I was worth. If he reverted, at least I’d have him held fast.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Olivia hugged the Book of Shadows to her like it was the most precious thing in the world. Ulric got Marcy and Brent to their feet. Brent swayed a little as he rose, but he managed to stay upright as he limped toward the door. We left Rebecca and Ty where they’d fallen. No, Rebecca and the Salem Strangler, whoever he’d been in life. I hoped they wouldn’t wake up and kill each other before we could put all the spirits to rest.

“Get her blood,” Olivia ordered me, “and hair. I don’t know what we’ll need to break the spell, but the amulet’s bound to her, so we’ll need something of hers for the unbinding.”

I could go her one better. Rather than just collect Rebecca’s blood, I could take some of it into me. If we couldn’t break the enchantment on the amulet, maybe her blood bond with it would transfer to me. At the least, perhaps I could divide its loyalties. I would never let Rebecca use it against us again.

And I
would
find a way to give Jenny peace. She’d more than earned it. I was so proud of her for fighting her demon and making her own justice, all these years later. I hoped it would bring her peace as well.

I pulled Rebecca’s jacket aside. My fangs were already fully onboard with the plan, and I sank them deep into her neck. All the action had made me hungry, but even so I could only take so much of her. There was something sour about her blood. Rebecca was rotten, bitter … but whether it was in body or spirit, I couldn’t tell. I pulled back well before I’d drunk my fill and used a strip I’d torn from her jacket lining to catch some of her leftover blood before it congealed. I pulled a few strands of her hair out by the roots and wrapped them in the lining, tucking them into my jacket pocket—the one
not
the one holding the pendant, which no longer burned me like the sun.

Ghost-Jenny followed us out, small and unassuming again. A six-year-old child in form, a tigress at heart. She tripped the secret latch to close the door behind us.

17

A
s soon as we got into the car, the pendant started to vibrate just a little … or maybe had been vibrating all along, but I’d missed it in the midst of all the action. I realized after a second that it was more like a purr, a melodic rumble, like it was somehow aware and happy to be reunited with the book. Like there was some kind of resonance between them. Since rising from the dead, I’d come to terms with vampires and telepaths and witches—oh my! Now I had to accustom myself to self-aware objects? A girl could only take so much.

“Is someone … humming?” Olivia asked.

Then a funny look came over her face. “Wait, I think it’s the book.”

“Or the amulet,” I said.

“Weird.”

I laughed.
That
was weird. For a witch, she had a pretty low bar for weird.

“Shut it,” I told the pendant. It stopped just like that. Rebecca’s blood had to be working through me.

“Where are we going?” Ulric asked, not that the lack of direction had stopped him from putting distance between us and Old Town. Already we were blocks away.

“The Morbid Gift Shop,” Olivia said. “It’s closed for the night, and the theater’s dark. Chip said he’d set up the circle and have it all ready for us.”

Ulric didn’t say anything in response, but he seemed extra focused on the rearview mirror.

“Everything okay?” I asked him.

“Ye-ah. I thought I saw a car following us, but it turned off at the last cross street and hasn’t reappeared.”

“What made you think it was following?”

He shrugged. “Too many cop shows?”

“Let us know if you see it again.”

The amulet had stayed silent, and the car was now so quiet we could actually hear the chirping of the cicadas or frogs or whatever Salem had that made night noises. It would have been peaceful if it weren’t so tense. I didn’t trust the quiet.

“Hey,” Bobby said into it, his voice warm and deep and totally his … just like me.

“Hey, yourself,” I said huskily.

I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder and breathing him in.

“Why does my mouth taste all foul?” he asked.

Ulric laughed and Marcy made a choking sound.

“You don’t want to know,” I answered. “Trust me.”

“With my life,” he said.

It was Ulric’s turn to gag, but he stopped quickly as we came to the mall and he found a place to park around back, where the Crown Vic might not be quite so visible.

Olivia pulled out her phone to call Chip to let us into the locked mall.

“How long do these spells usually take?” I asked her.

“As long as they take,” she answered helpfully. She patted the book. “Let’s just hope there’s something helpful in here that’ll break or block the amulet’s power and that we don’t have to come up with a spell from scratch.
That
would take a lot longer.”

Chip unlocked the doors for us and let us precede him so that he could lock up again. The Morbid Gift Shop exhibited an unearthly glow as we approached. I realized how on edge I was when I saw that the glow I was getting all worked up about was only candlelight, flickering behind the curtains and screens that set off the theater area. I didn’t know what had me so edgy, but I had the sense of something pending, unfinished, oncoming. For the life or death of me, I couldn’t think what it was. Rebecca and Ty were out cold; Sid and Maya were hopefully still tied up …

Brent studiously avoided touching the cage, the coffin, or any of the other antique-looking doodads decorating the gift shop. Based on the tension in his shoulders as he and Marcy preceded Bobby and me, he was feeling the energies anyway. If I had to guess, the proximity of the pendant was making the vibes all that much stronger.

We followed Chip through the curtains into the theater area, where we got to see the candles up close and personal. The chairs that were usually set out for the Gothic Magic Show had been folded up and pushed back to the outer edge of the space, to make room for a huge chalk circle in the midst of which was a pentagram. Olivia’s fellow witches were standing around it.

Irish came forward. He looked a lot more … mystical now that he’d ditched the cable-knit sweater for some midnight-blue robes tied with a silver cord.

“May I see the book?” he asked.

Olivia moved out from behind Bobby and me to present it to him, holding it in both hands like an offering and giving it over with a little bow.

“The amulet?” he asked.

I withdrew it from my pocket and let the obsidian stone dangle where it could be seen.

“Place it in the center of the circle,” he ordered. No please or thank you. Just do.

I shot a look at Olivia for reassurance that this was what she’d expected, and she gave me the nod.

I expected to feel something when I stepped over the chalk outline of the circle, but there was nothing. Maybe it hadn’t yet been activated, or whatever it was they did. I laid the pendant down in the center and backed away as Irish thumbed through the book. His eyes got bigger with every page turned, and I could see Bobby watching him avidly. I wondered if he could read upside-down and then realized that this was
Bobby
. He could probably read upside-down, backwards, in Morse code and even Swahili. The thought gave me the chills. I was fine with him having the information, but not his brain-buddy. And with his memory …

“Blood,” Irish said.

I handed the bit I’d collected, along with the hair, to Olivia, since he didn’t have any more hands for holding.

“Maybe we should step into the other room,” I said to Bobby once everything was out of my hands. “Someone needs to stand guard.”

“You trying to get me alone?” he asked, teasing.

“You know it,” I answered.

I meant it … as soon as I could be sure we’d be
truly
alone. The smile I gave him was bittersweet.

The pendant seemed to call to me as we walked away. It was like a tug, as from an elastic tether that would pull tighter and tighter with each step I took. But we stopped long before it could become a problem.

Bobby and I stopped outside of the theater area, where he sank to the floor and put his back to the partition wall, signaling for me to join him. I so wanted to just sink into his arms, but more than that, I wanted to be able to see his face, spot the second he changed, if he changed. I was standing guard for internal threats as much as external. If he went ballistic again, I didn’t want him breaking up the circle and my chance at getting him back for good.

But I didn’t want to be the one to bust him up again, either. I could still feel the snap of his neck beneath my hands and hear his vertebrae breaking. I wondered if it would ever leave me.

Bobby looked sad when I didn’t join him. He drew up his legs, ready to get to his feet again at any moment, but then stayed low, beneath any casual surveillance of the store by, say, a security guard on rounds. I paced, too agitated to sit.

On the one hand, I really,
really
wanted to know what was going on behind those curtains. On the other, I could almost feel it. Chanting started, and the power of the amulet began to pulse in time … and me with it. I felt it like a heartbeat. I hadn’t realized I’d missed it. Who would miss something they were rarely ever aware of to begin with? But now it filled my chest and reverberated through my body. Every cell vibrated with it. It was as though I’d truly been dead—empty—and now I was full, alive, restless, and sad … so, so sad, because I was going to lose it again. They were going to neutralize the amulet, and it felt like I would go with it.

Jenny floated over to us, skirting the cage and coffin as if she too felt something of their history.

“I feel … strange,” she said softly, meeting my gaze. She was solid enough that I could read the fearful wonder shining in her eyes.

“Alive?” I asked, still feeling that phantom heartbeat.

Instead of responding, Jenny froze. “Someone comes.”

Bobby suddenly sat ramrod straight, head cocked to the side, listening as though he felt it too.

I dropped to a squat beside him, out of the casual sight line, but I knew that wasn’t going to do it. I’d just known things had been too easy. That feeling I’d had, of something unfinished, rushed back at me full force. My fashion senses were sharply honed, but my Spidey-senses … those were still a work in progress.

I saw the problem about two seconds later: two figures converging on the shop from different directions. One tall and one not-so. One male, one female. I
knew
those figures. I’d dated one of them back in Mozulla, Ohio. We’d “died” together on prom night when he’d wrapped his shiny red convertible around a tree with the two of us inside. The girl was my arch-nemesis, Tina Carstairs. I’d recognize the blond bimbo anywhere, even with a black scarf tied over her hair and muting the salon shine. My two least favorite members of my former team of fanged Federal flunkies. I should have known that Sid and Maya wouldn’t be working alone. They were the public face of things. Tina and Chaz, being vamps, were a field team. But if they were here, their handlers couldn’t be far behind.

“Incoming,” I whispered.

I signaled Bobby to go right. I’d go left, and we’d ambush them from behind displays when they broke in. I hoped he’d hold it together that long, but even as I was thinking it, something rose to a crescendo behind the curtain, and I felt it like a fist to my heart. I cried out silently and clutched at my chest, like I could fight off the heart-attack. I couldn’t catch a breath, and felt suddenly like I needed one. Desperately. Which was absurd—unless, with Rebecca’s blood coursing through me and with that blood tied to the amulet, we were somehow linked. Was I feeling
her
heartbeat? Her panic? Her gasping pain?

I didn’t have time for this! I lurched toward the theater, frantic to stop the spell, forgetting about the incoming agents. Then the shop door burst open behind me and a bolt of screaming agony shot through me, piercing my chest just to the right of my heart, impaling me against the semi-
permanent wall like a bug to a board. A wooden stake.

“Stop right there!” Tina commanded, maliciously gleeful about it.

I didn’t see that I had any choice. I craned my neck around to glare, to face death head-on, and saw Bobby hurl himself at Tina, knocking the crossbow out of her hands and throwing her backward into Chaz, who was coming through behind her. Tina tore at his hair as they went down.

Brent, Marcy, and Ulric poured out of the back, alerted by Tina’s oh-so-subtle entrance and my impact on the wall. Using that wall as leverage, I tried to tear myself free of the stake to go to Bobby’s aid. The pain blackened my vision and nearly made me pass out. I tried to ghost, but with the wood stuck through me, nothing happened except crippling, rippling agony, shooting through my body so that all my nerves screamed as one.

My heart squeezed one last time as the chant ended, and I shattered. My knees gave out and I collapsed, the stake ripping through me as I went down before catching on bone, keeping me half-upright, sagging like a scarecrow. I could feel the blood, the life seeping out of me, the wood like poison killing the flesh around it.

A white light beamed down from above, blasting through the darkness stealing my vision. I thought at first I was fainting. The cold stopped; the pain stopped. Time froze. But I was still aware, and the light … so beautiful, only it wasn’t coming for me.

The beam fell on the face of the little ghost girl—Jenny—lighting her up like the Christmas tree of an overzealous suburbanite. So lovely. So angelic I checked her for wings. Was this the white light people talked about, summoning her to heaven or whatever lay beyond?

All I wanted to do was go toward that light, to find out, but Jenny shrank back from it—fear and longing battling it out on her face.

“Go. What are you waiting for?” I said … or tried to, anyway. I didn’t seem to have lips any more. Or if I did, I couldn’t get them to move.

But somehow she heard me. “I can’t leave you,” she said.

“You have to.” I didn’t know if the light would wait or if it was a limited-time offer, but I knew she had to take it. There was something about that light … glorious, warm, pure. Longing ripped through me like the stake. I wanted to go. But it wasn’t there for me. It never would be.

I closed my eyes against the loss until a distant pain forced them open again. Jenny’s hands, quickly going ghostly again, were grabbing at the stake, trying to pull it out, but we’d taken that away from her. She could no longer grip strongly enough to finish the job.

Gently, a pair of hands waved her aside, and I looked up into the face of an angel. My angel. My Bobby. He grabbed the stake in both hands and yanked it out in one great heave.

My body finished its aborted slide to the floor and the light started to fade from the room. Or maybe from my consciousness. I sought out Jenny’s gaze. “Go!” I demanded.