Smoke on the Water Read online

  The big woman with the knife was already out the door. An instant later gravel spewed as she took one of the vehicles and made tracks.

  “Bitch-whore!”

  I blinked and the house, the trees, the man, the mattress and pillow that were never going to be used again were all gone and Mary was back.

  I closed my eyes and drank the water in the cup, then set it down. “You need to stop doing that.”

  “How else are we going to find out anything?”

  “What did we find out? Do you know that guy? The house? Recognize anything?” She opened her mouth, and I lifted my hand. “Besides the bitch-whore?”

  “Yeah. Her knife.”

  There had been something strange about it.

  “The blade,” I said. “Like a z and double-edged.”

  She’d had it in the clearing, as well, but I’d been too distracted to notice much more than the meat cleaver and the murder. I was funny that way.

  “Did you see the hilt?”

  I thought back. The hilt had been carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf. “What does that mean?”

  We already knew the long-haired woman was a Venatores Mali, that they were a witchhunting society, and they used the snarling wolf as their symbol. But usually on a ring.

  “I saw a knife like that in this book.” Mary started to page through.

  “With the wolf?”

  “No.” She turned the book so I could see. “The blade.”

  The page she’d opened to had drawings of four magical items. A pentagram, a chalice, a wand, and—

  “‘Athame,’” I read. “‘Used by a fire witch to cut herbs and draw the sacred circle.’ But this one isn’t curved.”

  “No,” Mary agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be.”

  Mary riffled through more pages, then indicated a five-pointed star drawn on one. “Four elements.” She tapped each point and read what was written within the triangle. “Fire, air, water, earth.” Then the final one, which pointed up. “Spirit.”

  She turned the book to face her so she could read what was written beneath it. “The pentagram with the point ascendant indicates the spirit is more important than earthly concerns.”

  “What if the point is down?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe that’s for the other guys.”

  “What’s a fire witch?”

  “There’s a type of witch for every element, and they each have their magical instrument. Wand for an air witch. Pentacle for an earth witch. Your instrument would be a chalice, because you’re a water witch.”

  “Sure I am.”

  Mary’s eyes narrowed at my disbelief. She handed the book to me. “Read.”

  “‘Sometimes called a sea witch, a water witch aligns with all types of water. Water reflects. A water witch can see things others cannot. She is adept at divination. She can foretell the future.’”

  “See?” Mary said.

  From her tone, I half expected her to stick out her tongue.

  “I don’t—”

  Mary snatched the book from my hands. “Elemental witches are born. They have real magic. Like you.”

  “I’m not magic.”

  “You transported me. Of course you are.”

  “You think that was me?”

  “I know it was you.” She set her hand on mine. “Tomorrow night’s the full moon again. We’ll do the spell. Then you’ll believe.”

  “That’s probably not the best idea in the world.”

  “I need to stop those bastards from killing people,” Mary said. “Die, witch hunters!” She pumped her fist into the air for emphasis.

  “If I do the spell tomorrow night and nothing happens, can we stop?”

  She lowered her fist. “People are dying, Willow. Witches are dying. How can you stop?”

  She was right. I might want to stop, but I couldn’t. Not if I could help. And if the only help I had was sending Mary out there like an insane version of The Avengers …

  So be it.

  Chapter 10

  “Do you think we should meet again at midnight?” Mary whispered at supper the next day.

  My gaze lifted to the guard on duty. Tom, the original, slightly less gung-ho than Deux but not by much, had his gaze on us—or maybe just on Mary. Since she’d disappeared the last time, there seemed to be eyes on her 24/7.

  “Have you noticed you’re a guard favorite these days?”

  Mary turned her head and stuck out her tongue. She began to lift her middle finger too, but I grabbed her hand, held it between my own. “That won’t help.”

  “Helps me.”

  “Let’s watch TV. They’ll get bored watching us watch the screen. Eventually.”

  If they didn’t I wasn’t sure what I’d do. Or what Mary would do. I could easily see her banging a guard’s head against a wall to make him stop staring at her. I’d like to avoid that.

  After supper we returned to the common room, took some chairs near the back. I wasn’t certain if we had to have the moon shining on us, or if the moon just had to be shining. Or if this would even work. I guess we’d find out.

  “We need the bell and the candle.” Mary stood.

  “No.” I pulled her back down. “We might be able to ring a bell, but we certainly aren’t going to be allowed to light a candle.”

  “But—”

  “We didn’t use them in the library, remember?”

  Her eyes widened. “When we used them, nothing happened.” Mary patted my hand, beaming at me as if I were a prize pupil. Why that made me feel like one, I wasn’t sure.

  An obnoxious reality show blared on the television. From what I could gather they’d locked a bunch of people in a house. They seemed sane when they went in, except that no one in their right mind should agree to such a thing. Which kind of explained what was going on in the show now.

  “Ready?” Mary asked halfway through the televised fiasco.

  The room was full of patients staring zombielike at the screen. The guard’s attention had wandered. He stood outside the room, talking to the night nurse. They were flirting. It was kind of cute—even more so because they weren’t watching us.

  “You remember the spell?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. I wasn’t sure if that meant she remembered it or she didn’t. In the end, it didn’t matter.

  She held out her hand. I held out mine. The instant I touched her, Mary vanished.

  *

  Sebastian got the call just as he reached his apartment. He pointed the Harley back the way he’d come.

  Mary was gone. No one had seen how. At least the staff had already called the local police. His review of emergency procedures must have helped. By the time he got back, a county cruiser sat in front, its flashing lights pulsing against the night.

  Sebastian reached the door just as the sheriff came out. He introduced himself, shook hands.

  “We’ll find her, Doctor. She can’t have gotten very far.”

  Sebastian resisted the urge to snort and hurried inside.

  Tonight’s second-shift guard—the first Tom—waited. “They were watching TV.”

  “Who’s they?”

  Tom spread his hands. “The patients.”

  “All of them?”

  “Most. Mary and Willow for sure. I’ve been keeping a special eye on Mary, like you said.”

  “Not special enough,” Sebastian muttered, and Tom winced.

  “I was at the door. No one went in or out.”

  Sebastian rubbed his forehead. “Where’s Willow?”

  “Here.”

  Her voice trilled along his skin like a feather. He dropped his hand. Had she been standing there in the shadows all along? Must have been, it wasn’t like she’d warped in the way Mary had warped out.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  She sounded like she was telling the truth, but what did he know? Not much. Not enough to keep his job if he continued losing patients.
/>   Make that patient. Same woman, different day. Would that matter? Probably not.

  “You were sitting right next to her.” Tom loomed over Willow, making her seem smaller, frailer, paler than ever before. He grabbed her arm, shook her a bit. “You had to have seen something.”

  Sebastian didn’t even realize he’d moved until Tom’s back hit the wall and his head bounced off it with a sickening thunk. That’s what happened when a bigger man put his hand around a smaller man’s throat and shoved.

  “Don’t touch her,” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.

  “I’m all right.” Willow tugged on Sebastian’s arm.

  He released the guard. “Never touch her again.”

  Tom nodded, rubbing his throat.

  “Or any of the others,” Sebastian thought to add, though from Tom’s expression he wasn’t buying it. “Go.”

  Tom went.

  Sebastian took a deep breath—in, out, in again—waiting for the pounding in his ears to recede along with the orange haze behind his eyes. He didn’t have much luck until Willow took his hand. Everything calmed. He wanted to hold her hand forever, but he couldn’t. He shouldn’t have held it this long.

  “Come along.” Not waiting to see if she followed, Sebastian released her and headed to the courtyard door, unlocked it and stepped through, closing it behind them both. “What happened?”

  She lifted her face to the moon—full and silver, it shone on her for just an instant before shadows danced between that moon and the earth. He lifted his face too.

  Odd. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky and now the sky was full of them.

  “We were watching TV,” Willow said.

  Sebastian lowered his gaze to hers. “And then?”

  She stared at her feet. “Someone screamed that she was gone. That she’d been there and then she’d disappeared.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look at me.”

  She continued to stare at the grass. He stepped closer—too close. Inappropriately close. Thunder rolled on the horizon.

  “Please,” he murmured.

  When she did, he fell into her eyes as if he’d fallen into the ocean from a rocky cliff. The world shimmied like déjà vu, which was crazy. He’d never stood with her in the night, beneath the moon, with a storm blowing in, electricity humming along his skin, making the hair on his arms buzz. He’d never stood like this with anyone.

  They were as close as they could get without touching. Every breath she took, her breasts rose closer to his chest. He couldn’t seem to move, to speak, to think. He could do nothing but listen to the cadence of her breath, inhale the scent of her skin, tingle at the memory of a touch that had never happened.

  The wind picked up and whipped her hair across his face. She shuddered, and the movement caused her breasts to brush against him at last. He was going to kiss her. He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. Nevertheless—

  “Tree,” she said, and shoved him in the chest.

  He was big; she was not. He only took a single step back, surprised more than anything else. Then she launched herself into his arms; his feet tangled. Together they fell.

  An instant before a giant limb from the largest tree in the courtyard cracked and slammed into the ground exactly where they’d been.

  *

  I’d had a lot of visions in my life. Most of them I remembered, some of them I didn’t until right before they happened.

  Like tonight.

  I knew this wasn’t our first kiss. Wrong place. Wrong time. However, the instant my breasts had brushed his chest and the entire world stilled, I’d seen again what I’d seen once before.

  The tree was going to break. It was going to break us unless we moved.

  We fell hard. My chin hit his chest. I bit my tongue. Blood filled my mouth. He grunted when my knee connected where it shouldn’t. Then we both lay there kind of stunned.

  The earth shook—the tree or the thunder? Perhaps both. Then the courtyard filled with lights and sound and people. Someone dragged me off Dr. Frasier, pinned my arms behind my back.

  “What did you do?” Nurse Zoe yanked my arms up so high I saw stars, or maybe it was just the sizzle of lightning far too close.

  “Stop.” The doctor’s voice was hoarse. He held up a hand. One of the guards hauled him to his feet. He limped over and physically extricated me from Zoe’s clutches. “You’re bleeding.”

  He wiped my chin. From the wash of red on his palm, I was bleeding a lot.

  “I’ll fill out the incident report,” Zoe said.

  “What incident?” Dr. Frasier asked.

  “She attacked you. You had to defend yourself.”

  I didn’t have to be psychic to understand the look she gave me. I was in for a rough time whenever she was around. Nothing new there. She hadn’t been able to do much more than pinch and shove with Mary around. But Mary was gone.

  “Willow did nothing but push me out of the way of that tree limb.”

  Everyone stared at the limb that was more of a log. It had put a dent in the ground. It definitely would have put a dent in one or both of us.

  Zoe didn’t appear convinced. Neither did anyone else. I suppose the idea of me pushing Dr. Frasier was a bit far-fetched. But terror fuels adrenaline. It had certainly fueled me.

  “Let’s clean you up.” Dr. Frasier took my arm and led me inside.

  I was a mess. Blood had dripped all over my shirt. My face was probably worse. He led me to his office, sat me on the couch, went into the nearby restroom and came back with a cloth. Then he knelt at my side and gently washed the blood from my face and neck.

  I probably should have stopped him, but I’d started shaking. What if I hadn’t remembered the future/past in time?

  He took my trembling hands between his own. “You’re like ice. Lie down.”

  I shook my head.

  “Doctor’s orders. You’re going into shock.” He glanced over his shoulder at the continued pandemonium in the hall. “Really, Willow, I don’t have the time.”

  “Time?” I echoed.

  Worry haunted his face. “This is a secure psychiatric facility. Or at least it was before I took over. To lose the same patient twice isn’t going to be good for me. As much as I’d like to sit here with you, I need to find Mary. Now.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  He urged me to lie down and covered me with a blanket. Then he smoothed my hair. “Who else’s fault would it be?”

  I couldn’t tell him it was mine, but I could help him find her. “May I have a glass of water, please?”

  “Of course.” He fetched it, handing it over without glancing at me at all.

  Which only showed how distracted he was. I’m sure the fact that I never drank water by choice was very prominent in my file.

  At first I saw nothing in the tiny bathroom-sized cup. I sipped and when the water hit my lacerated tongue it burned. A fleck of dried blood floated across the surface. It spread out, dissolved, became one with the water, and I saw a small town—different from the last one but similar enough to be in the same general area. A coffee shop—a woman and a man sat in the booth by the window. He was slim and blond; he had a goatee. She was the same long-haired woman I’d seen twice before.

  Someone shot out of the darkness, ran up to the window, started hammering fists against the glass.

  “Bitch-whore!” she screamed.

  “Mary,” I said.

  “What?” Dr. Frasier asked.

  I dropped the cup. It soaked first the blanket and then me. “The restaurant is called Missy’s Café.”

  “What restaurant? Where?”

  “Google it.” I pointed to his computer. “Quick. I’m not sure how much time you have.”

  “Before what?” he asked, but he was already sitting at his desk and bringing up the search engine.

  “Before Mary tries to kill her.”

  He flicked a glance at me, then back
at the screen. “Who?”

  “That bitch-whore she keeps talking about? She found her.”

  *

  Sebastian located the restaurant through the wonder of Google in Carlton’s Cave Township.

  “That’s forty miles from here,” he said. “There’s no way she could be there yet. Even if she got a ride.”

  “You need to hurry,” was all Willow said.

  “She told you she was going there?” He typed in the Carlton’s Cave PD, found the number, dialed.

  “Whatever works.”

  Sebastian frowned at her answer, but he didn’t have time to ask “what the hell?” because the phone was picked up on the other end.

  “Carlton’s Cave Police Department.”

  “This is Dr. Sebastian Frasier from the Northern Wisconsin Mental Health Facility. One of our patients may be in your area. Perhaps headed to a restaurant called Missy’s Café?”

  “That’s not a crime,” the dispatcher said.

  “Not yet.” Sebastian couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “If you could have an officer patrol there tonight, be on the lookout for an older woman, long gray hair, tan jumpsuit, slippers not shoes. Can’t miss her.”

  Especially if she put her hands around someone else’s throat and started to squeeze.

  “And if we find her?”

  “Detain, please. I’m on my way.” He hung up as Willow swung her feet to the floor. “You should stay there until you feel less shaky. Would you like more water?”

  Sebastian heard what he’d just said and frowned. Because of what she thought she saw in it, Willow only drank water to get rid of it. She never asked for it. Why had she tonight?

  To find Mary. And she had. Or at least she thought she had. Who was he to throw stones? He was heading to Carlton’s Cave because of her “vision.” But he had to do something.

  What if Mary was actually there? He’d deal with that after he found her. He’d deal with calling Dr. Tronsted then too. Breaking with procedure again but why stop now?

  “I’ll come with you.” Willow stood, swayed.

  “Not.”

  “She’ll behave better if I’m there.”

  “Willow, I cannot take you out of here.”

  Well, he could—in cuffs maybe—but he wasn’t going to. He wasn’t taking anyone. Willow because he didn’t want to lose two patients in one night. And anyone else because he didn’t want an audience if he got to Carlton’s Cave and found nothing but locals.