“Gaa!” Mrs. Fowler sat up so quickly that she knocked Becca over. Her mouth, rimmed with chocolate, split into a huge grin. Her eyes twirled like kaleidoscopes.
“Mother?” Becca asked hesitantly.
“Who are you?” Mrs. Fowler demanded.
Becca looked frightened. “I’m Becca, Mother. Your daughter. And this is Katy, and Peter, and—”
“Blah, blah. Who cares?” Mrs. Fowler shouted as she jumped up from the log and landed in a bow-legged warrior’s stance. She looked completely different than she had earlier. Shorter. Stronger. And, if possible, even more belligerent.
“Mrs. Fowler—”
“Call me Lolille,” she croaked.
“Er…Beg pardon?”
“Lolille,” she repeated, slapping me on the back. It hurt. An odor like swamp water pervaded the air. “Now, what say we have some real fun, kids?”
“Fun?” Verity echoed timidly. “Like…like what?”
“Well, let’s see.” Lolille, or whoever Mrs. Fowler thought she was, squatted down on her haunches, rubbing her chin as if deep in thought. Then she cackled.“I’ve got it,” she said, snapping her fingers. “How about raising the dead?”
CHAPTER FOUR
As I’ve mentioned, Samhain is the biggest holiday in a witch’s year. Unlike the cowen New Year, Samhain marks the end of the year, rather than the beginning, and the end of life, as well.
The harvests are gathered. The fields are fallow. And the souls of the dead are honored. That is the main purpose of Samhain, to invite the ghosts of the departed to enjoy the pleasures of life once more, for one night.
At Hattie’s, the spirits of our ancestors mingle freely with the living revelers, and there are always tears when dawn comes and the dead must return to the Summer Country.
So we didn’t exactly know who we’d be raising, but it seemed like a good idea. Or at least a better one than playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
“You! Get me some fish roe, deer droppings, and a dead bird,” she commanded Arnold. She pointed to Chrissie. “Collect some toadstools and a handful of thorns.” Her voice, once so pretentiously operatic, now took on the cadences of the Louisiana bayou. “And Blondie, you scrape some mold off a tree and bring it here.”
Becca squinted at her. “Mother—”
“Quit calling me that! I told you, my name is Lolille. LOLILLE,” she spelled. “And I ain’t nobody’s mama. Now get to scraping. And bring me two toads. Nice fat ones. Move.”
I was sent off to gather worms. When I got back to the campsite, Lolille was making a ritual circle about twenty feet across out of twigs and dried grass.
“Get in here!” she chided. “No pokin’!” She tossed one of my worms at Verity, who screamed.
“That one’s high strung,” Lolille said to Cheswick with a nod. “Now gather round, y’all. Let me show you how we do things back home in Crawfish Gully.”
She arranged all the gruesome things we’d gathered into the center of the circle and began to dance around them, hopping up and down and chanting in some language that seemed a little like French, although I couldn’t make out its meaning.
An’ a gris-gris comin
Better watch les petits
Les mortes sont venues
Ici avec nous
Peter and I looked at each other. Verity was trembling. Becca had blanked out.
“Weirdest camping trip ever,” Cheswick said.
At that moment the circle around us burst into flames. Verity’s shaking hands flew to her face.
Now telling, now telling,
La terre sauvage
Give ‘em up, vielle mere
Give ‘em up en rage
Then Lolille fell into a swoon as the things around her—the worms and toads and moldy bark and all the other dirty things she’d made us fetch—wriggled and rose up around her like dream trees. They grew tendrils and wound among us, changing form, melting, growing, taking on color, taking on life, until we were faced with…people.
They’d all turned into people.
Some were young, no older than we were, and might have come straight from Ainsworth School, blinking in the moonlight and looking bewildered. There was a pale, beautiful girl with dark hair hanging down to her waist, who could have been on the cover of a fashion magazine, a lanky boy as tall as Peter, a gap-toothed Georgia Mae Jagger look-alike with big pink lips and bleached hair, a pair of twins with sly eyes like foxes, a short, stubby guy with a buzz cut and pimples…
And him. Him, perfectly, heartbreakingly gorgeous. A Chris Hemsworth clone, aged seventeen. Blond hair a little too long, cheeks that blushed. Eyes like blue ice, sparking in the firelight. He was wearing a red military jacket with gold epaulets. And he was looking at me.
“Katy.”
“Huh?” I’d been willing my heart to stop pounding. Peter was pinching my arm. “Ow.”
“This is some kind of spell,” he said.
Duh. “Well, yeah.”
“Are they all dead, or what?”
“I don’t…” I began, but then the pretty brunette floated up off the ground and hovered above our heads. “Well, maybe.”
Cheswick craned his neck upward, probably to look up her skirt. “Weirdest camping trip—”
“You already said that,” Verity snapped.
Everything happened fast after that. One by one, our normal-looking visitors changed form again: The hot sexy girl suddenly grew claws and a hairy, foot-long snout. The lanky kid started shedding parts of his skin in blobs that fell to the ground. The twins sprouted wings and flew around the circle so fast they made heat and left trails.
“Pixies,” Becca whispered.
“With a werewolf and a zombie for company,” Peter said, stepping aside as the fish eggs grew into ropey serpents with embryonic human faces and slithered around our feet.
“What are these water creatures?” I asked.
“Ondines,” Amanda said.
Verity was already clinging to Cheswick like she was going down on the Titanic, but at the sight of the ondines, she started whimpering and skittering around in a panic.
“So who’s the floater?” Cheswick asked, oblivious to Verity’s distress. He was still staring at the hovering girl with the long black hair.
“I think she’s a ghost,” Chrissie said.
Okay, I thought. We can handle this. If everything stayed inside the magic circle, whatever evil Lolille had conjured would be contained.
“Just stay calm,” I said, as calmly as I could. But then the pimply-faced boy opened his mouth and a river of fire shot out of it. Verity let out a blood-curdling scream and ran out of the circle, breaking it so that all the creatures inside ran out into the real world.
“Go, my lovelies,” Lolille chortled while we all scrambled to get out. “Be fruitful and decimate.”
In that instant, it seemed all manner of gross things crawled out of the trees, the ground, the high grass, the mud. They leaped past us, reeking of death, crackling with evil energy. The spirits of Samhain. The other spirits, the ones who didn’t go to Hattie’s for a dose of nostalgia. These spirits were out for blood.
Peter grabbed my arm. “Come on,” he said as the Whitfield clock tower struck twelve. I followed him, but when I looked back, I saw the soldier—the redcoat—still inside the circle, his sad eyes fixed on mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “The dorms? Your grandma’s? Your choice.”
“Hattie’s,” I decided. “We’d better warn her about what’s on the loose out here.”
“Speaking of which…what happened to Mrs. Fowler?”
“You mean Lolille, I say LOLILLE?” I gave it my best Foghorn Leghorn imitation. “Beats me. But that’s not her. Even Becca ran away.”
“There was something in that bottle.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hey, ya think?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Katy. I’m just trying to figure out
what caused this…this mess, so that maybe we can do something about it.”
“Like what? That tall guy was a zombie, Peter!”
“And the blond girl—” Cheswick began.
“Yeah. A werewolf. I saw.”
“Not to mention the ghost, the pixies, and the fire-breathing nerd.”
Peter laughed. “Up till then, I’d have given that title to Katy.”
I punched him.
“The fire-breathing nerd,” he chuckled.
I punched him again.
Up ahead, Hattie’s was lit up like a birthday cake. With music and loud voices we could hear from a hundred yards away, the party seemed to be in full swing.
And it was, but not in a good way. As soon as we opened the front door, a cloud of locusts flew out. Inside, our friend the zombie must have arrived there before us, because he was thumping out some hot New Orleans blues on the piano. The other musicians were cowering in a corner, their smashed instruments lying beside them. The pixie twins were flying around the rafters on the ceiling, where some helpless diners were dangling by their feet. All around, people were screaming and scrambling for the exit, but whenever the doors opened, some new horror would rush in: a demon, a ghoul, a swarm of cockroaches and spiders. The only ones who were really safe, I realized, were the dead, whose spirits had wisely departed the scene. The werewolf from Lolille’s circle ran around the perimeter of the dining room, chasing a man dressed as a court jester. I upended an empty chair and set it flying into the wolf, knocking the creature out.
“Good work,” Peter said.
“I’ve got to see Hattie,” I said.
“Okay.” He picked up an unopened wine bottle and hefted it like a weapon. “I’ll try to get things under control here.”
I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Too much damage had already been done. “Maybe you’d better come with me.”
“I told you, I’m staying here,” he said irritably.
I knew there was no point in arguing with him. Peter was brave. I just wished he had some magic to back up his courage. “I’ll be quick,” I said over my shoulder as I burst through the kitchen doors.
I nearly got killed as a knife flew past me, an inch from my face.
* * *
“Get out, Katy.” Hattie was standing with her back against the refrigerator, her gaze directed at someone behind me. I sneaked a look. It was Mrs. Fowler, or Lolille, or whoever she thought she was at the moment.
“Let the girl stay,” she drawled. “She can watch me hurt you.” Then she whistled, high and piercing, and the pimply-faced boy appeared by her side, opening his mouth in a wide grin.
I knew what was coming. I concentrated on the shelf where all the metal pot lids were stored. Then I flung them telekinetically in front of Hattie and me as a shield against the blast of flame that shot out of the boy’s mouth. The fire doubled back and charred both him and Lolille till they looked like end men in a minstrel show.
“Idiot,” Lolille growled. “Get out, fool.” The boy stumbled away, his shoulders slumped and heaving.
Suddenly I understood. I grabbed Hattie’s arm. “She’s a summoner,” I said. “She calls up demons out of dead things.”
“Is that right.” Hattie didn’t seem as surprised as I’d expected her to be.
“It’s the truth. And she’s not Livia Fowler, either. Her name’s—”
“I know who she is,” Hattie said.
I looked from one woman to the other. “You do? Do you know her?”
Hattie sighed. “Katy, meet my cousin Lolille.”
“Your…cousin?”
“Not part of the family I’m proud of.”
“Well, you should be,” Lolille said, squaring her shoulders. Her mouth was turned downward, making her face look bitter and arrogant. “I’m not the one flipping hamburgers for the rich children of stupid cowen.”
Hattie only shook her head.
“Yeah, you think you’re so high and mighty, Mizz Hattie Scott, you with your college education and your money and your fancy restaurant. You think you’re so much better’n me, ‘cause you’re up here with the quality folks while I’m living down with the skeeters and ‘gators in a Louisiana swamp you wouldn’t set your dainty little feet in.”
“My feet are not dainty,” Hattie said flatly.
“Well, I still got something you ain’t never going to have.”
“Oh, you mean those nasty undead creatures you brought in to ruin our Samhain party? Well, you can keep them!” Hattie strode up to her. “As for the body you chose to inhabit, you can keep that, too. Livia Fowler’s almost as low down bad as you.”
Some things, at least, were beginning to make sense. “So that’s what happened,” I said, almost to myself. “She took over Mrs. Fowler’s body.”
“That’s what she does. Moves into folks like some old hermit crab sliding into a sea shell, all the while calling out for everybody to do her bidding,” Hattie said. “And those that’s weak enough will do it, too.”
“Hmmph,” Lolille grunted. “Well, weak or strong, when Lolille calls, they come,” she sneered triumphantly. “Because I got the power.”
“Maybe down in the swamp you do,” Hattie countered. “There’s nobody there to stop you. But here we’ve got real magic. And witches powerful enough to vaporize you like bad air.”
“Maybe they don’t need to know,” Lolille said cryptically.
Hattie laughed. “Don’t need to know you’re not Livia Fowler? How long you think it’ll be before folks figure that out?”
“I’m not staying in this body,” Lolille said. “Livia Fowler, she got piles. Constipated. And she fat.” She looked directly at Hattie, squinting her eyes and smiling like the Cheshire cat.
“Oh, God,” I said. “She wants you, Hattie. Your body.”
“Well, she’s not going to get it.”
“Yeah?” Lolille stuck out her chin. “Who going to stop me, this Chiclet-tooth furniture mover?”
It took me a second to realize she was talking about me. A furniture mover? That made me so mad, I sent a fusillade of pots and pans soaring over to her, but she batted them away.
“Dang, girl, I think you might have broke Mrs. Fowler’s arm.” She popped the bone back into place with a snap. “And now you going to be sorry.”
“Like I said before,” Hattie whispered to me, “get out.”
“But—”
“Do it now.”
Too late. Before I could turn and run, the dining room door crashed open and the werewolf appeared, slavering, its wild red eyes looking at me like I was a juicy steak. I wondered if it—she—remembered that I’d smacked her with a chair.
She growled.
Guess she did, I concluded.
The wolf leaped high in the air, claws out, fast as a bullet…and then froze in midair, surrounded by waves of Hattie’s magic.
“Run!” she whispered, slow as molasses.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. As I cannonballed out the doors leading into the dining room, I heard the creature thump against the place where I’d been standing a moment before.
I could see sparks literally flying in the kitchen, lighting up the portholes like spears of lightning. I stood up weakly, trying to figure out how I could help, when I saw Peter. He was in the far corner of the dining room, being lifted toward the ceiling by the laughing pixie twins.
“Katy!” he shouted.
I ran over to him, jumping to try to grab his feet, but the pixies were moving fast now, sailing across the room and out the front door, their round little wings buzzing. As I ran outside, I could see Peter dangling helplessly between them as they rose higher, backlit by the full moon.
CHAPTER SIX
“Peter!” I gasped. I didn’t know what to do.
“I think they may be headed toward the lake,” someone said behind me. I whirled around to see the red-coated Chris Hemsworth duplicate. He even spoke with a British accent.“We’ll go together,” he said, breaking in
to an easy run. I didn’t know who this guy was, but he was offering to help me, and I needed all the help I could get.
I followed him. Redcoat’s legs were longer than mine, so I struggled to keep up with him until we got back into the woods, where the underbrush slowed our progress. Even though I needed to reach Peter, I was relieved to be able to catch my breath for a few minutes. Through the trees, I could faintly make out the figure of Peter as he was carried across the sky. And my escort had been right: The pixies were headed toward the lake.
“Why are they going there?” I asked.
“Water. The ondines…”
“Water sprites? What would they want with Peter?”
He cleared his throat. “Let’s just find him, all right?”
I could tell he didn’t want me to know something. Probably that Peter was being delivered like a pizza for the ondines’ midnight snack.
“Okay,” I said, forging on.
“I’m sure everything will be all right,” Redcoat said. As if anything were all right. “I’m Colin, by the way. Colin Westbrook, at your service.”
“Katy,” I answered. Now he was struggling to keep up with me through the forest thickets. “Where are you from, Colin?”
“Wessex. My family has…had a home there. But after I was grown, I lived mainly in London.”
“Lolille summoned you from England?”
“No, I…I was stationed here. During the Colonial Rebellion.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You’ve been here since the Revolutionary War?” Here in Whitfield?”
“In that cemetery over there,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I died here, actually. But I suppose you knew that.”
“Why did she call you?”
“That woman shaped like a mushroom?” He shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
I touched the fabric of his coat. “You seem pretty substantial, for a ghost.”
He glanced around as if in distress. “I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with ghosts. But I daresay they—we—apparently don’t all float around like wisps.” He tugged at his hair. “Whatever I am, I seem quite real.”
“Okay, okay. It’s just that everyone else she summoned was some kind of demon. I thought maybe you…”
“Just a ghost,” he said sadly. “Although perhaps ‘spirit’ might be a less pejorative term?”