Chapter Seventeen
I pretended to fill in the form on my lap while glancing surreptitiously at the other three people in the room. I saw the receptionist, out of the corner of my eye, pick up the phone, speak briefly, and then exit through a door to the back. Perfect.
The little boy was slumped over in his chair, his short legs not reaching the ground. He sniffed occasionally and wiped his face on his arm. I managed to make eye contact and smiled. He gave me a timid grin in return.
“Hi!” I said brightly.
Every eye in the waiting room turned to me. I had no idea what the proper demeanor for a homeless person was. Apparently I should have sat there and pretended to be alone in my own little world. Normally I would have been dreadfully embarrassed. I don’t like drawing attention to myself. But in this situation it was all part of the plan.
“So, have you been here before?” I asked, still sounding chipper.
The boy studied me, perhaps not used to adults taking an interest in him. He burped loudly and laughed.
“Say excuse me!” his mother said scolded him angrily.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” I smiled, wishing she would see the hurt in his eyes. “How old is your son?”
“That is none of your business!” She looked defensive.
“I know,” I said. “I just thought maybe he would like a snack. I know my kids like to have a snack right about not.” I fumbled in my purse, making sure that the “magical disrupter” stayed hidden.
“We don’t need your charity,” the woman sneered.
“Oh,” I blinked. “I wasn’t trying to be rude or condescending. I just thought he might like a granola bar.”
“I’ll take that granola bar,” the grimy man spoke, not looking at me.
“Uh,” I said. “I really was offering it to the little guy here.”
The boy looked up at his mother, hopeful.
“No,” she said sharply. She pulled him to his feet. “We’ll come back later,” she said, shooting me an evil glare.
“I was just trying to be nice!” I protested, sorry that I had offended her, but happy that she was taking her son out of the danger zone.
“Go be a Good Samaritan somewhere else,” she scowled and dragged her son out the door.
I sighed.
“I’ll still take that granola bar,” the homeless man said.
I turned to look at him. He did look hungry.
“Here you go,” I said, handing it over. “And I think maybe you should go wait somewhere else too.”
He gave me a wise look. “Ah,” he said. “Cops, eh?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Now don’t worry about me,” he winked. “I won’t give you away. ‘bout time someone looked into the place.”
“Why?”
He nodded sagely. “Something off here. Too many people taking off without saying goodbye. Never comin’ back. I reckon maybe they’re not taking off.” He winked at me again. “Not takin’ off at all.”
I gave him a suspicious frown. “Then why are you here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t much care no more,” he said. “Doc says I ain’t got much longer.” He coughed violently. “And the grubs good.”
I wished I had more than a granola bar to give him.
“All the same,” I said, “I think maybe you should go somewhere else tonight.” I pulled out my wallet and tried to hand him a ten dollar bill.
“Nah,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t need your money. You go ahead and do what you gotta do. Just keep us safe.”
He picked up a battered trash bag and slowly limped out the door. I hoped that wherever he wound up was safer than here.
The bell quit jingling and I looked around the empty room. It was now or never. I really wanted to run out that door, but it wasn’t a long term solution. I had to do this.
I tiptoed towards the door the receptionist had exited through and gently opened it a crack. A long hallway ran the length of the building, empty for the moment.
I took a deep breath and ducked through the door, pulling it silently shut behind me. There were several closed doors leading off the hallway and I pressed my ear to the first one. I didn’t hear anyone talking or moving around so I carefully turned the knob and ducked inside.
It was a small office with a desk and two chairs. A fake fichus tree adorned one corner and a tinkling water fountain sat on a small table beside it. Except for the sound of falling water, the room was quiet.
I walked slowly into the room getting more nervous with every passing second. Something was not right. The room, which had looked so peaceful and bland at first, was beginning to take on a menacing feel. The walls seemed to lean in on the top, threatening to crush me. The sound of the waterfall began to grate on my ears. I kept turning my head to see the person I knew was standing right behind me.
“Get a grip, Piper,” I muttered. There was no reason why this room should feel intimidating. It was just like hundreds of other offices I had been in. I glared at the obnoxious waterfall, and unplugged it. It kept running. If anything, louder than before.
“Now that’s just silly,” I said aloud, and picked it carefully up to look for the batteries. The bottom was completely smooth. There was no compartment for batteries. The thing kept pouring water over the rocks.
I frowned at it. I was not going to be cowed by a stupid parlor trick. I walked around to the other side of the desk, opened a drawer and looked inside. It was filled with neat stacks of blank forms and brochures. No hideously ugly statue.
Oh well. I smiled and serenely poured the fountain into the drawer. There was a lot of water. It filled the drawer and began to run over the sides. I sighed in exasperation. This was too much.
They clearly knew I was here. I marched over to the door and tried to yank it open. It refused to even rattle on the hinges. It was as if someone had screwed a door knob onto a brick wall.
“Okay,” I yelled at the ceiling, “You made your point. You obviously know who I am. Come out and let’s talk.” I poured as much power as I could into the command.
Nothing happened.
Hmm. I sat down on one of the chairs and made a face. This was not going according to plan. I fingered my purse on my lap and tried to think. A squishing sound at my feet made me look down. The carpet was now soaked through and beginning to puddle in places. Great. I considered righting the fountain but decided that would look like giving up. I left it upside down in the drawer.
Movement in the corner of the room caught my eye and I bit back a gasp. The whole side wall was gone. A forest of fake fichus trees now stretched out before my eyes. I was definitely being played with. The funny thing was I wasn’t scared yet. I was mad. Hopping mad. They weren’t taking me seriously and I had a very serious job to do.
A gush of water exploded out of the desk and into the air showering me with droplets.
“Fine,” I said aloud, “You want me to take off into the scary woods. We’ll play this your way, for now.”
I stood up, still holding my purse tight and started to push my way through the plastic branches. They were so close together it was hard to see more than a couple feet in any direction. I walked, wiggled, and climbed for several minutes, then looked back. I could no longer see the room I had just left. Everything looked exactly the same in all directions.
Once, when I was a little girl, I had gone hiking in the woods with my family. Somehow I got separated from them. I think I stopped to tie my shoe or something, and when I looked up they were gone. It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I turned all around, calling frantically, and then couldn’t remember which way I had been going. I started to run, yelling out for my dad, tripping over roots and fallen branches, and ripping a huge hole in the knee of my pants.
I remembered the throbbing pain from my knee coupled with the crippling grip of fear in my chest. I had felt like I couldn’t breathe. My vision had seemed to shrink around the edges and I had whipped my he
ad around in circles, certain that the forest monsters were closing in on me.
I could feel that same fear again. My chest was tight and I started to gasp for breath. I forced myself to take another step and felt a searing pain go through my leg. When I looked down I saw my bloody knee peeking through the torn edges of my pants. I choked back a sob. Waves of terror were bombarding me and I sank to the bottom of a tree and huddled in as small a ball as I could make.
All I wanted to do was go home. This was too much for me. Who could fight against magic? I knew it couldn’t be real, but it felt real, and in that moment I knew that what happens in your brain is much more powerful than what happens to your body. I felt a tear run down my cheek.
Just like in the forest of my childhood, I knew, without a doubt, that I had been intentionally abandoned. Cecily, Kethudrim, Jonathan – they had led me here to die. They didn’t care about me. They didn’t care about humans. They were using me for their own schemes and would throw me to the wolves when they were done. Perhaps even literally. What was the point? I would never see my kids again. Maybe it was better that way. I was a horrible mother and incapable of protecting my children.
In a few days, humans would be openly hunted by all magical creatures. I would have to watch my baby girls become an appetizer for a vampire or werewolf. Or even worse, they would be kept like animals and drained slowly over time, never knowing freedom or their mother’s love.
More tears ran down my face. I should have been with my children. Instead, here I was, traipsing around during the last minutes we would ever have together. The hours that I had wasted today! I would never get them back. The last loving face my children would see would be their grandmother’s. I would never get to hold them again.
I felt despair wash over me and could suddenly take it no more. I could not face another minute in this hell of a life. I could not wait and see the destruction of everything I loved. It was all my fault. If only I had been smarter, faster, more powerful, perhaps I could have saved my family, but I was a failure and failures do not deserve to live.
Now that I knew what I had to do, I felt calmer. It would all be over soon and then the pain would be gone. I had a pocket knife in my purse. All I had to do was cut the veins in my wrists and then wait for peace. It was such a perfect solution; I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it earlier.
I dug around in my purse looking for the knife. It must have slid to the bottom under the hodge-podge of things that collect in any woman’s purse. I pulled out the magic disrupter, some diapers, a travel box of wipes, spare toddler underwear, a tube of Balmex, a fingernail file, some old receipts, my sunglasses, an old set of house keys … I stopped. Something had triggered a memory. I ran my hand lightly over the objects now littering the ground around me.
When I touched my sunglasses an electric shock went up my arm. The sunglasses! I had forgotten. I stared at them, slack jawed. How could I have been so stupid? I picked them up with shaking hands and slid them on my face. For a moment I was afraid that I had gone blind, but then I realized that I had my eyes squeezed shut. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
I was sitting on the floor in the middle of the same room I had started in. The fountain was on the table, unplugged and quiet. The floor was dry and only one fichus tree was in the corner. I took a deep sobbing breath. I had come so close to killing myself.
I had thought I was angry before; that was mere annoyance compared to what I felt now. Before, I had felt rather guilty for stealing something from anyone, even if they might be doing something horrible, but now I had every intention of setting off that magic disrupter as soon as I laid hands on the statue, and I hoped it laid the smack down on every single witch in the building!
I cautiously opened the door and peeked out. The hallway was still empty. The sunglasses made everything a trifle dark, but also highlighted odd strands of colored lights running through the air. I tilted the glasses down to peek over them. No lights. Must be something magical. I snickered to myself. I couldn’t believe I just had that as a serious thought. Magical lights indeed. I sobered up instantly. I was in way over my little human head. This stuff was real and obviously capable of causing permanent physical damage.
I focused on the brightest trail of light. It pulsed with yellow, red, and orange sparkles tinged with black. Don’t ask me how light can be black, but that’s how it looked through my glasses. I followed it down the hallway and past several closed doors. It disappeared through a door on the left and I tried the handle slowly. It wasn’t locked and swung back lightly under my touch. I don’t know what I was expecting, but definitely something grander than a walk-in cleaning closet.
The light snaked past a collection of brooms, mops, buckets, shelves of various cleaning supplies, and a vacuum or two. I stepped gingerly over the buckets on the floor and followed the light to the back of the closet. There, on the back shelf, sat the ugliest statue I had ever seen. Well, not entirely true. I had seen it before, in the photo. If possible, it was even uglier in person. The sparkling lights were emanating from the statue but seemed to be trapped by the black lights. The black surrounded the statue like some sort of dripping, sentient cloud.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was reach my hand through that cloud and touch the statue. Hey, even with no lights, the carving was not a thing of beauty. I figured it might be better if I took off my magic shades. The statue was still butt ugly, but at least that was all I could see. I stuck the sunglasses in my purse and set it down on a nearby shelf, (trying to ignore the fact that all of the cleaning bottles had to do with bloodstain removal. I guess that answered any questions about whether the WAND was engaging in criminal activity) took a deep breath, and reached cautiously forward until my fingers touched the statue.
Nothing happened. I didn’t feel cold, or hot, or faint, or suddenly have the urge to run screaming down the hallway. Okay. Not so bad. I gripped the hideous carving and lifted it off the shelf. It was heavier than I thought and my hand dipped a bit in the air. Still nothing happened.
I got a firmer grip with two hands and backed out the door. No alarms. No screaming. Nothing. This was going to be easier than I thought. Here I was scared to death of these people because of the word “witch,” and really it was just a walk in the park! Granted, the whole forest in an office was a little freaky, but if that was the best they could do! Ha! I laugh in the face of danger!
I took one step down the hallway before my head exploded in a ball of fire and everything went black.