“Do you know who these people were?” Lance prodded.
“No. She wouldn’t tell me, and she wouldn’t let me look at them.”
So, maybe not as much control of her abilities as she would like, if she couldn’t get more out of her mom, Samantha thought.
“Do you know where she kept the letters?” Samantha asked.
“In her office, I think.”
“Can you show us?” Lance asked.
Robin nodded and, with Samantha’s help, stood up. She walked over to the sink and splashed some water on her face before patting it dry with a paper towel. When she turned around again, most of the ravages of grief had been wiped clean from her face. Her eyes were far more vacant than they had been earlier, though. Samantha wondered whether she had jolted the girl too hard.
Robin left the kitchen, and Samantha and Lance followed her. They walked toward the back of the house, passing the staircase to the second floor. The Native American artifacts scattered around were colorful, but Samantha noticed faint vibrations coming off a few items she was unfamiliar with. She wondered if they had been owned by magic practitioners and used in their rituals. In the very back, right corner of the house was a room walled off with French doors inset with more beveled glass.
Robin pushed the doors open, snapped on a light, and then stopped with a gasp.
Samantha looked around the girl and saw what she had seen.
The room had been ransacked. Papers were strewn all about. Books had been yanked off their shelves and dumped on the floor. Drawers had also been pulled out and upended, sending an assortment of paper clips, pens, and note cards all over the floor. The back of the desk chair was slashed, and paintings lay on the floor, some of them with broken glass.
“How did this happen?” Robin asked. “When?”
She turned frightened, confused eyes on Samantha. Samantha stared instead at the open window on the far side of the room.
“How heavy a sleeper are you, Robin?”
“Mom says getting me up is like trying to wake the . . . dead,” Robin said, her voice slurring slightly.
“You think someone did this tonight?” Lance asked.
Samantha moved toward the window. Her skin was tingling, and she could feel energy swirling through the room. Whoever had ransacked the room had actually used magic to do it. It made no sense. That would be a huge drain on a witch’s energy, when they could have just as easily ripped the place apart with their bare hands.
She reached the window and put her hand on the casing. It was warm to the touch.
“As a matter of fact, I think whoever did this just left,” Samantha said.
“What makes you think that?” she heard Lance ask.
She didn’t answer. Instead she jumped through the window. Once outside, she flattened herself against the wall as she strained eyes and ears to see and hear everything she could.
Someone had just left. She could feel it.
And as she reached out with her senses, she realized that that particular someone was still nearby.
She plunged into the undergrowth before she could change her mind. She had gone only half a dozen steps when she heard a crashing sound followed by snapping twigs to her left.
She was right; there was someone out there.
She angled her steps to the left and heard a low groaning sound followed by a higher-pitched whining sound. The hair on the back of her neck raised on end, and she glanced over her shoulder to see a huge tree crashing down, coming right at her.
3
Samantha threw herself to the side, barely missing being crushed by the tree. It crashed to the ground. Branches whipped her face and body and knocked her off her feet. She could feel a hundred tiny cuts open up, and blood began to flow down her face into her eyes.
She shook her head as she staggered to her feet. She could hear Lance shouting. He sounded far away. Her ears were ringing slightly, and she spun in a slow circle, trying to reorient herself. She could see the lights of the house, the window she had exited through. The tree wasn’t angled toward it, so Lance and Robin should be fine.
“Stay inside!” Samantha shouted, hating that she was giving away her exact location.
As soon as she said it, she moved, going farther into the woods. She could feel the power shimmering and rippling in the air in the aftermath of the falling tree.
It would have taken a lot of energy to fell that tree. She only prayed it had left the witch who did it weak enough to capture easily.
You can’t catch a witch. All you can do is kill them. The voice was whispering inside her head. That had been true in Salem. She had known it going in. Getting a jury to convict a witch would be nearly impossible if they had their powers intact and were exerting their influence. And even if Samantha could sit in that courtroom for days or weeks, trying to counter the witch’s influence, no jail cell could hold a witch.
I’ll deal with that after I find him or her.
Samantha walked slowly, carefully, through the forest, wishing she’d brought her gun with her. She’d left it in the car, not wanting to introduce the weapon into the emotionally charged environment with the teenager who was finding out her mother was dead.
A wind sprang up, catching Samantha’s hair and blowing it back from her face. Around her the trees and bushes moved and groaned. It would make it impossible to hear someone walking quietly.
“Why are you here?” a whispered voice sounded all around her.
Samantha turned quickly, looking for the source of the voice, but she could see no one.
“I’m here because someone killed Winona Lightfoot,” she answered, praying that it wasn’t the woman’s killer she was talking to.
“She had to die, but you don’t have to,” the voice whispered again. It was definitely coming from multiple directions, and this time Samantha could detect several layers to it, as though it were more than one voice speaking. “You can leave, but you must go now.”
“Why did she have to die?” Samantha asked, then moved swiftly to a new location. If the voice was coming from all around, hopefully that meant the witch didn’t know exactly where she was. As long as she kept moving, made direction changes frequently, maybe she could find the witch before the witch could find her.
“We can still see you,” the voices whispered.
Was it true or just a bluff?
Samantha unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt and pulled it to the side slightly so that the tattoo she’d had put on again a few months ago shone out in the moonlight. A dozen times she’d gone to have it removed and a dozen times she had stopped herself. She’d told herself she was being paranoid, that there would never be another need for her to identify herself as a witch, let alone a witch of that particular coven.
“We do not recognize this symbol.”
They could see her. Samantha forced herself to stand her ground. She threw back her head and gathered energy in both of her hands as they hung at her sides, waiting for the moment when she’d have to use it.
“If you have not heard of this symbol, of my coven, then how can you call yourselves witches?” she asked, putting as much contempt into her voice as she could.
“We do not call ourselves witches,” came the whispered answer.
A shiver danced up Samantha’s spine. Something was wrong. There was something going on that she didn’t understand. She breathed in slowly, trying to focus her energies.
“Why not?”
“Because we are not witches.”
She turned, trying to catch a glimpse of the speakers but could still see no one. “Then what are you?” she demanded.
“Trees.”
Suddenly something exploded upward out of the ground, writhing and twisting. Roots, she realized as they wrapped around her legs and yanked her off her feet. She fell on her back, cracking the ribs on
her right side, where they landed on one of the roots.
Branches began to rain down on her, and she screamed as she brought up her arms to deflect them. The impact of the first two broke her arms. The third grazed her scalp, and everything went black for a moment. She kicked and screamed and tried to keep her arms in place.
Panic seared through her, outracing the pain. The trees are alive!
They were going to kill her. They had given her a chance to leave and she hadn’t taken it.
She shook her head, trying to regain her vision. No, the trees might be attacking her, but it was done through magic. She had to fight it with magic.
She filled her hands with energy, struggling to think of what to do with it. More roots reached up, snagging her arms and pinning them to her sides. Leaves and twigs began to shower down on her face. She coughed and twisted her head to the side, trying to breathe, but the leaves kept coming, burying her head until she realized she was suffocating.
Her body spasmed, the built-up energy needing somewhere to go, someone to direct it. But her mind was flying apart, bursts of images and fragments of thought coming to her.
She could feel the energy building, revving her body higher and higher even as she was dying. Her hands were so hot, it felt like they were on fire.
Fire.
Fire!
The roots and leaves went up in flames.
Around her she could hear screams of terror and the crashing of more branches.
The flames burned hot, turning the roots, pinning her down to ash in a moment, singeing her own skin. She struggled to her feet, coughing and gasping for air. She held her hands ready, waiting for the next attack.
“Hey!”
She spun around, and a moment later white-hot fire exploded in her temple. She was knocked off her feet, and she lay on her back, feeling the blood pumping out of the wound even as the echo of an explosion faded away into the darkness.
She could hear more shouting, crashing of underbrush.
I’ve been shot, she realized.
“Don’t move!” someone roared.
She looked up. Lance was standing over her, his gun aimed at her heart. His eyes were wide, dilated.
He doesn’t see me. He thinks he’s seeing someone else.
“Lance! It’s Samantha!” she shrieked.
“Where is she?” he demanded. “If you’ve hurt her . . .”
And behind Lance, a woman appeared, dressed all in black. Before Samantha could shout a warning, the woman touched Lance’s shoulder. A shudder passed through his body, and she stepped back, melting into the shadows.
“Samantha, is that you?” Lance asked, sounding bewildered.
“Yes,” she said, her relief triumphing over her confusion.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“You shot me,” she ground out.
“What! No, I fired at someone else. It was this woman in black.”
“Yeah, well, you might have been shooting at her, but you hit me.”
He dropped down next to her. “Where did I get you?”
“Grazed my temple,” she said.
She could already feel her body going to work, healing all the injuries. For most injuries witches had to actively heal themselves, but her injuries were so extensive that her body and subconscious had taken over. The bones in her arms were knitting back together, and the pain was overwhelming her.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Lance said, leaping up.
“No!”
He turned to look at her.
“What?”
“I’m fine. Just give me a minute to catch my breath and then help me inside to clean up. It’s just a scratch, and I really don’t think either of us wants to deal with the officer-involved shooting reports and the investigation.”
He swore under his breath. “Okay.”
“Good. Now, like I said, give me a minute.”
The ripples of energy had faded almost completely. It was quite possible the witch had left the area and what she was feeling now was actually Robin.
“So, did you get a good look at the woman in black?” Lance asked.
“No,” she lied. “Did you?”
“Just a profile, but it was too dark to see any useful detail.”
She wished she knew why the witch had lifted the spell on Lance and kept him from killing her.
You were warned, told that you had a chance to live. Maybe she was feeling generous.
“Time to get you up and take you inside?” Lance asked.
“Just about. Two more minutes,” she said.
Finally she let him help her up, and they made it back to the house. Robin was waiting inside. Samantha could feel the terror coming off the girl, which only doubled when she saw the blood on Samantha.
“I’m okay. It’s just a bunch of cuts and scrapes,” Samantha said. “If you’ve got some bandages, I’ll just borrow your bathroom and clean up.”
“The intruder got away, but I don’t like any of this,” Lance growled.
“I called my great-aunt. She was my grandfather’s sister. She’s going to catch a flight out to come stay with me.”
“Is there a neighbor you can call in the meantime?” Lance asked.
“Mrs. Braxton. She used to babysit me.”
“Call her,” Lance said.
Robin got Samantha some bandages and she headed off to the bathroom to clean up. Inside the bathroom, she inspected the damage. Her shirt was filthy and torn in several places. The scratches that covered her face and arms were fading away. Hopefully, if she got all the blood off, she’d look better than she was.
A sudden knock at the door made her jump. “Yes?”
“I thought you might like a different shirt,” Robin said.
Samantha opened the door and the girl handed her a black T-shirt with a shiny red rose on it. “Thank you. That was very thoughtful.”
“You’re welcome,” Robin said, but she wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What happened out there?”
Samantha hesitated, not sure how much she should actually tell the girl. “I chased the intruder. It was a woman. I lost her in the darkness. I tripped on some roots, fell pretty hard. Lance . . . fired a warning shot, but the woman gave him the slip too.”
“What do you think she wanted?”
“I don’t know. Maybe when you go through the office you’ll be able to tell if anything is missing. That would help us tremendously.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to tell. She didn’t talk a lot about work stuff.”
“Anything you can come up with at all would be helpful. And if you find those letters you were talking about . . .” Samantha drifted off, realizing how much pressure she was putting on a girl who had just found out within the last hour that she’d lost her mother.
“I’ll do whatever I can. I think she hid the letters somewhere.”
Again Robin looked away, clearly not wanting to admit she’d been snooping around trying to find them before.
Samantha took a deep breath. There were other things they needed to discuss, but she didn’t want to risk being overheard. Besides, she wasn’t sure Robin could take any more at that moment. She looked so young and so fragile.
“Thanks for the T-shirt. I promise to return it in good condition.”
Robin nodded. “Mrs. Braxton is coming over. She should be here any minute.”
“Good. I’ll be out as soon as I’m finished.”
Robin left, and Samantha closed the door again behind her. She stripped off her shirt and washed up as best she could. By the time that she was done, even the scratches had faded. The wound from the bullet was down to just a small cut, and it ultimately required only one small bandage.
“Hardly the worse for wear,” she muttered to her reflection.
S
he stood there for another minute, struggling to compose herself. She didn’t want to leave Robin when there was a witch running around, but if the woman had wanted to hurt Robin, she would have done so when she was in the house. Hopefully, she’d gotten what she had come for and was far away by now.
Samantha tucked her ruined shirt under her arm and headed back out to the family room, where everyone was congregated. Mrs. Braxton was a motherly older woman who, despite the obvious shock she was in, was already making a fuss over Robin.
Lance looked up, and he visibly relaxed when he saw Samantha. “A little scratch—is that what all the fuss was about?”
She refrained from the urge to remind him that the little scratch had been his fault. Instead she just glared at him, hoping he got the message.
Samantha made sure that both Mrs. Braxton and Robin had her card. “Call for anything, no matter how trivial it seems,” she urged.
When they walked outside to the car, the sun was rising.
“Going to be a beautiful day,” Samantha muttered.
“Yeah, heck of a day to catch killers or sleep until sunset,” Lance said.
She climbed into the car beside him. He looked as tired as she was. “It’s been a long night,” she commented.
“No doubt about that,” he said, as he headed the car down the mountain. “Although I’m still confused about what happened in the woods.”
“A trick of the light?” she suggested. She wanted to tease him with something sarcastic, but since she knew the truth and knew it had nothing to do with him, she held her tongue.
“Head okay?”
“Nothing that a giant bottle of aspirin couldn’t fix.”
“You think the kid’s going to be all right?” he asked.
She bit her tongue on another sarcastic comment. “I think a lot depends on how the next few months go,” she said.
“Yeah. That’s a terrible thing, losing a parent like that. I’m going to give mine a call when I get home. You know, just to make sure they’re still alive and batshit crazy.”
Samantha couldn’t help but laugh at that. He had been starting to sound so sentimental. She should have known he couldn’t keep it up for more than a second or two.