“Okay, and before and during too.”
“That sounds better. So what was it like?”
“The craziness?”
“No, the earthquake.”
“Weird. Really, really weird. I’ve felt the ground shake like that before. I’ve made the ground shake like that before. But this made me feel completely out of control and helpless.”
“Unless I miss my guess, that’s part of the whole point of things like earthquakes and natural disasters,” he said with a tiny chuckle.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You want to tell me what’s been going on?” he asked.
She hesitated. She did want to talk it over with someone who would understand, but she really wasn’t in the mood to do so right at that moment. “Later,” she finally said. “I just need to unwind a bit.”
“Later works. I miss you.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she thought she was going to cry. “I miss you too.”
“Since you need to unwind, I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about us yet.”
“No, sorry.”
“That’s okay. I believe we’ve established that we’re officially in the boy waits for girl portion of the story.”
She couldn’t help it; she had to laugh.
“Aha! Victory is mine,” he said with mock enthusiasm.
She laughed harder. “I wish you were here,” she said before she could think about what she was saying.
“I can be. I can be there in eight hours.”
“No. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.”
Again, she added silently.
“How do you know I’m not getting into trouble here without you?”
“You’re not, are you?”
“No, but I could be.”
“Don’t tease; it’s not funny.”
She could hear him sigh. “No, I guess it really isn’t, is it?”
“No,” Samantha said, “it’s not.”
A raindrop hit her windshield, followed by another. She looked up. The clouds were low and dark, and she could feel the energy crackling in the air.
“Look, I’m driving and it’s starting to rain, so I should go.”
“Okay, but pick up the phone once in a while.”
“I’ll be better,” she said.
“Okay.”
Silence hung for a moment between them, and she could almost hear him say something, something she certainly wasn’t ready to hear. “Okay, bye,” she said, and hung up.
Coward, she accused herself.
The skies opened up and water gushed down. She switched the windshield wipers onto high, but they were useless against the sudden onslaught. She slowed down, struggling to see the road ahead of her and praying that no one rear-ended her.
In the dark and the heavy rain, the unfamiliar curves in the narrow road became treacherous. She strained her eyes even as she realized she was gripping the steering wheel overly tight. There were barely any lights on the road, and she didn’t see any other cars around. There should have been other cars at this time of the evening, at least she would have thought so. Maybe all the locals had known better than to venture out into a coming storm.
The sky lit up overhead, and she heard the crash of thunder a second later. She slowed down even more, trying not to think about how she was driving through the forest in the only metal target around.
“It’s just a storm, Samantha,” she whispered to herself. She’d seen plenty.
But something about this one spooked her. Maybe it was the unfamiliar roads or how quickly it had come on. Maybe it was the eerie sensation of being the only person out in it, the isolation of the area that was getting to her.
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, passing between two clouds. She blinked, momentarily blinded by the brightness. The thunder a moment later was so loud it felt like her breastbone was vibrating. She thought about Robin. She should turn around, go back and make sure the girl was okay.
In the next moment, she rejected that notion. It was just a storm and the girl was inside. She would be fine until her neighbor and great-aunt got there.
Her right front tire skidded unexpectedly on something slippery on the road, and her heart began to pound. Maybe she should pull over and wait for the storm to pass. She slowed down, looking for a place where she could pull off to the side without putting herself in danger of being hit by other cars—if there were any other drivers actually out. There was nothing.
Suddenly a bolt of lightning came down with a crash twenty feet in front of her car, clearly outlining the figure of a woman who was standing immediately in front of it.
Samantha slammed on her brakes, but at the same moment she accidentally sent a burst of energy through the car. The engine died and the car skidded to a halt right in front of the woman.
Samantha stared at her through the windshield. The woman was a couple of years older than her, and her eyes were burning like coals. She was bareheaded and her long raven hair was whipping about her in the wind. She was wearing a short black dress that offered no protection from the storm. But she didn’t seem to care. Her head was thrown back as though in ecstasy, as though she were pulling the storm into herself.
She lifted her hands high into the air.
“What are you doing?” Samantha shouted at her through the windshield.
Lightning flashed in the sky.
The woman slammed her hands down onto the hood of Samantha’s car. Lightning struck her head, traveled down her arms and into the engine, which began to shower sparks around her.
The car caught on fire, and as Samantha stared in frozen horror, the witch smiled at her through the flames.
6
Samantha’s mind raced. She had only moments before her car would explode, killing her. But it was also electrified, and she risked electrocuting herself if she tried to exit. Plus, the witch was waiting for her to try to make a move like that.
The lightning hadn’t killed the witch. She’d been able to harness it. Maybe I can do the same thing with the current in the car.
The witch was still touching the car and it wasn’t harming her. Could it be because she was pushing energy into the car?
Two could play at that game. All Samantha had to do was reverse the flow of the energy and she would gain herself a few seconds. It would be more effective if she was touching part of the metal frame. As long as she wasn’t touching the car and the ground outside at the same time, she should be safe.
She reached out and touched a metal part of the door, and she could feel the flow of current through it. She pulled it into herself, gathering power, and then pushed it as hard and as fast as she could back into the door.
The witch went flying through the air and landed several feet away.
Samantha shoved open her door and launched herself out of the car, careful to clear the frame before she hit the ground. A wave of heat hit her, singeing her hair, and she turned to see her car now completely engulfed in flames.
She scuttled away as fast as she could, waiting for it to explode. Then she raised her hand and, without thinking, sent a fireball of her own straight at the witch.
The woman deflected it easily, laughing as she did so. Samantha could hear her laughter even above the sounds of the storm and the roar of the flames.
She’s insane.
The witch twisted her hands together suddenly, and a tornado opened up on top of Samantha. The winds felt like a thousand hands trying to tear her apart. She opened her mouth to scream, but the winds snatched her voice from her. She couldn’t catch her breath as the twisting winds picked her up and hurled her through the air.
She spun her hands in the opposite direction the witch had, and the churning winds slowed enough to drop her onto the ground with a jolt. She was able to throw herself outsi
de of the tornado. No sooner had she done so than it disappeared.
She turned around and saw the witch stumble, then fall to the ground. Samantha stood, watching, wondering what the witch was going to try next. She stayed that way for several seconds, and Samantha slowly edged closer.
Without warning, the witch leaped to her feet with a shriek and ran into the forest.
The rain stopped instantly, and the storm clouds began to dissipate as quickly as they had formed. Stunned, Samantha walked forward, wondering what had caused the witch to fall to the ground and remain there for so long.
She smelled blood, which made no sense. She hadn’t touched the witch. She leaned down and saw that the witch had used blood to spell out a message on the ground.
The last grave.
Samantha stood and very deliberately smeared the blood until it mixed with the water already on the ground. She couldn’t have anyone knowing that she had had a confrontation with Winona’s killer.
She had no idea what the phrase meant; she just knew that it was one more piece in the whole baffling puzzle. She stood there, thinking hard.
It was a different woman than the one she’d seen early that morning in the forest who had touched Lance’s shoulder and kept him from shooting her. How were the two connected? It was possible that they were in the same coven. Which one of them killed Winona?
She waited for several minutes, unwilling to venture into the trees and risk a repeat of the attack from the morning. Sooner or later, the witch would surely come back to finish what she’d started. She couldn’t sense her anymore, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t come back.
Finally, she let her muscles uncoil. The witch must truly be gone. Samantha took a deep breath.
What do I do now? she thought.
She turned to look at the charred remains of her car. There was nothing she could do to fix it, and she was fairly certain no one else would be able to either. She blinked at it for a moment, trying to force herself to think.
What would a normal person do in this situation?
After another minute’s thought, she called her roadside assistance company to send a tow truck. Fortunately, the truck got there within half an hour. The driver stepped out and whistled low as he stared at the car.
“She’s fried.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I can tow it to a service station for you, but I can tell you right now that it’s totaled.”
Samantha turned and looked at the charred wreck of her car. “I kind of got that.”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Shaken, but not broken,” she replied grimly.
“All right, well, let’s get this over with.”
“Do you need my help?” she asked.
“No. Why don’t you just climb in the cab? I’ll be done here in a minute.”
Samantha gratefully got into the truck. She felt like her nerves were completely frayed. She was tired, frightened, and completely bewildered. Nothing was making any sense. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had enough sleep. Or maybe she needed to get some distance and perspective on everything. Either way, she felt like it was taking every ounce of strength she had to not totally lose it.
When the driver had finished hooking up her car, he joined her in the cab. Fortunately, he seemed to want to talk even less than she did, so they drove in silence. After about twenty minutes, he turned off the highway into a repair shop that had a gas station next door.
“You going to be okay getting home?” he asked.
“I’ve got a friend coming to pick me up,” she lied.
“Do you need me to wait with you?”
“No, I’ll wait inside the gas station. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
He unhooked her car and presented a paper for her to sign. Then he drove off, and she headed to her car. She was grateful that the trunk was one of the only parts of the vehicle that didn’t seem to be damaged.
Samantha kept a change of clothes in her trunk for emergencies. It was a habit she had picked up from Ed, who had made the mistake as a rookie cop of going home after a particularly brutal day with blood on his shirt. His wife’s terror had quickly given way to anger at him for giving her the scare of her life. Even though Jill was Samantha’s first roommate, she had adopted the habit and half a dozen times had been able to change clothes in the middle of the workday without going home. If she’d had her car with them that first time in Santa Cruz, she wouldn’t have had to borrow Robin’s shirt.
She changed clothes in the gas station restroom and then called a cab to pick her up. There was no way she was having Lance or Jill come out and see her in this state. Sure, she could tell them the car was hit by lightning and caught on fire; it was true enough. She was going to have to tell that story to her insurance company in the morning. The thought of that made her grind her teeth. It seemed ridiculously unfair that she had to deal with such mundane problems when she had supernatural problems on her hands.
The cab arrived, and the driver asked, “Sure you don’t want me to take you someplace where you can get a rental car? I know a few places that are open late.”
“To be honest, I can’t handle dealing with that right now. I’d rather just pay you to drive me home,” she said.
“It’s your money,” he said, shaking his head again.
The drive seemed interminable, and when they finally arrived at her apartment and she had to pay for it, she began to regret her decision not to let him take her to the car rental place. She waved to the two officers in a car outside her building, men she knew by sight but not by name. By the time she staggered upstairs, she wasn’t sure if her exhaustion or her hunger was greater.
“I’m home,” she called as she walked in, not wanting to startle Jill.
Her roommate was parked on the couch, her face still as expressionless as it had been earlier.
“How are you?” Samantha asked.
Jill didn’t answer.
Samantha walked farther into the room and saw that one of the nightly news shows was on television. Normally Jill wasn’t one for watching the news. She was far more into history than current events.
“Every channel’s talking about the quake. It’ll die down in a couple of days,” Jill said. She was staring at the television with the slack posture of someone who was doing their best to completely tune out. “Scientists, researchers, psychics, foil hats, they’re all out in force today.”
Witches too, Samantha thought.
Samantha could tell Jill didn’t want to talk about what had happened earlier, and that was fine with her. She walked into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich, listening idly to the television anchor.
It was Samantha’s first earthquake, and under normal circumstances she probably would have joined Jill to hear all about it, but now she only half listened as they discussed things like magnitude and epicenter, comparing it to past quakes she knew nothing about.
“I’m here with George Wakefield, a scientist who’s made a career out of studying earthquake patterns and trying to create an early-warning system. George, can you tell us a little about what you do?”
“Certainly,” a pleasant male voice responded. “For years, scientists have been searching for a way to predict earthquakes. In the past few years, other researchers and I have been studying some fascinating statistics and think we’ve discovered a crude but effective way of predicting potential earthquakes.”
“That sounds intriguing,” the anchor enthused. “Can you tells us a little bit about what you’ve discovered?”
“Certainly. Over the past fifteen years, every significant earthquake has been preceded by a rise in the number of runaway pets.”
“Pets? So you’re talking cats and dogs here?”
“Yes. We know that animals have senses more acute than ours, and there are numerous
documented cases of animals knowing that something is wrong before we humans do.”
That’s true, Samantha thought. Just like rats leaving a ship.
“It’s like rats leaving a sinking ship,” George continued. Samantha smirked as she piled roast beef high on her sourdough.
“The increased numbers of runaway pets prior to an earthquake are statistically significant and consistent. So, what we’re starting to do is monitor reports, trying to locate spikes as soon as they occur. A colleague of mine actually predicted this quake eight hours before it happened.”
Samantha carried her sandwich out into the family room. On the television set, she could see George Wakefield. He was in his late forties, with graying hair and intense blue eyes. She lingered for a moment, staring at him. Something about him seemed familiar, like she’d seen him someplace before. She shrugged. San Francisco was a busy city. She could have passed him on the street at some point.
“I’ve heard weirder things today,” Jill said as she flipped channels.
“I’ve had my share for the day,” Samantha said, trying to keep her tone light. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. Wake me if you need me.”
“I won’t. I’m going to take something to help me sleep. And I got some earplugs I’m going to try.”
“Sounds good,” Samantha said, wincing at the thought of the earplugs. Well, if it kept Jill from being woken up by Samantha’s nightmares, it was a good thing.
Samantha made it into her room and closed the door. She sat down on the bed and for a moment thought about abandoning the sandwich and going straight to sleep. Her stomach growled a protest, though. She hadn’t really eaten in twenty-four hours.
She started to wolf down the food, just wanting to get the act of eating over with so she could collapse. Some days were so hard and so long that it made the simple acts feel monumental. Her jaw ached with exhaustion after only a couple of bites. She hurt everywhere, and she struggled just to keep her eyes open. Finally, she dropped the sandwich, only half-eaten, onto the plate on her end table.
She changed into her pajamas, and her mind started to fill with unwelcome thoughts.