Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (14 page)

“Apparently we missed
one,” Keon said sarcastically.

Saul stared again at
Aradia. “But how?”

“They don't know,” Keon
said. “The Sovereign and Morgan, that is. Either way, it matters
not. What does matter is obeying our Sovereign's order: acquire the
item to prove her identity.”

“This is big news,”
Saul said. “Every hidden in the world would want to know about
this.”

“I can think of three
in particular,” Keon mused. “But for now we will remain silent on
the matter. Understood?”

Saul stared silently at
Aradia, looking awestruck, until finally he said, “Understood. If
she is truly a witch, then wouldn’t that mean that
she’s...”

“The last of her kind?”
Keon finished for him then turned to look at Aradia as
well.

After a while, he
finally answered his own question by saying, “Yes.”

Aradia clutched her
forehead. Her frontal lobe exploded into excruciating, mind-searing
pain. Images danced and swam before her eyes of cops rapping on the
door, panic, confusion, disorder, and drunken teens either taking
off into the night or being handcuffed and shoved into the back of
a squad car.

"Hey Aradia, are you
alright?" asked Roy.

Aradia opened her eyes
to see Roy staring at her with concern in his eyes. She didn’t know
how long she’d been catatonic.

"Yeah Roy, I am
alright," she croaked. "This is going to sound random. Do your
parents know you’re at this party?"

Roy shook his head and
said, "Course not."

"Would they be ticked
if they found out you were here?"

Roy laughed. "Yeah, my
dad would probably put me on dishwasher duty at the diner for about
a month!"

"Yeah, that’s about
what I thought,” Aradia replied. “Where is your car
parked?"

Roy raised an
eyebrow.

"If you brought your
own car, I suggest you get to it like about five minutes
ago."

"Aradia, what’s this
about?"

"In about twenty
seconds, cops are going be at Jayce's door, and neither of us wants
to be here when they start arresting people."

Roy looked utterly
amused. He was still getting used to her odd sense of humor.
Thinking he was playing along, he grinned and asked, "Now Aradia,
how could you possibly know that?"

“Enough of this,” she
threw her hands up, exasperated. Grabbing his wrist Aradia yanked
Roy toward the back yard. She was careful to avoid the route
through the kitchen, where Dax was still being creepy.

Over the noise of the
party, Aradia picked out the sound of a police baton tapping
against the front door. Suddenly the door was open and blue
uniformed Salem Police Department officers swarmed into the
house.

It looked like three
officers were present, and Aradia suspected there might be at least
one more outside the house. That was actually a fairly impressive
turnout, considering the Salem PD consisted of a full complement of
97 employees, 81 of whom were full-time officers. They must have
considered Jayce’s party to be pretty big news to devote at least
four percent of their personnel to it.

Slow night for
crime
, Aradia mused.
Good for Salem. Bad for Jayce and
us.

"See?" Aradia said,
somewhere between panicked and smug.

Roy, who had been
running along with Aradia, stopped for a moment and stood stunned.
Gathering his wits, this time he grabbed Aradia's hand.

"C'mon Rai, we got to
get out of here!" He insisted once they’d reached the pool
again.

“You’re coming with
me,” she replied.

He shook his head. “I
have to find my brothers. I can’t leave without them. I just wanted
to make sure you got out safely.”

She thought for a
moment then nodded her assent. "Find your brothers and get
home."

Roy stood looking at
her. "What about you?"

Aradia smiled and said,
"I’ll be fine. Now go!"

He turned and ran
against the crush of his peers. He was certainly the only one
trying to get back into the house. He peeked over his shoulder as
he ran, obviously feeling a little guilty at having left Aradia.
Then he was back inside.

She quickly scaled the
fence in the backyard. She did not much fancy running through
unfamiliar woods at night, but she also knew running around the
house in the open was a surefire way to get picked up. She
compromised and cut through a small chunk of forest on her way back
to Fletcher Street which would lead her straight back to
Rhonda’s.

Unfortunately it looked
like Salem’s finest had anticipated that type of response. From the
top of Broomstick Hill, the same hill from which Jayce had earlier
spied her, as it happened, she could see a police cruiser parked
about half a mile off.

She made a snap
decision.

In the direction of
Rhonda’s house, Fletcher was straight, and the police would have a
clear view of her from where they were parked if she left the woods
at any point.

Normally that wouldn’t
have bothered her. She was very comfortable amid trees and nature,
and under other circumstances might have even preferred that path
to the road. However, whatever she’d sensed earlier had her
spooked. Until she knew more, she wanted to play it
safe.

In the other direction,
toward town, Fletcher was a positive zig zag of a road as it
meandered around small hills and other obstructions. It would be
relatively easy for her to evade capture in that direction. It
would take a while, but she could even just walk home.

That was the
play.

I’ll need a cover
story
, Aradia thought glumly as she
doubled back past Jayce’s house and snuck toward town.
It’s a shame I can’t turn
invisible.

After committing to her
plan Aradia couldn’t help but question the wisdom of her decision.
Wandering around in the middle of the night in what was still an
unfamiliar place seemed, at the very least, ill-conceived.
At least Salem has a low rate of violent
crimes
, Aradia noted, remembering her
father’s statistics lesson.

Before too long she
found herself back in the city proper. Not sure exactly how to
proceed, she decided to at least let her partner-in-crime know
where she was. She took a seat at a well lit bench beneath a street
light on Cauldron Avenue and pulled out her cell.

she texted Rhonda.

Almost immediately,
Rhonda replied:

exactly>

back?>

don’t think I’ll be back tonight>

that!>

you know I’m safe. See you Monday>

Feeling more
responsible after letting Rhonda know she was okay, Aradia got to
pondering how she’d spend the next few hours. “At least it’s
peaceful,” she said to herself, just before another head-crushing
vision hit her.

She saw herself and, of
all people, Tristan running together down Cauldron. From around the
corner at Cauldron and 3
^rd
Street came a police patrol
vehicle. In her mind the lights flashed and the siren
whooped
. Two
officers stepped out. Her hands were in the air. Tristan was
cuffed. She was left alone.

“Anybody home?” Tristan
said. Aradia came back to the here-and-now. She got the feeling
that he was repeating himself.

“Pleasure to see you,”
she said, voice laced with sarcasm.

“I’m sure it is,” he
replied cockily. For good measure he gave her a dirty look. He
reeked of booze. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then said, “Come
on. I saw cops around the corner. This way.” He started heading
north toward 3
^rd
Street.

She gave a hard look at
Tristan, debating what to do. After only a short delay, Aradia
sighed, heaved herself up, and grabbed him from behind by the left
shoulder.

“Problem?” he asked,
confused and curious.

"Okay, Tristan," she
said to him. "This is how it is going to be. We’re going to split
up, and you are going to go that way."

She pointed to her
right, toward 4
^th
Street.

"And I am going to go
this way."

She pointed in the
direction he’d been heading.

Tristan scoffed. "You
can't tell me what to do."

I really don’t feel
like dealing with this
. Aradia grabbed
the front of his shirt, brought his face to meet hers, and growled,
"Wanna bet?"

Tristan struggled to
free himself. After letting him squirm vainly for a few seconds,
she released her grip. With one solid look into Aradia's eyes, he
nodded. “You
are
curious,” he said before he took off in the direction she’d
instructed.

Aradia then turned,
sighed, and jogged the opposite way. She got to the corner just in
time to intercept the inevitable.

She only had a few
seconds before the cruiser would arrive. She knew that from her
vision. Those few seconds were enough for her to catch something
very odd out of the corner of her eye.

A couple was making out
in an alleyway across Cauldron from her. Salem was a clean town, so
it wasn’t as gross as it would have been most places. Still, Aradia
felt they should probably get a room.
At
least it’s a dark alley
, she thought,
giving the couple some semblance of privacy.

They seemed to be about
her age, maybe a little older, and were pressed against a brick
wall, the rear wall of the Salem Visitor’s Center. The girl's head
was tipped and it seemed that the boy was giving her a
hickey.

None of that was
terribly unusual.

Beyond those first few
details, she didn’t pay them much mind. She was really more focused
on intercepting the police car she knew was coming.

She wished she’d spent
a little more time watching them. Just as she turned away from the
couple, the boy raised his head. It was very dark, very late, and
not much of the glow from the street lights made it into the
alleyway. On top of that, she wasn’t really focusing on them. There
was no way Aradia could be sure of what she was seeing.

And yet, she felt sure
of what she was seeing. The boy’s face, from his lips to his chin,
was dripping with blood. Just as frightening, his two long fangs
glistened in the moonlight.

Fangs!
Aradia thought,
like a
vampire!

Then she heard
the
whoop
of
the police car rolling around from 3
^rd
, just as she’d predicted. The
car pulled to a stop. They left the lights flashing as the two
officers emerged.

Aradia almost
immediately turned back to where the vampire was draining his prey.
Of course they were both gone.
Oh come
on,
Aradia griped mentally.
What a friggin cliché.

"Evening, miss," one of
the policemen greeted politely. He was a little shorter than
average, maybe 5’ 7”. He wore wire-framed glasses and had a kind
voice.

Aradia threw her hands
up just as she’d seen herself do in the vision. She stood very
still as the cops moved towards her.

“Uh, you can put your
hands down,” the same officer,
Officer
Soft Voice
, instructed. She felt silly
and put them down, but still kept her hands where they could see
them. She’d watched a lot of
CSI
.

"What's your name,
kid?" the other officer asked. He looked older than Officer Soft
Voice, had a goatee, and sounded bored.

"Aradia," she responded
in a polite tone. “Aradia Preston.”

Aradia caught a spark
of recognition in Officer Soft Voice’s eye when she spoke her full
name. She hadn’t meant to name drop, and she hoped she wasn’t
getting her father into hot water.

Officer Goat Chin
didn’t seem to think anything of her surname. Still sounding bored,
he asked, "Were you at Jayce Chapman's party tonight?”

"Yes."

Both officers were
taken aback by her candid response. They exchanged a brief, puzzled
look.

Aradia just shrugged
and said, "It's not like you don't already know I was
there."

Soft Voice shrugged as
well and said, "We just weren’t expecting you to confirm
it."

"What he means," Goat
Chin interrupted, "is that in our experience, most teenagers are
not as honest as we wish them to be."