Witches (38 page)

Tibby was awake, gibbering like a mad mouse in her lap. She hushed him without taking the time to understand what he was trying to tell her, and asked the nearest person to her, a young teenage girl with short blond hair, “What happened?”

The girl, who’d obviously been scared out of her wits, answered in a squeaky voice, “Don’t know. The plane just began bucking like a wild horse. The captain came on the intercom and explained we were experiencing some difficulties. Before he could say anything else, it got worse.”

She let out a long breath, her whole body shuddering. “Jeeze, I thought we were goners for sure.

“Is it going to be okay now?” she begged of Rebecca as if she had the answer.

“I hope so,” Rebecca replied with a false courage she didn’t feel. The back of her neck was tingling. They were under somebody’s nefarious surveillance again. Something was still wrong.

“I thought I was gonna die.” The girl laid her face into her hands; Rebecca could hear her relieved sobs.

The plane was flying right now, the ride soft as a baby, but Rebecca’s inner voice was in high gear.
Danger. Danger.

She happened to peer out the window on her right and discovered why. There were eyes peering back at her. From outside
in the night. Red, glowing, bestial eyes. She blinked and they were gone. That quick.

Jesus. Demons.
That was why her witch senses were on overload. Something was watching her, following her. Perhaps even targeting her for elimination. Her paranoia back in the woods and when she first boarded the plane made sense now.

The other people around her whispered and talked, picked up their scattered belongings, and tried to calm themselves down as she contemplated the darkness racing by her window. Endless blackness. There was
something
out there. The wings of the large airplane, an L10-11 Widebody, were barely discernable, and, as Rebecca squinted her eyes into tight slits and shaded them from the interior lights of the plane with her hands, she wasn’t sure she was seeing what she thought she was. Blurry shapes were scuttling along the wings. Outlined shadows against the inky sky.

She wasn’t completely sure what the things were.

She closed her eyes and evoked a spell that would allow her to see in the dark. When she reopened her eyes, she had to cover her mouth to keep from gasping out loud in horror.

There
were
creatures sitting, clinging, and running on the wing. Hairy, scaly beasts with fiery eyes and lots of teeth. Lots of arms and legs. Spiderlike. All different sizes. Demons
.
A huge hulking one with glowing eyes as big as dinner plates ambled up to the window and grinned lasciviously in at her so that she jerked back in her seat in surprise. He tapped on the window and snarled at her. Wanting in.

“Good God,”
she whispered to herself. “What do they want?”

The book.
Tibby hissed at her from her lap. No one else could see him, he was hiding in the folds of her coat, which she’d taken off and laid across her lap.

She glanced down at him. His little face scrunched up in anger.

They want the book?
She questioned him in her mind.
The book we dug up at Black Pond? By the way, how did
y
ou know that book was there?

Yes, they want that book. And no, I don’t know how I found it. A voice in my head told me it was there. Made me dig it up.

So why do they want it?

It belongs to their Master, that’s why. He wants it back. It has a lot of forgotten magic in it. The blackest of black magic.

Oh.
Rebecca mind-murmured.
There’s something in it he doesn’t want me to know. Something very important. I
was right about Satan being behind the cult and Rachel being behind Amanda’s abduction.

Of course.

Oh, boy.
Rebecca stared back out at the things outside the window.

Are you going to return it?
Tibby demanded peevishly when she was silent too long.

No.
She responded firmly.
I need it to get Amanda back. I have a hunch that without it I won’t have a chance.
She shook her head, still regarding the threatening shapes. They were fading, her spell wearing off, leaving her light headed and even more tired. The price she had to pay for concocting so many enchantments.

Tibby snapped at her.
With it, we won’t have a chance, either.

What do you mean?

Tibby sighed an almost inaudible groan.
They—
he
could still see them and he tossed his head at the demons crowding now outside the window—
came
for the book. If they don’t get
it—he made a sharp cutting gesture with one of his tiny paws across his neck—
we’ll
get it.

Rebecca’s blood went cold. Oh, boy. That was what she’d been afraid of.

She made herself look away from the window. Made her heart slow down. Said a prayer. The strongest magic she had would come from God. And from anyone else out there who would hear the silent plea she was sending out. Help.
Help me.
She’d need it.

I’m not giving back the book. No way.

Tibby sputtered.
Stupid witch.
Then he fell silent, probably realizing that even if they did give back the book, they might die, anyway. Demons lied all the time. Just like their Master.

The plane began to pitch all over again. More violently than before. Rebecca grabbed onto the arms of her seat and held on. The passengers began to wail and screech. The lights began to flicker and the captain’s voice boomed out over the intercom for the second time with empty promises for their complete safety. No one believed him as the plane began to jump around like a giant was shaking it. All the lights on the plane went out, leaving them in a blackness so endless it was like dying.

People screamed. Prayed for God to save them. Went nuts. There were terrible noises coming from the engines.

Outside the window from the darkened interior, Rebecca could see the demons clearly again; they were bouncing up and down on the wings like they were on a goddamn trampoline...and now there seemed to be more of them. Lots more. Covering the plane’s wings like a blanket. They were going to wreck them. Rock them into pieces.

They must have heard what she said about not giving the book back.
Damn.

One of the engines exploded. Probably choked on a demon. The plane plummeted from the sky like a fatally wounded bird.

Do something!
Tibby yelped in terror, scurrying up, grabbing at her hair, and hanging on for dear life as the descent grew steeper. Rebecca slammed back against her seat, she could hardly move. The muscles in her face grew taut with the pressure and her mind started
to fall apart. She’d never been so scared in her life. The cries of the panicked passengers rose to a hideous crescendo.

Do something!

Rebecca evoked the strongest magic she knew of. Something she’d never tried before. She let out all the cautionary stops and did her damndest to save herself and the rest of those onboard. To hell with her inadequacies, to hell with what she could or couldn’t do.

Her trembling fingers absentmindedly located the infamous book and an electric charge bolted through her. Another charge, like a snake of lightning, crackled from one end of the plane to the other. Magic was everywhere. Strong magic. The sound of both engines restarted.

The plane righted itself. The lights came back on. The pilot was sobbing over the intercom. “We’re all right,”
he kept repeating in an hysterical voice, over and over. “We’re all right! It’s a miracle.”

The plane wasn’t going to crash.
Not bad, Rebecca, for second-class witch.
She congratulated herself shakily, deflating into her seat. It seemed impossible, but she’d done it. Her magic had worked somehow—or had it? Deep down inside somewhere she suspected a greater power had stepped in and saved their necks. Her call for assistance had been answered. Someone had helped her.

She could hardly believe it.

She searched outside with strained eyes. The wing was empty. The demons were all gone. Every last damn one of them. Hallelujah!

Rebecca took the small black book from her coat pocket and looked at it. They’d wanted it bad. What was in it that was so important? She didn’t have much time to dwell on the mystery. The energy she’d expended performing the magic necessary to save them, with or without someone’s aid, had sapped every bit of her strength. Even as a relieved and proud Tibby was babbling away at her from her shoulder, she was already sliding into an exhausted, unwakeable sleep.

She didn’t come to until they landed seven hours later at Heathrow Airport. Even then, someone had to help carry her off because she could hardly stand. They thought it was because of the trauma of the near crash and they wanted to send her to the hospital. She resisted them adamantly and had them call her a cab.

“Take me to 777 Cherry Lane in Richmond,” she apprised the cab driver as two airline attendants escorted her into the backseat of his cab. As usual for England, it was drizzling a fine steady mist and the night was chilly. At least it wasn’t snowing.

The driver, a burly guy with a cigar and a funny looking cap, gave her an exasperated glance in the rearview mirror. Probably thought she was sick or drunk, the way she was acting.

“Jet lag,” she told him gruffly, and he seemed to accept that. He had to wake her up when they arrived at Winifred’s; the rain tapping on the roof had lulled her back to dreamland.

As Rebecca was unloading herself and her bag out of the cab, the cottage door opened and a rotund figure bounced out.

Winifred was in a long pink flannel robe and fuzzy pink slippers, her white hair tucked up and pinned in the back. She looked like a huge pink whale barreling down on Rebecca.

“About time you arrived, boss.” Winifred greeted her affectionately, giving her a bear hug. “I was beginning to get worried about you.” They were friends as well as colleagues.

“And judging by the way you look—awful—I guess I had reason to.” The
Briton was studying her friend in the light reflected from the inside of the cab.

“Thanks. Let’s get in out of this rain and I’ll fill
you in. On everything.”

“Deal.”

“Why does it always rain in this bloody country, Winifred?” Rebecca teased as the woman took her bag.

“Doesn’t rain that much. You just catch us at the wrong times.” Winifred watched as Rebecca paid the cab driver and led her into the warm cottage. It was a small place with only three rooms, and the archaic way it looked, Rebecca always expected to see someone in seventeenth-century dress walk through it, not someone like Winifred in pink slippers.

Winifred tucked Rebecca’s bag into a corner. There was a blazing fire going in the main room’s stone fireplace. Winifred had set the table with her finest tea set and china, an over-laden plate of tiny sandwiches and the ever-present scones she was famous for.

“I mean,” Rebecca said, “I’ve been here now at least twenty times and every time it’s raining, or foggy. Doesn’t the sun ever shine?”

“Sure, every other month or so for a few hours, dearie. I love the rain, especially on my days off from the university. I can stay here shut up all cozy-like in my little cottage before the fire, with a good book before my old eyes. Listen to it rapping at my windows.”

Winifred’s shrewd eyes regarded Rebecca for a while. “Had a bad trip, ’eh? You do look like death warmed over, child.”

“I should.” Rebecca slipped her hand into her pocket and brought Tituba out. He rubbed his eyes, awake, and she set him down on the table. Winifred, who knew Tibby well, and had a soft spot for him, broke off a piece of a scone and handed it to him.

The familiar flashed her a big grin and started nibbling. Then he dashed off the table and perched before the fire to warm himself.

“We had a rough flight over here.” Rebecca met Winifred’s curious eyes and held them. “Somebody didn’t want us to make it. We almost didn’t.”

“This find of yours must be truly important.”

Rebecca had settled down in one of the cushioned rocking chairs facing the bright fire, dropping her coat down on the hooked rug beside her. She exhaled a pleasurable sigh of relief as she stretched her short legs toward the flames to unfreeze her feet, which always seemed to be cold these days. Old age, no doubt. Not to mention that grueling hike yesterday in the woods and the banging around on the plane, which had left her body feeling like it was a hundred instead of forty.

She glanced up at the old woman hovering above her. “After you give me some of those delicious looking scones and a cup of hot tea, I’ll tell you about the book. The wild airplane ride. About the trouble my sister Amanda has gotten herself into, and my assessment of it.”

Rebecca’s usually stiff face had softened, highlighted by the flickering fire to a glowing pink. She was warm and dry, and safely off that plane. Soon she’d eat and it felt good. “I need your advice. Any help you can give me.”