Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (22 page)

“Who’s out of control, Delia? Who are you talking about? If you’re this terrified, we should call the sheriff right now and get some help. I know Susan Gonzalez, and she—”

Delia’s hand shot out and caught my wrist, and a bolt of pain clawed through me. The gloves. I’d always made her wear gloves when she cut my hair.

She kept talking, but it was like the words were coming to me through a deep, dark tunnel. “No police. Especially not the sheriff. Don’t you know that he’s in on it with her? He’s there all the time, and he’s as bad as those sons of hers. You need to leave right now.”

I wanted to leave. I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life. But distantly, I realized that I wasn’t going anywhere for at least a few minutes, because I was falling into a vision of Delia’s death.

It was daytime, and she was outside, chanting. In fact, she was part of a group of chanting witches who stood in a tight circle around a tall woman. The tall woman turned to face Delia, and the shock of realization arrowed through me.

That was Olga Kowalski, and somehow—impossibly—it seemed like she could
see
me through my own vision.

“I don’t think so, little girl,” Olga said, and her voice was deeper and darker than I’d ever heard it before. She took a step closer to the Delia in my vision, pointed one long bony finger at her/us, and Delia started to choke to death.

And I felt every second of it.

I screamed, and lost the connection with the vision. Then I staggered back and almost fell off the porch, but Jack was there to catch me.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“No. Not okay. Not okay at all. We have to get Shelley away from Olga,” I said, and Delia—the real Delia, the one who was still alive and standing right in front of me—gasped and took a step back.

“Are you a witch too?”

I shook my head. “No. What I’ve got is a different kind of magic—or something. I don’t know. I don’t have time to talk about it. You need to get out of town. Go find your family. Go to Alabama—I don’t know, go to the moon. Just get somewhere out of town and away from Olga Kowalski.”

Jack let me go, but stayed close. I could tell he was afraid I’d fall down again, but I didn’t have time to fall down.

“The farther the better,” he told Delia. “Just until this is over.”

Delia shrugged helplessly. “If I could get away, don’t you think I would? She’s getting stronger and stronger, and once she completes that ritual at midnight tomorrow during the Blood Moon, she’ll be unstoppable. If I don’t show up to be part of her circle, she’ll take me out the way she did that man in jail. I can’t get far enough, fast enough.”

I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. But she was a grown woman, and it seemed like she could have at least tried to reach out for help before now. Shelley was a nine-year-old child, and she was trapped in the home of a crazy, power-mad witch. It had unpleasant shades of “Hansel and Gretel.”

“What about Chantal? Was she tied up with the coven too?”

Delia looked confused. “What? No. She was dating Hank, though, and his mom didn’t like it much, but she’s not the type to run around shooting people.”

Jack finally spoke up. “What about my uncle?”

Delia shook her head. “I never heard anybody say anything about Jeremiah. I never saw him out at her place, either. Look, you really need to go. Right now. Before something worse happens to any of us.”

“It’s already worse,” I said. “Delia, you have to find a way not to be part of that circle tomorrow. I had one of my visions—I know you know what I’m talking about—and I saw Olga killing you.”

Her face drained of what little color it had left, and then she uttered a hollow laugh. “You’re right, I do know about your visions. I know they show somebody’s death. But you warned that woman about her husband and his shovel, and it happened anyway. So it doesn’t matter what I do, does it? She’s going to kill me, one way or the other.”

“We don’t know that that’s true,” I said urgently. I forced myself to reach out and take her hands in mine, in spite of all my instincts screaming at me not to do it. I’d already touched her once; what did it matter?

“
Please
. Please try to get away. We’ll go—we’re leaving right now. She’ll never know we were here. And I’m going to call a friend we have in the FBI to see if he can send someone to help you. But please, Delia, get in your car and go. Now.”

“I can’t, Tess, but thank you for trying. And maybe…maybe this will help.” She reached out and touched my face before I realized she was doing it, and a tiny, tingling warmth spread through my bruised cheekbone and the area around my eye. When she lowered her hand, the dull headache I’d been fighting all day was gone.

“Tess. Your bruises—they’re gone,” Jack said. “She healed your face.”

“It’s my turn to thank
you
, Delia,” I said. “Please, if you’re afraid to be on your own, please just come with us.”

“No. No, I can’t. Please go. Just go now.” With that, she went back in her house, slamming and locking the door behind her.

I looked at Jack, mutely pleading for his help, but he shook his head.

“She made her decision, for better or worse. She’s an adult, and we can’t force her to protect herself. It’s a hard lesson that I’ve had to learn time and time again. You warned her, and that’s more than most people would do. It’s more than she had an hour ago. We should go. Every minute we stay here, she’s becoming more and more terrified.”

The sympathy in Jack’s voice nearly undid me. I knew he could tell how much this was hurting me, but he was right. There was nothing we could do for Delia. Shelley, though, was different. Olga Kowalski was planning to become a black magic practitioner on the very next night, and she still had custody of the little girl.

And
that
was something we were going to change.

We drove down the road a mile or so and pulled off onto a wide spot next to a cow pasture. Jack parked his bike and walked over to climb into the car with me.

“What can we do? We have to get Shelley out of there right this very minute,” I said frantically. “We can’t leave her with a witch who’s planning to go to the dark side.”

Jack nodded grimly. “I agree. But it’s getting dark now. Black magic has more power during the night. We’re better off calling in reinforcements and going out there tomorrow in the daylight.”

I slammed my hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “What reinforcements? The sheriff is almost certainly in league with Olga. I can’t trust Susan or Deputy Kelly, even if I wanted to, because they might be under some kind of spell.”

“As much as I hate to say it, it might be time to call in Agent Vasquez,” Jack said slowly. “He can probably get us a P-Ops backup team in place by tomorrow afternoon.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Jack bared his teeth. “If he doesn’t, we’ll go in ourselves. Either way, that little girl is coming out of there tomorrow, well before midnight.”

We split up then, still determined to keep to our plan. I might be able to find something out at Jeremiah’s, or Jack might learn something from the ex-military guys out in the swamp. I waved to him and tried to smile when he drove off, again pretending to have a lot more courage than I actually felt.

Suck it up, Buttercup
, I told myself. All I had to do was search through files at Jeremiah’s house. This was probably going to be the least scary thing I did all week.

Then I turned the volume way up on the radio, locked the car doors, and headed for Jack’s place. I drove very carefully, on high alert—for what, I didn’t know. Hank or Walt with a rifle, maybe. There was hardly any traffic on the road, though, and it was a clear night. After another mile or so, that oppressive feeling of menace that had centered on Delia’s house lifted. Apparently Olga had a limit to the range of her power, at least for now.

I was glumly wondering just how much the Blood Moon ritual would expand that range when the rhinoceros-sized alligator from my nightmares appeared in the middle of the road and charged my car. I screamed and slammed on the brakes, yanking the steering wheel to the left to avoid running into the monster. I was still screaming when my car swerved off the road and slammed into a tree, and then everything went fuzzy for a while.

By the time the cloud of dust from the airbag dissipated, I’d managed to calm down a little. I had to really work at it to get my door open, and when I finally did, I fell out of the car onto the ground. Then my poor, confused brain, which was sick and damn tired of being knocked around, kicked back into gear and reminded me that there was a monster after me. I whipped my head around, clamping my jaw shut to keep another scream from escaping, only to discover that there was
absolutely nothing on the road
.

I had just had the champion of all hallucinations, and I had a feeling I knew exactly who had sent it to me.

That
witch
.

I
stood up,
still a little woozy, and started to make my way back to the road. Then I remembered that I needed my phone from my purse, so I trudged back. This time I forced myself to actually look at the front of my car.

It was much worse than I’d thought. I was pretty lucky to be walking away at all.

My sturdy Toyota was now perfectly illustrating the phrase
wrapped around a tree
. The bottom dropped out of my stomach as I surveyed the scope of the damage. The whole front end was crushed. In fact, I’d hit the tree so hard that the glass in my windshield was threaded through with tiny cracks, probably a hairsbreadth away from shattering.

Suddenly, I really needed to sit down, but I wasn’t about to climb back in the car, even to rest. Instead, I carefully leaned over the driver side and grabbed my purse, which had fallen onto the floorboard of the passenger side. Then I walked back out to the road and kept one eye peeled for any more monsters while I fished around in my purse for my phone. Because, on further reflection, maybe that monster hadn’t been a hallucination.

After all, what did I know about what kinds of creatures black-magic witches could conjure up? Maybe there was a giant alligator lurking in the bushes…or maybe I was just being an idiot from too many knocks on the head in one week. I tried to shake it off—both the wooziness and the panic—and I called Jack. His phone went straight to voicemail. I tried out a few of my favorite bad words, but they didn’t do much to make me feel any better.

Uncle Mike was out of town, Molly was out of town, and I didn’t want to get Dave or Eleanor caught up in this mess. I needed somebody neutral—somebody who wouldn’t cause Olga to fixate on them just for coming out to get me.

Duh. I needed to call Dead End Towing. I called the Pit Stop, and the guy working there transferred me over.

“Dead End Towing, you crash ’em, we cash in,” said the guy who answered the phone. Then he laughed uproariously.

“I don’t really see that catching on as a marketing slogan,” I said dryly.

“I know, but I’m bored and it’s late and what the hell. Who’s this and what do you need?”

“Larry? Is that you? This is Tess Callahan. I had an accident, and I need for you to come out to get me and my car, please.”

Wow. There I was, using my nice words, even after somebody tried to kill me. Somebody give me a gold star.

Maybe I
was
still a little bit woozy.

Larry’s voice turned serious. “Tess? Are you okay? Where are you?”

I told him where I was, and he promised to be right out. After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and think, and worry.

About monsters and tigers and witches.

Oh my.

By the time Larry showed up about fifteen minutes later, I’d calmed down substantially. There hadn’t been any more monsters, hallucinatory or otherwise, but neither had there been a single other car. I wondered how long that stretch of road had felt like a dead zone, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard anything about it before. Were people protecting Olga? Or were they too afraid of her to talk about it?

The sight of the tow truck was a big relief. Larry pulled up and stepped out, hitching his pants up in the losing battle with his enormous belly. He took one look at my car and whistled, long and low.

“Tess, you’re awful damn lucky to be walking around after that.”

I nodded. “I know. Good airbags.”

“Good airbags and God’s blessing. I’ll deny it if you ever quote me, because I know it’s blasphemy around these parts, but those little Toyotas last forever, and they can take a good bit of damage. Not
that
much damage, though.” He took another look at my car and then shook his head. “Definitely not that much. I’m pretty sure it’s not salvageable.”

I felt a pain go through me at the thought of losing my little car, but in the grand scheme of things, better the car than me. That old Toyota had given up its life to protect me, if I looked at it from a certain angle.

Or maybe I just had a concussion.

“Do you think you can get it out of there and onto the truck?”

“Not by myself,” he said. “Especially not in the dark. I’ll come back with help in the morning. It’s not going anywhere.”

Captain Understatement.

He waved me into the truck with him, and we headed back to town.

“Do you want me to drop you at your place?”

“Yes. No, wait. Can you drop me at Jeremiah’s place instead?”

He didn’t look at me funny, or ask me why. Larry was an uncomplicated guy. “Sure thing.”

We drove along for a few minutes, and my eyes started to close in spite of myself. It must’ve been the aftereffect of the adrenaline rush from the accident. We were almost to Jeremiah’s when Larry said something that woke me right back up.

“I think we need to put a caution sign on that stretch of road. I don’t rightly understand why it’s so damn dangerous, but it is. That’s the exact spot where Melody Adler had
her
accident too.”

I sat straight up in my seat and turned to look at him. “What? Larry, are you sure? This is important. Are you sure that’s the exact spot?”

He snorted. “Of course I’m sure. I towed her car out of there, didn’t I? Saddest thing. Her and both of her parents too. I could only thank the good Lord that that sweet little girl of hers wasn’t in the car at the time.”