DoubleDown V (30 page)

“What?”

“I mean, he did…but he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Bobby, you’re not making sense.”

“It was my mother. She did some kitchen magick on him.”

“Kitchen magick?”

“Yes, it’s when you make up a potion and mix it in with food, that you then feed to someone. In this case she baked up a batch of cookies and left them for him. Once he ate the cookies, she had him. He was hers—he’d do anything she asked.”

“That night…at the graveyard….”

“Yes, I led you there, and my mother sent Derek to attack you.”

Karen’s legs suddenly felt weak, and she stumbled to the bench and dropped down. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “Why would she do that?”

“She wanted to put you in a situation where you would be upset and afraid so that you would tap into your power, realize a potential that you didn’t even realize you possessed. She thought it was the fastest way to get you to where she needed you to be so she could use your power.”

Karen felt lightheaded, and she wondered idly if she were about to pass out. Her emotions swirled like a cyclone. The day seemed to grow dim, as if a cloud had passed over the sun though the sky was clear and blue. She finally looked at Bobby. “You were in on this. I trusted you, and you helped set me up.”

“She promised you wouldn’t get hurt, but you’re right. I lied to you. I let my mother talk me into a truly horrible thing. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me. You shouldn’t. But this has to end. My mother has to be stopped.”

Before Karen could say anything else, Bobby was gone. At first Karen didn’t move, too stunned to process what she’d just learned. Her attack had been orchestrated by Penelope herself, with Bobby as her accomplice. The past several months of her life were nothing but a series of deceptions and masquerades.

As the shock wore off, anger took its place, filling Karen. She assumed Bobby had gone to confront his mother, and Karen was going to do the same. Leaving the park, she started down the trail toward campus at a brisk walk that soon turned into a sprint.

*   *   *

It took Karen almost forty-five minutes to drive to Penelope’s house. If her life were a movie, she would have sped at breakneck speeds, weaving in and out of traffic, tearing through red lights, going the wrong way down one-way streets, angling onto sidewalks to avoid stalled traffic, and sending pedestrians leaping out of the way. But life wasn’t like a movie, and Karen had to sit through red lights, wait patiently through stalled traffic. She tried calling Penelope a couple of times but got no answer.

The librarian’s car was in the driveway when Karen pulled up in front of the house. Now that she was here, she was having second thoughts. She was still angry, that was for damn sure, but she dreaded a confrontation. Her feelings were...complicated. She knew that Penelope was not her friend, and she did not want to help her in any way....

But that meant not helping Bobby, not being able to finally kiss him and feel his arms around her.

Then again, with what Bobby had learned from Jacoby, he probably was no longer concerned with being made flesh again. More than likely, he would want Karen to keep her promise and help his spirit move on. And now she knew how to do it.

But did she want to? He had betrayed her, had led her into a trap, had kept things from her...yet when she thought of how much pain he’d suffered at the park, she felt pain of her own.

Her feelings were complicated.

But first things first: she had to talk with Penelope. Getting out of the car, she hurried down the walk and began pushing the doorbell. She heard a chime inside but no footsteps approaching. Karen pounded on the door for good measure, but still no one answered. Penelope could have been around back in the circle, but in that case she would have heard Karen’s car pulling up.

Grasping the doorknob, she turned it…and the door swung open. Karen hesitated, feeling that she might be walking into another trap. But if she was, she’d be ready. She was not powerless, not by a long shot, and no one knew that better than Penelope.

The living room was lit only by a fire burning low in the fireplace. Stepping inside, Karen called the librarian’s name. When there was still no answer, she started toward the hall.

Bobby suddenly materialized in front of her. She was so startled that at first his words made no sense to her. By the time he said—“Behind you!”—sank in, it was too late.

She started to turn toward the door, which was now swinging shut, but something heavy collided with the side of her head and the world went black.

When Karen came to, she wasn’t sure where she was or why she couldn’t move her arms or legs. There was something with a vaguely sour taste stuffed in her mouth, and when she tried to spit it out she found she couldn’t. Her head pounded as violently as if atomic warheads were going off inside her skull. She blinked rapidly to clear her blurry vision and saw that she was in a dimly lit bedroom. Looking down her body, she could see that she was lying atop a bed, legs spread, and each foot tied with rope to the footboard. Craning her neck, she found her wrists likewise secured to the headboard.

She scanned the room to see what she could make out, but her vision blurred and the pounding in her head increased.

Now she remembered. She’d come to confront Penelope, and the witch had been lying in wait behind the front door and had hit Karen over the head with….

With what? She wasn’t sure. She’d only really seen an indistinct movement. Perhaps one of the shovels they’d used to dig up Rebecca Yomans. It didn’t really matter; what mattered was that Karen was imprisoned here with no idea what Penelope had planned.

A creak made Karen turn her head to the right, wincing as fresh pain detonated in her head. Light flooded in from the hallway, silhouetting Penelope in the doorway.

“I see you’re up,” Penelope said, stepping into the room. Her voice was flat and emotionless, nothing remaining of the woman Karen had once considered a friend. “You’ve been out for several hours. I was starting to think I’d whacked you too hard.”

Karen struggled against the rope, but her movements were slow, sluggish. Looking back up at her wrists, she tried to
will
the knots to loosen, but her vision kept going fuzzy and her mind felt fuzzy as well, unable to concentrate. She thought she detected a minute movement in the ropes, but that was it.

“Having trouble?” Penelope said, standing over her. “Might be the potion I forced down your throat while you were unconscious. Clouds the mind and weakens the body, rendering you almost powerless…at least until it wears off. Don’t want you untangling yourself until we’re done here. Of course, your powers would be useless against me anyway. For the past several months I’ve been spiking the tea you’ve been drinking with me with a little protection spell. Just for insurance, you understand.”

Karen’s eyes darted around the room, searching for any sign of—

“I’m afraid my son won’t be appearing,” Penelope said. “I removed your bracelet and put it away with the other talismans. He’s still around—I can feel him—but I don’t need to hear him whining and pleading. He’s my son; I know what’s best for him, and one day he’ll see that. One day he’ll thank me. It’ll take him a while to adjust to a female body, but he will adapt.”

This froze Karen. She ceased moving, for a few seconds ceased even breathing. Her already stunted thought processes slowed even further. Penelope couldn’t possibly mean what it sounded like she meant…but as the librarian was proving, she was capable of anything.

Penelope continued to speak as she went about the room, lighting candles around the bed. “I know it’s not quite the equinox, but it should be close enough. And of course, I wanted to use Pete’s body—that situation was just too perfect—but I can’t very well drag you down to the hospital like this, can I? So I’ll improvise.”

Once she finished with the candles, she reached down beside the bed, out of Karen’s line of sight, and picked up a mason jar full of a dark amber liquid.  Screwing off the lid, she dipped her fingers into the liquid and began smearing it on Karen’s forehead and eyelids. Karen shook her head back and forth, but her range of motion was limited.

“The potion I fed you earlier alters your concentration so you can’t focus enough to use your power, but the power is still there. Oh yes, you’re just brimming with power. And the more upset you become, the more potent that power becomes. Even though you will not be reciting the incantation with me, I think just your presence will ensure that the spell succeeds.  And if not…well, I’ll just move on and find another witch to help me. I’m nothing if not persistent when I have a goal.”

Karen tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by the gag stuffed in her mouth. Another attempt to spit it out proved futile, and now she could feel the duct tape that had been wound around her head to keep the gag in place. Still she tried to scream, straining until the tendons protruded from her neck and tears leaked from her eyes.

When Penelope finished anointing Karen, she reached down and retrieved a smaller jar, this one half-filled with a pale yellow liquid with something floating in it. Karen squinted at the jar and realized that these must be Bobby’s tonsils. The items Penelope was using to keep her son’s spirit on this plane of existence and that she would use to evict Karen from her own body to make room for Bobby.

“In order for the spell to work, these have to be inside you. Normally ingestion would be the route I’d take, but I don’t think I can trust you to keep quiet if I remove that gag, plus I don’t really fancy having you spitting my own son’s tonsils at me. So I’ll have to get them inside you another way.”

Karen began to buck on the bed, straining against her bonds again. The ropes didn’t seem to be tight, but she felt so weak.

Penelope stared down at her, and her expression softened, emotion coming back into her eyes. “I really am sorry it turned out this way. You have to believe that this isn’t how I wanted things to happen. Ideally, you would have helped me install Bobby’s spirit in Pete’s body, and I would have had my son back, and you and Bobby could have been a real couple. But I guess you two will still be together, just not in the way any of us envisioned. I mean, just think about it, what better way to show him how much you love him than by giving up your body so that he can have another shot at love? It’s rather poetic when you get right down to it. Almost Biblical.”

Unable to speak, Karen used her eyes to plead for mercy, hoping there was some sane part of Penelope left that she could reach. But the emotion bled from Penelope’s face again, leaving it cold as an ice carving, and she reached out with one hand and started undoing the buttons on Karen’s pants. Karen closed her eyes and tried to focus her mental energy and make something happen, anything…but she felt nothing.

“Mother, STOP!”

At the sound of the deep, gruff voice, Karen’s eyes sprang open. She looked toward the doorway to find Bobby standing there, his expression fierce in the flickering candlelight. Penelope was looking his way too, her jaw slack and her eyes wide.

“What…how…,” she stammered. “I locked away the talismans.”

A slight smile curved Bobby’s lips. “Guess I learned a little something from Jacoby. If a thought form, a creature that had never truly been a person, can conjure itself up, then surely I can manifest myself through the strength of my will.”

Penelope recovered from her shock quickly. “Listen, angel, you just need to let Mommy finish her work. I’m going to make you all better again. Whole, strong.”

“By killing the woman I love?”

“Please, the only reason you even started talking to her is because I told you to. Trust Mommy…this is for the best. Keep your mouth shut and let me do my work.”

“I’m not going to let you do this,” Bobby said, his voice firm and resolute. It had a ring of authority to it; Karen had never heard him sound this way before.

Penelope laughed. “And what exactly are you going to do to stop me? You’re a wraith. Smoke has more substance. You may not appreciate what I’m doing for you, but it is going to happen. So just sit back and watch if you want.”

Suddenly a warm breeze blew through the room, extinguishing all of the candles at once.

Penelope gasped and stared at Karen. “How did you do that? Is the potion wearing off?”

“No, Mother, that was me.”

“There’s no way. You can’t affect the physical world.”

“Seems I can. Apparently there’s a lot of things I can do that I never realized. But I guess it’s like you said, being really upset makes a person’s power all that more potent.”

“Why are you doing this?” Penelope said. “Don’t you see I’m just trying to help you?”

“Bullshit! You just want to control me, keep me under your thumb like you always have.”

“Bobby, I love you.”

“You do…in your own twisted way. But I’m like a prized possession you can’t part with. Before I died—and even after—you treated me like some fragile thing that had to constantly be protected. And I bought into it. I let you make me weak. But I’m not fragile…I’m not weak. And it’s time you let me go.”

The jar containing Bobby’s tonsils flew out of Penelope’s hands and shattered against the far wall, the two round blobs falling to the carpet. Penelope screamed and ran to them, scooping them up. Standing, she turned to Bobby, her face scarlet. She unleashed a banshee shriek—the bulb in the lamp on the table next to her exploded and the lamp flew across the room. It passed ineffectually through Bobby and crashed in the hallway.

“Please, Mother,” Bobby said, “don’t make me hurt you. Just stop this. Let Karen go. Let
me
go.”

“And what about me? You want to leave me all alone, with no one? With nothing?”

“Mother, once I’m gone, you’ll be free too. You can stop isolating yourself, get back out into the world. Meet people, not just people you want to use. Make friends, maybe have a romance. I’m only holding you back from living.”