Fangtabulous (18 page)

“Come on, we’ve got to get him out of here.” I put an arm through one of his to pull him with me, but he dug his heels in and refused to budge. His eyes were brown, and his whole body radiated leashed tension. Holding his arm was like holding a live wire.

“
Where?” he asked. “Can’t go far. Can’t leave. There be sea monsters.”

So much for sanity.

Ulric grabbed his other arm, and together we managed to propel him along with us and get him into the front seat of the car.

“Where are we going?” I whispered to Ulric, which was just silly, because Bobby’s vamp hearing would pick it up anyway. But human habits died hard.

“I talked to Olivia. She’ll meet us at the brew pub after closing, and she’s calling in reinforcements.”

“Huh?”

“Her coven.”

“Oh—cool.”

We all rode in silence the rest of the way to the pub, except for the silly song Bobby sang to himself as he began to rock:

“
… That wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I don’t know why she swallowed the fly
Perhaps she’ll die.”

I shared a glance with Ulric in the rearview mirror, like parents might share about their five-year-old’s imaginary friend. It made me feel old. And scared.

“What do we do with Bobby when we get to the pub?” Marcy hissed to me.

“Well, we can’t leave him alone,” I hissed back.

Which meant we’d be bringing him along. Babysitting had so never been my gig.

Bobby suddenly started to get agitated. Like …
really
. He went from gentle rocking to flinging his body into the backrest and kicking the dash. He tore at his hair with nubby nails and beat at his head.

“Stop. Stop, STOP!” he cried. “Stop thinking so loud. I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW!”

We all stared at Bobby. Was he talking to himself? Renfield telling Bobby to just stop fighting? Or was Bobby somehow coming through, warning us that his alter-ego could hear our thoughts? Bobby had said he couldn’t access his powers any more. But what if his counterpart could? What if our spoken words weren’t the only things he could overhear? Spooky.

“Shh-shh-shh!” I tried to soothe him. “No one’s saying a thing.” I turned to the others. “Blank your minds.”

Bobby gave me a suspicious look, but he paused from spazzing out long enough to listen. A second later, he sank bonelessly into the seat, no longer fighting
or
humming. I’d have thought him asleep if he didn’t flinch with every bump in the road. My heart hurt for my boy.

We had to finish this. Now. Tonight. Before the Feds found us or anyone else died.

We had to coax Bobby out of the car, toward the closed and locked doors of the nearly deserted pub. He dragged his feet the whole way until something caught his attention and his head suddenly shot up. Like a predator, his eyes became laser-focused. Following his gaze, I barely caught sight of a creepy, crawly movement before he pounced, slapped a hand over a shadow with too many legs, and swept it into his mouth. I heard the crunch of exoskeleton and nearly threw up all over the evergreens flanking the entrance.

“
But I don’t know why he swallowed the fly
,” Bobby sang
,
smacking his lips.
“Perhaps he’ll die
.”

I was never kissing that mouth again.

When Olivia answered our knock and let us in, her face was all concern. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Close enough,” I answered, unable even to look at Bobby. I knew it wasn’t actually
him
, but at the same time … “Let’s hurry.”

I shooed her inside, and held the door open for the others before yanking it closed and locked behind us.

Olivia led the way to a table at the back—or really, three tables pulled together, where her friends already sat. I don’t know what I’d expected—pointy hats, green faces, or just more blue hair like Olivia’s—but it wasn’t what I got. Around the table sat five perfectly normal-looking people … and Chip from the Morbid Gift Shop.

Olivia introduced us all, first names only. The coven was like a study in contrasts. Beside Chip was a gorgeous African-American lady with thick braids every variant of color from blond to black, twisted into a complicated updo, and skin that would make cosmetic companies weep because it needed no enhancement. She was so thoroughly occupied with the knitting in her lap—a baby-blue blanket—that she barely looked up at her name, Pru. Next to her was a pierced princess: eyebrow, nose, lip, and five studs marching up her right ear, the first with a chain connecting it to the last, and just two studs in the other ear, each with a blood-red little gem. Her hair, lips, and brows were black, but her blond roots were showing.

At the end of the table was a handsome man with sandy, close-cut hair wearing a heather-gray cable knit sweater like he’d just stepped off an Irish fishing boat. Then there was a businessy blond wearing her ponytail so tight that she looked surprised into an instant face-lift, and finally a hippy chick in a way-colorful dashiki and feathered earrings. If I’d been a pollster looking for a random sampling in a mall somewhere, I’d totally pull these people together, never suspecting they had anything in common. Certainly not witchcraft.

Through it all, Bobby rocked and sang to himself and the others shot him worried looks until Chip asked, “What’s his deal?”

“Actually,” I answered, “he’s part of the problem. The reason Olivia called you here is that we think we might have found the source of the sudden insanity plaguing the town. We thought that if we brought it here for you to examine, you might be able to help us stop it.”

We had everyone’s attention. I took the pendant from my pocket, touching it with my bare hand for the first time. I felt the tingle of power it possessed, but nothing else happened as I let it drop to the end of its cord and dangle for all to see. “We think this is what’s been riling up the spirits, fueling them to the point where they can possess and even kill.”

“So this guy is …
possessed
?” the pierced princess asked, like she was fascinated rather than repelled.

“Yes.”

“And you brought him
here
?” Chip asked, just as Pru gasped, “Tituba’s necklace!”

Chip froze mid-rise from his seat at the table, halfway to getting all up in my grill. “Say what?” he asked, turning on Pru.

She didn’t take her eyes from the amulet as she spoke. “At the Historical Society we have this sketch of Tituba—the only one, as far as anyone knows—wearing
that
pendant. There’s no record of what happened to it after she was arrested. See, the officials used to confiscate all an accused’s belongings, but since she was a slave, everything she had was considered her master’s, so it wasn’t overly strange that it never made it into the record. Where did you find it?”

I looked to the others and Brent gave me a shrug, spreading his hands in invitation, like it was my show.

“We got it tonight, from a girl named Rebecca Simms.”

The pierced princess gasped, and all the coven members exchanged a glance.

“What?” Brent asked sharply.

All gazes settled on Irish, who I assumed to be their leader. “She was one of us, once,” he said. “But we weren’t … edgy enough for her. She didn’t want balance. She wanted
power
.”

“I’d say she found it,” I commented, glancing at the amulet.

“But how did she get it?” Pru asked. “And where? Tituba escaped the gallows. That’s what’s fanned the continuing belief that she was the one true witch in the whole hunt. The histories say someone was allowed to buy Tituba’s way out and she left town, never to be heard from again. I’d have thought she’d take the necklace with her.”

“Unless it was sold to raise her ransom,” Irish suggested.

“Or passed on to her daughter,” I said.

“Violet?” Pru looked contemplative. “It’s possible. That would explain how it stayed in the area. By all accounts, Violet was left behind, stuck with the Reverend Parris until his death.”

“What happened at Violet’s death?” Ulric asked, leaning in.

Pru shrugged. “I could try to find out, but unless they were getting sold or persecuted, no one thought slaves’ lives much worth recording back then.”

“Ancient history,” Chip said, impatiently. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re interested in the here and now.”

“
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
,” Pru quoted to him.

“You sound like my eighth-grade history teacher.” Chip nodded to the necklace. “Shall we?”

Everyone looked at the amulet. Then Olivia looked at us. “We’ll need you outside of the circle,” she said gently. “We’re not attuned to your energies, and they’ll interfere with our reading.”

I had no idea at all what that meant, but I took Bobby by the arms. He flinched and started to lash out a hand, but then stopped to stroke and sniff at my hair instead. It was beyond weird to feel revulsion rather than attraction at his touch. I stifled the urge to pull back and led him to another table, along with Brent and Marcy. We watched from there. At the table we’d left, the coven reseated themselves around the amulet and began chanting, eyes closed.

I’d never seen magic before—which sounded odd when I thought about the fact that I was facing eternal youth with a boyfriend (assuming I ever got him back) who could move things with his mind, and that I could go ghosty. But I meant the external, power-to-the-people kind of magic. The kind that, apparently, glowed … just like the amulet.

True story—the amulet hovered there as we watched, about an inch or two off the table, and shone red. It was the kind of red an overactive imagination might assign the eyes of a demon staring into the house from the bushes outside, waiting to ambush you. It was a good thing I didn’t have an overactive imagination. Still, it gave me the creeps.

Finally, I couldn’t take the silence or the eerie glow a second longer. “So, the enchantment … you can break it?

The amulet dropped to the table with a clatter, but it took longer for its light to ebb.

“The user has bound it by blood,” Irish said. “We could, perhaps, shield it, isolate its power, but to stop it … if you sever a force like that rather than put it to rest, there’s backlash. There’s no telling what it might be. It could kill those who are possessed, or lock in the spirits. It could drive them mad.”

“So that would be a ‘no’?” Marcy asked wryly.

“A ‘no,’” Irish agreed. “Perhaps if we had time to study it.”

“What if you were able to study the spell book of the original owner?” Brent asked. “Would that tell you what you need to know?”

The man’s eyes lit up like a jack-o’-lantern caught in a flamethrower. “Tituba’s Book of Shadows? You have it?”

“We were hoping you could help us find it,” Brent responded.

The light in his eyes dimmed. “How?” he asked.

“Some kind of spell,” Brent answered. “Like a locator.”

But already Irish was shaking his head. “That spell book is legendary—people have been looking for decades. It might work if we had a connection. But if I’ve read it right, this amulet has had at least two owners since Tituba: her daughter, and then Rebecca, to whom it’s blood-bound.”

“Then any lore you might know,” Brent pushed. “Where Tituba lived, where she might have hidden the book.”

Irish thought about that. “The only surviving house dating back to that time and associated with the trials is the Witch House. At least according to their promo. It was the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, who used to interrogate witches there. They run tours now, but not at this time of night. Anyway, Tituba would hardly have hidden it there.”

Renfield-Bobby cackled suddenly and slammed a foot down on the ground. He reached down to pick up whatever he’d stomped and popped it into his mouth. My stomach fought to reverse itself. I wondered when his would do the same. Back when we’d first been vamped, a few of us had been silly enough to try real food and drink—and almost got to see ourselves from the inside out.

He saw me looking, and probably turning several shades of green, and grinned.

“Crunchy!” he said, like it was an endorsement. There was a wire-thin leg sticking out from between his teeth. Blood flooded my mouth like bile.

I had to choke it down again before I could rejoin the conversation. “So, what you’re saying is that we have to figure out what the town was like back then—what was standing and where she lived.”

Daunting didn’t begin to cover it.

“I can check the hall of records or the historical society archives in the morning,” Brent said.

“I can help,” Pru offered.

But I didn’t think we had that kind of time. Inspiration struck.

“I know someone who might help,” I said suddenly. “But she’s a little shy.”

All eyes were on me. I mean, not
on
me. That would just be gross. Looking my way, let’s say.

I explained.

“You know a ghost?” Irish asked, awed.

“So do you.” I cut a glance at Ren-Bobby. He was back to rocking and chanting, but now instead of the “There Was an Old Lady,” it was a twisted little childhood song. I knew it well:

“The worms crawl in

The worms crawl out

The worms play pinochle on your snout … ”

A sound from outside cut across his song.

Marcy and I exchanged a
look
. She’d heard it too—a car, maybe two, pulling up outside the closed pub … at this time of night.

“We’d better get out of here,” I said.

She nodded. The rest looked at us in confusion.

“We have company. Out front,” I explained.