Night World - Spellbinder Part 10

"From between-the standing stones . . . ?" she got out.

"The standing stones that encircle the spirits. Well, think, Thea! If you did n't have a circle of some kind to hold them in, they'd just-voom." Gran made a gesture. "They'd zip out and how would you ever find them again? That's why I went to Thierry today/' she added, taking a noisy sip of tea. "We need a p lace where the sandstone forms a natural circle . . . and naturally it's up to me to arrange everything. . . ." She went on grumbling softly.

Thea felt faint.

"You have to be-physically close to them-to send them back?"

"Of course. You have to be within spitting distance, And don't think I don'

t know why you're asking."

Thea stopped breathing.

"You're planning something for Samhain- and it's probably all Blaise's idea.

You two are like Maya and h.e.l.lewise. But you can forget about it right now- those spells are for the elders, not for girls." She stopped to cough. "I d on't understand why you want to be crones before you're done being maidens.

You ought to enjoy your youth while you have it. . . ."

Thea left her still grumbling.

She hadn't cast any kind of a circle before calling the spirit. She hadn't real ized she was supposed to.

And now . . . how could she ever get close enough to the spirit to send it ba ck?

Well-it'll just have to stay out in the world, she told herself bravely. Too bad . . . but it's not as if there aren't other spirits floating around out there. Ma ybe if it doesn't like roaming around, it'll come back.

But she was sick with guilt and disheartened. Not to mention worried-if only a little-about Gran's fainting spell.

Blaise didn't come to bed. She stayed downstairs and worked on her necklace long into the night.

On Monday, everyone at school was talking about Randy Marik and the ruine d dance. The girls were annoyed about it and furious with Blaise; the boy s were annoyed and furious with Randy.

"Are you okay?" Dani asked Thea after world lit cla.s.s. "You look kind of pa le."

Thea smiled wanly. "It was a busy weekend."

"Really? Did you do something with Eric?" The way she said "do something"

alerted Thea. Dani's heart-shaped face looked as sweet and concerned as ev er . . . but Thea couldn't trust even her. She was a Night Person, a witch , a human-hater.

It didn't matter. Thea was so edgy that the words just seemed to burst out.

"Do something like what? Smash his car? Turn him into a toad?"

Dani looked shocked, her velvet-dark eyes wide.

Thea turned and walked quickly away.

Stupid, stupid, she told herself. That was so dumb of you. You may not have to pretend to be playing with Eric in front of Blaise anymore-but in front o f the other witches you've got to keep acting.

She headed almost blindly for Eric's locker, ignoring the people she pa.s.sed.

I've only been here a week. How can everything in my life have become so awful? I'm at war with Blaise; I've worked a forbidden spell; I don't dare ta lk to Gran-and I've broken Night World law.

"Thea! I was looking for you."

It was Eric's voice. Warm, eager-everything that Thea wasn't. She turned to see green eyes flecked with dancing gray and an astonishing smile. A smile that drew her in, changing the world.

Maybe everything was going to be all right, after all.

"I called you yesterday, but I just kept getting the machine."

Thea hadn't even looked at the answering machine. "I'm sorry-there was a lo t going on." Eric looked so kind that she groped for something that had bee n going on that she could tell him about. "My grandmother's been sick." He sobered at once. "That's terrible." "Yes." Thea fished in her backpack for the small herb pillow she'd put there this morning. Then she hesitated. "Er ic ... is there somewhere we could go to talk alone? Just for a few minutes ? I want to give you something."

He blinked, then waggled his eyebrows. "Nothing I'd like better. And I know just the place. Come on." He led her across campus to a large building tha t stood apart from the rest of the complex. It had a shabby look and the pa int on the double doors was blistered. A banner announced in orange and bla ck letters: don't miss the .ultimate Halloween party. "What is this?"

Eric, who was opening the door, put a finger to his lips. He glanced inside, then beckoned to her.

"It's the old gym. They're supposed to be renovating it as a student center, b ut there isn't enough money." He snorted. "Probably because they're spending too much on renovating downtown. Now- what was it you wanted to give me?"

"It ..." Thea stopped dead as she took in her surroundings. All thoughts of th e herb pillow vanished. "Eric-. . ." She stared around her, feeling a slow wav e of sickness roil through her stomach. "Is this ... for the Halloween party?"

"Yeah. They do a couple fund-raisers a semester here. This is kind of a weird one-but they did it last year and it brought in a lot."

Not weird, Thea thought numbly. Weird doesn't begin to describe it.

Half the room was empty, just scuffed hardwood floor, a broken basketball backboard, and exposed pipes in the ceiling. But the other half looked lik e a cross between a medieval dungeon and a casino. She walked slowly towar d it, her footsteps echoing.

Wooden booths of various sizes were decorated with orange and black crepe paper and fake spider webs. Thea read one banner after another.

"Fortune telling . . . Drench a Wench . . . Bobbing for Shrunken Heads?"

"It's bobbing for apples really," Eric said, seeming embarra.s.sed. "And the g ambling isn't real. You do it all with goblin money and exchange it for prizes."

Thea couldn't stop looking at the booths. Wheel of Torture: a money wheel w ith a dummy dressed like a witch spreadeagled in the middle. b.l.o.o.d.y Blackja ck. Devil's Darts ... a dart game with a cork witch as a target.

And there were witch figures everywhere. Cloth witches on nooses hanging from the overhead pipes.

Cardboard witches leering from the tops of booths. Paper witches dancing on the wall. They were fat, skinny, white-haired, gray-haired, cross-eyed, sq uint-eyed, warty, funny, scary . . . and ugly. That was the one thing they all had in common.

That's what they think of us. Humans. All humans . . .

"Thea? Are you okay?"

Thea whirled. "No, I am not okay." She gestured around the room. "Will you look at this stuff? Do you really think it's funny? Something to party ab out?" Hardly aware of what she was doing, she spun him around to face The Iron Maiden-a wooden replica with rubber spikes.

"What are people going to do? Pay to step into that? Don't they realize that it used to be real? That real people were put in it, and that when the door c losed, those spikes went into them, into their arms and their stomachs and th eir eyes ..." She couldn't go on.

Eric looked as stricken as Dani had earlier. He'd never seen her like this. "The a-look, I'm sorry . . . I never thought ..."

"Or that." Thea gestured toward the Wheel of Torture, the words tumbling ou t. "Do you know how they really put a witch on the wheel? They broke every bone in her body so they could just thread her arms and legs through the sp okes like spaghetti. Then they put the wheel on a pole and left her up ther e to die. . . ."

Eric's face contracted with horror. "G.o.d, Thea ..."

"And these pictures--the witches who got tortured didn't have green skin and evil eyes. They weren't monsters, and they didn't have anything to do with devils. They were people."

Eric reached out for her, but she spun away, staring at a particularly ugly ha g on the wall. "Do you think this place is all right for a party? That this is good fun? That witches look like that?" She flung out an arm, close to being hysterical. "Well, do you?"

In her mind's eye she could see the world: Dani and Blaise and all other wit ches on the left; Eric and the students here and all other humans on the rig ht, both races hating and despising each other-and herself somewhere in the middle.

Eric caught her shoulders. "No, I don't think it's all right. Thea, will you jus t listen to me for a second?"

He was almost shaking her-but she could see that there were tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

"I feel awful," he said. "I never thought about taking this stuff seriously-an d that's my own stupid fault, and I know it's not an excuse. But now that you say it, I do see how terrible it is, and I'm sorry. And I never should have br ought you here, of all people ..."

Thea, who had been starting to relax, stiffened again. "Why me 'of all peop le'?" she demanded.

He hesitated a moment, then met her eyes and spoke quietly. "Because of your grandma's store. I mean, I know it's just herbs and positive thinking- but I also, know that in the old days, there would have been somebody out there pointing a finger and calling her a witch."

Thea relaxed again. It was okay for people to think Gran was a witch-if by "witch" they meant someone who talked to plants and mixed up homemade hair tonic. And she couldn't disbelieve Eric, not under t he intensity of those steady green eyes. But she saw an opportunity and sei zed it. "Yeah, and they'd probably have burned me for giving you this prese nt," she said, opening her hand. "And you'd probably have been scared or su perst.i.tious if I asked you to keep it with you all the time: you'd think I was putting some kind of a spell on you-"

"I wouldn't think anything," he said firmly, taking the little green pillow from her. It smelled like fresh New Hampshire pine needles, which was what w as in it-mainly. She'd also added a few protective herbs and an Ishtar cryst al, a golden beryl in a star cut with thirty-three facets, carved with the n ame of the Babylonian mother G.o.ddess. The charm was the best she could do to help him fend off Blaise's spells.

"I would just kiss it and put it my pocket and never let it out of my sight,"

Eric went on. And he did, stopping after the kiss to say, "Mm, smells good."

Thea couldn't help smiling at him. She chanced saying, "Actually, it's just to remind you of me."

"It will never leave my pocket," he said solemnly.

Well, that worked out nicely.

"Look, there's probably something we can do about this place," Eric said, glancing around again. "The school board doesn't want any bad publicity.

Why don't I run and borrow a camera from the journalism cla.s.s, and we ca n take some pictures so people will see what we mean when we complain?"

Thea glanced at her watch. "Why not? I think I've already missed French."

He grinned. "Back in a minute."

When he was gone, Thea wandered slowly among the silent booths, lost in her own thoughts.

For a few minutes there, when I was ranting, I almost told him the truth. And then later I thought maybe he'd figured it all out for himself.

And would that be so terrible? He's already under sentence of death just because I love him; it doesn't matter if he knows or not.

But if he did know . . . what would he say? Witches may be okay in the abstr act-but does he really want one for a girlfriend?

The only way to find out was to tell him.

She leaned against a ladder and gazed sightlessly at an oilcloth lying benea th a hanging noose. Of course, it was probably all academic anyway. What kin d of future could they possibly have . . . ?

Suddenly Thea realized what she was looking at.

Underneath that oilcloth was a shoe-and the shoe was connected to something . Subconsciously, she'd been a.s.suming it was another witch dummy . . . but now she focused. And she felt the hairs on her arms lift and tingle.

Why would they dress a witch in black Nike high-tops?

CHAPTER 9.

I he shoe was so incongruous that for an instant Thea thought her eyes must be playing tricks on her. It was the atmosphere here-the dim, echoing room with all its macabre booths. If she looked away and then looked back . . .

It was still there.

I should wait, I should call somebody. This could be something terrible. There are human authorities; I should at least wait for Eric. ...

Thea found herself moving in dreamlike, slow speed.

She took the edge of the oilcloth between finger and thumb and lifted it just an inch or so.

There was a leg attached to the shoe.

A blue-jeaned leg. Not part of a dummy. And another shoe.

Horror and adrenaline washed over Thea. And, strangely, that helped. Her first thought was. It's a person and she may be hurt. She went into emergency mode, slamming a wall between herself and he r fear.

Hang on, are you okay, just let me see . . .

She pulled the rest of the oilcloth off, tugging to get it free. She saw legs, a body, curled fingers clutching the sleeve of a black-dressed witch dummy . .

Then she saw the head and she reeled backward, both hands pressed over her mouth. She'd only gotten a glimpse, but the picture was burned into her m ind.

Blue-gray face, hideously swollen. Grotesquely bulging eyes. Tongue like a sausage protruding from between black lips . . .

Thea's knees gave out.