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Well, Émilie, I told you in the last report I sent that Jo was
going to have to make some friends, with the admittedly risky aim of getting
her murderous admirer out in the open. If she’s seen speaking to friends of the
victim, I reasoned, then we might be able to draw him out. Get him jealous, get
him visible. Charlie Kitson had been kind enough to give us the name of the bar
his murdered underage son used to go to, so I made sure Jo had put some nice
clothes on and a bit of slap and we drove over there.
Jo was a bit nervous in the car, I could tell. She was
scratching at her nails and tugging at her bangs. I told her that she looked
fine and she glared at me. OK, I thought. We hadn’t talked much before leaving
the house. That was OK too. I assumed she knew what she had to do.
It was the first time I’d been around town at night, really.
I only moved here a few weeks ago and since then I’ve made a point of leaving
the house as little as possible. The last time I’d been out at night was the
town meeting I organised at which I told everyone that I was a witch and that
they should leave me alone. That didn’t really work out. It never does. Anyway,
they all look the same to me, these small towns. There are the nice quiet
streets with the big houses, big cars, big front porches, and the big back
gardens and then you take a left and you’re sharing the road with people with
completely different circumstances. But people are all the same to me. Wherever
you go and wherever they come from. Everyone’s the same no matter how much
money you have or how big your house is. Which is why I want them to leave me
alone.
I took a right and saw the petrol station Kitson had told me
about and the bar just behind it. We were close to the edge of town here, I
suppose the kids thought the chances of law enforcement or their parents
bothering to come and find them was pretty slim. A fluorescent red sign above
the door told customers where they were: The Alhambra. There didn’t seem to be
anything particularly Spanish from the outside. Still, I wouldn’t see the
inside for myself.
“So what’s the plan then?” asked Jo, like she didn’t already
know. I turned to face her.
“You go in, you ask around for the names on that list, and
then you talk to them. Use your English accent to charm them. Well, that and
your face. Offer them a cigarette and get them outside. Then we’ll see if the
mystery man shows up.”
“How do you know they smoke?” she asked, and I sniffed.
“They’re underage. Of course they smoke.”
She took my pack of Gitanes and got out in a huff. I watched
her cross the car park, her heels clattering on the tarmac. I’d nearly
forgotten that she’d only been in America for a couple of days. I hadn’t even
asked about jetlag or anything. Which probably meant she was fine, I mean, if I
hadn’t noticed it. Probably. I found a new pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment
and waited for Jo to make friends.
It was about five minutes before she emerged with three
teenage boys and one girl. Even from across the car park I could tell that
they’d all made an effort to look older than they were. All the boys were
wearing shirts and long coats while the girl’s make up was visible from the
car. Only one of them took a cigarette from her. There you go, I thought. I can
be wrong sometimes. I let them talk for a little while, about ten minutes.
There was still no sign of anyone suspicious. Frankly, I was getting bored.
Finally I struck on a way to find out if anyone was paying
attention. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and ran over to where Jo was
standing. She looked up as I approached, as did the teens, a little slower,
admittedly.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted. Jo looked
shocked and unsure of herself. “What do you think you’re doing here? I leave
the house for five minutes and you go straight to a bloody pub and start
drinking! I thought we had agreed that you wouldn’t do this anymore!”
Jo stared, trying to understand what I was doing. I threw
her a bone, as they say.
“I am your mother and you will do what I say! Is one of
these that boy you’ve been seeing?” I practically screamed.
“Whoa, calm down, lady!” exclaimed one of the boys. His
right eye was covered by a lank fringe of brown hair that he shifted with a
movement that I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or some sort of twitch.
“Yeah, you don’t need to shout at her like that!” said the
tallest of the boys. He was wearing a blazer that actually fit him and you
could tell he was the confident one of the group because he wasn’t attempting
to hide any part of his face. Instead his black hair was greased back and there
was a single ring in his right ear. The shorter, rounder boy behind him nodded
in agreement but didn’t seem brave enough to say anything. Only the girl, a skinny little redhead in a leather jacket and short black skirt, seemed
frozen stiff. Until she opened her mouth.
“I know who you are,” she told me. I stopped huffing and
puffing and turned to face her.
“Do you now?” I asked, putting as much ice in my voice as
possible.
“You’re the witch. You’re Eliza Belmont.”
The boys didn’t know my face but they certainly knew my
name. They all took a small step back and stared a little harder. The tall one
jutted his chin at me. “That true? You a witch?” I nodded at him. He turned to
Jo, who looked like she wasn’t sure where she was supposed to go at this point.
“And, what, she’s your mom?”
Jo took a step over to me and turned to face them. “She’s
not my mother but you’ll answer any questions she has.” I was impressed and
didn’t bother trying to hide a smile. So she hadn’t asked them anything. Not
exactly according to plan, but at least she got out of the house.
“Where did your accent go?” asked the short one before
figuring it out for himself and looking at the floor.
“Now,” I said, ignoring the little man’s question. “Last
night, did you see Clyde talk to anyone?”
“We already told the police that we didn’t,” said the girl. “Clyde
left early last night. He said he needed to go home and study.”
“Well it’s nice to see you’re honouring his memory,” I
prodded. Her face dropped and the tall one spoke up again.
“We’re honouring his memory,” he said with all the sincerity
he could muster. I grinned.
“So you didn’t see him talking to a guy you didn’t know,
with straggly dark hair, beard, long coat? No?”
The short one cleared his throat and pointed.
“There’s a guy like that behind you.”
Jo turned first and grabbed my sleeve. I saw a man who fit
the description I’d just given. He stared at us, looking us over one by one.
There was a moment of silence. Even the tall kid couldn’t think of anything to
say.
“Did you get my present, Josephine?” asked the man finally.
Jo whimpered. “I left it where you could find it. Who are these people?”
I tried something risky at this point. Obviously you’re not
supposed to attack without gauging your enemy. But I thought I could get the
drop on him and I didn’t want to hang around in the open any longer than
necessary. So I tried to make his heart explode. It’s a nice trick if you get
it right, there’s relatively little mess, at least that you can see. So I
focused hard. Tried to find his heartbeat.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. He just stared at me,
unblinking. I knew what to do. I grabbed Jo and ran. You don’t get to my age
without learning how to run away from things. Well, not really running, if you
look very closely you can see our feet weren’t touching the ground and we were
going faster than a fifty year old woman and a young lady in high heels really
should have been but we made it to the car and bundled ourselves in.
As I turned the key in the ignition the headlights came on.
The man was walking over to us. In his right hand he held the tall boy by his
skinny neck. Behind him I could see the two other boys crumpled on top of each
other in a heap. The girl ran screaming back to the bar and slammed the door
behind her.
The man stopped about six feet from us. As I was about to
put my foot down he took out a knife and pointed it at Jo.
“I know you understand,” he said, and plunged the knife into
the boy’s face, just under the hairline. He twisted the blade and began to move
it downward, peeling the skin from the boy’s head as he went.
I put my foot down and drove straight at him. He didn’t try
to move out of the way. He just fell under the car and I felt the bump as we
ran him over. I didn’t bother looking behind us. I knew he wouldn’t stay down.
“It won’t have made any difference,” muttered Jo.
“It made me feel better,” I said.
We got home without any further incidents. Jo’s up in her
room and the lights are flickering so I can tell she’s upset. I know we’re
going to have a lot to deal with tomorrow when the police realise we were there
and work up the nerve to ask us why, so I’m going to sign off now and get some
sleep. And try to think about what kind of a monster actually doesn’t have a
heart.
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I hope you enjoyed part 7. We're getting towards the end of the Witch's Bile series now and I'm going to try and post the final few parts a bit more frequently than I have been. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the series so far.
I'm still planning to update the blog with more non-fiction posts so keep your eyes peeled for that. I'm also going to a post asking for title suggestions for short stories as I will be starting that up again soon!
Thanks for reading.
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