Chapter 25
Dying for the second time was a lot less painful than Arthur thought it would be.
Or at least, he assumed he was dying. There was a rushing in his ears that couldn’t possibly be blood and a weightless sense of being outside himself that he associated mostly with anxiety attacks.
It felt altogether like he was caught between undeath and true death like a held sneeze, stuck in uncertain anticipation.
And then, he wasn’t stuck anymore. He was moving before he had a chance to think it through, his arm suddenly free of his restraints.
He grabbed Martha’s wrist with only millimeters to spare before the stake connected with Sal’s back.
She gaped at him, but recovered quickly, pulling away with strength that had to be magically enhanced.
That or Martha had been drinking a lot of Chet’s fitness potions.
Arthur still managed to knock the stake out of her grip. It rolled away, under the bed.
“Well, then,” Martha said, scrambling for a long candle lighter on the dresser. “Let’s see how well you two hold up against fire.”
“Stop!”
Arthur, still flat on his back with Sal heavy on his chest, strained to see who had spoken.
A shadow fell over them from the doorway to the bedroom and he caught sight of a stranger—a white woman with wavy brown hair and green eyes.
She looked to be around forty and wore a dark red dress with long sleeves and chunky black boots, an inappropriate ensemble for the weather if ever he’d seen one.
“Rumble!” Sal exclaimed. “I’d know my daughter anywhere!”
Her features were indeed familiar, though Arthur recognized their similarity to Brody’s, not the cat’s. Wilhelmina was here, in the flesh (as opposed to fur).
“You’re not going to kill anyone else,” Wilhelmina said to a stunned Martha, who had stumbled back against the foot of the bed in her surprise.
“I disagree.” Martha shook off Wilhelmina’s sudden arrival, standing straighter and regaining her composure. It was a shame to go up against a murderer who was so good at thinking on her feet.
The temperature dropped around them and a spear of ice coalesced in Martha’s grasp before sailing across the room toward Wilhelmina at an unsettling speed.
Wilhelmina dodged, leaving the frozen instrument stuck in the wall behind her, where it began to melt immediately.
Wilhelmina raised her arms, and the room filled with fog so thick Arthur could hardly see Sal, who was still tied atop him.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Arthur whispered.
“How? I can’t see!” Sal whined. “And I can’t move! How on earth did you get free? This scarf is like a vise!”
“Let’s try rolling.” The magic binding the scarf around them still wouldn’t budge, but his left arm was free, at least. He pushed off the ground, hoping to move them closer to the door.
Sal joined his efforts, though unfortunately he couldn’t do much besides aggressively flop and grunt in a manner that sounded terribly inappropriate.
It probably didn’t look much better, though blessedly no one could see them through the fog.
Soon, they’d managed to scoot a few feet toward the door, and now Sal was beneath him.
“Which way is out?” Sal asked through a mouthful of Arthur’s shirt.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the room, with thunder following immediately. It boomed so loudly, it hurt Arthur’s ears. He hoped Wilhelmina was holding her own against Martha, and that no totally innocent vampires would get caught in the crossfire.
“I think it’s this way,” Arthur said, his own words muffled in the aftermath of the thunder. He motioned in the direction he deemed best from the brief visual he’d gotten from the lightning. The fog was still quite heavy, though it seemed to be dissipating a little as they moved.
They rolled again, Sal managing to keep his commentary to little squeaks of frustration. They landed next to the dog carrier. Al Capone yelped at them anxiously.
“We’ve got to let him out,” Arthur said, reaching for the zipper with his free hand. “He could get hurt.”
“You’re such a softie,” Sal said fondly.
As soon as the carrier was open, Al Capone darted away through the fog.
“Let’s follow him—” Arthur began, but a crash interrupted his words.
A wall of the room blasted outward, hit by some powerful spell. The fog fled, replaced by warm summer air and moonlight. The bulb above them had gone out. Arthur gaped, looking around for either witch.
Martha still stood beside her bed, and Wilhelmina was in the doorway to the room. There was a cut on Martha’s cheek, and Wilhelmina’s hair was singed. They were both panting.
“How could you?” Wilhelmina asked, her voice breaking. “Lola was an innocent!”
“It’s Ambrosia’s fault.” Martha clenched her jaw. “All of this is because she couldn’t stand being weak, and you couldn’t bear to admit her coven is a sham.”
Arthur elected to stay silent, and even Sal seemed to come to the same conclusion. They couldn’t risk drawing Martha’s attention now, not when she was so eager to toss around deadly magic.
“Ambrosia’s awful, but seriously, Martha? You sicced her on my son?”
“Maybe you should’ve been here to protect him.”
“Wow, that’s low. I was a cat.” Wilhelmina pinched the ends of her hair, extinguishing an ember. “Also, you killed someone! Ambrosia’s done plenty, but pretty sure she’s never actually committed murder.”
“It was the only way to stop her!” Martha growled.
“Okay, well…that’s not even remotely true. I was going to expose her. I had a plan. Why couldn’t you just be patient?”
“Oh, why couldn’t I just…wait around for Ambrosia to steal my magic a third time? It’s not like you could actually do anything about it because, like you said, you were a cat!”
Wilhelmina let out a loud groan of frustration. “That doesn’t give you the right to murder someone!”
Martha actually cackled.
“Not beating the wicked-witch allegations,” Sal muttered.
Wilhelmina heaved a sigh. “You chose to kill Lola. You can’t undo that, but you can choose to stop now.”
In response, Martha cast a spell that split the floor of her own house. The crack raced toward Wilhelmina, who narrowly jumped out of the way before it could swallow her.
“Maybe we should roll for the exit,” Sal whispered, nodding toward the huge hole in the room.
“Excellent notion,” Arthur agreed. When even Sal was being prudent, one knew it was time to leave the premises.
They inched slowly across the floor, moving so little that they evaded Martha’s notice.
It was exhausting work, but when they reached the hole that would allow them to spill out into the garden, Brody’s face appeared around the edges of splintered wood and drywall.
He was crouching to avoid being spotted, Al Capone held under his arm.
“It isn’t safe here,” Arthur hissed. “Leave!”
“Not without you two, and not without my mom,” Brody responded, creeping closer.
Errant bits of spells shot overhead, but Martha and Wilhelmina had moved to another room of the house.
The sounds of shattering dishes indicated they were probably somewhere in the kitchen.
A blender roared to life, then cut off with the same ferocity, the air filling with the resonance of broken glass raining down on hardwood floors.
“It’s too dangerous.” Arthur wiggled harder, trying to break the spell that held them tight. “She could return any moment.”
“Martha, or my mom?” Brody asked with a little grin. “Either would be bad. Mom told me to wait down the street, but no way was I missing this!”
“How’d she turn back into a human?” Sal asked, as if this was the correct venue and time for such a thing.
“I did it.” Brody was smug as he shifted Al Capone to his other arm. “And I bet I can figure out the counter for this…scarf spell.”
Arthur wasn’t so confident. “Go get help. We’ll be all right.”
Al Capone began barking. And he didn’t stop. Not even when Brody shushed him. Arthur imagined the excitement would be a lot for a little corgi. The excitement was a lot for a little vampire, too.
“What are you doing to my dog?” Martha shouted from the other room.
“Go!” Arthur urged, but Brody continued to murmur under his breath, trying out spells to free them. Whether Martha’s magic was too strong or Brody’s knowledge of counterspells too rudimentary, Arthur couldn’t tell, but nothing seemed to work.
A scream rent the air. Brody looked up, face paling. “That’s Mom.”
None of them had time to react to that revelation before Martha stalked into the room.
She was dragging Wilhelmina behind her, arms and legs bound in flowering vines.
The scent of blood filled the air, putting Arthur on edge even more, and he noticed a wound on the side of Wilhelmina’s head, blood slowly seeping into her hair.
“Let the dog go,” Martha said, voice strained, “or I’ll kill your mother, then you.”
“Jeez, lady, relax—” Brody yelped as a little icicle shot close enough to graze his skin. “Okay, okay, I’ll let the dog go. But you have to release everyone else first.”
Martha did not seem to be in a mood for negotiating. “I’ll give you until the count of three, then everyone’s dead. One.”
“If I let this corgi go, you’ll kill us anyway.” Brody held the dog up like a shield. It barked happily, tail wagging as if this were a grand game and not a life-or-death situation.
Arthur pulled at the scarf, but he was getting nowhere.
How had he gotten his left arm free? There were no rips in the fabric, and the magic was still going strong.
He tried to remember, but everything about that moment was fuzzy.
Sal had been inches away from death. Perhaps it had only been some miracle of adrenaline.
He’d heard of other cases like it—people who lifted cars off of loved ones after a car crash or pulled themselves out of caves with broken limbs.
But what he had done was no feat of strength.
The magic in the scarf would not budge for all the physical effort in the world. It was magic, after all.