Chapter Thirty-seven
I was exhausted. Utterly, completely, to-the-bone exhausted.
Once the portrait had knocked out Beata, the enchantment holding me hostage had broken.
I’d been able to easily bind Beata’s magic.
Not only did I remove her supercharge of power, I contained all of her magic, leaving behind only a thin residue, no more than anyone had.
When she regained consciousness, she was merely a woman in late middle age with traces of her former beauty in her pale eyes and sharp cheekbones, but none of her former glamour.
I reached down and peeled her blouse from her shoulder as she looked up, fear in her eyes. The birthmark was gone.
She walked away. I knew I would never see her again.
When the door closed, I turned to Lise, slumped against the wall. I pressed fingers to her neck. Her heart still beat. “Lise? Lise, wake up.”
Her eyes fluttered open, then closed again.
I knelt next to her. “Lise. Wake up. It’s okay now.”
She struggled to sitting and rubbed her eyes. “What happened?”
I explained how Beata had put a spell on her, but that she’d saved me by dissolving the dome Beata had sealed over me.
“I did that?” she said.
Lise was just coming into her magic. It would take time for it to settle in, and what form it might take, I didn’t know.
“I am so tired.” She pulled herself to standing. She’d tipped up her face and inhaled. “The sulfur is gone. It smells good in here again, like old books and calm.”
“I’m wiped out, too,” I’d said. “Can you make it back to the retreat center alone?”
Now Lise was back at the retreat center for what I guessed would be the deepest sleep she’d ever experienced. As for me, I was so tired that I questioned whether I had even the energy to mount the stairs to my apartment.
Besides that, one tiny thought niggled at me. Beata had said, “You’ll soon discover another surprise.” What could it be? I didn’t have the strength to worry about it. Besides, now that her magic was gone, Beata wouldn’t be able to try any further assaults.
I sank to the floor, next to Marilyn’s fallen portrait. I’d get up soon and go to bed. I simply needed a moment to catch my breath.
The sound of metal on metal broke the silence. Rodney growled low in his throat. Someone was messing with the lock on the kitchen door. Or was it the window in Old Man Thurston’s office on the opposite side of the library? Sounds seemed to come from both directions.
Before I could pull myself to standing, Byron Marshall strode into the atrium, a long zip tie dangling from his belt. I couldn’t breathe. It was if the zip tie were already tightened around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.
He seemed surprised to see me on the floor, but it only stopped him a second. He smiled and crossed the atrium. “Well, well, Josie the librarian.” His expression turned deadly serious. “Give me the key.”
The key. That was one detail I hadn’t yet settled. “I don’t have it.”
He grabbed my collar and yanked me to my feet. “Stop playing around. I saw you take the key.”
Then I understood. This was the “surprise.” When Beata’s magic had vanished, so, too, did the spell of glamour she’d cast on Byron. Now he remembered seeing Tyrone’s room key taken from his van. The thing was, Beata had veiled herself as me. He thought it was me who’d taken the key.
There was no way I could talk myself out of this one.
“If you won’t give me the key, I’ll have to find it myself,” Byron said. His breath was sour with beer.
Even if I had a scintilla of energy left, I wouldn’t be able to wriggle from his grasp. I closed my eyes and willed the books to lend me their strength. They, too, were depleted. I’d wrung them, and myself, dry.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Liar.”
He whipped the zip tie from his belt. This was it, then. I’d vanquished a powerful witch only to be killed by a sociopathic street gangster. Rodney hissed and struck at Byron’s ankles, but he kicked him away.
Byron looped the zip tie around my neck and fed the end through its latch.
“Don’t do this,” I whispered. Rodney yowled.
All at once, Byron’s head jerked, and he released me.
I stumbled back to see Wanda, dressed all in black, delivering a sharp blow to Byron’s skull.
Byron quickly recovered his balance and turned toward her, one arm extended to grab her neck.
If I’d thought Wanda’s flamenco dancing was graceful, it was nothing compared to her kickboxing skills.
She shouted, “Ay- ya !” and kicked high, spun, then delivered a series of one-two punches that made David Carradine in Kung Fu look like an amateur.
Byron was as shocked as I was. Eyes wide, he stumbled sideways.
Almost before I entirely understood what was happening, he lay unconscious on the floor, handcuffed with his own zip tie.
I stared first at him, then at Wanda, her face blackened, a dark stocking cap pulled over her gray hair.
Only her eyeballs showed white. Behind her lay a garbage sack.
“Wanda . . . ?”
She breathed heavily for a moment, then ripped off her cap. “I’m losing my mind.”
“What are you doing here?”
She burst into loud, body-wracking sobs. “I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
I led her to a chair, and she sat, no resistance. Rodney surprised me by jumping into her lap, and Wanda surprised me even more by, still sobbing, petting him.
“I . . . I’m a bad person,” she said. She paused, petting Rodney long enough to pull off a black glove and blow her nose into it.
“You’re a good person,” I said. “You saved my life.” I needed to call the sheriff’s office. Byron wouldn’t stay unconscious for long.
“No, I’m not. I came here to steal books from the kids’ section.” She waved toward the garbage sack.
“Books about cats,” I said.
At that, Rodney jumped from her lap and trotted purposefully from the room.
Wanda nodded in bewilderment. “Yes. And throw them in the river.” Her sobbing quieted, but the tears still flowed. “I’ve completely gone ’round the bend. Who have I become?”
Remembering Duke’s story about her broken engagement, I said, “You’ve been under a lot of stress.”
“That’s no excuse. I jimmied Old Man Thurston’s office window and crawled in. Then I saw you and that man….”
I retrieved a box of tissues from Circulation and handed it to her.
“Somehow,” she said, “seeing him threatening you, it all came to me at once, and I thought, what am I doing? I’m actually breaking into a library to .
. . to steal children’s books.” She looked at me with tearfilled eyes.
“Then, boom! I was angry. Like, really angry. I had some”—she glanced at me—“disappointments lately, and I hadn’t felt a whit of anger.
Just now it all came roaring in.” Her hands flopped to her sides.
“Wow.” She sniffed and, ignoring the box of tissues, honked into her glove again.
She’d sure chosen the right way to express that anger. “Excuse me a moment. Don’t go anywhere.”
As I climbed the service stairs to call 911, I heard my phone chiming, over and over.
I fetched it from the side table and watched text after text flood its screen.
Emotion thickened in my throat as the messages appeared.
I only caught glimpses of them— see you, love you, when, why .
The number on my voicemail box ticked up, too.
All from Sam. Realization dawned. To make my life worse and so build my need for her, Aunt Beata had been blocking Sam’s communication.
Now that she was banished, the spell had snapped.
All those texts and calls had been released.
I ran downstairs, phone in hand, and nearly collided with Sam, also holding his phone. “Sam.”
“Josie,” he said.
I fell into his arms. This was home. The salty smell of his skin, his warm embrace. Complete, utter happiness. I yanked myself away. “Let’s talk. But first, I need you to arrest a murderer.”
I grabbed his hand—that wonderful strong hand— and pulled him into the atrium, where Byron was coming to, his wrists still tightly bound behind him. Wanda stood guard over him, looking like a cross between Johnny Cash and a ninja.
Rodney nosed between us and dropped something on Byron’s chest.
It was Tyrone’s room key.