This choice: Pretend that the voodoo is responsible. • Go Back...Chapter #34Katy Takes Charge by: Seuzz   It takes you a long moment to realize what Katy is suggesting. "Will!" she finally shouts when you only stare at her, and points at the finely executed statue of Hannah Westrick that is sitting behind the wheel of the SUV. "That's what Stephanie and them did to Hannah last night! When they—!"
"Wait wait wait wait wait!" you yelp. "What are you—? How did Hannah get out here?"
"I called her," Katy says. She eyes swell up and her lips puff into a quivering frown. "I wanted to see if she was okay after what happened last night! So I asked her to meet me out here, and she asked if you were going to be here, and I said yes because I thought maybe you would be, that I'd call you anyway to come help check up on her. Well, she got here, and—"
Katy swallows hard and holds something up. Only now do you realize that she's been holding a mask all this time.
"She seemed like she was okay," Katy continues, "only she was mad about the thing last night. But I thought I should check on her anyway. I remember you told me that you put a mask on her that was mind-controlling her. So I decided to try taking it off her to see if that made a difference, and— And—!"
She bursts out crying and points at Hannah.
Oh Jesus, you think. She really does think the voodoo spell did that Hannah.
You've no idea what exactly her reasoning is, but you can sort of guess. Dominique Hughes (another of Stephanie's friends) came out of a bedroom dressed in an old-fashioned silk gown, wearing contact lenses that turned her eyes a milky white, like a blind woman's. While chanting some kind of Creole curse, she hurled a fistfuls of dark earth at Hannah, while from another angle Meghan surreptitiously lit and tossed some paper cartridges of flash powder that Caleb had made up.
Dirt plus fire. It's not so different from the stuff you used in the spell that really did turn Hannah into this ... thing. The spell might even have used some of the same chemicals that Caleb's flash powder used. And for sure Katy has no better idea for how Hannah could have been turned into a grayish-white stone statue.
And this, you realize, gives you perfect cover for hiding your own responsibility for Hannah's current condition.
"Oh my God," you murmur, and put your arms around her. She snuffles and cries into the front of your shirt as you hold her to your chest.
* * * * *
"It's not your fault," you tell Katy after she has recovered herself. "It's not Stephanie's fault or any of their fault either," you assure her. "They were just— They just thought they were throwing dirt and firecrackers at her. They didn't know that she was— I mean," you hastily correct yourself. "They didn't know it was magic, or that there was some other kind of magic around." Flop sweat stands out on your forehead. "It was just a really unlucky accident."
"But then it's still our fault," Katy insists. "For doing the mind-control thing to her."
"You didn't have anything to do with that," you tell her. "I'm the one who did that. You didn't even know I did it!"
"But I put you up to it. Sort of." Katy hangs her head. "I wanted to make a mask of her so that we could— Oh!"
You've been leaning against the side of the old school all this time, and Katy jumps up now and kicks the ground.
"This stupid fight! This stupid feud!" she fumes. "Stephanie and Hannah fighting over—! God!"
"Marc Garner?" you say. "They both want to be his, uh, girlfriend?"
"Yes! Stephanie does, but Hannah— And I don't even know that she did anything! I think Marc just asked her out before Stephanie could— Oh!" Her eyes go very wide, and the blood drains from her face.
"What?"
Katy doesn't answer, but rushes back over to her car. You follow.
"Can you take care of Hannah?" Katy asks you as she starts her car. "I know I shouldn't just run off like this, but Marc and Stephanie—" She bites her lip. "I think I should go talk to her!"
"About what?"
"About Marc! Because he's going to be pissed at her!" Katy rolls the window up and puts the car in reverse. You watch as she drives off.
Which is a relief, actually. The whole time you were comforting her, you were terrified that she'd try putting Hannah's mask on and would get the memories of what you did to her.
But now you've got time to prevent that from happening.
* * * * *
After the spell that turned Hannah into a statue came the spell that you described to Katy as a "mind control" spell. It's not quite that, if you understand it correctly. It creates a paste that gets applied to the inside of a mask, and then inside the mask you have to burn some of your own hair. The result is a portable lackey. If you put the mask onto yourself (so the book seems to imply; but the Latin is so weird and the translator so unhelpful) then you can wear it the way you do a regular mask, as a disguise. But if someone else puts on the mask, it turns them into the person under the mask but it also turns them into a lackey that will have to obey you.
The last thing you want to do is to turn Katy—your girlfriend—into a lackey, but after the lies you've been telling her, it might be a good idea to give yourself some insurance. The paste that you made yesterday you put into your own mask, and burned your own hair inside it. Now you make up some more paste and put it inside Hannah's mask, and again burn some of your hair inside it. Now, if Katy puts it on, she will turn into a lackey. But you'll be able to take it off her, and it will prevent her learning what you did to Hannah.
Yesterday, before the party, you summoned Hannah out to the old school, and you shifted her mask onto the petrified Hannah. This was, in part a test, to see if putting Hannah's mask onto Hannah would fix the girl. It didn't, but you found that wherever you put the mask, the resulting lackey would obey you, and it seemed safer to hide the petrified Hannah under the mask than inside the basement, so you left it on the petrified girl. Now you put the treated mask back onto the thing inside her car. The mask vanishes, and color washes over the grayish-white thing behind the wheel. Hannah Westrick blinks and starts when she sees you. "What the—?"
"Who's your boss?" you ask her, cautiously.
"You are," she grinds out from between pursed lips. "Where'd that girl go?"
"Never mind. Um, you should just go home or something."
"Oh, should I?" Hannah asks with barely veiled sarcasm. "What's the 'something' that I should do?"
"Just go back to what you were doing before. Just be Hannah."
"Whatever." She starts the car with a snort and turns it around toward the street. You have misgivings about sending the thing out without supervision. But it's not like you had anything to do with the real girl, so maybe it's more realistic if you send her away and try to forget about her.
Besides, you're pretty sure Katy will turn out to be a handful.
* * * * *
You're downstairs in the basement, puzzling at the next spell in the book—there seems to be something wrong with the page—when you get a text from Katy asking you to meet her up at the mall. How come? She just says, Please? so you lock up and make the thirty-minute drive to the other side of the city.
She's in Larsen's Department Store, in the women's athletic section, when you arrive, but she has to text you directions to find her, for you'd never have found her if she hadn't. That's because (like the other day), Katy Conlee is nowhere in evidence, but Stephanie Wyatt is there, larger than life. "Hey, I need you give me a ride," she says as you approach.
"Oh my God, what is this?"
"I need a ride out to Marc's. The Garners."
"What for?" Suddenly you are wary. Is this Katy in disguise, or the real Stephanie?
Fortunately for your peace of mind, she answers your unspoken question in her next reply. "To talk to him. To fix things between him and Stephanie." She puts her hands on her hips and gives you a look.
Christ, you think as you beckon her to follow her, the more time you spend in that thing the more like her you get.
And it's not just the attitude, you realize with a start. She's in a cherry-red polo shirt, white shorts, and brand-new sneakers. She was up here buying herself a "Stephanie Wyatt wardrobe", you realize with some little shock.
"I have to go straighten things out between Stephanie and Marc," she says as she strides out the store. (You have to hustle to keep up.) "He's boiling mad at her, and she doesn't know it and I think she thinks she doesn't care. But she will when she comes down off her high."
"Her high?"
"Yeah, she's still on a high after the thing with Hannah, and she doesn't know that Marc's probably never going to talk to her again. She's going to have to apologize to him. Like, she's going to have to grovel."
"Oh, shit."
"Right. So I'm—"
"No, I know what you're doing, Katy. That's what I'm saying 'Oh shit' about. You're going to apologize for her, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah." She gives you a puzzled look.
"What if we accidentally run into Stephanie?"
"Risk I'm willing to take."
You know how to mitigate the risk, though.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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