find that elephant.” I took the napkin she’d used and drew a picture of where it was in proportion to the house. Although my elephant looked more like a dying beetle than a magnificent beast. I offered the map. “This is where it is. Just maybe ask permission before digging up the current owner’s yard.”
She took the napkin from me in a daze.
“And Belinda,” I said, “your brother knew what that elephant meant to you. Food for thought.”
The server came up. I went ahead and ordered something else, mostly because I felt bad for taking up the table when there was a line outside. In the process, I missed where Belinda hurried off to. Hopefully to dig up an elephant.
I checked my phone for messages from Annette. She was rarely late to anything.
A chair scraped across the floor, and I looked up into the face of James Vogel. He stole Annette’s seat, the burly man barely fitting, and offered me a sneer.
“Yeah, that seat’s taken, actually.”
“By your little curly-haired friend?” He slid his phone across the table.
The screen showed a shot of a woman laying on a dirty blanket, blindfolded and gagged, the restraint so tight it cut into the sides of her mouth.
Annette.
Fear immobilized me. I cradled the phone in both hands, gazing at the photo, when someone reached over me from behind and snapped something onto my wrists.
I frowned at the black rings, two individual bracelets, and then watched as Minerva, the skittish witch from my grandmother’s coven, walked around to stand beside her uncle.
She was young and pretty, even when she bit her nails, like she was doing now. Her dark hair hung in strings over her eyes, her clothes too big for her boney frame. “She can’t do magic in irons,” she said to Vogel. “Even the Puritans knew that.”
“They knew nothing,” I whispered.
According to Ruthie, discovering a charmling in the wild was rather like finding the holy grail in the witch world. We were often held captive by malevolent witches or even warlocks seeking to use us, to use our powers, for their own gain.
But if we were so powerful, if we were so capable, how were we forced to serve others? It made no sense. I glanced at the iron cuffs, wondering in the back of my mind if they would really work on me. If they’d really suppress my powers.
I turned my focus back to Minerva. She wore a look I couldn’t wrap my head around. Had I done something to her? Did her uncle want her to have my powers? Only a female could steal them. Maybe he wanted to control her, but he’d said something earlier about bringing someone back from the dead. Surely, he wasn’t serious.
I sat there, treading in a volatile sea of confusion. Her uncle didn’t have a magic bone in his body. But he did have a sneer that sent my ire skyrocketing to Defcon 1. I wanted to strangle him. I actually wanted to do him real harm. Not for me, but because my best friend, my sister for all intents and purposes, was at his mercy.
I decided to test the legitimacy of the iron cuffs until . . . until I saw what Minerva was searching for. Her fondest wish. Her deepest desire. Her need for justice.
She wanted revenge on the man sitting beside her. He’d killed her aunt. The only woman who’d shown her kindness growing up. The only person in her family who hadn’t made fun of her fascination with the occult. With witchcraft and magic books and spells.
She gazed at me from between her strands of hair. Fear consumed her. So much so, she bit her nails to the quick. Dried blood crusted her cuticles and stained her fingers. Her uncle had coerced her into to helping him, thinking she could bring back his wife from the dead, the wife he’d killed in a moment of anger. If witches had that kind of power, they’d be driving Mercedes and installing helicopter pads. They could name their price.
“You make one sound”—Vogel opened his jacket to show me the butt of a gun—“and your friend is dead. Hear me, girl?”
When I didn’t answer, he took my hand and squeezed it painfully.
I clenched my teeth and fought not to react.
“You hear me?”
I nodded. Just barely.
“Don’t try none of that witch bullshit. There are three cops sitting at that table, and if they get the slightest wind something doesn’t seem right, your friend is counting worms.”