“Well, well—”
I kicked the door right in her face.
She flew backwards into the sink and smashed her head into the mirror. Sometimes, I couldn’t control my strength. Fear of dying in a public bathroom will do that to a gal. I hauled Taran up by her elbow while her latest fan seemed down for the count. The cracks in the mirror spiderwebbed from her bleeding skull. I secretly hoped that since it was technically her head that broke the mirror, the bad luck fell on her.
When Sandy lurched from the sink and a second, equally pissed-off version of herself appeared to block the door leading out, I knew I was very much mistaken. Taran’s head whipped back and forth between them. “It’s the same person,” I snarled. She smelled the same, looked the same, and also bled from her forehead the same way. The only difference was she’d divided her magic in two.
Taran gathered her power once more. “I’ll take the bitch at the door. You take the bitch at the sink.”
Sandy—both of them—surprised me by laughing. “Mures,” they both spat.
That one pretty much got lost in translation. I prowled toward her. My claws shot from my fingers like bullets from a chamber. She didn’t move. She didn’t gather her magic. She didn’t blink. She simply laughed. Either she’d hit her head a little too hard or she didn’t fear us. The latter scared the hell out of me. My beast remained sure we could take her. My human half knew something sinister lurked beneath, bubbling with a touch of dark and a spoonful of evil.
A transparent heaviness filled the air, reeking of garbage and festering meat. The ten plastic soap dispensers lining the wall of the mammoth counter exploded one by one, like a row of bottles being shot to bits. Paper towels fluttered in the air around us like birds. The pipes beneath us clanged and a toilet flushed for no reason.
I hated when my human side was right.
I heard the first squeak and the scratch of tiny clawed feet followed by a few more. A lot more. Taran heard it, too. In her panic, she blasted a bolt of lightning into her psycho witch, taking out the obviously evil tampon dispenser in the far wall. Chunks of cardboard and cotton pelted me in the hair and back, and still I heard the squeaks getting louder, getting closer, getting scurrier.
The Sandy Taran attempted to fight had somehow appeared on the sink next to her other half. She sat on the counter with her legs crossed, swinging them merrily as the result of her enchantment reached a creepy crescendo.
The large brass drain near the sinks began to stir. “Taran. We need to get out of here.”
“Damn it, Celia—”
I clutched her arm when the brass drain tipped and a pink whiskered nose poked through. Mures. . . . Rats.
Chapter Two
One rat, two rats, three—oh, crap. I slammed my protective shields around me before the creatures could send me into a full-grown seizure. Animals and I, well, let’s just say we mixed a little too well. They’d touch me. I’d turn into them. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t welcomed. And it typically took me hours to days to return to my human form.
I shoved us back as a swarm of black, white, brown, and red vermin spilled from the drain as if rammed forward, squeaking and snapping their tiny fangs. They swept over the tile in a wave of fur. Taran screamed. I kicked the first few that leapt onto my legs, sending their bodies to crunch into the walls as Taran let loose her lightning. Their small creepy bodies slid down the tiled walls, leaving splotches of red. I believed them dead . . . until they joined to form several more versions of Sandy—bleeding from identical gashes on their heads and cackling. Let’s not forget the cackling. It wouldn’t be the same without the cackling.
My head whipped toward the original Sandy versions near the sink. The fuzzy critters hung from them like live coats of fur, their little na**d tails flicking with delight.
That’s when I knew she was messing with us. Real rats or not, to some extent the spell targeted fear and created an illusion.
Emme and Shayna’s screams announced their arrival just as the overhead vent flung open and I was showered with tiny claws and warm fur. I wrenched them off me, feeling my skin crawl, panic pounding my heart like an ax. Behind me, Shayna grabbed the remains of the metal tampon dispenser. As the lights flickered back on, Shayna released the magnitude of her gift, transforming the warped metal into two deadly machetes. She grunted and swung her thin arms, hacking into the tiny fuzzy bodies while the witches’ laughter escalated with glee.
Emme stood on the toilet seat, pushing back the rats with her telekinetic force. She shook violently, managing to keep her concentration until more rats swam up from the toilet bowl and spilled out between her legs. A white rat drenched with water scurried up her leg. She jerked hard, flinging it into the air and toward Shayna’s blade. Shayna severed the mini-beast in two, splashing me with its warm blood.
Someone pounded on the door. “Ladies. Open the door. You’re not allowed to lock that shit up.”
I wasn’t a screamer. But I almost screamed then. Three versions of Sandy circled me, tossing armfuls of their little friends at me like confetti. I swatted one away into Shayna. It fastened onto her ponytail and found a way into her tunic. She shrieked and fell against the wall, mashing the rat against her back.
Shayna’s blue eyes widened and her skin paled as the horde crawled over her thin frame, enveloping her like a blanket. I kicked my way through the now knee-deep floor of flicking tails and ripped them off her. The witches’ manic laugh spilled into my ears, making it hard to keep my focus. But I supposed that was the point.
“You need to get the hell out. There’s a line.” The man pounded harder and his voice boomed. “Open the damn door!”