Page 15 of Bewicched

Detective Hernández stepped back. “I put a cold cloth on your forehead.” She cleared her throat. “You passed out and were in distress, crying in a high-pitched voice and then choking. I was just about to call the paramedics when you came around.”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting up in the chair and taking the wet rag off my head. “I appreciate this. I would have warned you not to touch me if I’d realized that was going to happen.”

I stood and took the cloth back to the kitchen. “I’m just so tired. My defenses are low.”

“Warn me about what?” Detective Hernández stood with her hands on her hips, looking ready for whatever I threw at her.

“I pick up on things through touch.” I held up my gloved hands. “I don’t touch people because I don’t want to hear their thoughts.”

“Oh.” She moved farther away, glancing to the side at the painting that so interested her. “What did you hear?”

“Um.” I went back and sat, gulping down my grape soda. “Izzy and Lili think I’m the real deal, but Andie isn’t sure. She’s more of a believer than you, but she worries how the guys at the station will react to it, especially as a Latina detective in a mostly white male precinct, there’s already some pushback.”

The color drained from her face.

“Sorry. It’s why I’m always so careful with long pants, sleeves, and gloves. I don’t want people’s private business in my head. Since it’s there, though, I don’t want younotto know what I heard.”

Nodding, she finally said, “I see.” She glanced back at the painting. “My mom says we havebrujasin the family, but I’ve never met any.”

“We’re everywhere,” I said with a laugh. I hated that I was making her so uncomfortable. We weren’t friends in high school or anything, but it was a small school and I remembered her being one of those rare cool kids who was a really nice person.

“Okay, well.” She moved toward the door, ready to shitcan this psychic idea.

“He was lured out of his bed.” If I had to live through the vision, she might as well hear what I had learned.

She stilled and then grabbed a small notebook and pen from her tweed blazer and started writing.

“It was in the middle of the night. The person—male—woke up the child, offering to show him his fort.”

“Fort?” Brow furrowed, she studied me. “He said a fort? Was this an adult?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, no. I’m not positive, but I got the impression he was a teenager. The little boy—Christopher!” I finally got his name. “He didn’t want the bigger kid to think he was a baby, so when the kid started to leave, Christopher asked him to wait. The little boy was afraid of the dark but wanted to see the fort the big kid had been telling him about.”

“What’s the big kid’s name?”

I shook my head again. “I don’t have it. He’s harder to see. I don’t know if my mind shies away from the darkness or what.” I finished the soda while she scribbled. “I’ve had a lot of years of visions and nightmares to come up with theories, but they’re just theories.”

I paused, waiting to see if she wanted to hear it. When she nodded, I continued, “I’m not a black wicche or a sorcerer. I think as people move further down the evil spectrum, they move further from my grasp. I see them, feel them, but I can’t know them the way I can the Christophers or Robs of the world.” I shrugged. “It’s a work in progress, but it feels right.”

She looked down at her notebook and then back up at me. “Black witches and sorcerers?”

“Things you don’t need to worry about.” I was going to give this poor woman a nervous breakdown.

“Until I do,” she said, one eyebrow raised.

“Until you do.”

She gestured to the painting with her notebook. “If I took you there, right there in the painting, could you tell me more? Because I have no teens on my radar. Christopher was abducted two nights ago. Their property butts up against forest. The mom has said that Christopher liked to go for walks and play in the forest. He never strayed far from home. He just liked taking his superhero dolls into the forest to play.”

“Spider-Man,” I murmured.

“What?”

“He has a Spider-Man night-light by his bedroom door.” I didn’t want to do this. I really did not want to live through that child’s death, and I was almost positive he was dead.

“Please.” The detective looked spooked but resolved.

I opened my mouth to say no, but she cut me off.

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