Page 34 of Bewicched

They stopped walking and waited.

“Grab me if I start to go down. I don’t want to get all dirty,” I said to Declan.

He grinned. “On it.”

I took off the same glove I’d removed in Christopher’s bedroom and touched my index finger—the one I’d touched the sheet with—to my thumb. I was hit with the panic again, the silhouette in the window. It was like a punch to the chest, but my knees didn’t buckle this time. Revisiting a vision seemed to give it less power. That was interesting.

Rubbing my fingers in little circles, I tried to calm the Christopher in my head, thereby slowing my own heartbeat.Where did he take you?I got a flash—the briefest of visions—and it had me bolting into the woods, stomach heaving. Gentle hands held my hair back, my abdominals unable to stop convulsing, even though there was nothing left but foamy spittle.

“Is she okay?”

“Don’t know yet,” Declan said, sounding annoyed that they’d rushed forward, crowding us.

When my stomach stopped quivering, I stood. Declan handed me a handkerchief to wipe my mouth—who the hell carries around handkerchiefs?—and then lifted my naked hand by the wrist of my hoodie, my abandoned glove in his other hand.

My relief at seeing my glove was drowned out as I watched slices cut open on the back of my hand. It stung, but not the way sliced flesh would. At least I didn’t think so, never having been carved up. Perhaps it was the adrenaline.

It finally got through the shock that the cops were gasping and muttering.

“I don’t—This has never happened before,” I said, lifting my head. The four police officers took a step back. Declan, however, moved forward. He yanked his sleeve over his hand before tilting my chin up.

I wiped at my mouth again, suddenly self-conscious. “What?”

“Your eyes are bloody and there’s a deep cut down your cheek.”

I flinched away, my heart in my throat. I lifted my other hand and Detective Rosen made a quiet noise of distress. Blood was blooming through my glove.

Staring at my hands, my brain froze. What was happening to me?

“Her chest,” Officer Cross breathed.

My gaze snapped to my chest and the thin lines of blood staining my white sweatshirt. I held up trembling bloody hands. “I need you to move back. I can’t figure out what’s happening to me with an audience. I need a minute.”

“We need to get you medical help,” Captain Hauer snapped. “Rosen, get her bandaged and check both of them for blades.”

Declan growled, prompting Officer Cross to rest his hand on his firearm. I stepped in front of the pissed-off werewolf, grateful my own rage was clearing away the terror.

“First of all, fuck you,” I said, a bloody finger pointing at Hauer. “You have no right to accuse either of us of lying and staging this. I’m here because you need me. You couldn’t find him. Had no idea what had happened to him. In one day, I’ve given you more information than you’d discovered in weeks of searching. So, again, fuck you.”

“Miss Corey,” Detective Hernández began.

“No. You, I like, but I’m not going to stand here, out in the fucking woods where this little psycho killer is probably watching me, bleeding from wounds that match Christopher’s, and listen to this asshole question my integrity.”

“Your cheek,” Rosen said.

“What about it?” I rubbed at it with the sleeve of my hoodie, sick of these people gawking at me.

“It stopped bleeding,” Hernández said. “There’s no cut, not even a scar.”

“Because I’m not him. I wasn’t sliced by a psychopath experimenting with torture.” I blew out a breath and dropped my head, my hair a wild curtain between me and them. Staring at the purple and green paint spattered across my sneakers, I tried to find the stillness and the focus.

I’d seen it before the vomiting. I knew where he was.

I slid the glove back on my bare hand before stuffing both in the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie. “He’s in an abandoned bomb shelter. It’s about a mile down this path and maybe a quarter of a mile north. When you reach a downed pine tree blocking the path, you cut left.”

I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. “It looks like a mound of earth covered in branches and leaves. On top, half buried in the dirt and pine needles, you’ll find Spider-Man, one of Christopher’s superheroes. He thought that was funny, Spider-Man sitting on top of the horror and doing nothing. The door on the side is under Ironman.”

Rubbing my forehead, I continued. The headache was like a spike behind the eyes. “He has anatomy charts ripped from library books taped to the walls. And knives, lots of knives. He’s been stealing them for years, dreaming of using them. The power he’d feel. The control. Life and death were his to grant or deny. All his previous experiments are in there with Christopher.

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