Page 5 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“Who’s your boss?”

“Can’t tell you that.”

“Can you tell me anything?” I asked. “What’s your name?”

“Not that it matters, but it’s Connor. Feel better?”

“That I know the name of my kidnapper? Yes.” I turned a hard right into a gas station, stepping on the gas. I stopped just short of plowing through the wall.

“Stop!” he shouted, trying to yank the wheel. When I stomped on the brake, I threw her in park, wrenched the keys out of the ignition, grabbed my purse, jumped out, and ran for my life, yelling at the top of my lungs.

“He’s trying to kidnap me! Help!Someone, help!”

Several men of the big, strong, pissed-that-someone-was-trying-to-hurt-a-woman variety fell in, blocking Connor to allow me to get inside the store. From the door, I watched as those same men surrounded him, closing ranks.

“My girlfriend gets a little dramatic,” he said in his lame attempt to cover his own behind. Which I had to admit was weird because it sounded like a radio transmission in my head. With only a glass door to separate us, his words should’ve sounded muffled, but they came at me clear as a bright sunny day. And I didn’t like them one bit. Dramatic? Did he really have the nerve to callmedramatic?

Oh, I could show him dramatic. With a great lack of common sense, considering the man kidnapped me and thus I should’vekept as many barriers between us as possible, I pushed open the door to yell, “He’s not my boyfriend. I met him once today at a secondhand store. I think he might be stalking me.”

There might have been some knuckle- and neck-cracking among the men keeping me safe from Connor. The cashier, an older woman who looked at me like this wasn’t the first time she’d seen something like this, handed me a phone. “911,” she said.

I explained the situation the best I could.

“Are you safe?” the dispatcher asked.

“For now. I’m inside. Men are keeping him from entering.”

“Good. Stay inside. Police are on the way.”

She kept me on the line, giving her a play-by-play of the standoff outside.

With my stomach all tied up in knots, the cashier kindly handed me a cup of coffee. I’d swear on a stack of tarot cards that I only turned my head away for a second—a measly, split second—andbam! The yelling and painful screams caught my attention. The cup of hot brew slipped from my fingers, spilling a puddle of brown liquid over the floor as both the cashier and I pressed our faces to the door, peering outside, where those big, strong, angry-on-my-behalf men slumped in a heap on the hot cement.

No Connor to be found.

That was when the police showed, sirens blazing. And just my luck, the angry police detective had to be the one to answer my call for help. Great. What could be odder than a failed kidnapping attempt, a dogpile of large protector-type men out cold, and a detective angry I breathed air? Well, that could only be the giant black hound the size of a grizzly running top speed away from the scene. I’d hate to be the animal control officer sent out to trap him.

“What are you staring at?” the detective asked after snapping his fingers in my face to get my attention.

I pointed in the direction of the dog. “Uh… the giganticdog.”

He turned his head the way I pointed, squinting his eyes and covering his hand like a visor to shield his eyes from the sun. “What dog?”

“What do you mean what dog? It’sright there?” I pointed again. “He’s running between the trees and that building.”

The man frowned even harder at me, a feat I didn’t think possible until I saw it with my own eyes, as he folded his arms over his massive chest taking a “don’t test me” stance that I probably should have found more intimidating—buthello, gigantic dog on the loose! “Did you hit your head?” he asked and I thought he might’ve been part dog himself the way he growled that sentence at me.

Hit it? No, but I shook it.

“Listen, just take my statement so I can go home and take a nice bubble bath.” Something felt off about the detective. Definitelysomethingthat I could no longer ascribe to him having a bad day. I wish I could put my finger on the what of his issues, but my head started to throb and I just needed to go home now. Thus, I gave my statement without any further pretense. When he asked me how I’d ended up at that abandoned building, I was honest. “Jeffery’s phone was in with his belongings. I charged it and turned it on. I saw his call log and texts. The location puzzled me, so I went to check it out. That’s how I ended up at the building.”

Then, I kid not, he poked me several times with a beefy finger right in the center of my chest. He did it hard enough that I figured I’d find a bruise in that spot. “I’m telling you now, don’t go back there. That’s an order.” —Uh,an order? Last I checked, we didn’t live in a fascist state and he had no say in where I choseto go at any given time of day— “You’ve got no business being in that part of town.”

Then he suddenly and completely dismissed me by turning his back on me to take the statements of the big, burly protector-type men who’d kept me safe from my kidnapper and now stood around in a huddle rubbing the backs of their necks and wherever else appeared to pain them. I couldn’t read their minds, but I’d say trying to figure out what the hell just happened to them.

Connor. He said his name was Connor. Why would he tell me his name unless he’d planned for me not to make it out of our encounter alive?

And on top of everything, I’d found nothing useful in the abandoned building. Zip. Zilch. I sighed. It was time to call this a day and head home. Vegging until I fell asleep sounded pretty perfect, actually. The magic simmered just below my skin now. It wanted out. It wanted me to let it loose onto an unexpecting world.

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