For the next week, I gradually lengthened my pool chair time from leaving Hope’s room to mine to just over an hour.  I waited, each time, for my baby sitter to come looking for me or wanting to know where I’d been, but it never happened.  So long as he didn’t insist on sitting out by the pool with me, I was fine.  I needed bus fare, and managed to get it one day when change from lunch delivery was left sitting on the little table.  I waited a couple more days, just to see if anything would break, but when the two-week mark came and went, I made my move.  On the fifteenth afternoon, when Hope was doing her daily tarot card reading out by the pool, I whispered to her under my breath.

“Listen.  I need you to pass out early tonight.”

There was a pause, but she didn’t blink.  After a moment, she merely said quietly, “Jay, be careful.”

“I will,” I said, doubting the words even as I said them. There would probably be no way to be careful.

That night, Hope rolled over and played dead just before nine.  I excused myself and was about to make my exit, when Hope’s babysitter, Angela, got a call on her cell.

“Sure, I’ll send it right over,” she said, and then reached for a folder on the edge of the little table and handed it to me.

“Give this to Bill for me, please. He needs it right away.”

“No problem,” I answered, cursing quietly to myself, my plans for the night ruined.

The next night, I decided to try again.  Hope feigned sleep, and this time Bill, my babysitter, wasn’t waiting for a delivery from me, and I slipped out of the motel yard at 9:05.  The bus came in just over ten minutes, lucky timing for a bus system that runs twice an hour, and I was on my way.  I made the 10:18 bus for O.B. at Old Town without a hitch, so I wasn’t missed yet, but it wouldn’t last forever.  Twenty minutes later I got off a block before the Magick Shoppe, one stop before the one right in front of it, in case they were watching.  When I skulked past the shop on the way to Wilkes’ place, the hood of my sweatshirt pulled over my head, still not knowing what I was going to do or what to expect, someone stepped out of the shadows.

“I think I know where to find the book.”

I jumped, managed not to make too much noise, and found myself staring at the good and lovely Willow wearing a dark blue cape, hood over her head, just like me.

“I had a dream.  You were looking for a book,” she went on matter-of-factly.  “I think I know where it is.”

I stood there, completely disarmed for a moment, which wasn’t unusual for me in her presence. A bit of amber light just caught her eyes and they glinted for a second under her hood like a cat’s.  I grabbed her arms and pushed her back into the shadows, then yanked off my hood.  “Listen, this is dangerous.”

“Yes.  And I’m the one that warned you it could be. But people getting kidnapped leaving my parties?  This is about me protecting my own.”

I felt the force of her words, of her.  It was hard to resist. And the truth was, I could use her help.  She might make a nice diversion. “You knew I would be here?”

“I’ve been here the last three nights.  I felt you’d come.”  Then she paused, and looked me in the eyes, “So what’s your plan?”

I didn’t hesitate.  “I don’t know.  Hit some people before they can shoot me.  Catch them by surprise.  Get the book and run.  Something like that.”

“Come inside,” she said in the tone of an order, and I followed her as she pushed the door of her shop open. She walked past me into the darkened space and flipped on a lamp at her desk and lifted something out of a drawer.  The hanging beads at the entrance clicked rhythmically behind me as I saw a blade glint in the filtered light. She walked toward me and handed me a dagger.

“You witches like your knives, don’t you,” I said as I grabbed the handle, feigning casualness, but failing.  “I don’t suppose you have a revolver in there?”

“It’s my personal ritual dagger.  It’s charmed,” she responded.  “And no, I don’t.”

“Oh well,” I nodded, a gesture which she may or may not have seen in the unlit store, and slipped the knife inside my belt by my right back pocket, no longer the least bit calm, but glad of her assistance. “Better than what I had.”

Willow also nodded, her blonde head shadowed by the faint light coming from behind her, then walked over to two of the jars of herbs in the back and filled up a small bottle with them.  I didn’t question it.  When she was done, she walked back towards me. We exchanged a glance in the shifting shadows of a car’s passing headlights, then turned for the door.  As she locked it behind her, I resisted the urge to touch her, someone, something, anything not tainted with evil, but instead just grabbed the haft of the knife behind me, making sure it was secure.  As we began our short walk to our destination, I said merely, “Follow my lead.” She didn’t question it.

When we got to the door five minutes later, my heart was pounding up into my throat, and I had a crazy, fleeting, wish for another numbing snort of those degenerates’ meth. But that was on the inside, and we were on the outside.  And this time, I didn’t think they would let me help myself.  There was nothing for it.  I rang the doorbell.

A few seconds later it opened. It was Carlos. Just my luck.  I’d really wanted to hit him.

“What the …” he greeted, rudely.

“Hi,” I said, “We’re from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and we’d like to talk to you about…”

At that, Willow, who I’d told to follow my lead, didn’t and threw some of her jar’s mixture in his face.  He cringed and cried in agony, then backed away from the door, rubbing at his eyes.  I slugged him and he banged into the wall and went down.  I glanced quickly past him into the kitchen and thanked God, or Goddess, that I had calculated right.  The boys were out.

“Find the book,” I stage-whispered to Willow.  A door opened down the hallway to my left, and I grabbed for the dagger. It was Wilkes in a pink bathrobe, carrying a rocks glass half filled with liquor and ice. I closed the distance between us in one long step and hit him with a right cross, and he went down like an effeminate sack of flour.

“Anybody else here?” I hissed into the side of his now swelling face, my knee pinning his chest to the floor.

“You…you’re dead…,” was all he could muster, as a twelve or thirteen year old boy tottered out hesitantly from the hallway in only his tighty-whities.

“Can I go now?” asked the boy, and just as he did, Willow, who I’d lost track of, appeared from a door further down the hallway of that musty old SoCal ranch, holding up the cursed book.

“Got it,” she said, in a business-like tone which surprised me a bit.  I breathed, and then, as if on cue, I heard a shout from behind me, “FBI!  Don’t move.”  I ignored it and reached and grabbed the black album from Willow’s outstretched hand, my knee still on Wilkes chest, and with my spare hand, slugged him one more time for good measure.

“We’ll take that, Mr. Sapphire,” I heard and turned to see a woman in a dark blazer holding a gun, with Seth right behind her.

“Give it here, Jay,” offered Seth, reaching his hand out, as I had involuntarily withdrawn mine in mistrust.  “Give it here.”

Reluctantly, I did.

Chapter 17 coming 2/1 (or so…)!!!