Minerva could not sit up. The same force that had tossed her back now pinned her down. The ghostly presence in the room shifted from one side of it to the other, restless. Minerva grunted and tried to push herself up.
Carolyn knelt next to her.They are gluttons,that’s what Nana Alba had told her. And Carolyn herself had said she was famished. Thomas had gone missing in December. Maybe Carolyn hadn’t indulged her murderous tendencies since then. Who knew how often she killed, or whether the quality of her victims had been substandard. Minerva felt, at any rate, like she had waved a piece of meat in front of a great white shark.
Carolyn’s nostrils flared and her eyes shone as she licked her lips. “You have a talent for being extremely dislikable. I’m going to thoroughly enjoy drinking your blood and eating your heart.”
“I hope you choke on it.”
Carolyn scoffed and roughly pulled Minerva’s wrist against her mouth. The witch’s lips felt like sandpaper as she licked her blood, and her hands were cold as ice, making Minerva shiver. She tried to flex her fingers and failed: she was frozen in place. She squeezed her eyes shut and then the woman wasn’t merely licking the wound, she was biting her, and the pain of her arm was so great Minerva opened her eyes again and began to yell even though she felt out of breath.
Carolyn chuckled; the laughter was muffled against Minerva’s skin. She tossed her head, tried to shove the woman off. Her body was a limp, useless mess, and the more she struggled the more tired she became.
Minerva had drunk almost the entire contents of her thermosbefore venturing into Joyce House, the potion her great-grandmother had told her about. Poison for witches. It ought to work. Then again, it was simply a story she’d heard late at night. It might have been made up. It might not work on someone like Carolyn.
She lay staring at the ceiling. She’d stopped screaming. The fluorescent lights hummed—it was almost like a whine, a wheezing. Or maybe that was Minerva who was wheezing. The memory of Nana Alba’s voice soothed her.
Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.
Carolyn coughed. The noise was sharp; it echoed inside the cavernous factory space. Again there was the wheezing and pain. Then Carolyn coughed again. She coughed a third time.
Suddenly Carolyn stopped feeding from Minerva and touched her neck. She gasped, scuttering away from her. All the while she coughed.
“What…” the witch said.
Minerva’s body seemed to jolt awake, the numbness receding in an instant, and she pushed herself up. She had all the coordination of a drunkard, but she was standing up. She managed to stumble toward the worktable and clutched it with both hands. Her fingers slid against the handle of the axe.
“You little bitch!” Carolyn roared.
Minerva couldn’t even raise a hand to defend herself. Before she could react, Carolyn had jumped to her feet and was squeezing her hands around Minerva’s neck, her nails digging into her skin. Again she felt the terrible iciness of Carolyn’s touch and attempted to yank the hands away. Carolyn continued coughing; her bloody spittle flew through the air and stained Minerva’s face.
Her hold on Minerva slackened and she stepped back. Minerva pressed a hand against her neck. She flung herself against the table, trying to get hold of anything that could be used as a weapon, but the nerves and muscles in her legs were twitching, a cramp ran down her lower body, and she clutched the table like a drowning woman holding on to a plank of wood.
The shadow-thing shimmered for a second. It stood at the other end of the table, close to where Carolyn was glaring at her.
“Help me.”
Minerva’s voice was hoarse, more a whimper than anything else.
I’m going to die,she thought once more. And although the idea had danced inside her brain, now it was a reality. Now death was there. There was nothing she could do except die the same way Santiago and Ginny had died. Bleeding to death, her heart carved out, her ghost left to haunt an abandoned, decayed building. She’d accomplished nothing, only delayed her grisly end.
But the shadow turned its head in Minerva’s direction. It was looking at her. Then it looked back at Carolyn.
Help me,she said. She mouthed the words; no sound made it out of her throat.
Carolyn shook her head and extended an arm. The ceremonial knife jumped into her hand. The sharp, ugly blade glinted as she stepped forward, ready to plunge it into Minerva’s chest.
“Help me!” Minerva said, and this time the words were clear; the command echoed around the room.
The shadow-thing seemed to acquire a solidness for a moment and sent the can full of nails flying. The rusty bits of metal hit Carolyn, embedding themselves in her face and neck. She shrieked, spinning around, her fingers madly trying to rip out the projectiles.
You simply live through it.Minerva remembered the words and her fingers tightened around the handle of the axe. Her vision was a throbbing burst of red and her body threatened to sink into unconsciousness, but she bit her tongue viciously. The stinging pain, the blood on her tongue, awoke every nerve in her body.
Minerva grabbed the weapon and rushed forward. She swung and stared into Carolyn’s startled eyes as the blade sliced her head off.
—
“Stop,” Arturo said, onepalm up in the air, the other against the ground.
Alba shook her head, her shoulders hunched with the weight of the axe. She could hardly stand. But he could hardly speak, lyingthere in the dirt, looking up at her, feebly attempting to sit up. His eyes were terribly intense, his voice so forceful that she lowered the axe for a moment, uncertain and afraid.
