George shook his head. “That’s not how we do it. When Jonah was in charge, we’d never—”
“My father is dead,” William said.
William tossed the brown velvet blankets to each of them. Victor, George and Paul unfolded them. They weren’t blankets. They were hooded robes.
The Gammas slipped the ugly brown fabric over their clothes. The robes, thick and heavy looking, fell all the way to the floor. William flipped his hood over his head. The others kept theirs down. All conversation stopped.
Something was about to happen.
“We will continue the discussion about what to do with the Longfellow girl at a later time,” William said. “Other matters must be dealt with now.”
On cue, a hooded figure walked out from behind the black curtain. The figure knelt down beside William. The head was bent, as if in prayer, so the hood concealed its face.
William placed his hand on the hooded head. “We bear the eternal burden of delivering this world from evil. We are God’s soldiers. We took a vow to hunt and eliminate all the witches of this great land.”
My heart dropped when I heard the word.
Witches.
They thought I was a witch. Just like Grandma Claudia did. I had the birthmark on my neck. I saw visions in my dreams. I could shatter objects with my mind. I could make the wind blow. And, according to everyone else, I’d eventually be able to do things that I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Was Grandma Claudia right all along? Were these hooded men, including Victor, witch hunters? Did this secret fraternity want to hunt me?
Victor, George and Paul linked their hands together. William raised his eyes to the ceiling. “The light of Gamma Omicron Delta will lead us out of the dark. And tonight, we will initiate a new member to our fraternity.”
I felt nauseous.
William raised his arms dramatically toward the heavens. He brought his hand down onto the head of the hooded figure kneeling beside him. In one swift motion, he pulled the hood back and displayed the figure’s face.
Chapter Twenty-One
I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle the gasp. Apparently, I didn’t do too good a job because the room went silent.
I prayed that it was a figment of my imagination.
It wasn’t. James Van Curen was obediently kneeling next to his psycho father. I’d blindly fallen right into his trap.
“Alex!” James jumped to his feet. “RUN!”
I dashed up the stairs.
“Get her!” William screamed.
I had no time to think or plan. All I could do was run. I climbed the stairs, using my hands to keep my shaky balance. I dashed into the fraternity-paddled dining room.
James reached the top of the stairs before the others. “Run, Alex! You have to get out of here!”
A million thoughts raced across my mind. None were as loud as the fact that James had betrayed me. Peter was right all along, I shouldn’t have trusted James. How long had I known James? A month? Six weeks? I should’ve known better.
I ran into the creepy living room, exploded through the front door and crashed into a brick wall. I fell backward onto my butt and glanced up in time to see that it wasn’t a wall after all. The man roughly seized me by my shoulders and stood me upright.
“Long time no see, doll.”
My eyes were blurry from the collision. I blinked to clear them, but immediately wished I hadn’t. The shaved head and “Sinner” tattoo on the man’s thick neck wobbled into focus.
It couldn’t be.
Before I could make sense of the situation, Shaved Head’s gaze shifted to the commotion behind me. It was my only chance. I raised my knee swiftly to his crotch with as much force as I could muster. Shaved head doubled over in pain. I stepped around him and out the door, but his hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. I fell face first onto the porch.
I viciously kicked his hands and arms. Shaved Head groaned in pain and released his hold on my ankle. I scrambled to my feet and hopped the railing. My car wasn’t far away. I could make it.
Shaved Head was on his feet and chasing me across the lawn. He must’ve been really fast (or maybe I was really slow), because he caught up with me. He leaped forward and tackled me to the ground.
The full weight of his body landed on me and the air squished out of my lungs. I tried to roll him off me, but he wouldn’t budge.
“You’re dead, kid.” Shaved Head pulled himself to his feet and my lungs inflated. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me back to the farmhouse.
“Let go of me!”
“Are you going to play nice and walk?”
My scalped burned. “Yes, yes,” I whimpered.
He pulled me to my feet by my hair. He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. If he pulled another centimeter or if I moved a muscle, the bone would snap from the pressure. With a shove, he escorted me back to the farmhouse.
The porch light glinted off the silver in William’s hair. He casually strolled over to me with a satisfied sneer. His hand swung forward. I flinched, thinking he was about to strike me, but he didn’t. He covered my nose and mouth with a folded handkerchief.
Fumes stormed my nose and, within seconds, my eyes closed.
My last coherent thought was that I was never going to get that date with Peter.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When I awoke, it was completely and absolutely dark. I couldn’t see anything. I probably couldn’t have seen my hand in front of my face, not that I could move my hands at the moment. They were tied in front of me. My legs were bound, too. I was on my side, cheek pressed against thin carpet. I tried to sit up, but my head slammed into the ceiling.
Wait. Not the ceiling. I stretched out my tied legs. They hit a wall. I raised my hands over my head. Another wall. I was in some sort of confined space. I listened carefully. Humming. A horn in the distance. Tires gliding over asphalt.
I was in the trunk of a car.
I violently convulsed. I banged the trunk door with my bound hands. I kicked the walls. I screamed until my throat was raw. Nothing. My pounding heart was the only thing I could hear besides the faint noises coming from the highway. Where were they taking me?
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. I hated small spaces. Were trunks airtight? My breathing came in short irregular gasps. I tried to concentrate on the oxygen filling my lungs. Was I going to suffocate? Were they going to leave me here to die?
My butt buzzed.
I was groggy from the chloroform and it took me a second to realize my cell phone was vibrating in my back pocket. Thank heavens. Gamma hadn’t searched me before they stuffed me in here. It had to be Peter. I was late for our date.
I couldn’t reach the cell phone because my hands were bound in front of me. I tried to pull my wrists apart, but they were tied too tight. The rope cut into my skin.
The buzzing stopped just as the car jostled beneath me. It felt like we’d turned off the smooth highway and onto a bumpy road. I wiped the tears away with my bound hands. I didn’t want them to know I’d been crying.
The car slowed to a halt. A door slammed. I waited. And waited. Finally, the trunk popped open and a cold gush of wonderful air blew into my face.
“How was the ride, doll?” Shaved Head yanked me out of the trunk of Victor’s Rolls. Once my feet hit the ground, I knew exactly where I was. I wouldn’t have expected anything less. I’d been dreaming about this place for weeks.
The sky was cloudy, but there was enough light from the stars, the moon and a couple of lanterns to light up the historical section of the Hazel Cove Cemetery. Light reflected off patches of snow left over from last week’s storm, giving the scene an eerie dreamlike feel.
George Murray and Paul were gone. Maybe kidnapping was too serious an offense for them. It was only William, Victor, Shaved Head and James. Victor crouched over an open gym bag. William had his back to me. And James sat next to a tree by my father’s tombstone. He held his head in his hands.
That’s when I noticed it.
A pile of loose dirt stacked next to the grave. A large square pit in front of Ethan’s marble gravestone.
They were digging up my father’s coffin.
My heart stopped. It literally quit beating. I doubled over and collapsed onto the ground.
“Whoa!” Shaved Head pulled his knife out of his back pocket—the same one he’d pulled on Peter—and cut the rope from my wrist and legs. He dragged me to the tree where James was sitting. “Move it, Junior. I need that tree.”
James, avoiding eye contact, scampered out of the way.
Shaved Head pulled my arms behind me, retied my wrists and sat me in front of the tree ten feet from Ethan’s open grave. He looped a second piece of rope around the tree trunk and through my arms.
I was careful not to look at Ethan’s grave. It was too much. Too horrible to imagine. Why were they doing this to me?
My cell phone buzzed again. I coughed to cover the sound, but the vibration was quiet enough that they couldn’t hear it. The Gammas couldn’t see my hands because I was propped up against the base of the tree. I twisted my wrists. They were bound, but not as tightly as before. I could move them a fraction of an inch.
The cell phone stopped buzzing, but I kept twisting my hands. I didn’t think I had much time. Pain shot up my arms as the skin rubbed raw, but I didn’t stop. Whatever they were planning on doing to me was going to be worse than what I was doing to my wrists.
“Hello there, Alex. Can I call you that? Or do you prefer Alexandria?” William sauntered forward. “Did you get a good show earlier?”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “You all are.”
Victor, Shaved Head and James stood behind William. Victor was staring at a nearby gravestone. James kept his eyes trained on his father’s back. Shaved Head, the only one paying attention, was waiting for the go-ahead to kill me.
William laughed. “Crazy? No, we’re practical. Calculated. Meticulous. But certainly not crazy.”
“Victor, please help me,” I begged my stepfather. He couldn’t stand by and let William kill me. Could he? I’d trusted him for seventeen years. Whatever deep-seated contempt Victor felt for me couldn’t be this drastic. There had to be some small sliver inside of him that cared whether William murdered me or not.
My pleas were met with silence. Victor’s eyes remained fixed on the ground.
“No more charades, no more shams,” William said. “No more Victor Ramsey. I gave up my own brother because of you. He’s a Van Curen and he’s helped you long enough.”
“What?” James whipped around to look at Victor and then at his father.
“You’re brothers?” I asked.
William Van Curen grinned. “Don’t you see the similarities?”
They had the same brown eyes. Olive skin. William’s hair was salt-and-pepper and he was thinner, but when they stood side by side the resemblance was clear. How did I miss that?
“So you don’t know everything,” William said. His pupils were dilated and it made him look feral. “I gave you more credit than you deserved. What exactly do you know?”
“I don’t know anything.” It was the truth. I had no idea what was going on.
James shifted his weight. Lines etched across his forehead. He looked on the verge of a breakdown. Good. I hope he felt horrible for what he did to me.
William followed my gaze to James. “I bet that was a surprise. See, if I’d known my son had feelings for you, then we would’ve been doing this,” he indicated the surroundings with his hand, “much sooner. But he’s a Van Curen. I explained the situation, talked a little sense into him and now you see where his loyalty lies.”
James finally looked at me.
Traitor. I wished I’d never met him. He stepped toward me, but Shaved Head swung his arm out to stop him.
“Dad, please let her go. She hasn’t done anything,” James said.
The vein in William’s forehead throbbed. “We’ve been over this. She’s cast her spell over you!”
“Do you hear yourselves? This is ridiculous! I don’t even know how to cast a stupid spell!” The rope around my wrists loosened. If I could buy more time, I might be able to wiggle out. I had to reach my cell phone. It was my only hope.
William folded his arms across his chest. “Why don’t you do a little demonstration for us? Give them a glimpse of your powers. Simon told me about the street lamps shattering.”
“You sent him?”
Shaved Head, or I guess his name was Simon, grinned from ear to ear. The other man from that night—the skinny greasy one —was nowhere in sight.
Victor turned to Simon. “You did what?”
William waved a dismissive hand. “I didn’t send Simon to kill her, only to frighten her. She’d started to snoop. She went to visit that wretched grandmother of hers. So I had Simon follow her. She stole your car, by the way, and went to the pier. Simon was scaring her a bit, but the boyfriend showed up. He caused some trouble for Simon and Jack.”
“Trouble?” I said to Simon. “Peter knocked you out.”
Simon’s nostrils flared.
James looked at Simon and then at me, trying to connect the dots. The sight of him disgusted me, even more so than Simon.
And without warning—maybe because I’d been too focused on my own survival—it all clicked into place. I was foolish not to realize before. “You killed Megan Lackey, didn’t you? You and your stupid fraternity, because you thought she was a witch.”
“She was a witch,” Victor said.
“You killed Bradley.” It wasn’t a question. They murdered him. I just didn’t know why. They couldn’t possibly have thought Bradley was a witch, too. The idea was absurd.
William shrugged. “That wasn’t planned. He—what was his name—Bradley? He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He overheard me talking to Victor in the garage at the Halloween party. He would’ve said something, so I took care of him.”
Victor’s face was expressionless. His insistence that Bradley committed suicide was a cover-up for William.
“And you killed my father.” I glanced at the open grave. My hands, still tied behind my back, balled into fists. My jaws clamped together waiting for an answer.
“No, that’s where you’re wrong,” William said. “My father killed Ethan. I wish I had, but my father was in charge back then. Now I am. However, it looks like I’ll have the opportunity to kill a Longfellow, too.”
Rage flashed through me with such force and conviction, that I momentarily lost my breath. I felt nauseous. I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t get sick.
A gust of cold wind blew across the cemetery. The lanterns fell over. Leaves scattered around the crumbling tombstones. Branches rattled on the tree above me.
William clapped. “Bravo, bravo Miss Longfellow. Small and quaint, yet extremely impressive, especially considering your age.”
Victor’s face turned to disgust. James froze.
I made the wind blow.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I did it, but I knew, without a doubt, that I was the culprit. Just like I knew, deep down that I’d broken the mirror in the haunted house. I shattered the street lamps on the docks when I was attacked by Simon and his greasy friend. I broke the lightbulb at Peter’s house during my nightmare. I knocked the Hallows Country Club sign over when Peter and James were fighting.
My emotions—whether it was fear or anger—physically caused something to happen. They were right. They were all right. Grandma Claudia, William, Victor, the entire Gamma fraternity.
I was a witch.
A real, honest-to-goodness witch. That realization scared me more than William Van Curen. Did all this really exist? In modern day? Witches and witch hunters?
William carefully watched my expression. He tilted his head. “You had to have known. Didn’t your grandmother tell you the story?”
I shook my head. I needed more time. The ropes around my wrists were almost loose.
&n
bsp; William stood up from his crouched position. “Why not? We have some time. This will be good for you to hear, too, James.”
Victor sighed.
“Your kind has been around for a long time,” William said. “Too long, actually. Dating all the way back to the old country. Always moving in small covens, living unnoticed by the rest of the world. During the good old days, when witch hunting was popular, we hunted as many of you as we could.”
Simon released James. He picked up the shovel and hopped into Ethan’s open pit. After a few seconds, a spray of dirt flew onto the pile.
They weren’t done digging.
William clasped his hands behind his back. “We too descend from a long line. The Gamma Omicron Delta Fraternity was established in 1206 for the sole purpose of eradicating witches. We study, we track, we watch and, if necessary, we exterminate.”
“You try to play God? That’s why you chose the letters Gamma Omicron Delta.”
William smiled. “We perform the work of God. We serve him. We protect society against evil like you.”
The mural of Michael the Archangel casting demons into Hell flashed into my mind. Was he serious?
“Evil like me? You have me tied to a tree! You’re murderers! You killed my father, Megan, Bradley and God knows who else!”
“Don’t you dare say the Lord’s name. You are no creature of God. We did what we did to save the greater good! Witches are dangerous. The Lackey girl was dangerous. You are even more dangerous!”
The dirt pile grew.
James watched Simon dig. Defeat was scribbled across his face. I recognized the look—it was the same one he wore at the Hawthorne attendance office when we first met. James had looked like a beaten dog, but as soon as William left another James had emerged—a confident and friendly version. Which was the real James? It was obvious he was terrified of his father. Who wouldn’t be? But would he really sit by and watch them kill me? Our entire friendship couldn’t have been an act.
Victor was seated near a random gravestone. His eyes were closed, but I knew he was listening.