Calm Before the Witch Storm Read online

  She wound around the bluff road fast. Cricket didn’t feel like she was going to tip over. Even so, she eased off the gas. Midway down the driveway, the car stopped. The key turned, shutting the engine off.

  What the?

  Nann heard a squeal of terror. A pig noise for sure. Pokey was in trouble. She grabbed the Athame from her purse and ran into the woods, following the sounds. She ran a long way. Boy, there were a lot of woods around the house. The Athame sparkled with danger a moment before she heard voices.

  Chapter 7

  “Yo! What are you doing with my pig?”

  Two men stood over a large animal trap, trying to move it...Pokey trying to bite them. Their eyes went big. Jim and Branden, the painters.

  “Your pig?” Jim finally found his voice.

  Branden held up his hands. “Look, we got a call from the agency about a feral pig tearing up people’s yards.”

  “Pokey?”

  The pig hung his head in shame.

  “Damn it, I forgot to find out what pigs eat.” Nann frowned at herself. “Okay, who sent you? Which people’s yards? This property is more than ten acres, and that pig’s got short legs.”

  “We just get the call from the Agency, same as we did for painting your store.” Jim shrugged. “Never thought this was somebody’s pet, savage as it is.”

  Branden opened the trap door with a gloved hand. Pokey raced out and hid behind Nann’s legs. He oinked. Perhaps in gratitude, perhaps cursing his former captors. Nann needed to get a portable radio to talk with Pokey on the go. Then, Hansel-and-Gretel, she thought, missing boys, gingerbread house. Maybe keep the pig talk private.

  “Okay, that’s obviously your pig. We meant no harm. But if we don’t do the jobs the Agency sends us, we might not get any work at all,” Jim said.

  “What were you supposed to do with Pokey?”

  “Take him to a pig farm down by Finger Lakes.”

  Pokey shuddered.

  “Okay, you tell the Agency you did your job. I’ll figure out who wanted to pig-nap Pokey.” Of course the Agency, Nann knew, was Gert at the hardware store.

  “You got it, Nann. Sorry for all the trouble,” Jim said.

  The two of them wandered off when Branden turned back. “How’s Zinnia doing? Is she still sick or whatever?”

  “Zinnia’s fine.” Hmm. “Y’know, I think she likes you, Branden.”

  Branden squinted and smiled. “A hottie like that? She’s out of my league.” The men disappeared into the woods.

  Pokey let out an oink of disgust.

  “I know, right?” Nann was thinking the same thing. People could be so dumb. “Sorry, I haven’t picked up any food for you yet. This day is getting worse and worse. I need to find where Aunt Nancy kept her important papers. Of course, she went kooky the last year she lived here.”

  Pokey’s grunt sounded dismayed.

  “Let’s go see what we have in the house.”

  They walked back. Cricket had parked herself in the garage. Brake lights flashed as Nann and Pokey passed. Even though they entered through the kitchen door, Pokey ran straight for the dining room. She heard the tippity-tap of his tiny hooves followed by a thud.

  Save a box of oatmeal, the cupboards were bare. Did pigs eat oatmeal? She really needed to stock up. Nothing looked good in the fridge—bacon and eggs. Perish the thought. She might have to give up pork products. There was a frozen lasagna in the freezer. “Do pigs eat pasta?”

  Tippity-tap. Thud.

  “What the hell are you doing in there?” Nann walked to the dining room. It was the formal kind, a buffet against one wall, a hutch against another, and a table that could fit at least eight centered on an oriental rug. With the table top a six-inch slab, and the pedestal heavily carved with four splayed feet, it looked like it weighed five hundred pounds.

  Pokey, in the corner, lowered his head and charged the table. “Are you crazy?”

  When his head collided with the pedestal, Nann was surprised to see the whole thing move a couple inches. With a glance at the panting pig, she put her hands on the edge of the top and gave a shove. She nearly fell over. The table glided on hidden wheels. Uncle Ed’s work, no doubt.

  “What the?” Nann pushed the table against the wall. She was surprised to see the oriental rug didn’t bunch up under the wheels. Kneeling, she discovered the rug was glued down. Pokey snuffled along the edge of the rug, flipping it up. Nann saw a pull ring hidden beneath the fabric. A trap door.

  It lifted without a squeak. Spiral stairs went down. In the dust, she could see footprints. She glanced at Pokey. “Looks dark and spidery down there.”

  Pokey grunted, angling his head, oinked. Nann saw an old radio on the buffet and switched it on. A demonic voice blatted.

  “—a radio right there, mortal fool!”

  She switched the station.

  “Ed did way too much work on this house after he sold the business and retired.” Pokey now sounded more reasonable.

  “What’s down there?”

  “The Lady Lair,” Pokey said. “You want me to describe it to you, or do you want to take a look?”

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass pig,” she said. Trying not to mar the footprints in the dust, she descended. And wondered why she was trying not to mar the footprints. Halfway down, she found a light switch on a weeping stone wall.

  She stepped into a broad, circular room, evenly divided. To the right, a desk, computer and filing cabinet. The drawers on the cabinet stood open and empty. On the other side of the desk were several recliners and a TV.

  “Nancy liked her soaps. When Ed retired, he was always underfoot, making her crazy,” Pokey said.

  The other side of the room boasted an altar on a dais. Atop the altar, a book lay open, covered with dried leaves and herbs. Behind that, a curving shelf held various paraphernalia in its pigeon holes. Books lined the top left and right, propped with heavy ends. In the center, hanging off a stand, was a silver scythe that resembled a question mark. The floor surrounding the dais was a mosaic depicting the Wheel of the Year.

  “This is... elaborate?”

  “Nancy was a practicing Druid. She needed a place to practice. Especially in the winter. Who wants to dance naked in the snow?” Pokey said.

  Nann saw the tracks on the floor led both to the altar and to the filing cabinet. She checked the cabinet first. All she found was an old grocery receipt and a pad of sticky notes. “Must be where Mr. Greenbaum put Aunt Nancy’ copies of the tax forms.” Nann slammed the drawers shut.

  “Someone must have busted in while your friends were capturing me. Again.” Pokey wandered around.

  “Again?”

  “Yeah, it’s been years since the last time.”

  “What happened?”

  “They took me to a pig farm near the Finger Lakes.”

  Nann thought about Aunt Nancy’s stories about Pokey. She’d never seen Pokey, and assumed he was a pet. But Nancy had lost Pokey. That was ten years ago. The doctors said it was the trigger that sent her over the edge. Uncle Ed died a few years before. But once she lost Pokey, she locked herself in this house until Human Services rescued her. At that point, she came to live with Nann and her mother. Nann had always assumed that Pokey had died. Could this be the same Pokey?

  “It wasn’t a bad gig. Regular chow, lots of company. At first it was rough. I was bound to Nancy by blood and magic. But after a while, the connection faded. I was just another pig in the pen. They were waiting for me to get big enough to slaughter. Ha! Fooled them.”

  “Bound to her?”

  “Uh-huh. She was my familiar. I suppose you’re my familiar now.”

  Nann didn’t like the sound of this. “How do you figure?”

  “Connection by magic and blood. You’re Aunt Nancy’s blood. Therefore, you’re my familiar.”

  “Wouldn’t you be my familiar?”

  Pokey wandered toward the sitting room side of the chamber. “If you want to be all self-centered and entitled about it.”
>
  Nann had had enough with this conversation. Curious, she moved across the room to the altar. The open book was an elephant folio size. Blowing the dusty leaves away, the writing shocked her.

  Abstract:

  Summon ye a Piper if ye be plagued with the rats

  as everybody knows, a piper pied is better with rats than are cats.

  Instructions:

  Find ye some seclusion, a high, abandoned space

  ask this boon when the mistress moon has turned away her fair face

  Heart of one coyote, bury it in the mud

  select your prey and once a day a drop of your victim’s blood

  Warning:

  If ye feed not your Piper when its work is complete/the change in its sound will from all around summon human meat

  “Holy Moly...Did Aunt Nancy summon some horrible creature that eats children?” Nann saw that the following page had been torn from the book. Flipping through, the vellum crackling, she noted that every other summoning spell was followed by the instructions for banishing. “Someone removed the page telling me how to get rid of that scary thing in the woods.”

  Pokey pranced across the room and jumped up on a recliner. He hung his head over the armrest to look at her. “Why not take the whole book?”

  “Because like me, Aunt Nancy ran a bookstore.” Nann took the Athame from her conjure bag, making an arc in front of her like a windshield wiper. The spell revealed itself. “We had a little table in my old store, Greenpoint Books. It was enchanted. Anybody who walked out with a book without paying was impelled to put the book on that table. We never had anything stolen. Same goes for Aunt Nancy’s little library.”

  There was an obvious space where this large book had stood. Nann looked in the gap. Nothing. Something caught her eye beyond the TV. A Franklin stove. She squeaked open the wrought iron doors. Perfectly clean. “Oh, man. I think we’re in trouble.”

  “Maybe not.” Pokey jumped down from the chair. “What was that you were saying about pasta?”

  AFTER PUTTING THE BOOK, the Tome of Knowledge Dark, back in its place, she followed Pokey up the stairs. He stood impatiently in the kitchen. Reluctantly, Nann took her dinner plans for the evening out of the freezer and put it in the microwave.

  “Hang on. It’s been a hot day.”

  “You wanna eat frozen lasagna?”

  “Contrary to popular cliché, pigs don’t sweat. It’ll be more fun this way.”

  Pokey was so weird, she had to ask, “So where have you been all this time?”

  “Well, I was on the pig farm for a while. But there isn’t a farm built that can hold me. I did the feral thing for a while. Then I felt the connection again, and I found my way back. I’m really glad they didn’t take me back to the Finger Lakes. That’s quite a walk when you’re two feet tall.”

  “You feel a connection to me?”

  Pokey angled his head. “Is this unrequited?”

  Were his feelings hurt? “No, I think you’re adorbs as all get-out. Even when you’re on the evil station. But a little less so, with the evil and all.”

  “Am I a good boy?”

  Something twanged in her heart. Nann bent down, scratching the bristles behind his ears. “Yes you are! You are a good boy. A good piggy. Yes you are.”

  “All right, all right, you’re embarrassing both of us,” Pokey said, but his eyes were big and happy. When he chomped into the frozen dinner, Nann was done for the time being.

  THE SKY BEHIND HER was still bright as she drove Cricket back to the store. Ahead, night had claimed the earth. A bunch of cars parked on Cemetery Street and in the lot around back. She found a spot further up the hill. Nann saw lights on in Zinnia’s apartment, and on the third floor.

  No one walked the street. Nann slipped into her store, and back to the office. There were no windows in here. She fumbled two candle stubs out of her conjure bag and set them on the desk. Lighting both with a gesture, she closed the door. Breathing deeply, focusing on her breathing, she went into a trance.

  “I am excluded from your sight

  “Like a shadow against the night.”

  The candle on her left went out.

  “And so Ignored is what I’ll be

  “A faux invisibility.”

  The candle on her right went out. Nann slowly reached out for the extinguished stubs and replaced them. For the big test, she walked out into the store, lit by streetlight. Looking over her shoulder, she saw she dragged the darkness behind her. Perfect.

  Outside, she found the door to the apartments unlocked. She proceeded to the second floor landing. To her surprise, the door to the third-floor steps stood wide. She went up. Although she moved slowly, these were the scream-iest stairs she’d ever climbed. Keeping her feet to the outside of the treads, she crunched and squealed her way to the top. Hopefully, the murmur of conversation hid her progress.

  Stairs ended in a closed door. Hand slow, she opened it a crack. Avoiding eye contact that would break the spell, she took in the room. Eight men sat around a dais about four feet tall, seven feet long and three feet wide. Nann thought it was obvious that this was a coffin. Yet the men had beer cans and snacks on the lid, with chairs dragged around.

  She saw Tom, owner of the building, Jim and Branden the painters, Rascal, Bob Reynolds and three guys she remembered from the search party. This was the Vampire Hunter Society?

  “I’m telling you, the country’s changing. The mill’s going to open again,” Rascal said. “I just talked to our union rep. There’s a plan in the works.”

  “There’s been a plan in the works for years,” Bob said, “but my unemployment ran out a long time ago. I’m sick of working as a stock boy.”

  “The union and the owners are never going to get together. They hate each other,” Jim said. “The only reason they don’t tear the place down is that it’ll cost too much, and they’ll have to work with the EPA.”

  Tom put his elbows on the marble coffin and leaned in. “We’re not hear to bitch about the mill. We got kids going missing. One from this town.”

  The others nodded and shut up. Except for Bob. “What are we going to do about it? All the guys who actually hunted the last vampire aren’t around anymore. Do we even know there’s a vampire out there?”

  “My old man said they put Marquise Charlotte away for good. She can’t be back, can she?” Rascal Metzger said.

  “Wasn’t a mark on the Billingsly boy,” Bob said. Nann remembered he was there when the body was found. “Maybe it’s something else?”

  Tom pulled a gym bag off the floor and put it on the coffin lid. He passed around wooden stakes and glass vials. “Like what?”

  Like a Piper, Nann thought to herself.

  “From what happened here in the ’80s, and the ’60s, and the ’30s, and all the way back when the mill was first built, we know this is how it starts. Kids go missing. Pretty soon, it’ll be adults. After that, we’ll be living in Vampire City. We need to take precautions.”

  A sound distracted Nann. She turned to see Zinnia creeping up the stairs. Nann put a finger to her lips. A moment later, Zinnia crashed into Nann. Acting quickly, Nann put a hand over Zinnia’s mouth. “Shh! It’s Nann. What are you doing here?”

  Zinnia blinked a few times, getting Nann into focus. “I live here. What are you doing here?”

  “Spying on the VHS.”

  With a shrug that said “busted!” Zinnia nodded. “Okay, me too.”

  “What then, patrols? A neighborhood watch with stakes and mallets?” Bob said.

  Jim’s lips formed a grim line. “We’ll have to start with the cemetery, in case Roy comes back.”

  Zinnia gave Nann big eyes.

  “I’m a night owl,” Tom said. “I can take a shift tonight.”

  “I’ll join you,” one of the men Nann didn’t know offered.

  “I can do Friday and Saturday,” Jim said. “The wife’s working third shift this weekend.”

  Zinnia’s eyes got no smaller. “Wow, they�
��re really hunting a vampire. Do they realize they’re sitting around a coffin drinking beer?”

  “That would cost millions, hundreds of millions,” Bob said. The talk had turned back to shop talk. “How could we afford to buy the mill?”

  “The union is in talks with the owners—” Rascal was interrupted by Bob.

  “We’ve all heard that song before. The owners would hold out just for spite,” Bob said.

  “What I heard, the owners aren’t in talks with the union. They’re talking to a redevelopment company,” Jim said.

  “Gonna make the mill into condos?” Bob said. “Put some flowers on the sludge waste hills.”

  “Technically, if they did, they could get a Brownfields grant from the EPA. That would mean jobs around here.” Branden shrugged.

  “For what, two years? I’m saying we stick tight with the union and let them figure out how to buy the mill,” Rascal said.

  Zinnia shook her head. “They’re doing it all wrong.”

  “What, the vampire thing? I agree.”

  “No, buying the mill, making it employee owned.”

  “Well, someone’s been buying up houses on the west side for years,” Jim said. “I get the feeling their plans don’t include a papermill.”

  An idea stirred in Nann’s head. What was it about the west side of Calamity Corners?

  “You see something sinister everywhere,” Branden chided him. “I think Rascal’s right. We stick with the union, let them figure out an employee buyout.”

  “No, not the union.” Zinnia leaned forward. She moved her hand toward the door frame to steady herself. But she missed, pushing the door open instead. With a whoop, she fell into the meeting hall.

  Nann ducked back. “Tell them they’re doing it wrong,” she whispered.

  But her spell was broken. The men all stood. A couple had guns. The guns were pointed at her and Zinnia.

  Chapter 8