Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 11

After Esther and Laura left me and Trey in the bedroom where they'd somehow managed to transport us while we were unconscious, the doorknob on the door literally disappeared. I heard Esther lock the door from the hallway, but by the time I crossed the moonlit room to jiggle the knob and see if an escape might be a remote possibility, the knob had vanished and the area of the door where it had just been was as smooth and seamless as if it had never been there at all.

It was a spell, or a charm, I was sure, but certainly one that I'd never be able to crack on my own. My heart sank; I had been an outright ass to have spent the last few months in Florida doing homework and going to school like a normal kid when it was painfully clear now that I should have dedicated myself to learning as much about magic and paranormal abilities as possible. If I had even a portion of as much magical power as Laura and Esther seemed to think, it should have been a piece of cake to strip away whatever spells they'd put on the room to hold us there. But I was ignorant and as a result, utterly helpless.

Behind me, on the bed, Trey stirred awake. He yawned deeply before opening his eyes. Upon realizing where he was, his legs jerked violently and he scrambled to sit up.

"Where are we?" he asked me, rubbing at his eyes.

The effect of the tea hadn't completely worn off on me; I still felt a little dizzy and fizzy between the ears. I flipped the light switch on the wall and was pleased to find that Esther and Laura hadn't somehow magically disabled it. "Bad news," I said. "Looks like we're hostages."

"Shit," Trey muttered, looking around. I looked around, too, taking in the details of what was presumably Esther's guest bedroom for the first time. For what was essentially a prison cell, it wasn't so bad; the room kind of looked like a window display at Pottery Barn. The bed was a white sleigh bed with a gray and white striped duvet and an assortment of fluffy pillow on top. A large flat-screen television was mounted to the wall across from the bed. There were two white doors on each side of a single wooden dresser, the first of which I opened to find a completely empty closet, and the second of which led to a tiny, windowless, but immaculate bathroom with a toilet and shower. "At least this witch has decent taste. I think this mattress is memory foam," he added.

I crossed the room and stepped out of my shoes before sitting down Indian-Style on the bed. "It gets kind of worse," I said gently, and he braced himself for what more I had to say. "Tomorrow, they're making me go to California with Laura to try and convince Mischa to come here."

Trey exclaimed, "Ha!" and shook his head. After a few seconds, he realized I wasn't joking. I reached forward and took his hands in mine, never wanting to let go of him. "Wait a second. Are you serious?"

My mouth twisted and I didn't reply. His face fell as the realization sobered his mood. "Oh, wow. What are they going to do to me?"

I shrugged, feeling too miserable and low to even cry. "I don't know, Trey. I think they're just keep you here, in this room, until we get back."

"Okay, but Mischa's never going to leave California. I mean, you know that right?"

As usual, Trey had sussed out the truth of a complicated situation in nothing flat. I sighed. "I know, I know. I'll think of something, I just can't... I haven't figured anything out yet. If I try to ditch Laura and go straight to the police, that hardly helps you. And I don't know if police would even be able to find you if they searched every corner of this house, with all of the different glamours and charms they've cast around here."

Trey nodded slowly, his eyes making another thorough sweep of the room. "We shouldn't talk about anything important. I'm sure they're listening."

An uneasiness spread over my skin and we both fell silent, listening. Even though I heard nothing, I still felt certain that he was right; of course they were listening. Without saying a word, I assessed the situation further. My purse wasn't in the room with us, which meant that my phone was elsewhere in the house. Presumably Laura and Esther knew that at that moment my parents had already called the police because I hadn't surfaced in Florida as expected, and they were texting me frantically. I could only speculate how Laura and Esther had chosen to either handle or ignore that situation. Police looking for me at the airport tomorrow was certainly a potential means of salvation, although probably not one on which I could count if Laura suspected it. If Esther could make cement deer come to life and run off into the woods, she could certainly disguise me with ease.

Trey's phone had been in the pocket of his coat, which was also (not surprisingly) absent from the room. I opened each of the drawers in the dresser hoping to find something I might be able to use as a pendulum, but they were all completely empty.

"Look," Trey said as he stood at the window. It overlooked the house's front yard, and I scanned the residential street, noticing cars in driveways and lights on in windows. It must have been around dinner time, as the silhouettes we saw passing by windows in the houses across the street suggested that people were still awake. "There," he pointed downward toward the driveway of the house where we were being kept.

"What?" I asked, not sure what exactly he wanted me to notice. The driveway was empty, suggesting that either Laura had driven home or parked her car in the house's garage.

"Those deer. They never came back."

He was right. Perhaps Esther had been lying about the purpose of the deer or the probability of their return after they felt like the house was suitably free from evil, but they hadn't returned to the area of the front lawn near the driveway where they'd been when we first arrived.

"Ha," I mumbled unenthusiastically. "Maybe they're keeping away because Esther's the evil one."

Trey remained stoically silent for a moment before saying, "No, I'm pretty sure they took off because I'm the evil one. And Esther cleansed you instead of me."

With a quizzical expression, I turned toward him. I wanted to hear more about his theory but not at the risk of Esther eavesdropping on us. "How did you know, earlier? When we were at the table, how did you know something weird was going on?" I was especially relieved now, considering that we were locked in a room, that neither of us had said Father Fahey's name aloud.

"That dog wasn't a dog," Trey said, so entertained and pleased with his discovery that he almost started laughing despite our dire predicament. "It took me a while to notice, but something about it really bothered me."

I raised my eyebrows at him and he cackled.

"When they cast the spell to create it, or whatever, they forgot to add details to its butt. Gross, I know. But it was totally missing a way to poop. I only noticed because it was wagging its tail so much."

I punched Trey in the arm. Only Trey would have noticed that such a magnificent-looking dog was missing such a critical feature on its body. Funny as his realization was, I had a sharp pain under my rib cage that I was pretty sure had been caused by anxiety. There was no way I could tell Trey that Esther planned to kill him if I didn't bring Mischa back to this place.  Then he would have had to agree with what I already knew: we were pretty much doomed.

In a burst of panic I attempted to lift the window, wondering if the women might have made a dumb oversight in securing the room if they'd been similarly foolish in crafting a fake dog. I dug my fingertips into the grooves on the window and lifted with all my might, groaning and straining, but it didn't budge.

"Maybe if we try to catch the attention of someone outside, they'll call the cops," Trey suggested after a minivan drove by. We both began waving frantically moments later when we saw a middle-aged woman bundled in a heavy winter puffer coat walking a cocker spaniel. She was headed toward Esther's house, but no matter how much we moved around or tried to use the curtains to alert her, she didn't lift her head to look up at the window where we watched her. Then I noticed something downright disheartening. "Trey, look," I said. I nodded at the house across the street. "You can see the reflection of this house in its windows."

In the reflection of Esther's house in the enormous picture windows of the house across the street, all of the lights appeared to be off. She had done an impeccable job of concealing our presence in her house from anyone passing by along the street.

"Maybe if I knock?" Trey suggested, raising his knuckles to the window pane.

I grabbed his hand and prevented him from knocking. "Don't. I don't want that woman coming back in here. As bad as this is, at least we're together. If she separates us, I'm going to totally flip out."