"Are my parents in danger?" Tonya's hands trembled and she gripped the steering wheel tightly.
"Turn this car around and I'll tell you." Aunt Helen cleared her throat noisily and opened the window. She held her face in the wind, letting stray hairs dip and dance.
Tonya glanced at the back of Aunt Helen's head. Her white ponytail was thinning, revealing pale scalp, like the ground of a replanted forest. When had she lost so much hair?
Tonya turned the car around and continued north, waiting for her Aunt to finally speak.
"Well?"
Aunt Helen sighed and stared straight ahead. "When I found out Len was back in town, I sent my sister on an eco tour of Australia. Your parents will be camping for two months."
"Why haven't they phoned?"
"Every week I email them that you're happy but busy, and don't have time to talk. Besides, they don't have much internet in the Outback."
"Is that why they won't answer my calls?"
"I convinced them not to bring their mobiles, oh, and I made them forget your number."
"You can do that?"
She laughed and Tonya felt like a little girl again, overawed by grown-up powers.
"They're going to be mad at me when they return and remember selling the house."
"What?"
"I had to pay for their trip somehow."
"They told me you were in the hospital, that they were moving to Toronto to visit you. They wouldn't let me see you, said you didn't want me to. Mom was really clear about that."
"I've done things I'm not proud of. When my sister finds out I manipulated her mind..."
"Let me talk to them."
"No. This is for their own good. If they come back, I can't protect them. I may not be in hospital right now, but I'm still very sick."
Tonya kept one eye on oncoming traffic to watch for help. Maybe her Aunt wasn't working for Waldock, but this was wrong. Was she any better than her enemies? Messing with people's minds was evil. And an eco tour? Tonya couldn't imagine her mother going on a trip without nice bathrooms, boutique shopping, and art galleries. Whenever her father suggested camping, she said 'she could rough it in Loon Lake if she wanted to, she just never wanted to.' Two months of camping felt like proof of her Aunt's evil intentions.
They drove until Tonya complained her stomach was growling. She hadn't eaten since breakfast.
Her Aunt got this funny look. "Are you sure that's all it is?"
"I can't promise I'm not infected," said Tonya. "I was in the forest with the dead body of Professor Rudolf." She explained her suspicions to Aunt Helene.
"You have good instincts. Pull over here. Stop. Now!" She indicated a gravel lane so overhung with trees, Tonya would have driven past it. They turned off the highway.
"I was hoping for a restaurant," she said, pulling up beside a weathered Victorian farm house.
"First we have to visit a doctor."
# # #
The sagging porch and moss-covered shingles looked more suited to a farmer, and not a successful one. As they waited on the porch, which was overrun by giant carpenter ants, Tonya asked: "Can't you drive back to Loon Lake and see a real doctor?"
"Shhh. The walls have ears."
Once again her Aunt didn't want to discuss things. Working summers in the Herbal Healing Shoppe, her Aunt often demanded quiet, especially when her teenaged niece asked about magic. It was something one didn't mention openly in Loon Lake, but Tonya felt it moving through the Shoppe, below the surface of things. Before that summer, she had associated magic with luck charms, New Age prayers, and placebo love potions.
Today she had witnessed powers strong enough to mesmerize, or kill at a distance, and it was high time her Aunt provided answers.
"Is this 'doctor' of yours a friend?" she asked, no longer sure a friend of her Aunt's could be trusted.
A tiny lady opened the door. She was young, although it was hard to tell if she were closer to thirty or twenty. Her face hardly moved when she talked, even when she ordered them to 'get inside quick' and snicked the door shut behind them.
"You kept us waiting long enough," said Aunt Helene.
"The Bad Penny is back." They stared at each other as if Tonya weren't there.
"Sorry about this." Aunt Helen shrugged and held up her hands. "What else could I do?"
"You'd better sit down." She brought them into the parlour and showed them to an antique sofa, upholstered in some kind of worn black hide, then went into another room. Watching her go, Tonya had to wonder why a lady in a tumbled-down farmhouse was wearing a pink angora sweater and pearls. She had noticed a pair of Italian leather pumps on the mat beside the door, beside mud-caked rubber boots.
"Is she bringing us lunch?" Tonya's stomach rumbled and ached.
The lady returned with a towel over her arm and a bowl of something green and bubbly, which she set on the coffee table. Definitely not appetizing, although if Tonya had to fast much longer, the grubby towel would start looking tasty.
Was she a witch? Tonya expected her to chant over the basin or recite a spell, until she put her hands in and washed them. Her Aunt and Tonya did the same.
"I'm Tonya." The woman ignored her outstretched hand, not taking her eyes off Aunt Helene.
"What do you want?" the woman asked.
Tonya burned to ask this doctor if she were infected like the others. Did they hear telepathic voices in their heads? Did they want to eat all the time like her? Did they feel stressed out of their minds too; or were they relaxed like Professor Rudolph, sleepwalking mindlessly into collapse? She hadn't felt a moment of peace for days. Well, unless you counted the moment when Ducky took her hand...
"Let's go for a walk," announced Aunt Helene. "This one needs to eat something, and I can't stand the sight of food right now."
The image of Lynette's chocolate binge sprang into Tonya's head. If Lynette and the Professor were sleep-eating and sleep-walking, mightn't she be too? Did her Aunt know about things Tonya was doing, but couldn't remember?
"You never call, you never write, and you only want to see me when you want something." The lady did a 'kvetching' voice, which wasn't quite working.
Aunt Helen's expression didn't twitch from grim mode. "Is this a bad time?"
"I'll be right back," the woman said. Tonya heard the click of shoes on tiles, and water running. Her heart leapt. The lady was in the kitchen. Finally, she would get lunch!
When it was brought out on a tray, however, the bread had a sprinkling of white around the edges that looked like mould. She tilted her head to peek at the slices of cheese, which seemed too blue. She lifted the lid. It was part cheddar, part kid's science fair experiment. Who ever heard of blue cheddar? Rather than mention the burgeoning mould colony, she just said 'thanks,' as the women headed outside.
Tonya looked back at her revolting lunch. Even the glass of water looked cloudy. Was this fancy 'doctor' trying to poison her? Forget that. They had a head start, but from a side window she spied them going around the side of a barn. She zipped her coat up to go out, but there was one more thing to do first.
She found a phone in the kitchen and dialled '0.' An automated response greeted her, but Tonya persevered, pressing buttons until a live voice answered.
"Operator."
"I'm lost at a farm house. Can you tell by my number where I am?"
It was an odd request and took some explaining, but at last Tonya got the address, a rural route far northeast of Loon Lake. Without letting the door slam behind her, Tonya slipped outside to observe. If her Aunt had a dark secret, she didn't want to miss it.
She edged her way along the side of the barn until she came to a knot hole in the wood and peeked through. Hay blocked the view, so she crept a bit further.
The cavalier way Aunt Helene had sent her parents away on holiday, if indeed that was what she had done, meant she was capable of anything. The only certainty was that she was a spell caster with powerful enemies, and that she had made Tonya abandon her friends and come here against her wishes. Why?
Near the corner a board had fallen away. Peeking through the gap she saw Aunt Helene arguing with the woman who made big gestures and her face was red. Her Aunt lounged against a bale of hay, as if she were bored. What Tonya wouldn't give to hear what they were saying, but no matter how loudly the young woman appeared to be yelling, judging by her gesticulations, Tonya heard nothing.
Was this another magic trick to repel spying ears, or was it because the wind was at Tonya's back?
Movement drew her attention. Aunt Helene picked up a two-by four and swung it like a club, knocking the young woman to the dirt. Tonya dashed to get back to the house before she was seen. Aunt Helene was coming and she was moving fast.
Tonya skinned in just ahead of her Aunt, and threw herself onto the sofa. She drew big breaths in through her nose, hoping her Aunt wouldn't notice how badly she wanted to gulp air. The sandwich, untouched on the plate, stared up at her, and she felt, just for a second, as if it would betray her.
"You didn't eat it, good," said her Aunt. "That means we can go."
********
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