Chapter Seventeen – Stephanie

 

“Take me off speaker,” Tabitha nearly growled. Even without ever having seen her, I could tell that the guttural tone was unbecoming.

“Tabitha, we ain’t got time for this bullshit. I need her to be able to hear this stuff, too. She’s in it almost as deep as I am, here, and I need a guide around town. Someone who’s been here for a while. So, sorry, you gotta stay on the talk box.”

A moment of silence on the other end. “Fine,” she said finally, her voice flat, the single word clipped.

We’d taken the phone down from the wall, dragged it over to the middle of the four-person table, and taken seats beside each other, our flanks nearly touching as we crowded in front of the little off-white device. Now, Ryder and I exchanged looks. I frowned at him, but he just shrugged and gave a little wave of his hand like this was nothing. Just par for the course.

I didn’t like stepping on her toes like this, or making her uncomfortable. If I’d known she was going to get this upset and make problems for him, I wouldn’t have insisted on being on the call. But, the look on Ryder’s face told me it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Tabitha sighed. “All right. You guys and your civilians. Always bringing in civilians. Why? I don’t get it. Colonel Harrington would be having a freaking heart attack if he was still around.” She sighed again, seemed to take a moment to collect herself. “Okay, I’m done. What’s the problem? You mentioned a bunch of different phenomena on your voicemail. Tried calling you back at the hotel, but the desk woman said you’d disappeared when I tried calling back.”

“Yeah,” Ryder replied. “We kind of went out the window.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Not really.”

“All right. Continue.”

Ryder and I started from the beginning. He told her about the woman he’d hit on the highway, about the cat eyes in the attendees, about the disappearing townspeople, about my mom’s ghost, and finally about the fact that we had one of them locked in a closet.

“What?” Tabitha asked. “Couldn’t manage to have them trying to end the world or something, too?”

“Figured there was enough on their plate already,” Ryder said, his words a drawl as they slipped out from between his full, kissable lips. “But, who knows? They still got the whole weekend in front of them. Maybe they’re overachievers?”

I smacked Ryder’s arm with the back of my hand just as Tabitha practically hissed his name.

“Let’s stay focused here,” Ryder said, rubbing his arm in an exaggerated manner. “What else do you need?”

“The witch,” Tabitha said. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Don’t we have that on file somewhere?” he asked. “I mean, this is supposedly the most haunted town in America.”

“That,” Tabitha said. It sounded like she pulled open a large file, began to flip through the pages. “Right. I did look into it, and I did pull one of the files we had in the archives. Harrington oversaw a team back in the early 80s that checked out the claims of Camelot, and found them lacking. This was before the PRB’s official formation, so he did it while he was with the Pentagon.”

“The Pentagon?” I asked, blushing a little, despite having already told Ryder it was all a big sham. Somehow it was even more embarrassing to know that my own government had had to waste taxpayer dollars by sending a team to investigate the town’s claims.

“Every threat needs to be investigated, even if it’s just cursory,” Tabitha said. “So, yes, they investigated it.”

“Anything else they found?” Ryder asked, glancing to me. “About this Winifred O’Bannon woman, or anything like that? Was she actually a witch?”

I sat back in my chair. “If you’d asked me this time yesterday,” I replied, “I would’ve said no. She was found not guilty, and a mob burned her. I always figured she got caught up in something, and it snowballed into her murder. Nothing Christina ever found indicated it one way or another, just that she was a greeting card saleswoman who was likely involved in some kind of affair with the owner of the local mine.”

“So maybe a witch, maybe not?”

“Exactly.”

“Notice anything else that’s been going on?” Tabitha asked.

“Like what?” I asked.

“There has to be some kind of pattern, here. Anything out of the ordinary in the last few weeks, or months?”

“You mean, other than us suddenly having a music festival in our backyard?” I replied. “Other than that, no.”

“About that festival,” Tabitha replied. “I need to do a little bit more digging into it, but any chance it’s connected?”

“How? You think someone’s using it to take revenge on the town, or something?”

“Maybe? One interesting tidbit I saw in the file was that Winifred had children back home in Philadelphia. Could be she actually was a witch, and her bloodline is trying to take revenge.”

“You know what?” I replied. “Come to think of it, I think the promotions company is out of Philadelphia. Maybe it is connected in some way?”

“Kind of a long time to hold a grudge, don’t you think?”

Tabitha sighed. “You might know shifters, Ryder, but you definitely don’t know witches. We can hold a grudge.”

I turned to Ryder, eyebrow raised. Shifters? What had that meant?

For his part, he barely flinched at her words. “Supposing that is what’s going on, that her family’s got an ax to grind still. What do we do?”

“For the moment? Not a clue. There might not be anything we can do.”

Nothing? My chest tightened a little, and I rose up from the table, both hands firmly planted in front of me. “Well, that’s not gonna fly,” I said, my voice a little bit louder than it should have been. “There has to be something. Some kind of spell we can do to reverse this, or protect people. Two of my best friends, people I love and care about, are already gone! What about the rest of Camelot? What should we do? Make little charms like Ryder had, and give them to everyone?”

Ryder put his hand over mine, gripping it tightly. “Hey,” he said, his voice calm and soothing, “we’re doing the best we can with limited information and resources, here. Cut Tabitha some slack, all right?”

“Your charm?” Tabitha asked.

“Yeah, the petrified lizard one.”

“That worked?” she asked. “That’s interesting.”

I leaned forward, ignoring Ryder’s hand on mine, intent on her reply. “Why?”

“Well, Ryder’s charm only works against hexes. Curses, I mean.” She was quiet for a moment, and neither he nor I said a word as she began to mumble to herself. “Yes, that would explain it.”

“Explain what?”

“Well, it’s definitely a curse, if your charm did something to prevent it. Which means we can likely reverse it.”

“Break the curse, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“What about the others?” I asked. “The cat-people.”

Before Tabitha could reply, someone called from somewhere inside the house in a soft, confused voice. “Hello? Hello? Can anyone tell me why I’m tied up? Is anyone even there?”

Ryder and I exchanged looks.

“That was fast,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Guess that answers that question,” Tabitha said. “Now, only about twenty more to go.”

“Well, guess you better get to work.”

“Gee, Ryder, thanks. Just the encouragement I needed. Now, before you go take care of your new friend, one more piece of advice.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Put yourself in a protective circle, same as what you did for him. Just to be on the safe side. There’s more to this than just a curse. Something, more than just the obvious, seems off about this whole thing.”

“Will do,” Ryder said, reaching forward to the phone, “Thanks, Tabitha.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Ryder,” she replied as his finger hovered over the disconnect button. “Good luck, you two. Sounds like you’ll need it.”