Page 70 of Witch and Tell

When the door closed, I turned to Lise, slumped against the wall. I pressed fingers to her neck. Her heart still beat. “Lise? Lise, wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open, then closed again.

I knelt next to her. “Lise. Wake up. It’s okay now.”

She struggled to sitting and rubbed her eyes. “What happened?”

I explained how Beata had put a spell on her, but that she’d saved me by dissolving the dome Beata had sealed over me.

“I did that?” she said.

Lise was just coming into her magic. It would take time for it to settle in, and what form it might take, I didn’t know.

“I am so tired.” She pulled herself to standing. She’d tipped up her face and inhaled. “The sulfur is gone. It smells good in here again, like old books and calm.”

“I’m wiped out, too,” I’d said. “Can you make it back to the retreat center alone?”

Now Lise was back at the retreat center for what I guessed would be the deepest sleep she’d ever experienced. As for me, I was so tired that I questioned whether I had even the energy to mount the stairs to my apartment.

Besides that, one tiny thought niggled at me. Beata had said, “You’ll soon discover another surprise.” What could it be? I didn’t have the strength to worry about it. Besides, now that her magic was gone, Beata wouldn’t be able to try any further assaults.

I sank to the floor, next to Marilyn’s fallen portrait. I’d get up soon and go to bed. I simply needed a moment to catch my breath.

The sound of metal on metal broke the silence. Rodney growled low in his throat. Someone was messing with the lock on the kitchen door. Or was it the window in Old Man Thurston’s office on the opposite side of the library? Sounds seemed to come from both directions.

Before I could pull myself to standing, Byron Marshall strode into the atrium, a long zip tie dangling from his belt. I couldn’t breathe. It was if the zip tie were already tightened around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.

He seemed surprised to see me on the floor, but it only stopped him a second. He smiled and crossed the atrium. “Well, well, Josie the librarian.” His expression turned deadly serious. “Give me the key.”

The key. That was one detail I hadn’t yet settled. “I don’t have it.”

He grabbed my collar and yanked me to my feet. “Stop playing around. I saw you take the key.”

Then I understood. This was the “surprise.” When Beata’s magic had vanished, so, too, did the spell of glamour she’d cast on Byron. Now he remembered seeing Tyrone’s room key taken from his van. The thing was, Beata had veiled herself as me. He thought it was me who’d taken the key.

There was no way I could talk myself out of this one.

“If you won’t give me the key, I’ll have to find it myself,” Byron said. His breath was sour with beer.

Even if I had a scintilla of energy left, I wouldn’t be able to wriggle from his grasp. I closed my eyes and willed the books to lend me their strength. They, too, were depleted. I’d wrung them, and myself, dry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Liar.”

He whipped the zip tie from his belt. This was it, then. I’d vanquished a powerful witch only to be killed by a sociopathic street gangster. Rodney hissed and struck at Byron’s ankles, but he kicked him away.

Byron looped the zip tie around my neck and fed the end through its latch.

“Don’t do this,” I whispered. Rodney yowled.

All at once, Byron’s head jerked, and he released me.

I stumbled back to see Wanda, dressed all in black, delivering a sharp blow to Byron’s skull. Byron quickly recovered his balance and turned toward her, one arm extended to grab her neck. If I’d thought Wanda’s flamenco dancing was graceful, it was nothing compared to her kickboxing skills. She shouted, “Ay-ya!” and kicked high, spun, then delivered a series of one-two punches that made David Carradine inKung Fulook like an amateur.

Byron was as shocked as I was. Eyes wide, he stumbled sideways. Almost before I entirely understood what was happening, he lay unconscious on the floor, handcuffed with his own zip tie. I stared first at him, then at Wanda, her face blackened, a dark stocking cap pulled over her gray hair. Only her eyeballs showed white. Behind her lay a garbage sack.

“Wanda . . . ?”