09 - Return Of The Witch Read Online Free

noticed, but I heard it. I hear it every night.

 
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
     
    Eight o’clock the next morning, my phone rang, waking me from the deepest sleep I had fallen into in over a week. It was Dominic. He sounded anxious if not excited, like a puppy with a new squeaky toy. But then Dominic often appears more animated than a given situation calls for, so I didn’t read too much into it.
    “Lilith, wha ddaya doing?”
    I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and began unbuttoning the shirt I had slept in. “Nothing. I just woke up. What do you want?”
    “Can you come down to the station?”
    “Why?”
    “I want to talk to you about something.”
    “Can’t we talk over the phone?”
    “Lilith, please. It’s important. I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t.”
    I peeled the shirt off and tossed it onto the bed. “Is Ursula there?”
    “No. Why?”
    “ No reason. I’ll get there when I can.”
    “Lilith, why did you ask—”
    I hung up the phone and dragged myself to the bathroom. One hour and a lousy cup of coffee later, I was dressed in blue jeans, a cap-sleeve V-neck and sneakers, standing on my front porch, soaking up the sun and contemplating heading back out to Gloucester Beach. I wasn’t there longer than a minute or two when a strange black car drove up in front of the house.
    At first, I thought Dominic had sent a car out to pick me up, until I realized it wasn’t a cop car. It wasn’t even a sedan. It was an Escalade, a badass one at that, all tricked out with chrome wheels, jacked suspension, tinted windows and a battering ram grill that looked like a lion’s sneer.
    It sat there awhile, motor running, its angle skewed so that I could not see the driver. My gut told me that something wasn’t right. My instincts told me to play it cool.
    I stepped off the porch and began walking toward the car. As I did, it started in a backward roll. I picked up the pace. The car did the same. When I stopped, it stopped. When I started walking toward it again, it continued backward.
    When I thought I had enough, I flipped the driver the bird and turned back toward the house. I only took about five steps when I heard the tires wind. I turned around. The car’s back end hunched up like an angry dog. The back tires were screaming, but the front wheels were locked in a classic break stand.
    “You punk son of a bitch!” I yelled, my arms spread wide in invitation. “You wanna piece of me? Com`on!”
    I waved him on, inviting him to drop the hammer down and give it his best shot. He took the bait, flooring the gas and releasing the break. I leveled my palm and spun up a zip ball the size of a grapefruit.
    The car kept charging. I stood my ground. A blue cloud of burning rubber billowed from behind the tires. I wound up and let the zip ball fly. It hit the radiator grill in a shower of white-hot sparks, blowing out both headlights and shredding the right front fender. The car veered left. I jumped right, hitting the grass in a tuck-n-roll and landing on my feet again.
    When I turned around, the car’s rear bumper was all I could see through the smoke spewing from the tires. I thumbed my chin and flicked him a “Bah-fungoo!”
    And that was it. Kids, I thought. They’re such assholes these days. It made me wonder why Dominic and Ursula were trying so hard to have one of their own. I mean, wouldn’t adopting a Tasmanian devil make just as much sense?
     
    After changing out of my grass-stained shirt, I got in my car and drove on over to the Justice Center. Standing in front of Carlos and Dominic at their desks, I noticed that both looked a little guilty of something. It took me a second, but I finally realized why.
    Carlos had moved to Tony’s old desk and Dominic to Carlos’. I suppose they thought I’d find that morbid or something, but of course, I didn’t. It had been ten days since Tony died. I couldn’t very well expect the world to stop spinning or the flowers to stop growing. They had begun the