Page 51 of Fortress
Jake paused, then swung around and moved unsteadily back to the bed. Tobias jumped up to guide him to the table. He pulled up a chair for Jake and took the other himself, pulling his notebook closer. Once he sat, Jake’s hand dropped to Tobias’s knee. Tobias squeezed it once, then set to work. The warm pressure of Jake’s palm and fingers helped steady his hand as he wrote the date and circumstances of the witch’s curse.
Poking through the remains of the hex bag with a coffee stirrer, Tobias wrote and reported aloud what he could identify or at least describe. Wolfsbane, hemlock, rue, something spiky he couldn’t name. After figuring out what he could (and putting aside a couple of plants to look at later), he frowned.
“Does any of this sound familiar to you?” he asked Jake, who was still gazing vacantly into the distance, the black smudges around his eyes darker than they had been back at the school.
“I fucking hate witches,” Jake said, then jerked a little, turning his head toward Tobias. “I mean—”
So Jake remembered Becca. “I know,” Tobias interrupted. He kept his voice level and his hands still. “They look h-human. But anyone who chooses to corrupt their humanity with the occult has forfeited the r-right to be considered human.”
“Toby—”
“I need to get some supplies out of the trunk, okay? I’ll be right back. I don’t recognize this particular curse, but I can try some standard anti-witchcraft remedies. I’ll be right back,”Tobias repeated, and squeezed Jake’s hand before getting up. At least he didn’t have to try to smile.
The difference between Becca and the freak they were hunting now was that she couldn’t hurt anyone again. Tobias wished he could forget her, could stop remembering her, because it never helped anything. It certainly wouldn’t help now. Jake had to know that Tobias understood what a witch was,especiallynow, and that Tobias wouldn’t flinch from doing what had to be done to stop the bastard who had stolen Jake’s sight. So what if there had been a time (no, no, don’t think of it) when the only comfort he’d known was a thin arm holding him tight, one hand over his eyes,shh shhin his ear?
None of that changed what they were huntingnow, and Tobias would not think about her.
When he returned, Jake was on his feet, circling the middle of the room with his fingers extended to catch the furniture. Tobias let him roam while he warmed holy water with a high concentration of rock salt over a small burner and disinfected one of the washcloths.
Once ready, he called to Jake, “I think this may be easiest if you sit and tilt your head back or lie down.”
Jake felt for a chair and lowered himself into it, one knee bouncing as he drummed his fingers on the armrests. “Whatcha got for me? Better not taste like that gross cough syrup.”
“No, it’s a basic poultice. Just holy water and rock salt. Sometimes if you apply it to an affected area, it draws out the curse.” Tobias touched the cloth to Jake’s arm first to prepare him for the temperature and moisture, but Jake’s shoulders still flinched as Tobias draped the cloth over his eyes. “Sorry—is it too hot?”
“Nah, it’s just like my last time at a day spa. You got any cucumber slices?” But Jake’s knuckles were white, gripping thearmrests. Tobias touched them lightly, stroking back and forth with his thumb until Jake let go to take Tobias’s hand instead.
After ten minutes, Tobias lifted the poultice off and went to get a fresh cloth, this one dipped in cold holy water (from a flask hastily pushed into the mini-fridge), to wipe Jake’s eyelids as carefully as he could.He tried to ignore the growing ache in his chest. Jake should not be so helpless, left to no one’s care but Tobias’s.
“Okay,” Tobias said at last. “Open your eyes slowly.”
Jake blinked them open, but his eyes were still blank green, focused on nothing. His mouth twisted, and he struck the armrests with his palms. “Should’ve worked by now, right?”
Tobias laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Yeah, but there’s other ones to try.”
Blowing wolfsbane over Jake’s eyes, drawing the sigil against the evil eye over Jake’s forehead, the back of his neck, inside both his palms, wrapping a blessed set of beads around his eyes and saying a few words to match the blessing tradition—nothing had any effect. Tobias told himself that perhaps this would at least prevent any spread of the curse. But as far as reversing the vision loss, their only real hope was to catch the witch who had cast it.
They’d come to Minden, Louisiana, after hearing one of those “weird news of the day” specials that entertain civilians without setting off ASC alarm bells. This kind of investigation was usually worth checking out but went unnoticed by ASC hunters.
A high school science teacher (plain, middle-aged, serious, and seriously upset in the interviews) had woken up to find that every plant in her greenhouse had not only been relocated to inside her house, but had also quadrupled in number. Flowers and ferns overran her carpets, and vines twined up her lamps and banisters. She’d called the police, suspecting one of her students had broken in as a prank. The police, however, hadbeen unable to find any signs of illegal entry and hadn’t been sure how even a group of pranksters could have moved all the flora inside without the homeowner hearing so much as a whisper.
To Tobias and Jake, those details spelled out “mischievous spirit of one type or another,” so they turned the Eldorado down I-55 and headed toward Louisiana.
They’d found a few more odd things going down in Minden once they arrived, most of them focused around the high school. Nothing as suspicious as nocturnally migrating plants, but enough to connect a few dots, even if those dots didn’t yield a clear image yet. The custodian admitted that classroom doors kept getting stuck shut, no matter how much they were oiled and examined, and that sometimes even the master key wouldn’t work. He also complained that the new gymnasium hovered at arctic temperatures, despite it being summer in the South and that technicians had completely dismantled the air-conditioning unit.
Jake figured that whatever type of spirit or mojo going on didn’t have much juice, but since the Hawthornes were in the area, they ought to put a stop to it. They’d gone to the high school that night intending to scan the place for EMF, but instead they’d run into the trespasser with a hex bag in hand.
“We’re going to have to do a lot more interviewing,” Jake said. “Research. It was sloppy of us—me—to get surprised like that, and no way are we gonna let it happen again.” He glanced at Tobias, but it didn’t quite work, his eyes passing over the general area where he thought Tobias should be and focusing past his shoulder. “He looked human to me when I could still see him, which means definitely a witch and not just something humanoid. That always makes it hard. Witches can be tricky, they’re... well, you know a lot of this, Toby.”
Tobias agreed, and they brainstormed the next course of action, whom to interview and where to gather evidence. What neither of them pointed out was how much harder it would be now that they had only one working set of eyes between them.
Tobias knew he could push back the usual worries and self-doubts he had while navigating the real world, enough to get the information they needed without alerting suspicion. He wouldn’t let his own weaknesses get in the way when Jake was depending on him. Tobias had promised he would find the witch and restore Jake’s sight, and he knew he could do that. He knew how weak freaks were, how they tripped up, and how they broke.
But there were still countless ways his ignorance and inexperience could triphimup, leave him vulnerable to those same mistakes freaks were so likely to make, or at least slow him down at this, the worst possible time—when Jake needed him. Tobias knew he could do it, knew he could make it work, but he also knew that they needed to use every possible resource and assistance to get it donefastand right.
“I think we should call Roger,” he said.
Jake gave a short nod but stayed quiet, restlessly fingering the amulet hanging from his neck. That motion, coupled with the silence, worried Tobias more than he wanted to admit. He reached for Jake’s free hand, interlocking their fingers as he dialed Roger’s number, then turned the speaker on and set the phone on the table.
