Page 56 of Witches of Dubious Origin
Olive and I exchanged a look. Olive had been right. There was something off about this situation and about Moran. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he was definitely not all here and he was nothing like the kindly man who had consoled me after the death of my mother.
“Mr. Moran.” I thought if I questioned him, we’d have more luck. Maybe he would be more sympathetic to a relative. “Idon’t know if you remember me. I’m Zoe Ziakas, Juliet’s daughter.”
This seemed to resonate with him. He turned toward me. He didn’t meet my gaze but glanced somewhere behind me.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. There was no sincerity in his voice. It was almost as if he was saying something he was preprogrammed to say.
“Thank you.” I leaned forward. “But I have questions.”
“I can’t answer any questions,” Moran protested. He glanced at us and his eyes looked scared. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m d—” He flinched and stopped speaking.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Olive asked.
“Ground—” Again he flinched. “Not here. There. Don’t let them—argh.”
Olive abruptly stood up, knocking her chair back a few feet. Startled, I leaned away from her, afraid of what she might do. It was Olive, after all. She wasn’t one for announcing her intentions and this was no different.
She held her hands up in front of her with her palms facing Moran. In a low voice, she spoke in an ancient language that was guttural and sharp, the sort of language in which words of affection sounded like insults. It suited her.
The temperature dropped in the room to a bone-deep coldness that I knew I wasn’t imagining, as I could see my breath when I exhaled the air I’d been holding in. I glanced at Olive in equal parts fear and wonder. Her face had become even paler than usual and her dark eyes looked wild, as if some supernatural force lurked inside her. One that she kept a tight leash on except for in this moment when she loosenedher grasp, allowing a glimpse of it to peek out through her eyes. She was terrifying.
The words were obviously a spell of some sort and now I desperately wanted to know what sort of witch Olive was. When I’d lived with Agatha as a teen, she had told me about the different types of witches, trying to get me interested in my family history, no doubt. I suspected Olive was one of the more powerful ones, like a storm witch, a blood witch, or possibly the most elusive of all—a Fae witch. At this point, nothing would surprise me.
Olive dropped her hands and Moran watched her, unmoving. It took me a moment to realize that he couldn’t move, that whatever she had muttered had rendered him a prisoner in his own body.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Followed a hunch,” she said. “Open the closet door.”
A hunch had created the terrifying power I’d seen in her eyes? What the hell?
Still, I knew better than to ask questions. I pushed up from my seat and approached the door. I didn’t know why I was suddenly so nervous. My fingers shook as I reached for the knob. I glanced back at Olive. She jerked her chin at the door and said, “Do it.”
I took the cold metal in my hand and twisted it. I pulled the door open, and out tumbled a woman with tape over her mouth and her hands secured with zip ties. I ripped the tape off her mouth. But instead of taking a breath and saying thank you, she took one look at Mr. Moran and started screaming.
18
“He’s dead!” she screamed. “Dead!” Her face was shiny as tears streamed down her cheeks. She was shaking and she kept screaming, “Dead!”
I glanced over my shoulder at Moran. Did the woman mean what I thought she meant? I snatched a tissue from the holder on the desk and dropped into a crouch in front of her.
“Hi, I’m Zoe and this is my friend Olive.” I heard a hiss behind me and realized belatedly that we probably shouldn’t give our real names. Oops. “We’re here to help.”
The woman stopped screaming and blinked at me. She began to cry, rocking back and forth in a self-soothing motion. Her shoulder-length curly brown hair was mussed and shot with gray. She wore a blue-and-pink floral silk blouse with a bow at the neck and a pleated skirt in a matching blue. She was wearing sensible low-heeled brown pumps and looked every inch the part of middle-aged office administrator.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Shelly. Shelly Dabrowski. I’m the interim director herebecause Mr. Moran…Mr. Moran…” She glanced at the man frozen in place at the desk and started to hyperventilate.
“Don’t look at him, Shelly, look at me,” I instructed. “What happened to Mr. Moran?”
“He died,” she wailed, growing louder with each word. “Two weeks ago he passed away from a surgical complication. I went to his funeral and everything. He’s dead, but today he showed up here and tied my hands and taped my mouth and shoved me in the closet!” She started to wail.
Olive let out a put-upon sigh and turned to Shelly. She opened her hand, then closed it into a tight fist. Shelly continued screaming, but no sound came out. This seemed to freak her out even more and her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped to the floor.
“How did you do that?” I gestured to Moran. “And that?”
Olive stared at me.
