I supposed in retrospect it didn’t much matter.  It was technically the merciful thing to do, and I don’t think I could have stopped her even if I tried.  What was more unsettling to me at the time was that I suddenly realized that regardless of who was stuck there, I didn’t want to. 

Blondie moved in past the hood of the Oldsmobile, pastel blue skirt flowing lightly with the cool breeze.  She stepped in front of Sorensen, blocking my view.  Her hand unceremoniously lifted and twirled the blade once more before quickly moving down then sideways, bright crimson blood spraying out as if from a pressurized hose onto her midsection and beyond to splash on newly fallen leaves. 

The muffled cries died out a moment later.  As soon as they did she turned and walked slowly back to the car, her expression still blank.  Everything was horrifically serene.  Her walking toward me, the skirt flowing up around her in the breeze, a spattered stripe of fresh red blood splashed diagonally across her white long sleeved t-shirt, wild blonde hair dancing out into the air. 

I twisted the key as Blondie climbed into the car, breathing a sigh of relief when the engine turned over.  Luckily Sorensen hadn’t had the foresight to disable the Oldsmobile.  My yellow haired companion pulled her door shut and dropped the bloody blade at her feet. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she said without looking at me.

I didn’t bother turning my eyes toward Sorensen to see her handiwork.  I stayed quiet, lit a slightly crushed Marlboro Light with the bad-luck lighter, and wheeled us out of the glade.  Within fifteen minutes we were cruising north on the interstate surrounded by early morning commuters, the mundane reality of people living normal lives laughing silently in our faces as we drove north toward Portland.

Twenty-Nine
Home

"You taking a fucking nap up there, buster... or what?”

Blondie’s voice was barely audible, caught and carried to my frigid ears by the unrelenting ocean wind that blustered across the Casco Bay.  The strong gusts whooshed past the outlying drawbridge then twisted and darted their way into the small South Portland cove, slamming forcefully onto the rocky beach where she stood waiting.  I pulled myself a little higher against the grassy drop off where the earth had eroded away to the water’s edge and squinted into the blustery night. 

Up over the embanking and beyond the paved dead end roundabout stood the dark silhouette of a familiar two story house.  It felt like a lifetime since I’d cautiously left one morning for work at The Citadel, only to be swept away later by poor Aerin and her doomed black Honda. 

Barely a week ago, I reminded myself. 

A brief, unexpected twinge of disappointment hit me as I took note of the empty driveway.  I think a small part of me, still in denial about her death or ‘banishment’ as Blondie had called it, hoped to see the dark colored import parked in front of the house.  The White Witch poised to rescue me from this insanity, tell me I’d been tricked or brainwashed or... something.  But the driveway, like The Citadel itself had inexplicably been as Blondie and I had cruised slowly by it half an hour prior, was lonely and abandoned.

“There’s nothing,” I rasped back as loudly as I could, my cheek stinging as dried blood from still-fresh cuts pulled slightly apart.  “It’s all dark.  You sure Frost said here?”

I’d considered bandaging the painful reminder of my close escape, but a couple days worth of stubble on my face convinced me it would be easier to just let the thin lacerations heal uncovered.  Not to mention it probably would have looked pretty stupid.

“I’m sure.  She’ll be here,” she said as I slid back down to the rocky beach.

Her arms were bundling the wild mane of curls into a frizzy blonde nest on the back of her head.  The left hand seemed to be doing the bulk of the work, as her right had been limited in motion since we’d left Danvers.  I had asked her about it a few times on the ride up but all she’d told me about her escape was that Frost had rescued her from the rubble where she’d been unconscious, instructed her to go with me and rendezvous at my old house, then distracted Sorensen so she could slip out.

Yeah, she’ll be here, I responded silently in my head.  If she isn’t dead that is...

Or maybe demon-cop Sorensen had made it through the tunnel to us because Frost had let him go after us.  She had seemed pretty pissed that I wasn’t all starry eyed about her ‘power of the Gods’ speech.  Not to mention it probably would have allowed her time to escape.  Plus there was the Frost and Aerin link.  All three of them in fact, caught up in some kind of bizarre dysfunctional witch-family drama.  Part of me was convinced it was important I came clean with Blondie about the information I had, but something kept whispering in the back of my head every time I considered it...

She’ll freak if you tell her.  Go absolutely bat-shit crazy haywire.  Just keep your fucking mouth shut, loser.

“I hope to hell you’re right,” I fake smiled at her.  “Because if not, something tells me this is the last place I should be right now.”

Blondie snapped the elastic into place behind her head and retrieved a small pair of leather gloves from the black windbreaker she was wearing.  A few days worth of grunge and dirt on our clothing was one thing, but demon-cop’s bright crimson bloodstains all over her skirt wasn’t exactly something we could get away with in public.  Bearing that fact in mind a quick detour to a department store had been order.  I had just barely been able to convince her to abandon a skirt altogether (she insisted she could ‘kick better’ in one) and pick up a pair of much more utilitarian khakis instead.

“Just chill the fuck out, buster,” I heard her say under her breath as she pushed past me. 

Man I am fucking sick of that. 

“Hey,” I moved back up the embankment with her and settled in where she was peering out across the street, “can I ask you something?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“What’s with the whole ‘buster’ thing?  You do know I have a name, right?”

Blondie sighed then twisted so she could catch me square on with bright blue eyes.  She looked at me for a full minute, mouth just barely open as if she were about to speak, then turned back to stare back out at the dark dwelling.

“Makes it easier...” she mumbled distractedly.

“What?”

“It makes it easier, okay?” she pulled herself up into a half crouch.  “It makes it easier for me to do what I do if I don’t use names.”

“...what you do?”

“You know... kill people and all.”

“But I thought you were just ‘banishing’ them...  Like what you said happened to Aerin.”

“Well if they don’t ever come back it’s pretty much the same fucking thing, isn’t it?” she snapped back quickly.

“Uh...I guess...”  I trailed off and made a silent decision to drop it.

“Well there ya go.  C’mon, let’s get this shit over with.”

As we stepped from the roadside brush onto the pavement the sheer weirdness of standing in front of the old house I’d rented with my deceased (technically twice deceased) friend Dave made me feel as if I were moving through a dream.  The sea-side dead end neighborhood was dimly lit by a partially covered moon that peeked through the ever changing storm clouds overhead.  Wind, bounding off the bay and onto the land, was rustling everything around us that wasn’t nailed down.  Trees, bushes, dead autumn leaves... they all danced and swayed crazily around us, as if trying to attract our attention about something urgent.  I trotted through a few incidental bushes and then leaned up against the peeling paint next to my front door.  Blondie looked over at me from the back corner of the house, a few scattered pine trees from the edge of the back yard swaying crazily behind her.
                   
“Now what?” I mouthed at her.

She looked at me for a few seconds then just shook her head.  The breeze noise was overpowering, and all I could hear as she started padding softly through the night toward me was an incessant whooshing. 

Be pretty hard to tell if something was sneaking up on me here...

“You... have your house keys, right?” she said as she slid up next to me.

I thought for a few moments.  I should have had my keys; that much I knew.  But for some reason I absolutely could not recall with any clarity where the hell they might have been.  I remembered having them during the trip down to Massachusetts.  But when and where exactly I last saw them was escaping me entirely.  My wallet had miraculously stayed with me, and I still had Blondie’s Marlboro Lights in my front pocket. 

Definitely no house keys though.

The look on my face apparently said it all, and my curly haired companion made an exasperated sound as she stepped around me onto the brick front stoop.  Moving ever so slowly, she reached out and tried the handle.  With barely any effort the battered door creaked inward.  Like the entrance to a damn haunted house.  I half expected to see Lurch stomp up to the portal and grumble “You raaaang?”