Something Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

of you.
    This time was different, and here’s why.

    For one thing, my give-a-damn level was about the lowest it’s ever been. My parents were long gone. My sister was newly dead. While I wasn’t exactly suicidal, I wasn’t anywhere near Safety First mode either.

    For another, my rage levels were about as high as my give-a-damn level was low.

    If someone was screwing with me and my house tonight, then only one of us was walking away. I didn’t much care which one, as long as someone got hurt in the process.

    Preferably the intruder.

    Wiping my feet on old carpet, I glanced around the room for weapons. I wasn’t any better at it than I’d been a week before.

    So I opened the armoire.

    And there sat the newly cleaned athame.

    An athame is a knife, but it isn’t used to cut anything physical—no chickens, no babies. It’s used to direct energy in rituals. See, magic works by affecting things on the energy level in order to change them on the physical level. This idea is so basic that even after refusing the training that Diana got from our mother and grandmothers, I knew that much.

    Point being? The athame, marginally sharper than a nail file, didn’t make the most practical weapon. Not if I used it right.

    But I took it anyway.

    Since I had only one good hand, I tucked the black-handled knife into my back jeans pocket. One careful thrust cut the blade through the denim, making a kind of sheath.

    Here’s hoping I remembered not to sit down.

    I headed, still barefoot, to the open area off the kitchen. On one side of the niche was the door to the attic stairs. Opposite was the door to the basement stairs.

    I listened at the attic door.

    Nothing. Or a city version of nothing, anyway. A plane flew by overhead. A siren warbled in the distance. Dogs continued to howl—who owned those damned dogs, anyway? Wind shook the skeletal branches of the sycamore tree next door. But the intruder stayed silent.

    I reached for the crystal doorknob, then hesitated. What if it was another killer?

    What if it was the same killer, somehow escaped or freed on bail, come to take out the only witness?

    The idea should have scared me more than it did. Instead, it gave me a grim satisfaction.

    Welcome to the world of the dark side.

    What should have scared me more? The fact that the knob then, slowly, turned in my hand.

    Quickly, I ducked behind the opposite door, the one that led down to the basement. I barely pulled it closed, with just a crack to see through, before the door from the attic opened.

    Someone stepped into the areaway between the two doors. I only caught a glimpse of a man’s hefty shoulder, a glance of reddish hair.

    In my kitchen.

    Mine and Diana’s.

    That’s all it took. I threw my whole body against the basement door. I slammed it open and into the intruder with all my strength.

    Hardwood smacked into him with a satisfying jolt—and grunt—before bouncing listlessly back at me. When I kicked it open again, into him again, the intruder began to swear.

    He also yanked open the attic door and ran up the stairs, three at a time.

    I went after him.

    He had a head start, and his stride was longer than mine. Even when I tried to lengthen my stride, the athame poked me in the back of the thigh. But I knew the attic better than he did. The intruder tripped over our Christmas bins and knocked over Mom’s old dress dummy before he even reached the windows that led out onto the dormer roof.

    This was a big guy, shoulders like a linebacker, waist like an armchair quarterback. But damn, he moved fast.

    He’d squeezed out the window and onto the roof by the time I’d safely vaulted the now-prone dress dummy.

    I grabbed the top sill with my good hand and swung out after him, barefoot, into the bitter Chicago night. I was in time to see him navigating the skirt roof toward the chasm between my house and Mrs. Hillcrest’s. He picked up speed, regardless of possible ice patches, and hurled himself into