Witch {Book One} [UNEDITED]

III: How to Make a Deal with Death

My hospital gown was blue. My hospital room was empty. I sat up, wincing from the ache in my stomach. I looked around. IV attached to my arm. Inconsistent but fairly normal heart rate monitor. Window with closed blinds. Blank walls. Locked door. Someone had braided my black hair. I looked at my arms. Six tattoos on my left, one on my right. I looked at my legs. Bare. Vulnerable. Fourteen tattoos altogether on them. One birthmark on my inner thigh. Scars. Lots and lots. I sighed and lied back down, my eyes closed.

"Hello, Adelaide," a familiar voice said. I jolted up, ignoring the shocking pain in my stomach. "Or, Bandit is what you call yourself, no?"

"Samantha," I said simply, locking eyes with the red-haired girl. Her dark blue eyes pierced through my nonexistent soul. "I'm assuming you're the one who touched my hair."

"It was quite the mess."

"I liked it that way."

Sammy shrugged and sat on the edge of my thin hospital cot. I scooted away from her. She just inched closer.

"Why do you hang out with people like Alice? She's covered in piercings and you have none," Sammy said.

"Why do you hang out with people like Lucy? She's possessed by the Devil and is covered in piercings while you aren't and you have none," I replied.

Sammy frowned in response.

"Why are you here, Sammy? We haven't seen each other since Flynn died." I glanced at Samantha. She bit her lip and looked down.

"I need you to be friends with Lucy . . ." She said softly. "If you do, I can bring Flynn back . . ." That caught my attention. I turned around and faced Sammy.

"Bring Flynn back? How?" I demanded, leaning closer to her. She shrugged, locking eyes with me.

"Make a deal with Death," she said, smirking slightly. "I hear Death's in a generous mood. Tell him that you just need a soul and give him one in exchange. No biggie. Pretty damn easy if you ask me."

I narrowed my eyes.

"And how'm I supposed to make a deal with Death? Atheists don't exactly have that privilege. Plus, if I need to go to church to talk to him, I've been banned from every church in New Orleans."

Sammy raised an eyebrow. "Banned from every church in New Orleans, huh? How come?"

"I gave blowjobs to the boys in the back."

"Explains a lot. You don't need to go to church to talk to Death and you don't need to be Christian either. Just go to a cemetery. There should always be a crossroads in the middle. I'll give you a summoning spell. He'll come," Sammy says assuringly. "But I won't give you shit until you be friends with Lucy. Trust me. It's important."

"Sure. Befriending the wannabe slut. That sounds . . . Important," I murmured.

"Do you want Flynn back?"

"More than anything."

"Then befriend the wannabe slut."

>>>

Three days later I was checked out of the hospital. Sammy visited once more before I was left alone in that tiny hellhole of a room. As soon as I could, I put on my black dress with a Peter Pan collar and my stripped socks. I ran home as fast as I could.

Lucy was there, Leviathan at her heels. Samantha stood slightly behind Lucy. Alice was nowhere in sigh. I frowned.

"Sammy dearest said you wanted to talk?" Lucy asked, shattering the safety of silence. I silently prayed to some nonexistent God for safety and more silence.

"Perhaps," I said, crossing my arms across my mostly flat and very bony and somewhat ugly chest. My multicolored childish bandaids were taken off, revealing stitches across my left forefinger and middle finger as well as my tattoo of the palm reading lines on my right hand. Sammy shot me a glare. I rolled my eyes.

"So . . .?" Lucy asked, yet again ruining my moment of silence.

"Where'd you get your lips pierced?" I asked, trying to break the ice, the next protective layer I had.

"Tattoo parlor down the street," she said simply. "Now, what did you really want to talk about?"

I cringed slightly, not wanting to talk at the moment. Sammy gave me another glare.

"Maybe . . ." I chose my words carefully. Very carefully. After all, I was talking to the Devil. "We should put our . . . differences . . . behind us and be friends . . .?" It came out as a question. I tense up, waiting for a reply. Or a laugh. Anything but the suddenly evil silence.

"Why not?" She shrugged. I dropped my arms to my sides.

"What?!" I exclaimed, causing Samantha to take a small step back.

"Why the hell not?" She repeated. "Give me a reason."

I didn't.

Lucy and I were friends after that brief conversation. She spent the night at my house. We watched every horror movie I owned.

>>>

Lucy took me to the tattoo parlor down the street the next morning. I got spider bite lip piercings. I flinched only once. Lucy said that the piercings as well as the scar along the side of my eye made me look much more like a bandit. I was living up to my name.

When I was twenty one years old I celebrated my birthday by going to a bar with Alice and my ex-boyfriend Jace. I had drunk alcohol before, sure. But there was something different about going to an actual bar and drinking there. Ironically, it was a strip bar.

Jace ordered drinks for Alice and me, as well as himself. We were four or five drinks in when some man came up and started flirting with me. I refused to talk to him so he threw a bottle cap at my eye. I went to the hospital and got seven stitches. The scar of the edge of a bottle cap stayed on the corner of my left eye for the rest of my life. Jace and I broke up the week later. He said the scar made me ugly.

>>>

Samantha Alison Phillip came over two weeks after Lucy and I became friends. Alice came with her. She dyed half her purple hair black. She got a new tattoo on her right breast. A black widow.

"We're taking you to the crossroads now," Sammy said. "The three of you. It's relevant."

Lucy walked past me and Alice and followed Sammy outside. It was pouring rain. I followed Lucy and Alice trailed closely behind me.

When we got to the cemetery, it was raining upside-down. Sammy led us to the crossroads. In the middle was a pentacle. Inside the pentacle was a pile of bones. I knew in an instant that they were Flynn Camden's bones.