Free Spellcasters by Kelley Armstrong

leaving my room. For some reason, this seemed to make more sense than getting dressed. From the hall closet, I selected the old rubber boots my mother had used for gardening. I’d kept them, maybe in the dim hope that someday I’d sprout a green thumb.
    I slipped out the back door. I’d left the hand under the sink, so if someone caught me digging, at least they wouldn’t see what I was burying. Yeah, like that was going to help matters if anyone saw me in the forest after midnight, digging a hole while dressed in a red silk kimono and black rubber boots.
    Once outside, I caught a whiff of smoke. As my stomach clenched, I cursed my fear. In first-year psychology I read a theory that all the major phobias are the result of hereditary memory, that our distant ancestors had good reason to fear snakes and heights, so evolution passed those fears on to future generations. Maybe that explains witches’ fear of fire. I fight against it, but seem unable to completely overcome the fear.
    Struggling against instinct, I sniffed the air, searching for the source of the smell. Was it smoke from a fireplace extinguished hours ago? Smoldering embers from an evening trash-burning? As I scanned the darkness, I noticed an orange glow to the east, in the forest behind my back fence. A bush party. With the weather warming, local teens must have found something better to do on a Friday night than hang out in the hardware store parking lot. Great, now the hand would have to stay in my house until tomorrow night. I didn’t dare bury it with a potential audience looking on.
    As I turned to go back in the house, I noticed the silence. Complete silence. Since when did partying teens sit silently around a campfire? I considered other excuses for a late-night fire. East Falls was too small for a homeless population. Could a dropped match or cigarette have ignited the undergrowth? Could someone be secretly burning hazardous material? Either required action.
    I tiptoed across the grass, wondering whether I’d have another fire to put out. Two in one evening—coincidence? Oh, God, please don’t let this be a second Hand of Glory. I inhaled and pushed past my revulsion. If it was, at least I’d seen it before anyone else had.
    As I reached the fence, I was glad I hadn’t done anything so foolish as calling the fire department. There, laid out in the grass, was a ring of lit black candles surrounding a red cloth embroidered with a goat’s head. A Satanic altar.
    With an oath, I raced to put out the candles. Then I saw that they encircled a blood-covered heap. For one terrible, endless moment I thought it was a child’s body. Then I saw the face and realized it was a cat. A skinned cat: a lifeless mass of blood and muscle, teeth bared in a lipless snarl.
    I twisted away from the sight. Something slapped me in the face, something cold and wet. Frantically shoving it away, I stumbled back, but my hand caught in a loop of spongy elastic. I bit back a shriek. I looked up and saw what I’d hit: another skinned cat, this one hanging from a tree, its belly sliced open, guts spilling out. A loop of intestine was wrapped around my hand.
    I yanked free barely in time to bring my hands to my mouth to stifle my scream. I fell to my knees, chest heaving, struggling for breath. My hands were covered in blood. My stomach lurched and I spilled my dinner into the grass. For several minutes, I crouched there, unable to move.
    “Paige?” Savannah’s whisper floated from the backyard.
    “No!” I hissed and sprang to my feet. “Stay there!”
    I ran and grabbed her as she rounded the corner. Her eyes widened and I knew she’d seen everything, but I still pushed her away.
    “Go—go back in the house,” I said. “I—I have to clean it up.”
    “I’ll help.”
    “No!”
    Silence.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—” I realized I was getting vomit and blood all over her bathrobe and pulled back. “I’m sorry. Go inside and clean up. No,