Tonya looked out the window, relieved to see no police cars or ambulances driving in the next lane. The bus swayed as it moved, sending her head in dizzy circles. To avoid closing her eyes, she concentrated on the problem at hand. Tonya wanted to speak to her aunt. Aunt Helen could tell if the eating disease was a deliberate curse, and might know how to counteract it.

Tonya wished she had powerful Mod or Trad friends to help her. She feared a malevolent spell caster had used death magic on a gravedigger plant, and its telepathy was getting into people’s heads and compelling them to gorge themselves. It wasn’t too hard to see what would happen next. Gravediggers grew by absorbing dead bodies, and it was implanting hunger in people’s minds, just as Professor Rudolph’s voice had spoken in hers. The hunger, which she had also felt, would make them eat more and more so that when they died and were buried, it would have plenty of fat to absorb from their corpses. Tonya shivered. How could someone defile the Ash Tree to create such a monstrosity?

For hundreds of years, her ancestors had been burying their dead near the Ash because the recent dead were full of dark magic. Without the tree to purify the bodies of dead magic users, all sorts of evil could rise from the cemetery. It was the price of magic, but Mods didn’t care since it didn’t have to be paid in life. What did it matter to them if leftover power somehow infected the ground like pollution, causing unpredictable effects?

This dangerous power was something Mods and Trads quarreled over. It could be harnessed by death magic if it wasn’t dispelled by the Ash. Somebody had used it to raise Professor Rudolph from the dead and set him walking, casting his voice right into her head. It was everything the Trads feared.

Tonya hadn’t been invited to City Council meetings where Trads and Mods argued over the rules, but her mother and aunt had similar debates.

“I’m with Mayor Thornton,” Mom had said. “What happens if Mundanes find out your cures work and declare Loon Lake a miracle town like Lourdes?”

“I could help more people,” replied Aunt Helen.

“While we get trampled by outsiders, asking you to make the lame walk or cure their cancer.”

“You’re overreacting.”

“Am I? What will we do when some Mundane offers your Mod friends so much money that they agree to bring back their dead loved ones?”

“They would never do that.”

What made the uneasy Mod-Trad truce possible was the historical pattern of Mundanes who feared magic and burned or hung anyone who used it. Nobody in Loon Lake could ignore the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody was naïve enough to think similar things couldn’t happen again.

The bus stopped hard, sending a wave of pain through her head. The driver opened the door to pick up commuters and as they filed past her, Tonya caught a whiff of coffee and hash browns. Her stomach raged with hunger but that could be normal. By this time of day, she should have eaten breakfast. Maybe she wasn’t one of the infected, just hungry. What she wouldn’t give for a stack of her Mom’s pancakes right now. She sighed. A lump rose in her throat.

Her phone pinged. It was a text from Aunt Helen:

Only trust family. Leave town. NOW. Love, Aunt Helen

Tonya tried to call back, but her rings went unanswered. She texted Aunt Helen:

Where are you? Where are my parents? I can’t contact them. I need your help. But be careful. Somebody killed my professor then raised him from the dead.

She waited, staring at the screen but there was no answer. Aunt Helen just sent her a message so why didn’t she reply? The bus lumbered on, but it would turn soon, leaving Tonya to walk the rest of the trip to campus. She rang for her stop and made her way to the back door.

No sooner had she stepped out and started walking when she heard limping steps behind her. When she sped up, she heard them keep pace. Tonya walked as fast as she could without running, but her pursuer was gaining. Despite her dizziness, she ran a block before she risked a peek back.

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He was an old guy in a leather coat, almost on top of her! She needed a bike, a car, a rocket, to lose him.

Tonya kept running, searching for a house with an unfenced yard she could cut through. Loon Lake City was surrounded by farms and forest. One minute you were on a residential street near the north end of town, the next you cut north and found yourself toiling through a field of corn stalks.

She ran to the center and then took a sharp turn, gambling that her pursuer would not guess which way she went.

Out of breath, she emerged from the cornfield onto a familiar country road, hoping to flag down a ride. If a car didn’t come soon, the white-haired man would figure out where she went and catch her. She eyed the top of the hill eagerly, willing any kind of vehicle to appear. She stepped into the road, ready to stop whatever came from either direction.

She didn’t have long to wait. An ancient station wagon with fake wooden panels drove over the rise and slowed down. The sun-burned driver opened the passenger side door, releasing a chorus of slide guitars.

“What’s wrong, Miss? You can’t stand in the middle of the road.” He wore a sweat-stained John Deere hat.

“It’s an emergency. Are you going near campus?”

“Yup. Get in.”

His face looked familiar. Tonya and her family attended the Cattlemen’s Ball and similar fundraisers, but she didn’t know many farmers by name. With luck, he wouldn’t recognize her either. Tonya climbed in.

“Hope you don’t mind sharing,” he said, by which he meant his slobbery hound would sit across her lap and lean its head out the window.

“I’m just grateful for the lift.” After watching the dog’s long ears and tongue cast around in the wind for a while, she decided she liked this guy and his dog. They were a real pair. There was even a framed picture of the dog glued to the dashboard.

“What’s his name?” She stroked his back.

“Fido.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yeah.”

Tonya was about to ask whether “yeah,” meant he was kidding, when the dog pulled his head back into the car and gave Tonya a long, searching look before it opened its mouth, showing her every detail of its teeth and tonsils. She shivered.

Tonya had never been fond of toothy dogs. Too many owners let them roam free and it was always the bitey ones that ran after your bike. As a kid, she had been terrorized more than once by farmers’ German Shepherds, keen to sink their teeth into her pedaling legs. At least, that’s how it felt when she was a kid. It was kind of pathetic.

I know.

It took Tonya a moment to register that the driver’s lips hadn’t moved. He had answered with a voice in her head! Tonya shoved the dog aside, opened the door, and jumped out of the moving car, rolling into the ditch with none of the grace of an action hero. Maybe that was because of all the rocks she hit as she somersaulted along the ground. By the time she crashed to a stop, she was bruised like a banana and when she put her hand to her mouth, it came away bloody.

Struggling to her feet, she stood, teetering, as the car backed up to her. The door was still open, the hound fixing her with a steady stare. It wasn’t a big dog, but when it leaped out of the car she screamed like a little girl and took off across the field as if pursued by wolves.

Tree. Tree. Climb a tree, she thought. Except she was in the middle of a corn field with nothing but stalks to slow her down and trip her.

The wicked thing caught her, growling and sinking its teeth into the cuff of her jeans. Tonya tried to shake free, but it wouldn’t let go. What she wouldn’t do to have some of her aunt’s extra-persuasive talents right now. She was always good with animals.

She turned to face the beast. “Calm down Buddy. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

The dog growled louder.

“That’s it! I refuse to be intimidated by a mutt who, five minutes ago, was sitting on my lap with his floppy ears out the window.” She circled her hands mysteriously and looked him in the eyes. “I am your new master,” she intoned in her best lion taming voice. “Let go my pant leg.”

“You gotta be kidding.” The white-haired man emerged through the corn stalks. “You are the niece of the dreaded Witch of Loon Lake?”

How did he know her? And where had he come from? No one could have predicted she would jump out of the car into this cornfield. She continued to croon and move her hands mysteriously which seemed to calm the dog. At last, it released her leg and sat back on its haunches.

“Alright, fun’s over. You’re coming with me,” said the man.

“You’re welcome to him. What a strange dog.”

“Don’t try to be funny.” He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. Levitating above it appeared a tiny flaming orb, so bright it hurt to look at. “You must be wondering where your aunt has gone. Get in the car and we’ll take you to her.”

“Is Aunt Helen okay?” She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. Nothing she had seen in her life prepared her for a man who could harness a ball of fire, and the telepathic farmer creeped her out. “Did you kill my professor?”

“Let’s go.” He talked like a man who had a gun on her, but he didn’t. Over distance, she could outrun this limping old man.

“Make me.”

Suddenly, the fireball levitated ten feet over his head, expanding to the size of a tennis ball. “Shall I burn up the cornfield along with you? How about the farmer’s house with his family inside?” The man attempted a smile, which failed to turn up the corners of his mouth. It only sank his wrinkles deeper as his Grinch mouth stretched wide.

To think she’d been afraid of a dog bite a few minutes ago. For the first time in her life, Tonya wondered what her parents would do if she predeceased them.