Chapter 2 Alpha's Vixen
"With a car as old as yours, I guess," she shrugged. Pia shook her head, "Honestly, though, the 20 cents in gas isn't worth us risking catching a cold. Even if some of us are more insulated than others." She walked to the front passenger door and opened it. "Come on already, let's go." Sean grimaced and went to the driver's side door. The other three girls exchanged a look a mutual frustration before Elize rebuttoned the coat and they piled into the back seat. The car backed out and then Sean shifted into gear, starting them off towards their party. Pia looked back at the girls in the back seat, "Hey, did you know that what sailors thought were mermaids were actually sea cows?"
"My, they'll do, won't they?" The car was still traveling but it and the area around it rippled moved slightly, rippling from a steady roiling motion centered just below the vehicle. The group's travel continued, being seen as if from a camera above and behind the car, following it. "This will be a Halloween to remember!"
The speaker smiled as she stood up straight, having been leaning forward over a large cauldron that was at a soft, steady boil, the image of the car and those within floating on its surface. She was tall and unnaturally busty; her breasts massive and proudly defying gravity as they deliciously deformed the fabric of the simple black dress she was wearing, the garment clinging to a figure that was very slender otherwise. Her hair fell down to her ass and was a rich royal purple, her cunning eyes were the color of red wine and her lips were lavender. She gestured over the water's surface with one hand, her nails long and well-manicured though her fingertips were stained slightly from the chemicals and substances she handled. The view changed to the inside of the car, moving over the faces of the 20 year old college students within and then over their bodies. "They're so pretty."
The cauldron was in the middle of a very large room, with a hearth beneath it and the hood of a chimney descending from the ceiling above to trap and channel smoke up and away. The walls were lined with shelves that held books, all hardback, some bound in leather, some newer and some looking very old. There were also jars and seasoning shakers on many of them and a table in one corner had a large array of chemistry and alchemical equipment neatly arranged. There were a few other tables as well and old, handmade wooden chairs. The rafters were low enough to be reached by hand and there were more objects sitting on or hanging from them for easy access. The witch smiled down at the cauldron and then began to move around, snatching jars and vials off the shelves, setting them on a high counter that was on one side of the hearth. She took an old fashioned pesticide sprayer down from the rafters, humming, and set it beside an earthen ware bowl into which she started to add ingredients together.
Sean frowned as the car rose up another abrupt hill on the windy country road they were on. "That's sudden," he murmured. It was almost dark but there was still some sunlight in the sky but from the fields and woods around the road a thick, heavy fog was rolling in. Within a minute of him spotting it the ghostly white mist flowed around the car, shrouding the landscape around them.
Pia had been texting a few other guys she knew who'd be at the party and looked up from her phone. "Where the hell did this come from?" She looked out, barely able to see six feet from the car. "Slow down, you're going to get us killed!"
Her boyfriend grimaced, "Pia, I've driven on roads like this before and in fog. We'll be fine." He did slow slightly, "I can see the edge of the road, so we'l l stay on it."
"I forgot you're a nerd AND a hick," she retorted, rolling her eyes. "Staying on the road won't help us if we get lost out in the sticks."
Sophie growled softly in her throat and then leaned forward, the fitness major sitting behind Pia, "Calm down. Everything doesn't have to be a scene, you know that right? Fog happens. We have the directions." She waggled her own phone at the scowling Pia, "We just have to follow the lights on the road from here."
Ina was sitting between Elize and Sophie. She leaned over to Elize and whispered in her ear, "Was it Black Widow or Bitch Widow?" Elize just grinned and giggled.
Back in her cottage, the witch leaned over the cauldron, which had thick vapor rolling down the sides, though the scene of the car driving in the fog could be seen clearly. She setting the sprayer she'd used to create the fog aside and picking up a small candle in a carved wooden holder. She muttered something and it lit suddenly, burning with a slightly greenish fire. She held it over the cauldron, in front of the car as it drove carefully on. "This way," she cooed, "Follow the light."
"We should be there by now," Elize said softly. The dark haired girl's face was worried as she looked out at the thick fog that still billowed around them. "We've been driving almost 40 minutes since this fog showed up. Shouldn't we be there?" The heater had been on the whole time and it was warm enough that the buxom girl had taken off Sean's borrowed coat, the garment stuffed between her body and Ina's.
"Yeah," Sean said slowly, "I think you're right. We should have been there ten, fifteen minutes ago."
"What?" Pia glared at him, "Why didn't you say something?"
"I wasn't sure I was right since we're traveling slower than normal," he said, an edge of frustration in his voice, "And I didn't want to worry you guys with it until I'd found a place we could turn around at." It didn't make sense. He'd been following the lights as they came up, just like the directions said. He'd had to take a few turns to do so, and they'd gone up and down at least one big hill, but that was just the way the country was out here. "Can one of you check our position on your phones?"
Ina shook her head, "No signal. It went out when the fog came up."
Sophie frowned at her phone, "Yeah, I've got no bars either."
Elize sighed, "Same here."
Pia growled, "Fuck. That's perfect! We're lost in God knows where, with no way to get back to civilization. Great driving." She glared back at the girls in the back seat, as if the girls there somehow shared in the blame, and then turned back, arms tight across her chest. "You're so useless sometimes."
Sean's hands tightened on the steering wheel and his face was bleak. "We're not entirely lost. We know the road we're on has those lights. We'll turn around and follow them back until we see where we got mixed up. Don't be scared, this kind of thing happens. We'll get there; it might just take a while."
"That'll be great," Pia said in a chipper, lilting tone, "We can get to the party just in time to go home!" Not with him though; geek boy needed to learn a lesson about being useful. "I was wrong; you're so dependable."
"Mom, Dad," Sophie interjected before Sean could respond, "The kids're scared that you're fighting. Can we just, you know, focus on finding a turn around?"
Before she could answer there was a slight thump and a rough rumbling, rolling, scrabbling sound came from under the car. Pia shrieked, "What the fuck?"
Sean slowed down, "The road changed. We're on gravel and dirt now." Where the hell were they? As angry as he was at Pia, he was angrier at himself. How could he get them so out of the way? He really was useless.
Back in the cottage, the witch set the candle firmly on the wide lip of the cauldron. She had lined the lip with tin foil that stuck up about an inch or so over the rim. She had two smaller bowls on her little counter, shaking something into one, "Cat nose hairs," she murmured. Then she set that down and picked up a different shaker and a vial. "Powdered satyr horn and a coward's tears," she poured the liquid into the bowl, shaking a lot of the powdered material into it. She leaned over and took a breath, blowing slowly on the surface of the cauldron and then holding up the first of the little bowls and sprinkling it once the image of the confused and worried faces of the college kids.
"Hey, look!" Sophie pointed out the window as the fog seemed to ripple, "A breeze!" The seemingly endless mist rolled back from them as if someone had turned on a fan and blown it away. They were on a dirt road as Sean had said, with trees on either side of them. They were running along a ridge, not at the top, but high up enough that they could see the valley below and the wall of the next ridge over beyond it, even in the darkness. The sky overhead was clear and stars gleamed, as did a full and heavy moon.
"It's pretty," Elize said with a smile. "I know we're out of the way, but the view's something at least, right?"
Sean glanced to the side, nodding, "Yeah. Wow...look at all of that spreading out."
"Who the fuck cares? It's not where we're supposed to be. We're still lost," Pia snapped.
"The road widens out up ahead," Sean said. "Looks like there's a clearing." He slowed further and the car pulled out of the wooded lane and onto a small turn around. Spreading out from it was a great clear area on the ridge's side, covered with short grasses and herbs. The clear space was bordered by woodlands, but there were clear trails here and there in the scrub before them, leading into the darkened forest beyond. He pulled the car to a stop. "...Cool." Wow, this place was gorgeous! If it wasn't night, it'd be a perfect picnic spot, and they could check out those trails...awesome! He should turn around and head back down but he felt a sudden deep curiosity about the place. "I think I'm going to get out and take a look. It'll feel good to stretch my legs anyway."