Amity rung up the drink, pocketed the change, and shrugged. “I’ve been doing this since before I was legal. There aren’t a lot of things I can do without leaving Claysville, and there are fewer that I would enjoy. This job is my life ... There are other things I want in life, but not many of them.”
The tone in her voice made Rebekkah pause; Amity wasn’t as blasé as she was pretending to be. “Should I ask what those are?”
Amity hugged her. “Family, friends, you know, just the normal stuff.”
Only half jokingly, Rebekkah shuddered. “No thanks. Cages don’t appeal to me. Never have, never will.”
“People change, Bek,” Amity murmured as she turned away and busied herself at straightening the top-shelf liquor.
“Not if I can help it.” Rebekkah tossed the ice out of several glasses that had been brought back up to the bar. “If it works for you, though, good luck with whoever he is. There is a specific he , right?”
Amity glanced over her shoulder at Rebekkah. “Tonight was to be about me cheering you up. So let’s drop that subject, okay?”
“Sure.” Rebekkah felt increasingly uncomfortable, suspecting that the “he” in question was Byron. She tucked her hands into her pockets. “I think I need to crash. I’m going to head out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s just been a long day and—”
“And my mood-swinging on you didn’t help, did it?” Amity glanced at the tables again, presumably to make sure they weren’t in need of attention. “I was serious, you know: I really could use the extra hands here if you decide to stick around for a while. I have a few temp people, and I’m happy to step up as a manager till Troy turns up again ... if he does ... but another bartender on call would be great.”
“Sure.” Rebekkah forced a smile to her lips. “Add me to the list. I’m guessing I’ll be around for a few days while I figure out what I’m doing about ... everything.”
Maylene’s house. Maylene’s things. How do I box it all up? Rebekkah felt the returned weight of decisions she didn’t want to make—or know how to make. How do I not box it up? Cissy’s claims that Rebekkah wasn’t real family came back with an almost physical slap. I am Maylene’s family. Family isn’t only blood. Maylene had told her that over and over, and just then, Rebekkah was even more grateful than usual for that particular sentiment.
“Bek?”
Rebekkah pulled her thoughts back to the here and now. “Sorry. I’m tired ... and overwhelmed.”
“I know.” Amity glanced toward the door. “Hey, do you want to call someone to walk with you? Or maybe one of the guys—”
“I’m good. I got here on my own, right?”
“You know Maylene didn’t die of natural causes, don’t you?” Amity lowered her voice and added, “Somebody killed her, Bek. That means that you need to be careful. Everyone does.”
Rebekkah pushed the queasiness down. “Drop it.”
“Ignoring it doesn’t change it. You aren’t safe,” Amity insisted.
“Me specifically?”
Amity hesitated. It was only a fraction of a moment, but it was there. “Everyone, but everyone’s not grieving and walking home alone.”
“Right.” Rebekkah didn’t believe her. She felt cold chills run down her spine. Without another word, she grabbed her jacket and ducked out from behind the bar. She caught Amity’s gaze. “I want to ask you questions. I want to know that you’re ... I don’t know ... the person I thought I knew, but right now I’m burned out. It’s been a long day, and I’m going to hope that whatever you’re hiding right now is because you’re trying to look out for me—or that I’m just being paranoid. I’m not even sure right now.”
“Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.” Amity spoke the words softly.
“I am.” Rebekkah shrugged on her jacket and walked out without another word.
The walk between Gallagher’s and home wasn’t that far, but it was still a little stupid to think about walking alone when both an animal and a murderer were loose in town. Rebekkah reminded herself that she had done far stupider things in the past and suspected she would do so again. Most of her bad decisions after being in a bar were a lot worse than walking home in the dark in the small town where she’d come for respite over the years.
Of course, her grandmother had just been murdered in this small town, so she couldn’t shake her discomfort as easily as she would have been able to do on prior visits. Streetlights were spaced so far apart that the darker shadows seemed omnipresent. Passing cars made her tense. Far-off unidentified noises as well as the sound of dogs barking raised chills on her skin, so when she saw Troy sitting on the stoop of Once in a Blue Moon Antiques, the sense of relief she felt was palpable.
The shop was across the street and partway up the tiny block, but she recognized him easily enough. Few men in Claysville had the combination of bulky muscles and pretty-boy hair that Troy had. His long curls were tied back with a red bandanna, and he had on his usual bartender garb: black jeans and a button-up shirt worn like a jacket over a formfitting T-shirt. That particular look made Amity call him “cougar bait” when they’d gone out dancing, and a group of much older women spent the night eyeing him like he was a particularly decadent treat. Troy was too good-natured to mind, especially as Amity was several years younger than him. “Barely old enough to be in a bar, much less working in one,” Troy had pointed out.
“Hey,” Rebekkah called.
He looked up, but not at her. Rebekkah couldn’t read his expression under the dim light that reached into the shadowy stoop. He didn’t move.
“Troy!” She was still across the street, but not so far away that he shouldn’t be able to recognize her. “It’s me. Rebekkah.”
Still, Troy didn’t move or reply.
The nerves that had been eased by seeing him became unsettled again. “Troy?”
He stood then. His movements were awkward, so much so that he seemed to stumble as he took a step forward. He lifted his head and stared straight at her.
“Are you okay?” She stopped with more than an arm’s length between them. “Amity was worried about you.”
Troy lifted a hand like he was going to reach out to her, but he simply stood there with his hand upraised. He looked at his hand and then at her. His brow wrinkled, and he scowled.
“You’re freaking me out a little,” Rebekkah told him.
She reached out to touch his wrist, and he knocked her arm aside with his already upraised hand. Before Rebekkah could react, he pivoted and lunged forward. With his other hand, he grabbed her shoulder.
“What the fuck, Troy?” Rebekkah put the flat of her hand against his chest and shoved.
Troy’s fingers clutched at her as she shoved him backward into the brick front of the store, but he still didn’t speak. His lips parted in a soundless snarl.
“Don’t try me.” Rebekkah backed up, though: she wasn’t a fighter. She’d taken some basic self-defense courses, but she also knew that he outweighed her by half again her body weight—and he seemed strung out on something.
She reached in her pocket for her pepper spray. If not for whatever adrenaline burst she’d just had, she wasn’t sure she could have pushed him away, and adrenaline wasn’t a reliable fight tool. She stepped back again. “Whatever you’re on, it’s not doing you any good.”
He stared at her silently.
“Get some help.” She kept hold of the pepper spray, but didn’t raise it.
“Re bek kah.” He said her name as if the act of speech was a challenge; the word came out in broken syllables.
She swallowed nervously. “Yeah ...”
“Fix it.” He lunged at her a second time; this time, his mouth came down on her shoulder.
The weight of his body against hers made her knees bend, and she started to fall backward. Instinctively, she pressed her other hand against his throat and pushed. She felt something under her hand give, and then before she could do anything else, Troy wa
s gone.
She stood, cautiously, and looked around. In a fraction of a second, Troy had vanished. For someone so obviously unsteady on his feet, that kind of quick exit made little sense.
Rebekkah looked up and down the street. There was no sign of him or anyone else. He could’ve ducked into any one of a number of shadowed doorways or down an alley, but it had felt like he’d evaporated when she’d pushed against his throat.
Which is impossible.
She shivered, as much from the cold as from fear, and then she continued walking home. It felt like every hour since Maylene died brought new questions. The only answer she had just then was that standing alone in the street wasn’t going to help matters, especially if Troy came back.
With a small sigh of relief, she let herself back into the house. The temptation to call Amity—and Byron—was outweighed by the fact that she simply didn’t want to stay awake for either conversation. The adrenaline rush was gone, and the combination of the crash and her already pressing exhaustion meant that she wanted nothing more than to topple over onto whatever flat surface she could find. Tomorrow she could make those calls. Morning would come soon enough.
Chapter 25
F LIP THE SIGN, WOULD YOU?” PENELOPE CALLED OUT FROM THE BACK hall when Xavier entered.
“I could’ve been anyone. You shouldn’t leave the door unlocked, especially right now. There are monsters out there and—”
“I left it unlocked because I knew you were coming,” she interrupted.
One of these days, she suspected she’d tire of provoking Xavier, but until such time, she’d enjoy herself. Father Xavier Ness could accept that the dead walked, that Death himself had made a bargain with Claysville, that the townsfolk knowingly accepted such a bargain in exchange for health and semisealed borders, but the idea that she could foretell the future caused him to furrow his brow. As far as she was concerned, that degree of mulishness simply begged for provocation, and she was happy to provide it.
“Penelope?”
“Still changing. You can wait or watch.” She dropped her skirt and slipped on her jeans. She wasn’t about to go walking around this town in a voluminous skirt that would hamper any running she might need to do.
The sound of the priest’s pacing made her pause. She brushed the beaded curtain aside and said, “There’s chamomile or that mild mint you liked already out on the counter. I couldn’t tell which you’d want.”
He kept his back to her, but she knew he lifted the mint. The chamomile was for her, but it was more fun if she let him think she had wavered. Once she was sure he’d put the tea ball in his cup, she grabbed her boots and said, “I thought you might surprise me, for a minute. Put the chamomile in my cup, would you?”
“Surprise ...” He glanced at the tea balls. “You dislike the mint.”
“I do, but it’s always nice to test myself.” She twisted her hair into a knot on top of her head. “Don’t worry about the mess.” She grabbed the broom just before he accidentally knocked the jar to the floor.
“I find that infuriating.” He snatched the broom from her hand. “You set up these ridiculous scenarios simply to ... provoke me.”
“And to prove that I’m not a charlatan, Xavier.” She squatted down with the dustpan and held it in front of the pile of tea. “You doubt me every time we go too long without these ‘ridiculous scenarios,’ and we both know it.”
He swept the spilled tea onto the dustpan and said quietly, “I don’t mean to doubt you.”
“But you do.” She stood and dumped the tea into the waste bin. “You won’t eventually, but until then”—she took the broom and put it and the dustpan aside—“we will do this. It causes you far more consternation than it does me.”
He took a deep breath and looked directly at her. “Tell me why I came, then.”
Side by side, they washed their hands. She filled both of their cups with boiling water, took hers, and walked to the front of the shop. Standing in front of the window looking out at the darkened streets, she whispered, “To tell me that William has died.”
Behind her, she heard Xavier’s footsteps, the slide of the chair, and the soft clack of his cup against the mosaic-covered table he preferred. She waited for him to ask the question he needed answered.
Moments passed. She sipped her tea and waited. Xavier hated that he wanted to ask her these things, struggled with it, so she gave him the space to do so on his own terms. Like everyone else in Claysville, he had to come to his decisions in his own time and way.
Finally, he said, “Tell me that everything will be resolved soon.”
“I can’t.” She turned and walked to the table. “I can only see so far out most of the time, especially on matters of the dead. I can’t see when the end is, only that we aren’t near it yet.”
“And Byron?”
“He needs to talk tonight.” Penelope stood beside the table. “Not to a council member, but to someone who knew his father. You should go.”
“I wish you could tell me where the monster is,” he admitted. “It seems wrong that you can tell that I’ll knock over the tea, but can’t tell me ... You make me question things, Pen. I don’t like that.”
“I know.” Penelope took her seat. “I don’t always like it either, but I am only what the Goddess allows me to be. If I knew everything”—she smiled at him—“I wouldn’t be human ... or here.”
“Be safe.”
She nodded, and the priest stood and left.
Chapter 26
L ATE THAT NIGHT, HE SAT AT HIS PARENTS’ KITCHEN TABLE TRYING TO make sense of what had just happened. Byron heard a soft knock on the kitchen door. He stood and opened it.
“Father Ness.” He stepped aside to let the priest in.
“How are you?”
“Fine.” Byron pulled out a chair and gestured to it.
The priest sat. “And William?”
The question was spoken softly, but the answer wasn’t one Byron knew. Do I say he’s stayed in the land of the dead? That I killed him? Byron took his seat.
“I’ll be staying here for a while. Dad had to go ... he ...” Byron faltered.
“Died.” Father Ness patted his hand.
Byron stared at the priest. “You know.”
“Some of us are tasked with knowing. I can’t tell you this will get easier, but if it helps, we—myself and the other clergy—can do a memorial. William was a good man.” Father Ness had the look in his eyes that Byron had seen at innumerable funerals. It was only the second time it had been directed at him. The first time, when his mother died, it had been for both Byron and William. Grief shared was easier than grieving alone.
“He was a good man.” Byron walked away and pulled open the fridge. A six-pack sat inside. He grabbed two bottles, popped the tops off on the edge of the counter, and set one in front of Father Ness.
The priest lifted his bottle. “To William, may God protect and keep him.”
“To Dad.” Byron clinked his bottle against Father Ness’.
They drank in silence. The priest let him have his quiet and his memories for the space of one slowly swallowed beer. When Byron slid his empty bottle away, Father Ness pushed his mostly full beer aside, too.
“A service would be great. Not right now, though.” Byron had thought about the things he knew so far, and as much as he wanted to grieve, to hide and nurse the sense of loss, he couldn’t.
Neither can Bek.
“No one will ask after William,” Father Ness mentioned. “The inability to question things tied to the town contract is a typical consequence of being born here. People accept any anomalies that spring from the contract. Once you’re settled, the town council will help you better understand the minutiae.”
“Town contract?”
Father Ness gave him a wry smile. “When the town founders settled here in Claysville, they made an agreement with an entity whom they—mistakenly—thought was a devil. When I moved here, fresh out of seminary and ready to tackle the
evils of the world, the previous Mayor Whittaker explained everything to me in rather tedious detail. I have no doubt that Nicolas will follow in his father’s footsteps and tell you. The gist of it is that we’re safe from a lot of things, and children born here won’t be able to leave, but sometimes the dead refuse to stay dead.”
“ ‘They’ made a pact and ‘sometimes’ the dead don’t ‘stay dead’? You say it like it’s no big deal. You just accept all of this?” Byron wrapped his hand around the empty bottle, holding it as if to reassure himself of something ’s solidarity. “How do I know I’m even sane ? I walked through a gate in—”
“Don’t tell me,” Father Ness interrupted. “The diocese sent me here because of my openness to the less modern parts of the Catholic faith. However, unless there is due cause, only two people are meant to know where the gateway is. I am not one of them. There are things the members of the council know and things we should never be told.”
Byron tossed the bottle into the sink. It broke in the stainless-steel basin. Brown glass shards bounced up and across the counter. “I hate this.”
“I know, but what you do keeps us safe. Your father did God’s work.”
“Really? Because what I saw over there sure didn’t look like heaven.”
“Please, Byron, what’s over there isn’t something I should know. I wish I could ease your burden on this, but it’s not my place. I can be here to help you through your grief ... or your anger.” Father Ness didn’t look any less sympathetic and understanding than he had before. If anything, he looked more sympathetic. “Either way, you can call me or any of the spiritual leaders at any hour.”
“For?”
“Talking. Whatever you need. You do God’s work now.” Father Ness stood. He laid his hand on Byron’s shoulder and squeezed. “We can’t carry the burden, but you are not alone.”
Byron felt his anger flee at the kindness the priest offered. It wasn’t Father Ness’ fault that Byron was in this situation. The priest didn’t deserve anger or disdain. “Thank you.”
Father Ness nodded.