I downed the half can of coke that Eliza so generously volunteered and propped myself up on the seat. “Thanks,” I said.
Eliza seated herself on the other arm chair and examined me. “So? Aren’t you gonna tell me what, or who, has kept you up all night?”
“I’m really not in the mood for an interrogation.”
“Well, you better get in the mood because it’s coming.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. College is tougher than I thought. I’m up reading all night and I’m not sleeping well, I guess.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, there’s just a lot to do.” I wasn’t sure where I was going with the lie. Eliza had seen me devour whole books in a single evening. I didn’t know if she was buying any of it.
“I think I know what’s going on.”
“You do?”
“C’mon, you can’t keep things from me. You’re a terrible liar.”
“I am.”
“How long are you gonna keep you and Damien a secret from me?” she asked with the biggest grin on her face.
“Damien? Why do you have to assume its Damien?”
“I know it’s not the work, so it has to be a guy.”
“We’re just friends, Eliza. You know I’d tell you if something happened between us.”
“Would you?” she asked, her smile twisting into a playful u-shape, “I don’t think you would. I think you’d keep it so quiet from me.”
“And why would I lie to you about a guy?”
“Because you like keeping your secrets; I know you, baby. Better than you think.”
I couldn’t deal with Eliza’s incessant questions, but how do you let your best friend down without hurting her feelings? “It’s not Damien, alright? Can we drop it there?”
Eliza stood and raised her hands. “Alright, if you say so; but I know you. You’re hiding something.” She checked her phone for the time. “You’re lucky I’ve gotta be at this Antenatal appointment in… now.”
“I’ll take care of the shop, don’t worry,” I said.
Eliza grabbed her bag from the counter and made a swift exit. Thank the Goddess. I loved Eliza with all my heart, but I’d been keeping the truth from her a lot lately. Part of me couldn’t even meet her eyes out of the guilt of it all, but what could I have said to her? Sorry, I’m a Witch; I’m doing Witchy things without you and Evan. My being a Witch was going to test our sisterhood, and it made me sick to my stomach.
A few customers trickled in during the course of the afternoon, enough to keep me awake and justify my being there as far as dollars and cents went. At around five o’clock the door to the bookshop tinkled open and I spied Damien stepping into the fading evening sunlight wearing a long-sleeved black top I’d grown to enjoy seeing him in.
“Hey,” he said, approaching. Damien paused and cocked his head. “You look… different.”
“Different?” I asked.
“Sorry, I don’t think I’ve really seen your eyes in this light before. You have really nice eyes.”
My cheeks burned red. “Way to wake a girl up,” I said, smiling.
“Tired?” asked Damien, dropping his backpack by the counter.
“Yeah, spent. Last night really took it out of me.”
“I’m not surprised. Using magick, even just feeling it, takes it out of you.” He produced a box with a familiar theme, and aroma, and placed it on the counter. The side read “Mary’s Cupcakes” and the translucent top revealed a set of delicious chocolate treats inside.
“You know, normally, when someone brings me food it’s because they want something. You’ve just dropped my favorite cupcakes in front of me; tell me what you’d like and it’s yours.”
Damien smiled. “I don’t want anything. I just figured we haven’t had a real conversation since the cabin. I thought you could use some company in your—this is your last hour before closing, right?”
I nodded and smiled. “It is. This is the quiet hour.”
“Then you don’t mind me sticking around for a while? I don’t have anything else to do, and—”
“—I accept your request, and these delicious cupcakes. Take a seat.”
I hopped around the counter and sat on one of the arm chairs, opening the box and taking in the chocolate aroma just oozing out of it. They were warm, too!
“Oh God,” I said, picking one up. “And they’re fresh too! You know how to strike a deal.”
“I didn’t get them because I wanted something from you. I just wanted to make sure you were happy. Last night was… crazy.” His smile; I couldn’t keep my eyes off it.
“You didn’t have to, Damien. Really, you didn’t.” I picked one of the cupcakes up and handed it to him. “But now you have to share them with me.”
We went into the back room and I poured us a couple of cups of coffee from the machine we had in the back. We sat in silence for a moment, our mouths full of hazelnut, buttercream and spongey goodness.
“I thought you were staring at me the first time we met,” I finally said.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little—”
“—awkward, I know. Don’t worry, it’s fine, I’m awkward too. I don’t deal well with people.”
“You seem to do okay with me.”
“Once I’ve hung around someone enough, sure, but it isn’t easy.”
“I don’t like crowds,” Damien confessed, “I blend into the background half the time. As a teen I was that kid who trailed off and sat on a bench on his own while his group of friends mingled nearby.”
“And I bet all the pretty girls came over to see if you were okay?”
Damien laughed.
“Am I right?”
“They weren’t always pretty.”
I grinned. “Can I try something on you?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Damien.
I shuffled my seat closer to Damien’s and asked for his hand, which he gave me without much hesitation. I opened his palm and gazed into it, tracing the lines with my fingertips. He had such smooth skin.
“Are you about to read my palm?” asked Damien.
“You taught me how to use magick. Let me use it.”
Damien nodded and fell silent.
I gazed into his palm and closed my eyes, sensing the currents of magick around us but paying attention specifically to the waves his presence caused in the ethereal waters. The whole process had become a lot more natural to me now.
“Your favorite band is Nirvana,” I started, “You play an instrument. I’m hearing percussion, drums. You prefer blue over red, but both are needed to make purple—your true favorite. How close am I?”
“Pretty close.”
I opened my eyes and smiled. “Impressed?”
Damien nodded. “You’ve picked it all up way faster than I did.”
“I have a good teacher,” I said, still stroking his hand. “Or maybe I’m just more perceptive than you thought.”
He nodded over to the desk. “What are you reading?”
“Oh this?” I asked, releasing his hand and picking the book up from the table. “IT, the Clown from Hell. Stephen King.” I dropped the book in his lap.
“I’ve never read it,” he said, staring at the haunting clown on the cover.
“You read any of Stephen King’s books before?”
“I… don’t read much at all.”
“Really? Not even horror? I thought you loved horror.”
“Yeah, movies…”
“Oh… yeah, you’re missing out.”
“That’s what everyone says.” He put the book back on the table. “Books are always better than movies.”
“They are. That’s just a fact.”
“I don’t know. Movies are pretty good too.”
“Yeah, movies are fun to watch, but they’re over too quickly. And besides, a movie has never hooked me in quite like a good book has. With a book you live with the character. You feel their fear, their pain and their love.”
Damien smiled. I could tell he wasn’t being swayed.
“You know what?” I said, standing, “Let’s go find you a few books.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Up.”
Damien followed me through the aisles and held on to every book I passed him; horror titles, mainly. I made a mental note of each book I gave him and then wrote them down in a notepad I kept in the drawer beneath the counter. By the time closing rolled along the stack of books had grown so large that Damien could barely hold onto them all. We stuffed them into the back room behind a pile of boxes and I gave Damien his first assignment; The Woman in Black.
“Read this, and when you’re done you can bring it back and take another one,” I said.
“Don’t I have to pay?”
“Schh. I’m starting a private lender’s club. Just don’t tell Eliza.”
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly serious. You need to read these books so that we can talk about them when we’re watching the movies and compare which ones were better.”
Damien smiled and carefully placed the book into his backpack as if it were a sacred and fragile tome. “I’ll take good care of it,” he said.
“I’m sure you will.”
My phone buzzed. 7pm had rolled along. Damien and I were forced down from the clouds. It was time to find Frank.
CHAPTER 32
Finding Frank’s address didn’t prove to be as difficult a task as I thought. His name was listed in the phone book, so after we closed up shop Damien and I drove over thinking we’d get to him before the evening caught up with us. I’d never met the strange looking man in person, but I remember what eyewitnesses—religious, biased eyewitnesses—had to say about him. None of it was pretty.
Frank’s apartment was on the third floor of one of several identical low-rise buildings close to the center of town. The neighborhood was still pretty busy, but once we entered the building all was quiet—that is until we reached Frank’s floor. Heavy rock music blared through the hall; Marilyn Manson’s The Beautiful People, to be precise.
We reached the door and I counted four deadbolt locks lined up vertically along one side.
“Jesus,” I muttered. A few times I knocked, but the music drowned out just about every other sound on the floor. I wondered how people put up with it.
Damien glanced around the corridor and placed his hand against the door. I sensed a ripple of power trickle through me. He was doing something to the door, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. Then Damien pulled on the door knob and effortlessly swung it open. Beyond it I glimpsed a mess of a man in the dark room, sunk into a sofa, with a needle to his arm. Frank.
My heart skipped a beat. I dashed into the room and with a flick of my wrist the needle flew out of Frank’s grip and slammed into a wall. Frank shot up, wide eyed, and backed away from us.
I couldn’t hear him but his expression and tone were easy enough to read. He wanted us to get the fuck out.
I raised my hands defensively. “Frank, we’re only here to help!”
Frank glared at me with eyes like knives. The skin on my arm started to crawl, and then it burned! I gaped at my forearm, watching the skin as it grew red and irritated. I cradled my arm as the heat began to intensify.
Damien grabbed me and pulled me behind him. With a single gesture he plunged the room into darkness and silence. The front door slammed shut. Frank and Damien stared at each other for a moment without saying a word.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Damien finally said.
“Bullshit!” Frank spat.
“I’m Lilith’s brother.”
“Get out of my house,” said Frank, practically chattering, “I don’t want you in my house!”
Damien pulled his phone from his pocket and flicked the flashlight on, bathing his own face in white light. He didn’t need to say a word. Soft sobbing soon filled the silence. We’d broken through.
I approached through the darkness and found Frank curled into the fetal position. “Frank,” I said, placing my hand on his bony shoulder, “Lilith led us to you.”
Frank looked up at me but avoided my eyes. He had a perpetual sneer strewn across his face like the sight of me disgusted him. His cheeks were hollow, pupils constricted, his sunken eyes were red from over crying and his bony body was way too skinny for the clothes on his back. “Lilith sent you?” he asked.
I nodded, and Frank wrapped his arms around my neck, hugging me and crying into my chest. “I knew I wasn’t crazy,” he said between sobs, “She’s been here, I’ve seen her in my house, I see her everywhere! I told everyone I didn’t kill her!”
“I know,” I said, rubbing his back to comfort him. Damien approached and squatted next to us. “It’s okay, everything’s fine,” I said.
Frank pulled his face away from my chest and glanced at Damien. “You look so much like her,” he said, “She always talked about you.”
“Listen, Frank,” said Damien, “I’m gonna get the lights back on. We want to talk to you about Lilith.”
I helped Frank to his feet and realized how much taller than me he was. My arm still burned, but the sensation receded as time went on.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “We shouldn’t have burst in like that. Is there anything I can get you?”
“My needle,” he said. The stern gaze he shot me assured me of his seriousness,
Damien fiddled with the fuse box and brought power back to the apartment. I hesitated, but I sniffed around the area where I saw the needle fly off to and searched for it. Frank fidgeted as I searched his house, as if he didn’t want me nosing around. After seeing the state of his apartment I realized why he was so apprehensive.
Soda cans, a multitude of empty takeout boxes, dirty old clothes and dead bugs were all stuffed into every single nook and cranny. I didn’t understand how someone could live like this. Finally, much to my relief, I found the syringe.
“Give me that!” snapped Frank, snatching the needle from my hand.
He didn’t need any help, only space. In an instant Frank melted into his sofa. I thought he was going to nod off!
“Frank,” I said, “Can you hear me?”
“Do you know what it’s like to have your life thrown into the gutter?” asked Frank. His voice was still hoarse and strained, but it took on a mellow tone. “Lilith and Joanna were my best fucking friends, and they’re both fucking gone.”
I sat down on the sofa next to Frank. Damien stood in the middle of the room, all eyes on Frank.
“And to top it off,” Frank continued, “They pegged Lilith’s death on me. Why? Because I’m different, because I was close to her, and because they needed a scapegoat.”
“Who’s they?” asked Damien.
“Who do you think?”
“You’re not suggesting there’s a cover-up going on?”
“Oh come on, isn’t it fucking obvious?”
Damien remained silent.
“Look, first Joanna died—hung herself from a tree—then Lilith died, drowned in her pool. Two girls, both gay, dead in under three months, and I’m next.”
“How do you know you’re next?” I asked.
“Because I just do. I can feel it in my bones, in my chest, in my heart.”
“Your alibi,” said Damien, “The cops dropped the charges because of it.”
“They had no choice but to,” said Frank, “I went to a party in San Francisco the night of Lilith’s death. Tagged pictures, Facebook check-ins and plenty of eye-witness testimony got me out of that bind.”
Frank went quiet. His eyes welled up. “I asked her to come with me,” he continued, “To take her mind off Joanna, you know? But she was possessed. She thought Joanna was trying to get a message to her.”
“So you just left her here?” asked Damien.
Frank’s face twisted into a sneer. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he snarled, “I loved that woman with all my heart! Who was there for her when Joanna died, hmm? Me! I was there!
I gave her all my time and all my love!”
I rubbed Frank’s shaking shoulder. “Damien didn’t mean it like that, Frank,” I said, “Please, let’s all just calm down.”
The room fell silent for a moment. “Lilith was found in her pool,” I said, “But that’s all the media has said. What else can you tell us?”
“After they cleared me, the cops said Lilith had OD’d on crack and fallen into the pool.”
“What?” asked Damien, fists clenching.
“But,” said Frank, intervening before Damien could fly off the handle, “That story is bullshit. The girl didn’t even drink or smoke, let alone do drugs. She was the one who got me clean, for God’s sake!”
He wasn’t clean anymore. Poor Frank; life truly had come down hard on him. A sudden thought struck me like lightning. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fell into place to form a picture. My inner detective smiled at me proudly, but the revelation shook my foundations.
“Lilith didn’t drown in her pool,” I said. Both men gave me their attention. “In her diary, on the night of her death, Lilith said she was going into the woods to find Joanna. The spot where Joanna’s body was discovered by the authorities was about a mile upstream from where I found Lilith’s bracelet.”
Damien didn’t say anything.
Frank stared at me like I was crazy.
“Oh God,” I said, turning my head down.
My body went numb. No denying it now. Lilith and Joanna hadn’t killed themselves; someone came after them with intent and went through a lot of trouble to make their deaths seem accidental.
My mind went back to the night of the attack and showed me the gruesome truth about what would’ve happened to me if Aaron hadn’t intervened. I’d have been the third “accident” to the town’s eyes, but another notch on some fucked up serial killer’s belt.
CHAPTER 33
Our visit brightened Frank’s spirits. He didn’t feel like he had a friend left in the world, but we showed him we were on his side and that we wanted to get to the bottom of Lilith’s death. Leaving his home was difficult. I had more questions and Frank needed the kind of help and attention he’d clearly been deprived of for a long time, but Damien and I were exhausted and Frank needed to recover from the emotional rollercoaster he’d been on.