But Damien grabbed me and pulled me behind him, and 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 in the dark without saying a word, but my skin was still burning and the sudden loss of music left a loud ringing in my ears.
“Let her go,” Damien demanded.
“Or what?”
The empty bottle Frank had tripped over earlier started to roll, then it levitated and hovered close to Frank’s head. “Or I’ll break this bottle on your skull.”
Frank’s heavy breathing was all I could hear for a couple of moments, but at least the burning had stopped.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Damien said.
“Bullshit!” Frank spat.
“I’m Lily’s brother.”
Silence hung in the air.
“Get out of my house,” Frank said. “You hear me? I don’t want you in my house!”
Damien pulled his phone from his pocket and seconds later a sharp, bright, white light popped on. It wasn’t a strong light, but it was powerful enough to illuminate Frank’s form at the back of the room. He approached with the phone in his hand and then turned it so that Frank could see. It was the picture of Damien and Lily in San Francisco.
Soft sobs soon filled the silence and I knew we had broken through. But this man was quite clearly broken, and I needed to be careful. So, despite the pain in my arm, I approached through the darkness and tried to take Frank’s hand. “Frank,” I said, “You need to believe that we’re here to help. Lily led us to you.”
Frank looked up at me but avoided my eyes. He had a perpetual sneer strewn across his face, as if the sight of me disgusted him. His cheeks were hollow, his pupils constricted, and his sunken eyes were red from over crying. I also hadn’t seen a man as bony as he was; his clothes seemed to just about hang off his frame as if he were a human clothes hangar.
“Lily sent you?” he asked.
I nodded and Frank wrapped his arms around my neck, hugging me and crying into my shoulder. He reeked of alcohol and was in desperate need of a shower, but I didn’t much care. I rubbed his back and comforted him.
“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. Damien approached and squatted next to us. “It’s okay, everything’s fine,” I said.
Frank pulled his face away from my chest and looked at Damien. “You look so much like her,” he said, “She always talked about you.”
Damien smiled and nodded.
“Listen, Frank,” I said, “I’m gonna get the lights back on. We want to talk to you about Lilith.”
He nodded and I helped him to his feet, realizing then just how much taller than me he was. Easily a whole foot or two; and I wasn’t a short girl, either. My arm still burned, but the sensation dulled as time went on and it didn’t much hurt anymore. Though I didn’t dare look at the arm, not even for a second. What kind of Magick was that?
“I’m sorry,” I said, “We shouldn’t have burst in like that. Is there anything I can get you?”
“My needle,” he said. He was serious, too.
“Your n-needle?” I didn’t want to give it to him. The Gods only knew what was in there.
“Have you ever tried to reason with an addict when he hasn’t had his fix?” he asked.
I guessed I hadn’t.
Damien fiddled with the fuse box and brought power back to the apartment. For a while I hesitated, but I checked around the area where I saw the needle fly off to and searched for it. Frank fidgeted while I went looking like he didn’t want me nosing around, but after seeing the state of his apartment I could understand.
Soda cans, a multitude of empty takeout boxes, and dirty old clothes were stuffed into every single nook and cranny. The sink was full of flies, moths had taken up residence around the lightbulb on the ceiling, and I really didn’t want to reach blindly into the gaps behind bits of furniture, but I didn’t have a choice. I also didn’t understand how someone could live like this. But before I could contemplate the question too much, I found the syringe.
“Give me that!” Frank snapped, snatching the needle from my hand.
He didn’t need any help, only space. I watched him slip in a fresh needle, shoot up, and in an instant melt into his sofa. I thought he was going to fall asleep!
“Frank,” I said, “Can you hear me?”
“Do you know what it’s like to have your life thrown into the gutter?” Frank asked. His voice was still hoarse and strained, but it had a mellow tone now. “Lily and Joanna were my best fucking friends, and they’re both fucking gone. Poof. Snuffed out.”
I sat down on the sofa. Damien stood in the middle of the room, all eyes on the junkie Witch. He didn’t want to sit.
“And to top it off,” Frank continued, “They pegged Lily’s death on me. Why? Because I’m different, because I was close to her, and because they needed a scapegoat.”
“Who’s they?” Damien asked.
“Who do you think?”
“You’re not suggesting there’s a conspiracy going on?”
“Oh come on, isn’t it fucking obvious?”
Damien remained silent.
“Look, first Joanna died—hung herself from a tree—then Lily died, drowned. Two girls, both gay, dead in under three months, and I’m next.” His voice started to break toward the end.
“How do you know you’re next?” I asked.
“Because I just do. I can feel it in my bones, in my chest, and in my heart.”
“Your alibi,” Damien said, “The cops dropped the charges because of it.”
“They had no choice but to,” Frank said, “I went to a party in San Francisco the night of Lily’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, you know, to take her mind off Joanna. But she was possessed. She thought Joanna was trying to get a message to her.”
“So you just left her here?” Damien asked.
Frank’s face twisted into a sneer. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he said, snarling, “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. “Lily 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 Lily had OD’d on something and fallen into the pool.”
“What?” 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 really had come down hard on him. But what could I do? I could help him. That’s what I could do. For Frank, for Lily, and for Joanna. That was the right thing to do. And then, just like lightning, a thought came to me. My inner detective smiled proudly, but the revelation shook my foundations.
“Lily didn’t drown in her pool,” I said. Both men gave me their attention. “In her diary, on the night of her death, Lily 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 Lily’s bracelet.”
Damien didn’t say anything.
Frank stared at me like I was crazy.
“Oh God,” I said, turning my head down as that cold thing happened to my stomach.
My body went numb. There would No denying it now. Lily 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 raced back to the night of the attack and offered me the gruesome truth about what would’ve happened if Aaron hadn’t intervened. I would have been the third “tragic accident” in the town’s eyes, but another notch on some serial killer’s belt.
Someone was killing Witches.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Our visit brightened Frank’s spirits. He hadn’t felt like he had a friend left in the world, but we showed him that we were on his side and that we wanted to get to the bottom of Lily’s death, but leaving his house was difficult. I had more questions and Frank needed constant help and attention, but Damien and I were exhausted and Frank needed to, first, recover from the emotional rollercoaster he’d been on anyway. So we left Frank’s place and headed to Damien’s apartment in my car.
He didn’t say a word the whole way there.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, “You’ve been quiet.”
The night was silent; we were the only two souls on the entire street.
“Come up first?” Damien asked, “I have a few more books for you to take home.”
I nodded, unable to resist Damien’s somber eyes. It’s like all the color in them was gone.
His student housing apartment was a little barren. Save for what amenities came with the house as part of the lease he signed when he first rented the place, he had made little effort at making the place feel homely and cozy. The apartment had a kind of non-committal vibe, the kind of a man who didn’t think he was going to stay long.
“Nice place,” I said.
“Its home,” Damien said, heading toward the single bed. He sat down and sighed.
I followed him and scanned his apartment again. There wasn’t anything interesting about it, but I worried I would fall into a pit of sadness if I stared directly at him and anything was better than that. I sat down.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Damien ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “I didn’t know her,” he said, “I thought I knew her, but I didn’t even know she had a girlfriend.”
My heart broke for him. I could relate to not knowing everything about my immediate family. Corey and I didn’t speak, and it killed me that I didn’t know what she was up to. If anyone could relate to Damien in that moment it was me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I know what it’s like.”
“I just wish she’d have told me something. Anything. I don’t know what I ever did to make her feel like she had to keep me at a distance.”
“Maybe it was nothing you did. Some people just like to keep things close to their chest. I’m like that too. I don’t tell Eliza everything, and I tell Corey even less—and she’s my real sister. But I keep things from Eliza to spare her sometimes. I’m sure that’s what your sister was doing with you. Lily loved you.”
Damien looked up at me. In the dim light of his studio flat his features became more pronounced than they had ever been. I gave him a comforting smile and reached for his hand, squeezing it caringly.
“Thanks,” he said, “For going through this with me. It’s been… tough.”
“You don’t make it easy,” I said.
“I can say the same about you.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“Because I…” Damien trailed off and fell silent. I could see the storm building behind his eyes as he gazed at me. The air in the room charged up with electricity, filling the silence with static. We were still holding hands. In an instant I remembered every glance I had ever stolen, every smile, every flutter of my heart. I thought back to that night on the bed at the cabin and phantom fingers trailed down my ribs causing the skin to tingle.
He leant toward me.
“Damien,” I whispered.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t know what to say. My eyes darted around his face, from the glint in his eyes to the shine of his nose. His lips came close enough to touch mine. His warm breath tickled my mouth. Damien carefully wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and tilted my face to his, closing the gap.
What are you doing, Amber? I thought.
Thousands of volts of electricity surged through me at the point of contact. I couldn’t move, frozen and melted all at once. He cupped my cheek with his other hand and pressed further into the kiss, parting my lips with his tongue. I snapped out of the reverie and took his slender face in my hands, finally participating in the kiss.
Damien pushed me onto the bed with his lips and arched over me, not once allowing the kiss to break. I kicked off my boots. With the taste of his lips on mine, the warmth of his face and the feel of his hair between my fingers, I lost myself in the moment—and in him.
Amber! My mind protested, but my fingers had a mind of their own. They searched for a way into his shirt, craving to feel the softness of his skin. I wrapped my arms around his back savored the moment. He pulled away from me and stared into my eyes. I gazed back at him, heaving, and dove in for another kiss.
I pushed against him and set him straight. Straddling him, I lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it aside before going for his neck and collar, hungrily kissing his skin and drinking in his scent. Damien’s hands found my bare skin and his touch lit a wildfire inside of me. I pulled my lips from his chest, gazed into his eyes, and tugged the hem of my dress up and over my head letting it drop to the floor. Then I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra, slipping it off my shoulders and exposing my pale breasts to him.
Damien took me by the back of the neck again and pulled me to his lips. I caressed his shoulders and arms while we kissed. Every stroke of his fingertips on my skin left trails of electricity in their wake, as they had once done. He drew my body to him and bravely brought his lips to my collarbone. Inside, I begged for him to touch me and taste me. I suspected I’d never wanted someone nearly as much as I did Damien, and when the first sigh left my lips I lost all doubt.
We were both heaving almost in unison as we kissed, his soft hands tracing the curve of my back, exploring. My blood was on fire. Damien’s bodily warmth so close to me filled me with a kind of power I had only ever felt around Aaron—although I wasn’t about to mention his name right now.
Without saying a word, he took my hand and brought me to him, leading me once more toward the bed and laying me on my back. Damien followed. His hair dropped on either side of his head and obscured his face. I brushed it away and kissed him. As my tongue found his, Damien guided himself into me. I moaned into his mouth and drew my nails down his back. I sighed with him, groaned with him, and rocked with him as we made love on his bed, both of us completely detached from the rest of the world… and oblivious to the consequences of our actions.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The cold light of morning woke me from the dream I had been having. I tried to chase it, to get back into its sleepy embrace, but most dreams were happy to evaporate as soon as consciousness kicks in. I’ll write it down, I thought, but as I shuffled onto my side I became all too aware of the arm draped around my back, and writing down—or getting back into—a dream was no longer a priority.
What the fuck did I do?
For a moment I had forgotten where I was and who I was with, but when I glimpsed his sleeping face—his rosy cheeks—my stomach sank through the bed and into the ground. I blinked and ran a replay of the night’s events in my mind as they came to me. Butterflies performed aerial acrobatics in my stomach to an almost nauseating degree; Damien and I didn’t just go once. The clock had crept way past four in the morning before either of us had slipped into sleep.
If Aaron was a series of quick, hot and sweaty sprints, Damien was an equally sweaty marathon run.
The bed creaked as I snuck out of it. While wiping the sleep from my eyes I went around the room and found my panties, dress, and bra and slipped them on before going for my boots. Damien writhed around on the bed and breathed in deeply. I caught him watching me with a sleepy smile on his face.
“What??
?? I asked, smiling back.
“Good morning,” he said.
I came up to the bed and sat down next to him, stroking his hair out of his face. “Are you feeling better?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am. Thanks.”
“What are you thanking me for?”
“For last night.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that.”
Definitely don’t thank me for that. Ever.
Damien sat upright. The sheets rolled down his chest and to his abdomen. My eyes wandered. One can truly tell how beautiful someone is first thing in the morning. Aaron and I never had this… this intimacy. This vulnerability. I wanted to jump on top of him again to kiss him, take him in, and stay with him in that sleepy room. But I couldn’t, and Damien sensed my hasty departure was imminent.
“Let me take you to breakfast,” he said. I suspected he was scrambling for an excuse to stay near me.
“Breakfast? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Everybody’s got to eat. C’mon, I’ll buy.”
I wanted to decline, but my stomach grumbled in protest. “Alright, breakfast sounds good.”
We left Damien’s apartment after he got changed and went across the road to a little café called Breakfast 2 Go. It was a tiny establishment with, somehow, plenty of seating available inside and the tastiest, warmest, and most authentic French croissants on the continent. And I had enough facts to back that claim up.
I ordered myself pancakes and a vanilla latte—white with plenty of sugar—and Damien did the same, though he didn’t need nearly as much sugar in his coffee as I did. We glanced at each other from across the table as the world passed us by on the other side of the window, but mainly sat in silence. Neither of us wanted to burst the bubble we’d made for ourselves.
Damien’s lips curled into a smile, and I caught myself smiling back while chewing on a delicious piece of my pancake. I brought a hand to my mouth, embarrassed, and finished.