“Zora, please think for, like, two seconds before you do something next time. There is always someone around to film something, especially at a place like that. We can’t afford this kind of attention, not when Dad is getting out of prison in two days. Let Rivera do her job.”
Heat pooled in my face. It was Dad’s fault we were getting so much of this attention, and she could only talk about his feelings, and his reactions. But worse, she said it like I didn’t know what was happening, like I was too stupid to see how my actions affected the situation. Like I wasn’t smart enough to figure out for myself that this was pretty near a worst-case scenario. I try to make things right, and everyone tells me to sit down, shut up, let the adults handle it. I wished I could. I would have handed all of this back to Mom in a heartbeat, if it was possible. But I was the one here, and I had to do something.
I lowered my voice. “It’s not even your problem.”
“It is my problem,” she hissed back. “I’m responsible for you until Dad comes home.”
“Eat your fu—fudging ice cream, Sadie.”
“Let’s go sit,” Grim said gently, rubbing Sadie’s back and looking strangely like some kind of druid in a jumpsuit, put on Earth to heal weariness. “We can talk to the police later and tell them what we know. Everything will be okay.”
Sadie huffed, gave me a look halfway between reproach and apology, and let Grim pull her to one of the patio tables. She ate her ice cream with a hand covering one ear, the other open to Grim.
I busied myself getting more spoons and napkins to refill the holders by the windows and slammed the spoons down so hard the cup fell over and rolled onto the floor. I bit my tongue to keep from swearing. I was always the one who had to be careful, and the only thing I’d ever done wrong was underestimate one little firestarter. Dad had been the thief. Mom had been the witch. All the Novaks before me had been the trailer dogs of this town, and thanks to them, we always would be. I was trying to make things right.
Even Sadie had to ask if I’d killed George Masrell. If I’d killed someone.
Mads’s voice rose. “Why would an old hermit kill a janitor? And don’t say because he—”
“Because he murdered twelve people,” Hal finished.
“He was only suspected of that.” Lorelei appeared by the soft-serve machine. “Never convicted.”
“His whole family dies in different mysterious fires within a week and he comes out totally unscathed, but somehow the police never find out who did it?” Hal shrugged. “I’m just saying, looks suspicious. Start your investigations with the most obvious. Maybe George Masrell knew something.”
Mads looked like she’d just realized she was in an argument with a ten-year-old. “The Forester mansion gets used for ghost tours now. He doesn’t even live there anymore.”
“Sure he does. Bach works for him, doesn’t he? And he’s always lurking around town. Forester lives in the upper floors, where they don’t take the tours.” Hal clapped a hand against the countertop. “Maybe he had Bach do it.”
“The most obvious,” I repeated as I picked up spoons. “Me and the weird hermit from the woods are the most obvious options. Cool, thanks Hal. Also, Bach might look like a vampire, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t kill people.” Anymore was the very important missing word. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what Bach did with most of his free time, but if he’d killed anyone in the past thirty years, I couldn’t find any record of it.
Mads snorted. “A vampire with a greaser fetish.”
“You should be honored to be among such company as Hermit Forester and his Lost Boy,” Hal said to me. “Keep it up and you’ll be a town legend.”
“Yes, because that’s an accomplishment.” Everything became a legend here if it had once been alive and something bad had happened to it. Sometimes the alive part wasn’t even necessary.
“Speak of the devil.” Hal laughed and motioned out the windows. “Your vampire’s here, Zora. And he brought some friends.”
I shot up as a pitch-black Mustang turned off the street. It was long and sleek and made barely any noise, impressive for a muscle car of its age. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on it. Like a beautiful, evil version of the Chevelle. Bach’s pale hands on the steering wheel were visible as he passed under the parking lot lights. Three other cars followed him in.
The first: Artemis’s powder-blue Prius.
The second: a gray SUV with dark rims and silver detailing.
And the third: a white panel van with a huge text logo painted on the side in black and red, the words as obnoxious and as visible as possible.
DEAD MEN WALKING
6
Dead Men Walking had become an Addamsville favorite in the two months since it was announced that the show would be filming here. I’d seen only one episode, in which they went near Chernobyl, and I was less concerned with learning the cast’s names and more with the fact that they were wandering around a literally radioactive area looking for ghosts.
How stupid did you have to be to put yourself at physical risk to search for a truth that would never be accepted? Even money didn’t seem like a good enough reason for it.
The cast climbed out of the SUV. The leader, the sidekick, the tech guy, and the girl. The only one whose name I remembered was the leader, Tad Thompson. The intro to the show was him explaining how he’d had some kind of revelatory incident as a child that put him on the search for signs of life after death. He looked like your run-of-the-mill white guy in a T-shirt and cargo pants. As soon as he appeared, a smattering of applause broke out among our customers, starting with a table where a man wore a Dead Men Walking baseball hat. Tad Thompson gave a big smile and waved.
The five dead town council members stood twenty feet away, unimpressed.
The cast members milled around their SUV and their van while a couple of cameramen and production assistants got equipment ready. Everyone on the patio had turned to watch them.
“Did you know they were coming here?” I asked Hal. “Don’t they need permission to shoot on your property?”
“It’s my dad’s property, not mine,” Hal said. He leaned out the window to get a better look. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Even if I said no, the town council would overrule it.”
“Can they do that?”
“Would you get in a fight with Greta Wake?”
“Already did once today, will pass.”
Artemis had left her Prius and now stood off to the side of the camera crew, looking made up and ready to be interviewed. There was a man wearing khakis, a blue button-down, and a lanyard with an ID tag, directing the crew with their equipment; Artemis was trying to speak with him and he didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes scanned the patio, the front of Happy Hal’s, then settled on Bach’s Mustang as Bach climbed out of the driver’s seat. The man’s face lit up.
“Vampire with a greaser fetish” was, I hated to say it, not an entirely incorrect description of Bach. He was too trim and put together to be a punk rocker, too casual to be an aristocrat. It was like Hermit Forester had hired a bouncer who used to guard a castle and drink the guests’ blood. Dark T-shirt, dark jeans, dark boots. Black hair. Pale skin. A jawline that could cut diamonds. Firestarters tended to pick who to possess for a reason, and Bach clearly had not been trying to lie low when he’d taken that one.
The man with the ID tag went up to him. As he spoke, Bach looked him up and down, expression flat. The man stopped talking. Bach smiled a bit and said something. The man’s face fell. Bach turned away and started toward Hal’s again.
“Get your jaw off the floor,” Hal said. “It’s unsanitary.”
I already held the tray for the double-size Happy Summer Sundae. Frozen banana, frozen cherries, no hot fudge. One spoon. Bach ordered the same thing every time he came around, so I’d gotten good at having it already made when he got to the window.
Hal and Mads thought this was hilarious. Everyone did, when you’re known for your lack of interest in any other human person. Lorelei
had already faded into the background in extreme secondhand embarrassment. I slowed down so Hal wouldn’t lay it on any thicker. I wasn’t interested in anyone because I had a very specific set of aesthetics that appealed to me, and two of them were “old-world vampire” and “Outsiders-style greaser.” It wasn’t my fault Bach managed to land in the center of that Venn diagram.
Besides, this wasn’t a I want to look at your face sundae. It was a I need to question you about your employer’s homicidal tendencies and connections to Addamsville’s paranormal happenings sundae.
But Bach didn’t make it to my window. Tad Thompson slid in front of him first.
Bach and I both blinked in surprise, and Tad, leader of this ghost-hunting pack of scavengers, smiled and leaned through my window like he’d been in line the whole time.
“Hey there,” he said, extending a hand for me to shake. I shook it. He glanced down but didn’t say anything about the prosthetics. “I’m Tad Thompson, part of the crew from Dead Men Walking.” When I didn’t respond, he motioned toward the van with the logo. “The TV show.”
“I know who you are,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s bumming me out that I don’t know you.”
There are few things in this life for which I have real patience, and being hit on is not one of them. “Wrong tree, dog. Bark elsewhere.”
“Lesbian?” he said.
“None of your business,” I replied.
His smile widened. “I don’t believe it until I see proof.”
Hal watched from the other window, but said nothing, because he knew I could handle this. Mads stood somewhere behind my left shoulder; the stone silence from her direction was enough to know she was listening and probably also rankled. Lorelei still hadn’t reappeared. I glanced at the Bell of Shame.
Behind Tad, Bach raised his eyebrows. I pinched my leg through my jeans to keep my temper in check. No more incidents today. I had to behave. Even if it was for a misogynist asshole.
I put on my sweetest smile and said, “What can I get for you?”
“Depends,” Tad said, “are you on the menu?”
I grabbed the string on the Bell of Shame and yanked as hard as I could. Hal and Mads cheered. Tad Thompson sprang back from the window as the bell let loose its cantankerous cry. He ran into Bach, who looked down at him with his hands in his pockets and his lips curling up. Several hoots went through the crowd gathered on the patio. I kept ringing the bell.
“Shame on those who come to Happy Hal’s and hit on the employees!” I yelled with vicious glee. “Shame on those who do it so badly! Shame! Shame!”
“Shame!” Hal and Mads joined in. Sadie whistled from her table. Tad looked at all of us like we’d lost our minds. The crowd cheered. I let the string go and the ringing faded.
“Now,” I said, as quiet descended. “If you’d like ice cream, you can move to the back of the line, wait your turn, and ask for it like a real human being.”
Tad glanced around the patio. Customers watched with ice cream dripping from cones and off spoons; the DMW crew stood motionless with their equipment; Bach took a deep, contented breath. Finally, face flaming, Tad stepped out of the way and let Bach approach the window.
“Hello, sir,” I said, putting on that winning smile again. It wasn’t so difficult this time. “What can I get for you?”
Bach’s black eyes shone with mirth as he gave me an equally sweet smile back. The way his lips formed around his teeth always gave me the impression of fangs. “Hello, ma’am. I’ll have the Happy Summer Sundae, bananas, cherries, hold the fudge. Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Just beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” Bach said. “Not only is the service here top of the line, the ice cream is great, too. You are a fine server, ma’am; may I get your name?”
“Oh, why thank you, sir. My name is Zora Novak. It’s very nice to meet you.”
We shook hands. Bach never flinched at my fingers. I made a point to meet Tad’s gaze over Bach’s shoulder, hoping my eyes felt like lasers searing into his gross soul.
Bach stepped off to the side, and Tad approached the window a second time.
“Hello again,” I said. “What can I get for you?”
“One medium chocolate cone.”
I got Tad his stupid cone and took his stupid money. By now it was late enough that the only new people showing up were Dead Men Walking fans who’d heard that the cast was here. Many of our customers had stuck around to watch the filming. The dead town council members had disappeared shortly after the DMW cast had arrived, and I hadn’t seen them since. A lot of ghosts had disappeared, but they tended to do that when tourists were around.
I volunteered to sweep the patio, where Bach leaned against the counter with his sundae, watching the crew set up. Through the window behind him, Hal mimicked Bach’s posture and Mads mimed sweeping past him. Then they pretended to make out.
I didn’t want to make out with Bach. I just liked the way he looked, and sometimes it was easier to talk to him than to anyone else. He knew who I was. I knew who he was. He’d murdered people on Hermit Forester’s order and he’d possessed a human for a body, so there would come a day when I had to chop his head off and send him back through his entrance, but until then, we had an understanding.
I ignored Hal and Mads and leaned against the counter. Bach glanced at me but didn’t move away.
“I hear we get to suffer through a week of this.” I pointed to Tad and his three team members trying out different poses along the curb.
“I’ll give them four days,” Bach said, spooning frozen banana into his mouth.
“Four?” I snorted. “You going to scare them out of here?”
“Oh no. I’m on a loose leash these days; I’m not going to ruin that freedom.”
“So it wasn’t you who set the fire at Masrell’s?” I said it so only he would hear.
“No,” he replied, just as quietly, “but it was one of us. Sammy’s lying low—he knows the rumors are going to come up again and doesn’t want anyone bothering him.”
Hermit Forester—Sam Forester—didn’t want anyone bothering him so I wouldn’t look into Bach’s entrance again, so I wouldn’t ruin the little farming operation they’d had here for the past thirty years. Twelve ghosts they were feeding off of.
“How does it work?” I asked him, glancing around to make sure no one was paying too close attention to us. “I know Forester pulls strength from the people you kill, but he’s human.”
“Partly,” Bach said. “His mother was a firestarter.”
“Lenore Forester?”
“No. His other mother. My mother. Hildegard.”
“So he’s half human.”
Bach made a noise. He didn’t look happy; he had told me before that his mother—if that was really what firestarters called them, the things that spawned more firestarters—had shackled him to Sam Forester, and Sam was the one who made him kill. I wasn’t sure I believed him yet, but everything I knew about firestarters had come from Mom, and they hadn’t exactly been spilling their secrets to her. Bach told me things, but only a little bit at a time, to keep Hermit Forester from finding out he was doing it and going on another rampage.
The audience at Hal’s was turned now, facing the street, where the camera crew had set up. Lamps lit the long line of quaint, touristy buildings down Valleywine. Tad handed his cone to the one girl in the group—her name was Leila, according to the white block letters on the back of her sweatshirt—slopping melted chocolate over her fingers. Then Tad took his power stance with his hands clasped in front of him.
The producer quieted the crowd at Hal’s. Customers and fans alike already had their phones out. The cameras started rolling.
“Tonight,” Tad’s voice was low and serious, “we arrive in the sleepy town of Addamsville, Indiana, to investigate some of the grisliest murders ever seen in small-town America. Collapsed coal mines, missing children, a family of killers, and a mysterious spree of fir
es—believed by many in the town to be the work of the devil himself—have plagued this midwestern hamlet for years.”
I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “A hamlet is smaller than a town!”
Heads turned. Sadie, at a nearby table with Grim, gave me a look that could have stripped paint off a speedboat. The producer held up his hands and called back, “Quiet, please!”
I sank against the counter. Even correcting a bunch of jerks couldn’t help me relax. My only small consolation was that these hacks would never know the dead were here.
“The town itself is overflowing with stories,” Tad continued, “but we’ve narrowed our investigation to a few specific locations. The first: the abandoned coal mine where the son of the town’s founder died tragically more than one hundred years ago. The second: Maple Hills Campground, where two teenagers perished in 1990. And the third location, the focus of all of Addamsville’s dark energy: the Forester mansion, hidden in the woods to the west of town. It is in this house where the fires began; is it also where the spirits of Addamsville draw their power? That’s what we’re here to find out.”
I looked for Artemis; she was already looking at me. Worry laced her features. The coal mine. She wouldn’t know about the firestarter there yet—but going to Forester House was bad enough. I nudged Bach with my elbow. “Did you know that? That they’re going to Forester’s?”
He nodded, mouth full of ice cream. “I knew. They’re filming that one last. A couple days from now. They already knew I worked for Forester, big shocker. I think Greta Wake told them. She e-mailed Sam about it, and he didn’t want to comment. I had to turn down an interview request from that producer when I got here, too.”
Greta told them. Greta okayed it. Did she not think Forester would do anything? If he was trying to lie low, he wouldn’t, so maybe Forester House was safe. Then what did Artemis look so worried about?
“Don’t want to be on TV?” I asked.
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