by Etta Faire
Maybe, the officers staying at the bed and breakfast weren’t normal people. Maybe they were shifters.
Cold air shot through the store as Paula Henkel threw open the door and left in a huff. As soon as she was out of earshot, I told Rosalie about the channeling I’d done with Sylvia, preparing myself for another lecture.
Rosalie loved to tell me horror stories about how people who channeled too much had to have their food mushed up for them because they were bed-ridden vegetables. That, or they needed an exorcism.
This time, though, Rosalie barely cared. “Can you believe she wanted me to take in Jean? You can’t just pawn someone off like that. So she’s a little strange?”
“We’re all strange,” I said.
“I feel sorry for Jean, having to stay at that awful woman’s bed and breakfast, though.”
“I can help you make room for her at your house, if you want.”
“No, I can’t have that crazy woman staying with me,” Rosalie said. She took the feather duster from behind the cash register and dusted the fake plants around the shop as she hobbled around on her bad hip. “You have plenty of room at Gate House, huh? It’s such a big house you probably wouldn’t even notice she was there. Plus, that would keep her farther away from the Dead Forest…”
I shook my head no. “Sylvia and I are channeling to the Executives Club next, and that’s not something I want to do around guests,” I said like that was the only reason. “Speaking of which, I might see you in my channeling. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“You won’t see me,” she said. “I was nowhere near the club on the night of the murder. Louis and I had already broken up.”
I straightened out the incense packets, pulling out some and alphabetizing them by scent for no other reason than we probably weren’t going to get any customers today because of the rain, and it gave me something to do. “That would be fun if I did, though, huh?”
“Yeah, fun,” she deadpanned. “But you won’t, so fun’s over.”
“I bet you look the same,” I said.
“You’d lose that bet.”
“Well, I can’t wait to see how Mr. Peters looks…”
“I don’t want to hear a thing about it,” she said. “Got it? I don’t want to hear how cute or different he looked or how fun the club seemed.”
It occurred to me why she was being so defensive. This was the part in their relationship where Rosalie had thought she and Mr. Peters were on a break, and Mr. Peters had moved on, and found his wife. This was hard stuff, the kind of stuff that makes for unicorns.
I quickly tried to change the subject. “You were right about that club, though. I can already tell. Total cult. No wonder they couldn’t stand you. They obviously didn’t like strong people.”
She stopped dusting, and pointed the duster at me. “What do you mean they couldn’t stand me? I was a joy to be around.”
Jackson appeared by the cash register, hands pressed together in gratitude. “And to think, I was worried I was going to miss this.”
“You need to tell me when you’re traveling on me, Jackson,” I snapped at my ex. “We talked about this.”
I explained to Rosalie that Jackson was here while I fumbled with a packet of frankincense incense, putting it to the side of the ginger ones. “It’s not that they couldn’t stand you. It’s just Sylvia said you guys didn’t always get along.”
Jackson pointed at me. “Because she was high-strung and weird,” he added. “You almost forgot the best part.”
Thankfully, Rosalie couldn’t hear him. “I think I always knew that group of idiots hated me. I think they talked Louis into breaking up with me.”
I bit my lip and didn’t say anything.
“I knew it,” she said.
“But technically, you broke up with him,” I reminded her. “After he proposed.”
“Yeah, but I was always doing stuff like that. It was a non-committal breakup. And he knew it. Or, at least I thought it was. I thought we were going to get back together again after we both cooled off a little. I guess I was wrong about that. You’ll probably see my replacement.”
“Oh dear God,” Jackson said, fading out. “I hate it when awful people make you feel sorry for them. It takes all the fun out of gloating.”
The way she’d said “replacement” made me know, even though Mr. Peters’s wife had passed away, Rosalie was still very resentful about how things had gone down in 1978.
The wind chimes on the door rang again, and Rosalie and I both stared at it. We hardly got customers on fair weather days.
Jean waddled in, dressed in a long black trench coat and carrying a duffle bag that I was sure was full of large wooden stakes. She stomped and wiped her combat boots onto the rug at the front door and put her bag down.
Rosalie snapped out of her funk almost instantly. “Come on in and have some coffee, Jean. It’s a nightmare out there today,” she said like she was greeting a long lost friend. She motioned toward the new coffee station.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jean replied, taking off her coat and hanging it on the coat rack at the front of the store.
“How are you enjoying your stay at the bed and breakfast?” Rosalie asked as her cousin helped herself to a cup of French Roast. “Paula loves you, by the way. She was just in here, telling me all about it. I hear they serve fresh crepes.”
“Don’t get me started on that place. There’s something very fishy going on there. And it’s not just the frozen crepes.”
Rosalie gave me a “I knew they were frozen” smile.
Jean continued, leaning in and lowering her voice. “I’m pretty sure they think I’m the weird one there. But you should hear what they talk about when they think no one’s listening.”
“Do tell,” I found myself saying like an 80-year-old with her pinkie up at tea.
Even Jackson appeared again, and I knew he didn’t find the police at the Dead Forest remotely interesting.
“They go around mumbling about reading signs and some sort of a prophecy. A prophecy. What kind of police do that?”
After realizing I’d been holding my breath, I took a large exhale, pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my still-damp leggings and clicked my notes app on.
“What are you doing?” Jean asked.
“I need to know every detail,” I said.
Jean ran her fingers through her wild, dyed-black hair. “I never hear too much, only because they stop talking whenever they see me. But there are about ten of ‘em in the group. Six men, four women. Most in their 50s. They look normal, nicely dressed, like plain-clothed police officers.”
I typed frantically while she talked, not even caring that my fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. I’d figure it out later.
“One guy, an old man with a white beard, I heard him talk about a border walker more than once.”
“Interesting,” I said, thinking about the border crosser I read about in Justin’s book.
“Interesting if you like prophetic weirdos who don’t make sense,” Jean replied, pulling up her black jeans so they sat high above her natural waist. “They go to the Dead Forest a lot. Too much. They’re always there. They are the strangest group of police officers I’ve ever met.”
I looked at my notes, rereading them over and over again. I knew I needed to confront Justin about this. These “police officers” were definitely anything but. It was time he told me the truth. But then, that might mean telling him I could read his books.
I reminded myself about what I told George. We all needed to start talking more.
Rosalie shook her head, her dreadlocks bouncing along her shoulders. “All I know is next time Paula Henkel dares to come in here, telling me about how weird she thinks you are, I’m gonna tell her this damn story.”
“I knew they thought I was weird,” Jean replied, sipping her coffee. “They don’t like hearing the truth, is all. It’s why I’ve stopped talking to them, beyond a friendly hello every once in a while. I know they would
n’t want to know where I’m headed today.”
“Where you headed?” I asked.
She took a long sip then set her coffee cup down by the coffee station and put a to-go lid on it. “The Dead Forest. Where the police barricade is still set up at. They won’t be there on a rainy day, I’m sure.” She went over to her duffle bag and unzipped it. I peeked in. Wooden stakes, just like I thought.
Rosalie’s face fell. I could tell she was worried about her cousin.
“You don’t want to go out in the rain. Just stay here and relax,” I said.
“You’re kidding, right? Rain’s the perfect time to go vampire hunting. They’re huddled somewhere, unsuspecting. The element of surprise. That’s how you get them.”
“What makes you think they’re at that spot?”
She shrugged. “I just know that spot gets talked about a lot by some questionable sorts.”
I looked around for Jackson to make a comment when she said “questionable sorts,” but he was nowhere to be found anymore.
She was still talking. “It’s the perfect time to check it out. I was hoping one of you could take me.”
I looked over at Rosalie.
“I’m just going to be honest,” she said, her face almost as white as her hair. “We’re concerned about you, Jean.”
“Who’s we?”
“Everyone. I can’t help you. Carly’s not helping you either. You’re going to get hurt tracking down whatever it is you think you’re seeing. Why are you tracking vampires down anyway?”
Jean zipped up her duffle bag and took out her phone from the pocket of her jeans, tapping at her screen. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. After the massacre, things changed for Normal City. We put laws in place to limit the rights of the vampires and we all agreed to abide by those laws. Now, things are changing again, and I can’t let it.”
“Killing someone you blame for the death of your husband isn’t going to bring your husband back,” Rosalie said like she and her glitter unicorn didn’t spend a lot of unhealthy time together, living in the past.
“Never mind,” Jean said, slinging the duffle bag over her shoulder. “I called another Uber.”
“Going to the Dead Forest by yourself is a bad idea,” Rosalie said. “It’s dark and rainy.”
Jean didn’t respond. She stood by the glass door to the front, arms crossed, watching silently until a set of headlights bounced into focus in the parking lot. I looked over at Rosalie who was busy twisting and squeezing her hands together.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Jean said, leaving.
“Don’t worry,” I told Rosalie as soon as her cousin left. “I’ll call Justin. Tell him to keep an eye on her.”
I opened my phone and my notes app stared back. I had a lot of things to go over with that guy, actually.
Chapter 13
Intruders
“A vampire? What?” Justin said with the kind of disbelief you wouldn’t expect from a man-bear with ancient scrolls in his closet.
I looked at my notes app while I had him on speaker phone. I couldn’t ask him any of the things Jean had overheard at the B&B, not with Rosalie standing beside me, wringing her hands together, worrying about her crazy cousin. But maybe I could allude to them a little.
He assured me he’d look into the thing with Jean, but in the same breath, he also told me an Uber driver was not going to drive around a police barrier. And there was still a barrier set up at the entrance to the road leading to the drive-in.
“Uber drivers have scruples,” he said. I could tell he was directing the comment at me.
“Just keep an eye on her if you can,” I snapped back. “I only ask because she seems hellbent on going there. I guess one of the guests at the bed and breakfast mentioned some unusual things about the Dead Forest, so she’s convinced that’s where the vampire she’s been stalking is at.”
“Please stop saying that out loud like it’s normal,” Rosalie said. “And why are you dressed up all fancy, anyway?”
I pulled off my infinity scarf again and moved into the backroom so I could have more privacy. “She also said she heard a few people talking about a prophecy and some signs. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
There was a long pause. “No offense, but I think the woman might not be all together there. In the head.”
“There’s a lot of that going on around here,” I said. “We’ll talk about the rest of us later.”
I knew exactly when we were going to talk about it too. Sunday during our date night, when we were headed to Mr. Peters’s restaurant to compare Justin’s garlic shrimp recipe with the real deal. He didn’t know I also had an ulterior motive.
I was planning to grill the owner of the restaurant on the cult he was a member of 40 years ago.
After work, I talked to Jackson on the ride home since I now knew he was traveling on me. I told him about how Sylvia had gone into Rebecca’s locker.
“And the plot thickens,” he said, appearing in the passenger’s seat.
Coming up Gate Hill, we hit a large pothole and my car made a weird crunching noise as it jolted forward, splashing through a large puddle. “We need to get this road fixed.”
“It’s on the list,” he said.
I threw him a skeptical look, turning my brights on so I’d know pothole from road. It was no longer raining, thank goodness, but it was still slow going up the muddy, basically unpaved private road leading to my house. “Anyway, I’m heading to Sylvia’s mother’s tomorrow before work. I’m also going to ask her about Myrna, the cousin who was borrowing money from Sylvia. I’d like to talk to Myrna too if Sylvia’s mother will give me her contact info. But Mrs. Darcy seems strangely guarded about everything.” I bounced over another rock, and I slowed down even more. “I could tell she didn’t want to talk to me, even though I told her I was helping to solve Sylvia’s murder. She acts like I’m an intruder prying.”
“Remember when I said your delusional egotism knows no bounds,” he said, looking out the window at the darkness. “It applies here too. You are an intruder prying, Carly Doll.”
“But I’m actually a well-meaning intruder who can help.”
He pointed toward the distance like he was no longer listening. “Gate House is beautiful, isn’t it?”
We’d just passed the second rusty “who knows why this is even here” gate, and the tippy top of the library’s tower was just peeking into view, a silhouette against the still cloudy, darkening sky. Gate House was anything but traditionally beautiful, with its lopsided turrets that seemed oddly placed and even upside down in spots.
But I have never felt a connection to anything traditionally beautiful, anyway. “It’s an amazing house,” I said to my ex as we both watched it growing larger.
“Yes, it’s gotten even better with age and time. Like the memory Mrs. Darcy has of Sylvia. I’m fairly certain that’s what she’s guarding against the most. She probably knows not even the most well-meaning intruder can do anything for her now, except change the memory.”
I hated it when he went all wise and professor-y on me.
Chapter 14
A pocket full of groovy
Mrs. Darcy was waiting for me on the porch when I pulled up to her mid-century split-level the next day. She was a short woman with a taller-than-average blonde wig and humungous glasses that kind of moved askew as she waved to me to hurry up.
“Sorry to rush you, but I have to leave for bridge in an hour.” She checked her watch as she talked, the universal sign for “too busy for you.”
She shut the door and I looked around.
Even though Sylvia hadn’t taken me to her home in the channeling, I could not imagine it looking any different in 1978. Green shag carpet. Brown and orange kitchen cabinets with olive green appliances. But it was a little messier than I thought it’d be.
Old pizza boxes and styrofoam takeout containers cluttered the green tile counter. It was straight out of the Brady Bunch, if Alice had ever told t
hem to shove it.
Mrs. Darcy noticed me checking out the mess. “Sorry about that. My son lives with me now. Came home hungry from the bar last night. Told me this morning he was going to take care of that.”
She pulled me by the arm over to the closet like she was in a hurry for some unknown reason. Probably bridge.
I turned on my recorder and slipped it into my jacket pocket. I wasn’t sure if Sylvia was here or not. I hadn’t seen her since the channeling, but she might want to hear this later.
Mrs. Darcy paused in front of the closet doors like what she was about to show me needed a proper introduction. “I have never told anyone about the outfit Sylvia left for her cousin. So I knew you had to be legit.”
I smiled, resisting the urge to pat myself on the back.
“The last thing Sylvia told me,” Mrs. Darcy said, pulling open the accordion-style doors in her hall. “Aside from ‘I love you, Mother,’ because we always ended our conversations with ‘I love you,’ thank goodness…”
I let the woman have her fantasy even though I’d been there and Sylvia did not end the conversation with “I love you.” But then, I knew better than anyone else that people remembered things the way they wanted to, outside of a channeling.
She was still talking about her last moments with Sylvia. “And, you know, it’s funny because I remember it like it was yesterday. We were at the roller rink. We owned a roller rink at the time. Darcy’s, we called it.”
I nodded. I was standing by her side as she sifted through the closet. The faint smell of dust and mothballs came up with each push of a hanger.
She went on. “And Sylvia told me she left something on the bed for her cousin, an outfit. But when I saw it, I thought, ‘My goodness. That’s the most peculiar outfit ever.’”
She moved quickly for an older woman. Her heavy, beehive-looking blonde wig balanced perfectly on her head as she sifted through the clothes hanging in her closet. She looked basically the same as she had 40 years ago, down to the short silk scarf tied around her neck that matched her pants, light blue this time. She was shorter, older, and a little heavier, but the same.