“Hey, Sam.” Lola grinned up at him. Her lips were glistening with some kind of sparkling lip gloss.
Sam backed up. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to see you,” said Lola.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Duh, you told your Facebook page you were going away for research, and I figured you had to be coming to Keyser.”
“And this hotel?”
“Drove around until I saw your car.” She pushed past him into the room. “I did flirt with the guy at the desk to find out your room number, though.”
Sam shut the hotel door. Why the hell was Lola here? He didn’t need Lola here. He needed a clear head to focus on the book, and it didn’t seem possible to be clearheaded around Lola.
Lola was lounging on his bed. “So, Sam, what kind of research you been doing since you got here?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Mostly just talking to people.”
She tossed her hair back. “Like who?”
“Couple of Todd’s friends. Your aunt.”
She sat up straight. “You talked to Aunt Sabrina? Why would you do that?”
“She’s your aunt,” he said. “I’m trying to find out what people think about you.”
Lola got off the bed, rolling her eyes. “Well, I could have saved you the trouble on that. They all hate me.”
Sam felt an urge to reassure her that she wasn’t universally hated. But that would be a lie. So he simply shrugged. “It sort of seems that way.”
Lola studied her shoes.
Damn it. She was doing that thing again. That thing where she looked vulnerable.
Sam couldn’t get a handle on this girl. One second, she was brave and brass, saying whatever came to her mind. The next, she was like a scolded child. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
She squared her shoulders. “It’s not a big deal. I know what everyone thinks about me.”
“Well, they’re probably biased,” he said, even if he wasn’t sure that was true.
She walked slowly over to the desk in the room and ran her fingertips over it. “You didn’t even tell me you were coming here.”
“I didn’t think I needed to. I’m writing a book here.”
She peered over her shoulder. “Yeah, but what kind of book are you writing? Are you actually on my side, Sam?”
He shifted on his feet. “I want to be. You really haven’t opened up to me much, you know, Lola.”
Slowly, she turned to face him, her lips curving into a smile. “That what you want, Sam? You want me to open up?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here at all. But if you wanted to talk, we could do that. Let me get my recorder.”
She crossed the room to him, stopping just inches from his body. Her voice was breathy. “Tell me how it worked with Rachel Fletcher. How long did she talk before she opened up for you?”
He took a shaky breath. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
She bit down on her lip. “Do I?”
Was she doing this on purpose? She had to be. Well, he didn’t need her to fuck with him this way. He turned away from her and spied his bag on a chair across the room. He went for it, pulling out his recorder. “Tell me about your relationship with Nicholas Todd.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, so that’s how it works, huh? Did it get you hot when Rachel talked about the men who kidnapped her and locked her in that basement?”
“This has nothing to do with Rachel,” he said.
“Tell me about the first time you kissed her,” she said. “And I’ll tell you about the first time I kissed Nick.”
He shook his head. “Lola, this isn’t tit for tat. What happened with Rachel Fletcher was an enormous mistake that ruined my life. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, well, what happened with Nick really ruined my life.”
“You came to me. You wanted to talk about it.”
“Was she a good kisser?”
Sam drew in a breath through his nose. “Stop it.”
“Why does it bother you so much?”
He sighed. He sat down in the chair. “Fine. You want to know? I’ll tell you all about it.”
She grinned. She picked up his bag from the other chair and sat down next to him.
“Rachel got upset,” he said. “At some point. I don’t remember when. I put my arm around her. Things happened.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s hardly telling me all about it.”
He looked up at the ceiling, thinking about it. “It was just a kiss at first. I promised myself I’d never do it again. But the next time I saw her, she seemed so… lonely. She doesn’t trust very many people. She’s afraid all the time, and she never leaves her apartment. The abduction changed her. It took something from her. But after I kissed her, she was more relaxed. The more I kissed her, the more she talked, the more she shared things with me. She didn’t like being alone, but she was afraid not to be.” He licked his lips. “It felt good to help her. It felt like I was helping her.”
“You weren’t helping her?”
Sam looked at Lola. “Maybe I was in those moments, but overall, I think it ended up worse. Plus, she hates me now. She thinks I slept with her so that I could get her to spill more details.”
“Didn’t you?” said Lola.
Sam considered. “I don’t know.”
Lola curled up in the chair next to him. “What if I told you that you’d have to sleep with me if you wanted me to spill details?”
“I’d say I don’t believe you, because you said you’d tell me about your first kiss with Nick if I told you about Rachel. If you’re holding back on that now, you’re obviously just a liar.”
She laughed. “So you’re saying you don’t want to sleep with me.”
Sam blushed. “Why are we talking about this?”
She stretched. Her shirt rode up a little bit, exposing her stomach. “Why not talk about it? It seems to me that attraction is usually pretty obvious between two people. But everybody’s so afraid of being rejected or something that they don’t say anything. So, everything gets awkward and tentative, and I don’t really like that. I’m only saying that I think you’re attractive. I would fuck you.”
Sam just stared at her. He really didn’t know how to take her. At all. “Well, thanks. I’m flattered. I think.”
“You don’t want to fuck me, too?” She didn’t sound like she believed it.
“I want you to tell me something for my book.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You do want to.”
“Lola, can we stop talking about this?”
She leaned forward. “If you didn’t want to, you’d just say so. But you want to, and you don’t want me to know.”
“You’re wrong.” He looked down at his hands. “I have no interest in having sex with you. Now, can we move on here?”
She leaned back in the chair, hanging her head over the back. “Fine,” she sighed. “First time I kissed Nick.”
Sam clicked on his recorder.
“We were in his car,” she said. “We’d left the mall, and we were driving around. And he pulled onto some old dirt road and parked the car. He was really nervous. And really sweet, too. He said a bunch of stuff to me, like how he thought I was the prettiest girl he ever saw, that I was really smart, and that he couldn’t believe someone like me was hanging out with him. It was cool, because no one else had ever said anything like that to me before. And at the time, he was like, the epitome of masculinity to me. He was so much older than me, and he had muscles in his arms and shit, and it was really cool that he was into me. So, I unbuckled my seat belt, and I crawled over to him. It had one of those seats that goes the whole way across, you know? I remember I pushed his hair out of his face. He had long hair, then. Sort of. It was long in the front and shaved in the back, but he had these strands of long, black hair, and they would hang in his face. So, I moved the strands. And then I kind o
f crawled into his lap. He seemed so enormous to me. He was like… a man. A real man. Not a boy. And then we kissed. And we kissed and kissed and kissed. And it was basically the most awesome thing I’d ever experienced in my entire life. But then he had to take me back to the mall, because I was supposed to meet my parents in the food court, and they didn’t know that I’d gone anywhere with him.”
Sam watched her. While talking, she’d been gesturing with her hands, totally caught up in remembering the moment. And as she’d done it, he’d seen the girl she must have been. Hopeful and young. A little rebellious. Curious.
She turned to him, caught him staring. She actually looked abashed. She ducked her head down.
Sam cleared his throat. He was supposed to be interviewing her, not staring at her. “Why did you lie about your relationship with him?”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I don’t know. I couldn’t believe how much he’d changed, I guess. When I met him, he seemed so sweet. And then… the longer we were together, the less sweet he got.”
“You saying he hurt you?” Was Nicholas Todd the typical abusive boyfriend?
“No. But he… he wanted me so bad, you know? And, like, he just wanted me all the time.”
“But you didn’t want that?”
She was quiet, looking away from Sam. “I don’t know. I thought I would. But…”
“He scared you?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. He… bored me.”
“Bored you?”
She swung around to face him. “Well, at first, it was enough that he was so grown up and that he wanted me. I didn’t mind, because he seemed really mature, and he could do all this stuff. He had a car. He could buy beer. He had money, because he had a job. It seemed totally cool. But the thing was, there was a reason that someone like that would be attracted to a kid like me.”
“You mean, he was a predator.”
She snorted. “Nick didn’t have enough brain cells to be a predator. No, he was just stupid. Like way, way stupider than I was. He graduated from high school or whatever, but he didn’t really read very well. His spelling was so bad. He tried to write me love letters, but they were just awful. I read them, and he sort of disgusted me. But, I don’t know, it was cool to have a boyfriend. So, I didn’t break it off or anything.”
“Even though he disgusted you?”
“Only because he was stupid. Not because I thought he was going to kill people.”
“So, you didn’t want to be close to him all the time, then? You didn’t want him to kill your parents so that you could be with him?”
“No.” Lola glared at him. “You’re pulling that theory out, huh?”
Sam spread his hands. “That’s what Nick’s friends say. They say it was your idea. Patrick even said that you were using the promise of sex to manipulate him into doing it for you.”
“Patrick? I never talked to Patrick. I would never have said something like that to him. He’s making that up.”
“He said Nick told him that.”
Lola got out of her chair. She crossed to the bed, where she’d left her purse. She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Was your relationship with Nicholas Todd sexual?”
She choked on the cigarette smoke. “Why are you asking me that?”
Sam flinched. He remembered speculating that Todd had raped her. Man, if he’d struck a nerve, then he’d done it in the worst way possible. It was only that she’d practically just got finished throwing herself at him. He hadn’t thought that anything he said could upset her.
He softened his voice.“Look, if he did things to you… things that you didn’t want… if he hurt you, then it’s okay to talk about it. I won’t put anything you don’t want in the book, but you can be honest with me.”
Lola’s hand shook. “He always wanted to do it. To fuck me. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to do it, it was just that I didn’t want it to be rushed and stuff, and it was hard for me to really go out with Nick. When my parents found out about him, they grounded me, and they said I wasn’t allowed to see him. So it wasn’t like I was able to just go out with him whenever he wanted. And he bitched about it a lot, and one time I said something like, ‘We’re not going be able to sleep together until my parents are dead.’ And I guess he took me literally.” She took a hard drag on the cigarette. Tears were forming in her eyes.
Sam got up and went across the room to her. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
She looked away. Down at the ground. Up at the ceiling. Over at the door. She wiped at her face. “I’m fine.”
He thought about touching her. Thought better of it.
She backed away. “In answer to your question, Sam, no, we did not have a sexual relationship. Because after he fucking did what he did, there was no way I was going to touch him.” She smoked furiously. “Look, if you want to know what Nick was really like, don’t talk to his stupid buddies like Patrick, okay? I’ll give you someone to talk to.”
CHAPTER SIX
Merie Dillon wore a long burgundy dress that pooled around her feet. Her dark hair fell midway down her back, and she carried herself with a regal posture.
Sam followed her through the rooms of her townhouse. The thing had to have been built over a hundred years ago. The doorways were all small and the hallways narrow. The cloying scent of incense bit against Sam’s nostrils.
They emerged into a living room. Tapestries were draped over the couch and also served as curtains. There was an overstuffed couch with three cats lounging on it.
“You can sit,” said Merie.
Sam did. He found himself facing a tall bookshelf, crammed full of books with titles like Drawing Down the Moon, The Complete Book of Witchcraft, and Pagans and the Law. He busied himself with getting out his recorder. “Do you mind if I record this?”
Merie raised her eyebrows as she settled down in a chair opposite him. “What are you going to do with the recording?”
“It’s only for my own use,” he said. “It’s easier for me to get accurate quotes this way.”
“So you want to quote me in your book?”
“I might want to,” he said. “I guess it depends on if you have relevant information.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Is this going to be a book about how innocent children were led astray by devil worship?”
“Uh… no, that wasn’t the angle I was going for. Why? Did Nicholas Todd worship the devil?”
Merie laughed. “Of course not. I don’t know that anyone actually worships the devil, Mr. Black.”
“Well, there are Satanists,” he said.
“You ever met one?”
“Sure. In high school, there was this girl who—”
“One who wasn’t a teenager?”
He considered. Then he shook his head.
She smiled. “Most talk of devil worship is nothing more than a scare tactic. It doesn’t make sense to worship something evil, does it? Do you know anyone who thinks he’s evil?”
“I guess not.” Sam was finding this bit of philosophy a little tiresome. “Really, the book is about Lola. That’s what I’m concerned with.”
“It’s only that I’m a witch, Mr. Black, and a lot of people take that in a bad way.”
Sam knitted his brows together. “You’re a witch.”
“That’s right,” she said.
Really? “You do spells? Do they work?”
She laughed again. “You’ve got the wrong idea about it. Spells really have much more in common with Christian prayer. It’s a ritual that we do in order to focus on things that will better us. Witches don’t seek to control nature. They seek to be integrated with it.”
“I see,” said Sam. “Look, I’ve got nothing against your religion. Nothing at all. I don’t know anything about it, and near as I can tell, more witches have been burned throughout history than ever hurt anyone. So, as long as you’re not going to put hexes on me—”
Sam gritted his teeth. Was this woman for real? “Look, how about if I promise to not even mention that you’re a witch or a Wicca or whatever you are?”
“But that’s an offensive omission. I am a witch. That’s deeply part of who I am.”
Sam sighed. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”
Merie clasped her hands together, looking serene. “Thank you, Mr. Black. Now, what is it that I can help you with?”
Sam started the recorder. “Lola said I should talk to you because you knew what Nicholas Todd was really like.”
“Did she?” Merie cocked her head to one side, looking thoughtful. “I wonder why she’d say that. I didn’t know him well at all. He and his friends came here occasionally for various gatherings that my coven hosted. But they weren’t really part of the community. They flirted with paganism but didn’t truly commit. I only remember speaking to him a handful of times.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Well, how did he strike you? What kind of person would you have said he was?”
“Drunk,” said Merie, laughing a little. “Every time I saw him, I think he was drunk. He seemed noisy, and a little crude, and… well, typical for a guy his age, I guess.”
This was going nowhere. Why had Lola sent him to this woman? Sam tried to think of another question.
Merie leaned forward. “You know, actually, I do remember something. The only time that I ever met Lola, in fact. She was only ever here once. It was near Samhain—that’s our word for Halloween.”
“Yeah, I know that,” said Sam.
“Oh, good for you,” said Merie. “See, you know more about the religion than you think.”
Sam stifled the urge to roll his eyes.
“Where was I?”
“The only time you met Lola?”
“Right,” said Merie. “Well, there was a gathering here. And at the time, I was bit younger, and I shared this house with a few roommates. We actually had a polyamorous triad for a brief period of time, but it didn’t end up working out. At any rate, those kinds of gatherings were much more frequent here, and they were often attended by young people from all over the area. We saw them as a form of outreach. It was meant to be a safe place for them to congregate, and to fellowship together in the eyes of the Goddess.”
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