It was time to find Frank. That much the bird had decided for us.
When we got the message the bird made for the front door and waited. I swallowed hard, stood up from behind the counter, and then I strode over to the front door and opened it without paying the Raven any mind. It flew out almost immediately, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“That,” I said, “Is how it’s done.”
Damien joined me by the front door, breathing heavily, and ran his hands through his hair. “That was the Raven you saw the day you took a dip, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty sure no other Raven has been following me around.”
“So I guess we go and find Frank, then, huh?”
I nodded and we set ourselves to the task of figuring out where he lived. As it turned out, Finding Frank’s address didn’t prove to be as difficult a task as I had originally thought. We knew his last name and it was listed in the phone book under a registered address, so after we drove over straight away as the bird had urged us to do.
I had never met the strange man in person, but I remembered what the public had to say about him. Faggot. Satanist. Murderer. Of course, back then he was accused of having murdered a very lovely young woman, and if the authorities had found him guilty they probably would have been able to pin Joanna’s death on him too. I mean, if the Sheriff was suspicious of Damien simply because he was from out of town, was it any wonder, really, of the way they had treated Frank?
But Frank probably didn’t want pity, so I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and went on with my mission.
We found Frank’s apartment 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 was ripping through the hall. Drums and percussion beats slamming into walls as hard as bullets.
There were four deadbolt locks lined up vertically along one side of the door to Frank’s place. I knocked a few times but the music swallowed just about every other sound on the floor. Damien glanced around the corridor and placed his hand against the door. I sensed a ripple of power spill out of him and touch me, and my body shuddered. He was doing something to the door, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was.
I didn’t hear the deadbolts unlock on their own over the music, but when I saw Damien effortlessly push the door open I knew what he had done beyond a shadow of a doubt, and my body started to shake with the excitement of what he had just done. Or maybe my own power was reacting to his in some strange way?
Beyond the closed door lived a dim, untidy apartment that smelled vaguely like alcohol and… disinfectant? I stepped inside as the music assaulted my ears and found a tall, lanky man in the dark room, strewn out over a sofa, with a needle to his arm. Without thinking, I dashed deeper into the room and with a flick of my wrist sent the needle flying out of the man’s hand and into the wall on the far side of the room.
Did I just throw telekinesis at him?
The man shot bolt-upright, wide eyed, and backed away from us; stumbling over an empty bottle and collapsing to the ground on his ass. I couldn’t hear what the man was saying but the defensive expression on his face and the wide O of his mouth was easy enough to read. He was surprised we had gotten in, shocked that I had thrown Magick at him, and he wanted us to get the fuck out.
I brought my hands up, the same way I would have if someone was aiming a gun at me. “Frank,” I said, knowing we had our guy, “We’re here to help.” But I doubted he could hear me over the music.
His surprise turned to a scowl and he glared at me with eyes like knives. The skin on my arm started then to crawl, and then it burned! I gaped at my forearm, watching the skin as it grew irate and red. The burn was starting to make me feel sick, and when the blisters started to show I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands dropped and I cradled my arm, screaming from the pain.
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 furn
iture, 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.