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.
“I had fun last night,” I said.
“Me too,” Damien said. I could see him running an instant replay of last night’s highlights in his mind.
“But I know it isn’t gonna happen again,” I said.
Damien’s smile deflated like a hot air balloon with a hole poked in the side. “Is it because of Natalie?” he asked.
It occurred to me that in our time as friends I had never asked him for his girlfriend’s name. Hearing it now made me go huh? But the penny dropped and I understood.
“It was a moment of weakness on both our parts, Damien,” I said.
Damien pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded.
“I don’t regret it,” I said, “But I can’t do it again if you’re with someone.”
“You’re right,” Damien said. “I probably shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.”
I wondered if the guilt over what he had done was wringing his insides in the same way it was twisting mine.
“I had a part to play too,” I said, “We just have to not let things get weird.”
“I’m not having the best time with Natalie,” Damien said, “This long distance thing, it’s tougher than I thought.”
“Damien, you don’t have to lie to me. I know you’re doing fine.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I told you; I’m more perceptive than you think.”
Damien glanced at the window to the street and let out a sigh. I didn’t disbelieve him—I had a feeling the relationship wasn’t easy on either of them—but I also thought he may have been exaggerating on account of the high. I forgave him for it, although I wondered if I would ever be able to forgive myself for letting him cheat on his girlfriend.
Gods; I had become a hypocrite.
“I’m a big girl,” I said, “I know what this was and I can handle it. Let’s just not go back there again and everything will be fine.”
Damien nodded, but he wasn’t as convinced by what I said as I was. I meant what I said. No need to dress it up in clean clothes. The whole thing was a dirty interlude, just another secret to add to the already heaping pile, to be sure. And I would be kicking myself for it until the end of the semester, most like.
But it was worth it.
Chapter Thirty Five
I left Damien alone in the café after paying for my breakfast and took the scenic route home. From the ground, the dark line of trees in the distance looked like little spears teasing the belly of the thick, coal-colored clouds crawling overhead. Any one of the little spears could prick the clouds and the rain would come bursting out, but I didn’t think it would happen any time soon.
Still, I decided to hurry home. If nothing else, I was in desperate need to get out of the clothes I was wearing… and clean last night from off my body. Even if it was fun, and even if I did want it, and even if I did enjoy it. What happened wasn’t right. It just wasn’t. I couldn’t believe how selfish I had been. And to think I thought I was doing him a favor, that I was trying to make him feel better.
Lies.
All dirty little lies.
I pulled into the drive and stepped out of the car. Crisp, fresh air hit my face and I welcomed it with open arms as I made my way to the front door of my house, rummaging for my keys in my bag. That’s when I spotted the note on my door. It was a white piece of paper with some writing on it, pinned to my door with a crude nail and flickering in the breeze.
Seeing it there gave me pause, but reading it made me swallow hard.
The note simply read:
“You’re next, freak.”
The words cut through me like a hot knife through butter. At once my body went hot and cold, seemingly unable to settle on one or the other. Eyes darting around. Heart beating quickly. Head starting to float. Shit. What could I do? Do I get back in the car and leave or do I go into the house? Part of me was terrified of the prospect of going inside, but the other part said fuck it, this is my house!
In the end, the first part won.
I yanked the note from the door and headed for my car with adrenaline pumping through my system. Driving recklessly as I was I barely managed to make it out of my neighborhood without slamming into another car—or person—along the way. If
there’d been cops nearby I would’ve been pulled over immediately, but I didn’t care. My home, my most sacred place, had been violated.
They knew where I lived!
Rain yet hadn’t fallen from the coal clouds, but I expected it at any moment. Weather be damned, I drove hard to the outskirts of town and stopped by the side of the road at the opening of a quiet little path that ran between the trees. From the trunk I retrieved a large black bag I’d left there since the weekend at the cabin; inside it were all the trinkets I’d decorated my room with. With the bag swung over my shoulder, I made tracks into the thicket of trees and bushes along the path.
The forest was wet beneath my boots and full of life. Birds were chirping, frogs were croaking, and leaves and twigs were cracking and crunching as I put my weight on them. But there wouldn’t be a human out here for miles, only me and nature, so I didn’t care much about the noise I was making.
Finally I came to an open, wide spot in an enclosure of trees. I set my bag down from the dirt and started to produce tall candles, matches, sage, a small bowl, and the note which I’d found nailed to my door. I filled the bowl with the sage, kneeled before the candles, lit them, and placed the sage-filled bowl before me.
The wind was starting to pick up so I had to act fast.
“Goddess, hear me,” I said between tired breaths. I handled the note in my hands, feeling the texture of the paper and the grooves caused by the pen that had written it. “I call to thee as your child of light and invoke thy presence.”
A droplet of rainwater kissed my nose, another reached my hands. Goosebumps crawled up my arms and shoulders.
“Grant me your intuition and insight,” I pleaded.
Striking a match, I lit the sage and let it burn in the bowl. A Raven fluttered into my periphery and landed on the damp leaves ahead of me. The bird squawked—Sage, Sage, Sage—but I kept my gaze on the steady flame rising from the bowl and allowed myself to sense the Currents of Magick as they flowed through and around me.
Impressions came rushing into my consciousness like the echoes of feelings and concepts; indifference, authority—bravado. I could taste sweat in my mouth, could feel the strength of the hand that wrote the note and the mocking intent behind it, but the thoughts slipped away like clouds, dispersing before I could truly hold onto them and analyze them.
The sage turned to ash and the feelings vanished.
The Raven hopped further into view. It cocked its head and checked me out. Cawing, it turned around, waited, and then fluttered up into the sky. Up above, where the Raven had gone, the clouds were churning like rushing rapids. Arcs of purple light whipped around forming the outlines of near monstrous shapes in the clouds. Believing this to be the work of the Raven—or whatever it was—I raised my palms and imagined a calm sky, free of lightning and rain. I thought I could undo the weather.
But the weather fought back, and a bolt of lightning struck so close to me I nearly jumped out of my skin. I shielded my face with my hands and backed away from the sound of crackling wood as a tree branch snapped off its trunk and fell to the ground, smoldering. I dashed toward my makeshift circle of power, grabbed my candles and my bag, and ran back the way I came, following the trail until I reached my car, breathless.
I threw my bag into the backseat and made it into the car before just as the sky opened up and released a torrent of rain. The Goddess was angry, I knew. But why? What had upset her so much?
The rain picked up and hammered my car. With the windshield wipers swaying from side to side as fast as they could to keep the water out of my view I drove back into town. A traffic jam on the road, probably thanks to the rain, gave me enough time to think about what’d happened in the woods and calm down.
Who could’ve left that note? I ran through a list of all of the people who checked the boxes; freak, bravado, arrogant and authoritative. I finally landed on a name, and all of time itself stood still. I stared at the display on my dashboard, listened to the hum of the engine, and said the name aloud through gritted teeth.
“Aaron.”
Chapter Thirty Six
Though the drive down from the woods gave me time to relax, the closer I got to Aaron’s place, the more my hands started to shake. Hot, angry blood rushed to my cheeks. The anger of the Goddess. My heart was pounding against my chest and temples now, beating hard with anger. But Aaron couldn’t be behind this, could he? He chased off my attacker on the night I came under attack, unless I was too hurt to truly understand what was going on?
No. It can’t have been Aaron; but it could’ve been one of his shitty friends.
That was way more likely, and it made what I was going to do next the right thing by default.
I knocked on the door to Aaron’s apartment and rang the buzzer like a mad-woman until he opened the door. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, at least until I stormed into his apartment and shoved the note in his face.
“Which one of your fucking shitty friends decided this would be a good idea?” I said, nostrils flaring.
“Why don’t you just relax and tell me what you’re talking about,” Aaron said.
“This!” I smacked the note into his hand. Aaron read it.
“I don’t know what this is.”
“Bullshit! Your friends hear you call me freak all the time. I told you to cut it out, but you kept it up. Now look at what’s happening!”
“And what’s happening, huh?” Aaron asked, sizing me up, jaw clenching. I forgot how easy it was to work him up, but in that moment I didn’t much care.
“Aaron, one of your friends is trying to kill me!”
“How do you figure that? Because of this note?” Aaron crumpled the note and tossed it aside. “Get a grip. This is a prank, and one I have nothing to do with.”
“A prank?” I asked, hands on my hips. His proximity excited me, but not in the way I wanted. “A week ago someone came at me with a knife. It took you to scare him off. Now I get this note nailed to my door and you expect me to believe this is all a big prank?”
Aaron raised an index finger to my face. “I’m getting real sick and tired of this right now,” he said, “I don’t see you in a week and then you show up at my house accusing me of shit I have nothing to do with—”
“How fucking stupid are you, Aaron?” I said, interrupting him, “Get it through your head, this is not a coincidence!”
“Why the hell do you think someone’s trying to kill you? The guy that attacked you was just a mugger and I got him off you.”
I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Someone attacked me,” I said, “Then the Sheriff comes to my place and tells me other people on my street have been attacked and badly hurt. Then I get this note on my door telling me I’m next. Let’s not forget about the other two girls who died this year. Girls my age. What do you think?”
“But why would it be one of my friends? I’m not the only person to have called you freak in this town.”
He was right, but I couldn’t think of anyone from my past who would want me dead. “Aaron, I don’t have time for this!” I said, “You need to call your friends right now and find out who the hell did this.”
“And what do you suggest I do? You want me to ask them point blank if they’re trying to kill you?”
“Would you?”
“What?”
“If I asked you to do that for me, would you?”
Aaron gaped at me, clenching his jaw. “No,” he said. “Because that’s crazy.”
Stunned, my composure started to dribble away like a wet cake. “Aaron, you need to help me. You need to be that guy you were the other night when you saved me, when you believed the things I was telling you.”
“Did you think it was me?” he asked.
“What?”
“When you were figuring this all out. Did you think it was me? At any point?”
“Aaron,” I said, lowering my voice.
He kept his gaze fixed on me, breathing, knuckles white, but he wasn’t saying anything
and neither was I. I had thought it was him. I didn’t know whether to lie to him or tell him the truth. Didn’t know which would be worse.
“Say something!” I said.
“Get out,” he said under his voice.
My body began to tremble uncontrollably. “What?” I asked.
Aaron threw his fist into the side of his fridge so hard he dented metal casing. “Out!” he said.
And I left.
I dashed into my car—ignoring the cold from the rain rain—and drove. By the time I reached Damien’s place he was standing in the hall with a towel in his hands ready to wrap me up. I threw myself into him and cried, exhausted, and done with the whole thing.
Chapter Thirty Seven
I warmed up quickly with the help of the warm cup of hot chocolate Damien had prepared for me. The conversation with Aaron was still fresh in my mind, though; I could still hear the metal crunching under the strength of his fist and every time I heard it I felt myself shake a little.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the mug between my cold hands and sipping the warmth.
“Are you going to tell me what’s happened?” he asked.
Gravity pulled my eyes to the floor. I couldn’t keep them on him. Images of the blissful, fun night we last night invaded my mind and blocked my ability to be serious with him, but I had to break through and tell him.
“I thought I found out who the killer was,” I said.
Damien remained quiet.
“I found a note on my door,” I said, “It said I was next…”
“Who do you think the killer is?”
“At first I thought it was Aaron, the guy from that night when we went to Joe’s. The ones who called me—”
“I remember,” Damien said, interrupting. “But now you aren’t sure?”
“I went to see Aaron and… I don’t know. He isn’t capable of something like that. So then I thought it could have been someone else in his crew. But I don’t know. His stupid friends probably aren’t capable of something like this.”
“People are more than just skin deep.”