Chapter Two
"Rai! Wake up, Rai!" The shrill voice of Aradia’s mother pierced her dreams so swiftly and sharply that she jolted herself awake and shot upright.
After she realized where she was and what was happening, Aradia groggily mumbled, “I can’t wait to go to college.”
“Rai! It’s the first day of school! Wake up sweetie!”
“In another state,” she added. Only then would her mother, and especially her mother's voice, be unable to disturb her slumber. Nevertheless, for now Aradia was still in bed in her new home in Salem, Massachusetts. No matter what her mother wanted, Aradia was inclined to say "to hell with it all" and stay in bed all day.
Just as Aradia was curling up to go back to sleep, her mother knocked twice and, without waiting, threw open her door. "Come now, Aradia, get up or you're going to miss the bus!"
"No. I am not," Aradia grumbled.
"What makes you say that?" her mother asked with her hands on her hips, an eyebrow raised, and the puppy bathrobe she wore every morning looking as ridiculous as ever.
"Because Dad said he’d drive me," Aradia replied. She’d already pulled the covers over her head, but Liza could sense her daughter was smirking.
After a few moments of contemplation on how she wanted to play her hand, Liza said, "Ah, well then, I guess you’ll miss the big breakfast I made for you, the Belgian waffles, cheddar cheese omelet, orange juice, and homemade blueberry muffins. All that will just have to go to your father now. I’m sure he won’t mind cleaning his plate, and the whole table, while you get a few minutes more sleep."
Aradia opened her eyes and pulled the covers off her face. "You fight dirty. You know that, don't you?"
"I prefer to think of it as just being a good mother," Liza replied with a lovely smile.
Aradia feigned a scowl. Liza merely turned and slammed the door shut, knowing her daughter would be up and about now.
She was right. Aradia swung out of bed and walked, no longer groggy, over to her dresser. Her nerves had wiped any latent sleepiness out of her.
There was one concern on Aradia’s mind at the moment though and that was making a good first impression at her new school.
She had no decision to make on what to wear; she’d chosen and laid out her clothes for the day weeks earlier. She’d actually spent a good deal of time in the interim just staring at the outfit. She wasn’t so much eager or nervous, but rather was, if anything, trying to be thorough. Most girls did not have to start their freshman year in a brand new school in a brand new state that was thousands of miles away from their old home in Arizona. She felt that there wasn’t much she could control about her situation. Her clothes, though, she could control. So she did.
After dressing Aradia turned to her chocolate brown vanity mirror and examined the girl staring back. She was a waifish-yet-curvy, pale-skinned and freckled, round-faced teenage girl. Her hair was long, wavy, and shockingly red. Aradia alternated between thinking of it as fire hydrant red and stoplight red. She loved her hair, in no small part because of the way it made her green eyes pop all the more vividly. Green eyes that her father swore that could see right through a person’s soul.
Aradia expected to be pleased with the visage. Her anticipatory smile, however, melted into horror when she saw the disgusting whitehead zit on her chin.
Her gut instinct was to shriek and lock her bedroom door to prevent her parents from dragging her to school with the evil blemish on her face. She could skip the first few days and give her chin time to settle down. Not much happens the first few days anyway, right? she justified the plan to herself.
She wasn’t so vain generally, but today was different. More than simply looking gross, that zit could ruin her intended first impression at her brand new school. She knew first hand how hard a closed-clique school could be when you were one of the ones on the fringes. She did not look forward to four long years of more of the same. If she didn’t make a good impression, people mocking her could be only the start of her troubles.
A ray of hope appeared to her as she remembered her latest concoction, mostly made of herbs from her mother’s garden. Usually her mother got slightly annoyed when Aradia helped herself to “raw materials,” as Aradia put it. With the move, however, Liza knew she would have to leave the garden behind anyway. “You can take whatever herbs you like, honey bee,” she’d said. “Even more than you do already.”
Aradia had let herself have fun with the options, and had spent most of that day mashing, grinding, and mixing. Most of her mixtures were utter failures at doing anything useful, but her efforts were not in vain. After enough stirring to give her quite the arm workout, she had created about an ounce of paste which, she believed at least, would clear one's skin.
It struck her as very coincidental and timely that she’d created such a salve so shortly before desperately needing one, but she mentally waved that thought away.
“Everything happens for a reason, and all that jazz,” she said to herself.
Unfortunately, Aradia had done a poor job of packing or labeling her personal things for the move in any reasonable manner, and most of her stuff, including the lotion, was still packed up.
That much did not bother her, though. In fact, there was a good reason why she’d never developed much of an organizational sense. She possessed a sure-fire method to find anything that was lost to her.
Closing her eyes, she held out her palm and envisioned clearly in her mind the small bottle. It was one of those mini-toiletry shampoo bottles one finds at hotels, that said “Marriot” on the side of it. Aradia was especially big on the “reuse” part of “reduce, reuse, recycle.”
Her hand began to glow, dimly at first, but building up to a bright white intensity. The light started to emerge from her outstretched hand like steam from a kettle. Aradia opened her eyes, and with one last blinding flash like the death of a star, the bottle and lotion-potion appeared in her hand.
"Rai! Come on downstairs! I can't keep protecting your breakfast from your father forever!" her mother's loud voice disrupted the climactic moment.
"I am coming, Mama! And I appreciate your protecting my breakfast from the Daddy Disposal!” Aradia shouted back.
"I heard that!" This time a strong male voice responded to Aradia instead of a soft female one. "And don't shout in the house!
"Okay, Daddy!" she shouted back.
Aradia smirked and turned to her mirror. She then smeared onto her chin a generous glob of the precious, pale pink paste. Realizing it might take a while for the balm to zap the zit on its own, Aradia decided one more summoning might be in order. Pressing her fingers hard onto the spot where she had just rubbed the paste, she called upon the white light once again, “summoning” the ointment deep into her flesh. Just as quickly both the medicinal and the zit disappeared.
"Okay, okay! I have arrived, no need to call my lawyer!" Aradia announced as she skipped down the stairs into the kitchen where her family was having breakfast. Her mother had not exaggerated the quantity of food, and the quality looked just as impressive.
"Too late," her father managed to murmur through a mouth full of toast.
"Oh yeah, that's right," Aradia said in a voice that dripped with faux innocence. "My Daddy is my lawyer. I hope you still have time for your number one client even with your fancy new job.”
Ross was Salem’s newest Assistant District Attorney. Technically it was a lateral transfer, not a promotion, as it was the same title he’d held in Arizona. His prospects for advancement were much brighter here in Salem, though.
"Don't remind me," he grumbled, swigging back on his glass of orange juice.
"What's your problem?" Aradia demanded defensively. She tended not to take it well when others failed to find the comedy in her frequent, and sometimes successful, attempts at humor.
"Oh, ignore him, honey," her mother said as she provided Aradia with her own glass of juice. Aradia was already digging into a loaded plate of the pre-described
breakfast. "Your father is just nervous about being the newest criminal lawyer on the block."
Aradia's father scowled at his wife who just looked at him and said, "Well, you are!"
"You can't really blame me for being grumpy,” he defended himself, spraying a dozen or so pumps of the calorie-free butter substitute his wife insisted their family use onto a muffin. “It’s bad enough that my predecessor was dismissed under a cloud of scandal–"
"And cocaine,” Aradia interjected and automatically received a warning look from her father before he continued with his complaint.
“What will you be working on?” Liza asked. It was not common, but Ross did, from time to time, throw himself a pity party. Liza had learned that comforting him did nothing to help. The best way to get him out of it was to get him talking about whatever subject bothered him. He only ever got down on himself about things he was really quite good at. She just had to guide him into talking himself out of it.
“Okay, so they’re not holding back on me,” he said, mood immediately shifting. “Three weeks ago Salem had a murder. The press went crazy over it.”
“Over one murder?” Aradia asked. “Why?”
“Well, all violent crime in Salem is way below the national average,” he replied, and started rattling off statistics. “It’s a pretty small town, just shy of forty-five thousand probably, by the last Census. Aggravated assault, rape, murder, all are way below average.”
“Not so good for your job security,” Aradia joked.
Ross wanted to chastise her for taking the subject lightly. Rape and murder were not laughing matters to him. He still chuckled before he could correct her. Liza shot him a glance, with the clear message being: “Don’t encourage that!”
“Anyway,” Ross went on, “I hate saying this, but a murder here is news. It was the manner it was committed that got the press all in a frenzy though. The body was exsanguinated.”
Aradia responded, “Does that mean what I think it does?”
“Drained of blood,” her dad nodded solemnly. “Eerie, huh?”
“Oh,” she replied. “Not what I thought then.”
“What did you think?”
“From context I figured it meant ‘really messed up,’” she joked morbidly.
“Aradia,” her dad struggled, and failed, to hold back another inappropriate laugh, “that is inappropriate.”
“Ross, should you be telling us all this?” Liza attempted to change the subject.
He waved her concern away. “This is all public record. Don’t worry. Frankly, one of the news stations must have an inside source somewhere close to the investigation, because I probably couldn’t tell you much which wasn’t already all over the television.”
Liza nodded. She didn’t quite consider this an acceptable breakfast topic, but if it got her husband out of his funk, she’d let it slide this time.
“They’re calling him or her the Vampire Murderer.”
“Well that’s silly,” Liza replied in spite of herself. “That sounds like he kills vampires.”
“Or she,” Aradia added through a mouth full of Belgian waffle.
Ross nodded his agreement with his daughter while he replied, “It is silly. The press is silly. That was the name that stuck though.”
“So you’re on the case?” Aradia replied with real interest. “That’s huge! They brought you in to solve it before it becomes a cold case!”
Ross let a glimmer of pride show in his eye. “That’s more of a police term, but kind of. It’s not as big as it seems. You’re right that the DA’s office is at a dead end. I think they are hoping a fresh set of eyes might help.”
“I bet the DA wants to prosecute somebody, and fast,” Aradia surmised.
Ross smiled inwardly at his daughter’s astuteness. “Well, I won’t speak to that, but I know that if I were the DA, I’d want to set an example.”
“Well,” Aradia said, “if I were the DA, I’d be happy you were swooping in to save the day.”
"I plan on it,” Ross said boldly, confidence returned. “This case won’t be my only challenge, though. There’s a real East-West mentality to overcome. Since we moved from Arizona, I’ll have to contend with other ADA's thinking I am some glorified backwater cowboy. If I want any respect, I’ll have to show results. Until I do, they’ll probably expect my only value will be making them look good."
"So you’ll do what you always tell me to do,” Aradia replied. “Prove them all wrong."