Salem Falls (10 page)

Chelsea frowned. “But if we were sending the energy away, how come it felt so powerful in the circle?”

“Because it takes more strength to change someone else’s life than it takes to change your own,” Gillian replied.

“And if it works-” Whitney said.

“When it works.”

“When it works . . . it will be something he wanted all along, anyway.” Whitney stared at the altar, at the smoking candle. “A true witch can cast spells for someone else.”

“A true witch can cast spells on someone else.” Gillian raised her finger, smudged brown with cinnamon, and blew so that it clouded the air in front of her. “What if we hadn’t healed Mr. Hollings? What if we made him sicker?”

Chelsea’s eyes widened. “You know that goes against the Wiccan rede, Gilly. Whatever you do comes back to you threefold.”

“Well, okay. Mr. Hollings is a stupid example. But if Wicca’s all about keeping the balance of nature, then why couldn’t we use magick for that?”

Whitney looked at Gillian. “I don’t get it.”

Meg leaned forward. “She means if we help people who’ve helped others, it’s natural to hurt people who’ve hurt others. Right?”

Gillian nodded. “And to do it so that they don’t know who’s making it happen.” Her voice skimmed over the others’ reservations, smoothing in its wake. “Think about how powerful you felt tonight, healing someone. And then imagine how powerful you’d feel if you could ruin someone’s life.”

“Hailey McCourt,” Meg whispered.

Gillian turned. “That’s a start.”

“And where have you been?” Addie demanded, as Jack entered the diner.

“Out.”

It was empty of patrons, quiet in the kitchen. Overhead, Jeopardy! played on the television, the sound muted. Jack pulled off his jacket, determined to help close for the night.

“Well, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you can’t just walk off a job without an explanation. Or maybe that’s what got you red from teaching?”

He fixed his eyes on the screen above her left shoulder. The core of a quarter is made of this metal.

What is zinc? Jack thought. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud.

“You should be. I needed you here tonight. I may not be paying you a lot, but-”

The bells over the diner door jingled. Addie narrowed her eyes at Jack, blaming him for forgetting to lock the door behind himself. Wes Courtemanche walked in in uniform. “Coffee, Addie?”

“Sorry, Wes. I just cleaned out the pots.”

“I have a perfectly nice Mr. Coffee in my kitchen.”

Jack stuck the mop in the bucket and inadvertently knocked it over. A small flood spread beneath Wes’s feet. “Sorry,” Jack murmured, hurrying to swab the spill.

“Even if I wasn’t so tired, Wes, I couldn’t. Chloe’s asleep in the back, and I have to get her home.”

Wes didn’t know what to say to that. “Chloe,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“You know, I’ve been blown off before, Addie . . . but never because of a ghost.”

None of your business, Jack thought to himself over and over. He pushed the mop over the black and white tiles in a smooth, easy rhythm.

The last surviving Brontë sister.

“C’mon, Addie.”

Not Emily.

“No, Wes. I can’t.”

Not Jane.

From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Courtemanche reach for her, saw Addie back away.

Who is Charlotte?

He dropped the mop and wedged between Addie and Wes, pinning the policeman to the wall. “She doesn’t want to go with you.”

“Jack, don’t!”

Wes shoved, sending Jack sprawling. “I could throw your ass in jail for that.”

Jack did not move from where he’d fallen. Wes jammed his hat on his head and stormed out of the diner, furious. Addie, Jack thought. I did this for Addie.

“Are you crazy?” She leaned down so that her face was level with his, her eyes hard and cold. “He’s a policeman, Jack. He can make a small-business owner’s life miserable. And if that isn’t bad enough, this is only going to make him try twice as hard to come after me next time.”

Jack hauled himself to his feet, yanked on his jacket, and for the second time that day left without telling Addie where he was going, or why.

Addie’s strongest memory of Chloe took place underwater. Chloe had been seven the year Addie managed to scrape together enough money to take the two of them to the Caribbean. They stayed in a tiny rental house that was sixteen giant Mother-May-I steps from the beach. Palm fronds batted against the peeling pink shutters, and every morning on the sand there would be a new coconut.

One afternoon, Addie watched Chloe streaking back and forth beneath the water, as if she were logging mileage. “What are you doing?”

“I’m a mermaid. Come and watch.”

And so Addie had waded in with her daughter’s scuba mask. Underwater, Chloe wriggled: legs tight, hips undulating, as her bright blond hair streamed out behind her. Through the ripples of the water Addie could see the sun quivering like the yolk of an egg. Suddenly Chloe turned to face her, eyes wide, hair snaking soft about her face, arms blued by the shadows of the sea.

Addie could remember being a kid in the pool at the Y, pretending that she was a mermaid, too. There were moments she was certain it had happened-that her legs had turned into a scaled tail, that her lungs could take in water, that the wide thighs of women in the water aerobics class had thickened into pillars of coral. Beneath the water, the world was a different place, and you could be anything you wanted to be. Beneath the water, you moved slowly, so slowly you might never have to grow up.

On the day that Chloe died, the nurses had let Addie sit with her body for an hour, alone in the hospital room. Addie had tucked the sheets tight around Chloe’s still legs. She had witnessed those thin limbs going blue from lack of oxygen; she had seen Chloe’s cheeks and temples glisten wet from the spots where her own tears had fallen-and she’d thought, You are a mermaid, baby.

She’d thought, Wait for me.

The neurologists at the hospital had never seen anything quite like it-a man with significant damage in the aftermath of a stroke suddenly get up and start the day as if nothing had happened. But the nurses had been standing right there: Stuart Hollings, who could not speak or move an entire side of his body, had awakened asking for breakfast . . . and then threatened to leave when it didn’t arrive fast enough.

Three hours after finishing his bacon, eggs, wheat toast, and neurological exams, Stuart’s doctors pronounced him well enough to recuperate at home.

It was standard procedure at the SFPD to alert all duty officers about potential problems . . . including felons who had recently moved to town, although in the past this had never been an issue.

There was a small piece of Charlie-the piece that would probably have gotten him tossed out of law school, had he decided to attend-that hated this part of his job. It seemed to him that if you planted the seed of doubt in people’s minds, they were more likely to take a look at new growth and yank it out by its roots as a potential weed, when it could very well have turned into something as harmless as a daisy.

On the other hand, St. Bride just might drag off a local high school girl and assault her, in which case Charlie would wish he’d set up a frigging billboard.

He began to type a memo on his laptop, one that would be distributed that same day through internal mail. He’d barely gotten through the header when his secretary opened the door. “Dispatch just got a call. You supposed to be at the district court?”

“Ah, shoot.” He’d completely forgotten an arraignment. Hurrying to the door, he decided he’d get the St. Bride memo out when he came back; it would be there along with the other 200 things on his to-do list.

Unfortunately, his secretary didn’t know that. So when she came in later to lay a fax on Charlie’s desk and saw the computer still on, she shut it off. And when Charlie returned to the courthouse, he had completely forgotten about Jack St. Bride.

Hailey McCourt could not read the words in her textbook because they were tap-dancing on the page. She slid her ponytail holder out of her hair and tied it up a little less tightly. Her mom got migraines . . . maybe she was predisposed to inheriting them. But God, of all days to find that out! As long as it waited until after soccer tryouts, then Hailey didn’t care if she dropped dead in the locker room.

Mr. O’Donnell asked her to put last night’s homework on the board, some horrendous trigonometry proof. Hailey swallowed and stood up, trying to find her center before she walked to the front of the room. But she stumbled on a desk, collapsing on top of the kid sitting in it.

There were a few titters, and the girl she’d fallen on gave her a dirty look. Finally, Hailey reached a spot just behind Mr. O’Donnell, who was busy collecting papers. She tried to pick up the chalk, but every time she did, it slipped out of her fingers. This time, the whole class snickered.

“Ms. McCourt,” the teacher said, “we don’t have time for this today.”

She swiped for the chalk, holding it primitively, as if her hand was no better than a paw. Then she looked up.

The classroom was upside down.

She was standing, all right, and the blackboard was in front of her. But her feet rested on the ceiling, and the kids in the class, behind her, were suspended, feet first from their seats.

She must have made a sound, because Mr. O’Donnell approached. “Hailey,” he said quietly, “do you need to see the nurse?”

The hell with soccer. The hell with everything. Hailey felt tears spring to her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

She turned and fled, forgetting about her books and her knapsack. She suddenly didn’t fit into this world, and she had no idea how to move in it with grace. That was Hailey McCourt’s last thought before she walked directly into the door frame and knocked herself unconscious.

Unlike many of the houses in Salem Falls, which were close together, Addie’s sat all by itself in the woods up a long, winding driveway. Tiny and neat with weathered shingles and a green roof, the little cape seemed to suit her. Smoke rose from the chimney to cut a signature across the night sky. Set off in the yard, in a moonlit mud puddle, was a rusty swing set.

Jack sat on a curved rubber seat. The racket that came when he swung back and forth was painful, like old bones being brought to life. Surely, inside, Addie was listening.

When the door opened, Jack watched feelings chase across her face-hope, as she turned to the swing set; disappointment, as she realized he was not her daughter; curiosity, as she wondered what had brought him here.

As she approached, Jack saw a final emotion: relief. “Where have you been?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m sorry about not showing up for work today.”

Even in the dim light, Jack saw Addie blush. “Well, I asked for it. I should never have treated you the way I did the other night. I know you were only doing what you thought was right.”

Jack sucked in a deep breath, using it to force out the explanation lodged in his chest. “There’s something I need to tell you, Addie.”

“No . . . I think I ought to talk first.” She stood in front of him, trailing the toes of her boots in the mud. “That day at Stuart’s . . . you asked me what happened to Chloe.”

Jack went very still, the way he would have if a rare butterfly suddenly landed a foot in front of him. “I know she’s dead,” Addie confessed. “I may say or do differently, but I know.” She set her swing rocking slightly. “She woke up one morning and she had a sore throat. That’s it-just a sore throat, the same thing a hundred other kids get. Her fever wasn’t even past ninety-nine. And I . . . I had to work that day. So I stuck her upstairs at my dad’s on the couch, with cartoons on TV, while I waitressed. I figured if it was a virus, it would go away. If it was strep, I’d make a doctor’s appointment after the lunch crunch.” Addie lowered her face, her profile edged in silver. “I should have taken her in right away. I just didn’t think . . . she was that sick.”

“Bacterial meningitis,” Jack murmured.

“She died at 5:07. I remember, because the news was coming on TV, and I thought, What could they possibly tell me about the world gone bad that is more awful than this?” Finally, she met Jack’s eyes. “I go a little crazy sometimes when it comes to Chloe. I know she’s never going to eat the sandwich I set out for her at the diner, not anymore. But I need to put it there. And I know she’s never going to get in my way again when I’m serving plates, but I wish she would . . . so I pretend that she does.”

“Addie-”

“Even when I try my hardest, I can’t remember exactly what her smile looked like. Or if the color of her hair was more gold or more yellow. It gets worse . . . harder . . . every year. I lost her once,” Addie said brokenly. “I can’t stand to lose her all over again.”

“A doctor might not have caught it in time, Addie. Not even if you’d brought Chloe in that morning.”