Chapter 16 Salem
CHAPTER 16
SALEM
Present Day
The memories brought on by that name, one she didn’t like to think about, in hindsight, filled her with lead in her stomach. She walked with Baron in silence, wondering if she should come right out and ask him what exactly he thought he knew or just ignore it and hope it went away.
With each step, though, the latter seemed more and more of a farfetched option.
“You must be wondering how I know that, right?” he asked, unbothered, and she stayed silent, keeping her head high, hiding her turmoil. If she addressed it, acknowledged it, it would open a can of worms she had pushed away in the corner of her mind, never even thought about. She wasn’t ready to do that, not with this stranger she didn’t know.
After a few seconds of her non-response, he chuckled, but didn’t push for anything.
They walked back in that strange, awkward silence until she saw the gates of the university.
“If you must know.” Baron stopped a few steps away from the entrance, turning to her. “I know all about you, Salem Salazar.”
Salem looked him in the eyes, noting they were dark. She doubted he knew everything about her, and even if he did, she couldn’t understand what the agenda of a postgraduate university student she’d never met in her life could be.
“What’s your purpose here?” she asked him point-blank, crossing her arms over her chest.
“No purpose.” His dark eyes gleamed. “I just like to shake things up now and again.”
“Then why tell me?”
“So you know that I know.”
She blinked at him, trying to take his measure.
So, he knew that she’d met someone she’d thought had been a friend in a weird group when she’d been a kid. Her first and only friend, she’d thought. As an adult, she didn’t understand how she could’ve been so stupid. But then, loneliness made fools out of all of them.
She hadn’t known better and sent him some pictures, the kind a child should never have taken or shared with anyone even though she had been coerced, and after her phone was taken, she’d been removed from the group and those pictures had been all over the internet. Everyone in her school had seen them before they were taken down and her father had the story and the photos buried. Though thankfully her face hadn’t been visible and the family was able to refute it, her name had been attached to it and smeared for a while. For a few months, every boy in school had thought her easy and the scandal had seemed to be the end of her world, until everyone moved on to the next thing and she was eventually forgotten. In retrospect, it bothered her more that she’d been too young to understand the consequences of everything and her own foolishness in trusting a stranger.
Even though she knew she was being harsh on herself, looking back, she knew she’d been the victim and it had been illegal, what had happened to her.
But legality was a fickle thing in the matters of their society. The only thing that mattered was reputation. And hers had begun to rot.
It had been rotting ever since.
The boy who had tried to grope her at the party had been a result of that. So had her sister standing up for her. Her parents hadn’t given her another phone after that, not until a few years later when she was older. And she had just isolated herself by then and had stopped speaking anyway.
She didn’t like to think of that chapter in her life. That was one of the reasons she never investigated the group or anything about it after. Everything had been buried and forgotten, and all she wanted was to forget as well.
She was here, as odd and ill-fitted as she was. And though bringing it back up was prickling, she didn’t understand what this man thought he had over her head. He should’ve known she had skin made of scandals and seclusion. She didn’t fear society.
Before she could tell him that she didn’t care, the hair on the back of her neck stood with awareness, the voice she knew down to her marrow as the one inciting responses in her brain, the voice of sea and smoke, coming from right behind her.
“What the fuck is going on here, Whitmore?”
She didn’t turn but she noted his voice was tight, condensed like the mist on her skin, enveloping her but intangible.
“Well, well, well, van der Waal.” Baron smiled, like he knew something no one did, and she was riled enough by his mention of her past to believe that maybe he did. “Out for an early run?”
She felt Caz step behind her, similar to the way he’d been at the library, except this time with a little distance between their bodies. The distance didn’t help. She could feel the gap pulsing with something, something that made her want to take a step back and see if she fit against him as she remembered, something that was pulling, tugging, taking her. The cells of her back felt like particles of iron suddenly thrust into the field of a magnet, moving, rearranging, rehoming themselves.
She clenched her hands into fists in her coat pockets and kept her face neutral, not betraying a thing to the stranger in front of her.
“I asked,” the voice spoke almost over the top of her head, the words and the breath hitting the back of her messy bun, moving it infinitesimally but enough for her to feel it in her roots, “what the fuck is going on here?”
Baron huffed a laugh, rubbing his hands together, probably to warm them but looking like a stereotypical bad guy in the movies instead. “I could ask you the same thing but I’m pretty sure of the answer. You have no subtlety, dude.” Baron shook his head. “You’re not the only one watching. Remember that.”
The man behind her growled— growled— though whether in warning or threat, she couldn’t tell. The sound penetrated her brain and did something to her insides she couldn’t explain, something new, a new kind of tingling with the auditory sensation. It was a sound she hadn’t heard before. People in polite, civilized circles like theirs didn’t growl like big beasts. They would poison each other with a smile or stab each other’s backs with manners.
Who the hell was this man?
Baron chuckled again. “Being a brute doesn’t do anything. Think with your head, the one on your neck.”
The whole situation was bizarre as they stayed silent, measuring each other. It was clear that neither of the men trusted her enough to speak freely in front of her. Knowing they were wasting time on an impasse, Salem smoothly stepped sideways.
“Thanks for walking me back,” she told Baron politely.
“My pleasure,” he answered, just as politely. “Remember what I said.”
As if she would forget anytime soon.
She could feel waves of something emanating from the other man in their huddle, something dark, but she ignored it and him as she’d decided she was going to do, and walked through the campus gates.
Dawn was cracking over the horizon, the gray light chasing away the black night, lighting up the world enough to render the streetlamps useless. She walked back to the residential block, not knowing what she was going to do to dispel this sense of restlessness that seemed to have taken over her life. It never quietened, not when she was awake, not when she was asleep, and there was a part of her deep inside that just wanted to lie down on the street and close her eyes until it passed.
She felt tired.
The sound of footsteps behind her alerted her to another presence. Just by the awareness in her body, she knew it was him, and she just wasn’t in the headspace to play any of his games, not at the moment. She turned to tell him precisely that, only to see the bane of her existence in human form jogging up to her, a dark, fierce scowl on his rugged face that she’d never seen in the months she had known him she had known him, and the words died in her throat.
“What—” She opened her mouth, only to have his hands slide into her hair at the back of her head, completely dislodging her bun as he fisted the strands, making his palms knot against her skull. Her heart rate suddenly shot up, breathing becoming difficult. The roots of her hair came alive at being tugged, not harshly but firmly, the neurons and synapses firing away as sensation traveled down her body from the point of contact.
She blinked up at him, thankful for the glasses that created a barrier between her and the intensity emanating from him. He leaned down, glaring at her, coming close, so close that his mouth, the one she hated when he smirked, stopped just an inch apart from hers.
There was no smirk on it now, just a tight flatness, the beautifully formed upper lip pressed to the fuller lower lip she knew was soft and pillowy from the one time she’d smacked their lips together.
Their noses almost brushing, the scent of paint and petrichor, the scent that made her feel some type of way, invaded her senses, along with the sound of his harsh breathing and her own blood rushing in her ears.
The orange of the streetlamp behind him and the gray from the morning combined to create an eerie fire-and-ice filter over his face, his gray eyes volatile. He was buzzing, his skin, his energy, the air around him, buzzing with tension and aggression and power of some kind, and she felt the oddest urge to soothe it, to cool him and calm him down so he came back to his natural, chaotic but controlled, self.
Unbidden, slightly hesitant, she brought her hands up to the sides of his forearms that were exposed by his pushed-up sleeves, for the first time feeling his bare skin and hair under her fingers, the ink and sinews under her hands, the hard muscles like stone under her smaller palms.
Keeping her eyes locked with his, she squeezed once.
“Hey.”
She saw him drag a deep breath in at her softly spoken word, his broad chest expanding out under his sweatshirt, and he dropped his forehead to hers, just regulating his breathing, his fingers twitching in her hair.
“Hey,” he mumbled back, his voice registering even lower.
She could see the minute details of his face so close, each hair in his brow, the shadow on his jaw, the vertical line on his forehead, the small scar at the corner of his nose she’d never noticed before, a tiny mole near his hairline, a lock of hair falling on his forehead. Her fingers itched with the sudden urge to push it back away from his face, so it joined his longish hair.
She mapped it all as he often mapped her, and tried to relax her own racing heart, no idea what the hell was happening but just following her instincts and seeing where things went.
It took him a few moments, not too many but still too many, before he exhaled and pulled back, loosening his grip in her hair, now gentling it, stroking it, petting it, following the bend of each curl with his fingers as he’d done with his pencil two months ago, the memory becoming core in her mind.
It was so soothing, the motion of his hands, almost lulling her, relaxing her so much she could have fallen asleep standing up in the middle of the street.
God, she was so tired.
“How do you know Baron?”
The words jarred her back to reality, completely at odds with the gentle, almost hypnotic motion of his hands. His voice was hard, the blade of a scalpel, cutting her quick.
She blinked at the contrast and though she could tell him she’d just met the man a few minutes ago, she owed him no answers, not after the way he’d been playing with her, the way he’d not answered any of her questions, the way he’d touched the other girl’s hair. She wondered if he’d petted and stroked her hair too, the way he was doing now.
Stepping out of his hold, feeling his fingers drift through her strands and unraveling them as she pulled away, she turned and began walking back to her building again.
What the hell possessed her in his vicinity, she did not know and at the moment, didn’t care.
“Tell me.” He caught up easily and fell into step by her side.
“And I should answer why?” She let her voice drift off.
“Because.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Did you know him before you came here? Know his family?”
She had to give it to him, he was persistent. Too bad, so was she.
Whitmore did ring a bell in her head but nothing concrete. She shrugged.
“Fucking hell,” he spit. “Fine. One question. Ask me one question, and then I want an answer.”
Salem stopped in her tracks, unable to believe that after weeks, months of trying to hound and corner him with no give, it was something as innocuous as this that made him give in.
Questions barreled into her mind. She had so, so many she wanted to ask him, personal, not personal.
Where were you before coming to Mortimer?
Why were you on the beach that night we met?
How did you know the girl who died?
Do you know something about the rest of the deaths, about my sister’s?
Who were “they” that you froze up about in the library?
Why did you tell me there couldn’t be anything here? Not that I wanted it, but I’m curious? Was it because of the girl on the landing? Who is she and who is she to you?
Why are you asking about Baron all of a sudden?
Why are you watching me all the damn time?
Can you maybe stroke my hair and make my mind quiet for a little bit, mute my demons long enough for me to rest for a bit?
She didn’t know which one to ask him, which one took precedence, her mind blanking, slow, sluggish from the lack of sleep and general sleepless nights she’d been having.
She needed to think, move away from his field and get her brain working. “I’ll take a rain check.”
She turned to leave and felt him grip her bicep, turning her back around again to face him. “What’s going on with you?”
Salem looked at him, puzzled.
“You’ve been off the last few days,” he stated, daring her to defy his observation. “You’re not meeting with the girls in the block these days, you don’t go to the library, you’re distracted in class, and this is not the first morning I’ve seen you leave campus this early. You look dead on your feet. So, what the hell is going on with you?”
Had she not noticed and known he was watching her, this would have surprised the hell out of her. For some reason, though, it did the opposite.
Salem had given up speaking for years and no one in her own flesh and blood family had noticed. And yet she had gone off her regular routine for a few days, and this man, the one who confused the hell out of her, the one who wasn’t a friend, wasn’t a foe, wasn’t anything but something, the one who inspired so many ugly, not so ugly, feelings in her… he noticed.
He noticed her breaking her pattern.
He noticed her being off.
He noticed her looking tired.
She hadn’t said a word to anyone about the things weighing her down, and yet, somehow, he had noticed it.
For the first time in her life.
Someone had seen her.
No, she wasn’t stunned. She wasn’t creeped out. She wasn’t aloof.
She was moved.
Moved down to her core at something so simple, something so many people in the world took for granted, something she had never experienced for herself before.
Being seen.
And yeah, it moved her something fierce.
And it wasn’t because he was the first person to. No. It was that she had wanted him, not anyone else, to notice things about her. There had been people in her life she could’ve maybe allowed closer who would have seen her too if she didn’t keep them at arm’s length. Yet, she had let him into her personal space, something within her wanting him to see. And it reveled in knowing that he did.
But all she did was just gape at him, unable to find the words to express everything happening inside her in the moment. How could she tell him that? Where would she even begin?
She saw his eyes rove over her face, take in her features that she knew looked as tired as she felt. Then he murmured a “fuck it” before dragging her with him in the opposite direction.
“My building is that way.” She pointed behind them, keeping up with his pace.
“I know,” he acknowledged. Of course he knew. “We’re going somewhere else.”
“Where?” she asked, not really knowing or getting what he was doing, why he was doing it. It made no sense for him to suddenly want to be in her vicinity privately after having avoided her successfully for weeks.
He turned his neck to level a look at her before heading in the direction of the library. Her heart began to pound, not at the brisk pace but at the intention. The library was the only building open on campus twenty-four seven.
“Why?”
He didn’t reply, but turned right on the path directly headed to the block, taking a shortcut. It was more like an alley nestled between two old buildings, shrouded in shadows, the stones under their feet misted with a thin sheen.
At this hour, she doubted there would be a soul in the library. She didn’t know why her body was tensing, as though preparing for something. He wouldn’t slaughter her between books, although paper could be a sharp, unsuspected weapon. She remembered reading about a case where a murderer had used paper to slit his victim’s throat and then burned it, erasing the weapon and his fingerprints from it.
Distracted by the morbid thoughts in her head, she startled when the library door beeped as he scanned his card, and she noticed idly it was different from the one she had. Hers was white plastic with the university crest. His was black metal with another crest—a gold and silver one—embossed in it.
One that reminded her of something she’d seen before.
She didn’t know if it was the conversation with Baron that triggered the memory, but she remembered seeing the black background with a gold and silver vulture years ago.
Mortemia.
Though the vulture was different. She stared at the card. It was the same color and theme, and yet different, the bird not at rest as it sat still in the logo, but rather in flight with a snake in its beak and clutched in its claws.
Had the logo just evolved or was it a different thing entirely? But how could it be? Mortemia had been a group specific to the university. Why the hell did he have this? Was he a part of the group?
Had they come after her?
A terror unknown to her filled her veins.
She snatched her hand away from his arm, and he turned to her, freezing when he saw the horror of her memories seeping onto her face.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked in a whisper, her voice uneven, shaken, the curse escaping her lips unbidden.
He didn’t say a word, just looked at her, maybe trying to figure out her reaction.
She took a step back away from him, and he followed.
She took another back, and he followed again.
“Stop.” She raised a hand in front of her defensively, taking in his face, his demeanor, everything, utterly confused by what was happening, by her past colliding with her present like this when she’d thought she’d put it to rest, by him having anything to do with that wretched group. The thought made her sick.
“Stay away from me.”
“Salem—”
And without listening to another word, she ran.
Who wants ?owers when you’re dead? Nobody.
—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye