Chapter 28 Salem
CHAPTER 28
SALEM
“Miss Salazar, you called?” The accented voice of Anna, the Salazar family’s twenty-year-old housekeeper, came on the line, reminding Salem of the house she had grown up in.
While never quite cold, Anna had never been particularly warm either. What she had always been, and still was, was efficient. Which was exactly why Salem was calling her. If there was anything that needed to be done, especially in secrecy, the portly woman was the person to do it.
“Anna,” Salem greeted her, raising a hand at Aditi in a silent wave as she entered BBC. “I hope you are keeping well.”
“Yes, miss.” The older woman sounded the same, like time had frozen her since Salem had been born. “What can I help you with?” Straight to the point. Salem had always liked that no-nonsense attitude about her. It had been refreshing in the world she had lived in.
“I need you to do something for me, Anna,” Salem began. “With discretion. My mother cannot know.”
Anna hesitated. “Within boundaries, miss. I answer to Mrs. Salazar.”
Salem had expected that. Anna was nothing if not loyal. “Of course, nothing untoward, Anna. Do you remember Great-grandmama’s journals? They were brought to the house after her funeral, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, miss,” Anna agreed, taking a few moments to think. “They are all in a box in storage. Do you need them?”
Smart woman. “Yes,” Salem replied. “There are important notes in them that will help me with a project. There is a special award I have applied for this year. I called mother but she seemed reluctant to part with them.” Honesty was the best policy with Anna, especially since she could easily talk to her mother. “Would you be able to pack the box carefully and have it sent to me as soon as possible, please? I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t urgent.”
“Of course, miss. You’ll have them by tomorrow. Is there any particular address you’d want me to direct it to? Or your residence on campus?”
“My campus residence, please.” Salem felt a sliver of excitement course through her as she thanked Anna. “Oh, and one more thing.”
Then she stated the other thing she wanted and hung up, turning to Aditi. The other girl looked tired, the same way Salem had felt for days until her deep, deep sleep last night in an unconventional, uncomfortable place. Caz had been asleep when she’d gotten up, gotten dressed, and slipped out, walking back to the campus. She had a meeting with Dr. Bayne before classes began and she couldn’t miss it.
But her friend had her attention now. “What’s going on?”
Aditi sighed. “Boy problems.”
Salem leaned on the counter. “Baron?”
The other girl rolled her eyes. “Who else have I been banging on the regular?”
Salem didn’t say anything, just patiently waited for Aditi to come out with it. The other girl lasted all of ten seconds before caving. “He’s being weird. Well, weirder.”
Salem frowned. “Weird how?”
“When we began, he used to leave after we, you know. Last few days, though, I don’t know what’s gotten into him, he’s staying the night, leaving in the morning. And then this morning he just left, acting all weird, telling me we were done, and I don’t know what’s happening. And when I asked him about it, he was all cagey.”
Her friend was freaking out because Baron was possibly catching feelings for her. But Baron was a shady guy, she knew. She couldn’t imagine him doing something out of pure emotion without some kind of calculation behind it. “Do you think he’s maybe feeling more for you?”
Aditi scoffed. “Yeah, no. Man is hot in bed but cold at heart. We both knew exactly what this was, and it sure as hell hadn’t run its course. It’s something else. I have a gut feeling.”
Salem’s reminder for the meeting buzzed her phone and she pocketed it. “Listen, I have a meeting with my advisor. Let’s meet after classes. I have to update you guys about something too.”
Aditi’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, did that hunky chonk of a man win you over?”
Salem was the one to scoff this time. She waved her friend goodbye and hurried out of the café, avoiding bumping into the morning foot traffic as she brisk-walked her way to the meeting.
Her phone vibrated again with her mother’s customary early-morning call.
“Good morning, Mother,” Salem greeted her.
There was a brief pause. “You seem to be in a good mood,” her mother noted, pleasant surprise in her voice. “I take it everything is going well?”
“Yes.” Salem picked up her pace around the fountain in front of the old castle building where Dr. Bayne’s office was located. “How are you doing, Mother?”
“Good, now that I hear you sound happier.” The words made Salem slow down. There was sincerity in her mother’s tone, and that confused her. Salem’s happiness had never been a topic of conversation for them. This felt a little out of left field.
“Anyway,” her mother continued when Salem stayed silent. “Good news is we have buyers for two of our properties. I have been quite enjoying showing them off and getting the best deal for them. Isn’t that great?”
“That’s great,” Salem agreed. Though they weren’t short on funds, her mother’s lifestyle had taken a hit after the scandal, and if selling properties gave her a modicum of comfort in her loneliness, Salem was all for it. “Have you…?”
Salem stopped.
“Have I what?” her mother asked.
“Have you ever thought of moving away? Maybe starting new somewhere?”
She heard her mother laugh softly. “Of course I have.” The laugh died down. “But I will be a Salazar no matter where I go. What I see here, I will see anywhere else. Societies like ours are very small.”
Salem pondered on that, thinking about the truth of the statement, especially in light of what Caz had told her. He had stopped using his name and become someone else. That had been the only thing that had shielded him.
“And you’ve never thought to change your name?” Salem wondered out loud.
“No,” her mother denied immediately. “This is the name of the man I loved and married. The name of a legacy I became a part of. The name of children I carried in my womb. People can take our lives, our homes, our reputations, but they cannot take our names. No matter what tragedies we face, what we lose, this name stays with us.”
Salem felt surprisingly moved by the emotion in her mother’s voice, something beyond pride. It was surprising because Salem had always felt like a blight on this name, but the emotion in her mother’s voice suggested otherwise. It put her mother in a different light, made her understand her differently.
“Anyway.” Her mother deliberately changed the topic, talking about other regular things before they said their goodbyes.
Salem was in a thoughtful mood as she entered the castle through the small side door, directly entering the lower foyer that opened up into a small courtyard. The morning was surprisingly bright and sunny as she made her way to Dr. Bayne’s office. The old part of the castle his office was located in was chilly despite the sun outside, the high ceiling of the corridor and expansive stone walls making everything drafty. Salem tugged her sleeves over her hands, trying to shield them and shake off the bite. She climbed the old stone stairs to the second floor, surprisingly alone on her way. It was early morning, but usually there were still a few students on campus. Was it a holiday or day off and she’d missed the notice?
Dr. Bayne’s office. As she tried to figure it out, she turned right from the first floor landing, toward his office, and stopped in her tracks.
There were voices coming from inside, loud voices, loud enough to stop her.
“We have a bouquet of four flowers this time,” a male voice said, and Salem recognized it. It was the same one she’d heard that night hiding next to Merlin’s office. The man who had been with Merlin. What was he doing in Dr. Bayne’s office? What bouquet were they talking about?
“We need one more. And how many gardeners?” Dr. Bayne asked.
“Seven.”
“That’s a good number,” a girl’s slurred voice came, another voice she recognized.
Lara. What was she doing? Was Dr. Bayne Lara’s supervisor as well?
Curiosity got the better of her. Crouching, she leaned forward and lined her eye up to the keyhole, peeking inside, trying to see what was happening.
Dr. Bayne sat in his chair, next to a man she didn’t recognize with his profile to her and Lara, on her knees in front of the stranger, giving him a blowjob.
Salem pressed her hand to her lips, shushing herself physically, shock coursing through her veins at seeing a girl she had known peripherally throughout her life, a girl who had been the epitome of prim and proper, be degraded on her knees for a man at least thrice her age, in the company of Dr. Bayne.
Lara was choking on the dick, drool and spit running down the sides of her mouth, her mascara running down her face that Salem could see.
“When is the pruning scheduled?” Dr. Bayne asked, looking down at a file with disinterest, as though there wasn’t oral happening right in front of him.
“When they blossom after winter,” the stranger answered, and Dr. Bayne nodded.
“What about the fertilizers?”
“Seem to be okay,” the man getting the blowjob grunted.
It was a bizarre conversation, and an even more bizarre visual, one that made Salem frown and step away from the door. She quickly backed away from the office and went out of the lobby, out into the main staircase that was slowly filling in with students heading to their classes.
Salem started for hers, unable to wrap her head around the fact that what she had witnessed was happening so close to so many students. What had they been talking about? And what the hell was Lara doing there, like that, so early in the morning?
She was too slow in moving because a second later, she heard her name being called and turned to see Dr. Bayne at the mouth of the lobby, waiting for her with his usual warm, genuine smile. Her brain couldn’t compute this as the same man she had seen inside.
“Miss Salazar,” he greeted her. “You just got here?”
Salem nodded mutely, thankful for the first time that talking wasn’t expected from her because she couldn’t find the words.
“C’mon,” he invited her, and walked toward his office. “Let’s wrap this up quickly so you can go to your classes.”
Salem walked into the office, a little hesitant, her eyes falling to the place Lara had been kneeling, right in front of the chair she usually took. It felt dirty now, so she walked to the window instead, looking out.
“Are you alright, Miss Salazar?” Dr. Bayne asked, concern in his voice.
Salem studied him, focusing herself to remove emotion from the situation and study it dispassionately. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Had she not peeped through the keyhole, she couldn’t have even guessed anything was amiss. But maybe it wasn’t. What if it was a more regular thing than she knew?
“Just a sleepless night, Dr. Bayne.” It would’ve been the truth had she said it yesterday. This morning, it was a blatant lie.
Dr. Bayne nodded and took his seat, rotating his chair to face her as she leaned next to the window. “Are you worried about the awards?” he asked. “Your application went through seamlessly, despite your not going to Dr. Merlin for your recommendation letter.”
There was no admonishment in his statement, just curiosity, like he was waiting for her to reveal her cards the same way she waited for everyone else. She knew this game. So she simply nodded. “As I’d said, I didn’t feel I had enough of a rapport with him to ask, not like I do with other faculty.”
Dr. Bayne considered her, his hair glistening in the sunlight coming into the room. “Why would you think that, Miss Salazar? He mentioned to me that you even talked about your sister with him.”
Merlin had a loud mouth, and apparently, Dr. Bayne had a big nose.
She just shrugged, waiting him out.
They went on like that for a few minutes before Dr. Bayne gave her a swift nod. “In that case, there is nothing else. Your application was accepted. You’re now one of the applicants for one of the most prestigious awards. I just wanted to check in on you and ask how your project was going.”
Salem hiked her bag higher up her shoulder. “It’s going great, actually.”
“Are you comfortable sharing what it is?”
Had he asked her an hour ago, she might have told him. But her glasses, though still on her face, had lost the rose-colored film she had adopted for him, to the point that she was questioning if he’d ever even had a daughter and if she’d ever died, or if it was a story fabricated to generate empathy and get people to relate with him. She almost felt bad for thinking like that, but she forced herself to leave the emotion behind and look with the lens of an investigator.
She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Just investigating some cold cases,” she told him, which wasn’t a lie at all. All the deaths she was investigating had gone cold or had their files shut.
Dr. Bayne smiled. “Well, if you manage to solve one, that would add to your repertoire with the board when they look through the applications. That kind of critical thinking and tenacity can be of great value to society.”
Salem nodded. “Forensics never lie, professor,” she told him, keeping her eyes steady on his. “No matter how deeply buried, it always carries the truth. One just has to unveil it. That’s my job. I will uncover the truth.”
His smile dimmed a fraction, just a fraction, but she was watching for micro-expressions and she saw it. She kept her own face completely stoic, grateful for how handy years and years of experience had come in.
“You’ll be late for your class.” Dr. Bayne pointed at the door. She headed to it.
“And Miss Salazar?”
She turned.
“Next time we have a meeting, make sure you’re well rested.”
Salem waited outside the pub-style bar for Aditi and Melissa. Drunk Damsels was a little outside of town, on the stretch of the only road that connected the university to the outside world, about half an hour from campus by foot. Though she could have called a cab, the walk was beautiful, a path along the coast with beautiful views and beaches and breezes on one side, thick, lush woods on the other. And with the student population always flocking to and from there, the path was never quite empty.
Originally, she had planned to meet the girls outside BBC and they’d have walked together. But there had been some issue in their department and classes had run super late. So they’d told her to go ahead and get them a table, and that they’d meet her there.
She looked down at her phone again. They were supposed to be there five minutes ago.
A text notification popped up on the screen, making her heart race. It was a new number in her contacts, one she had added that day.
He had cornered her in a corridor earlier that day.
“Why did I wake up and you were gone?” he asked, kissing a line down her neck.
“I had a meeting.” She breathed out. “I would’ve left you a note, but…”
“But?” More kisses.
“I didn’t have anything.”
“You had your phone,” he pouted, and she felt her lips twitch at the exaggerated way he was doing it.
She shook her head and handed it to him. “Fine. Add your number.”
He smiled, triumphant.
She looked down at the text, shaking her head at the way he’d saved his number.
Love of my life: You need to leave me your finger next time.
Love of my life: How the hell do I get in? Was this your plan? Trap me in the girls’ building? Revenge for any public displays, even though I know you’re secretly kinky for it?
She knew what he was doing, why he was doing it. Being all dramatic so she didn’t regret her decision and get uncomfortable. She went to contacts, updated his name, and typed out a response.
Salem: There’s a keypad. Code is 54639149.
Bane of my existence: Who the hell keeps codes like that?
Salem: I do. And you better learn it.
Bane of my existence: Fine. When will you be home?
Home.
Salem blinked at the screen, surprised by the rush of emotions suddenly assaulting her. She’d never thought of any place as home in her life. She’d had houses and rooms. Not a home, not once she’d grown up and out of the idea of one.
And she knew the word held the same meaning for him. She knew what he was doing.
Fuck.
Salem: Waiting for the girls. Hopefully by midnight.
Bane of my existence: Take care of my pussy. Said pussy gave a ghost of a clench at being acknowledged by him. She’d just had him once but already she was insatiable, waiting till she could go to him, be with him, learn more about him and ride him to bliss.
Salem took a breath to calm her ass down, and switched chats to see the girls’ location. Ten minutes. They were walking too.
She locked her phone and had just turned to go in to grab a table when light hair caught her eye across the street.
She knew that hair. She’d admired it many times, and just that morning, seen it in a fist.
Lara.
The girl’s back was turned to her. She was facing the low wall that separated the road from the short beach, and then the sea beyond. Darkness had descended, and aside from the light of the bar and streetlamps at a distance, it was shadowed and gloomy.
Salem stared at the girl’s back, an awful, awful feeling twisting in her stomach. She looked around, to see if anyone else had noticed her or had come with her. The students hanging outside, waiting outside, were all in groups, talking and laughing with each other, none the wiser about the girl who was standing alone across the street.
Somehow, under the orange light of the lamp, her hair looked more reddish brown than blond, and Salem felt queasy.
She looked exactly like Olivia from the back.
Dream interspersed with reality. Olivia’s rotting face cut to Lara’s back, and Salem bit the insides of her cheeks.
Stay in the present.
Thankfully, she saw Aditi and Melissa walking her way sooner than she’d expected and she waved to them, pointing at Lara standing still near the short wall.
She saw the girls frown as she crossed the street quickly to where Lara was.
The girl was eerily still.
“Lara,” Salem said carefully, not wanting to disturb her if she was lost in thought or having some kind of psychological breakdown.
Lara turned to face her, her gaze empty, like she was having an episode of some kind.
Salem hesitantly touched her shoulder. “Lara, it’s Salem. Lara?”
No reaction, no expressions, nothing. It was like she was in a fugue state.
Aditi and Melissa reached them, their faces full of concern. “What’s wrong with her?”
Salem shook her head. “I don’t know. But she’s not okay.”
Aditi had her phone in her hands. “She needs to be taken to the hospital.” She pressed the phone to her ear. “Hey, it’s me. Yeah, yell later. Listen, we have a problem. Yeah, a girl from Business is outside the bar. She’s just blank, not responding. I don’t know, you tell me?”
Salem listened with one ear to the conversation, the majority of her focus on Lara. She took hold of the girl’s wrist and pressed her thumb to it, looking down at her watch. A minute passed and her pulse was normal. Not low or high as one might have suspected. Was her condition because of what had happened that morning? Had she been raped? Could Salem have done something to prevent whatever this was?
Salem stepped closer to the girl, trying to reach her, when her eye fell on something that stunned her.
The small symbol behind her ear. A tattoo of an unknown symbol. She was marked, just like the two dead people on her board.
“Lara, if you’re in trouble, you need to tell me,” she urged the other girl. “Who did this to you?”
When Lara didn’t respond, Salem looked at Aditi and Melissa, aware they were listening in. Salem pushed that to the side and focused again on Lara.
“Are they making you do this?”
A flutter.
Just a flutter of her eyelashes.
But more, much more than anything in the last few minutes.
Salem took hold of both her hands, gripping them tight, her heart beating rapidly. “Who are they, Lara?”
Something cackled in the air, startling Salem into turning around. Just a parked car’s alarm going off.
Before she could calm her heart, the grip on her hands tightened for a split second before Lara pulled away. Salem let go, looking at her in surprise as she looked at Salem with one second of clarity, saying one word that rocked her to her core.
“Bird.”
Before Salem could even process the impact of the word, Lara climbed over the low wall and walked onto the beach.
“What the—” She heard Melissa begin to speak and then cut off as they looked at Lara, walking barefoot, straight to the dark sea.
No.
Without hesitation, Salem jumped over the wall and landed on the beach, grateful that she’d worn flat, comfortable boots as her friends fell behind her on the unstable sand.
“Lara!” she called, aware of the girls getting other people’s attention and calling for help. Someone screamed for the lifeguard who had gotten off the beach due to the tides. Knowing that they were there behind her, she went after Lara as she walked faster and faster toward the sea.
Salem could feel her heart thundering in her chest as she ran after the girl as best she could, the sand wet and awkward under her flat boots.
“Lara, stop!”
The girl kept moving, almost running now.
Lights didn’t reach so far into the beach. The clouds offered almost no moonlight. Salem just heard her rushing blood in her ears and the sound of the waves in front of her, seeing Lara’s white dress as a beacon in the darkness. She marched on.
“Lara, think of your family!” She screamed the one thing she knew Lara cared about.
No effect.
“Salem!” she heard Aditi yell. “Salem, come back! The riptide is coming in. You can’t go in!”
Fuck.
She froze on the beach, shaking from head to toe, torn between her own survival and protecting someone else, someone who was connected someway to everything happening at the university. If she let her go, the link would be gone, her chance of finding something, anything, evidentiary next to none if the water washed it away.
“Salem!” Melissa screamed her name as well, and Salem took a step forward, watching Lara wade into the incoming tide. She wanted to move forward, charge into the waves and bring her back, get her to a hospital and demand answers.
She needed answers.
But the tide was touching her feet now, the other girl submerged in it to her waist.
She turned in the water, and Salem saw the flicker of life in her face at last. She looked at Salem, and Salem at her, aware of the water touching her ankles now.
Lara didn’t say another word. Just turned around again, submerged in the water to her neck. Salem kept watching her, unable to move, watching as the girl, a girl she had known her entire life, was swallowed by the sea.
A strong hand gripped her arm and pulled her back. She looked to see Baron dragging her back from the water, the lifeguard beside him, and her feet complied, even as her mind tried to process what had just happened.
Baron took her back to the wall, where her friends waited along with a large crowd, an ambulance and a police cruiser just pulling into the road. As soon as she reached the wall, Aditi and Melissa enveloped her in a tight hug, telling her how worried they had been, and Salem let it wash over her, a sound coming from herself making her aware her teeth were chattering.
Baron picked her up and easily put her on the other side of the low wall, doing the same to Melissa and Aditi, his hands staying on Aditi’s hips.
Someone wrapped a blanket around Salem and she looked up to see it was a kind-looking emergency responder. There were more of them out on the beach, with flashlights trying to locate Lara in the dark tides, hoping to find her swimming and bring her back.
“You’ll have to stay and give statements,” a cop standing with them told everyone, looking especially at her. She managed a semi-nod.
“I’ve called van der Waal,” Baron told her, looking at her with a severity she hadn’t seen from him. “Let him take care of you, Salazar.”
She just hugged the blanket around her, feeling chilled to the bone, her eyes on the sea with no sign of the girl who had gone into it. She wondered how many bodies lay in those waters, unknown and unnamed, and felt a shiver go down her spine. Her teeth kept chattering.
“She’s in shock,” Melissa said to someone, and wrapped an arm around her. It helped, but didn’t dissipate the chill from her bones that seemed to have found her again.
The sound of tires screeching filled the air and she looked up to see Caz jumping out of a car, a dark, unhinged look on his face, a ferocity in his eyes as he searched the crowd, finally spotting her in her little huddle. She saw his eyes flare, his jaw clenching as he came toward her, covering the space in long strides, the crowd parting around him like the sea that never did, following him with their eyes.
He came to her like a storm, all charged and lit up so bright it blinded her and electrified her the same, as he stepped into her personal space, his hands fisting in her hair, tilting her neck up so he could look into her eyes. He searched them, back and forth and back and forth, and Salem looked into his, turbulent like storm clouds, feeling like she was in the middle of one, zapped and suddenly burning alive.
But she was so cold, and she knew what would help.
And then, as if he understood exactly what she needed, maybe because he needed it too, he wrapped his arms around her, picking her up off the ground, the blanket falling down as his embrace re placed the warmth—much better, hotter, tighter. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he just stood there, cupping the back of her head in one large hand and holding her up by the other under her ass, scenting her hair and kissing the side of her neck, in the spot she had come to think of as his because of his odd obsession with it.
The cold slowly leached from her bones as she hugged him back, hanging on to him, holding on to him, tucking her face into the space under his neck, feeling his pulse throbbing against her cheek, the chattering of her teeth and shivering of her body slowly subsiding as he warmed her from the inside out, not saying anything but just with his presence, just by being there.
The clearing of a throat brought her back to reality. She hid inside him for a second longer, wishing that she could hide there forever, that he was big enough to keep the world at bay.
“Chin up, baby,” he whispered into her ear, and she let out a shaky breath, pulling back.
She looked around to see people watching them, from her friends to other university-goers to the police waiting for her statement.
Salem squeezed his shoulder once, and unwrapped her legs as he let her down.
One of the policemen came up to her, a notepad in hand. “We’d like to know what happened.”
Salem turned to him fully, realizing Caz had taken a stand behind her, his hands on her hips, his stance broad and immovable, daring anyone to ask him to leave, a solid wall of warmth behind her, letting her lean on him, rely on him, take from him.
Salem exhaled slowly, letting the emotions disperse as she focused on the investigative side of her brain, and relayed everything to the police officer, starting with seeing Lara and the blowjob thing in the morning, through seeing her outside, to the very end, telling him everything except the symbol tattoo behind her ear. The lights kept flashing, the emergency responders kept searching, the crowd kept watching.
Everyone around her listened to her account of things then gave their own statements, and through it all, the dark lord, with blaze and brimstone in his soul, stood behind her.
Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.
—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla