Chapter 18
When they finished scrubbing down the last car, Elias excused himself to use the restroom and Charlie went in search of Lou and Mason.
It didn’t take long. She found them standing beside a navy blue Ford, arguing over the proper way to dry a door handle.
“You’ve got to lift it,” Lou was saying, demonstrating by carefully pulling open the handle and sliding the rag underneath. “See? Not all the way—you don’t want to actually open the door—but enough to get the towel under.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Mason. “You don’t have to lift the handle at all. You can just stuff the rag underneath, and—”
“I hate to interrupt such a scintillating debate,” Charlie said, startling them so much that one would have thought they’d been arguing over climate change, not drying techniques. “But I was hoping we could discuss the carpool home.”
“What about it?” asked Mason, looking annoyed that Charlie interrupted his time with Lou—or, more likely, that Charlie had the audacity to exist at all. “You’re driving. I’m packing in with the rest of the boys to run the supplies up to the Gut.”
“Cool. I didn’t want to get stuck riding back with Elias.”
“Speaking of Mr. Handsome,” said Lou, waggling her eyebrows at Charlie, “how was your afternoon getting sudsy together?”
“I don’t know how you can even make jokes about him,” said Charlie. “He possessed your body, Lou. Kidnapped you, dragged you to a cave, and tried to use you to murder us all. Including yourself.”
“I know, I know.” She flapped a hand. “You’ve told me about a thousand times.”
This time, it was Mason who spoke. “And just how many times will it take for the message to sink in?”
“I told you,” Lou said, glaring at her brother in a way that made Charlie think that the two of them argued about this far more than she knew.
“I know he did all of those things. And I’m sure it was grisly and horrifying and unforgivable and all the other adjectives you and Charlie and Abigail have used to talk about that night.
But Mason … I don’t remember any of it.”
“That’s not the point, Lou,” Mason practically yelled.
Splotches of red blossomed on his cheeks, and he clutched the rag in his hand with a white-knuckled stranglehold.
“It doesn’t matter that you don’t remember what happened.
What matters is that it happened at all.
What matters is that Elias is a monster who should never have set foot in this town again. ”
“I don’t view the world in the black-and-white way you do, Mason.” She tossed the damp rag over her shoulder. “I see people in shades of gray. No one is beyond saving.”
Mason blinked at Lou several times. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m perfectly serious,” she said, lifting her freckled chin.
“I’m not the type to hold wrongdoings against someone forever.
You know that about me. Everyone makes mistakes, and I genuinely don’t mind a little bad in someone.
Actually, I prefer it.” She looked at Charlie and grinned.
“It’s why I chose your sister as my best friend. ”
Charlie shook her head, bewildered. “Me?”
“Obviously.”
“But that’s absurd. I’m not the type of person to cause trouble.”
“Not recently,” Lou said. “But you used to be.”
Charlie flinched backward, as if she’d been struck.
But she knew that Lou was right. When they were kids, the two had been mischiefs-in-arms, dragging Sophie into ploys that her shy twin wanted nothing to do with.
But on the night that she lost Sophie—or, at least, thought she lost her—Charlie had shrunk into herself.
Lost the playful, adventurous side of her personality.
Had become, if she were being honest, something of a zombie.
Numb. Barely able to speak.
Last month, Charlie had finally tasted the adventurous side of herself again.
She’d begun to blossom, to fill with hope and an almost painful desire for thrills.
In her mind, it was Asgard that had awakened that part of her again.
It was the forest, and Henry, and the will-o’-the-wisps, and the ash wives.
Not to mention learning that her twin sister wasn’t actually dead.
No—she was alive and had transformed into a badass winged warrior princess.
While things between them weren’t the same as they once were, and while Charlie might now be experiencing an entirely different form of pain (one that had to do with the fact that her twin had revealed she was still alive but had only come to see her twice, and for brief, terse, visits at that), merely knowing that Sophie wasn’t dead had certainly eased some of Charlie’s grief.
But it had nothing to do with the dark-haired boy who had handed her the eyaerberry that started it all.
Nothing.
“All I’m saying,” Lou went on, “is that we don’t really know Elias. We don’t know his past. We don’t know his motivations. We don’t know what made him the way he is.”
I do, Charlie thought. I know. Or, at least, I know a small part.
She could have shared what she knew. Lou had given her the perfect segue. But part of her … well, frankly, part of her felt too guilty to disclose his secrets. Even after everything he’d done. Even when he claimed not to care anymore.
“Oh, I see,” said Mason. “This is a delusional offshoot of your obsession with serial killers. You’ve always been the type to look at Jeffrey Dahmer and see someone who just needed to be loved.”
“That’s because he did need to be loved,” she snapped. “Just like everyone else in this world.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Okay, Mother Teresa.”
“Plus,” Lou added, “now that Elias is back and everyone thinks he and Charlie are still together, he’s totally going to get us into the senior section at the camp-out this weekend.”
Charlie and Mason groaned in unison.
“There it is,” said Mason. “Now you’re starting to sound like Louise Fisher again.”
“Hey, I meant everything else I said, too.” She grinned.
“I’m a multifaceted girl. The chance to party is an added benefit.
Speaking of…” She pulled out her phone, clicking the side to turn on the screen.
“Shouldn’t you and the other boys be hitting the road?
All the money is collected, and it’s a long drive up to… ”
Her voice trailed off.
“What?” Charlie asked. “What is it?”
“It’s…” Lou swallowed thickly. Her face had drained of its color. “You two should…” She shook her head, turning the screen around to show them.
That was when they saw the photograph.
It was a close-up of two dead bodies. Something taken on a cell phone and leaked from the crime scene, no doubt.
Far too graphic to be listed on any respectable news site.
It showed a boy and a girl lying on the pavement of a thin alleyway, right in front of a garage door.
Faces pale. Eyes open and unseeing. Clothes splattered with blood. Slash marks on their chests.
No fingers on their hands.
A third killing. Six dead in under thirty-six hours.
Charlie didn’t recognize them, a fact for which she was briefly grateful—then immediately felt awful for feeling any relief at all when two innocent kids were dead.
But the thing that scared Charlie the most had nothing to do with the bodies, nothing to do with blood stains or missing fingers. What scared Charlie the most was the message carved into the garage door behind them, letters jagged as if scratched with a long, sharp claw:
CHILDREN OF LOKI …
COME OUT, COME OUT,
WHEREVER YOU ARE.