Chapter 7 Gia
SEVEN
GIA
Edward Ramirez had way too many candles for a lawyer. They lined the windowsill. His desk. The many shelves. New candles. Half-melted candles. Little stubby wax ends that most people would have thrown away.
Even more worrying were the odd, unlabeled bottles littering the room. It all added up to a bad omen. Fuck, Gia didn’t even believe in omens. She wasn’t superstitious. She believed in no higher power. But something about being here sent her mind down a fantastical path.
Was this what sleep deprivation did to a person?
Gia was bound to get a migraine soon, but before she could address self-care, she had to get the hell out of Ramirez’s creepy office.
Really, he’d been nothing but kind. Unless he’d been too kind? Gia couldn’t help second-guessing. Nothing seemed simple after that strange car ride.
Ramirez placed a key on his cluttered desk. “Now all the paperwork is taken care of, here’s the key to Susan’s condo, and these”—he placed a ring of keys next to the first—“are for the theater.”
“I can’t thank you enough.” Gia slipped the keys into her hoodie pocket. She needed a shower and a change of clothes as badly as she needed to get away from this man and all his candles.
Ramirez gave her a warm smile. “We’re happy to help. I know you must be exhausted, but there’s more to go over.”
“More?” Gia grabbed the stack of manila folders he’d given her. “Wait. What we are you talking about?”
He wasn’t giving organized crime vibes, but who knew how they did things on the West Coast?
Ramirez leaned back in his chair. “We as in the Lockwoods.”
Gia almost laughed in relief. He meant her newfound family. “Are you part of the family?” Maybe he’d married in.
“No. I mean the Lockwood Coven. My membership isn’t obvious since I use my legal last name for business, but I’m a Lockwood too.”
Gia stood, her chair scraping backward. Coven? No. No way.
“It’s cool if my Aunt Susan was Wiccan or whatever, but I’m not interested in hearing about your religion.”
Ramirez chuckled. “It’s not a religion. Not for us anyway. Witches and Wiccans aren’t the same. Susan wondered if we’d need to fill you in.”
“No, really. I don’t need to be. I’m good.” Gia took a step toward the door.
She wouldn’t lie, she was relieved Susan hadn’t been involved with a gang or something criminal in nature, but she did not need this guy to try to recruit her to his cult.
Witches. Did he think he could do spells? No wonder he had so many candles.
Ramirez opened his mouth, but Gia cut him off. “I need to sleep and get organized. I can hardly think straight right now. If I have any questions, I’ll call.”
“Okay.” He sounded reluctant, but didn’t push.
Was he respecting her boundaries? He was one of the few people in her life who bothered, and that was fucking sad.
As novel as basic respect was, Gia still wasn’t hearing Ramirez out. She did not survive the emotional turmoil that Catholicism had brought into her life to get sucked into something else, regardless of what Ramirez said about his coven not being religious.
Gia said goodbye and got the hell out of there, her backpack stuffed with papers, cash, pills, and her club dress. Jesus.
For a brief moment, Gia wished she hadn’t sent Sam and her offer of a ride away, but if Sam was in the same coven as Ramirez, it was for the best. Susan’s condo, now Gia’s, wasn’t terribly far away.
Gia walked through the modest neighborhood, following the directions on her burner phone’s map, and came to a narrow, tidily kept building across the street from the Spotlight Theater, which she now owned.
She unearthed the residential building’s entry code from her pile of papers and let herself inside. The condo was on the third floor with one other unit beside it.
Gia unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Ramirez had mentioned that Susan’s things had been cleared out, but the lack of personality in the space was jarring. There was no art on the walls. No décor. The furniture had been left, and a quick walk-through and a peek into the closets revealed no personal effects.
Gia had no complaints. She hadn’t been looking forward to living in someone else’s home, especially someone she hadn’t known.
She found a shopping bag full of clothes in the middle of the living room floor, and a closer inspection revealed the items generally matched her size. How considerate and creepy.
Who’d bought these?
Gia had the urge to toss the bag out the front door, but she couldn’t spend another second in these leggings, and she wasn’t even wearing a shirt under her hoodie.
After showering and changing her clothes, Gia felt more functional. She swallowed a pill in the hopes the dull ache in her head wouldn’t get worse, and stretched out on the couch, too tired to make the bed with the new linens she’d seen in the laundry cupboard.
She shut her eyes.
Knock. Knock.
Gia jolted awake with no idea how long she’d been asleep.
She hauled herself up with effort. At the door, she peered through the peephole. A woman she didn’t recognize stood on the other side.
Gia opened the door a crack. “Hello?”
“Hey.” The woman smiled, her lips twisting slyly. “I live next door. Are you the new owner of this place?”
Gia forced her brain to kick into gear. “Yeah…”
“Welcome. I’m Viv.” She seemed younger than Gia, maybe twenty, her short black hair gelled into an artful wave. Her outfit said she was on her way to or from the gym, and she had the biceps to match.
“Um, hi. I’m Gia.” Her stomach flipped. Was it smart to give out her real name? She was well out of the Balzanos’ reach, but still.
Viv crossed her arms. “Were you close to the woman who lived here before?”
Gia didn’t see how it was her business. “Were you?”
“No, I haven’t lived in the building long. This place was never listed for sale, so you must have known Susan Lockwood.”
Why did she care? “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve had a long night. I was sleeping, so if you don’t mind, later would be a better time to catch up.”
“And if I mind?” Viv raised an eyebrow.
Gia was stunned by the sheer audacity.
“I’m kidding.” Viv huffed, almost a laugh. “I’ll see you around.” She turned and disappeared into the neighboring condo.
Gia shut the door and locked it. Hopefully, Viv wasn’t part of the Lockwood Coven.
Gia woke around sunset, the evening light filtering in through the living room windows.
She glanced outside and surveyed the street, unable to tell if any of the parked cars contained her father’s men, staking out her building. There were no shiny black SUVs, at least.
Gia might be paranoid, but her escape had been too easy. Her father’s men should have caught up to her.
Once they saw her leaving on the back alley camera, all they’d had to do was ask one of the businesses around the corner for their street footage, and they’d have found the car she’d escaped in.
Yeah, Sam had driven like a possessed woman, but the Balzanos wouldn’t have had to stop in their pursuit. They could have swapped drivers.
Maybe the Balzanos hadn’t figured out where Sam had gone after getting on the highway. Maybe they thought Gia had gone south. Or fled to Canada. She had her passport with her, and her father had probably searched her room by now and realized it was missing.
The big question was: had Franco known where his wife and her lover had been trying to take Gia all those years ago, and was he aware of Jeffrey’s surviving family?
Even if Franco hadn’t known about Susan before, he could figure out Jeffrey had a sister and track Gia down. But then, Franco had no idea Gia had discovered her true parentage. He didn’t know why she’d run. His mind wouldn’t immediately go to Jeffrey Lockwood.
But it wasn’t smart to stay here.
Gia needed to sell the condo and the theater and move somewhere she wanted to live. There was no reason to stay in the place she’d been brought by some random lawyer and his coven.
The beginnings of a plan motivated Gia to step away from the window and do something more productive than watch the street. She had to get moving if she wanted to turn this unexpected inheritance into a real future.
Gia divided her cash between a cereal box—the kitchen was stocked with a few basics—the cupboard housing the water heater, and the gap behind the washing machine. With a stack of twenties in her pocket, she left the condo.
Surprisingly, Gia felt refreshed. Her headache was gone, which was a win right there. Frankly, getting through the cross-country trip without an episode was a miracle, but she wouldn’t question her good luck.
She wandered the neighborhood until she found a corner store and bought a new phone and prepaid SIM. The old one went in the nearest trash can.
Gia didn’t bother to save Ramirez’s number, planning find her own lawyer to handle the sales of her newly acquired assets.
After stopping to eat a burrito at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Gia returned the way she’d come.
She paused outside her building, attention on the dark theater across the street. According to Ramirez, there weren’t any productions on at the moment, and the old movie screenings that usually happened on weekends ceased when Susan passed away.
The Spotlight Theater had a classic look, and the building could easily be as old as the others on the block, but the paint looked relatively fresh.
The marquee was blank, and the posters on either side of the doors were half taken down, leaving ripped remnants advertising the last show, but otherwise the place seemed far from abandoned.
Gia sifted through her keys, trying each one until she unlocked the front door.
Night had fallen, and she fumbled around inside for the lights. Once she could see, she closed and locked the front door behind her before surveying her new business.
The vintage vibe extended into the building’s interior, with worn red carpet beneath her feet and grand embellishments along the walls and ceiling.
Everything seemed well cared for, the building’s old features preserved rather than modernized.
To one side sat a ticket counter and concession stand.
Opposite, loomed a well-lit stairwell, and the center of the far wall housed closed double doors.
Gia pushed one of the doors open.
It was dark, and she could hardly make out the stage beyond the rows of seats. Gia didn’t feel like searching for the lights, so she closed the door and headed up the stairs.
A hall to one side led to balcony seating. In the other direction, she found a line of closed doors, which seemed more promising. Hopefully, Susan had an office around here since there had been nothing related to the theater at the condo.
Gia needed to go over the theater’s expenses and income and figure out its net worth.
She’d studied business in college and wasn’t worried about doing a little analysis.
Sure, she wasn’t very knowledgeable about theaters in particular, but she could learn, and if all else failed, she could scrap the business and sell the property on its own.
With the lights flicked on, Gia worked her way along the hall. She found restrooms and the projection control room. It was too bad the theater hadn’t stayed open after her aunt’s death and kept screening old movies. That way, it could have received some income.
Had all the employees lost their jobs?
Even if the business had been profitable, Gia didn’t know if she could revive it after the closure and get everything going again. At least not before she needed to move on from Shearwater Landing.
The last door in the hallway was locked, and Gia sifted through the keys, trying them one at a time until at last, the lock clicked.
A chill ran down Gia’s spine, but a look over her shoulder reassured her she was alone. Maybe that was the problem. A creepy sensation she hadn’t noticed before seemed to settle over everything.
But Gia had been raised better than to be afraid of the dark.
People were dangerous, not deserted old theaters, and no mention of covens or witches—or anything superstitious—would prevent Gia from taking this opportunity and turning it into freedom from the Balzanos.
Gia opened the door, finding the inside dark. No surprise there. She ran her hand along the wall, flipped the light switch, and walked into the room.
Ice enveloped her, like an arctic wind hitting out of nowhere. Gia gasped, her chest tight.
What the fuck?
She sucked in air, clutching her sweater above her heart, and spun around, her skin prickling.
There, between her and the door, was a ghost.