Chapter 21 Basements
Basements
I opened my eyes in bed and stared at the patterns of sunlight shifting on the ceiling. Light and shadow.
I glanced over at Nick. He was a good man. He abhorred the oppression of women as much as I did, but I didn’t think he’d really understand, not the way that women did.
And I didn’t expect him to understand this shadowy world I was drowning in. Was I losing my grip on reality again? Was the Rusalka just a projection of my own rage at my father? I couldn’t say. I could say only that she felt real, as real as my father’s demons had.
When I’d finally climbed out of bed to start the day, I received an email from the Sumners’ alarm company.
Drema had granted me access to the alarm company’s records and app.
I downloaded the app to watch the video from the night Mason was hurt.
It contained mostly ordinary stuff—Leah arriving, and Jeff and Drema leaving for their date, captured by the front-door cameras.
But the front-door camera fizzled out around sunset.
I stared at the footage, over and over. Something black washed over the lens. It looked to me like spray paint—black spray paint, like the kind used to create the ouroboros symbols that kept appearing.
I listened to the audio, hearing whispered female voices.
The speech was too indistinct for me to understand what they said, but it sounded as if they approached and then receded into the distance.
The alarm company’s log showed that the front door opened three times after the Sumners left.
Once was moments after the video was killed; the second time was a half hour later; and the third was fifteen minutes after that, when, I calculated, I’d found Leah in the field.
Witches. I thought of the cape I’d found. I’d been expecting Jeff or one of his cronies to be at fault here, and disappointment flashed through me.
Leah was involved with this.
The log showed a fault in zone 16, the back door, around the time Mason must have left. Interesting.
I changed the view to the back cameras, and a chill settled over me. I saw the back door open, but I didn’t see anyone open it. Maybe it was because of the angle, but it looked creepy as hell.
Mason walked out onto the back deck. He was holding his left arm up, the way a child does when their hand is being held by an adult. But there was no adult there.
I watched as Mason moved off the deck and out of the camera frame, still holding his arm up. It looked a helluva lot like the kid was being led by someone unseen.
I also checked the cameras for the night that Viv disappeared. I wanted to see if the Kings of Warsaw Creek were in the living room, watching the game.
But I got nothing.
I went through Leah’s phone records. Thanks to a warrant issued by Judge Chamberlain, the private messaging app she was using had coughed up the user profiles and associated phone numbers she’d been texting.
It took only a little time to match them up to the other girls in her homeschool pod—seven of them.
The numbers matched the girls’ numbers saved in Leah’s contacts.
But there was one number that wasn’t in her contacts.
It belonged to Viv Carson.
I exhaled, only beginning to understand the rebellion that had begun to foment beneath the nose of the church.
I got a call from Kara from CPS and picked up right away.
“Leah wants to go back to her house to get some of her clothes,” she said, “but she says she’s afraid to go. Would you mind accompanying us?”
“Of course I can help.”
“Great. I’ll meet you at the church.”
I exhaled. This was my chance to poke around Sims’s haunts without a warrant.
—
The church parking lot was empty except for Kara’s station wagon. I parked next to it and approached Leah.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly. “How are you holding up?”
Leah met my gaze and nodded. “I’m good.”
I glanced at Kara, behind her. She nodded.
“I’m happy to help you, however you need,” I said.
The parsonage was still, locked up, with no porch lights on. Maybe Sims had never intended to return the night he died.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked Leah.
She lifted a shoulder. “We didn’t move in here until after Mom died. I hate it.” Leah opened the red front door with her keys, leading us inside.
I stared at the cross made of railroad spikes above the door.
“Leah,” I said, “do you know what that is?”
She gave it a passing glance. “Dad collected crosses. Even ugly ones.”
Leah and Kara went down the hallway to Leah’s room. I turned left, into the master bedroom.
This room didn’t belong with the rest of the house, which was almost sterile. The closet had been ransacked, and I saw tracks in the carpet from the wheels of a piece of luggage. I peered into open drawers, seeing men’s clothes.
I went to Leah’s room. Leah was putting clothes and notebooks on her bed, and Kara carefully placed them in garbage bags. It seemed so harsh to move a child out with garbage bags, but this was the way of things.
I glanced around Leah’s room. A Bible sat on the nightstand, which Leah didn’t bother to pack up. She grabbed notebooks out of her closet, and framed photos of a woman with Leah, who I presumed to be her mother.
“You look like your mom,” I said softly.
Leah stared down at the picture in her hands. “I miss her.”
Kara put her arm around Leah. “It’s gonna be okay, kiddo.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She nodded to herself.
My gaze fell on one of Leah’s notebooks. It had fallen open, showing some of her art. There were very good pen-and-ink drawings of a cat, a lion, and a woman with angel wings. “You’re a very good artist.”
“Thanks. Dad thought my art was a waste of time.”
I flipped the page and saw a picture of a snake eating its own tail. I kept my voice light. “What’s this?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Nothing.” She closed the notebook and stuffed it into a bag.
“Leah, I have to tell you that I think this symbol is important to the case I’m working. I need you to be honest with me.”
Leah looked at me, her chin lifted a notch. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something. It’s something I keep seeing, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Leah crossed her arms over her chest. “Why should I tell you anything?”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “I know the adults in your life have failed you in a really major way. Trust isn’t something that’s given freely. I get that. But there are people dying here. This is serious.”
Leah looked away. “I saw it at the gas station. I traced it.”
“I think you and your friends have been in contact with Viv Carson. Viv has gone missing.”
Leah blinked. “She’s missing?”
“Yeah. We’re trying to find her. We suspect foul play. If there’s anything you can tell us, it might save her life.”
Leah’s shoulders sagged. “She’s like my mom in a lot of ways, you know? But stronger. My mom never really fought back, but Viv does.”
“Viv is the leader of your coven.” Saying it aloud felt like cracking a geode open, exposing to light something that hadn’t been seen in many years.
She nodded. “Viv showed us that we’re not just here to serve. We’re here to be powerful. To be free.”
“Leah, did the coven kill those people?”
She looked away.
“I can’t help you unless I know what happened.”
Leah’s lip trembled. “I…I had an abortion six months ago. Viv took me.”
The bill at Viv’s house wasn’t for Viv’s procedure. I sat beside Leah and took her hand. “That’s not what I—that’s not killing.”
She rubbed tears away from her eyes. “My dad would say it is—if he knew. But he…” Her shoulders shook. “It was his.”
Rage flashed through me. That piece of complete and utter shit. If he weren’t already dead, I’d want to kill him.
“I’m so, so sorry that no one protected you.” I felt wrathful and helpless.
She blinked away her tears. “But someone did. Viv did.”
Kara enfolded Leah in a hug. I sat beside her on the bed.
“He hurt a lot of girls. Not just me.”
“You’re safe now,” Kara murmured.
My blood boiled, and I struggled to keep my voice soft. “Leah, I know the other girls were with you at the Sumner house when Mason almost drowned.”
She stared at me. “You know?”
“I know about the coven. And I need to know what you know, to try to find Viv.”
“I haven’t heard from Viv. I hope nobody hurt her.” She clasped her hands before her in something like prayer.
“I hope so, too, but Viv’s enemies think she had something to do with what happened to Mason, Ross, your dad, and some of Ross’s relatives. So I need you to tell me.”
Leah stared down at her shoes. “The girls came over when I was watching Mason. It was a chance for us to get together without any adults. That’s what we do—we say we’re doing homework at someone else’s house, and we gather whoever’s free.
Our parents think we’re out of trouble when we’re with our study pod.
Since we’re not in school, we’ve got a lot of free time, so it sort of works for us. ”
“Was Viv with you?”
“No. She had to work. Four other girls from the coven were, though. Viv told us what Jeff and the other guys did to her sister, and we thought it would help if we did a revenge spell at the house.”
“What did you do?”
“The girls came over around seven thirty. We went outside to burn some candles and ask for justice for Dana. One girl brought a skull she found in the woods.”
“I found a black cape in the yard. Did that belong to one of the girls?”
“No. We don’t dress up like trick-or-treaters. That’s stupid.” She scrunched her face up.
“So, you went outside, burned some candles…Then what?”
“We asked for justice for Dana. And justice for the rest of us.” Her eyes shone dark. “We asked for freedom.”
I exhaled. I wondered if that spell, fueled by the girls’ rage, was enough to awaken Dana, to pull the Rusalka up from the depths. “And then…?”
“They put the skull in the mailbox and they left. Mason woke up wanting a snack.” She shrugged. “He was playing with his action figures, and everything else happened as I told you.”
“You didn’t hurt Mason?”