Chapter 2 #3
Avery and I look across the coffee table at one another, both of us mentally scrambling for ideas.
“A church women’s group?” I propose.
“Okay, yeah.” She nibbles a green fingernail, thinking. “But what reason can we come up with to go to one of those?”
Good question. Any church we visit would want us joining a young adult group, and it’s middle-aged or older women we need to talk to. “Never mind, scratch that. How about some sort of craft circle?”
She laughs. “Too bad I don’t know how to quilt!
I giggle. “And that would be a hard thing to fake. Same thing with knitting.”
The others in the room watch us in stunned silence.
“I can crochet,” she offers. “Can you?”
“No, but that’s an option. I could go to a group as someone who wants to learn.”
“Bingo!” Aaron blurts.
Startled, Avery turns to him. “You think crochet would work?”
“No. Bingo, the game.” He scans all our faces. “It’s real big where I come from. You pass the bingo hall on a Friday night, and I’m telling you, that joint is jammin’. My grandma goes every week.”
Avery and I both go slack-jawed. “That’s brilliant!” I breathe.
She laughs. “We could all go play, even the guys.”
Leo grimaces. “Us guys?”
“Sure. Why not?”
He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know how to play bingo.”
“Toddlers play bingo.”
Aaron gets up to grab a handful of Doritos, smirking at Avery. “You’ve never been in a bingo hall in your life, have you?”
“No, so?”
“So, it’s some pretty intense shit. They don’t play the Disney Princess version.”
I hop up to snatch my phone from my coat pocket and google Alderford bingo on my way back to the couch.
Aaron scrunches up against Leo to make room for me on his opposite side, and together we scroll through the options, few though they are.
We either go Friday to Our Lady of the Assumption, Wednesday to the Alderford Fire Hall, or wait until summer to play “Bingo in the Park” with the mosquitos for a frilly, over-priced basket.
“Fire hall,” Aaron says with a firm nod. “Definitely the fire hall. That’s where we’ll find the regulars.”
Avery grabs her laptop, and we all gather around while Aaron hunts down some bingo tutorials on YouTube. He finds a whole series filmed at a VFW in Indiana, claiming it’s most like what we’ll encounter at the fire hall.
Rime sits on the floor at my knees, his back against the sofa, while Topaz, looking put out as always, rolls the desk chair close enough to see the screen but not so close as to appear interested. Avery leans over the back of the sofa between Aaron and Leo.
About halfway through video number two, Rime admits, “This is brutal.”
“Told you,” Aaron laughs.
“They’re a lot of older women there, though,” Avery points out.
Rime says, “They’re terrifying.”
Aaron wasn’t kidding. This isn’t anything like the Dora the Explorer bingo I had as a kid.
The principle is the same: call the numbers, mark them on our card, shout out Bingo!
But the pace is faster and the stakes are high.
Like hundreds of dollars high. They’re not playing for a glow stick and a pack of pretzels.
After one more video, we have a good enough idea of what we’re in for to commit to going on Wednesday night.
“Okay,” I say. “So how are we gonna get people to talk? We can’t just sit down and be like, ‘Hi. How’s it going? You know anything about a haunted hill?’” That may work on Supernatural, but not in real life.
“Get to know people,” Avery says. “Use some charm.”
At that last word, every head in the room turns to Rime. Young and fit, big blue eyes, just the right amount of insouciance. He’s the type of guy who can get an older woman giggling like a teenager and eating right out of his hand.
He smiles crookedly at our pointed looks. “I’ll try my best.”
We spend the next half hour drinking the rest of the tea, finishing the snacks, and planning our strategy.
“The key is to divide and conquer,” Avery says. “If we spread ourselves out around the hall, we’ll end up meeting more people than if we just sit together in one big group.”
She takes charge, splitting us into pairs—Aaron and Leo, herself and Topaz, and me and Rime—making sure there’s a human buffer in each duo to counteract any faerie awkwardness.
Then, to allow for Topaz and Rime’s ignorance of American mores, she assigns us roles.
She and Topaz will pretend to be locals, with the latter being too angry at her ex for kicking her out of his apartment to want to make much conversation.
Aaron and Leo will pretty much be themselves: two college boys, Aaron the seasoned bingo player, and Leo his buddy coming along for the first time.
And then there’s Rime and me. I’m the na?ve city girl and he’s my Irish grad student boyfriend.
When we get carried away inventing backstories, Leo calls us down. “Keep it simple, everybody.”
He’s right, we’ll have enough to focus on without having to remember our elaborate histories, but still, why does he have to be such a party pooper?
I stand up, and after a good stretch, join in the clean-up effort, sweeping the crumbs off the coffee table into the empty chip bag. On my way to the kitchen, I also grab a handful of dirty cups.
Voices reach me as I approach the entryway, stopping me in my tracks.
“It should be me, not you.”
“I don’t think she wants to go with you.”
I survey the living room. How did I not notice Leo and Rime were no longer there?
Leo insists, “You need to be able to help her if she senses something. You saw what happened when she got overwhelmed, and with that logging accident, it was even worse.”
“I can handle it.”
“Can you?” Leo’s voice is laced with anger. “You forced her to look at you unglamoured.”
“No,” Rime counters, “I forced you to tell her the truth.”
Ears burning, I relive that moment in Leo’s living room. Rime’s red eyes peering at me as Leo pinned him to the wall, the two of them too busy fighting to care about the humiliated little human whose world they were destroying.
“You can’t heal her,” Leo bites out.
Rime snorts. “What do you think is going to happen down there? She’s not going to need healing.”
Down there? They must be talking about going to the river. Considering how pissy Leo’s been since Rime agreed to play the part of my boyfriend, I assumed they were arguing about bingo.
“No, but she might need calming,” Leo argues. “And you’re not the one who can do that.”
Rime is unfazed. “I don’t need magic to keep her calm.”
Excuse me, what? Calming magic? Is that part of Leo’s healing ability, that he can calm his patient? Has he ‘calmed’ me before?
Without my consent?
Crack. One of the plastic cups splits in my fist.
“Those two arguing again?” Aaron stands beside me, the rest of the dirty cups pinched in his fingers. “What’s up with them?”
Hoping my face isn’t as red as it feels, I shrug and take the cups from him, hiding the split one in the stack. Whatever its source, Leo and Rime’s deep-seated animosity isn’t about me, even if it seems like I’m at the center of it right now.
When I enter the kitchen, Rime smiles, but Leo frowns. And just like that morning, I feel an urge to soothe him, to protect and shield him from this threatening stranger. Like he’s still the Leo I thought I knew.
I gulp and push my way to the trash can. He’s not that Leo. He never was. The snuggles in the library, the gifts, the promises—they were all lies to draw me in and earn my trust. A way to mold me into a tool he can use, one he’s convinced he’s better equipped to manage than Rime.
I hold my breath to contain my aggravated scream. Why can’t I let go of this resentment? I need to stop licking my wounds and wallowing in all the feelings I caught. I mean, who even knows if those feelings are real? If Leo can calm me, what else can he do?
He rakes a hand through his hair and glares at his toes. The energy of his frustration is like a wallop to the chest, tempered only slightly by Rime’s self-satisfaction.
Rime turns his attention to me. “When do you want to go down to the river, little psychic?”
“My last class is over at three tomorrow, so how about three-thirty?”
“Okay. I’ll come get you at your dorm.”
“No,” I gasp. “No. Not a good idea.” Bringing Rime into a building full of college girls? No one has time for that kind of chaos.
“Why not? I’ll be glamoured.” There’s a hint of a grin playing on his lips.
“You know why not. I’ll meet you at the tennis courts.”
His brow furrows. “Tennis?”
“The sport? The one with the net you—”
Leo grumbles, “I’ll show him some pictures.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.” With a wave, I slip from the kitchen, leaving Rime to gloat and Leo to glower at the floor.