Chapter 27 The Running of the Witches
The Running of the Witches
Sam Vetiver was lost.
Metaphorically, not literally. In actuality she was sitting in her Jeep behind the Salem train station, being buffeted by
hundreds of turbocharged Wiccans. Sam had never been to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, but she imagined it was much
like this, except with witches instead of large angry bovine creatures. From the surfeit of estrogen and patchouli alone,
Sam would have known where she was with her eyes closed.
Emotionally, she was as lost as she’d ever been in her life.
She didn’t know what to do. She was in no condition to drive; she didn’t even remember how she’d gotten to her car. One moment
she was in the conference room at the Hawthorne, the next she was here. Huddled in her driver’s seat with the heater cranked
all the way up, unable to get warm. It wasn’t the cold, damp wind whistling off the harbor or the gunmetal sky, Sam knew.
It was shock. She’d been here before.
She couldn’t stop seeing Cyndi—this was another PTSD symptom, her therapist had told her.
Invasive thoughts. So that every time Sam blinked, she saw Cyndi in the tub.
Blink: Cyndi’s big blue eyes staring blindly at the ceiling.
Blink: her hair fanning in the maroon water.
Blink: her T-shirt and jeans molded to her body—who wore clothes when she slit her wrists in the tub?
Cyndi, that’s who. Because she was such a sweetheart she wanted to spare whoever found her the extra shock of her nudity.
Blink: how leached her skin was, her lips gray, an unseasonable fly washing its legs on her dead arm next to the pill bottles on the tub’s edge.
Sam should have known. She remembered the Family Day group leader at Hank’s psychiatric ward saying, What’s the number-one thing you should know? It’s not your fault. Sam had nodded. She was sure this was true, and yet she’d never believed it for a second. Not at all.
She should have stopped Hank. And Amelie. And Cyndi. And her dad. Sam was 0 for 4. She should have known.
And this time maybe Sam was directly responsible as well as clueless, because hadn’t she known Cyndi had a condition? She
had. She’d watched Cyndi count out her meds at the café table—Sorry, Cyndi had said, smiling sweetly, if I don’t take these at the same time every day, they’re not as effective.
Had noticed the semicolon tattooed on Cyndi’s wrist and thought, Oh, honey.
Had seen how Cyndi’s eyes gleamed when she talked
about William: He reached out to help me with my fiction novel! I was so surprised! I mean, somebody like you, I could understand him talking
to. But me, why? And how that light in Cyndi’s face had gone out when Sam described how William had treated her, said Cyndi should be careful,
suggested they confront him together. Sure, Cyndi had said. I’d be happy to help. But she had drooped and gone quiet. What if Cyndi had been depending on the What If fantasy of life with William, even more
than Sam had, and in puncturing it, Sam had tripped her wires?
Sam should have stayed away. Maybe then the next time she’d seen Cyndi would not have been dead in a bathtub, with William
in the next room.
William.
And what was wrong with Sam that all she wanted to do, the only thing in the world, was talk to William?
She had been utterly unprepared for the instant surge of animal relief she’d felt when she opened the suite door and saw him standing there: It’s you! Or for the joy that had flooded his face, probably mirroring her own, swiftly replaced by confusion, then anger, then frustration
as he chased her through the rooms.
Or for the hot, damp solidity of his body as he restrained her when she lunged, howling, toward the bathtub—screaming No, no! No! His ferocious growl in her ear: Don’t, Simone! Stop it. You can’t help her. She’s beyond that now. And don’t touch her. You can’t disturb the scene.
She’d thought he might offer some commiseration, some touch or reassurance, when she sat shuddering on the couch while he
called the front desk. His voice so calm as he said There’s been an incident in Room 620, I need the police, but he’d been pulling down the skin under his eyes as he spoke, turning his face into a grotesque Halloween mask. When he
hung up, he’d been remote as a stranger, standing in the middle of the room with his hands at his sides, muttering a most
familiar refrain: I should have done something. I should have known.
And when the detectives arrived after the manager and EMTs, William had spared Sam only one glance, the kind he might give
a pedestrian on the street, before they escorted him from the suite.
Of course, he’d been under terrible strain. As Sam was. They’d been in the same room with a dead woman. They’d found her together.
Maybe that was why Sam’s need to see William, to talk to him, was like a fever. Even though he’d dumped her and ignored her,
even though he’d taken up with a woman a decade his junior who was emotionally unstable, even though Sam’s subsequent behavior
had turned her into someone she didn’t like, was actively ashamed of, who called him and messaged him and stalked him and
eventually set a honey trap in desperation—after all this, William was the only person in the world who knew exactly how Sam
felt right now. How terrified he might be blamed. How scared that there might have been third-party Rabbit involvement. How
guilty that, if Cyndi’s death was the suicide even the police seemed to believe it was, he might have done something to prevent
it.
Sam’s phone buzzed. Drishti. Sam hadn’t told Drishti beforehand that she was going to the Hawthorne, nor, later, about finding Cyndi in the tub.
Sam had texted only SOS, can I stay with you guys tonight?
, because the thought of being in her own apartment, visited by spectral Cyndi or perhaps the actual Rabbit, was insupportable.
But it was time to tell Drishti what had happened and come clean. Sam flipped her phone.
The text said: Hi Simone. Where are you? Are you all right?