Chapter 27 #3
“What? Don’t be silly. Graham’s not dead. He’s in a coma. He’ll wake when his body has healed enough. The doctor said sometimes—”
“No, Katie. Not Graham.” I stared down at my hands and picked at the corner of my thumbnail. “Hunter. He’s dead.”
“What? What do you mean? Where is he?” Katie’s voice dropped.
“I don’t know. Graham took him someplace.” My voice cracked. “He told me he didn’t want me to know where he was in case questions were raised.”
Katie stared straight ahead. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, just that she certainly wasn’t expecting that.
“It was self-defense, right? He was hurting you, you feared for your life… right?”
I swallowed. Yeah sure, Hunter would have continued hitting me, and who knows maybe the spell did amplify his rage explaining the kidnapping. But at that moment, it was murder.
“No. Graham had already beat the shit out of him. I wasn’t supposed to, but I followed him into the woods.
I couldn’t help it. Something inside of me took over.
Rage. Sadness. Frustration. I don’t know what it was.
Graham had propped him against a stump, and when I saw him there…
I just got so… mad. Not just for what he did to me, but what he did to all those girls that looked like me…
and the ones before. Did the world really need another man like Hunter Devereaux? ”
“Maggie… that’s not—”
“I know, that’s not for me to decide. But we couldn’t find a cure for the curse, so I had to take care of it.
Every second I stood idly by was another girl washed up on the pier or found just off the bike trail.
How many more mothers had to mourn their child before we said enough?
I couldn’t live with it any longer, Kates.
I know I didn’t cause him to murder them, but once I found out, I couldn’t let it go on.
So, I took my gun and followed Graham. I planned it the minute I saw him chuck Hunter in the bed of the truck.
I didn’t know what he was doing—if he was planning to rough him up a bit more, or if he was going to kill him himself.
But I didn’t want that on him. If anyone found out… he’d be done for.”
Katie’s hands were tight on the wheel as she gazed forward without a word.
“If you need to turn me in… I understand. But please, Katie…” I touched her shoulder and she finally blinked. “Wait until I find the body so I can keep Graham’s name clean.”
Then like she was hit by an epiphany, she turned to me, her eyes glassy from holding back tears. “As far as I’m concerned… he was never here.”
I finally breathed and sunk back in my seat.
Katie started the Gremlin and we drove to the manor in silence.
This was hard for her. She had a different moral standard. So did I. But Katie? Her higher standard went so far as to perform some ritual to send their soul to be tortured for eternities. Sounded good to me, except for one thing… I was now a murderer.
Back home Katie parked us in front of the garage. She didn’t get out. Just waited, just like Graham did when I told him about the curse. Her hands were still gripped around the steering wheel, jaw set, face… emotionless.
Shit.
I couldn’t lose her.
I wouldn’t blame her if she chose to end our friendship—I wouldn’t stay friends with me either.
“Is Hunter’s car in there?” She pointed to the garage.
“Yeah.”
“I have a plan. There’s a place just outside of town it’s kind of hard to get to, it’s back where the coast meets the forest’s edge. It was known for suicides back in the fifties. We’re taking it there.” She sat back in the seat and let out a breath.
“You think that will work?”
“Trust me,” she said, finally looking at me.
“Hunter could have known about it. There’s a bike trail that pokes into the edge of the woods there.
The cops are going to think he got scared since they were onto him, and instead of living out his existence in prison, he ended it.
Lots of killers go that way. Something about not being able to give up that control, so they take themselves out before the authorities can. ”
“You’re really going to risk losing everything for me?” I asked as we walked up the path to the front porch of the manor.
“What do you mean, Mags? We’re besties. That’s what we do.”
Katie and I had hit a new level that night. We weren’t just besties. We were closer than that. Bound by the promises we’d made... the secrets we’d keep… the bodies we were about to hide.
“Do you have something with Hunter’s writing on it?” she asked.
“Um… What about this?” I opened the front door and ran to the study, where I grabbed the small red book of poems he gave me for my birthday.
I handed it to Katie, who opened it and read the inscription:
“A chuisle mo chróí, sweet is the day with you by my side.
Long is the hour my heart in your hands will reside.
Happy Birthday, pretty thing.
Love you forever, Hunter.”
“Oh, puke.” Katie set the book on the dining room table and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen from the secretary desk near the buffet. “Maggie, hold your right hand over the paper and the pen and the left over the book, but don’t touch them.”
I did as she directed. She stood beside me, placing her hands over mine.
“Repeat after me,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Loose flowing ink, like soft butter carved. Write Hunter’s suicide note, from the decency he starved.”
I cocked a brow. “What? Katie, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Okay. How about this? ‘At this hour, time was lost. Write Hunter’s death note, who cares what it cost?’”
“Better than nothing, I guess.”
I didn’t like the wording but repeated it anyway, hoping the intent meant more than the literal meaning.