Frankie #2
the natural world. They seek to rejuvenate the planet’s health by taking care not to use fossil fuels, and to avoid consumerism
and waste. That’s why—”
HecateHaley leans forward and playfully plucks the phone from the filmmaker’s fingers—Emma’s fingers, we see when the girl
turns the camera around to show a surprised-looking Emma sitting on the ground outside the tent amongst a now larger circle
of girls—ten or twelve of them.
“Hey!” Emma cries, laughing. “Give it back.”
“I will,” HecateHaley says. “But only so you can sacrifice it when you’re ready. You’re all going to need to sacrifice every
vestige of your past lives if you truly want to be victorious in this fight.”
Emma’s expression puckers over this. She seems to be giving the matter some serious thought. The girl beside her—Meg Boucher again—is the one who objects.
“But I need my phone,” Meg insists.
“You don’t need it,” HecateHaley says. “You only want it. It’s a material thing that gives you pleasure.”
“Well, it also serves a valuable function.” Meg is looking at the other girls for support, but they seem too cowed by Haley
to speak up—including, at that moment at least, Emma. “How else am I going to call my family?”
HecateHaley shakes her head. “You don’t need to call your family. We’re your family now.”
We’re your family now. Emma and Meg, along with the other girls, exchange pleased, excited looks. The cherubic-looking HecateHaley is an astute
leader, one who knows not only how to perform to her audience but how to control its members as well.
Ash abruptly shuts the lid of his laptop, then rises from his chair.
“That’s it,” he says as he walks back to the coffeemaker. “That’s Emma’s last post. A few days later, she lied to her mother
about going to a slumber party at a different, non-witchy friend’s house, one who claims not to know anything about a sleepover,
and no one has seen or heard from her since.”
I watch as he fills a white coffee mug from the spigot on the machine. “Until today, you mean.”
“Right.” He walks back over to the table to hand the coffee mug to me. No offer of milk or sugar. He’s too distracted. “Meg’s
is the first proof I’ve had so far that Emma is even still alive . . . well, this, and the footprints outside that window.”
“Those footprints were Emma’s?” I ask in surprise.
“Some of them. Emma’s mother says she was wearing Silver Stars when she disappeared.”
“So in other words,” I say slowly, “your superpower worked. Emma found you, but you weren’t home.”
“It’s starting to seem like it.”
He’s gone to stand in front of the wall of sliding glass doors that look out across his back deck. He doesn’t open any of
them. He just stands there, looking unseeingly out across the water . . . probably berating himself internally for having
missed his opportunity to rescue Emma. At least, that’s what I’d assume someone with the delusion that they have the power
to find missing things would be doing in his situation.
“But you did find Meg,” I point out. I don’t know why I’m playing along with his fantasy . . . maybe for the same reason Mark
played along with Mrs. Baumgarten’s conviction that her rental was haunted: I’m embracing his reality. “Maybe, once Meg reunites
with her family and gets the medical care she needs, she’ll feel safe enough to tell you where she last saw Emma.”
“I don’t think so.” He finally turns his head to look at me. “She’s too scared of Haley.”
“Haley?” I rise from my chair but don’t approach him, even though a big part of me wants to. To keep myself from doing anything
stupid—such as running my hand soothingly along those broad shoulders—I take my coffee mug and head to the enormous stainless
steel refrigerator. “What do you mean she’s too scared of Haley?”
“You saw the videos. All of those girls seemed cowed by her.”
“Oh, right. Any idea who she really is?”
“Yeah. Haley Leeanne Nesbitt, twenty-four-year-old graduate of the University of Texas,” he says.
“Computer science major. Had an internship with a hundred-billion-dollar biomedical foundation for a while, but according to her supervisor—who would only speak to me under condition of anonymity due to being so afraid of retaliation from Haley and her followers—she was let go for—”
“Her followers?” Ash doesn’t even seem to notice that I’ve opened his fridge and am doctoring the coffee he served me with
some milk from the brand-new carton I find inside it. It’s the only food item in the house that I can see, unless you count
the cauliflower pizza crust in the freezer, and some packets of sugar I find in a nearby drawer, along with dozens of soy
sauce packets from West Harbor’s best Chinese food restaurant, House of Hong . . .
As well as the binder of local information I made and forced Harbor Hideaways to put in Ash’s house so his renters would quit
bothering me with questions.
“Yeah,” Ash is going on, oblivious to the kitchen search I’m conducting. “The supervisor said she let Haley go for hacking
the foundation’s confidential donor base . . . and for refusing to stop proselytizing about her belief that the world’s current
climate challenges are all the fault of a single individual.”
I don’t reply right away. I’m too stunned by the sight of that binder. It looks as fresh and clean as the day I dropped it
off, probably because no one has ever opened it. It was stuffed in this drawer and forgotten.
Telling myself to think about the implications of this later, I extract the sugar packet I need and close the drawer. I’m
proud of myself when I’m able to ask in a completely nonjudgmental tone, while tapping sugar into my drink: “And who does
Haley blame for the world’s current climate challenges?”
“Mother Nature.”
I made the mistake of lifting the mug to my lips just as he started speaking. Now I choke on the mouthful of coffee I’ve taken.
“Haley blames climate change on Mother Nature?”
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I can’t help it. It takes a lot to surprise me. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it all.
But this is a new one.
Ash doesn’t laugh. He looks dead serious as he says, “Haley blames Gaia, the ancient Greek primordial deity and ancestral
mother of all life on earth, for everything that’s wrong with the world. War, famine, drought, hurricanes, floods . . . all
Gaia’s fault.”
“But what about us?” I ask, still laughing a little. “Don’t we humans get any of the blame? I’m pretty sure Mother Nature
hasn’t started any wars. That responsibility falls solely on us.”
“Oh, Haley’s got plenty of blame for humanity, too. She’s a big believer in punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with her beliefs.”
“Punish? Punish how?”
He gives me a piercing look . . . surprisingly piercing, given that his eyes are such a warm dark brown. “Death.”
“Death like murder?”
He nods. “That’s what Meg meant earlier when she said she doesn’t want her family to die. Haley threatens the loved ones of
any of her followers who she feels are going astray or not contributing as fully to the cause as she thinks they should be.”
“Contributing in what way?”
“Financially. Interestingly, for all her ranting against consumerism, Haley’s got almost a half million dollars in her own
name in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. How does an unemployed, recent college graduate get that much money?”
“My sister says all of these missing girls are witch influencers.”
“That’s true. But do you know how much money Emma Bridle has in her bank accounts? Zero. Her parents say it appears to all have been transferred to Haley’s account in the Caymans.”
“That doesn’t sound like a coven,” I say, beginning to see why he isn’t laughing. “It sounds more like a cult.”
And I should know, given how many covens have shown up in West Harbor lately. At first I was puzzled by the sight of all these
women, standing in the dark in the front yards of their vacation rentals, holding candles, gazing up at the moon, and chanting
softly. But later I realized that they were simply having a good time while enjoying a spiritual journey in the company of
friends.
“A coven is a group of like-minded individuals who share a common interest,” I explain. “It’s generally leaderless, only requiring
its members to be nurturing and supportive of one another. Both covens and cults attract the same kind of people, usually
highly intelligent and idealistic, desirous of spiritual meaning in their lives. But a cult uses fear tactics to control,
isolate, and exploit them. It’s generally led by a godlike leader who . . .” I stare at him as an unwelcome thought occurs
to me. “How does Haley suggest they deal with Mother Nature?”
“According to a video she posted a few months ago, the only way to stop Gaia is to summon Hecate.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Who?”
“Hecate is Gaia’s granddaughter—or great-granddaughter, depending on which myth you believe. She’s a titan with powers over
the earth, sea, and sky,” he replies. “Not to mention magic and the Underworld.”
“And Hecate is supposed to use those powers to do . . . what?”
“Well, according to Haley, she’s going to destroy Gaia and take control over the planet herself.”
I can’t help it. I start laughing all over again. “Okay. Well, I don’t think we have to worry too much about that happening.”
He doesn’t smile in response. “You don’t understand. Haley is tagging herself as Hecate.”
“I saw that. What does it mean?”
“Well, I’m not a therapist like you, so I don’t know for sure. But I think it means that Haley believes she’s the living personification
of Hecate, goddess of the Occult,” he says. “And that that gives her the ability—and the right—to kill whoever gets in the
way of her goals.”