Ash
I can’t believe this.
I keep telling the doctors I’m all right, but they’ve got me hooked up to an IV anyway.
If I really were a demigod, I’d pull out the needle, grab my clothes, and bug out of here. That’s what superheroes always
do on TV when they end up in the hospital, even if they’ve been hit by a bullet. Especially if they’ve been hit by a bullet.
But I’m not a demigod. I’m not even all that much of a hero. I haven’t been hit by a bullet. I’m only in the ER. No one has
suggested admitting me, like they did Emma and the other girls . . . but only after first arresting them for assault, destruction
of property, trespassing, theft, and a dozen other charges.
I’m guessing those charges will be dropped if the girls are forthcoming enough about Haley.
Which is fine. Haley’s the one the cops seem to really want, anyway.
Jackie’s with the girls now, taking their statements about Haley. Unlike the other girls, Haley isn’t suffering from malnutrition, exposure, and various parasitic infections. That’s because she spent the summer in a generator-powered
luxury tent, with a cookstove, mini fridge, and laptop with Wi-Fi, committing extortion. Troy and his buddies found this tent—along
with other evidence of criminal activity, including one girl who was tied to a tree the entire time—not far from the Seat.
That’s another reason why Haley went directly to jail: she’s being charged with a lot more serious stuff than her followers.
Some of the charges I overheard Jackie mention include racketeering, forced labor, wire fraud, assault, kidnapping, and attempted
murder. Of me.
“You’re lucky,” Jackie told me, “that you got away with just a few bruised ribs. We found an entire manifesto in Haley’s tent
that laid out her plan to kidnap you and extort your grandmother. She’s been planning this for months.”
Great. Good to know.
“And what she intended to do to you if your grandmother didn’t pay your ransom was a lot worse than blowing some weed into
your face. You’re lucky that this area is so prone to earthquakes, because if that one hadn’t interrupted her right when it
did, you’d be dead . . . or at least dismembered.”
In the meantime, the ER doc won’t let me leave.
“Datura stramonium is a serious poison,” she keeps saying. “We’re going to keep you here until we’re sure it’s all out of your system and there’s
no allergic reaction.”
I already told her I’ve been poisoned with this weed and its many various cousins before, and it’s no big deal.
But this isn’t the right thing to say in the West Harbor Hospital ER, since it only results in the doc suggesting that maybe I, like the girls, need a consult with Psych and Social Services, since I seem to enjoy ingesting toxic weeds so much.
It’s only thanks to Frankie that they haven’t taken me straight upstairs for a psych hold.
“He’s joking,” she told the ER doc. “Don’t worry; I can vouch for him. He’s sane . . . ish.”
The ER doc didn’t look very reassured by this. And frankly, neither am I. Francesca has been quiet since our rescue. Too quiet. Quiet enough that I almost wish they would admit me, since at least that way I’d be in a private room with limited visitors and could get to the bottom of whatever
it is that’s bothering her.
But down here in the ER, there’s apparently no limit on the amount of guests who are allowed in—at least when it comes to
the Giovannis. I overheard the doctor trying to tell Frankie’s family they could only come in two at a time, and only at the
top of the hour for five minutes until actual hospital visiting hours begin at seven AM.
But Mrs. Giovanni simply sniffed and said, “We’ll stay as long as we like. That’s my daughter you’ve got in there!”
But she didn’t mean Frankie. She meant Frankie’s little sister, Cat.
“I still don’t understand what you were doing there, Caterina,” her mother keeps saying.
Cat’s in the bed next to mine, also receiving fluids. Unlike the other girls, she’s suffering from rope burns in addition
to malnutrition and exposure.
That’s right. The girl they found tied to a tree is Frankie’s little sister.
“I told you,” Cat says for what has to be the hundredth time. “I was undercover.”
“As what?” Mark demands. He’s here, too, along with his wife Dina, sister Angelina, brother-in-law Troy, and their two daughters, both
of whom are passed out in a nearby visitor’s chair, since it’s three in the morning.
The doctor said I’m supposed to be resting. But that’s a little difficult with the entire Giovanni clan clustered around the
bed next to mine. They’re watching Cat as she attempts to polish off a trayful of leftovers from Sunday Gravy that her mother
brought over, even though both the doctors and Frankie warned her that too much food too fast could hurt her.
This only served to insult Mama Giovanni, however, who sniffed and said, “Too much of my food has never harmed anyone.”
“Don’t even think about it,” the doc said when she saw me eyeing the eggplant parmesan in the container in front of Cat. “You’re
on fluids only until I’m sure that poison is out of you. And you need to sleep. Now.”
That’s when she pulled the curtain, blocking my view of Frankie, her family, and her little sister’s food tray.
I can still smell Mrs. Giovanni’s food though . . . and hear every word the family says.
“I told you, I’m writing a piece for The West Harbor Daily on the influx of witch covens to this area,” Cat is explaining to her brother. “I figured the best way to get the full story
was to join one—”
“So you picked the one that’s a cult?” Dina cries. “Why didn’t you come to me? I could have steered you to a nice, supportive coven that doesn’t extort money
from its members or try to kidnap people.”
“Because that wouldn’t make a good story.
” Cat sounds exasperated. “Besides, I didn’t know it was a cult when I joined.
And by the time I figured it out, I had too much good dirt on it to quit.
Do you have any idea how competitive it is out there for journalists, especially female journalists?
I gotta do whatever I have to in order to get my own byline. ”
“Does The West Harbor Daily even pay their reporters to go undercover?” Angie asks snidely.
“Well, no. If I ever get my notes back from Jackie—she confiscated them all for the case against Haley—I plan to write this
up as a short investigative piece for The Daily but pitch a much longer article to someone willing to pay me a living wage for it. I think Vanity Fair would love a story about a teenage witch death cult. I already have an editor who’s interested, not to mention a producer
at Netflix.”
“Death cult?” Mrs. Giovanni sounds horrified.
“Well, that’s what I’m calling it. I feel like Teenage Witch Death Cult will get more clicks than the Green Witches from Greenwich,
don’t you think?”
Finally I hear Frankie speak: “So this whole time you’ve been telling us you can’t come to Sunday Gravy because you’re working,
you were with those witches?”
“That’s right!” Cat seems remarkably cheerful for someone who spent the evening with her wrists tied around the base of a
tree. “It was going pretty well until Haley found my phone. She put me in charge of cutting everyone’s hair. I told them my
sister cuts hair for a living, so—”
“Having a sister who cuts hair does not qualify you to be a stylist in the state of Connecticut,” Angie snaps. “I was wondering who gave these girls such appalling
cuts, and then to find out that it was my own sister? Do not put me in your article. I do not give you permission to mention me.”
Cat only laughs. “Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure Haley was going to kick me out anyway. She kept asking me to sign my college
fund over to her.”
“You don’t have a college fund,” Frankie says. “You already graduated.”
“I know, but I told her that my name is Trina, and that I’m only twenty. I’m sure if she hadn’t found my phone, she’d have
made up some other excuse to get rid of me since I wasn’t tithing enough. She was ready to drag me up onto that altar until she decided to sacrifice that rando she found instead.”
Frankie sounds as if she’s trying to remain calm.
“That wasn’t some rando,” she says. She, at least, has dropped her voice to a whisper, conscious that I’m supposed to be sleeping
behind the curtain next door. “That was my neighbor, Ash.”
Cat sounds perplexed. “Wait . . . that guy is Ash Merit? I thought you hated him.”
“I never said I hated him.”
“Uh, you’ve only said it every single day since he bought the place next door.”
“Well, I don’t hate him anymore.”
I know I shouldn’t be eavesdropping. But how can I help it? They’re right there next to me.
Still, this is a disappointing response. I know Frankie thinks I’m asleep behind my curtain, but considering what we’ve been
through together, the least she could say is, Well, I like him now. I’m not even asking for I love him.
But I haven’t been able to ignore the fact that I’ve told Frankie several times that I love her, and she hasn’t said it back
to me once.
And true, most of the times I said it, I was under the influence of a highly poisonous plant.
But I still meant it. It’s true we only met—officially—a few days ago. But I feel like I’ve known her for years.
And it’s also true Henry says I’m too quick to tell girls I love them. “‘You have ‘a heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,’” was how he put it, quoting some poet. I think he was specifically thinking of Nicole and those girls in Berlin, because I
really haven’t told that many other women I love them.
But when you know, you know, am I right? And what I feel for Frankie is different from anything I’ve ever felt for any other
woman. It’s something bigger, stronger . . . something I know is never going to go away.
Still, I don’t expect Frankie to feel the same way . . . especially not now that she knows the truth about me.
Though she has to like me a little. Why else would she have gone through so much to try to find me?