Chapter 31 Lovely Little Threats
Jessica had her head up, thanked the officer who handed her her purse, and signed something.
Bess and Ursula watched through the glass partition as Chief Landry ran them through what happened and how they responded to the ludicrous acts of unmarked security physically removing their friend from a town hall.
"It was dystopian," Bess raged, her teen angst put to good use.
Landry nodded, his steadiness and calm disposition not shaken as he agreed with her.
"They should be arrested."Another nod.
"Can I do a citizen's arrest?" Bess asked, throwing her arms out as she lost patience.
Ursula was letting her go off because she hadn't stopped from the five-minute walk from the library to the station. And it was kind of fun watching an intensely stoic man get the brunt of her passion.
"We've got it handled," was his reply. Then he offered, "But you're more than welcome to stay and throw them that stare. Would work better than most of our interrogators."
The teen seemed to preen under the praise and smiled the slightest.
"While I am sure that would be fun, we do have things to get to," Ursula answered for her. "Listen, you should know that Astra said something to Tilly."
Chief Landry stared at her.
"About, you know," she gestured to her mouth as she showed her teeth.
He raised his eyebrows in question and Bess explained.
"She asked if you bit her yet. And then she told us," Bess paused and Ursula almost jumped in to stop her but she beat her to it. "That vampires bite witches because it's the only way to sire a human and keep your bloodline going." She rushed the words like they were hot in her mouth.
Ursula looked around nervously as he and Bess stared at each other. No one else was in the station's waiting area as they talked vampire teeth and magic.
"Do you have a question?" he asked the teenager easily, without concern.
Her folded arms over her chest and raised eyebrow communicated that he should have concern.
"Do you have a response?"
"I don't think talking about biting your aunt is something I'm comfortable talking about with a young woman."
Ursula's mouth turned down at the corners trying to hold back a smile as they went back and forth.
"I want to know if you're using her. Because that would be a pretty lame dick move."
He almost smiled at her fire. "I assure you, and I promise on my honor, that I am not usin' your aunt. I happen to be quite taken by the little mynx. I've been chasin' her since I met her."
"And not because you want her magic blood," Bess clarified.
He nodded. "Not because of her magic blood." He didn't expand on that and Bess gave him an unsure look that he returned with a stone face.
"I'm rooting for you, man. You saved my life, and Lady Macbeth's," she added.
"You fight for the good guys, and you don't talk a lot.
Which is surprisingly difficult to find in people.
So don't mess this up."Ursula groaned. She'd found herself giving up more battles with Bess lately.
The girl was almost a woman and she had a lot of learning to do, but this is how she would do it.
And Ursula found herself fighting smiles at the young woman's obstinacy, her charging through life.
She had these glimmers of time, small and fleeting, but they flashed brightly with the warmth of how much she loved Bess and when she got them she learned to just stop everything and enjoy them.
And she was having one now watching her standoff with one of the tallest men Ursula had ever met, with a concrete disposition to boot. She had to admire Bess's spunk.
He chuckled. "Listen. If there is any stirrin' up to be done, Astra will be the first with a spoon."
"Old girlfriend of yours?"
Ursula's eyes widened as she fought that smile.
The chief's smile twitched. "No ma'am. She's not my type."
"What is your type?"
"Tilly."
"And what are your intentions?"
His silence was not a good sign, and Bess widened her eyes in a gotcha look.
"Unbelievable. Even men who have lived for thousands of years haven't learned how to actually woo a woman."
Ursula stifled a laugh in her bent elbow, hiding it as a cough.
Then the chief responded.
"I want to learn about her so that I can be intentional about how I fall in love with her so that she feels seen.
And to settle with her here, because for too long I've not felt settled but when I'm with her my mind relaxes.
I like seeing the world through her. She's odd and kind and too unsure of herself so I want to give her a world where she can feel sure of herself.
She's beautiful but in that way that makes you want to sit with her beauty and experience it through more than sight.
And I'm not thousands of years old. That's rude. "
Both women stared at the police chief. A few clicks of the clock were the only sound until Ursula said, "Well, I think that was the right answer."
Bess nodded, agreeing. "Yeah, that was one hell of an answer. I think I'm being ruined by cursed and paranormal men," Bess grumbled.
"Good," was Ursula's reply. "I want your standards to require exertion on his part."
Bess thought of a certain guy who went out of his way to walk her to her summer classes, found her at work, or sitting on the porch at The Lost Souls just for a moment of her time. He gave her a cat.
But all of it was tainted because none of it was real.
"Yeah, but," she shrugged, "that's not really how regular guys are."
The chief looked at her, tilted his head at the young woman's struggle. He could see it sitting on her shoulders and the way that her eyes were harder than most her age.
Ursula finally drew their conversation to a close. "Alright, we need to get Jessica and head out. We have a town trying to run us out and a return villain."
"And The Sanderson sisters," Bess added.
Ursula made a face at that truth then smiled when Jessica made it out of where she was signing for her freedom. She didn't look worn. She looked ready for battle.
"All set?"
"Yes. Let's go. Chief," she said, nodding her head to him.
He nodded once back and handed her a folder telling her it would help her case before he watched the three women leave the station.
Bess popped back through the doorway, her upper half anyway, and made the sign with her fingers that she was watching him.
He smiled once the door closed behind them. But his smile slipped as he walked to his office thinking about Astra's meddling. The woman was a nuisance, that he knew, but could she have damaged what he had slowly built with Tilly?
The trees were a painting of gold, pumpkin orange, and red. The air had taken on the smell of crisp autumn, leaving everyone in Salem confused as they paused to sniff the air and place the out-of-place scent that had never visited this time of year before.
The women sat in the unseasonable autumn garden, surrounded by the sounds of birds singing their confusion, making last-minute plans to find warmer weather.
Bess sat next to Crystal, who ran her hand gently over the teen's back. Finally, the wood lit and the flames danced in the middle of the women as they sat silently, somberly.
What was there to say?
The feeling of being defeated and hopelessness was filling their pockets with a weight they all kept checking on with delicate hands.
Hopelessness was a living creature.
Perhaps one of the darkest.
There's a seduction there - because it feels like the bottom of something that had been deep, unexplored, fathomless. But you reach the bottom and the mystery is gone. So maybe you can settle here for a moment.
Or a lifetime.
Hope, on the other hand, is full of such colorful ambiguity that fear shoves itself in all of hope's crevices. This could turn out good, or it could all fall apart.
Tilly and Eloise drove from the women's prison back to Salem with a different aura than the women back home.
There was a flame lit.
It was hope.
It was about them, about what they believed in, what they cared about, who they cared about. Their hope was power.
Two ways to fight conflict: "When you go low, I will go lower," or "when you go low, I will rise above," and what if they could combine the two?
If you go low, I will push you lower by rising above.
I will drag you to hell with the power of good.
"What's going on here?" Eloise asked as she and Tilly joined the bonfire crew. The silence was thick. The feeling of despair was loud. Eloise could smell wilting roses and bad truck-stop coffee. Tilly heard that familiar voice saying, "Did you miss me? I learned a few things while I was gone."
The pit in her stomach was gaping, and her mind suddenly was busy. She told her mind to be quiet.
"They called for a vote to pull Cora," Jen said, her eyes not moving from the trance of the moving flames. She had a glass of something clear in her hand. She took a sip from it. "And the people spoke. She's out."
"Ohmygod," Tilly's disbelief was loud. She shook her head against the voices competing inside of her.
"Is Rob," Eloise looked uncertainly to Ursula, "Is he the mayor now? And how? People saw who he was."
"Not yet. But, only a matter of time." Carol replied. She, too, had a glass in her hand. This one with whiskey. "Propaganda is a powerful drug," she said like a true journalist.
"I'll give him props. The man knows how to convince the mediocre mind that their problems lay in the hands of a bunch of women rather than the truth." Jen smiled humorlessly.
"How is Cora?" Ursula asked then winced. "Dumb question."
Jen shook her head. Her hair was in long intricate braids hanging to just below her chest, the ends a striking silver. "Not dumb. She's devastated. But I also know she will rally."
And that there was one of the secrets of women - they learn the ways in which each other takes on detrimental pain and disappointment, and what their character will end up doing by the end of it all.
"How was our friend?" Crystal asked, looking to Eloise and Tilly.