Chapter 27
“Are you okay?”
It took Hazel too long to recognize the voice, since Jess was the only other person in the library.
She’d opened her eyes, straightened up from leaning her head against her hand, and half turned around before she’d come up with a name and a face.
“Basically.” Just fine wouldn’t pass muster when she’d almost fallen asleep at the library terminal.
“Tired, that’s all. But thank you for checking. ”
“I try to make sure nobody dies in here,” said Jess. “It’s not explicitly part of the job, but I think the city council would have opinions if I didn’t. They’re demanding that way.”
Hazel found the energy for a smile. “Very unreasonable. What am I paying my taxes for if I can’t pass away at a public computer?”
Jess laughed, quietly enough to suit the environment, but then gave Hazel a long once-over, their hands shoved into the pockets of their jeans.
“Not that it’s any of my business, but you look like a zombie, and you’re doing a lot more work in here than you used to.
Did you lose power out at your place? Or did the roof finally cave in? ”
“My laptop broke,” said Hazel, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if either of your suggestions happened too.”
“Yikes. Kathy said you’d taken on a big job, but…”
“Bigger than I’d realized,” Hazel said, remembering the tall spires of the deserted city.
“Seems like that’s a thing with home renovation. My uncle’s always finding a new problem with his house—I think the latest is wasps.” Jess shuddered. “Are you about ready to flee to the nearest Motel 6?”
Hazel shook her head. “It’s not really an option for me, much as I’d love to.”
The thought actually brought up a little flutter of reluctance, startling Hazel. She didn’t want Perthrux and Chapman and tooth-flowers in the walls, naturally, but she’d put enough work into the house to dislike the idea of abandoning it, and she realized she’d miss the garden and Bramble.
And Ligat?
Dismissing that thought firmly, she focused on Jess again. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Pfft.” Jess waved a hand. “Not that I want you to be unwell, but if you did faint, it’d be the most excitement I’ve had for a week.”
“I’ll do my best another time.”
“As long as you don’t throw up. I’ve had plenty of that during story hour. Someday, one of those kids is going to go into politics, and I’ll either get to blackmail them or sell information to the tabloids. ‘Presidential Hopeful Scared of Little Bunny Foo Foo.’”
“Hey, that rabbit was a menace.”
They both giggled. Looking up at the librarian, Hazel realized that she was having a good time, in a quiet way, and wished she had the kind of life where she could go out for coffee with Jess or invite them over for a bad movie.
It would have been nice to have a local friend, one without the now-awkward sexual tension she had with Maxwell—and ideally one who hadn’t lied about their origins.
Even before the demon had bitten her, Hazel wouldn’t have let herself hope too much.
Most people backed way off when her abilities inevitably became clear.
Tiffany was the only one who’d stuck around without having any prior experience of the supernatural.
Hazel might have chanced a coffee anyhow—humans were incurable pack animals and Jess seemed open-minded—but the thought of the hand in her hallway stopped the idea cold.
She could just see its fingers closing around Jess’s thin frame.
She shuddered and saw the librarian’s face cloud again. “Goose walked over my grave, I guess,” Hazel said, before Jess could ask any questions and she could give in and vent. “I was wondering, though: Have you ever heard of a guy called Maxwell Redfern around here?”
“The only Red Fern I know is an angsty middle grade novel.”
“How about a guy my age, tall, with a British accent and brown hair? Or a woman with the same kind of accent?”
“Oh, no. That would have stuck with me.” Jess leaned against the side of the cubicle, interest lighting up their gaze. “Jeez, you’ve been here a month and you’re already running into mystery men?”
“I guess so,” said Hazel, and spilled.
It was easy to talk around the supernatural parts, and the story that remained sounded surprisingly basic to her own ears.
Maxwell had showed up, she’d gotten interested and made a move, he’d backed off for reasons he didn’t explain, and she’d found out that he’d fed her a fake background.
“If we were in the city, I’d think he was married, didn’t want me finding out, and had a change of heart when we kissed,” she finished up.
“I suppose that still could be the case, but it seems either really risky to do in a small town or really strange to do if you live far away.”
“No kidding,” said Jess. “Also, the footprints are creepy. Maybe it was a really persistent Jehovah’s Witness or somebody’s car was stalled and they hoped you’d be home, but the windows…you might want to call the cops. And I don’t generally make that suggestion.”
“Yeah,” Hazel said, and knew she wouldn’t.
Police had never been much help, and she was connected to a serial killer.
As tenuous as that connection was in the physical world, she was sure that an ambitious detective or suspicious sheriff would make a meal of it, putting her under surveillance if not in jail.
Her situation would only get worse after that.
Jess had been thinking while Hazel was silent, turning the gold stud in one ear absently around and around.
“Maxwell—or John Doe, probably—doesn’t live in this town, I can tell you that for sure.
We have a family from Minnesota, Ms. Nowak came out from Phoenix when she got married, and there’s you. People would notice a Brit.”
“Maybe he and his sister keep to themselves.”
“They’d have to be hermits. Hermits who eat squirrels—nobody delivers groceries outside of town. The guy you describe doesn’t sound like somebody on an all-squirrel diet.”
“No,” Hazel admitted. Maxwell had also been much more put together than she would have expected from an off-the-grid weirdo. “So he probably drove to near my place and parked a little ways off, then walked over. I don’t think he’d do that just to watch birds.”
“Or to hit on you. If he just wants a girlfriend on the side, there are apps for that.”
“Right. So he deliberately set out to meet me.” Hazel’s stomach dropped.
She’d thought she’d stopped hoping for any kind of connection with Maxwell once she hadn’t been able to find his alleged house.
But the human capacity for self-delusion seemed to be infinite.
“I was…kind of involved with a news story a while back. Not closely, but other people have tried to follow up that angle.”
“Well, that’s shitty,” said Jess.
Hazel nodded, remembering how he’d declined her offer of wine—keeping a clear head in case she let any secrets slip? Too bad for him, she’d drunk a glass and hadn’t revealed more than her childhood encounters with the flute. He hadn’t been very good at guiding the conversation.
“He never tried to get me to talk about…my past,” she said out loud. “He didn’t ask many questions at all, other than how I was settling in. He must have been playing a long game.”
Jess shrugged. “It’s that, or he’s a ghost.”
“He what?”
The surprise in Hazel’s voice and the way she stared at Jess made the librarian blush.
They waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, you know. Guy picks up girl at the side of the highway, she leaves her sweater when he drops her off, he goes to return it and she’s been dead for twenty years, woooooooo…
” Jess wiggled their fingers. “Sorry. I joke around when I’m creeped out.
I should watch that around other people. ”
“No, no, that’s fine. I’m not offended. He was, um, definitely not a ghost, though.”
Jess reached their own conclusion before she had to explain. “He sure sounded physical, though I guess so’s the girl’s sweater in that story, and it’s not like I know the rules of ghosts. Probably just a living jerk, though. Too bad.”
“The world doesn’t have any shortage of those.”
She tried to sound nonchalant, and if Jess doubted, they were tactful enough not to press the issue.
Hazel couldn’t shrug the questions off, though.
Was Maxwell a reporter? Was he even human?
She knew he wasn’t a ghost—physicality aside, she’d have been able to tell—but unlike Jess, she also knew those weren’t the only possibilities.
More things in heaven and earth, yadda yadda yadda.
But if she had reason to suspect the paranormal, she also had reason to want to.
A supernatural apparition wouldn’t have hurt nearly as much as a human who’d only played her in the hopes of getting material for an article.
She didn’t know how much she was biased, and even considering the possibility of bias was humiliating.
The motives of a man she’d met twice shouldn’t have had any power to hurt her.
She tried to put the questions out of her mind as she drove home, the way she’d been trying for the three days since she’d failed to find Maxwell’s sister’s house.
Usually she could fix her attention on other problems, but all of those seemed stalled as well.
Research had turned up one healing spell that seemed more powerful than the others, but she’d have to wait for a full moon to try it, and she needed to prepare more before she tried to follow Ligat again.
Thinking of him also raised a number of questions she couldn’t answer.
Hazel turned the music up and made herself sing along.
Indie rock lyrics only helped so much, though, especially when she knew most of them by heart.
She was still picking at the mystery when she pulled into her driveway, when she put away her groceries, and when she walked down her hall and found Chapman sitting in her living room.