Page 53 of The Sister's Curse

He frowned. “The cameras got nothing. It was like the power cut out.”

Detwiler and I looked at each other. There wasn’t anything we could do if they weren’t making a report.

But it looked weird as hell.

Predictably, I got stonewalled from talking to Lister. He wouldn’t even talk to Detwiler. But I was able to pick up my car. I didn’t trust Lister, but getting work done at the dealership had given me a plausible reason to keep trying to talk to him. And that had come to nothing. I figured he’d overcharged me for tires by at least a couple hundred bucks.

I had Detwiler follow me to the next exit on the freeway and scan my car for bugs with a new gadget Patrol had acquired. While he did so, I crawled under the car to check the brake lines. Everything looked good, and Detwiler came up with nothing. Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe the dealership had their hands full dealing with that vandalism. Whoever was at the beach at Sandpiper Run was at the dealership, too, and I chewed on what Viv had said about…witches.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about witches. I knew there were weird things in Bayern County, like preachers performing apparent exorcisms by candlelight. Belief in the supernatural was a powerful thing, and certainly some people in the county believed. But I resisted expanding my personal cosmology to includewitches handing out curses. I needed to think of mundane explanations for the crimes I investigated first…and the most mundane explanation was that someone like Viv believed they were a witch, and purchased a few cans of spray paint. It was the law that driver’s licenses had to be given over to buy spray paint, to deter vandalism, and I could theoretically run down recent sales in the county. I wasn’t sure that would yield anything. People kept cans of spray paint in their garages for years. Even if I could investigate the vandalism at Lister’s dealership, I didn’t have access to perform a paint match. And if I could prove that Viv bought black spray paint at the local hardware store last night and didn’t have an alibi, I would be no closer to finding the truth without evidence.

Nick’s SUV was in the driveway when I got home. As he always did when he got home first, he’d left the porch light on for me. I let myself inside the house. He’d left the light over the stove on for me, too, and snoring echoed from the bedroom.

I locked up and left my keys in the bowl on top of the refrigerator. I took some ibuprofen and antibiotics for my leg and got into my pajamas.

I slid into bed, between Nick and Gibby. Gibby was awake, giving an aggrieved huff when I climbed in. He closed his eyes and was soon snoring heavily.

I’d grown accustomed to this, the warmth I felt sandwiched between the two of them. I loved them, and I could trust them entirely, with everything I was.

It wasn’t like there weren’t other people I trusted with my life. I trusted Monica, and the chief, and probably also deputies, like Detwiler and Jasper. But trusting someone with my life was a very different matter than trusting a person with who I was.

Maybe I would always be on the outside, looking in on relationships. But what I had here, in bed with me…that could be enough. The snores and the dog hair and the late nights.

That was enough, and I wouldn’t let it go.

—

A green flash seared my vision, then faded, leaving me in the dark.

I was eleven years old then, creeping through the yard at night, toward the well. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling of something brushing against my leg in the dark. I was afraid an animal was trapped in there, in the poisoned water, one that needed my help.

I crouched by the edge of the well. The pump hummed a low pulse, and I felt like I was sitting next to a hive of bees.

“Hello?” I whispered. I stared into the dark, searching for ripples in the water. I reached down with a stick and stirred. If there was a snake there, I could catch it and pull it to safety.

Something grabbed the stick and tore it away. I flung myself back and landed on my backside.

Slowly, I crept to the edge again.

Below the buzz of the pump, I heard a musical hum, the hum of a woman, echoing off the well’s earthen walls, then the distant cry of a baby.

I called out to it. “What’s down there?”

Water churned, and something pale roiled beneath. The moon’s reflection fractured in the black, and I glimpsed the profile of a woman below the water.

I leaned forward, toward that musical humming.

“Who are you?” I needed to know.

I jumped as someone grabbed the back of my neck, drew me away. My mom.

Her eyes were as black as the pool.

“Mom,” I gasped. “What is it?”

She closed her eyes as the thing in the well cried with the sound of a baby.

“There’s a spirit in this place,” she said. “A spirit with many voices, many stories of pain and suffering. She takes on the suffering of the dead, takes their voices and their faces and visits her wrath upon men who abuse and kill women and girls. She’s a vengeful spirit, summoned by grief.”