Chapter 30- Hera
Limboburg has moved from bad to worse. Once upon a time it used to be a small retirement settlement where you could raise chickens at the back of your house in peace. Now it has mysterious stalkers, ruthless serial killers and creepy representatives of shady organizations that send hand-written threats and questionable tokens to unconventional senior high-school age detectives, aimed at stopping them from investigating their parents’ disappearance, a case in point being me, the uninspired, amateur sleuth whose greatest fears in a nowhere like this were once teenage drama, social situations and permanent boredom. Now my pathetic and uneventful existence is in danger– last night was proof enough.
Is all of this alarming? Absolutely. But Czar scares me more and heaven knows I am not insane enough to not be afraid. At a mere glance, my morally-dubious private investigator could tell that the offering dropped at my door at eleven p.m-ish yesterday did not belong to a human being before it was severed. Said man would gladly send a body my way if I requested it. On top of that, he knows just too much about me– including the especially disturbing details– hides his identity, has no traceable office and is cryptic about his sources, which, by the way, have been uncovering a load of information that would leave anyone stunned… because aside from the calibre of the intel, it's barely been a week since we made contact and already, he knows that my parents lied about going to Mexico City– something not even the cops were able to arrive at despite months on the case, not to mention the significance of that singular fact and how it changes everything. Because it does. Mr and Mrs North lied about where they were going… because they were running… Apparently, not fast enough.
Daddy and Mummy dearest were en route to Nashville when their car was run off the road– an automobile accident that ended in minimal blood loss and the abduction of two grown adults… Czar has reason to believe that when they were removed from the vehicle, they were fine– alive– and the kidnap that followed was strategic. Let's also not forget the fact that ransom has, to date, not been demanded, which is a good pointer to the fact that whoever took them wasn't a common criminal… at least not one motivated by the desire to have a bit of their money. The person responsible wanted them…
As for their burnt orange vintage baby, before it landed in police custody, it found its way to a garage in Novadale, and while the mechanic to whom it was given didn't know that a critical piece of evidence in a high-profile missing persons case was pawned off to him, usually puppets hardly know when they're being used to derail investigation.
Czar is still on the trail of the phantom customer who gave the Bugatti to the hapless repairman, he tells me, and knowing him, he will catch up with the guy. Conviction like this goes without saying and I do know where the certainty is from. Last night, prior to Czar ending the man that had tried attacking me, I had thought I was going to become a random victim to Novadale’s latest serial killer– an entity whose existence I concluded upon after I got wind of the deaths at the square– until another body was found this morning– eliminated by someone else, the actual Novadale serial killer most probably– proving that Black Hood was out last night for me specifically. Not a mass murderer, just a mercenary willing to do anything to make sure my parents are not found, including destroy my vitals. Who knows, he might have even dropped the bloodied heart as a teaser for what was to come. How stupid of me to think the sender of the threat would stop at just that, or delay before acting. The man in question might have even skulked outside the property in the cover of the woods across from the paved road, noticed me going out to the community center and then followed… If that is true, it would mean I offered myself on a platter of gold without even knowing it.
Conjectures, surmises, I know. But they're all I have at this point. There are just too many loose ends– a symbol of unknown origins, a runaway car gifter and a visitor in Novadale that would have murdered me– yet it's more progress than the police have made in close to three months, chilling as the surrounding events are. And now, the morning after I nearly died, third period, I'm in one of my elective classes, unable to concentrate. In the last twenty four hours, I was sent the oddest warning I ever saw, nearly lost my life and stood face to mask with the man that has been following me around, wishing he had done more than watch me leave after I played the piano for him, wondering what it would have felt like if it had been his bulk pinning me to the marble, not just that piercing, onyx-eyed stare. Am I going mad? I believe so. And that is why this class is the least of my worries… For more reasons than one, really.
While there are other pressing issues currently taking up space in my head, there is a reason even my best friend can't help admitting my nerd status sometimes. I am irritatingly good at academics and the fact that I may purportedly be a witch is not the only reason people in this school hate me. Teacher's pet is a curse far worse than that of being possibly possessed– and I have both. To the board though, I am a star student. The kind that gets parallel As, perfect scores and writes two-page essays to answer a simple exam question. In other words, it's because of people like myself that the bar gets raised higher and higher each year. I would hate me too.
I'm currently in French class where I've never needed to pay attention before as it is one of ten languages I have had private tutors teach me and am now fluent at, so instead of tuning into the lesson, I am making an updated list of suspects in my parents' disappearance behind my hardback notebook when a noise from the back distracts me.
“Bonjour, Bitch.”
The pejorative is followed by conspiratorial sniggers I can't quite place until I turn around and see Aura ‘Knox's Ex’ Delroy and her best friend, Cami Crowley– the architects of the rumours of my sluthood at Novadale High– looking like they're having just too much fun making me the object of their current gossip they just had to let me know.
I pause mid action and fix them a bewildered look because I need to know the kind of crack that is sponsoring their delusions. The fact that they think they get to talk to me is insane. "Excuse me?"