Chapter 30

I feel a weight crush my chest and my eyes flutter open. Above me is Mary Gibson, her eyes wide and unblinking. I lift my head slightly and see the butcher knife sticking out of her back.

“Oh my—Bea!”

My aunt takes no time to celebrate her triumph but instead rolls the librarian off me and pulls me to a standing position by the arm.

“Come on, we have to get out of here!”

The curtains and runner are in flames around Mary Gibson’s lifeless body – and boy are they moving fast! Before we can get to the door, they lick at our heels, urging us out to the fresh air.

We both nearly collapse on the stone steps outside the church. The fire within is a wall of heat, growing ever-larger, and we must drag ourselves onto the lawn to get away from it.

With my head on the grass, I can hear approaching footfalls.

“Callie! Callie!”

I push myself up to sitting. “Trey!”

He drops down to his knees to examine me. “Are you okay? What happened?”

I shake my head. “You have to call the police.”

“The fire department is on its way.”

“No, no. The cops. You have to get them. There’s a woman…”

She’s three hundred years old. She tried to murder me and Beatrix. She thinks I’m a witch. She…

I feel myself start to hyperventilate. My pulse pounds quicker and I struggle to take in breaths.

“Callie!” I hear. Bea’s voice.

Not a witch. We’re not witches. We…we…I…I’m not evil. I don’t do the Devil’s work. I’m…I can shift.

The voices in my head are growing stronger. They fight each other, yell over each other to be heard, to make me…what? Do what? What do you want me to do?

“Stop it! Stop!” I cover my ears with my hands.

The pain. End the pain. You can’t handle this. No one can.

“Yes, I can! I can handle it!”

No! No you can’t. None of us can.

And then Trey’s arms are around me, holding me tight, and I can feel myself relax against him. Warm, I feel suddenly warm, from the inside out. He leans down and places a kiss against my lips, breathing into me.

No fireworks, no drama. But when he pulls back, I feel infinitely calmer, like I’m myself again.

I close my eyes briefly and try to block out the sounds of the fire and the sirens of approaching firefighters. I hear…nothing. No voices, nothing. Just me.

“You…” I say to him. But I don’t know how to finish that. What is he? Who is he?

He helps me up and away from the church, toward the caretaker’s building.

“Wait! Where’s Beatrix? Bea! Bea!”

“I’m here, I’m here,” she says behind me, waving her cell phone as she comes over to us. “I can’t…I can’t focus on the…” And she shakes her head. She’s exhausted and I can’t blame her. I take the phone from her and flip it open; the blue glow is reassuring but I can barely concentrate on the numbers either. My fingers feel fat against the buttons. I hand it to Trey.

“Trey, would you call the cops for us?”

“Oh, um, well, the fire trucks are on their way.” He nods in the direction of the main road where two trucks, their red lights flashing, are making their way toward us.

“I know but the police,” I say. “They need to get out here.”

“Yeah but—”

“Trey, just take the damn phone.”

I don’t understand his reluctance when clearly he came out here to help us. He allows me to place the phone in his hand but as soon as I do, the blue glow vanishes. I open and close the clam-shell again and again but it won’t come back on.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “It was working like, a second ago.”

Beatrix peeks over my shoulder. “Did it die? I would have sworn I had it fully charged this afternoon.”

We both look at Trey. He holds his hands up and backs away a step. “I never trusted those things. They give you brain cancer or something.”

Bea and I exchange a glance and then shake our heads. Of all the weird things that happened tonight, the phone is the very least of them.

“You must be freezing,” Trey says as the fire trucks pull into the parking lot of the church. “Come back to the office and I’ll make you both some coffee.”

“Really? It must be after .” I glance at Bea’s phone for the time, forgetting for a moment that it’s dead.

We stand on the periphery of the church lawn, watching the firefighters race to connect their hoses to the hydrant on the street.

“Never stops raining in this crappy Cove,” Trey says, forcing a smile for Bea and me. “Where’s that rain when you need it?”

A third vehicle arrives, a paramedic’s truck, which the driver parks close to the front of the church. Two ’s fling open the back door of the truck and pull out a stretcher.

Trey steps between the church and me then. “Coffee?” he asks me and as much as it seems like kind of a banal thing to do right now and frankly, caffeine would probably mess with my nerves, I nod yes because I know what he’s trying to do: shield me from seeing Mrs. Gibson’s body being wheeled out.

“Okay,” I say, and allow him to lead me toward the caretaker’s building. “Beatrix?” I glance back over my shoulder at my aunt. Her arms are wrapped around her waist in a hug and she frets, nervously, watching the firefighters.

“I don’t see her,” I hear Bea say under her breath.

“What?”

“Never mind, never mind,” she says quickly, adding a grim smile. “Go on with Trey. I’ll bring one of the paramedics over in a minute to look at your hands.”

“And your neck,” I tell her. I realize then that both Bea and I are still wearing the nooses around our necks. Mine is still bloody from where I tore at it with my fingers.

Well now, that’s a helluva souvenir.

I glance down at my palms: red and raw but not bleeding. They’ll definitely sting next time I shower. Oh man, a shower; just thinking about standing under hot running water makes me feel better and I smile to myself, imagining a river of steaming water cascading over my body.

“What’s so funny?”

“Funny? Oh, just thinking about taking a shower.”

Trey’s grin is lopsided and curious. “That is funny. I was thinking about you taking a shower too.”

I roll my eyes. “Jerk,” I say, teasing Trey.

Stupid silly flirting. Such a normal thing to do.

Will my life ever be normal again?

Was it ever?