[Drinks water.] I got my key from the front desk, Cyndi had left me one, saying I was her sister, and I went up to the room, and there was William—
About 2:00... 2:05? I’d guess? Maybe 2:10?
No. No. Definitely no sound or sign of struggle. Not then and not before I came in. Just William saying What the hell are you doing here,Simone, and I was like, We want to ask you the same question, and I called for Cyndi but she didn’t answer, so I went looking for her, and—[Sobbing.]
I’m sorry. It was just such a shock. Although maybe it shouldn’t have been. I saw signs, when we were at the café—she took meds at the table, and one of them was lithium. Plus I saw the semicolon tattoo on her wrist, and I know that means the person has had suicidal ideation or past attempts. As in,My sentence could have ended here, but I keep going. It’s a suicide survivor thing—my former fiancé has one too. He got it after his release from the psychiatric hospital.
So I’m shocked but not surprised that she took her own life. Are you—do you suspect it could be something else? I guess you can’t say, but... I just want to clarify for the record that if it IS foul play, I do NOT think it’s William. He’d have no motive, and as mad as I am at him, I think he’s seriously sketchy about women but not more than that.
Thereisone other possibility you could investigateifyou think it’s foul play. There’s a woman who’s been stalking me—actually she’s William’s stalker, but I inherited her. The Rabbit, he calls her. Because... Never mind. I don’t know her real name. She started following me and leaving me threatening notes while I was dating him, but since he ghosted me I haven’t heard from her.
No, I didn’t save the notes because I turned them in to the Boston PD, but they would have them on file. Nothing too gory. Just stay away from William Corwyn if you know what’s good for you, stuff like that.
Nothing physically violent, or I would have gotten a restraining order. Still, I would ask William about her. He’d know more. There was another supposedly disturbed woman he mentioned, too—a complication, he called her, though God knows what the real story was there. As I said, his relationship style was hot mess. And women in love can be crazy.
Of course. I’m happy to help. Well, not happy, butyou know what I mean. If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know. [Sighs.] I’m sure Cyndi’s death is what it looks like. But I would check out the Rabbit, if you can figure out who and where she is.
The Rabbit
Here I am in Salem, and the good thing about it is, it’s crowded AF. Easy for a girl to get lost on Halloween, especially if she’s gone to the Dollar Store and gotten a fake nose piercing, a packet of supposedly silver rings that are already leaving green circles on her fingers, and purple barrette feathers for her hair. I blend right in here, or at least I would if I were clinically insane. There are witches in capes and hats, witches with twig brooms, witches with actual live ravens on their shoulders, witches with pentagram tattoos, pouring into the city in vehicles that all have the same bumper sticker:My Other Car’s a Broom!They’re setting up tents in the parks and parking lots, including this one I’m sitting in now, on a broken chair I found behind the Hawthorne Hotel dumpster. I admire their commitment and some of them even look bad-@$$ but who the f*ck has the time and money for this?
The bad thing about Salem is, it’s crowded AF, which means it’s hard for me to maintain a clear sight line on the back door of the Hawthorne—until the emergency vehicles show up. Here we go. They part the crowd like Moses, moving slowly through the lot with their flashers on but sirens off. The witches make way reluctantly, at first turning to see what’s happening and then going back to their business, which I assume is preparing to summon spirits tonight or some such. They’re not really interested in seeing who is newly, actually, physically dead.
Myself, I am quite interested. I drift through the crowd until I’m near the back door where the ambulance is parked. It takes a minute, of course itdoes, the authorities have to investigate, they have to officially pronounce her deceased. I hug myself in the chilly wind coming off the harbor. I almost wish I had some big velvet witchy cloak. Eventually the door opens and the EMTs bring out the gurney with its enclosed passenger. Cyndi Pietorowski. Poor girl. So many William Corwyn love interests, so many body bags.
Some of the witches look up from their cell phones and books of spells or whatever, and one chants something in a long-dead language. Somebody else hits a gong, which spooks the ravens, one of which splats on its irate owner’s shoulder. I’m not religious, but I say a prayer in case Anyone is listening. This one was certifiably nuts. Poor little Cyndi. But she was so sweet. And I am sorry. I’m genuinely sorry. I’m so, so sorry for what has happened to her. Even though it’s William’s fault for choosing her in the first place. But it is definitely my fault too.
The ambulance proceeds in reverse. The police vehicles remain. So do I. I didn’t see William’s car in the lot, but I know he’s in there somewhere. And I know if he leaves the hotel, which BTW is about fifty times nicer than any I’ve ever stayed in, he’ll want to avoid notice and do it through the back door.
But guess who comes out with a female police officer? Not William. Sam Vetiver! I can’t believe it. F*cking Sam Vetiver. She’s like a yeast infection you thought was gone but that never goes away. What the hell is she doing here? I mean, obviously she’s here because William is here. And I knew she was stalking that poor Cyndi. I knew because I tailed Sam Vetiver for a while to make sure she and William were done, which is how I knew she was spying on them in that weird park with the blue trees, and then at Cyndi’s house FFS, although Sam Vetiver just jumped around in the bushes for a while in a totally ineffective way trying to see through the windows and then went and sat in her yellow Jeep and cried, then drove home. Which is also how I knew William had ditched her, had done that William thing of promising her the world and then pulling the football away. I knew he’d ghosted her because why the hell else would a grown woman be acting like such a lunatic. I watched Sam Vetiver through her apartment windows scrolling social media all hours of the night, her face underlit with screen glow, and I knewshe and William were over, that he’d kicked the chair out from under her and let her twist.
So I thought she was no longer a threat and I switched to the Cyndi channel instead. But somehow I f*cked up, because here Sam Vetiver is, released from police questioning and wandering through the insanity like some orphan child in a Nat Geo photo shoot about a natural disaster, her face smeared with makeup and tears.
I elbow through the witches, saying “’Scuse me pardon me ’scuse me” and following Sam Vetiver to the train station where her yellow Jeep is parked. How did I miss it? I was focused on Cyndi, is how. So f*cking sloppy. Sam Vetiver gets into her Jeep, and I bolt for the waterfront warehouse where I’ve been parked and sleeping for the whole last week. Wherever Sam Vetiver goes, I go, and I’ve got to get to my car.
Chapter 27
The Running of the Witches
Sam Vetiver was lost.
Metaphorically, not literally. In actuality she was sitting in her Jeep behind the Salem train station, being buffeted by hundreds of turbocharged Wiccans. Sam had never been to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, but she imagined it was much like this, except with witches instead of large angry bovine creatures. From the surfeit of estrogen and patchouli alone, Sam would have known where she was with her eyes closed.
Emotionally, she was as lost as she’d ever been in her life.
She didn’t know what to do. She was in no condition to drive; she didn’t even remember how she’d gotten to her car. One moment she was in the conference room at the Hawthorne, the next she was here. Huddled in her driver’s seat with the heater cranked all the way up, unable to get warm. It wasn’t the cold, damp wind whistling off the harbor or the gunmetal sky, Sam knew. It was shock. She’d been here before.
She couldn’t stop seeing Cyndi—this was another PTSD symptom, her therapist had told her. Invasive thoughts. So that every time Sam blinked, she saw Cyndi in the tub. Blink: Cyndi’s big blue eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. Blink: her hair fanning in the maroon water. Blink: her T-shirt and jeans molded to her body—who wore clothes when she slit her wrists in the tub? Cyndi, that’s who. Because she was such asweetheart she wanted to spare whoever found her the extra shock of her nudity. Blink: how leached her skin was, her lips gray, an unseasonable fly washing its legs on her dead arm next to the pill bottles on the tub’s edge.
Sam should have known. She remembered the Family Day group leader at Hank’s psychiatric ward saying,What’s the number-one thing you should know? It’s not your fault.Sam had nodded. She was sure this was true, and yet she’d never believed it for a second. Not at all.
She should have stopped Hank. And Amelie. And Cyndi. And her dad. Sam was 0 for 4. She should have known.
And this time maybe Sam was directly responsible as well as clueless, because hadn’t she known Cyndi had a condition? She had. She’d watched Cyndi count out her meds at the café table—Sorry, Cyndi had said, smiling sweetly,if I don’t take these at the same time every day, they’re not as effective.Had noticed the semicolon tattooed on Cyndi’s wrist and thought, Oh, honey. Had seen how Cyndi’s eyes gleamed when she talked about William:He reached out to help me with my fiction novel! I was so surprised! I mean, somebody like you, I could understand him talking to. But me, why?And how that light in Cyndi’s face had gone out when Sam described how William had treated her, said Cyndi should be careful, suggested they confront him together.Sure, Cyndi had said.I’d be happy to help.But she had drooped and gone quiet. What if Cyndi had been depending on the What If fantasy of life with William, even more than Sam had, and in puncturing it, Sam had tripped her wires?
Sam should have stayed away. Maybe then the next time she’d seen Cyndi would not have been dead in a bathtub, with William in the next room.
William.
