“One day,” Everett whispered, “there’s going to be real justice.”
10
NOW
“Caught you,” says Nissa, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
She steps up behind me and rests a hand on my shoulder, metal bracelets jangling. “I told you if you kept reading that spooky stuff, you’d regret it.”
I shove my notebook into my lap, heart thundering, and manage to squeak, “What?”
Nissa points at the book on the circulation desk. “‘Tell-Tale Heart,’ huh? You got something you want to get off your chest?”
For a second, I simply blink at the Edgar Allan Poe collection, which is cracked open to the beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” I’d grabbed the text at random to shield my notebook, where I was writing every question we needed answered now that the skull in the swamp had turned out to be Fred’s. I’d figured if I was stuck at work and couldn’t talk to Everett, the least I could do was strategize. The fact that my cover-up turned out to be Poe seems a damning detail.
“I don’t blame you for being on edge,” Nissa continues. “We all are, with a killer on the loose.” She shivers, wrapping her peach cardigan tighter. Nissa Guidry’s personality shines through in the bright colors she wears, a beautiful complement to her rich dark skin and glossy curls, and in herspecial way of walking, which I privately call sashaying. If she wasn’t such an excellent librarian, she could’ve been a performer. Nissa has natural stage presence. She’s been my sole colleague for a year, ever since she and her doctor husband, Elijah, moved here from Baton Rouge after Elijah got an offer at Blanchard Hospital, which employs the other half of town not employed by the Fortenot Fishing Company. According to Nissa, it had been worth quitting her beloved job as a research librarian at LSU so her husband could fulfill his dream of working in rural medicine.
I once asked how she could possibly stand living and working here after experiencing city life and a real library. To my surprise, she’d said Bottom Springs was paradise on earth, postcard-perfect with its little Main Street, a town untouched by modernity and the encroachment of big businesses like Walmart, small enough to know your neighbors, beauty everywhere you looked. Hearing the admiration in Nissa’s voice had pierced my heart, as if her inability to see this town the way I did was a betrayal. But even so, before her, I’d worked with crotchety old Mrs. Dupre, who died of a stroke two days after she retired, so I’m grateful to have Nissa.
It’s 9:00 a.m. and we’re alone. Not that we’d tell anyone, but sometimes whole days go by without a single patron. On those days, Nissa and I entertain ourselves—or, rather, she entertains me, and I play willing audience member. Our topics range from books to town gossip, which Nissa somehow gets faster and fresher than anyone, despite being a newcomer.
“That man of yours tell you anything new about the case?” she asks now. “I almost keeled over when I heard the skull was Fred Fortenot’s. Of all people. Fred was almost as big in this town as your daddy. Apparently Fortenot Fishing is at a standstill over the news.”
“Barry hasn’t told me anything.” I twist my fingers under the desk. Barry drove me home last night, a thing I couldn’t avoid even if all I wanted was to be alone with Everett so we could discuss Fred and thesecond killer, what our next move should be. The fact that Ever doesn’t own a phone and I have to work today seems akin to cosmic torture.
I notice Nissa is hovering instead of sitting. “You going somewhere?”
She roots around in her cardigan pocket. “I heard Barry found a symbol carved in the swamp.”
Of course she did. She’s a magnet for information.
“A circle with two crescent moons,” I confirm. “Heard it too.”
To my surprise, she produces a folded-up napkin from her pocket and smooths it. “Like this?”
It’s a drawing of the symbol in blue ink. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “That’s it.” There are so many things I need to talk to Everett about.
“Perfect.” She spins on her heel and beelines to one of our biggest sections: state and local history.
I swivel in my chair. “What are you doing?”
She stops at a bookshelf and bends over, pulling out two massive tomes. Hefting them, she heads back to the desk.
“A couple weeks ago I was doing my sweep for any un-Christian material. Weeding out anything that might’ve slipped in through the donation box, like your daddy asked.”
I flush. I am the secret cause of this particular precaution.
“And I found these.” Nissa slides the books onto the desk:Coastal Louisiana: An Arcane History of Your BackyardandModern Wicca in the South.
“Youkeptthem?”
It’s Nissa’s turn to flush. “A little history’s not going to hurt nobody.”
I suppress a smile. Like me, Nissa is a book eater. Except her passion is nonfiction, histories of things that really happened, while I need fiction to escape.
“The point is, I remembered these books when I heard about the symbol.”
I reach forAn Arcane History of Your Backyard. “Really? There’s information about the symbol in here?” If she’s right, and I’ve had it sitting at my fingertips all these years…what a fool I’ve been.
