“It’s a vampire. You mark my words. They’ve come back.”
Come back? I turn to look around me, trying to figure out who said that but I can’t tell if it was coming from behind me or beside me. Damn. I think I figure it out when I spot a curly-headed old woman whispering to her husband to the right of me but when I start to push my way towards them Sheriff Dayton emerges from the bowels of the city hall’s offices and takes the stage.
Sheriff Dayton, the perpetual bachelor, is an alright guy. He went to school with my dad. We used to have him over for barbecues and sometimes Christmas when he didn’t want to spend it alone. Christmas was a big to-do in those days. All the holidays were. They had to be if they were being hosted at Vesper House. Before the night I killed Mike, Sheriff Dayton hadn’t set foot in Vesper House since my parents’ wake when I was twelve. He was good to me when I blew up my life. I think he’s one of themain reasons I didn’t go to jail, not with the way he argued that there was no way I could have overpowered Mike if it wasn’t life or death, and itwaslife and death. Sheriff Dayton said so when he took the witness stand.
“She’s just a woman on her own. You think she wanted that fuck in her house? She did what she needed to and now she’s here and he’s not. End of story.”
I watch him now. He’s doing his best to look calm and collected which is a bad sign. Sheriff Dayton is always cool and calm, there’s not an excitable bone in the man’s body. He’s on an even keel, rocky waters or not Sheriff Dayton never shows it.
Except for now.
“Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for gathering here on such short notice. It’s good to see your faces, though I wish it was on a more joyous occasion.” Sheriff Dayton smiles but his eyes are somber. “We lost a good man. I’d like to take a moment of silence to remember Father Paretti before we begin.”
A hush thick as a wool blanket falls over the crowd and we all bow our heads. Sheriff Dayton wasn’t lying, Father Paretti was a good man. Good enough to let a sinner like me confide in him.
But you confided in his killer, not him,I remind myself.
All of this is a mess.
I probably did. Jesus.
You have to tell Sheriff Dayton.
The thought of telling him what I think happened is strong but if I do that, I already know what his first question will be.
“What were you doing there at midnight, Maris?”
And if he asks that, they’re going to know it was me when Brian doesn’t turn up for work, when he doesn’t pick up his phone or show his face at the bar. When they realize he’s missing they’ll know it was me if I admit I was there.
No fucking way.
“Amen,” Sheriff Dayton says into the mic and the rest of us repeat it back like the good townsfolk Sheriff Dayton thinks we are. Was I ever good? I don’t know. Maybe before my parents died, before I lost granny. Maybe I was good and not faking it.
“At approximately midnight on the night before last, Father Paretti passed from this world at St. Edwards. He was discovered yesterday morning at roughly five am by the morning cleaning crew. We have reason to believe foul play was involved in this tragedy. We have ruled it as a homicide.”
Instantly the room starts buzzing.Foul Fucking Play.
It’s not hearsay anymore, or a rumor or whatever urban legend the morgue and the rest of town think happened. It’s real. Father Paretti was murdered. It’s real and I was there at midnight. That means whoever killed him was still there in the confessional booth with his body.
The killer was the midnight confessor.
My confessor.
Twenty-Four
JULIAN
Maybe I fucked up eating the priest. I’m willing to admit it. That’s a sign of maturity, isn’t it?
The entirety of Vesper Point is crammed into the vestibule of City Hall. We’re talking wall-to-wall, ass to hip. They’re like sardines packed in here. I’m standing off to the side, having just walked in from the cold. I noticed the steady stream of humans making their way down Main Street and like any predator, naturally, I followed.
“They’re going to go over the murder in town,” the barista from this morning told me when she saw me studying the building from a few feet away.
“They know it’s a murder?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I heard and get this,” she comes closer after giving a quick look around like she’s scared someone might overhear and when she speaks, I know why, “all of his blood wassucked out. Like, just totally gone. I heard that the coroner’s office is saying it’s a vampire.”
Earlier, when Maris’ staff proposed it I brushed it off. They work at a newspaper, of course they’re going to say some crazy shit but now…
