Twenty
“I’ll go look for the sheriff,” said Todd’s more helpful brother. The instant Father Barry was out of sight, Charlotte and Todd started making eyes at each other. Sherry watched, fascinated. She’d always found it remarkable to see how attractive people seemed to have a sort of secret password that let them pass directly through the parts of socializing that involved trying to convince people that you were worth speaking to and move directly on to the fun parts. It reminded her of how very young children made friends by asking another child if they’d like to be friends. In the past few minutes, it seemed that Charlotte and Todd had become very good friends indeed, based on how close together they were standing.
“So,” Todd said. “Your husband was murdered, huh?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “His mistress stabbed him to death in his studio.”
Todd made a sound like, “Eurgh,” before he recovered himself and cleared his throat. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
Charlotte shrugged. “It’s complicated,” she said. “So…what do you do for a living?”
The two of them made uncomfortably flirtatious small talk for the duration of Father Barry’s absence, until he reappeared with Sheriff Brown in tow. The sheriff took one look at Sherryand stopped dead. “Sherry? What the—what are you doing in there?”
“Not much,” Sherry said. “You didn’t leave me any magazines to read.” It seemed pointless to bring up her visitation from Beelzebub. Then she added, helpfully, “You locked me up. I’ve been here for hours.”
Sheriff Brown went pale, then shook his head. “No, Ididn’t.”
“It must have been someone else, then,” Father Barry said, in the tone of voice that someone might use to soothe a child who’d just woken up out of a nightmare. Maybe that was fair: maybe it was exactly how Sheriff Brown felt right now. Like a child caught in a terrible dream. Sherry couldn’t blame him, if he did. She’d felt like that for days. “She really is locked up in there, though. We checked the door. Do you think that you could let her out?”
Sheriff Brown nodded and pulled a key from his pocket. Sherry couldn’t see his hand from where she was standing, but she could hear the key rattling against the lock when it shook. “I can’t,” he said. He looked ghostly. “I can’t do it.” He lifted his hands up so that she could see them. The skin looked almost blue. “I can’t feel my hands.”
Sherry had heard of skin crawling, but right now she felt like her skin wanted to sprint right out of the cell without the rest of her. She knew that she shouldn’t, but she reached through the bars to grip his wrist. He looked solost. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”
He flushed, blotchily and unattractively, all over his face. He didn’t jerk away, though. He let her hold his wrist, just for a moment, until she released him. Then his hand shot out to lock ontoherwrist. “Nothing like this ever used to happen around here,” he said. He was looking her right in the eyes, asif he was trying to really make her listen, to force someone to understand him. “This all started after you came to town. There’s somethingwronghere.”
“I know,” she said. “I know. It might be my fault. I’m trying to stop it. I promise I am. Do you think there might be another way to get me out of here?”
“Not until you’ve thought about why you feel the need to be so insolent,” said a snake’s voice coming out of Sheriff Brown’s mouth. “We’ll be holding you here for twenty-four hours. You’ll be released in the morning.” Then—“Oh,” he said, in his own, miserable voice. “Ugh.That felt like puking backward.”
Everyone in the room gave a kind of instinctive writhe of sympathy. Then Sheriff Brown locked eyes with Sherry again. “Sherry,” he said, suddenly urgent. “What happened to the internet?”
Reality sneezed.
“What?” Sherry said.
“What?” Sheriff Brown said, looking just as confused as she felt. Then he wandered out of the room without saying another word, like a man who’d gotten as far as the refrigerator before remembering that he was running late for an appointment and needed to be on his way.
Todd waited until the sheriff had left the room for about half a second before he said, “I’m going to go look for a hacksaw. Does anyone need anything else?”
“If we’re going to break her out of jail, you might as well steal me an expensive car or something,” Charlotte said. “Since we’re doing serious time when we get caught either way.”
“I need someone to break into the antiques shop,” Sherry said.
“I’ll do it,” Todd said. “Do you need me to pick a lock? Did someone open an evil box that I have to get back so Barry can exorcise it?”
“Oh, wow,isthere an evil box?” Charlotte asked.
Sherry considered that for a second. “Maybe,” she said finally. “It’s as likely as anything else. Keep your eyes out for anything with a mysterious glow, I suppose. But I really just want to know if the account books are in there. There’s an outside chance that Alan could have run them back to the shop before he died, and I want to see them.” Really, the specific contents of the shop’s books mattered less to her than the thought that someone else might have gone out of their way to try tohidethem.
Todd visibly deflated. “Oh. Yeah, okay. I guess I could find those. Would they be in a safe? Do you have a key or a code or something?”
“Todd,” Barry said. “I don’t know if you getting involved is a good idea. Aren’t you still on probation?”
“Oh, no, you’re a criminal?” Charlotte asked. The look on her face suggested that their blooming jailhouse romance might be about to come to an abrupt end.
“It was just weed,” Todd said, looking as if he was making some rapid calculations in his head. He gave Charlotte an admittedly beautiful smile. Sherry could see how a man with a smile like that could get away with all sorts of things. “I promise that I’ve grown out of my rebellious phase. I’m a nice boy who takes the train upstate to visit his priest big brother every month now.”
“I’m onlytwenty minutes older,” Barry mumbled.
