“Yes,” Luna said, “Sidra can be quite the helpful girl.” And with that, she turned and disappeared.
Sidra let out a breath. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Not mentioning Freya. I don’t like to make Luna angry.”
“Why would that make her angry? Regardless of what she and the others felt for Freya back then, the poor girl has been dead for years.”
“You don’t know Luna very well,” she murmured. Then she leaned in, her voice lowered to a whisper. “There’s something you need to see.”
“What is it?”
“Not now. Meet me here tomorrow after Luna leaves.”
“I don’t know if I can make it—”
“It’s about those hex signs,” she said. “Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you.”
When I left the library a little while later, I found Wayne Van Zandt nosing around my car. He had his hands cupped to his face, peering in through the back window. When he heard my approach, his head came around, but his smirk told me he wasn’t unduly concerned that I’d caught him snooping.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked coolly. My gaze tried to stray to those scars, but I forced myself to focus on his eyes. Still, I couldn’t help but think of everything Thane had told me about the attack. Apparently Wayne had no recollection except that he’d gone to the falls to meet Luna.
I felt an odd tug and glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find Luna glaring at me. Instead, I saw Ivy standing in the shade of the clock tower staring at us. As our gazes collided, I felt a chill creep up my spine. Wayne noticed her, too, and muttered under his breath.
“Were you looking for something in my car?” I asked again.
“Just waiting for you,” he said.
“Why?”
“I thought you might be interested to know that I found a kennel up in the hills.”
“Did you make an arrest?” I asked anxiously.
He stroked a finger down one of the scars as if deliberately trying to bait my gaze. “No need to,” he said. “Someone was there before me. The dogs were all gone and the kennel was torched. The owner got himself roughed up, too. He wouldn’t talk, of course.” His eyes narrowed as he searched my face. “Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that incident.”
“Me?” I asked in surprise, even as I visualized the cut at Thane’s temple and the bruises on his knuckles. “How would I know anything about it?”
He turned his head to observe the street. “That stray still hanging around the Covey place?” His tone was casual, almost distracted, but I had the impression of a cold calculation behind the question.
If he meant to catch me off guard or provoke a reaction, he had no idea who he was dealing with—a woman who had been disciplined by the presence of ghosts since childhood. “I told you the other day, he’s probably long gone by now.”
“That is what you said,” he agreed.
“Wayne, what do you think you’re doing?” a voice demanded from the sidewalk. We both turned as Catrice Hawthorne stepped off the curb and headed toward us, her shabby attire a far cry from the elegant cocktail dress she’d worn to Asher House the other night. Her floppy hat and shapeless capris reminded me of the garb favored by the tourists who flocked to the Battery in the summer, the ones who avidly snapped pictures of the mansions and bartered for souvenirs at the Market.
Annoyed, Wayne said, “This is none of your business, Catrice. Go back to your vultures.”
Her eyes sparkled with good humor. “Vultures are scavengers. Hardly my area of expertise.”
“Maybe I wasn’t talking about birds,” he muttered.
She laughed as she turned to me. “I’m so glad I ran into you, Amelia. My car is on the fritz and I wonder if I could trouble you for a ride home. I’m right on your way.”
“Of course. No trouble at all.”
“You’re a lifesaver. And if you have time, I’ll give you that tour of the studio I promised.”
Her genuine warmth once again took me by surprise. She was so much more personable than either Bryn or Luna, or anyone else I’d met in Asher Falls, for that matter—with the possible exception of Thane.
She shook a finger at Wayne. “I know it’s asking a lot, but try to work on that attitude. You’ll give Amelia a bad impression, and we don’t want to scare her off.”
He merely glared as we climbed into the car, and I pulled away from the curb.
Catrice glanced back with a chuckle. “I hope this isn’t too much of an imposition.”
“Not at all.”
“I thought you looked as if you needed rescuing. Wayne can be a little overbearing at times, especially with strangers. He’s been through a lot, though, so we try to cut him some slack.”
“You’ve known him a long time, I take it?”
“We grew up together…all of us…Wayne, Luna, Bryn, Edward, Hugh and myself. We were thick as thieves as children.” She removed her hat and placed it on the console between us. Sunlight streaming in through the windshield set fire to her red hair as she ran fingers through it. “Then Hugh and Edward were shipped off to boarding school, Wayne’s family moved to Woodberry for a time and we three girls were left to our own devices.”
“You and Luna and Bryn?”
She smiled. “Blood sisters, we called ourselves. We were quite the explorers. There was a time when we knew these hills as well as our own backyards.”
“What about Freya Pattershaw?” I kept my gaze on the road, but from the corner of my eye, I saw Catrice turn to study me.
“How do you know about Freya?” she asked after a moment.
“How did you know who she was?”
“Thane told me.”
“How would
“It’s a small town. I’m sure he’s heard of her. Maybe he’s even seen other pictures of her,” I said with a shrug.
She sighed and turned to stare out the window. “Poor Freya. She was always lurking in the background, always trying to fit in where she didn’t belong. I always suspected her insecurities came from not having a father.”
“What happened to him?”
“No one knows. Tilly was never married, you see. Her past is a little mysterious, to say the least, and she seems to like it that way. She’s always kept to herself, always been the eccentric. Freya was the exact opposite. She wanted more than anything to belong. She would have done anything to fit in.” Idly, Catrice studied her hands. “But for all her indiscretions, she had a way about her. An innocence. Men loved her, women hated her.”
“Did you hate her?”
She swung around. “Me? No, I liked her. As I said, she had a naive charm that I found endearing.”
“How old was she when she died?”
“Just seventeen.”
My chest tightened. “That young? I had no idea.”
“Yes. We were all still in high school. It happened the weekend of prom.
