Page 47 of Thief of Night
“Wow.” Charlie hadn’t seen that in any of the reporting. “If you want me to go by myself, I can.”
Melissa gave a nervous laugh. “No, I’ll go.”
The basement was damp and carried the scent of bleach. It reminded her of how Vince’s clothes had smelled, back when he worked under the table for the forensic cleaning team.
A few metal chairs were folded against a wall, along with a long plastic table. As she looked around, Charlie realized how unlikely it was that there was anything left to find. She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to look for. This wasn’t like searching for where people hid their valuables. This wasn’t like figuring out door codes or cracking a safe.
Do you see anything?Charlie thought at Red.
Walk around,he whispered back.
“So they met down here?” Charlie said aloud, pacing across the basement to give Red a better view.
Melissa shivered. “Lots of organizations do—did,anyway. That’s how most churches make a little extra money—and I do mean averylittle. We had a yoga class. Narcotics Anonymous. There was even an after-school Dungeons and Dragons club that met here. No one wants to use the space now, of course. Town hall overcharges, but everyone’s going there anyway.”
Charlie took another sip of coffee. “How long had the people who died been coming?”
“Three years. They called themselves a Seekers Discussion Group and seemed like very normal people. A retired college professor, a homemaker with three kids under ten, a couple of girls still in college, a clerk at the Big Y. Ordinary people.”
Charlie thought of those horrible photos.
“And their shadows were intact?” she asked, hoping the woman might mention the girl whose shadow had been missing.
The woman looked surprised. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about that.”
It wasn’t the kind of thing an insurance adjuster should ask. “I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “I guess it’s hard not to be curious.”
Melissa pursed her lips. “That night was so normal. Marv got there early with cookies. I guess that was the only thing that stood out to me. Bakedgoods. I usually let him close up—he had a set of keys. This is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. Margie wasn’t there. Neither was Nate. They found Margie at home, safe and sound. Nate, they didn’t, which made the police interested in him, but it turned out he was just on vacation. But there were always new members coming and going. It wasn’t like there was a roll call.”
Had the baked goods been because a speaker was coming? “Look, obviously don’t answer if you don’t want to, but what doyouthink happened that night?”
“Just between us?” Melissa asked.
“Absolutely,” Charlie assured her, lying through her teeth.
“These people weren’t part of any cult. They were just interested in learning about shadow magic, even though not a one of them had it. I told the police that they had speakers sometimes or out-of-town guests—I said one of them must have killed them.”
Seeing the room, Charlie tried to overlay her memory of the photos she’d seen online onto the space. But the pattern of death made no more sense than it had before. Why would people race for the corners and stay in them instead of going for the door? How could any one person have killed three different groups, before a single person made it to the steps? No one Blight could do that. Not even a gloamist and a shadow working together. You’d need at least three separate actors.
“I’ve got to take some pictures,” she said, moving around the room. On one wall, she noticed deep gouges. Like claw marks. She got out her phone and took several shots. “This is going to have to be fixed.”
“Honestly, what I told the police isn’t what I really think, though,” the woman said.
Charlie glanced at her, then went back to taking photos. It seemed clear that Melissa had more to say and maybe she was one of those people who needed to fill silences.
For that reason or because there was a certain safety in unburdening oneself to a stranger, after a few minutes she sighed and began to speak. “Nothing human made those. The police said one of those gardening things might have been used. A three-prong rake. But I think it was claws.” Melissa turned toward the stairs with a shudder.
Charlie followed her back up. As they passed by the church nave, with all the empty pews, her steps slowed. She remembered that red carpet, those prayer books sitting in pockets behind the seats. Memory washed over her, the smell of freshly applied nail polish and her mother’s perfume, the stickiness ofthe weedy flowers in her hand, someone playing the piano, and the vows that Travis read off of a folded piece of paper:I promise to love you until we die and I plan on dying in your arms.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” the woman said.
Charlie startled out of her thoughts, blinking.
Tell her you’re not going to say anything about what she told you,Red prompted.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Charlie said. Then, she made an exaggerated shudder. “And I am going to do my best not to have nightmares.”
Melissa led her to the door nearest the parking lot. “The reverend and everyone here wants to believe it wasn’t something supernatural.”
