Ripple Effect: A Novel (29 page)

“How many goons are there?”

“I honestly can’t tell you. He has eyes and ears everywhere, so I figure it’s more than just Aaron and his demented brother, Roy.”

Reinhart turns toward me. “What was it that Roy was serious about? You said he talked to you in World Civilizations.”

“He—” I feel my stomach drop. “He told me that Aaron wanted to have sex with me.”

“My guess is that it wouldn’t be voluntary either,” Hazel pipes in.

Sabrina snorts. “Well, Aaron is the least of your concerns.”

“What does that
even
mean?” I find myself glaring at her.

“If Leison catches you . . . he’ll be doing the honors himself.”

My stomach instantly contorts and I cover it with my hands. At the same time my mom gasps and her face goes white, like she’s going to pass out. The agents look at her, concerned.

Maybe we shouldn’t be chasing this mad man. “He’ll come for me . . . won’t he?”

Owens crosses his arms. Reinhardt’s penciled in eyebrows rise in disgust. She looks at Owens with apprehension before masking her emotion once more.

Sabrina keeps talking to the agents, “Leison makes the goons prove that they can be like him, a sick serial killer type. So, there is this initiation thing where the goon takes a vulnerable girl from a party and––”

I put my shaky hand up for her to stop talking. “I think we get it. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Reinhardt’s eyes soften for just a moment. “I understand that you’re scared, Cecily.”

She doesn’t understand anything! I look down to hide my glare. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be terrified to no avail.

“Why would he push to get Cecily?” Hazel asks, looking at me.

“Because she was dark, remember . . . ?” Sabrina points to me. “You have to remember how desperate and mean she had become—you know—like me. She was a perfect target! She was the ‘Victim.’”

Mom can hardly stand to hear all of this. Both special agents look at me, eyes intent and mouths nearly pursed. “What changed then?” Reinhardt is intrigued by such a transformation.

My hands are thrown into the air. “I don’t freaking know! One minute I’m getting ready to go to that blasted party, the next I wake up on my floor with a new perspective on life.” I sigh. “And now I’m just more of a challenge to him, now that I have a sense of life again!”

Hazel seems so confused. “Cecily just isn’t his type. Why would he do this?”

Detective Owens glances at me, then Hazel. “Some serial killers get bored with their antics and want to change things up. Some just want to get caught. Maybe they enjoy the thrill of cutting it close. Maybe they see how disgusting they are and want to be stopped. It’s hard to say. Leison thought that Cecily would cave to his will, but when she didn’t, he had to change his game. He played on her moral strength—figured that if he told her he had hostages, she wouldn’t sic the cops on him. Now, he’s just playing games.”

“He’s pushing the envelope, making a power play,” Reinhardt explains. “It seems that, maybe, Cecily scared him with her turn around. Perhaps that is why we unearthed a crime scene and perhaps Leison has escaped once again.”

“Do you think he’s already made a run for it?” Sabrina asks. “The girls are dead and he has no more ties in this town—except for us.”

Owens and Reinhardt exchange wary looks. “Except for you . . .” Owens says quietly.

“He won’t come here, will he?” my mother asks frantically.

Neither Reinhardt nor Owens answer.

“We’ll gladly put a few federal officers around your house for safety,” Owens says when the silence starts to get awkward.

Hazel prods at me with her finger. “What about the map?” she whispers.

“What map?” Reinhardt asks, her eyes narrowing.

My eyes close and I try to breathe. “The map that Leison keeps in his classroom.”

“It shows coordinates of the where he keeps the girls,” Sabrina says quietly.

Reinhardt laughs. “You don’t really believe this, do you?”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” I defend.

“No killer would willingly let you see something so precious to their game plan.”

Sabrina steps forward. “We’ll see who’s right when we get it! We’ll shove it in your faces!”

Owens shakes his head. “Sabrina, don’t do this. Stay away from him, let us handle it.” He looks at me, brow tensed. “Cecily, you too. Especially you.”

Sabrina and I exchange looks, as if we have been stomped on and enslaved by their narrow perspectives and naïve perceptions of our strength. We’ll get that map, no matter what. The FBI clearly doesn’t care about the dying girls, now do they?

Staring at us, hands on hips, Reinhardt says, “Listen to me. Don’t do anything that will get you in trouble with this man, do you understand me?” She straightens up so she seems taller. “Especially over a map—of all things—because he will kill you. This is something
serious.
Stay out of the way and let the FBI do their job.”

Sabrina and I nod at the same time. Agent Reinhardt is clearly concerned about our wellbeing, as she ought to be. She also thinks that we are just annoying teenagers who talk big but can’t actually help. If she only knew what we had gone through with this conniving creature.

Her phone beeps, she takes it from her pocket, and looks down at the glowing screen. Her eyes squint and her lips purse ever so slightly. “Owens— Time to go.”

Agent Owens nods. “Goodbye, girls. Nina,” he says in passing.

Mom walks them to the door and follows them outside. We stay in the living room.

We hear Agent Reinhardt say, “Nina, don’t let those girls do anything stupid,” but the door closes before we can hear my mom reply.

Once the door closes, we start talking.

“He’s not gone. If it’s a trick to get the FBI off his back, it means that he’ll stay here and finish the job.” I glance worriedly at Sabrina. “Of taking us out. Even Owens says so.”

“Well, he can’t come to the school . . . they’ll catch him.” Sabrina seems letdown. “How are we going to get the map if he has it?”

“What about the girls he has captive?” Hazel wonders. “If the remains aren’t theirs, then whose are they and where did they come from?”

Sabrina glances at her, irritated. “They said he’s been doing this for twelve years. I’m sure he has a stash of bones that he uses in emergency situations, Hazel.”

We stare at her with widened eyes.
Does she even know how horrible that sounds?

I shake my head, disgusted. “He has the girls locked up somewhere in another cave and they are slowly dying.” I look directly into Sabrina’s, then Hazel’s, eyes. “Only the map will tell us where!”

Sabrina tilts her head. “So what do you suggest we do, oh brave one?”

“Shut it,” Hazel warns.

I cover my face so that I can think for a minute. All of this stress and fear is making us unreasonable. “Black light,” I say, my eyes widening. “We’ll take a black light to school and see if it’s the actual map or not. Maybe he leaves it there . . . ?”

“That’s a little farfetched, don’t you think?” Sabrina’s dark eyebrow shoots up.

“Darien has a black light flashlight,” Hazel says, in support of my idea.

I can’t help but to glare at Sabrina. “He’s not going to be there. We have free rein of his classroom.” I lean toward her. “And if Leison’s hiding away, we’ll probably find him in the same place where he’s keeping the girls. If we can get the FBI to follow us we can stop him. Otherwise, he’ll come after us . . .”

“You’re crazier than I realized, Wolf.” Sabrina folds her arms. “It seems utterly terrifying. But, either way, we might as well fight and die. That’s what my brother always said.”

A sympathetic smile lifts from the corner of my mouth. Her
dead
brother.

“I’ll contact Landon. He has a black light too,” Sabrina adds.

Hazel gives her an odd look. “Landon Ainsworth, Darien’s friend?”

“Yes,” Sabrina snaps. “I can have secret geeky friends, too. When I’m not the duchess, I’m a normal human. Landon’s my best friend.”

“Two geeks are way better than one,” Hazel says, referencing her own boyfriend.

For once today, I feel a little relief. We have our own little cavalry here.

Someone clears her throat. We turn and see my mom standing on the step, slouching against the wall. She does not look happy to have found us conspiring.

I didn’t even hear her come in.

She clears her throat before speaking. “You’re not going to chase the serial killer.”

“Mom, you don’t understand—” I begin.

“No, Cecily!” Mom has that look in her eye . . . the angry look she gets on her last leg of exhaustion. Her voice rises. “Twenty four, Cecily Wolf! That’s how many bodies they’ve found!”

“It’ll be twenty nine if we don’t stop him!” I remind her. “The three lost girls, Sabrina, and I add another five!”

Mom straightens up. “You heard what Reinhardt said. Let the FBI control this.”

I can’t believe she is against me! “Fine!” I yell—but that is just to keep her happy.

We all know that we have no choice. We have to save the girls. Most importantly, we have to stop Leison from killing us. If only they would listen to us about the map, they could do it themselves. No one ever listens to teenagers!

An orange sign hangs outside on a post.
Elsie’s Apothecary and Fortunetelling Shoppe
, it reads, in big purple letters. We stand in the outskirts of downtown, in the
hippie district
as we call it. Old, colonial style houses were transformed into shops, with wares ranging from clothing, to herbal remedies, to midwives.

In the west the sun is setting, sending flaming colors of pink and orange through the slits in the gray clouds. Supposedly, the storm is to be around for a few more days. These slices of color give me some sort of peace before we dive into the depths of hell tomorrow.

Hazel seems so excited to be here, so bouncy and energetic. “New age,” she corrects Darien when he mentions something about a shop with a crystal skull.

“Organic fruit and veggies,” Kelly says, looking down the road at a small market.

White and green party tents shelter the space from the elements and glow with the light emitted from fixtures found inside. On either side of “tent alley” are colonial houses with steep roofs, flat faces, and small windows, which had been turned into shops with added ornamentation to enhance the historic features. Essentially, that’s what the whole district looks like. This region dates back to before America was America.

I sigh, wondering why I agreed to this. Generally we love going to the hippie district, but today I just feel sick about everything. Curled up in my bed is where I belong. “Haze.” I look at her with reluctance. “We have school tomorrow––a big day, too.”

“That’s only if you find the map,” Darien reminds me. I glare at him. “What’s twenty minutes of your time?”

“Come on, Ces. You won’t regret it!” Hazel smiles and heads up the white wooden stairs and into the shop with the orange sign. “Come on,” she says, motioning me with her arm.

Sabrina sighs. “Let’s go, Cecily. It’s better than sitting at home all night and stressing out, right?”

Shrugging, I give in. “Okay, okay.”

A little bell sounds as the door opens and we all pummel into the small shop with orange walls. Instantly, I smell eucalyptus and lavender, maybe some rose as well. Small shelves are lined with soaps, oils, and lotions; really just potions in all sizes, shapes, and consistencies. In the corner, an illuminated square fountain spews out fog; above, little wind chimes and birdhouses crowd parts of the ceiling.

“I wonder if there is something for a headache,” says Darien as he looks through the essential oils.

“Try peppermint,” a woman says from the counter.

Darien makes a face. “I hate peppermint.”

She laughs. “Lavender it is.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t try one for acne?” Sabrina teases him.

“Only if there is one for witches-wart,” Darien banters back. “It might be beneficial for you.”

They scowl at each other.

“Elsie!” Hazel yells excitedly, before running to the woman.

With long red hair and dazzling green eyes, she looks like a mermaid. Tall, slender, and overly mysterious, she towers a few inches above us and looks down at the new specimens that have entered her little cave of wonders. She even has a long, green tie-dye dress on. On her hips sits a twine belt with a large peace-sign buckle on it. Only her freckle-filled arms are showing. She’s like a hippie version of Daphne.

“Hazel!” she replies, a smile forming on her lips. “You found it okay.”

Hazel nods. “Ces and I have been to the area a few times. These are my friends, by the way.” Then she names us one by one and Elsie stares at me for what seems to be forever.

“You.” She points her finger at me. “You want your fortune told, correct?”

I shrug, unsure. “Yeah, I guess.”

Elsie smiles slyly. “I guess that’s a good enough answer for me.” She looks at Hazel and then to me. “Follow me,” she orders lightly.

I’m taken into this room that’s dimly lit and smells like burnt flower petals––or incense. My nose scrunches at the smell. What little light there is comes from a few lamps and from chunks of red salt crystal whose insides have been carved out and replaced with light bulbs. It’s toastier than I like, but I figure that I won’t be in here very long.

“Have you had your palm read before?”

She sits down in a black velvet-lined chair. Her hand motions for me to sit in the one opposite. “Please.”

“I’m not really into this type of thing.”

I sit down at the small round table with a black velvet tablecloth. There’s also a crystal ball in the middle. A sense of mysticism lingers in this dark backroom that wasn’t there in the main shop.

“Why are you here, Cecily?” Elsie stares at me as she
reads
my energy.

My hands fold together in my lap. “Hazel dragged me here.”

“You can’t really blame it all on your best friend, can you?” She smiles, but her eyes remains serious—exposing minute wrinkles. “If there isn’t something you personally seek, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Shrugging, I glance to the side to find a bamboo plant sitting on a copper perch.
Perhaps she’s right . . .

I extend my right hand to her and watch anxiously as she starts to trace the lines on my palm. She says something about wealth. Then she releases a small gasp and her eyes widen.

She slowly looks at me, her pupils large. My right hand drops to the table. “Your left hand—” Elsie is eager to see what the other palm has to reveal.

My left hand extends more reluctantly than the right. An ache in my temples suggests that my jaw has been clenched too tightly for too long . . . that, or the incense is giving me a headache.

After another examination and complete silence, she places my left hand on the table. She just stares at me, evaluating everything about me.

“Well—” My throat is a little froggy from being nervous, so I clear it and try again. “
Well?
”

Elsie leans forward onto her pointy elbows. “Welcome back to the realm of the living.”

What??

I chew on my lip. Suddenly I don’t feel like playing this game.

Cold, pale hands hold my right hand again. “Cecily, have you had an
out of body
experience?”

Bumps fill my skin and I shiver. “I think . . . ?”
What am I saying? I don’t even know her!
My gaze directs up to see stars painted on the black ceiling. Chills hit again and I gulp.
This isn’t right.
“Maybe,” I mumble.

“What have you seen?” Elsie is dead serious, her eyes glued to mine, a slit for a mouth.

“I saw––” I pause, considering how crazy this will sound “—I saw
myself.
”

Elsie’s eyes widen. “What did you say to yourself?”

“I––I don’t know. One minute I’m getting ready to go to a party, a bad one, and the next minute—a shimmering version of me shows up. The next minute I wake up on the floor, wondering why in the world I’m dressed like some teenage hooker!”

“Something bad was supposed to happen? You said you planned on attending a party?”

Inside of me something aches painfully—into the fiber of my being. “Yes.” My lips purse as I slouch back into the seat. “I was going to commit suicide that night.”

Nodding, as if she already knew this, her eyes soften and her head tilts. “The shimmering version of yourself helped you reconsider your options?”

“I would like to think so.”

“Cecily, this is my opinion,” the way she says this makes me nervous, “and perhaps you’ve died previously and this is a reboot of sorts, a second chance.” My head shakes—I’m confused. “Perhaps the spirit version of you was sent back to earth. I believe there could have been something you were meant to do. When you died you very well could have left a hole in the universe you lived in.”

It’s hard for me to accept what she’s saying. I nod anyway.

“A ripple effect. Perhaps you are the dam that keeps the water in the reservoir.”

Cocking my eyebrow, I hardly buy it. “Hazel called me a dam, too.”

“Think about it for a second. How would your suicide effect the people around you?”

Of course, my mind goes straight to Adie and her bone marrow transplants. Then Hazel—I don’t know what she would have gotten herself into without me . . . not that we were in the best of states today. My heart breaks a little when I think of Sabrina being used and raped by Leison; she would have died in his hands.

Kelly . . . I couldn’t live without him. Literally.

I took a shallow breath. “Why did you ask if I had a lover?”

Elsie smiles at me. “Someone in the other universe was fond of you. He died young . . . just as you had.”

I think of the instant attraction we shared. “Could it be someone related to Kelly?” I wonder. “Elsie, it was like I had met him before somehow.”

“Perhaps.” She shrugs casually. “The other man loved you, but you weren’t his to love.”

I laugh. “You’re saying that I committed suicide in an alternate universe, met some version of Kelly and fell in love . . . then was sent back to here to repair the tear that I caused when I died?”

Elsie’s forehead tenses. “More than repair the tear, dear girl. You’ve been sent back to stop something evil and sinister—something that threatens to consume the lives of the ones you love.”

Stomach churning, I close my eyes, not wanting to believe it.

His stare is imprinted into the insides of my eyelids. His snickering laughter travels through my ears. Even the memory of his disgusting cologne haunts my nose.

Dark and demonic eyes stare back, black like tar and radiating evil.

Someone most certainly sinister stalks this town.

Stop the epic disaster. Be the hero.
It makes sense now . . .

Leison and his hostages. “Did Hazel tell you about that?” I wonder.

She shakes her head. “About what?”

“Um . . .” I debate telling her.             

Elsie stares directly at the curtain that separates this room from the shop. That look on her face, the look of
oh, crap,
is the fiercest expression I’d ever seen. “You need to leave,” she states, her tone calm. “It’s not safe to be here right now.” Her vision seems glued to that spot. “Now hurry, you must leave.” Elsie stands up and shoo’s me out the door.

“What’s the matter?” Hazel asks as she’s being pushed out of the small shop.

Elsie kisses her cousins forehead. “Something bad is coming here. Run, Hazel, go,” she warns her.

Elsie grabs my arm. “Remember, you are more important than you think.”

*              *              *

Next thing I know I’m being pulled into the bushes by my friends.

Twenty seconds later Leison is walking past us and into the shop.

Sabrina is freaking out and my hand is over her mouth while the rest of us are being deathly quiet. Ten minutes pass and the creep leaves the shop and heads away. Leison carries a small paper bag in his hand.

Finally, we all take a breath and look at each other warily.

“I knew he was in town,” Sabrina whispers, nearly crying. “And he has rose oil, the same he uses on all his victims.”

“What does he use rose oil for?” I ask Sabrina.

Sabrina shakes her head as she begins to cry once more. “He’s a sick man, Cecily.”

Then I remember the smell in his classroom, the very peculiar smell. He didn’t use oil with me, so . . .

He must have another victim.