Salem Falls Read online

  Amos forced his attention back to Wes. "You off soon?"

  "Ten, fifteen minutes."

  "Good, good." He nodded. "Well, thanks for the tip."

  "Just trying to keep everyone safe."

  Amos held up his hand in farewell, already moving off. Wes headed back toward the green again. He never noticed that Amos had turned away from the road that led to his house and was running quickly in the opposite direction.

  Tom O'Neill swung the door open, surprised to find Amos Duncan on his doorstep, panting hard.

  "Amos, you all right?"

  "Sorry to bother you."

  Tom glanced over his shoulder. In the dining room, his family was gathered around their dinner. "No, no problem at all." He stepped out onto the porch. "What's the matter?"

  Amos soberly met his gaze. "Well," he said. "It's like this."

  April 30, 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  Addie couldn't get Jack out of her mind. Now, she leaned forward, kissing the nape of his neck in a blatant attempt to draw his attention from the TV set in her living room. The Formosa type of this tea is more famous than the Amoy, Foochow, and Canton varieties.

  "What is oolong," Jack said, his elbows resting on his knees. Addie opened her mouth and licked the soft shell of his ear. "Cut it out! I'm on a roll."

  "You could be on me." Most hours of the day, Jack could be counted on to catch her gaze across the diner, hot enough to make her stumble, or manage to pass by her so closely their bodies brushed. But when Jeopardy!came on, she could have paraded in front of him completely naked without managing to capture his attention.

  Jack was addicted to Jeopardy! In three years, he had gone only one day without seeing the show, and that was because he was driving in a sheriff's cruiser to the jail at the time. He was delighted that because he and Addie had taken the afternoon off to move his things, today he'd have the chance to watch at both 7 and 11 P.M. Addie, however, had a different agenda.

  She began to unbutton his shirt, but Jack brushed her away. "I'll get you back during the commercial," he warned halfheartedly.

  "Ooh ... now I'm scared."

  Demeter brought famine upon the earth after this daughter was abducted to the underworld.

  "I bet you know this one," Jack said.

  In response, she slipped her hand down the front of his jeans.

  He jumped. "Addie!" he said, even as he swelled into her palm.

  "Who is Persephone?" the contestant said on the screen.

  Addie squeezed gently. "Aha. You missed."

  Beneath her, Jack's hips moved. "I knew the answer. I was just distracted before I could give it."

  Jefferson said it "is no excuse in any country ... because it can always be prevented."

  Addie straddled him, blocking his view of the television set. Finally, Jack gave up fighting. He drew her face down and kissed her, slipping the answer into her mouth: "What is ignorance of the law."

  "Ignorance," Addie repeated. "A very nice segue to bliss." She arched her throat, tilting back her head, and suddenly stilled. "Did you hear that?"

  But Jack's famous concentration was now focused entirely on Addie. "No."

  A crash, the sound of running. Addie sat up a little straighter. "There it is again."

  "It's an animal," Jack suggested. "You live in the woods."

  She pulled away from him, even as he grabbed for her hand and groaned at the loss of her soft weight on his lap. Peering out the window, Addie could only see the edge of the swing set, serrated by the moonlight. "Nothing out there."

  "Then try looking here." Jack stood up, his erection straining against his jeans. He took Addie into his arms. "It's probably raccoons. Why don't you go upstairs while I get rid of them?"

  "You're going to miss Final Jeopardy?" Addie teased.

  "Never," he said, all seriousness, and then he winked. "There's a rerun at eleven."

  Gilly could not get Jack out of her mind. She relived the moment outside the diner a hundred times, playing different scenarios like a slide show--things she should have said and done instead, images of Jack grabbing her and kissing her so hard her lips bled. Every time she stumbled over the part where Jack had treated her like a child, her stomach clenched, and she'd start to cry, dying a hundred deaths all over again. A moment later, she'd be spitting mad, itching for the next opportunity she might have to show him she wasn't a child after all.

  Her father had kept a hawk's eye on her all afternoon and evening; then he'd gone running and made her swear she would be there when he got home. Now she was drowning her sorrows in the emotional angst of Sarah McLachlan and painting her fingernails bloodred as the phone rang. Whitney's voice came on the line. "Gil, what time tonight?"

  Gillian sighed. She didn't want to deal with her friends right now. She didn't want to do anything but figure out how to keep her father from being such a goddamned warden, so that she could make Jack see what he was missing. "What time for what?"

  "The meeting?"

  "The meeting ..."

  "I could have sworn I put down April thirtieth on my calendar."

  Understanding bloomed. "Oh, Beltane," Gilly said.

  "How could you forget?"

  Gillian hadn't forgotten, exactly; she'd just been preoccupied with Jack. Her coven had made plans to meet in the woods behind the cemetery, at the base of the flowering dogwood tree. Meg was bringing Georgia fatwood to light a bonfire, Whit had been given the task of sewing herb sachets to hang on the tree as gifts to the God and Goddess, and Chelsea was going to figure out some kind of maypole. Gilly's job had been the Simple Feast, the sharing of food and drink within a circle that had been cast.

  Her father would kill her if she sneaked out of the house.

  Her gaze lit on a small ceramic vase that had once been her mother's. There was a sprig of pussywillows inside, but no water. Instead, hiding at the base, was the vial of atropine she'd taken from the R & D lab.

  "Eleven," she said into the phone. "Be there."

  They attacked him from behind. Jack had no sooner stepped out of the small halo of light cast by the lantern hanging beside the door than he was grabbed, his arms pinned behind him while fists slammed into his ribs, his belly, his face. Blood ran down his throat, tinny; he spat it back at them. He struggled to find their faces, to mark them in his mind, but they were wearing stocking caps pulled low and scarves tugged high; all Jack could see was an ocean of black, a series of hands, and wave after wave of their anger.

  *

  Addie brushed out her hair, then sprayed perfume onto her wrists and knees and navel. Jack had been gone awhile, which was strange; even stranger, she could hear an occasional crash. If it was raccoons, it was a hell of a lot of them.

  She stepped to the bedroom window and pulled back the Swiss organdy curtain. It was dark for eight o'clock, and at first she could not see Jack at all. Then a foot appeared in the yellow periphery cast by the porch light. An elbow. Finally, the entire body of a man, dressed in black, his hands bright with blood.

  "Jack," she gasped, and she reached underneath the bed for the rifle she kept there. She had used it once in twenty years--to shoot a rabid coon that had wandered into the yard where Chloe was playing. She loaded it on the run, hurrying downstairs, and threw open the front door to fire once into the night sky. Five faces turned, and their owners then ran off in disparate directions into the woods behind her house, tracks spreading like the spokes of a wheel.

  On the gravel, in a boneless, battered heap, lay Jack.

  Addie set down the gun, ran to his side, and gently rolled him over. Oh, God, she thought. What have they done to you?

  Jack coughed, his lips pulling back to show teeth shiny with blood. He tried to sit up, wincing away from Addie's hands. "No," he grit out, that one syllable staining the stars. "Noooo!"

  His cry bent back the young grass lining the driveway; it shouldered aside the violet clouds and left the moon to shiver, bare-boned. "Jack," she s