Chapter 17

17

DECLAN

W hen I first saw the old alarm clock with bright red digits beside the bed in the Castillos’ guest room, I thought it was charming. Now, at 2:45 a.m., it’s mocking me. The bright red numbers are like eyes staring at me in the dark, taunting me with every minute that passes. While the rest of Grove Meadow sleeps, I keep turning over the day’s events.

I can’t stop my mind from racing, going in circles around the same impossible truths.

Carolina Castillo is a witch.

So is her sister, and they have a talking cat and a reticulated python as pets.

Elijah Thorton is dead, and it’s likely all of the other people who went missing are too.

We still don’t know who’s behind the disappearances, but a demon under a truth spell said it wasn’t other demons, which left…humans or witches.

Carolina Castillo is a witch.

The thought loops in my head like a broken record. Again and again, the cycle turns in my head, even when I beg it to stop. I try to think rationally, to piece it all together like a puzzle, but every time I get close to clarity, another piece shifts out of place.

I should be afraid of Carolina and Camila, but I can’t bring myself to be. It was clear that if they wanted to harm me, they would have done so already.

Or, at the very least, if they wanted to keep me away from them, they could have cast a spell on me. But they didn’t, and Carolina told me her secret. Showed me her secret. That had to mean something.

Trust . That’s what it had to be. Why else would she have let me in on a world I didn’t even know existed?

Maybe they trusted me.

Not that I’d given them a reason to. I’d come here to interrogate them and close this case. While I was getting closer to doing the latter, I never imagined investigating the girls would turn into…this.

When the mocking red digits turn to 3:00 a.m., the screaming starts, and I jump out of bed. The sound rips through the silence, sharp and panicked. My heart jumps into my throat, and adrenaline surges through me before my brain even registers what’s happening.

I grab my gun from the bedside drawer and slowly walk to the door. Every muscle in my body is tense, hyperaware of the smallest sounds. I grimace when a floorboard creaks under my weight but continue down the hallway and end up in front of Carolina’s door—the source of the cacophony.

Her screams are like nothing I’ve ever heard before—raw, guttural, like she’s being torn apart from the inside. I don’t knock before opening the door.

The room is dark, but the curtain in front of her window is open, so it lets in some of the light from the moon, and I can make out her shape in the bed. Carolina’s screams have turned to wails of agony, like something is hurting her, but there’s nothing in the room, and she’s asleep.

Just a nightmare.

Relief floods through me, but it’s short-lived. If this is what her nightmares are like, I can’t even imagine what she’s been through.

Placing my gun on her bedside table, I see she has the same alarm clock, and I wonder if it plagues her as much as it does me. That same red glow, unfeeling, as if it’s mocking both of us now.

“Carolina,” I whisper, sitting on the edge of her bed and reaching out to grip her arm to wake her from her dream. My hand hovers for a second before I touch her, unsure if this is the right way to help, but I can’t just sit back and do nothing.

But when I touch her, I’m not in her bedroom anymore. Everything shifts. The air changes, and suddenly, I’m somewhere else entirely, somewhere that feels too warm for comfort. Heat presses down on me, stifling and thick, like the walls are closing in. I tug at my shirt, but I’m not wearing one, and I’m looking down at Carolina, who’s pulling on a dress.

Her hair is different—longer, maybe. Her face is familiar, but there’s something…older about her. This isn’t the Carolina I know.

I don’t mean to move, but I’m suddenly helping her lace up the back with an expertise I didn’t know I had. My hands move with a skill I’ve never learned, tying the intricate laces with precision. It’s like I’ve done this a hundred times before, but I know I haven’t.

The room we’re in is quickly filling with smoke, but I feel oddly calm. The smoke should make me panic, but it doesn’t. There’s a sense of resignation settling over me, like this was always going to happen.

The emotion is opposite to the one written on Carolina’s face when she turns to face me. There’s fear in her eyes, but there’s something else—urgency.

“You need to leave,” she says quickly.

And then, just like that, everything snaps back into place. The clock blinks 3:03 a.m. in its big bright red digits, and Carolina is staring at me with a look of horrified wonder, our faces inches from each other. I’m close enough to feel her breath against my skin, and for a moment, I forget how to move, how to think.

Her breath fans across my face as she tries to regain control of her breathing.

“You were screaming,” I explain, pulling away from her and choosing not to tell her what I saw. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.

I register that I shouldn’t be able to see her this clearly, but there’s a floating orb of light that wasn’t there when I first entered the room. It hovers above us, casting a soft glow, but I don’t remember it being there before. My mind is spinning too much to focus on it.

My gaze goes back to her as her big brown eyes search my face. She’s still trying to get her breathing under control, and I notice the thin sheen of sweat that covers her skin. The way the light catches on her damp skin makes her look almost ethereal, but there’s a fragility to her in this moment that makes my chest ache.

Whatever I saw must have been different than whatever she saw, and that made everything much more confusing. The fear in her eyes isn’t the same as mine. We weren’t in the same nightmare, that much is clear.

Carolina puts a hand to her chest as if feeling herself inhale and exhale will help her force air into her lungs. Her breaths are shallow, shaky, like she’s still trapped in whatever nightmare gripped her. I know nothing I do will help her, so I just study her expression.

It’s an amalgam of things. Confusion. Terror. Concern. It’s like she doesn’t know how to process what just happened, and neither do I. But my presence here…I’m not sure it’s helping her calm down.

“I get nightmares. I should have warned you. Camila sleeps with earplugs in most nights.” Her voice is quiet, almost apologetic, like she feels bad for disturbing me.

The idea of her going through this, night after night, alone, twists something inside me. “Do you want to tell me about them?”

“Not really.” Her hand trembles slightly as she runs it through her hair, and I notice how exhausted she looks. It’s like she’s carrying the weight of a thousand sleepless nights.Her hair is loose around her oversized T-shirt-covered shoulders, but the baby hairs on her hairline stick to the sweat on her forehead.

“Can I get you anything?” She shakes her head. “Okay,” I reply, standing.

“What are you doing?” Her voice is that of startled confusion.

I raise my eyebrows at her in question as I situate myself on the floor beside her bed. “Going to bed.”

“On the floor? Why?”

Her flustered confusion makes me want to laugh, but I hold it back. It’s not like I had a grand plan here, but I wasn’t sleeping in the other room, so I might as well stay here. I didn’t feel like going back to that guest room with its mocking alarm clock. Being near her, even in silence, felt…right.

“In case you need me.” The words come out without much thought, but there’s truth in them. I don’t want to leave her alone tonight. She frowns at me and looks like she’s going to argue, so I say, “And it’s good for my back.”

Carolina leans back in her bed, and the mysterious floating light extinguishes. Even though the floor is cold, possibly giving me a splinter, and I’m only in a T-shirt and boxers, I’m already more comfortable than in the other room.

The tension that had been coiled so tightly inside me begins to unwind, and I can feel the pull of sleep tugging at me. It’s now a struggle to keep my eyes open, and when I finally give up, I dream of Carolina.

The next morning, I don’t wake up on the floor of Carolina’s bedroom; I wake up in her bed. She’s not in it, though. I’m sprawled out on my stomach in the middle of the mattress. The scent of her—cinnamon and vanilla—lingers on the pillows and sheets, wrapping around me like a cocoon. I let myself sink into it for a moment, savoring it.

My mind affords me the luxury of basking in the scent before it propels me into the previous day’s memories, making me realize I have no idea how I got into this bed in the first place.

I probably shouldn’t be getting hard over a witch’s scent. That’s probably not good. Especially Carolina’s, who I was pretty sure wished I would just go back to the West Coast and forget everything about Grove Meadow.

But I can’t forget her. And that’s the problem.

Begrudgingly, I drag myself from the bed, flip off the clock that reads 8:46 a.m., and go back to the guest room to shower and dress. I’ll have to stop by my place to get fresh clothes before I go to the station and figure out what to do about Elijah and the rest of this situation.

I should go straight to get my car still parked across from the alley, and then to the hotel where I’m staying to change my clothes, but I go into the shop anyway .

“Morning, Detective,” Camila says as she pulls an espresso shot for someone I don’t recognize. Her smile is bright, her voice cheery, but I can’t help but feel a little disoriented by how normal everything feels after last night. “Lina had some errands to run, so just me here. Can I get you a cup to go?”

“Sure, I’ll try one of those medicine balls, finally.”

Camila shakes her head and passes the to-go cup to the waiting customer. “Here you go, ma’am. Thanks for stopping in.”

The woman leaves, and Camila fixes me with a stare. I grin at her. “They’re not teas, are they?”

“Obviously not.” Camila rolls her eyes while she pours a drip coffee into a to-go cup for me.

On my way out the door, I glance over at one of the paintings on the wall. It’s one of those pieces that looks simple at first, but the more you look, the more you notice. It’s a landscape painting of a park during the fall, but a snake is wrapped around the branch, and a cat is swatting at it. I narrow my eyes at it, just like I had the first time I saw it, but this time, I know what I’m looking for.

“Bye Camila…and Silas and Luna.”

“Goodbye, Declan.” Camila’s laughter follows me out the door, light and easy, like everything is perfectly normal.

Why couldn’t I like the nice sister? It just had to be the one with the snake. Fate was cruel.

When I get to the station, Bas is deep in investigation mode. His desk looks like a crime scene of its own—files and papers scattered everywhere, his phone pressed between his ear and shoulder while he types furiously on the keyboard. His cuticle beds are jagged and bright red.

“What did I miss?” I ask when he hangs up the phone.

“Elijah Thorton is missing.” There’s an edge to his voice as he shuffles through his files. “No one knows where he was last night, so we can’t figure out where he might have disappeared.”

“Who called it in?”

As far as I knew from Carolina and Camila, Elijah didn’t have anyone checking in on him. I thought it would be at least a full day before someone reported him missing, if not longer.

“I did,” Bas says, leaning back in his chair and running a hand through his hair. There’s so much product in it that I’m surprised his fingers don’t get caught. “I went to Owen Donovan’s house to ask his family about those Wednesday meetings like you asked me to, and it turns out he was going to AA meetings at Hazel’s Inn with the other victims. They didn’t tell us about them originally because they were embarrassed, but they admitted it when I asked specifically about those nights. They also mentioned that they knew Elijah was also attending them. So, I went over to Elijah’s last night, and he wasn’t home. I went back again this morning, and there was no sign of him. No one’s seen him since yesterday afternoon when he was tinkering in his driveway.”

I raise my brows. “And it’s not normal for him to go visit friends or family in a neighboring town? We’re sure he’s missing?”

If this were anyone else, we’d need to wait 48 hours to issue a missing person report, so the fact that Bas wasn’t waiting was curious. Unless he knew something about Elijah that other people didn’t.

“It’s not likely. He doesn’t have any family, and I don’t know of any out-of-town friends.”

“Well, who saw him last?”

Bas flips open the report and passes it to me. I glance at the notes, each one a confirmation of what I already knew. Elijah had been alive yesterday. A number of people saw Elijah working on something in his garage in the afternoon. His garage door was closed after sunset, and no one saw him after that.

I slide the file back onto his desk. “We should definitely investigate, but this might not be our next vic, Bas. Weird shit is happening in this town. He might just have wanted to get out of dodge.”

He shakes his head at me in frustration. “You’re all about your gut, right? Intuition?” he asks, leaning forward and pressing his index finger on the report. “Well, my gut is telling me that something’s wrong here, and we should be looking for Elijah.”

My stomach feels like it’s bottoming out. I’d seen my share of victims and missing person cases, but to know that someone wasn’t coming back and having to lie about it…

“Okay, Bas,” I say with a resigned sigh. “You take lead on this.”

Bas nods. “Thanks, O’Reilly,” he says, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair and heading out.

My hand twitched to call Carolina and give her a heads up about Bas, but no doubt her phone records would be evidence if she ever ended up in a trial.

It didn’t matter. All that was left of Elijah Thorton was a pile of ash anyway.

I grab Elijah’s file from Bas’s desk to look over, and underneath it is a business card I hadn’t noticed before.

I quickly type “Esme Briarwood” and “Thorn I drew the line at investigating my partner.