Midnight Lullaby

by Jen Blood

  And like that, it all fell into place: The Torino sitting in the darkness outside the house. The coffee cups on the table at Jacob Deng’s home. My brother’s words: Right track, wrong train. The sacrifices had been to restore someone’s health, just as we’d ultimately suspected... Just not Bobby Davies’.

  “Keep going,” Laura said. She nodded to the stairs.

  “Laura,” I started. She jammed the gun so far into my back I half expected it to come out the other side.

  “Go,” she repeated.

  Solomon took the first step, then the next.

  It was an old cellar carved out of the limestone foundation, the walls roughhewn, the place dank with rot and mildew and age.

  And blood.

  At the center of an open space lay Maisie Dsengani, bound. The candles illuminated a naked child, her eyes wide. Blood dripped from precise cuts in her dark skin—at her shoulders, her arms, her stomach. The liquid darkened the floor beneath her, slowly seeping into the earth.

  Beside her, unconscious, also naked, lay Thibodeau’s son. His hands were open as though in supplication, even in sleep. My brother sat next to him, cross-legged, his hand on the boy’s forehead.

  Rachel knelt beside Maisie. She wore a black robe that dwarfed her, the hood nearly obscuring her face. There was a large knife with an ivory handle, dripping blood, in her right hand.

  “Rach,” Laura said. For the first time, she didn’t sound so composed.

  Rachel looked up, her eyes wild, reckless. Unhinged. “What are they—why are they here?”

  “They were outside. I didn’t know what to do,” Laura said. Maisie locked eyes with me, her own wide as she began to struggle against the ropes that bound her.

  “Get them out!” Rachel shouted. “They’ll ruin everything. Get them away from here.”

  “What am I supposed to do with them?” Laura asked. There was a hint of panic in her voice, the gun shaking almost imperceptibly in her hand. “Rach, they know.”

  “I called the police,” I interrupted. “They’ll be here soon. They know Maisie is here. It’s too late.”

  Rachel straightened so quickly it seemed impossible that she’d even moved. She stalked toward me, the knife outstretched. Her hands steady. Eyes manic.

  “How did you know?” she demanded. “Who told you?”

  I hesitated. She took another step forward, moving with that same near-inhuman speed, and grabbed Solomon’s arm. Before I could make a move, stage a protest, she sliced the blade along the flesh of Solomon’s bare forearm. Solomon cried out, pulling backward as blood filled the wound. Overflowed.

  Solomon went for her. Laura grabbed her by the hair and yanked her backward. In the chaos, I went for Laura’s gun. Blood gushed from Solomon’s arm, dripping onto the dirt floor at our feet. I caught Laura’s gun in one hand as Rachel lashed out again, wild now, her knife stabbing into the empty space between us.

  My hand closed around cool steel as Laura fought me—her body powerful, frenzied, while her sister moved with no less violence beside her. Laura forced the gun toward me. Behind her, Maisie continued fighting the ropes, animal sounds coming from her stricken throat. All the while, my brother watched. He stood now, his eyes locked on the battle.

  I caught the edge of Rachel’s robe in one hand. She had Solomon, or Solomon had her, blood staining both their clothes now.

  Laura kicked me in the knee with a steel-toed boot. The pain rocked through me in a wave. I loosened my grip on the gun. Watched as it swayed toward me.

  I heard the shot go off.

  Felt it in my gut. My spine. My bowels.

  Everyone froze.

  I waited to fall.

  “Get away from them,” I heard a man’s voice say.

  Thibodeau’s voice.

  I didn’t fall. As if in a dream, I realized finally that it wasn’t Laura’s gun that had gone off.

  A piece of plaster lay on the floor in front of Thibodeau, dust rising in a cloud around it.

  I stepped away from the sisters and back to Solomon. Her face was pale, her sleeve soaked with blood.

  “Rachel,” Thibodeau said.

  In the fray, she’d returned to Maisie. Now, she knelt beside the girl with her breath coming hard, sweat shining on her forehead. She looked up at her husband’s voice. Her eyes were wide with fear, dark with madness. The depth of the tragedy in Thibodeau’s eyes was what I couldn’t look away from, though.

  He hadn’t known.

  Maybe he’d suspected, maybe not. But it was only now that he knew for sure.

  “What are you—” Rachel began. She shook her head desperately, tears welling. Maisie screamed behind the gag, fighting the bonds that held her. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” Rachel said. Her voice broke. Madness slipped through, elbowed the wound deeper. “No, no, no,” she whispered, rocking where she knelt. She held the knife close to her chest and looked at their son, miraculously still unconscious.

  “He’s getting better,” she whispered. “You’ve seen. You know—he’s getting better, Carl.”

  “What did you do?” Thibodeau said. His gun hung at his side. He looked at Laura helplessly, then back at his wife.

  “Rachel,” he said again. His voice rose. “What the hell did you do?”

  He took a step closer. Maisie’s muffled cries escalated behind the gag, her eyes following his every move. I pulled Solomon toward me, mindful of the wound that would need attention soon.

  “You’ve seen it,” Rachel said. “He’d gotten so much worse, and then in the spring there was... I was desperate. The bone scan came back, and I thought: just try. Try this. I went to Jacob Deng, and we... One life. One goat—and remember the difference?” she asked. Pleading now, still on her knees. Thibodeau took another step, gun still in his hand. Tears tracked down his cheeks.

  “You killed Charlene,” he said softly. “Jacob.”

  “We had to,” Laura said. “You don’t know... You couldn’t understand.”

  “Shut up!” he roared suddenly, focused on her for a moment. “You have no idea what I can understand.”

  “She’s right,” Rachel said. “They had power. You know their power. I’ve studied it, read about it. Felt it. They had power, Carl. And that power... The blood from one goat, and he was better for the first time. Remember? The doctor said he couldn’t believe it. They had never expected that. And so I tried again. A month later, when he’d taken a bad turn. And it helped, Carl. That helped him. But not enough—”

  “Damn it, Rachel—you killed them. Human beings!” Thibodeau shouted it. The words echoed off the close rock walls.

  She looked at Maisie. Tears started. I watched as she took the knife and traced the blade across Maisie’s stomach. The girl screamed behind her gag, squirming as another trail of blood appeared.

  “I know it’s wrong,” Rachel said. “I loved them... You know I loved Charlene, Carl. I said prayers for them. I even left those statues—I had reverence for their lives. I did. But I am saving our child. No one else will do it. But I will. I can’t... I can’t think of anything else. Can’t imagine anything I wouldn’t do—because I can’t watch him die, Carl. I won’t.”

  She shook her head viciously, tears still falling. Doug Philbrick stood in the shadows, watching. My mother was beside Josh and Thibodeau’s son now, the three a tableau of grief and loss and golden light.

  Rachel lowered the knife again, her hand steadier. Solomon took my hand and squeezed it.

  “Don’t,” Thibodeau said to his wife.

  “The pain makes it more powerful,” she said. “Twenty-four hours. One thousand cuts. One family—the father, the mother, the child. Sefu would have believed—”

  “Except it’s not one family,” I heard myself say out loud. Rachel looked at me as though she’d forgotten I was there.

  “You don’t know,” she said. She didn’t make the cut, though.

  “She isn’t Charlene and Jacob’s child,” I continued. “She’s Lisette’s daughter. Rick Foster
’s. There’s nothing pure there—”

  She looked at Thibodeau again. “He’s lying. He’s—”

  “No,” Thibodeau said. “He’s not. It came out this last day or so. We were hoping to keep it quiet.”

  Maisie had stopped moving. Blood pooled at the gash in her stomach—she’d been cut deeper than I’d realized. Rachel stared at the girl, then looked back at her son. I saw Charlene and Jacob, whole again, hands joined, as they emerged from the darkness and took a step toward Maisie.

  Rachel pulled up the knife.

  “Rachel,” Thibodeau warned. His hand tightened convulsively around the gun.

  “He won’t die,” she said. “There’s still power. It’s ruined now, but maybe...” The blade caught the light as she lifted the knife above her head, her eyes fixed on Maisie.

  “Put it down, damn it,” Thibodeau said.

  “I’m not stopping now,” Rachel said. “Not when I’m this close.”

  With a swift, clean motion, she swept the knife down.

  Thibodeau brought his gun up, and fired.

  Epilogue

  The rest of the summer went by too fast, as summers tend to do. Bobby Davies had turned himself in later that same fateful night, and would stand trial for the murder of Rick Foster, but between his illness, an insanity plea, and all the sins that had come to light after Foster’s death, I didn’t expect him to do too much time. He did bear some blame for the deaths of Jacob Deng and Charlene Dsengani, though unwittingly so... Going through cancer treatment at the same time Rachel’s son had been, he admitted that he’d had a conversation with Rachel nearly a year before about the apparent magic he’d seen at the hands of Sefu Keita.

  “I thought we were just talking,” he said in a statement, eyes tearful, body wasted. “I had no idea she would ever take it seriously.”

  Rachel Thibodeau and Laura Edgecomb, on the other hand, would likely not fare as well with their own pleas. Detective Thibodeau had shot Rachel in the arm when she’d raised her knife that night in the basement at Applewood Farms; by all reports, she was healing well. But the brutal murders of Charlene Dsengani and Jacob Deng had left a lasting impression on the community, and there was little question that she and her sister would pay for that. I felt badly, but couldn’t find it in my heart to hope for leniency when I thought of everything both Charlene and Jacob had survived to come to America. Not to mention that Rachel had confessed to breaking into our apartment and cursing my bedroom, which I’d come to take personally by the time everything was said and done.

  Thibodeau had resigned from the police force, and the last I’d heard was staying home taking care of their son while Rachel awaited trial in a psychiatric facility, Laura in prison. There was a rumor that Jed’s lymphoma was in remission, but so far I’d been unable to verify that.

  On the last day at the paper before Solomon and I were supposed to head up the coast to try and track down her father, Buzz presented her with a suitcase filled with bags of M&Ms and premium coffee. Solomon got misty, and slugged me in the gut—hard—when I pointed it out.

  “You got everything you need?” Buzz asked her for the hundredth time that day, just before he and Alice prepared to go. Though the stitches had been removed from his throat, the scar Elias had left was impressive. I noticed that Alice hovered a little more now than she had before.

  “Got everything,” she agreed.

  “If you need a recommendation...” he began.

  “I know, Buzz—Alice will write it and sign your name. Got it.”

  “And after the work you put in this summer, I sure as hell hope you don’t consider taking another internship with anyone short of maybe the Times. You have a paid position here anytime.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He hugged her one more time, kissed her cheek, and nodded to Alice. “All right. Let’s get the hell out of here. You two okay to close up shop one last time?”

  “I think we can handle it,” I said.

  We stood together and watched them leave for only a moment before I shut the door. Solomon looked serious and sad as she returned to her desk.

  “Maybe I should just stay here,” she said. “I’ll learn more on the job, anyway, than in a classroom. Everyone knows that.”

  “You’re not staying. Even if it wasn’t a dumb idea, Buzz would never let you hang out here instead of going back to Wellesley.”

  She hopped up on my desk, frowning. I sat down beside her.

  “It was a good summer,” I said.

  She leaned her head on my shoulder, and an ache—visceral, bone-deep—ran through me. I hadn’t seen my ghosts since the night Thibodeau shot his wife. Since then, Philbrick, Elias, Charlene and Jacob...even my brother, all seemed to have gone back into whatever dark recesses of my own mind they’d come from. At night sometimes, though, lying in bed with Solomon in my arms, I thought about that car ride to the hospital, and my brother’s hand on mine.

  I didn’t believe in ghosts, but it was impossible to deny just how deeply I wanted to believe in him.

  “It was a great summer,” Solomon corrected me. “Maybe you could come to Boston. There are papers there, you know.”

  “If I were staying...” I began. She nodded. After the stories that we’d broken with Foster’s death and the ritual murders, I was gradually pulling my career from the sinkhole it had slipped into in Baja. Job offers were starting to come in—the most recent from a surf magazine based in New Zealand I’d applied to months before.

  “Maybe we can both come back and work here next summer,” I said.

  Solomon just looked at me. “Maybe.” ‘No’ was clearly what she meant by that—and not because she didn’t want to, I knew. But because a summer like this, as shitty as much of it had been, wasn’t the kind of thing you could follow up. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

  She hopped off the desk and went to the bulletin board. She paused at a postcard of a wolf in winter, surrounded by his pack.

  “You can take that if you want,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of room for keepsakes in my duffel.”

  The postcard had come two weeks after Maisie had been released from the hospital, and one week after she, Lisette, and Wolf dropped out of sight. On the back, written in block letters, were a few simple words:

  All’s well that ends well. – L, W, M

  I imagined the three of them, all carrying scars even time could never fully heal, living out their lives somewhere far from here. It would be somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. The closest anyone could come to a happy ending in a story like this.

  “Thanks,” Solomon said. “This one too?” She indicated a newspaper clipping. The headline read, Dsengani Survivor Returns to Portland to Continue the Fight.

  “I want to keep that one, actually. You’ve got a copy, right? It’s my favorite thing you wrote this summer.”

  Mary Dsengani stared out beneath the subhead, her dark eyes determined, her mouth set in a firm line. She’d returned the day after the story of Maisie’s survival hit the news, and announced soon after that she would take Laura Edgecomb’s place at Applewood Farms.

  I have lived through many things, Mary told us in our interview, shortly after she’d made the announcement. And always I have run. My sister did not run. My sister would want me to stay, for this place. She is only a ghost to me now, but still she whispers wisdom to me. This time, I will stay. I will not run again.

  I went to Solomon and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, pulling her to me. She was too young to hold onto now—there were things we both needed to do, places we needed to see. But there was part of me that longed for the future... A reason to stop running all my own.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “We going anyway?”

  She looked up at me, sad and trying to hide it, the same M.O. I was going with. “Promise me one thing,” she said.

  I kissed her nose. “Anything.”

  “Promise me this isn’t the end of ou
r story.”

  I slid my hand down her smooth cheek, and barely gave it a moment’s thought before I answered. “I can all but guarantee it, Sol. Our story hasn’t even started yet.”

  All the Blue-Eyed Angels

  Turn the page for a free sample of All the Blue-Eyed Angels, the first novel in the bestselling, now-complete Erin Solomon Pentalogy. In Angels, readers fast forward to 2012, twelve years after the events of Midnight Lullaby.

  Jonestown. The Solar Temple. Heaven’s Gate. In the summer of 1990, the Payson Church of Tomorrow joins the ranks of those infamous cult suicides when thirty-four members burn to death on a small island off the coast of Maine. At ten years old, Payson member Erin Solomon watches helplessly as the church and its congregation are reduced to ash and embers.

  More than twenty years later, Erin is an accomplished investigative journalist when she receives word that she has inherited Payson Isle... and all its ghosts. She returns to Maine to learn the truth behind the tragedy that has haunted her since childhood, aided by the rakish mentor who’s stood by her side since she was a teenager, her trusty mutt Einstein, and a mysterious stranger with his own dark past.

  Soon, Erin is enmeshed in a decades-old conspiracy rooted in lust, delusion, and betrayal, as she fights to unearth the secrets of the Payson Church of Tomorrow—secrets someone will kill to keep buried.

  Prologue

  AUGUST 22, 1990

  On my tenth birthday, I am baptized by fire.

  I race through a forest of smoke, ignoring the sting of blackberry brambles and pine branches on sensitive cheeks and bare arms. Up ahead, I catch a glimpse of my father’s shirt, drenched and muddy, as he races through the woods. I follow blindly, too terrified to scream, too panicked to stop.

  A figure in black chases us, gaining on me fast. At ten years old, raised in the church, I am certain that it is the devil himself. He wears a hooded cloak; I imagine him taking flight at my heels, reaching for me with gnarled fingers. I run faster, my breath high in my chest, trees speeding past. The air gets thicker and harder to breathe the closer we get to the fire, but I don’t stop.