Burning Books

by Sharon Gerlach

  He sighed heavily. She could see him in her mind’s eye, holding a hand to his face, fingertips pressing on his closed eyelids as though she were causing him a headache.

  “You’re reaching, making connections out of common coincidences. I don’t think you should do this.”

  “Duly noted. But I need to know.”

  “Please reconsider. You could be caught and charged for breaking and entering.”

  Everyone she knew would frown upon it, Molly thought after he’d disconnected. It would be humiliating to face Harvey Cohen after being arresting for B&E—it would be humiliating to face anyone after that. But the urgency to search for those trophies, to set her mind at ease about her brother and to finally put a face to Cecily’s name, could not be denied.

  The shadows from her bedside lamp limned the ceiling clouds in grey, turning them to storm clouds. Her eyes followed a swirl, and then another, and another, ending at the crevice where the wall met the ceiling. A smudge bled up from the yellow wall and onto the ceiling, looking like a bird. A graceful blue bird flapping away from the sun and into the storm.

  Molly sat up slowly. Her heart thudded. Why was there a blue smudge on her ceiling? And why had she never noticed it before? She slid off the bed and walked across the room, turned on her cell-phone flashlight app, and aimed it at the ceiling. Pale, powder-blue paint. The color of the broken door in the garage.

  She laid a hand on the wall. Pale yellow, like the paint-smeared cans on the shelf in the garage.

  Her room had been painted and her door broken, but she couldn’t remember either. It, like everything else of great import in her life, lay in the missing year.

  She changed into more comfortable lounge clothes, set an alarm on her phone to wake her up in a few hours, and lay back down. As weary as both body and brain were, sleep stayed just out of reach. Her mind whirled in the same ever-looping circle: Magnus sustaining a knife injury around the same time Genevieve died from multiple stab wounds. Finding the niche in Cary’s study just after reading how Cecily found one in her husband’s. Magnus despising Genevieve and the way she talked down to Molly. Cary buying takeout from the same restaurant as Genevieve on the same night she was attacked.

  But Magnus couldn’t have sustained the knife wound while killing Viv. And Cary had seemed surprised to find the niche. His dad lived in the house before him. Cary had mentioned his mother only once and never by name. Maybe the diaries were hers. Maybe he hadn’t mentioned her because she went into hiding after divorcing his father. And Cary’s father was one odd individual; no one could deny that. Odd enough to be a serial killer? She couldn’t judge from her limited interaction with him.

  Magnus . . . Cary . . . Ed . . . Magnus . . . Cary . . . Ed . . . Magnus . . . Cary . . . Ed . . .

  Over and over, round and round, until her brain, exhausted and reeling, shut down in midthought.

  She walked until the detritus that littered the forest floor tore her feet so much that she could no longer bear the pain. Then she crawled, dragging herself over the jagged ground, inch after torturous inch, the air so frigid, she couldn’t feel the fresh wounds torn into her flesh by the sharp stones, broken branches, and pinecones. An embankment loomed ahead. Laboriously, she drew herself over the edge. Down the embankment and a few feet to crawl lay Shangri-la in the form of a muddy logging road.

  The embankment was steeper than she’d estimated. Her forward momentum rolled her down, over stones and branches that jabbed deep and punctured more skin. She pulled herself from the dangerous edge of the trees and through the mud into the middle of the road, where she rolled onto her back and stared up at the waning autumn sun.

  The brilliant, blazing orange and scarlet mantles over the forest dulled in the dimming light as the vivid blue of the sky faded to indigo. She blinked, and when she next opened her eyes, it was night. Black, cold, starless night.

  Then she realized she was in her room, staring up at the darkened ceiling, cold because hadn’t turned up the furnace before lying down and she’d thrown off her blanket in her sleep. The details of the dream were already hazy, but she could still feel where every stone jabbed her skin, where every stick drew blood, where every pinecone shredded skin.

  But that, too, faded as she sat up and clicked on her lamp, banishing the shadows from the room. As though on cue, her phone alarm blared. She tapped it to turn it off. Ten p.m. Magnus should be on his way or already at dinner with Cecily before their midnight movie.

  She used the bathroom and took only enough time to quickly brush her teeth and hair and dash cold water over her face to dispel the foggy aftereffects of her nap, then slipped into fleece-lined black leggings and a black sweater. Her black knee boots weren’t designed for schlepping through the elements, but she donned them, anyway, lacking more appropriate footgear. Her dark hair secured in a ponytail and one of Magnus’s dark-colored beanies crammed onto her head, she was ready for sleuthing.

  Or breaking and entering, as Cary had called it. She couldn’t dispute that. That she felt justified in illegally breaching Cecily’s house again wouldn’t matter one iota to the authorities should she be caught. She would just have to make sure she wasn’t caught.

  Her nap seemed to have broken the endless circle in which her thoughts had travelled earlier, and she was better able to view with some objectivity her suspicions, which now seemed more like stress-induced paranoia. Magnus was right that the books had become an obsession for her; they had, to the point she was attempting to apply the story to real life.

  She drove to Cecily’s, anyway, parked a block away, and walked past the cottage, keeping to a brisk pace and to the other side of the street. No cars in Cecily’s long driveway. No lights on in her house, either; only the glow of the front porch light. The circle of light didn’t reach the edges of her property; Molly would be able to keep to the shadows and access the property from the street rather than the frightening alley she’d run through last time. Dark rain clouds scudded across the moon, dimming its light as though complicit in her criminal endeavors.

  Because the house sat closer to one edge of the property than it did the other, she circled on the wider side, passing the lush garden beds. The wind pushed the clouds from the moon, illuminating the yard. Molly crossed the lawn and hunkered low in the shadow of the house, creeping to the corner of the cottage, peering around it cautiously. No one in the alley. No one in the backyard. She straightened, her hand dipping into her pocket to retrieve the jackknife she’d swiped from Magnus’s room before she left. If he’d repaired the screen, she’d have to rip it again to get in. Supposing, of course, that the sliding door was unlocked this time.

  She raised a foot to take a step, just as an arm came across her chest and a hand clamped over her mouth. A hard, lean body against her back prevented escape, and a harsh voice rasped in her ear.

  “Don’t scream.”

  ∞2∞

  “What the bloody hell are you doing, Molly?”

  The hand fell away. Molly dragged in a steadying breath as Cary spun her around to face him.

  “It will only take a minute,” she hissed.

  “If you can even get in the house. Plus, I could be wrong, but I think there’s an alarm system.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The ADT sticker on the front window was my first clue.” He tugged on her arm. “Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee and talk.”

  Her chin jutted out, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “About what?”

  “About your growing obsession and paranoia, for starters. You don’t see it, Molly, but I do, because I’m trained to see it.” He glanced around. “While we’re trespassing isn’t the time to talk about this. Come on. Please.”

  “How did you know where—ah. You followed me.” She couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from her voice.

  “You could say I took a leaf from your book,” he pointed out sharply. “Let’s go. Now.”

  There was no defying him—he was bigger and strong
er, and she wouldn’t put it past him to employ physical force. She walked complacently back to her car, aware of his silent disapproval as he strode beside her. She sent a withering glance at his car, parked right behind hers.

  “Coffee?” he prompted.

  “No. I’ll just go home.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  She glared at him.

  “You can hardly blame me.”

  “What’s to stop me from coming back after you leave?”

  About to open his car door, he let his hand drop and stalked back to her, crowding her against the side of her car and jailing her there with his arms.

  “Would you like my professional opinion, Molly?”

  She lifted a brow. “As an anthropologist, a psychiatrist, or an occult expert?”

  “Can we dispense with the flip attitude? I’m serious. Will you listen to me, or do I just walk away and wait to hear from you when you get out of jail?”

  “You assume I’d be caught.”

  “I recognize the high odds that you’ll be caught. I don’t know Cecily, but I do know Magnus. Are you absolutely certain he wouldn’t call the police and have you hauled off for trespassing, especially considering the current state of your relationship?”

  No, she wasn’t sure. As a matter of fact, she was pretty sure he was so frustrated with her at this point that he wouldn’t hesitate to let Cecily call the authorities. Somehow Cary had dialed into that vibe just from the things she’d told him. It rankled a bit for him to side with Magnus despite Magnus’s hostility toward him.

  “Molly, please.”

  “Cary.”

  His voice dropped to a sensual purr. “Please.”

  She shivered. It was disgusting how her resistance to him dipped into negative numbers when he used that tone. Was he even aware of doing it, of dropping into seduction mode by just a change in the timbre of his voice? Or was his magnetism so ingrained that he employed it subconsciously?

  “Please what?”

  “Listen to me.”

  “I’m listening.” Then she realized what he meant. “Right here? Now?”

  “I am not one to ignore the advantage of a captive audience.”

  He brought his hands up to frame her face, peering down at her with a grave expression. His fingers were cold. The darkness leeched the color from his eyes and rendered them a patchwork of shaded grey.

  “I am worried about the effect those books are having on you. They are fast becoming an obsession. You’re assigning to real life sensations, thoughts, and feelings that you’re reading.”

  Ouch. She had already surmised as much herself, but it stung to have his psychiatric opinion confirm it.

  “I don’t know if the intent of the magic is to trap you in fantasy, or to distract you while something worse is set in motion when you’re not paying attention. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is this isn’t healthy for you emotionally or mentally. It’s equally unhealthy for Magnus. As often as you insist you love him, I’d think that you would give up the books, knowing how distressed he is over them.”

  She stared back in blank shock. Had he really just suggested what she thought he had? “You’re asking me to stop reading them.”

  “I’m asking you to assess the risk to everyone involved should you continue reading them. And what about the Augury Group—have you forgotten what my dad told you about them?”

  “But—”

  “Molly, shut up.” She did. “It’s very hard to watch you jittering apart, knowing there are strange forces out there causing it and not knowing the reasons, but knowing that everything depends on your complicity. You ignite it; you set things in motion by reading and burning the books. It’s a deliberate choice. I know you’re compelled to by the magic, but there are precautions you could take to dampen its pull. I’m just asking you to resist the compulsion to read and burn the books, and take some time to give this situation some really deep thought.”

  Her cheeks burned. Half of her wanted to cling to her defiance, but the other half let her shoulders slump and gave up the fight. He cared; that was obvious. And because of that, she could compromise.

  But later, after he’d seen her safely into her house and kissed her good night and the charismatic pull of his personality subsided, she lay alone in her darkened bedroom, watching the tree limbs perform their disjointed ballet in the patches of moonlight across her ceiling. And she thought of Genevieve crawling over the muddy ground of Seventy-Six Gulch, brutalized and terrified and alone, and she knew she’d try again when Cary wasn’t there to stop her.

  ∞

  A cosmological conspiracy seemed to foil Molly’s plans for the next two weeks. Magnus bounced between the house and Cecily’s cottage, his mood so foul the first couple of days that Molly kept clear of him. The surliness faded to a strange, quiet resignation, but when Molly attempted some gentle prying, his mouth formed that sardonic curve that clearly accused her of meddling, so she let the subject go and didn’t bring it up again.

  She spent two more uneasy nights at Cary’s in his guest room, and he spent a couple in her bed when his kids were with his in-laws. She met Lynda the day after her abortive attempt to raid Cecily’s photo albums and talked to her a couple of times on the phone, but otherwise, Lynda had been scarce. Observing her at Genevieve’s graveside service, nine days after Viv’s death, Molly thought she looked abnormally healthy and happy. No dark circles underscoring her eyes, no paleness of grief, no glaze of lingering shock in her eyes—not that they’d been great friends with Viv. Still, she’d have thought at least a show of solemnity was in order. When Lynda caught her scrutiny, a fine blush crept from under her collar, staining her throat and cheeks a blotchy red. Ah. Must be a man. She wondered if it was Magnus but refused to ask. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t meddle. Couldn’t suffocate.

  A knot of black-garbed relatives huddled together, white-knuckled hands clutching umbrellas as talismans against the billowing black clouds overhead. Harvey Cohen hovered at the edge of this knot, surveilling the crowd and bringing an element of clinical detachment to Viv’s send-off.

  “I’ve heard about this on those crime shows,” Lynda murmured when the service was over, leaning close to Molly so her voice wouldn’t carry. “They watch the crowd, looking for any suspicious behavior. Killers often attend their victims’ funerals.”

  “It seems rather . . . cold. Like it’s robbing the dignity from the deceased.”

  “Their dignity was already robbed, Mols,” Lynda said darkly. “Come on, let’s say goodbye to Brenda and get the hell out of here. I need a drink.”

  Getting to Brenda was harder than anticipated. At the center of a protective circle of fierce-looking friends, as though Viv’s murderer was poised to strike her down right in the middle of the funeral, Brenda clutched a lace-trimmed handkerchief she used to blot her tears.

  “If I hadn’t wanted beef chow yuk and sweet-and-sour chicken, this never would have happened. She never would have been at Southcenter where she could have been kidnapped.”

  Lynda brazenly breached the friends, circling one arm around Brenda’s neck and holding her cheek-to-sopping-cheek for a moment. But Molly hung back, nausea coiling in her gut. Beef chow yuk? Cary and she had eaten that, sitting in his bed. And he had eaten sweet-and-sour chicken for lunch the next day—she knew because he’d been texting her while he was reheating it.

  “What do you mean, Brenda?”

  “I’m the one who asked Viv to go get takeout from Mayflower China. The Autumn Family Style Dinner, like we always get. She didn’t want to go, but I was being bitchy, and . . . It’s all my fault, Molly.”

  Brenda began to wail in earnest. Mechanically, Molly edged around Lynda and hugged her. Inside, her mind was screaming out the coincidences, too many to be ignored. But ignore them she did, at least for the moment, because she couldn’t bear to examine them too closely while facing Viv’s grieving friends and relatives. Then Brenda’s companions closed the circle around her
again, leaving Molly and Lynda on the outside, watching silently as they moved her toward a waiting car.

  “I hate funerals,” Lynda muttered finally. “Never die, Mols. I don’t know that I could stand all the maudlin sentimentality and self-recrimination.”

  She managed a smile. As Lynda drove them to a quiet bar for a fortifying glass of wine, Molly tapped out a text to Cary: Lyn and I are going to grab takeout for dinner—what was it you got the other night? It was good. She dropped her phone in her sweater pocket, dreading the answer. Dreading it so much, in fact, that she didn’t look at her phone again until she was home again and alone in her bedroom, away from Lynda’s uncomfortable scrutiny and Magnus’s fractious presence. Cold from the inside out, skin prickling with icy sweat, she took out her phone as though it were nitroglycerin, swiped across her lock screen, and read his reply.

  Some combination thing. I can’t find the receipt now. It was crazy-busy, and I told them to give me whatever the lady in front of me had because it smelled good.

  Hardly confirmation of either guilt or innocence. And what was she thinking, anyway? That Cary had kidnapped Genevieve, mutilated her and left her for dead in Seventy-Six Gulch, and stole her takeout?

  She sank to the floor at the foot of the bed, arms braced on her upraised knees, forehead pressed against her arms. She was tired and confused and still reeling from Genevieve’s murder. That had to be why she was seeing suspects in everyone around her.

  A quiet knock on her door brought her head up just as her bedroom door eased open. Magnus peered around it hesitantly. Molly smiled weakly.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself. Lynda asked me to check on you. She said you were acting strange today.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You don’t look all right.”

  He edged into the room and took a couple of cautious steps toward her. When she didn’t protest, he crossed the rest of the distance between them and lowered himself to the floor beside her, leaving a prudent distance between them. Molly laid her head back down on her arms.