Howling In The Darkness

The woman arched an eyebrow, and then with the flick of her wrist—the cluster of cheap tin bracelets jangling—she produced a tarot card as if pulling it from thin air. She dropped the card on the table in front of Kat. It was the devil card. “I charged your friend nothing. You, however, will have to pay me for information about the man you’ve been looking for all day, but I assure you it will be worth every penny.”

Cassandra smiled at her surprise and tapped the card, drawing Kat’s attention to the devil’s face. Incredibly, it looked a whole lot like her mystery date from last night.

Chapter Three

Kat hurried after Claire, catching her as she stepped inside the diner. “I hope you don’t believe any of that mumbo-jumbo stuff. That woman just pulled the devil card out of her sleeve as if that was supposed to scare me.” Kat shook her head. “I can’t believe those people.”

“The devil card?” Claire asked, sounding worried as Kat stepped past her to slide into a booth by the window.

“A woman I met at the hospital read tarot cards,” Claire said as she took the seat opposite Kat, still looking concerned. “The devil is the fear card. It symbolizes fear of the unknown.”

Kat groaned, wishing she hadn’t said anything. “It’s just the card the woman happened to have up her sleeve, Claire. My only fear is that she said something to upset you.”

Claire didn’t seem to hear. “The devil card can also be a sign of temptation, the demonic side of you, tempting you in some way.”

Kat felt a shadow fall across the window and looked up as a man passed in front of the diner. For just an instant she thought he was her mystery date from last night. Maybe the devil was tempting her.

“Some people believe the cards reveal hidden truths and can forecast the future by opening a channel into another world,” Claire was saying as she pulled one of the plastic-covered menus from behind the condiments.

“A channel? Like HBO?” Kat asked, reaching for the other menu.

Claire laughed, the first real laugh Kat had heard out of her in years. “More like the Learning Channel.” Her friend smiled. “You shouldn’t be afraid of the cards. It isn’t as if they’re some form of sorcery.”

“I’m not afraid of the cards,” Kat said, sounding defensive. “But needing to know the future seems…dangerous to me.”

Claire disappeared behind her menu. “Haven’t you ever wondered, though, why things happen the way they do? Like if maybe there aren’t some supernatural forces at work here that decide our destinies?”

Kat realized that maybe her friend needed to believe that what had happened to her was destined—and that none of them could have done anything to stop it, especially Claire herself. Five years ago Kat, Claire, Elizabeth and two other friends, Tasha Pierce and Brie Dudley, were pledging to the top sorority on campus. On a dare, they decided to spend the night in St. John’s Cemetery next to McFarland Leary’s grave.

As part of the hazing, one of the girls had to enter a haunted mausoleum—alone. They drew lots and Claire “won.” Kat had wanted to take Claire’s place, but Claire said this was something she had to do. As soon as she entered, the girls heard a scream and rushed into the mausoleum. But there was no one there.

Searchers had combed the town and the cemetery, finding no sign of Claire. Then, two days later, she miraculously turned up in the cemetery after escaping her attacker.

Kat blamed herself because she should have insisted on taking Claire’s place. She could see Claire was frightened. Almost as if Claire had somehow sensed the danger. If you believed in that sort of thing. Some thought McFarland Leary had attacked Claire—a ghost. Whoever had hurt her friend was no ghost. He’d been a flesh-and-blood monster.

“You know me,” Kat said now. “I have trouble believing in anything I can’t see. But, wait a minute, yes, I do see a cheeseburger deluxe in my future.”

Claire peeked out from behind her menu, her smile sympathetic. “You should have your cards read sometime. You might be surprised what you find out.”

The last thing she wanted was to be surprised, Kat thought as she glanced through the window at Cassandra in her fortune-telling booth. “Even if I wanted to know the future, I’m not sure I could believe a woman who dressed like that,” she joked, again trying to lighten the mood. When she looked at her friend, she saw Claire frowning at her.

“You had the dream again, didn’t you?” Claire whispered.

Kat felt a chill. “How did you—”

“You look as if you didn’t get any sleep last night.” Claire shrugged. “Maybe I just know the look. I’ve seen it enough mornings in my mirror.”

Kat knew that Claire had had her share of nightmares.

“Do you want to talk about it?” her friend asked. “I’ve learned quite a lot about dream interpretation—”

“From your friend the tarot-card reader?” Kat guessed.

Claire smiled. “Sometimes it helps if you understand what the dream is about. I have a book I’ll drop by.”

“I know what the dream’s about,” Kat said as she looked toward the window. “My mother.” The moment she said the words, she wished she hadn’t. Her mother was thought to have been the first victim of the serial killer who’d terrorized the town twenty years ago, and perhaps was even the same man who’d attacked Claire five years ago.

“I’ve often wondered why I was spared,” Claire said. “I know he planned to kill me, too.”

Kat didn’t want to talk about this. Especially today. She knew that half the people in town, including Claire at one time, believed that the attacker had been the ghost of McFarland Leary. Kat couldn’t deal with that discussion, not today. There were enough weird things going on in her world right now without digging up Leary, no pun intended.

“You said there was something you needed to talk to me about,” Kat said, hoping to change the subject.

Claire nodded. “It’s my little brother, Tommy. I’m worried about him. He’s spending too much time with those older boys who hang out at the arcade, Razz and Dodie, and my mother is so busy with the younger children…” Claire came from a huge family with the kids ranging in age from twenty-three to three.

Kat was very relieved Claire’s request had nothing to do with ghosts or fortune-tellers. Tommy, she could handle. Tommy Cavendish was a sullen fifteen-year-old, who Kat had seen hanging out along the wharf with the boys Claire had mentioned, two locals who were always in trouble. She thought Claire probably had reason for concern.

“I think Tommy might be involved in something…illegal,” Claire said quietly.

“What makes you think that?” Kat asked.

“He’s so secretive and he has money, more money than a boy can make at his age running errands. I’ve tried to talk to him….”

Kat nodded. “Emily doesn’t listen to me either. What is it you’d like me to do?”

“I was hoping you would find out where Tommy’s getting the money,” Claire said.

Kat could see how hard it was for Claire to involve someone outside the family, even a close friend.

“I would pay you—”

“We can talk about a fee later,” Kat said, not wanting to offend Claire by refusing her money, and at the same time feeling she owed her friend.

The rest of their lunch, she and Claire chatted about Elizabeth’s wedding, their bridesmaid dresses and how lucky Elizabeth was after everything that had happened with the recent murders. How lucky they all were that Renе Rathfastar had been stopped before he killed any more young women. Moriah’s Landing, they agreed, attracted weirdos.

The one man they didn’t talk about was the one who was believed to have killed Kat’s mother and attacked Claire. That man, whom Claire hadn’t been able to identify, was still at large.

Kat noticed her friend staring across the street at the fortune-teller. “Want to tell me what Cassandra Quintana said to you?”

“She said I will find peace soon. But first I must confront my past by going back to where it all began.”

“You aren’t really going to go back to the cemetery based on what some fortune-teller told you, are you?”

“She knew what I’d been through,” Claire said, sounding a little defensive. “I could see it in her eyes. She knew.”

Sure she did. Kat wanted to tell her it didn’t take psychic powers to know about Claire’s attack. It had been in all the newspapers. Everyone knew. But advising her to go back to the cemetery…

“I think you should ask your doctor at the hospital about this first,” Kat advised.