As she passed Jesse at the doorway his eyes followed her. Her guilt burned brighter. What had he seen? Malcolm, coming down the stairs, spread his hands and demanded, “What??” Eyes down, she shook her head.
In the living room was Tomás with his prickly glare. Nothing to do with KerriAnne! He knows Charla thinks I’m hers for the taking, that’s all! She hated his self-effacing meekness and, for a shameful moment, his slight Mexican accent. He acted like Charla’s servant instead of her husband.
She opened the door of the guest room where their things still were and drew back as Charla, hunched on the edge of the bed, jerked her head up, tears of mortification squeezing from her eyes.
Charla slapped on a belligerent mask to deny what she had only minutes ago realized but soft hope danced in the corners of her eyes. Sally’s heart hammered. So brave in battle, she dreaded the outfall of yelling at someone. (Leave this house and never return‼!)
But the way Charla’s arms twitched as if Sally might throw herself into them with helpless passion made her rage surge. “You bitch,” she said murderously, happy to throw KerriAnne’s word at someone who deserved it more.
Charla battened down, so menacing that Sally’s heart quailed, and opened her mouth to say something like, “Well, you’re a fine one to talk, felchin’ pervert.” All Sally’s disappointed hero worship, misery and growing subconscious dread of this house, poured out in a torrent.
“I Don’t Want You! I’m in love, deeply in love! Do you even know what that is? I’m not available just because I’m the first dyke you’ve ever seen! I don’t just have sex with anybody!” I’m not KerriAnne! (But she’d looked so tenderly at Jeremy…)
Charla started one more smug pronouncement and Sally (it was easier than letting Charla say it) grabbed her blouse and yanked her face to face. Charla’s body jerked as Sally yelled, “Just take your fucked up sexual repressions and, and quit fucking around with me! Find some woman who’ll actually want you!” She heard a soft breath and realized Tomás was in the hall behind her. Cheeks red, she added, “Or maybe give a little heart to the marriage you’re in!” But Tomás walked quickly away again.
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Shaking, she let go and waited for Charla to attack. But Charla sat numb. Awkwardly, Sally said, “Move please, our stuff is under the bed.” Charla lifted her legs obediently. As Sally left with her duffel bag Charla said, “This is yours too,” pulled something from between her feet and held it out with carefully neutral distaste.
Sally started. It was a pentagram carved from deep golden wood, decorated with arrows and little people and Sally had found it day before yesterday in the curio shop run by Jesse and Walter’s rainbow hippy neighbor. She’d reluctantly bought it because of a weird story behind it but she’d stuck it under the bed. If she remembered it when she left, she’d told herself, then she was meant to take it. This morning she’d forgotten all about it … and now Charla handed it to her. She pocketed it without a word and turned again to leave.
Charla gasped, “I, I….”
Sally had never been able to walk away from someone who still wanted to speak. She waited with the meekness she hated in Tomás.
“I, I didn’t…” Charla tried brokenly, shook her head and but couldn’t go on.
Sally felt KerriAnne’s slap. She muttered, “Look, I didn’t mean…” But what hadn’t she meant?
Through the closed bathroom door, Tomás sobbed voicelessly. He was probably sitting on the toilet, bent forward with the weight of his misery.
Sally just wanted to get out. “I’m sorry,” she said brusquely, to the unseen Tomás as much as to Charla, and wrenched herself away. She walked quickly through the living room, noticing sadly that Jesse and Walter were sitting apart again, not looking at each other.
“Hey, what?” Malcolm called, but she clumped down the stairs again and walked out. She hurried across the open space before any vampires in the garden could realize she was alone and climbed with relief into the familiar camper. “Let’s go park somewhere else, now.”
Lavinia nodded and started the roaring motor.
Why was she so eager to get far away? She felt again KerriAnne’s slap, saw her sister’s outrage and Jeremy’s haunted face. Sally told herself she hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of; KerriAnne was just being her usual twisted self.
But slowly another explanation took shape for everything that had happened.
Sally’s jaw physically dropped as things rearranged themselves into a sinister pattern where KerriAnne was right.
She played over the events of the evening. It all fit. KerriAnne’s outrage, Jeremy’s blank stare, Jesse and Walter’s new estrangement. Everything fit.
And if so, even though she knew none of the details, she could almost see the scene that had played out two weeks ago when Jeremy faced the monster he had brought back to life….