Julian threw his hand up to Phoenix, and Phoenix nodded from behind the bar.
Then the Heathens were gone.
Kane snapped his eyes back over briefly with a devious smile.
“That was freaking amazing,” Adora said, coming before me, breaking my narrowed gaze on Kane and peeling me from the spot under the dartboard. She led me toward the bar as Kane talked to his friends, all their eyes on the path Julian just took when he’d left. “I can’t believe you did that for me,” she went on, but a solemn void took over the high Julian once gave. I wanted to run after him, to thank him and slap him and kiss him all at the same time. But Adora clung to me with a smile on her pouty lips under a wave of appreciation.
“It was nothing,” I said with a vacancy, my eyes locked on the door Julian had just walked through. I couldn’t just let him leave again. I had to talk to him. I had to know where his head was at after the night we shared.
Then my feet started moving in that same direction.
“Where are you going?” I heard Adora call out from behind me.
I didn’t know, but I couldn’t just let him leave like this.
My shoulders shoved through the crowd of people, and I swallowed down the anxiety threatening to come up. I had to get to him before he left. I had to know what the hell just happened, what was happening to us, and why he was avoiding me.
“Fallon!” Kane called out after me, but I kept moving.
I pushed open the double doors and stumbled out of the bar as the fresh cold air slapped my face. Julian’s head snapped around, along with Beck’s and Zephyr’s. All three stood, silver chains swinging around their necks.
“So that’s it now? No hello? No goodbye? You just come here to show off, and that’s it?” I called out, storming toward him with so much pent up adrenaline pumping through me. I could keep what happened between us in the dark, but refusing to talk to me or acknowledge me or pretending we were strangers was too far. Julian looked to Zephyr then back at me. “What was the point?!” I shouted, feeling used.
Zephyr yanked on Julian’s shoulder, pulling him back, whispering, “What’s the freak talking about, Jules?”
Julian shook his head, shock and a million lies in his eyes, Zephyr yanking back his shoulder.
“Fallon!” Kane called out from behind me, and the music from inside Voodoos spilled out into the parking lot with him. “Are they messing with you?”
Julian’s dark gaze locked on mine, his chest heaved violently, his fist clenching. Words flicked across his irises. Inside them, all the things he wanted to scream were there, radiating off him like an angry song.
Then he’d turned and walked away, leaving me in his cold spots.
Chapter 19
Fallon
A young woman, a flatlander, had been transported to the funeral home this morning. Jonah had taken it upon himself to pick up the body without notifying me, saying he didn’t want to interrupt my morning with Gramps, knowing he was getting worse. And after what had happened last night with Julian, I needed the extra hours of sleep.
I had been up all night replaying his departure. Over and over and over. Last night, Julian, a man who everyone believed to be indestructible, was on the verge of breaking before an audience, but he couldn’t have let that happen. The more I thought about him, the more it drove me crazy.
And I used the death that happened this morning to distract my mind.
The body had been identified as Beth Clayton, eighteen-year-old daughter to Jeremy and Christine Clayton, who owned the hardware store on Norse Woods’ end. The only homeless man of Weeping Hollow, who went by the name of Ocean, had found her body.
Ocean had a tent set up in the alleyways behind the strip mall on the Westside. Since Ocean had proof of his whereabouts around the time the girl was murdered, Officer Stoker hadn’t taken him in for questioning. Even though no defensive wounds were present, indicating a struggle, Beth’s lips were stitched shut by black thread post-mortem. Milo had been the first to appear at the morgue, demanding answers to the cause of death of the town’s sweet and innocent Beth Clayton.
I hadn’t told Milo this, but after Jonah, Dr. Morley, and I examined her body, we found absolutely no indications as to the cause of her heart failure. All the signs pointed toward the Hollow Heathens—to Julian. She was young, healthy, no reason for her heart to fail her. All the proof I needed was laid out before me, but my heart couldn’t accept it. Perhaps my heart was failing me too.
There were similarities between Beth and me. The long white hair, pale skin, same height, same build. Only she was six years younger than me. Jonah hadn’t mentioned anything, neither did Dr. Morley, and if they had noticed, they didn’t say anything. But there was no denying the obvious.
Beth Clayton and I could have passed as sisters.
I kept these concerns to myself in case it was a state of paranoia. But after the letter I’d received from someone other than Gramps to get me to return to Weeping Hollow, I couldn’t help but think someone was after me.
Or maybe I was finding reasons to place the blame on someone else other than Julian.
Ocean had also stopped by to pay his respects to the girl he’d found.
Ocean was a thin and hairy man who I would always see sitting on the corner of Bram Boulevard and Joyland Lane, playing his harmonica. I’d never talked to him before now and only knew about him through Gramps’ letters. Ocean was a knower of things. He saw things when no one knew he was watching, heard things when no one thought he was listening. Mina Mae kept him fed as long as he kept an eye over Town Square at night, her living and breathing security camera.
But in the early hours, between three and four, he’d failed sweet Beth Clayton.
Ocean didn’t talk much, but the one thing he’d said that never left my mind was the way he found her. “She was so peaceful, at first I thought she was sleeping … until I saw her mouth stitched shut. She was just lying there on a blanket of purple flowers with her arms folded across her chest beside the dump. Sweet, sweet, Beth,” he’d said. “The scene was beautifully tragic.”
They were purple Hyacinths. I’d plucked a few from her white hair and checked online back in my office to make sure. The purple Hyacinths were a symbol of sorrow, sometimes a plea for forgiveness. Were they sorry because they got the wrong girl? Was it from Agatha’s night-garden? Was Julian sorry because he couldn’t control himself?
When I walked out of the funeral home, Kane Pruitt was leaning against the trunk of his car with both hands shoved into his khaki Chinos.
“Hey, Fallon,” he immediately greeted, his voice filled with an apology, and his expression displaying a whole mess of embarrassment. I paused for a moment to study his features, then walked up to him with my arms crossed over my chest. “Monday said you’d be off by lunch.” He paused and looked around, as if he was nervous. “I was an ass last night,” he finally said.
I shifted my bag over my shoulder. “Go on, I’m listening.”
Kane grinned. “Well, I wanted to make it up to you.”
“Are you typically the act-first-and-ask-for-forgiveness-later guy?”
“Honestly, yes. But I’m moving toward the I-like-this-girl-but-I’m-so-in-over-my-head guy.”