Deviant

Chapter 10

Rowen

I roam aimlessly about the cemetery, my eyes peeled for a sign of Father O’Sullivan. But after a good hour of searching and coming up with nothing, I walk back to the church and inspect his living quarters instead.

I enter his bedroom and find his bed untouched for days, disappointment washing over me when I see no signs of life. When I walk into the kitchen and find it just as bare, his refrigerator completely empty, my anxiety soars wondering if I lost my chance altogether.

Damn it.

Time is running out since the Harvest Festival is just two weeks away.

It’s clear that I won’t get my answers from the old priest.

I’ve spooked him, and now he’s gone into hiding.

There has to be another way I can get my answers.

‘Please, Nora. If you can help me, then do it soon,’ I whisper in my head.

If she were here, she would know what to do.

She did it before.

She got her answers.

If only I had paid better attention then.

If only…

But just as the melancholic thought arises, so too does the memory of Nora on the day she accomplished what I have been unable to achieve for days now.

Once I’ve carefully placed my apron behind the counter, I wave my boss, Rosie, goodbye and leave the diner.

Today’s shift wasn’t so bad, but I’m grateful it’s over, and I get to go home now. I need a long shower after all the fried food I had to deliver.

Every time the games approach, everyone ditches their diets for the greasiest, unhealthiest foods imaginable. It’s like every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks that if their day is coming, then why spend it eating right and taking care of their bodies? Might as well go off with a bang.

The mentality of this town really goes to shit when the games are afoot.

No one really cares about being kind to themselves. Or to others, for that matter.

They are too preoccupied with throwing the biggest Harvest Festival that Blackwater Falls has ever seen to appease whatever evil charlatan is holding the strings of this town’s purse.

But as I walk outside and button up my cardigan, I catch a glimpse of black hair blowing in the cool autumn wind.

I smile instantly when I see my best friend walking down the hill toward the abandoned church.

One of the few memories I still have of my mother was her taking Nora and me to the old church so we could play a game of hide-and-seek. Sometimes it would take her hours to find us, but we didn’t mind. Mom always made this huge hilarious production when she finaly found us, tickling us both until we were on the floor crying from laughing so hard. Then, as our prize for being so clever in having eluded her for so long, Mom would take us for ice cream.

It’s a simple memory, but one that I treasure.

When I see that in my reverie Nora is now further away from me, I call out her name, but the wind is blowing too hard for her to hear me from this far.

No matter.

I speed up my steps and trail behind her, losing sight of her when she enters the church. Unfortunately, when I finally reach the church and go inside, she is nowhere to be found.

Nora always knew the best places to hide.

However, after a full ten minutes of being unable to track her down, I start to get nervous.

She wasn’t an apparition

I did see her come in here.

So where the hell did she go?

As if the wind seeks to answer my unspoken question, a door at the back of the church raps against its frame.

That’s where she is. Nora’s gone outside to the cemetery. Another ideal place to hide.

Laughing at the possibility that maybe she heard me call out her name after all, and that perhaps she’s up to her little games, I rush outside in search of her.

But when I finally find her, I’m taken aback by the peculiar scene.

Nora is talking to the old priest in hushed whispers, noting down everything he says in a little black notebook. Her eyes sparkle at something he says, bringing a smile so wide to her lips that it almost splits her face in half.

What could he possibly have told her that would make her that happy?

Everyone knows the old priest lost his mind ages ago, and coaxing any coherent thought out of him is as much a miracle as the deity he worships.

But, somehow, Nora has found a way to not only talk to him but understand his irrational babble.

Making a strained effort to keep my footsteps quiet, I slowly walk in their direction, and hide behind a tombstone that’s close enough to hear their conversation.

“That’s all I have to do?” Nora repeats calmly.

“Yes. Tomorrow night. Be there, and you’ll get what you want.”

“Thank you, Father. You have no idea what this means to me.”

The priest’s eyes sadden at her reply.

“I’m sending you to your death. Don’t thank me.”

“I won’t die,” she says assuredly.

“We all die. Red. Red. Red. We all die,” he begins mumbling as if triggered by the word.

“Not me. Not yet. Not until I save my mother.”

“Choose black, child. Not white. Never white. White leads to red. Only black. Always black. Death is shadow. Shadows can’t survive without light. Death needs life. Remember. Remember black.”

Seeing that he’s back to talking in riddles, Nora just smiles sweetly at him.

“I’ll remember, Father. I promise.”

He nods as if comforted by her taking him seriously.

“Goodbye. Die well. It’s all I can hope for you,” he says with sadness before walking away from her.

Nora’s gaze only leaves his retreating form when she finally spots me standing next to an unmarked grave, once I’ve left my hiding spot.

“Roe? What are you doing here?” she asks with a bright smile, skipping over to me as if I hadn’t just caught her in the weirdest rendezvous ever.

“I could ask you the same thing? Why were you talking with Father O’Sullivan?”

“Maybe I wanted him to hear my confession?” She winks before picking up both of my hands in hers.

“You’re not Catholic.”

“I’m not anything.” She laughs whimsically. “But I read somewhere that confession is good for the soul.”

“Then confess to me,” I insist, needing to know what that was all about. “What were you two talking about?”

Her good disposition wanes when she sees the anxiety in my eyes.

“It’s nothing, Roe. Don’t give yourself a coronary,” she admonishes, letting go of my hands to start walking back to the church.

“It’s not nothing,” I reprimand behind her. “It’s about The Scourge, isn’t it?”

“And what if it is?” She shrugs off as if it were nothing.

I stop in my tracks and say the one sentence I know will stop her in hers, “I’ll tell Elias what you’re up to.”

Nora freezes on the spot, just as I predicted, turning around to face me with an expression made of stone, and replies, “You will do no such thing.”

“I will. I promise you I will.”

“No. You won’t,” she says assertively, eating the small space between us. I open my mouth to warn her again, but she gently places her palm over my mouth to shut me up and asks out of left field, “Do you love me, Roe?” causing my eyebrows to bunch in confusion. “Answer me. Do you love me?” she repeats, lowering her hand from my lips.

“Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”

“How do you love me? Like a best friend? A sister? Your soulmate? How do you love me?”

“Is there a difference between the three?”

Her eyes soften at that.

“There is… to me, at least,” she retorts with a sad hue in her eyes. “But I can understand why you don’t see a difference. And that’s okay. It’s always been okay with me. Because I love you just as fiercely. There is nothing in this world that I would deprive you of. Nothing. And if you love me, even an inkling of how much I love you, you won’t stand in my way. Especially not now.”

I hear the warning in her voice—one that fills me with trepidation and all-consuming fear.

“And if I do stand in your way ?”

“That will be the death of us. I’d never forgive you.” I swallow the shards of glass that she just force-fed me down my throat. “If you’re truly my friend, you won’t tell Elias a thing. You won’t stop me from doing what I need to save my mother’s life. You will be the good girl everyone takes you for and do nothing at all.” Her words feel like a slap to the face, and yet I remain silent. “Tomorrow night, I’ll tell everyone that I’ll be sleeping over at your house. Your dad is on the graveyard shift, right?” I nod. “Good. That will be my cover, then. I’ll pop by before dinner so he sees me there, but once he’s gone, so am I.”

“Where will you go?” I ask, hating how meek and submissive my voice sounds.

“I’ll be off to get chosen,” she reveals proudly.

“You found a loophole.” It’s not a question, merely a fact to which Nora nods, confirming it to me just the same. “Can I come with you?”

“No. I wish you could, but you can’t. I don’t want anyone seeing you with me and thinking that you’re fair game, too. They must only see me.”

I swallow dryly at the thought.

“Why tomorrow night?”

“It will be the first full moon before the autumn equinox, and my only shot at getting selected.” She grins as if unveiling some big secret when, in fact, all she did was confuse me more with her cryptic explanation.

But she doesn’t look confused.

She looks determined.

I didn’t give her enough credit.

Nora is clever. Clever enough to have found a way to get chosen to the Harvest Dozen.

Maybe she could win The Scourge.

What am I thinking?

Of course she can’t. She’s going on a suicide mission.

Unless I can stop her.

Unless I can find a way to prevent her from going wherever she has to go tomorrow night.

Nora might think she’s clever, but so am I.

I must find a way to keep her from leaving my house tomorrow night. If her only chance is really tomorrow night, then all I need to do is keep her busy the whole night. Even if I have to go to extreme lengths to ensure that she never leaves.

If she can’t go to god-knows-where, then she won’t get chosen.

Or maybe she will, and I’m just battling an unseeable force that already wants her.

“I need an answer, Rowen,” she says, pulling me out of my internal scheming plans of betrayal. “What will it be? Will you stand with me or against me? I need to know if I can count on you to do what’s right?”

My tense muscles instantly relax by the way she phrased her ultimatum.

“I’m a good girl. Isn’t that what you said? I always do the right thing.”

She doesn’t detect the hindrance behind my words and gifts me one of her warm smiles.

“Thank you,” she says gratefully, hooking her arm around mine and leading me back to the church. “All this heavy talk has made me hungry. I know you just got off your shift, but do you mind if we pop over at Rosie’s to grab a burger and some chili fries? Today feels like a cheat day.”

I nod, keeping to myself that the idea of eating anything right now churns my stomach.

“Good.” She gives my arm a little squeeze, her blue eyes shining at me. “I do love you, you know?”

“I know.”

I’ve always known.

And I love her too.

Maybe a little too much.

Maybe more than she knows.

Even though she just threatened our friendship, her life means more to me than that.

Even if she says she’ll never forgive me, it’s a risk I’ll just have to take.

Because I will do what’s right, like the good girl that she just reprimanded me for being.

And what’s right is protecting my friend at all costs.

Even if that means protecting her from herself.

When I finally give up my search and walk out of the church, I’m surprised to see Elias leaning against his bike, looking like he’s been waiting for me for quite some time now.

“Are you following me?” I ask, since I’ve had this sick sense of having been watched all day.

“And why would I follow you?” he retorts with that air of contempt he loves to flaunt against me.

“I don’t know, you tell me?”

Instead of answering, he gifts me that wolfish grin of his that’s meant to intimidate.

“I saw you walk inside and thought I’d wait for you to come out so we could talk.”

“Talk? What could we possibly have to talk about?”

Elias doesn’t respond yet again, leaving me furious at how he never seems to answer any of my questions.

“You haven’t been at the house for a while.”

“I wonder why that is?” I cross my arms over my chest to look just as intimidating. “Last time I visited, I was blackmailed into doing something I didn’t want to do.”

“Sure. Keep telling yourself that.” He has the audacity to smirk.

I hate that smile on his face.

If I could, I would slap it off him if it wasn’t so damn sexy to see it on his lips.

“But if that’s your concern, then don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

My heart falls to the pit of my stomach at how unequivocally he stated that our illicit encounter was a one-off.

Aside from the harvest games, that night is all I think about. I keep reliving it over and over in my mind. Usually, I’m responsible for my own orgasms. Still, I have to admit that the one Elias delivered was a hundred times better than any I could give myself.

And the names he called me…

The demeaning way that he treated me…

It shouldn’t have turned me on the way that it did.

But here we are.

I really must be damaged, considering how hot I found it being debased like that.

I always knew I wasn’t a missionary type of girl. Sleeping with Aidan taught me that much.

I just never knew that I was so depraved to the point of spending most nights fantasizing about the next time Elias would come all over me.

On my dress.

On my chest.

On my face.

Though the possibilities were endless, I’m pretty sure I’ve come imagining every single one since that night.

Not that I want Elias to know that.

Not that he would care, either.

Sigh.

“You wanted to talk? Then talk,” I reply with a snark since he’s already put me in a mood.

“First, tell me why you were in there?” Elias asks, pointing at the church behind me.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Now, now, Rowen. Play nice. If you tell me what I want to know, perhaps I can be nice to you, too.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“Nice? Do you even know the meaning of the word?”

When his eyes darken, my fit of laughter dies a quick death.

“I think I was very nice to you the last time we saw each other.”

My cheeks heat up instantly at the reminder.

“That… wasn’t nice. It was… demeaning,” I stammer, trying to push the memory out of my head.

“Call it whatever you want. You still came like fireworks in a Fourth of July show. Didn’t know you had it in you,” he taunts before leaning closer to me. “I can still smell your cunt on me.”

Unwilling for him to see how his words always seem to strike a chord inside me, I begin to push past him, only for him to grab my forearm and keep me still, his taunting expression morphing to a deadly serious one.

“What are you up to, Rowen? Why were you inside that church?”

There is more than mere curiosity in his gaze… there’s something else… something I can’t quite name.

I pull my arm away and look him dead in the eye.

“You’ll find out soon enough. Everyone will. Until then, leave me the fuck alone.”

“Not a fucking chance in hell that’s happening.”

I don’t stick around to ask what he means by that, and instead, I run back toward the town square where my car is parked. Once I reach the parking spot, I unlock my car and quickly get in. Safely inside, I take off the scarf—the one that I’ve been wearing around my neck for the past week—and look at the rear-view mirror just to admire his handiwork. I scowl at my reflection, disappointed to only see faint traces of what was once Elias’s hand imprint on my neck.

It won’t happen again.

Those were his exact words.

If only he knew that those words hurt me more than any other he’s ever said to me. Elias doesn’t respond yet again, leaving me furious at how he never seems to answer any of my questions.