Root had come by to collect my father’s latest mail, and I’d asked her about Vallanium. I’d shown her one of the little red capsules that Michael had given me.
Yes, Root said, she’d heard of it. She’d heard the drug was popular in Tampa, near where she was staying. Apparently it was sold in the high schools.
“What’s in it?” I asked her.
“Who knows?” She rubbed her hands, looking uneasy at not having an answer.
“Could you analyze this for me?”
Then Dashay sauntered in with her rumor story.
One thing about vampires: we generally disregard rumors. When you don’t have a presence in society, it doesn’t matter much what people say about you, unless things go to extremes. Then you simply disappear and move on.
But for some reason this one did matter to me. “It’s not fair,” I said. “I had nothing to do with Mysty that night. And why does everyone assume that she’s dead?”
From their faces alone, I saw that Dashay and Root assumed the same thing.
“Here, give me the capsule.” Root stretched out her hand, which reminded me of a paw; thick hair grew like fur across its back. “I’ll find out what’s in it, and I’ll let you know.”
Then she gathered up the mail and left without saying good-bye, as if she’d had more than enough of our company.
“So that Root is a friend of yours now?” Dashay’s voice dripped skepticism.
“At least she doesn’t spread rumors.” I felt miffed, but I couldn’t stay mad at Dashay. “I have a question,” I said.
“You always do.”
It wasn’t easy to phrase this one. “It’s okay to kill a demon?” My father was an advocate of nonviolence, and I’d grown up thinking that all killing was wrong.
Dashay listened to me without moving, without even blinking. “It’s like removing a cancer,” she said. “Once you know it’s there, it would be wrong not to get rid of it.”
I took a deep breath. “So what does it look like?”
“Every sasa is different.” Dashay walked over to the bowl of nuts on the coffee table. She lifted out a walnut. “It was about the size and shape of this nut, but dark, and without a hard shell. It’s softer, you know. Like a tumor.”
I’d never seen or felt a tumor, and I hoped I never would. “So it doesn’t have eyes?”
Dashay laughed. “You looked at it, remember? No, it does not have eyes or ears or a nose.” Then she laughed again. “Don’t look so disappointed. It does have a little mouth—that’s how it attaches itself. And it vibrates and sometimes it sends out a high-pitched sound that only foy-eyes hear.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d heard it, too.
Later that day we received a visit from the FBI.
At the sound of the buzzer, my mother went down to the front gate. She returned a moment later, followed by Agent Cecil Burton.
I’d seen him only a month ago. He’d turned up at the place in Kissimmee where we stayed after the hurricane. He was still trying to find out who killed Kathleen.
Now that I was a “person of interest” in Mysty’s disappearance as well, he wanted to ask me some questions.
I was lying on the living room sofa, reading The Count of Monte Cristo and thinking about the nature of honor, when he came in. From our first exchange of glances I knew this interview wasn’t going to be anything like the last one.
Agent Burton’s eyes had always been world-weary, but this time they had a look of cold determination. His fingernails, buffed and trimmed the last time I’d seen him, were ragged now, as if he’d bitten them.
He said, “How are you, Miss Ariella?”
I sat up. “I’m fine.”
He sat in a chair across from me. Mãe offered him a drink and he said that water would be very nice. As usual, he wore a suit and tie, in spite of the heat. He looked fit, but his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept well in a long time. I had a sense that personal problems were keeping him awake.
“Lovely place you have here.” He took a small tape recorder out of his pocket and set it on the table between us.
Mãe came back with two glasses of water, which she set on either side of the tape recorder.
Agent Burton said he had some questions for me that were important in finding out what happened to Kathleen and to Mysty. He asked if I wanted to help.
“Of course.” I sent Mãe a quick question: Am I allowed to listen to his thoughts?
Mãe sent back, Of course. She sat on the sofa next to me.
The next hour went quickly, but I felt exhausted by the time it ended. Listening to Burton’s questions and his thoughts required concentration. Answering the questions was the easy part.
By and large, I told him the truth. We’d been over the details of Kathleen’s murder before, so I found myself repeating things I’d already said. Of course I didn’t talk about Malcolm, or his admission that he’d murdered Kathleen.
From time to time my mother let me know that I was doing a good job.
When we got to Mysty, Burton’s thoughts became fresher and more complicated. Now I had to think before I spoke. Yes, I said, I’d heard rumors that I was involved in her disappearance.
His thoughts told me he didn’t take the rumors seriously. He was mostly intrigued by the coincidence: two girls I’d known had come to “bad ends.” That was his phrase for it. Like most people, he assumed that Mysty was dead.
“Tell me about Jesse Springer.”
I told Burton all I knew: the kayak accident, the trip to the mall, Jesse’s interest in the stars and deep space, Jesse’s decision to stop drinking.
I even mentioned Jesse’s visit to our house the night I’d hypnotized him. All I left out was the hypnosis itself.
It was hard for me to talk at times, because Burton was thinking such contrary thoughts: that Jesse had deliberately capsized the kayak to get attention, that he’d only pretended to stop drinking, and that he’d killed Mysty without a qualm.
The polygraph tests indicated that Jesse was lying in response to some questions. He’d said that he’d agreed to meet Mysty that night at one of the river docks, but that she never turned up.
Apparently Jesse fit the FBI profile for Mysty’s abductor/murderer: a white male between twenty and thirty who tended to be a loner and substance abuser who’d had previous problems with the law. Mysty’s stepbrothers in Tennessee also had been interviewed, but were ruled out as suspects since both had solid alibis.
Burton asked me about the man I’d seen driving the beige Chevrolet van, but he was thinking that the man-in-van was a long shot. Jesse was the one.
I was so intent on listening to his thoughts that I stopped in mid-sentence, having no idea of what I’d been saying. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s natural for you to be upset,” Burton said, but he was thinking, All in all, she’s a pretty cool customer.
Mãe said, “She’s only fourteen.”
Finally the tape recorder was shut off. Burton looked at me, his eyes still cold and detached. “If you think of anything else,” he said, and handed me his card.
I already had this card, but I took a new one.
That’s when Dashay came in. She’d been swimming in the river, and she strode into the living room, wrapped in a red towel, beads of water flying from her shoulders. Her skin gleamed, and her hair was hidden by a vintage bathing cap festooned with white rubber zinnias. Anyone else would have looked ridiculous in this getup. Dashay looked stunning.
Agent Burton dropped the tape recorder as he stood up.
Mãe and Dashay tried not to laugh.
“How do you do?” Dashay extended her hand as my mother introduced them and smiled her dazzling fake smile. She stood close to Burton and looked into his eyes.
A spot near the kidneys, she thought. Nothing sizable yet. Probably a result of consorting with criminal types—or with the ex-wife.
A week later, I stopped riding my bicycle.
I’d developed the habit of riding into town three or four times a week, going to the library or the drugstore, drinking a soda, and stopping for a swim on the way home. The city streets were quiet those days. Most of the locals had volunteered for the Mysty search parties.
I saw one group, fanned out in the forest between the town and the river, walking slowly, looking from side to side. I knew they were hoping to find a body, and the thought made me shiver.
At the library and the drugstore, people stared at me with suspicion. I heard them thinking: That’s her. She’s the one. Poor Mysty. And sometimes I had the sense that I was being followed, although no one was visible. Finally the unpleasantness outweighed my need for exercise. I stayed home.
We were visited again by the sheriff ’s detectives, who asked the same questions as before. I felt like a parrot, repeating syllables that carried no meaning for me.
Our house was finished now, stronger and larger than it had been before the hurricane. Mãe had added three new rooms and a deck for my telescope. But I didn’t feel like stargazing, or helping her arrange the furniture and artwork we’d brought from Saratoga Springs.
The days were quiet with the work crew gone. Mãe mourned her honeybees and Dashay brooded about Bennett; both tried to hide their feelings. We were living in a house of heartbreak.
Mãe tried to interest me in Florida folk tales. Dashay renewed her offer to teach me about sasa. I wasn’t interested. And I didn’t want to go to Flo’s to eat oysters. I had no appetite.
My mother told me that many vampires are prone to bouts of depression. “Some of it is justified,” she said. “When you look at the state of the world, it makes you more than sad.”
My father, I thought, had given me a classical education but had kept me from knowledge of current events and crime. He’d wanted to keep me optimistic for as long as he could.
The strangest thing about that time: words failed me. I couldn’t find the right phrases or terms. More and more, I resorted to nodding and shaking my head, and then to avoiding opportunities for conversation altogether.
At night I lay awake for hours, thinking about Mysty and Kathleen: people who’d been presences in my life only briefly, and now were voids. I remembered my father talking about presence and absence, tension and release, as the basis of all art and all science. I wanted to think about the implications of that, but my head was too foggy to get anywhere.
One morning, after a nearly sleepless night, I came out to the kitchen and found Mãe sitting at the table, doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. She downloaded it on her computer every morning.
“What is the football term for ‘shoving away’?” she asked me.
I shrugged and traced a spiral pattern with my finger on the tablecloth.