Jaxon and I walk up my redbrick driveway as the last bit of light leaves the horizon. Under the overhang of the doorway stands Elijah. Did he find something?
“I’m gonna go over to Dillon’s house in a bit. He’s having a couple of people over. You should come,” says Jaxon.
I stop a few feet away from the overhang.
“She will be otherwise engaged,” says Elijah.
I glare at him before I catch myself. “Actually, I need to get up early in the morning. We’re driving to Boston to see my dad.”
Jaxon moves closer to me. “I’ll text you tomorrow, then.”
“Say farewell or I will for you,” says Elijah.
In any other circumstance I would tell him where to stick it, but I just made up with Jaxon and I don’t need to look crazy again.
“Sounds good,” I say, and turn toward my door just as Jaxon leans forward.
Jaxon lingers for a few seconds before turning toward his house. I push my door open and close it before Elijah can follow. It doesn’t matter, though, because he walks right through the wall.
“What the hell, Elijah? Are you trying to embarrass me?”
“Who’s Elijah?” Vivian asks, entering the foyer. She’s in a particularly good mood.
I look down at the mail on the table, trying to act casual.
“You succeed artfully in embarrassment without any help from me,” Elijah says.
“No one important,” I say to Vivian. “A boy at school.”
Vivian’s eyebrows push together. “Then why were you talking to him in our foyer?”
“I wasn’t. I was talking to myself.”
“Right.” Her look of worry turns to a smile. “Are you hungry? I thought we might go out for a change. Celebrate your father’s transfer.”
“No thanks. I grabbed some food with Jaxon on my way home.”
“Suit yourself,” she says.
I walk past her and up to my room, Elijah by my side.
“Don’t do that!” I whisper, and close my bedroom door behind me.
“I do not enjoy waiting,” he says flatly, his wavy hair brushing against his cheek.
“Then why didn’t you come find me?”
“I have no intention of searching all of Salem for you.”
I scowl. “I was trying to find the hanging location. Which I could’ve just asked you for and saved myself a lot of trouble, if you didn’t disappear last night.”
“It is behind the Walgreens.”
“I know!” I snap, although I wasn’t convinced until he confirmed it.
“I have made sense of the death records.”
“Really?” Curiosity replaces my annoyance.
He picks up a few sheets of paper from my window seat and sits down. The handwriting on them is in old-fashioned cursive. I sit down next to him, and for just a second I swear he smells like freshly cut grass.
“At first glance, the clustering of death tolls follows no discernible pattern.”
He speaks with his old-world accent. His eyelashes are long, longer than mine, and his eyebrows are perfectly shaped. It seems unfair that they’re on a guy, especially a dead one.
“I looked for medical causes, but there was nothing out of the ordinary during the years your grandmother dog-eared. In fact, the rest of Salem’s population was birthing and dying at a perfectly consistent rate.”
“Is there something different about the Witch Trials’ families?”
“Kindly do not interrupt me,” he says with anything but kindness.
Kindly I will smack you in your perfect face.
“After a few false starts, I mapped out the approximate population size of the Witch Trials’ families. My efforts showed that there was a significant increase in the number of descendants living in Salem around years with more deaths. And, more important, there were members from each of the major families in Salem itself. In years when there were not, everything was status quo.”
“So it has to do with the number of descendants in Salem? I’m not following.”
“The deaths appear to start when critical mass is reached,” he says.
“Elijah! What does that mean?”
“Stay in school, Samantha.”
You arrogant SOB.
“At least one descendant from each major family must be present in Salem. The moment they are, the deaths start.”
My thoughts go straight to my dad. “What about now? Are there descendants from all the families in Salem?”
“Yes.”
My stomach drops. “Are you sure?”
“By the proportionately largest number to date.”
My mouth is dry. I know the answer to this question, but like a moth drawn to a flame, I feel compelled to ask it. “Have there been any descendant deaths?”
“Seven. All since you moved here. You were the only missing lineage.”
And John’s great-grandfather was one of them. “Seven? Maybe it’s over?”
“Unlikely, if you compare the numbers to previous years. If I had to guess, I would say there are a lot more coming.”
It’s hard to breathe. I look at his papers to make sense of the figures he’s written out. But when I see the death count at twenty-five for a previous year, I wish I hadn’t. Please don’t let my dad be one of them. Please.
“So there is definitely a curse. You see that, right?” I start pacing. We actually moved my dad closer to Salem from New York. Does that make it worse? Can we transfer him back?
“I do not know.”
“But you admit that it’s more than a coincidence?”
“It is unusual, yes.”
“How are you so calm?”
“I am already dead.”