Chapter 5

“You seem chipper,” Olivia remarked, looking Cami up and down. Even through her shades, her gaze was probing. “Did you get abducted last night?”

Jane had told her to wait until they were both there, but her group project meeting had gone overtime. Apparently, her schoolmates were bickering over the diagnoses of historical figures.

I don’t care if Thomas Edison was or wasn’t a sociopath. He was an asshole and I’m sick of hearing about him, her latest text read. It’d been sent half an hour ago. Have you READ about the war of the currents??

Cami had not, in fact, read about the war of the currents.

“Well?” Olivia prompted.

Cami glanced up from her phone. “Abducted? Not quite. It’s a long story.”

“How do you get not quite abducted?”

“You’ll just have to wait and find out,” Cami said with a shrug. “Jane wants to tell the story with me, and she’ll be out any minute.”

Rachel swayed back and forth where she stood, radiating that youthful excitement she seemed to carry with her everywhere. “Was it fairies? I bet it was fairies.”

There was a knock at the door. Cami perked up. “About time!” she exclaimed, racing for the door. But when she threw it open, the girl before her decidedly wasn’t Jane.

“This is the Woodshore University Paranormal Club, right? Sometimes called Freakspotters?” Her voice was low, little more than a sultry whisper. She leaned her head in, closing the gap between herself and Cami, but staring right through her. Her face scrunched up with something between fear and disgust. “Oh, yes, it must be.”

Cami stumbled back, pushed down all her flustered feelings, crossed her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The vibes,” she declared, striding past Cami with a catlike grace, “are revolting.”

“What vibes?” Cami asked, her voice shaking. She glanced to Rachel and Olivia, but they both stared right back, their wide eyes reflecting her confusion.

But the girl was already at work. She pulled a lighter from one pocket and a stick of incense from the other. “Which of you was it? You can be honest.”

“About what?” Rachel squeaked, her hands up in surrender. “I didn’t do it. Whatever it was. I don’t do anything, really!”

The girl scoffed. “Someone here must’ve messed with the dead. Or the fey. One of the two.” She flicked her lighter, but it didn’t catch. She tried a second time, and a third, but to no avail. “This’ll be a lot less uncomfortable if you fess up. Something of some unhuman nature occurred, and I wholly intend on cleansing this place of whatever’s been dragged in.”

Rachel and Olivia looked to Cami, and it hit her that this was almost definitely her fault.

“Um, hey, uh…” She stepped forward. Her hands drifted to her chest, wringing at a feverish pace that almost matched her heartbeat. “Hey, new girl--”

“Helena,” she said without looking up. “The name’s Helena. You were saying?” The lighter continued to move in her hand, embers jumping out and dying in midair.

Cami gulped. “Well, I may have had a sort of supernatural encounter last night. Not quite a full-on abduction, but something definitely happened.”

“How do you not quite get abducted?”

Olivia threw her hands up. “That’s what I said!”

“Hey, you might wanna be careful,” Rachel piped up. “The tablecloths here are for gathering dust from rocks and stuff.”

Helena gave her an unreadable look. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

But the table was already on fire.

“It means it’s flammable,” Rachel whispered.

Cami yelped, throwing herself against the nearest wall. “Where’s the fire extinguisher? This room has a fire extinguisher, right?”

“I mean that’s required by the school, right?” Helena asked, her eyes darting around. She was still fiddling with the lighter until Rachel snatched it from her hands.

“I think you’ve played with fire long enough,” she said. “Also, where’d you get this? I love the floral engravings.”

Helena smirked. “Carved it myself.”

“Am I the only person who remembers the fire?” Olivia interjected. “Get out of the way!” In all the chaos, she’d not only found, but prepared the fire extinguisher.

Rachel and Helena scrambled over to Cami as Olivia let loose, dousing the table in foam.

And that was when Jane walked in.

“What,” she murmured, “the fuck is going on?”

“It’s under control,” Olivia said smoothly, tearing the tablecloth free and stomping out what embers remained. “Also, we have a new girl. She’s the one who did the arson.”

Helena rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t arson. I tried lighting incense.”

“And committed arson in the process.”

“The word arson implies intention!”

Cami groaned. “Do you guys remember when this was a club about the supernatural? Because I remember that.”

Rachel perked up. “Hey, now that Jane’s here, are you gonna tell us what happened last night? The, you know, not quite abduction?”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Jane asked. Her hands clasped together, eyes darting around the room, like it was some kind of terrible secret. “A not quite abduction?”

“I mean, that’s probably what it was,” Cami said with a shrug. “Do you want to tell it, or should I?”

“You can. I feel like you’ll have the most fun with it.” Jane dusted ash and foam off the nearest chair before taking a seat. “But I’ll be here to provide colourful commentary.”

Cami snickered. “Alright. Anyways!” She straightened up and put on her best storytelling voice. “Last night, Jane and I were at my house, doing homework, as usual. We like to study together.”

“It was barely studying on your part,” Jane teased. “You just watched old sitcoms.”

“I took notes too!” Cami objected. “But we’re getting sidetracked. Like I said, we were at my house, studying. And then we heard this… music. If you could even call it that.”

Jane nodded. “At first, it was just this low hum. Then things got really weird.”

“The whole room lit up silver!” Cami exclaimed, sweeping her hands out for effect. “And all of a sudden, we were moving on our own. Like we had to go to the light, like it was beckoning us. So we went outside, and as we got closer, we saw this kind of… figure.”

“And the music got louder,” Jane added. “More complex, too.”

“There were arpeggios and such,” Cami confirmed. “And the figure was like, made of the light. It was the beacon at the centre of everything. And we just… couldn’t help but feel drawn to it, you know?” She looked at Jane, whose nervous smile had faltered, her brows knitting together. “Whatever that thing was, Jane snapped out of its spell first and stopped me from falling headfirst into the creek behind my house.”

“Creek?” Olivia echoed. “Do you live by Douglas Brown Park?”

Cami blinked. “I do, actually.” It was one of the smaller parks in town, mostly used by old people walking their dogs and stoners who couldn’t smoke at home. This meant the entire place smelled like dog crap and weed. It wasn’t very popular. “Why?”

She perked up. “Apparently, that’s where Abigail Burton was last seen.” Her hands steepled together at her chest, and even through her shades, her eyes gleamed. “Did you move there before or after authorities found all those dead dogs?”

“What dead dogs?” Cami exclaimed. Just the thought made her heart twist. She’d never seen anything like that in her yard, save for a dead bird the neighbourhood cat had killed once. She’d been nine, and it’d made her cry. She and her mom had later held a funeral for the poor thing. “Did someone kill them? How many were there?”

Olivia chuckled, evidently relishing in her panic. “I’m not exactly sure. I was looking into the Abigail thing and they mentioned the park’s sketchy past. About a dozen dog skeletons were found there twelve years ago.”

“Shit,” Jane murmured. “We’re probably dealing with some kind of carnivore, then. Something feral but intelligent enough to take down a human woman.” She reached for her phone, thumbing in the password. “I took notes on some old records from my Mom’s study. There might’ve been some kind of relevant sighting.”

Liv scoffed. “So what, you think some kind of Sasquatch has been living in the woods for over a decade?”

“Maybe not a Sasquatch. Something less obvious. Maybe something nomadic that only returns here periodically.”

Rachel looked between the two, frowning. “I don’t know about you guys, but I bet it’s a witch.” She wrung her hands together. “Maybe the dogs were used in a ritual. Maybe Abigail, too. Does anyone know if she was a virgin?”

“You can’t just ask if a missing person was a virgin!” Cami exclaimed.

Helena rolled her eyes. “You realize most witches don’t sacrifice living things, right?” Even now, she was absentmindedly fidgeting with the lighter, which at some point she'd swiped back. Cami tried not to look at it. “I practice the craft, and I’ve never hurt a fly. This isn’t witchcraft, this is some kind of murder. Obviously.”

“You’re a witch?” Rachel murmured. “Do you turn people into frogs? Or use eyeballs in your soup?”

Helena ignored her. “I’ll be real, this town’s given me weird vibrations ever since I arrived. They’re especially weird in this very room. Probably a result of--” She waved a vague hand towards Cami and Jane, “whatever you two encountered. I think that, as a club, we should investigate whatever this is.” She strode forward, banging a fist down on the still-smouldering table. It splished awkwardly in the extinguisher foam.

“Okay.” The word was out of Cami’s mouth before she’d even thought about it. This new girl was too confident to object against. And up this close, she realizes Helena smelled faintly of roses. "We can... yeah, would you guys want to talk about investigating things somehow? Sometime?"

No objections.

“I guess that’s settled,” Cami said. She smiled at Helena. “Welcome to Freakspotters. And thanks for kind of taking charge like that.”

“All in a day’s work,” Helena assured her with a wink. “Anything left on the agenda for today?”

And Cami found her mind entirely blank, save for the part distinctly alarmed by the pretty girl that stood beside her.

Jane cleared her throat, breaking the spell. “We need to do something about this table. It’s kind of, you know, burnt to shit.”

“Oh. Right.” Sure enough, the tablet was still faintly smouldering. “Maybe we can just throw it out and hope no one notices?”

“Fine by me,” Jane said with a shrug.

Cami gave her a look. “Really?”

“If anyone gets in trouble for these damages, it’ll be either you or Helena. I’m just a bystdander.”

As the others filed out, Cami and Jane took hold of the table.

“Don’t get sidetracked,” Jane warned.

Cami scoffed. “Why would I get sidetracked?”

“You’re comically moonstruck by that new girl.”

Cami’s hands slipped. She caught the table before it hit the floor. “Am not.” She let herself smile a bit. “I will say, though, I’m hanging out with the right people if you just unironically used the word moonstruck.”

“I used it semi-ironically!” Jane objected. “Now come on, let’s plant this by the Business department or something.”

“Sounds like a plan.”