Part 9 (1/2)
”Don't bet on it,” Sarah told him.
When she got home, she was unpleasantly surprised to be greeted by the sound of country music and to see a light s.h.i.+ning through the crack at the bottom of her bedroom door. Her heart sank as she realized that Kyra had not just had dinner with her father but had come back with him to spend the night.
When she entered her room, she found Kyra seated on the second of the twin beds, painting her toenails. Her radio was installed on the dresser where Sarah's CD player usually sat and was tuned as usual to a country-western station.
”Your filthy cat has been sleeping on my bed again,” Kyra said by way of greeting. ”It got hairs all over my pillow.” She paused. ”So how did it go tonight?”
”Awful,” Sarah said.
”How could it have been awful?” Kyra demanded ”All that juicy info I gave you should have blown them away.”
”That was hurtful stuff,” Sarah said. ”Where on earth did you get it?”
”My mom knows a lot of sensational stuff about the paris.h.i.+oners,” Kyra said. ”She's church secretary. It goes with the territory.”
”Your mother told you all that? What a vicious creature she must be!” For the first time ever, Sarah felt some sympathy for Ted, who had lived for almost twenty years with a woman whose mind was a garbage bin.
”It's not like she volunteered it,” Kyra said defensively. ”I had to pump her to get it. With no husband to talk to, Mom talks a lot to me. And of course she had no idea what we were going to do with it. Eric told me he wanted personal stuff that would stun people. It's going to p.i.s.s him off if you refuse to use it.”
”I already told him I'm done with this,” Sarah said. ”If the two of you want to keep doing this, you can find yourselves another soothsayer.”
”Suits me,” Kyra said with a shrug. ”This wasn't my idea. I only went along with it because Eric asked me to. He does things like this to let off steam.”
”What do you mean, *does things like this'?” Sarah asked her.
”Eric does a lot of things people don't know about,” Kyra said. ”He's got this double image, like two sides of a coin. One side is what his father wants him to be-straight-arrow, A-student, cla.s.s president, captain of the debate team-the kind of guy who gets accepted at Harvard. The other side is ... the other side.”
”Meaning what?” Sarah prodded.
”Once in a while he's got to do something to prove to himself that he's his own person,” Kyra said. ”So he lives on the edge a little. I understand it. I've always understood Eric. He and I are soul mates.”
”You're welcome to each other,” Sarah said. ”I must have been out of my mind to have gotten involved with this. Back home I had a friend named Jon who was a little bit on the wild side, but he never made me feel manipulated. Eric Garrett is something else entirely.”
She got into bed and, realizing that sleep was impossible until Kyra was ready to turn off the light and the music, picked up the library book and continued reading where she had left off: Warrants were issued against Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and the slave t.i.tuba, and on March 1, 1692, a trial was held at the meetinghouse. The magistrates sat at a table in front of the pulpit, with the audience facing them and the afflicted children in the front row. The prisoners stood in a line between the magistrates and the children.
All the prisoners firmly attested that they were not guilty. Sarah Good was examined first.
”Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” Judge Hathorne asked her.
”None,” she replied.
”Then why do you hurt these children?”
”I do not hurt them,” Sarah Good insisted.
”Children, look here on Sarah Good and tell if she is the person who hurts you,” the judge said Ann Putnam screamed and hurled herself to the floor, and the other girls followed suit, shouting that Sarah Good's spirit was scratching and biting them. Betty Parris looked confused and frightened, but when she realized that everyone was watching her expectantly, she started to scream also.
Sarah Osburn and t.i.tuba were presented in the same manner, and the girls denounced them as well. All three women were found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sentenced to be hanged on Gallows Hill.
Sarah closed the book in a state of stunned bewilderment. That scene was the one she had dreamed about three nights earlier! The memory of the dream came surging back to her, and with a shudder of horror she recalled what had led her to scream.
The faces of the three women condemned to death had been those of Cindy Morris, Debbie Rice, and Misty Lamb.
CHAPTER.
ELEVEN.
WHEN KYRA GOT TO school the following Monday, she was startled to find Cindy Morris waiting to intercept her out by the flagpole.
”Our group needs to talk with you privately, Kyra,” Cindy said. ”We've got a really bad problem, and we need your input.”
Kyra was flattered and also a bit apprehensive. In keeping with her status as both a senior and the head cheerleader, Cindy devoted little of her time and attention to juniors. It had always been Kyra's secret dream to be a cheerleader, but she had never even had the nerve to try out for the squad. It wasn't enough to be cute and peppy and to know all the cheers; cheerleaders were also expected to be glamorous, long-legged, and s.e.xy-looking. Kyra had long since accepted the fact that she had none of those attributes. Regrettably she, like Brian, bore a physical resemblance to their father rather than their mother.
”What's going on?” Kyra asked now, trying to sound as if exchanges like this one were everyday occurrences.
”We need to talk privately,” Cindy repeated. ”I've called a meeting at noon in the girls' dressing room at the back of the gym. n.o.body will be there during lunch hour, so we'll have it to ourselves.”
”What's this all about-?” Kyra started to ask, but Cindy silenced her with a wave of her hand.
”We'll tell you about it then. This is highly confidential, so don't tell anybody about the meeting. And be sure to be there. It is very, very important.”
Kyra's curiosity continued to build steadily throughout a seemingly endless morning that was extended even farther by the fact that the last cla.s.s ran late because the teacher had waited too long to start handing back papers. Then two girls accosted her in the hall to ask her to have lunch at their table so that they could discuss plans for a cookie sale to raise money to purchase new hymnals for the church youth choir. By the time Kyra had disentangled herself from her friends with the excuse that she had to make a phone call, and had dashed down the hall and across the back courtyard to the gym, she was running ten minutes late for her meeting with the cheerleaders. She was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fear that they might have grown impatient and left.
However, when she entered the dressing room, she found all seven members of the squad a.s.sembled there waiting for her. As her eyes flicked from one gorgeous, clear-complected face to another, and took in the long, s.h.i.+ny manes of straight, glossy hair-all of which, except for Debbie's, were an identical shade of blond!-she was uncomfortably conscious of her own orange, flyaway curls; the ma.s.ses of freckles on her nose; and worse still, the zit that had erupted overnight on her chin.
”So, what's up?” she asked nervously, resisting the urge to cover her chin with her hand.
”Shut the door,” Cindy said. ”We need privacy. It's about Sarah Zoltanne.”
”About Sarah?” Kyra exclaimed in surprise. This was the last thing she had expected.
”We need to know some things about her,” Cindy said. ”And since you're her ... her ...” She left the sentence unfinished, obviously at a loss as to the appropriate term to use.
”I'm not her anything,” Kyra said firmly. ”My father's going out with her mother. That's my only connection with her.”
”From what I hear, they're not just dating,” Cindy said. ”They live together, don't they?”
”My parents are separated, and Dad has his own apartment,” Kyra said carefully. ”Mrs. Zoltanne and Sarah are renting a house, and my father spends time there.”
”And you spend time there with them,” Leanne Bush said, making it a statement rather than a question.
”Yes, sometimes. But that doesn't mean that Sarah and I are friends.”
”We know that,” Cindy said. ”It's obvious to everybody that you hate each other. And that's understandable. And it's why we feel that we can ask you some personal things about her. But before we do, we need your promise of confidentiality. Anything that you tell us and that we tell you stops right here. Because we think we may be on to something very serious.”
”Like what?” Kyra asked.