I picked my way along the meditation pathway that wound haphazardly around the house and up to the front porch. Alma walked it every day to realign her energy, but I was amazed that she hadn’t broken an ankle. The path was strewn with tripping hazards: hoses, rakes, and potted plants that had migrated from where they belonged.
I took the stairs of our rickety wooden porch two at a time.
Alma was sitting on the living room couch, sipping a cup of tea with a giant twig in it that I didn’t recognize. She brushed her long gray hair back from her face. “What’s the matter, honey? Your energy is completely off.”
I tried to speak but couldn’t find the words to explain what had happened.
“Gosh, Savannah, you’re hurt!” She jumped up and wrapped her arms around me, and the tension and terror drained from my body. If I ever needed my energy reset, her arms were the place to start. She was a font of goodness, calm, and inner beauty.
And she was all I had left in the world.
I looked down at my right arm. Blood had hardened along a set of claw-like scrapes. I snapped my gaze away, unable to think about how I had acquired those.
Alma got hot water and a washcloth and started fussing over my wound. My sweet godmother had taken care of me ever since my parents died six years ago, when
our house had burned down. The ignorant local newspaper speculated that it had been a meth lab explosion, but I didn’t believe it for a second.
The night of their death, Alma had grabbed me from a friend’s house and brought me to live in Belmont. People might be coming for you, she’d warned. She wouldn’t say why, but I’d known my parents were mixed up in something. I’d even changed my name to hers—Caine—and we’d never gone back up north.
Alma forced the cup of tea into my hands. “Drink this. It will realign your chakras. And tell me everything.”
I breathed in the earthy scent and took a sip. It tasted like dirt and smelled like cow patties, but if it could clear my head, I’d drink a gallon of it.
Alma sat and wrung her hands as I filled her in on every detail. The claws and scarlet eyes she took in stride, but when I mentioned Jaxson Laurent and his effect on the sheriff, she went ashen. “A government man. Oh gosh, Savy, this is dire.”
My godmother lived in fear of the shadowy government men lurking in the corners of her imagination. I’d always assumed it was simply tin-hat paranoia, but now I pictured the man with the black truck stepping out into the headlights, a mysterious silhouette.
“What do I do?” I mumbled, too exhausted to think.
“You gotta get out of town, Savy!”
Then she darted from the room, leaving my jaw flapping in the wind.
A moment later, Alma rushed back in, dragging an empty, oversized suitcase. “I was always afraid this day would come.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s gotta be the sins of your parents coming back on you. When I brought you here, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone came looking.”
Had my parents really been so deep in the shit that people would come hunting me six years later? “It can’t be my parents’ mess,” I protested. “There’ve been four other abductions.”
Alma pressed a slip of paper into my hand. “Honey, I don’t know if it was related to the explosion that killed them, but they knew someone would come.”
I unfolded the paper to find a note—to my surprise, one written in my father’s hand: If anything happens to us, watch over Savannah. Get her away. If you think there is danger, or if anyone comes looking, send her to Laurel LaSalle, 7546 Wildhaven Ave, Magic Side, Chicago.
Confusion tore through me, and I had to steady myself against the doorframe. My parents had known. What in God’s name had they been wrapped up in?
I looked up from the note. “Who is Laurel LaSalle?”
“Your aunt.”
The world spun, and I shook my head, not quite comprehending. “I have an aunt? And you knew?”
My heart raced. I tried to steady my emotions, but it was impossible, and anger crept under my skin. As long as I’d lived, my family had just been me, my folks, and Alma. I clenched my jaw. Why had she kept this from me?
The old woman sat on the low couch and looked down at her entwined fingers. “I knew you had family in Illinois, but that’s neither here nor there. Your parents always said that if anything happened to them, they wanted me to raise you here in this town. That no one else was to be involved.”
The reality of the situation rolled over me as I reasoned things out.