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“I know. But I’ll protect you any way I can.”
“Right,” she said. “He comes at one of us, he comes at all of us.”
August had said that Monday night when she told him she was being blackmailed.
“That’s not why I’m helping you,” he said.
“Then why are you?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you next time I see you. Go pray. Please.”
“I’ll pray as hard as I can.”
Lia hung up and immediately went into her bedroom.
Gogo sat up in his dog bed and gave her a curious worried stare. She wished she could reassure him but couldn’t. Visions of headlines ran through her head. All the horrible jokes. The puns. The salacious details of a peer’s daughter who started an illegal escort agency at age eighteen. Clients would be outed. People would lose marriages, jobs. Her friends would be mortified, humiliated, tossed out of their homes. She didn’t even want to think about how her brothers would fare, away at school. Daddy would never be able to look her in the eyes again. Her mother would want to know why this was happening, and Lia wouldn’t be able to tell her. Lia would have to stand there in silence and let her world crumble around her while David watched and laughed and patted himself on the back.
Nausea overwhelmed her. She wanted to throw up. She needed to throw up. But she wouldn’t. She’d promised August, for some insane reason, that she would say a prayer to Aphrodite. And if she was doing it for August, she would do it right.
Lia gathered the candles. She knew she ought to offer something. Tradition and all that. She found the note from David that still had the lock of hair she’d cut and given him after he’d taken her virginity. According to myth, Artemis and Aphrodite were sisters and rivals. Maybe Aphrodite would appreciate having an offering that belonged to Artemis offered to her instead.
“This is mad,” Lia said to herself as she lit the candles and arrayed them around the statue of Aphrodite. Surely this was just busywork August had given her, something to do to calm her down, to make her feel better or to shut her up for a few minutes so he could figure out how to help her. Even so, she picked up the lock of hair, and as she dipped it in the flame, she prayed her heart out.
“Aphrodite, goddess of love,” Lia began, “please help me.” After that Lia wasn’t sure what else to say. “David used my love for him against me. A man who likes hurting women shouldn’t be allowed to win, right? Um... I’ll shut up now. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it, anyway. That’s not true. I know exactly why I’m doing this. Because August asked me to. And I’m in love with him. So, please bless August, too, and keep him safe and happy... Amen.”
Lia let the curl of gingerbread-colored hair burn to nothing.
And that was that.
But that wasn’t that. That wasn’t that at all.
A wind kicked up.
A gust of wind that rattled Lia’s ancient windows, rattled and beat against them, beat against them until they finally blew open.
The wind rushed into the room and doused all four candles at once. The photos fell off the mantel. Her phone blew off her nightstand and onto the floor. Her lamp tipped over. Books blew open. Even Gogo looked windblown. He barked, but it wasn’t a scared sound. He barked the way he did when he’d treed a squirrel. A bark of joy. Lia ran to the windows to try to force them to shut and latch, but the wind was too strong, so strong it blew the petals off the roses from the bouquet August had given her. The pink petals swirled around her dark bedroom.
Then it just...stopped.
Just like that.
Over.
The wind died, and Lia was able to get the windows closed.
She set her lamp upright and checked to make sure the candles had really gone out before they burned the whole place down.
When she had everything set to rights, she finally sat down in her grandmother’s armchair. Gogo put his head in her lap and whimpered.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the hell that was, either, boy.” Whatever it was, it was terrifying, and Lia could do nothing but hold Gogo and pet him and comfort herself by comforting him.
About an hour later, her phone rang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
