I pause.
Hector points to the book that’s now in my hand with his cigar. “She escaped Salem.”
My fingers flex over the aged leather of the book. “Salem? As in the Salem witch trials?”
He nods. “The very same.” Taking a seat back on his chair, he puffs on his cigar until the sweet scent of burnt tobacco drifts around my face. “That was her journal, in her own words. The papers are all bonded together with wax. A lot of the words may not make sense. Majority of it is written in early modern English. She escaped the trials, ended up in Riverside, and well—” Hector raises his hands around the room. “She became a legend amongst most. Mainly for putting up with a Hayes, but because the year 1694 was the year she gave birth, and then 1695 was the year The Hayes Curse was born.”
I blow out a loud exhale of breath, shifting in my chair.
“I don’t understand what any of this means,” I answer honestly, placing the heavy book on my lap. “But what I really want to know, is what do you mean, The Hayes Curse?”
Bishop turns toward me. “They called it a curse, but it isn’t really. Have you heard of clear sight and psychometry?”
“Yes. Clairvoyancy?”
Bishop nods. “Yeah. So, they say there’s one in every Hayes generation. When it skipped me, we all figured we were fine, but that was until I found out Daddy Dearest was hiding another kid, along with his closet full of side bitches.”
Hector flashes a cocky smirk.
Bishop continues after glaring at him. “You’ve experienced things, right?”
Silence. Undiluted silence. I close my eyes, pulling my knees up to my chest. “I—I don’t know.”
Brantley turns toward me, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at me behind his shoulder. “I’ve caught you a few times.”
I look to him. “That was sleepwalking.”
Brantley glares at me, and the way his eyes flick between my mouth and back to my eyes, makes me shuffle uncomfortably. Pins and needles pinch over my skin. “Yes, but no.”
“The boys are right,” Hector says. “And over the years I was against you ever finding out. I didn’t think you needed to know. When Brantley stepped in and took you, it was agreed that when they started—if they started—he was to manage it.”
“—which I did,” Brantley snaps at Hector. “Until.”
“Until you came back into this life,” Hector finishes. “I underestimated the power of your generation.”
“Okay,” I murmur, thrown off by the revelation that I’m basically a damn freak. This explains a lot of things, but I need to bleed more information out of them anyway, at least before I spill. “What—what should I look out for?”
Hector shrugs. “That I don’t know. It comes in differently for every person.”
I hold my breath, my eyes swing between all of them quickly, shifting so fast, afraid I’ll miss something. I figure I have to read one of them, and one of them only if this is going to work. They can conceal anything far too quickly for me to catch.
I turn toward Brantley. “Ava Garcia.”
Goosebumps swell over my skin, a shiver crawling down my spine. The temperature in the room drops to dangerous levels, and suddenly they’re all silent. It’s fine. They can be silent, because Brantley’s slipup was loud enough for me to have an answer.
“How” —Brantley leans over, his elbows now on his knees while his eyes remain completely on mine—“the fuck do you know that name?”
I square my shoulders, fighting the urge to fidget. “I—I don’t know.”
“You obviously know,” Hector adds, far too calm for my liking.
I cross my arms in front of me. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Explain anyway,” Bishop says, turning his body toward me.
“You won’t believe me.”
Brantley chuckles. “Fucking try us.”
“Okay, but I want the truth. I want your side to what I know.”
“Fucking speak, Saint, my patience is running thin.”
“I see her,” I admit, and because I can’t watch their reactions, my focus falls to the patterns engraved into Hector’s desk. “She, well, she started visiting me in my dreams a little after I first met everyone.”
“Great, the bitch is fucking walking into dreams and trying to tell her truth. Why don’t people just die anymore?” Bishop grunts to himself and I don’t have the energy to ask him what he means by that. They talk about people like they’re disposable.
“It was just that.” I search Brantley’s eyes. “But recently it has become, I don’t know, something else.”
“What do you mean, something else?” Brantley pushes, and I’m well aware how silent Hector is now.
“I mean, I—I actually see her. Like when I’m in the bathroom. It’s no longer only when I close my eyes. And that’s not only it. She showed me what you all did to her.” I lean closer to Brantley, pinning him with my eyes. “Brantley, I felt what you did. Every step of the way. I watched it through the eyes of her ghost. When you killed her, I felt it.”