“I was only a teenager,” she said. “The group I ran with were… well, vile, if I’m looking back at it now, but back then, we were the top dogs, the ‘in crowd.’ We’d even attracted a couple of werewolves.”
“So you were born within the reservation?” I asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Mom was already pregnant with me when they moved here. Dad was a cardiologist at the hospital.”
“And this event? What happened?”
She lowered her gaze. “A new family came to town. Rumors soon got around that they were into magic and other weird stuff—”
“Meaning they were witches?” I cut in.
She shrugged. “I don’t really know. But a few animals had gone missing, and the rumor mill was soon blaming the family.”
Missing animals could certainly have pointed to the darker arts being used, but was no real proof. After all, animals did wander off sometimes, and either get lost or die. “What happened?”
“Their daughter was enrolled in our school. She wasn’t liked.” Her gaze rose again; the brown depths were haunted by both shame and regret. “You can imagine what happened.”
“Yes.”
There was no need to say anything else. Bullying—be it physical, verbal, or even via social media pages—had been an unwanted fact of life back in my day. It was only recently that schools and the government had begun to see and deal with the very real psychological damage it could cause.
But if the girl’s parents had been capable of magic, then surely they would have done something—cast some sort of spell against the perpetrators. While it went against the witch creed to cause direct harm unto others unless the circumstances were dire or involved the forces of darkness—and no matter how reprehensible the actions of Marjorie’s gang were, they would never be classified as either of those—there were certainly spells that could bounce actions and emotions back twofold. That was often enough to stop the hardiest bully in their tracks.
And when it came to dark magic, well, the options were endless.
Of course, either option depended on the child being honest and open to her parents about what was happening, and in a great percentage of bullying cases, they weren’t.
“How old were you when all this happened?”
“Sixteen.”
A bitch of an age, in more ways than one. “What happened?”
“We were relentless,” Marjorie continued. “Day after day, we picked on her. We made her life hell, both in and out of school.”
I knew what was coming, but I nevertheless asked the question. “And?”
“She killed herself. Her note said she couldn’t take the abuse anymore, and she couldn’t see any other way to be free of the pain and humiliation.” Marjorie took a deep, somewhat shuddery breath. “I wish I could turn back time and undo what we all did.”
It was a wish I could sympathize with, even if for very different reasons. Marjorie’s actions, like mine, had caused the death of another, but hers had been done in spite and hate, while mine had been an act of desperation.
But if she was looking for sympathy or even forgiveness, then she was talking to the wrong person. What she needed to be doing was evoking the girl’s spirit and asking her for forgiveness.
“Can you remember the names of the other people in your group?” I asked.
“Maybe. It was a long time ago.” She frowned. “I think there were eight—no, nine—others.”
I pulled out my phone and opened the voice recording app. “Tell me the names you remember.”
“Morris Redfern still lives here, and Mary Jones died in a car accident when she was twenty-five,” she said. “The others moved out of the reservation years ago. I have no idea where they are now.”
“Just tell me their names. We can search.”
She did so, although for a couple of them, all she could remember was their first names. When she’d finished, she wrapped the ends of her coat more tightly around her body and said, “Do you really think Karen was targeted because of that one event so long ago?”
“It’s a possibility we can’t ignore.” I stopped the recording and tucked my phone back into my pocket. “What can you tell me about the girl? Or her parents?”
“Her name was Frieda.” She paused. “Frieda Andersen, I think. We never saw her dad—he apparently had a night shift job somewhere in Bendigo. Her mom didn’t work.”