The girl in the checkered scarf looked at the others. Make this easier on me. Where are the local witch hunters?
One girl at the side, smaller, said, “Andy lives in that house right there. He used to babysit me, before his parents disappeared, and then he was too busy most of the time. Then his sister came back, and we couldn’t be near him at all anymore.”
“Mom says Eva’s a psychopath and a tramp,” the second boy said. he stood by the little girl, and was so bundled up that only a slice of his face was visible.
“You know if she’s around?”
“Andy might be gone right now, he usually goes and gets groceries around lunch, buys some fast food or sandwiches while he’s out, and sometimes he gives us something. Asks if we saw anything strange when he was gone. I think I heard him, but I’m not sure if he was coming or going. Don’t know about Eva. She’s usually out at night more.”
“Uh huh. Good to know. Hey, did he warn you about anything? Places to avoid, in case you came by?”
“Huh?” the girl asked.
But the other boy did have an answer. “He said we had to stay off the property, like our moms and dads told us. If we did have to come to his place, though, we should stick to the front walkway and stairs, no fooling around, no tampering with windows or trying to sneak in. Knock firmly on the door.”
“Got it.”
“I don’t,” said the boy in the snowbank. “What’s to get? Why even ask that question?”
“Because I might know Andy and Eva better than you do. I know the sort of thing Eva gets up to when she’s out for her nighttime walks, for example.”
That had their interest.
“What? What does she do?”
“Answers don’t come for free, dork.”
“You want us to pay you?”
“I want info. You’ve obviously paid attention to those two. They would’ve been the cool teenagers when you were kids, and now they’re two twenty-somethings who’re living on their own, they’re mysterious… you’ve watched, and you haven’t figured it out yet.”
“What, is she like a prostitute?” the girl said.
You’re, like, seven. How do you even know what a prostitute is?
“No. Look, you tell me something, I’ll tell you something. Maybe something Andy said, or that he did, or you saw Eva when she didn’t know you were watching.”
The three children exchanged glances.
The boy standing on the driveway spoke up, “I don’t know exactly, but there was this one time when my dad was having problems. Really stressed out and kind of freaking. Nothing going right, and he and my mom kept talking about this boy, and it was bugging me…”
The etching of concern on the little boy’s face suggested ‘bugging’ was the wrong word. He’d probably been tormented by confusion and the sheer negativity surrounding whatever had been going on, his friends hadn’t been any help, and he’d gone to the only trusted ‘adult’ he could find for counsel. Andy.
“Paul,” the boy in the snowbank said, “I really don’t think Andy would want anyone to tell.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess not,” ‘Paul’ said. He looked embarrassed, conflicted. Caught between loyalty and interest, unhappy with where he stood on both fronts.
The girl in the checkered scarf looked over the group. “I think I already know the answer. It was bugging you, so you talked to Andy about it. Then something happened, and the problem fixed itself. The ‘boy’ that was giving your parents trouble just… disappeared.”
Paul didn’t even try to hide his surprise that she’d hit the mark, or at least came close to it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know. And since you gave me a half-finished story, I’ll give you half an answer. Your mom told you Eva is dangerous? I think Andy is more dangerous than she is.”
“But he’s klutzy, and slow, and he’s a nerd.”
“Get with the new millennium, dork,” she said. “Nerds are the second scariest group that humanity’s ever produced.”
“Second scariest? Who are the scariest?”
“Stupid people,” she said. Seeing their expressions war between confusion and incredulity, she added, “You’ll get it when you’re older.”
She left the kids with that tidbit of wisdom, she headed to the house they’d pointed to.
In retrospect, she suspected she could have figured it out. The house was in worse shape than the others on the block, but it wasn’t malign influence or devious business that had caused it. Just the fact that two twenty-somethings with very little idea how to maintain a property had lived here.
She wasn’t about to play games with the rules the kids had outlined. Even if they didn’t know anything, a warning to them was as good as a warning to her.
Stick to the path, knock on the door.
There wasn’t a reply.
She hesitated to knock again.
The kids weren’t wrong. Reports from various sources seemed to conclude the same thing: Andy was a bit slow. Not mentally, but physically. His reflexes were bad, he wasn’t athletic, he had no stamina or raw strength.
But Andy knew that.
He knew he couldn’t win in a straight-up fight with any practitioner or other. His response to that knowledge was to avoid the straight-up fights entirely.
If he thought she was a threat, he’d kill her while she stood right here, before she even knew he was around.
“Hansel, Gretel, you home?” she asked the door.
The door opened, and her line of thinking made her take a step back.
It wasn’t Andy that was the problem. It was his sister.
The young woman had a black tank top, sweatpants, and a crossbow in hand, aimed at the girl in the checkered scarf. Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail that left waves of hair framing her face.
Her eyes, not the crossbow, were the most concerning thing.
“I-”
“Shh,” Eva said. “One more word that isn’t an answer to a question, or one more action I don’t give you permission to make, and I’ll shoot. Nod slowly if you understand. Good.”
Eva glanced around, furtive looks, as if unwilling to look away for more than half a second, then stepped back, the crossbow unwavering. The interior of the house suggested a lot of stuff that just didn’t have places to be. Stacks of what might have been tax forms, books with no shelves to go to, bags of garbage sitting by the door, waiting to be carried out… it might have looked organized, but whatever organization was trying to take hold, disorder was winning out. One garbage bag had been opened and left open, and bits of garbage sat on a chair with no table, right in the front hallway. As if someone had been going through the garbage.
It was chaotic. Unbalanced, even. A healthy, ordered mind didn’t live in a space like that.
“Step inside, very slowly, then close the door with your foot.”
The girl in the checkered scarf moved at a glacial pace, partially to see if it would agitate Eva. Eva didn’t seem to mind.
The door clicked as it shut.
“Without turning around, reach behind you and lock the door.”
Whatever the state of the house, the bolt slid in smoothly as the latch rotated.
Another click.
Eva stared, studying her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the practitioner who came into town halfway through the year. I’ve been to some meetings, I even played a part in what happened to Molly Walker.”