This is one of those chapters that I don't love...but it kind of needed to happen. Like the first time you have sex - it isn't great, but you're glad you got through it. :) Also, I'm upping the rating - I hope that doesn't screw anyone up. It's gonna get hot up in here later on...best be prepared.
Thanks for all the amazingly positive reviews! A girl could get used to this kind of positive reinforcement. It's doing wonders for my self esteem. Happy Friday to everyone. I just saw my favorite Kahlua commercial (the one with the Spanish woman who says everything in Spanish because it's way sexier and awesomer)...and I'm realizing that it might say some unfortunate things about me that I have a favorite Kahlua commercial.
Party on, people. Party on.
Vince told her, as she prepared to leave The Herald offices and walk four blocks down to the Haven Public Library, that the head librarian Phyllis McCaan was unpleasant on her best day. He also mentioned that she may or may not be the oldest living relative of Jesus. Audrey, always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt, thought maybe Vince was exaggerating as the Teague brothers often want to do.
But he wasn't. At all.
"Excuse me," she says, pulling her hood down and taking her gloves off, stuffing them in a pocket of her coat, "I'm looking for the folklore section."
Phyllis McCaan turns to look at her, crystal clear blue eyes blinking owlishly behind antique cat's eye frames. Her gray hair is pulled tight in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her skin is wrinkled and appears brittle, like aged paper. The way she stares at Audrey reminds her of a bird…a very alert, very aware bird. It's disconcerting.
Audrey sometimes wonders if the characters in "Twin Peaks" were based on the people of Haven.
She points towards the back of the main floor, where the stacks are thicker and the light is dimmer, and Audrey follows her line of sight. There's the faintest outline of a door back there, golden light glowing through the pebbled glass window.
"How far back do you need to go?" the librarian asks, head tilted to the side.
"Late eighteen hundreds, maybe."
Phyllis regards her a moment longer with her sharp blue eyes, seems to come to an acceptable conclusion about Audrey's motivations (of which, the latter has said nothing), and nods. "There are town histories back there, as well."
"Thank you, Ms. McCaan," Audrey says, moving towards the back shelves but the librarian's voice stops her.
"Stay away from the door, Officer Parker," she says and Audrey looks back at her. The librarian's head is down, her eyes focused on the books before her. The library goes quiet, the air stills. When Phyllis McCaan looks up from the books and meets Audrey's gaze, she looks younger.
"Let me know if I can be of any further assistance."
Audrey blinks and the librarian is an old woman again, the hushed voices of the few people in the library rise up again. She stares at her a moment longer before disappearing into the stacks in search of answers. She settles in at a table near the forbidden door, around the corner and hidden away from the rest of the library. She hunts and gathers books, lays out a fort of tomes along the edges of the table, and gets to work.
She searches through three histories before she finds a hint of what she's looking for, halfway through a book on Haven in the 1890s. It's a short entry, what you'd see within a personal diary, and the six sentences it's comprised of are nestled within a chapter on Haven's weather patterns from 1895. Audrey pulls her notepad closer, copies the passage.
"The Water Witches arrived in boats of all shapes and sizes. Some were long and graceful narrowboats, brightly painted with roses and castles. Others were newer, plastic boats, but were nevertheless loved and taken care of by their owners. One thing I did notice was that almost all of them had a wheel design containing six spokes painted on them, usually at the front. I knew this to be a religious symbol. In former days the families met together in a "conventicle" like this once a month, on the new moon, at a location chosen in advance."
She's underlining the words "water witches" when the Employees Only door creaks open and the sound of footsteps echos in the quiet of the stacks. Audrey, feeling an odd sense of danger, pulls her coat on quietly, flips her hood up over her blond hair, and pulls herself in tighter against the wall. The dark color of her coat allows her to blend into the chadow cast by the bookshelf behind her. She holds her breath, turns her head a fraction of an inch in order to see, and opens her ears.
Alice White appears a second later, long red hair flying out behind her as she walks through the dimly light shelves. She looks determined, her pale jaw set in a hard angle. An old woman trails behind her, frail and being kept upright by a wicked looking cane.
"You're forgetting yourself," the woman says and Alice pauses, stopping them both within thirty feet of Audrey's makeshift hiding place. If either of them steps to the right and pays enough attention, Audrey will have to explain herself. "You're jeopardizing our lives – lives we've kept for a very long time – for a foolish schoolgirl crush."
At this, Alice whirls on the old woman and in the odd light of the library, both look older than their ages. Audrey is reminded of how Phyllis McCaan had looked younger for that very brief moment.
"I've loved that man for as long as I've known him, and he hasn't a clue that I'm even alive." She closes the distance between herself and the old woman, lowers her voice. Audrey has to strain to hear, nearly gives herself away when her coat rustles in the quiet, but the women are focused on each other and little else. "I'm finally strong enough to do this," Alice says. "After how many dark years, Grandmother?"
"The cardinal rule, Alice. Do no harm. That was the agreement, the one we all made those many years ago." The old woman leans forward, shifting her weight entirely to the cane in order to invade Alice's personal space completely. "You've taken innocent souls to achieve all of this, child. You've damned yourself." She leans back, wavers. "I will not let you damn the rest of us."
Alice tosses her hair, adopts the same coquettish smile she'd given Audrey just yesterday morning. "We'll see," she says. "We'll just wait and see." She turns, then, and disappears into the library, the front doors banging closed a few seconds later. The old woman stares after her and Audrey tries to process what she's just seen and heard.
She wonders how Nathan will react to hearing the girl of his dream – and hers, apparently – has been manipulating him into…what, exactly? Love, lust, passion? And better than that, she's missed her mark completely since it's been Audrey who's been dreaming of Alice's erotic evenings with the Chief of Police.
"I remember when you were like that," the old woman says and Audrey, started from her own thoughts, gasps, shocked to realize the woman can see her. The woman laughs, a dry cackle that rattles both her ancient bones and the floorboards beneath her feet. "She didn't see you, Audrey. Don't worry."
Audrey unfurls herself from her hiding place, pushes her hood back and runs a hand through her tangled hair. The woman takes a moment to study her.
"You were a brunette the last time we met," she says. "And a red head twice before that."
Audrey's heart jumps in the way it always does whenever Lucy Ripley's name is mentioned in polite conversation. "You knew Lucy?" she asks, oddly hopeful.
The woman nods. "And Sarah Partridge and Mabel McCallister."
"Mabel?" Audrey asks, frowning as her mouth forms the name.
The woman grins. "It was the early nineteen hundreds. Mabel was a popular name at the time." She pushes herself to her full height using the cane and takes a few slow, unsteady steps back towards the door. She pauses near the end of the reading table, her fingers running over the spines of the histories sitting there, the motion reminiscent of a lover's caress. "You've been warned before, Audrey. Many, many times before." She taps the leg of the table with her cane. "Heed it this time."
Audrey's mouth goes dry and she feels lightheaded, a ringing appearing in her ears. "Who are you?" she manages.
"My name is Margaret," she says. "But when we first met, we knew each other by far different names." She points to the book in front of Audrey. "We're in those books, my dear, from as far back as they go." She smiles and moves again towards the door. "The answers you're looking for are with Alice. It's up to you to decide how badly you desire them."
Audrey grabs her jacket and is nearly out the front door by the time Margaret Hunt makes it back to the little room beyond the back shelves. As such, she misses the soft laugh Margaret gives as she shuts the door behind her and turns to smile at her many sisters within.
"All roads lead to the truth," she says.
"For those who seek it," Violet Unger says. "For those who do not, all roads lead to ruin."
"What happens to Alice when Audrey finally catches up with her?" Sarah Dubois asks.
"We'll see," Margaret says, pouring herself a cup of tea and sitting near the fire. She smiles a brittle smile around the rim of the cup. "We'll just wait and see."