Chilling Cadence

Eighteen

 Even though she wanted to head to The Sizzling Griddle, Cadence didn’t have the energy to do so. Too much had happened in the last two days. After using the magic to stop the Cyhyraeth, she had been the kind of tired that rested deep in her bones.

Lorelei, with narrowed eyes, had gone in the direction the speeding car had disappeared to without another word. After saying goodnight, Cadence parted ways with Ruth, Jaxon, and Chau.

“Let’s go to Spellbound together,” Chau said, waving as she headed in the direction of her parents' shop.

Cadence had never seen the shop herself, and she had only run into Mr. Phan a few times—once at the meetings Lorelei was holding due to the Cyhyraeth, and the second time in the graveyard—but she had never seen Mrs. Phan. She knew Chau’s family ran a shop that sold art and art services from Mrs. Phan and on the first floor, Mr. Phan ran his nail shop. She wondered if they were anything like Chau, who was so energetic, eager, and bubbly.

Grimm was sitting on the porch railing when Cadence trudged up the stairs. Her eyes were already drooping and her body felt so leaden she barely noticed the cold.

“Did you go out?” she asked, fishing out her keys.

“I did.”

Cadence looked over at him. “Did you find anything interesting?”

“That depends on what you would classify as interesting.”

As Cadence turned the key in the lock, Grimm hissed. The sound was like a swarm of angry bees, indignant at their honey being stolen or a group of pissed-off hornets. Cadence’s hands paused and she looked over at Grimm, her heart racing.

“Is there something wrong, Grimm?”

“Listen,” he hissed.

She did. And then she heard it.

Inside, piano music was playing. Cadence first tried to remember if she had left music on when she left. She liked classical music because it calmed her down, and she often listened to it as she cleaned the house or as she did her spellwork or worked in her garden. She had left so quickly this morning, it was possible she had forgotten to turn off any music she had left on.

But this piano music was unfamiliar to her. It wasn’t something she had ever heard before. Not Beethoven or Chaplin—whose music she more habitually leaned toward—but some unknown song she had never listened to before.

Cadence pulled out her cellphone and checked her Bluetooth. She wasn’t even connected to her speaker.

She sucked in a deep breath and focused on steadying her trembling hands. She took a step away from the door, her mind working a mile a minute. It couldn’t be a Vampire because they couldn’t enter a home that wasn’t theirs and she had drawn extra sigils for protection against them just in case. It could be a normal human who had broken in. That made her feel a little better. If it was a normal human, they would be no match for her or Grimm.

But if it wasn’t, if it was Hansel and Gretel instead…

Cadence glanced at Grimm. He still hadn’t recovered from fighting the Cyhyraeth yesterday. Changing his form too often was too strenuous for his body at the moment.

Cadence sucked in a breath and took a step back from her door. As tired as she was, she wasn’t delirious to the point of stupidity. She didn’t know who—or what, for that matter—and she wasn’t just about to go storming in. If Hansel and Gretel had somehow found out where she was staying before Samhain, she wouldn’t be a match for them. Last time, if it hadn’t been for Grimm, she would have died.

“Is something the matter?”

When Cadence turned and saw Lorelei standing at the foot of her porch, she was so grateful she almost flew headlong into the Vampire’s arms and kissed her on the cheek. She had never been so glad to see someone in her life.

Cadence pointed to her door. Lorelei’s head tilted to one side, listening to the piano music going on inside. Her eyes narrowed.

“You didn’t leave anything on?”

Cadence shook her head and then whispered, “No.”

Lorelei was suddenly at her side, twisting the doorknob and pushing the door open. She had been truly lucky that Lorelei had seen her; she didn’t want to think about what would have happened if another Vampire had seen her outside of her house, unprotected. She was certain Lorelei would have been miffed if Cadence had been killed—probably more because of whoever killing Cadence doing so without Lorelei’s permission—and Lorelei would surely not let that Vampire live, but the whole point of coming to Glasskeep was to survive in the first place.

Cadence followed behind Lorelei on bated breath as the Vampire stepped into the house.  The moment the Vampire’s boot-clad foot touched the wooden floorboards of Cadence’s new home, the piano music just…stopped.

A chill rose up Cadence’s spine and she sucked in a huge breath, trying to calm herself.

“Wait here,” Lorelei muttered before disappearing.

Ordinarily, Cadence would hate being bossed around—especially by a Vampire; it felt like taking orders from a Vampire went against her instincts—but tonight, she did exactly as Lorelei instructed. Grimm, although he seemed tense, didn’t move an inch from Cadence’s side as they waited for Lorelei to return.

The seconds it took for Lorelei to return felt like hours to Cadence, and she breathed out a sigh of relief when they were over.

“You didn’t find anyone?”

Lorelei shook her head. “And what’s even more odd is that your speaker was unplugged and turned off. I haven’t the faintest clue where the music was coming from.” Lorelei sounded like she loathed admitting the last part.

Cadence swallowed. She didn’t know what freaky things were going on in this house, but she couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit relieved. Hansel and Gretel weren’t her, at least. She knew she would live to see another day.

“Thanks. Oh, right, I meant to ask, whatever happened with that car you followed.”

“There was no one inside.”

Cadence’s eyebrows furrowed. “There was no one inside?” she repeated slowly.

“The car crashed in the woods where those children got hurt by the Cyhyraeth and it crashed full-on into one of the trees. I watched it crash with my own eyes. I went right up to it after it crashed, but when I opened the door, the car was empty. There was no one in it.”

Cadence had so many questions but she could only manage one. “How?”

Lorelei shook her head. “I don’t know but what I do know is that there’s no way that car drove itself from where we were all the way to the forest without crashing into a single building. Someone had to have been manning it.”

Cadence agreed with that line of thinking. Cars didn’t drive themselves, after all. Even though the driving had been pretty reckless, the car had stayed steady enough. If someone had put a brick on the gas pedal and forced the car forward, it wouldn’t have moved in such a straight line. But Cadence didn’t know of any creatures who could get around a Vampire.

“Did you notice anything at all? A scent or something?”

“There was blood,” Lorelei admitted. “There were two scents in that car; one distinctly male in nature and the other feminine. The blood was coming from the area where the feminine scent was concentrated.”

“There was nothing else?”

“I was getting to that part,” Lorelei said with more amusement than exasperation, though there was certainly a bit of exasperation. “There was a blood trail starting from the passenger’s seat and going a little way’s into the forest before it cut off. My guess is it was some kind of murderer looking to dump a body off or looking to kill someone in Glasskeep. Don’t look so horrified,” Lorelei said after looking properly at Cadence’s face. “This kind of thing is common here. Humans hear the lore and decide it’s the perfect place to commit a crime. I plan to call Sheriff Clearwater tomorrow since the victim might be someone from Blue Ridge. The murder isn’t what bothers me, what bothers me is how they escaped from me.”

Cadence looked at Lorelei incredulously. “Your sense of priorities is really off,” she said.

“In actuality, I think my sense of priorities are right where they should be. Think about it, there aren’t many things out there that can evade a Vampire. A powerful enough Witch could but could they do so dragging a body or an injured person around with them? It could be a good Hunter from the Association. If that’s the case, it might not have been a murder at all, do you understand what I mean?”

She did. “You’re saying, the scents could have belonged to Hansel and Gretel?”

“That’s an undeniable possibility, isn’t it? Maybe Gretel was hurt and they sensed me following and realized a fight with me was one they couldn’t win, so they fled.”

Cadence’s entire body was numb with panic. Even though her heart was pounding in her chest, her head was so frightfully light she couldn’t feel it.

“What do I do?” she whispered.

“It’s not Hansel and Gretel,” Grimm said.

Both Cadence and Lorelei looked in the familiar’s direction. He was sitting on the arm of Cadence’s couch, his tail wrapped neatly around his body.

Lorelei tilted her head to one side. “How do you know?”

“The matter of how I know isn’t important. All that truly matters is that I do know. Hansel and Gretel are in Houston, awaiting Samhain. They don’t know Cadence is in Glasskeep yet.”

Lorelei looked equal parts annoyed and amused. “You’re as cryptic as I remember.”

“And you’re as sadistic as I remember,” Grimm shot back. “I saw you with those humans tonight. You seem to like fear more now than you did back then.”

Cadence looked back and forth between her familiar and Lorelei. She knew the two of them had known each other before Grimm had become her familiar, but she wasn’t sure what the nature of their relationship was or how they met each other. Grimm never talked about his past as one of the Kings of Hel, and although Lorelei might tell her, Cadence could never seem to find the right time to ask about that kind of thing. Since she had come to Glasskeep, it had been non-stop one thing right after the other.

Lorelei looked completely unbothered by Grimm’s comment, though, and returned to the topic at hand.

“It’s not Hansel and Gretel, though. You’re sure.”

“I am.”

The relief that flood through her was so strong, her entire body sagged with it. Cadence had to grip the top of the couch for support as she let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank the Goddess,” she breathed.

“Then, I suppose we truly should treat this as a murder case.” Lorelei began heading to the door. “Either way, whoever has come to Glasskeep isn’t human. You should be careful.” And then she was gone, shutting the door behind her.

INQUIRING SIREN WAS busier on Samhain than it normally was. Every Witch in town piled into the shop to grab ingredients for their offerings to the dead and Hades. Some Witches were also gathering offerings for the Reaper who would revive the dead with his violin and dance with them until the dawn of November first.

Chau helped out in the store the way she always did whenever her school day finished. Cadence decided that a time like this might be a good time to try to talk to the girl and figure her out.

“Thanks for always helping out, Chau,” Cadence said, smiling tentatively.

Chau smiled back brightly. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It helps to have something else to do.”

“You don’t help out at your parents’ shop?”

Chau turned her gaze upward, thinking. “Well, I suck at doing nails, so Dad won’t let me go near the customers, and I also have no artistic talent. Sometimes I sweep the nail shop for Dad or arrange Mom’s paints. Oh, she also takes me with her when she has a big project. I was with her when she painted the ceiling in the church.”

Cadence knew she would have to bring up the next topic carefully and she did so as best she could.

“What about after school activities? Does the work here not keep you from hanging out with friends?”

Cadence had been counting the money in the register so as not to look suspicious but when the girl took a bit longer to respond than she had before, she looked up. Chau’s face was turned toward the door, so Cadence couldn’t see her face. To her, though, the air around Chau felt a little melancholic.

“I don’t…have any friends,” Chau said after a time.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a freak in a town full of freaks.”

Cadence sat money she had been counting aside in the register. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the amount to begin with; she would have to count again before she left. A fairly heavy rain had descended upon Glasskeep now, and the store was darker than it usually was. Briefly, she found herself wondering if Lorelei would be fine in weather like this. Would her body still be negatively affected like it was when the sunlight was out, or could she walk around without a worry in the world in this kind of environment?

“The founder of this town is a Vampire, the Necromancer who’s currently living in the basement of the church is my mother, and the Crypt Bangers are Sirens who perform at the Coffee Shop every weekend. How are you a freak among freaks?”

“I…” Chau glared at the rain falling on the windows for a few seconds, muttered something under her breath, and then took a deep breath. “I’m a Krasue.”

Cadence paused in surprise. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting Chau to say, but it most certainly wasn’t that. A Krasue was a being that was most commonly recorded in Asian myth. It was a monster disguised as a beautiful woman, but at night when it was time to feed, they would detach their heads from their bodies and search for blood to drink. They were like Vampires but instead of a bite, they drank blood through their long, forked tongues.

Although Cadence had read of them and had heard of them, she had never actually met or seen one before. She had always considered them as worse than Vampires were, with the very idea of a Krasue giving her the heebie-jeebies.

But Chau was such a nice, kind girl. It was hard imagining her detaching her head from her body and becoming a bloodthirsty fiend whose only desire was to feed. She just couldn’t imagine it at all.

“Technically, I’m not a Krasue now,” Chau corrected. She still hadn’t looked over at her, Cadence noticed. Her eyes had never left the window. “My mom is a Krasue but I don’t have much longer until I turn. The gene is something that’s passed down from mother to daughter. I…I don’t have any say in the matter.” Her bottom lip trembled.

“I see.”

“That’s why no one at school wants to hang out with me. Everyone knows that a Krasue moves its head from its body and drags her organs around looking for blood. People are…creeped out by me.” She looked down at her hands which were gripping a necklace made with rose quartz. “Even I’m creeped out by me. Mom says it’s not a big deal, that it’s natural for us. But she…she just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a freak among freaks.”

“Isn’t she a Krasue, too?” Cadence cut in. “Wouldn’t she understand better than anyone else?”

Chau was already shaking her head before Cadence had finished speaking.

“It’s not the same,” she insisted. “Mom is the artist who painted a beautiful mural on the church’s ceiling. Mom is the artist whose work is used to raise money for the town when we’re in dire straits. She’s beautiful and elegant and gentle-looking. Even if her skin turned inside out and she cooked people, she would still be easier to get along with than me. I’m awkward, you know. I try talking, I really do. But my awkwardness on top of me being a Krasue makes me a pain in the ass to be around.”

Cadence considered that for a moment. She came around to the front of the service counter and sat there, her gaze far away.

“When I was your age, I didn’t have friends either. At least, none who were my own age.”

Chau looked over at her in surprise. “Really? But you’re so cool.”

Cadence’s lips twitched a little at that. People always called her a lot of things, but ‘cool’ wasn’t usually one of them.

“When I was younger, I made a grave mistake. A mistake that cost a lot of innocent people their lives. The magic inside of me is immense and when I get overly emotional, it can control me instead of the other way around. Not only did I purposefully isolate myself from humans, but I was also shunned by other young Witches. They were afraid of me and I couldn’t hate them because I feared myself.”

Chau was quiet for a few moments as she gathered her thoughts. “What did you do?” she whispered.

A sigh slipped through Cadence’s lips. “What else could I do? I just lived in isolation. For me, it was easier that way. No one could get hurt if I kept my distance and remained on my own. Chau, do you know what I think?”

Chau shook her head.

“I think you’re being unreasonably hard on yourself. You’re afraid of what you are and others fear you, too. But you’re different than I was back then. You’re a bubbly, sweet kid. If you talk to those kids at school the way you were always so eager to talk to me when I first moved here, they’ll come around.”

It was silent for a while after that before Chau let out a long sigh. She grinned, seemingly in a better mood than before.

“You sound like my mom,” she said laughing. 

And although the incident hadn't been completely solved, Cadence knew it was water under the bridge for now.