“Sammy too?”

“Even old skinny bones herself.” She paused and took a long drag, and I could see her debating whether or not to tell me something. “I don’t believe people who say Sammy’s turning tricks. I don’t think she likes guys, except maybe Jacob. She told me her old man used to have sex with her – can you believe it? She hated it. That’s really sick if you ask me. And then he acts like some holy roller or something. Shit, I’d rather live with my dad. All he ever did was hit me.”

“I misjudged her. The more I’ve thought about what she went through – I don’t know if I would have been as brave about it as she was.”

Sarah shrugged. “You do what you have to do to survive.”

We sat there quietly for a while.

“Paul kicked Devon and Raney out yesterday,” she said.

“What?”

“They were assholes. They were really mean to everybody. Beyond mean.”

“Is that why Paul kicked them out?”

“Yeah, he said he was tired of them hassling everybody. They didn’t seem heartbroken about it or anything. Hey – why should you care? You seem kind of down about it.”

“Oh – no, I’m glad he kicked them out. It’s just that now I don’t have much to go on; four of the names in the journal were connected with the coven, and all four people are gone from the shelter.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess it’s five if you count the Goat.”

“Do you think the Goat is somehow connected to the shelter?”

She was thinking about this when a male voice made us jump out of our skins.

“What are you doing out here?”

It was Jack Fremont.

20

“YOU TWO ARE GOING to catch cold – it’s starting to rain again. Come on back inside.” We followed him in, but not before exchanging a look that said we would try to talk again later. Once inside, Sarah took off for the dessert table, leaving me with Jack in the kitchen.

“I’m surprised Frank doesn’t keep a tighter rein on you, Irene,” he said with a grin.

“I’m not exactly broken to the bit.”

He laughed. “I’ll just bet you aren’t. Well, nothing wrong with that. Not at all. I like a woman with spirit.”

Great, I thought. But the man intrigued me. I never would have imagined Mrs. Fremont’s son to look anything like Jack. It wasn’t that he didn’t resemble her – he looked quite a bit like her. But she just didn’t seem the sort to raise a scar-faced, biker son.

He appraised me as well, and made no attempt to hide the fact. Feeling a little nervous, I started cleaning off dishes that had piled up in the kitchen. Without a word, he took off his leather jacket and started filling the sink with hot soapy water.

“I’ll wash, if you’ll dry,” he said.

“It’s a deal.”

He immersed his arms to his elbows and scoured away. As he handed me the first dish, I noticed a colorful tattoo on the inside of his left arm. It was of a horned goat’s head, with the inscription “Satan Rides Again.”

He saw me staring at it and laughed. “Merely a token of my misspent youth, Miss Kelly. And nothing to worry over now.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

He washed a few more dishes, then turned to me and said, “I scare you, don’t I?”

“I just don’t know much about you. For example, how do you know my name?”

“Oh, I asked Paul all about you the first time I laid eyes on you. He seems to think Frank Harriman has a corner on the market.”

I didn’t reply.

“Oooh – that serious, huh?”

“At least that serious.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll back off,” he said, laughing. “Let’s see now. You’ve still got that curious look in your eye, even though I’ve made you mad. Now, what does Irene want to know? Let me guess.” He rinsed a stack of dishes and handed them to me. “She wants to know, ‘How could this ratty-assed biker be my friend Mrs. Fremont’s son?’ Am I right?”

I blushed. He laughed again.

“I am right! Okay, here goes. Life story of Jack Fremont, prodigal son of Althea and John Fremont, Senior. I barely remember John Senior – died when I was five. Left us well off, though. So I became a much doted upon, rich spoiled brat – the apple of my mother’s eye. And totally uncontrollable.

“You might say I had been something of a surprise. She was told she couldn’t have children, and at forty, found herself pregnant with yours truly. Dad was fifty, so I’m sure he felt like quite the old rooster. But as I said, he died not long after. Heart attack. Have this impression of a big guy holding me on his knee while he smoked a cigarette and drank a gin martini. But I couldn’t have known what a gin martini was when I was five, so who knows where that comes from.”

He looked over at me, as if to see if I was still interested, and went on.

“So much for the early years. As I got older, I got wilder. Got mixed up with what every parent in Las Piernas knew was the wrong crowd. Hell, I was one of the ones that made it the wrong crowd. And at fifteen, I got a girl pregnant. Cindy Larabee. Seeing a chance to have her marry into money, her daddy all but pulled out a shotgun. My mother made sure I did the honorable thing.”

“You were married at fifteen?”

“Yep. My mother supported us, of course. Old Cindy had me by the balls then, and she knew it. She knew that all she had to do was have that grandchild and Althea Fremont would take care of her for the rest of her days. I mean, the minute I said, ‘I do,’ the woman was transformed into the meanest thing on two feet. Cindy was a bitch. No other word for it.”

He paused while he rinsed off a plate and then reloaded the sink with dirty dishes.

“Well, all this marriage and pregnancy stuff scared the hell out of me. Nothing like feeling your life has come to an end when you’re fifteen. So I ran off; baby wasn’t even born yet. Mom found me and hauled me back. She did it again and again.

“When Paul was born, I stuck around for awhile. It was really exciting to me at first, but I couldn’t stand playing house with Cindy for long. She made my life miserable. So when I turned eighteen, I took off again, and this time I was too old to haul back home.

“I wandered around for about twelve years, dropping by every now and again. Caught glimpses of my boy growing up. Mom hated me then.

“I even tried to get back together with Cindy when Paul was in high school, mainly because I’d started thinking that I was his age back when he was born. I wanted to know my son.”

He stopped washing, but didn’t look up at me. He seemed to tense up for a minute. Just when I was about to ask him what was wrong, he started washing again and went on with his story. But his sarcastic tone was gone now.

“It was a big mistake. I didn’t have anything to offer either one of them. Cindy was still a nasty-tempered little shrew, and a drunk to boot. The night I left, she went on a bender. Died in a car accident – only good part of it was she took out another drunk.

“Anyway, if Paul didn’t hate me before, he surely did then. He was really messed up by the whole deal.”

He stopped washing again, staring off into space. His voice, when he continued, was much quieter.

“Kid even tried to kill himself.” He shook his head. “When my mom told me about that, I really felt like a piece of shit. I thought to myself, ‘Jack, you should be the one to kill himself. The world would be a better place. You’ve given your mother and that poor boy nothing but grief.’ But I don’t know, self-destructive as I’ve been – and believe me, I’ve pulled some dumb stunts – that just isn’t the way for me.”

He drew the back of his hand across his forehead, then looked over at me, trying to read something in my face. I suspected he wondered if I had passed judgment on him in some way. I’ve never been qualified to cast the first stone, so I was merely waiting for him to go on.

“Paul decided he wanted to live with his cousins, and did for almost a year. Boy, is that bunch something. Cindy’s sister can’t keep her pants on long enough to button her fly. She had five boys, all by different fathers. Married and divorced a couple of them. I think she figured that my mom would give her money for looking after Paul, and when that didn’t happen, out he went. My mother took him in again.