“Lots of people need reminding, Red.”

“Okay, fine.” He clearly wouldn’t stop until he had the whole messy story. “She found Jesus recently—”

“Was he lost?”

“Oh stop it. She’s very connected to religion, which isn’t a bad thing, but it means that we don’t do any of the old stuff we used to do or talk about any of the old stuff we used to talk about because she’s ‘not allowed.’ It all just seems pointless. She doesn’t know I’m a witch. I never told her or the others because I knew they’d think I was a freak. Now I really can’t tell her. She doesn’t even know what column, exactly, I write, or she’d be on my case about that because she’s very anti-wære.” I sighed. “I have to be so careful around her. It’s tedious keeping secrets like that. And I know she wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore if she knew the truth.”

He was quiet, then pointed out the big red-and-yellow Meijer sign in the distance, indicating that the next exit was the one I wanted. “Sounds to me like the truth will set you free.”

I dropped Johnny off outside the store and said I’d be watching for him in an hour. I drove off to the little plaza then and realized that the coffee shop Nancy expected to meet in was a Starbucks.

I didn’t see her Cavalier anywhere, but I went on inside. I ordered a hot apple cider from a very congenial employee and chose a seat away from the window and the nearly retired sun. I thought about picking up the complimentary local paper to flip through, but my eyes needed to rest.

Backing my chair against the wall, I let my head fall back, shut my eyes, and reflected upon my last visit to a coffee shop. Despite their different franchised names and color schemes, the environments inside the two shops were pretty much the same, and the aroma was definitely the same. It took me back.

Vivian had suckered me and started this whole mess. I wondered if Vivian was dead. Wondered if her flesh was cold and gray, her eyes wide and sightless. It surprised me how strongly I hoped that was the case. For what she had done to Lorrie, for the manipulation of so many, and to bury the info she held and keep it from getting to Menessos.

Leaning on the table, I stirred the hot cider, watching the amber liquid swirl. The strong sense of justice that had embraced me all my life seemed to be gripping me tighter lately, strengthened by the accompanying urge to personally dole justice out in hefty doses to those who required it—but only to those who either admitted their guilt or had it otherwise proven. Sounded like top-of-the-list requirements for a Lustrata.

“You hate me, don’t you?”

Nancy stood there with a little box in her arms. Her red-rimmed and puffy eyes were wide and uncertain. Her mousy brown hair was coiled up into a bun, with wisps of shorter, loose hair sticking out. It created a slight wildness about her. I noticed the little doily pinned atop her head. She’d worn it to our brunch too. I realized Nancy had chosen a strict denomination of Christianity, Apostolic. I felt like a bug some kid had just dropped into a jar as she studied me. “No. I don’t hate you,” I said.

“You look so…serious and angry,” she said.

“Sorry. Just deep in thought.” Nancy didn’t look convinced. The kid was going to start shaking the jar and might even poke around with a stick. “I told you it was a bad time.”

“Well, here.” She set the box on the table. “I’ll go get a coffee.”

Peering into the box, I saw a bright yellow V-neck sweater neatly folded, and under it was a hardcover copy of The Mists of Avalon. An introduction, for me, to Arthur. Fallen to the side of the book were three cassette tapes, rock ’n’ roll from my rebellious youth. I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

“That’s much better,” Nancy said, slipping into the chair across from me.

“What?”

“You, smiling.”

I sipped my cider. “I just remembered that concert in Cleveland when Olivia won the front row tickets from WMMS and you and Betsy flashed the singer your—”

“I remember,” she said quickly, smothering any further such reminiscences. Her faith was such a controlling belief that to show my consideration of it in her presence meant I had to alter myself. It wasn’t right. The core of our drifting friendship had became a surge in the opposite direction when she found religion.

We sat, stirring our drinks in silence. My leg bounced with impatience.

The bruising silence lasted a minute, then two.

I looked up from my drink. Nancy was sitting perfectly still. The cross on her necklace glittered delicately in the cozy ambient light. I caught myself wondering if the symbol was anathema to vampires like in the stories.

I had to stop thinking about vampires.

Nancy’s fingers were curled tight around the cardboard sleeve meant to make holding the hot drink more comfortable. She seemed crushed, as if someone just told her a car had hit her dog. “It’s gone,” she said. “That feeling of being free. Free of parents—or grandparents, in your case. Just hanging out with friends who won’t tell on you or hate you for being young and naive because they are too.”

I agreed. For me, that feeling had gone away in college when the bills started coming. Maybe religion was, for Nancy, the ultimate bill with payment due.

“Why is it gone?” she asked.

“I think it has something to do with maturity, responsibility.”

“That would explain Olivia and Betsy.” She could have made a joke of it, but instead she made it sound depressing.

“Probably.”

“Why us?”

“We accept what we have to do and do it.” I thought again of being the Lustrata.

“You’d think that maturity and responsibility would leave a mark.”

Involuntarily, I touched my chest where Menessos had left his mark, his stain. It was mine because I was responsible for Theo. “It does,” I said. “It’s an interior stain, spilled over you by failure and pain.”

Nancy had picked up on the inadvertent rhyme of my spoken words. “Maybe you should start putting poetry in that column of yours. Or branch out.”

I finished my apple cider and put the cup on the table. This suffocating encounter had gone on long enough. “Nancy.”

“Don’t, Seph. I know what you’re going to say and I beg you, don’t say it.”

“But—”

Nancy leaned forward and put her fingers on my forearm and implored me, “Even if we never talk again, we’re friends in our hearts if we don’t say that kind of good-bye. If we say that kind of good-bye, if we shut the door on this friendship, we can’t open that door again.” Her fingers were hot from holding the coffee cup.

“Shutting it might be best.”

She sat back, her hot hand drifting from my arm. “Have I been a bad friend?”

I stared at her, choking on the truth. “No. I have.”

“No you haven’t—”

“I’ve kept secrets from you. Secrets that would change everything.”

She gauged me, and I could feel her pulling away from me. It was as if her aura retreated and took its stifling oppression with it. I could breathe more easily. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Just trust me when I say that if you knew me, really knew me, you wouldn’t want to be my friend. You’d run screaming in the other direction and…” I’d gotten loud and emphatic enough to widen her eyes, so I toned it down to continue. “I’m so tired of trying to keep up the pretenses to make you happy.”

“Pretenses? Whatever do you mean?”

I didn’t answer.

“Oh my Lord…you’re not a wære, are you?”

I stood and picked up the box. “Thanks for returning these.” I didn’t have to straighten out her thoughts.

“Seph, no. No! You’re the only friend I have!”

“My nana says that to have a friend, you need to be a friend. So I suggest you try being a friend to those like-minded souls traveling the same road you’re on, because my path isn’t anywhere near yours. They can support you. No matter what I do, I can’t. I wish you the best, Nancy. I really do. Enjoy the life you’ve chosen for yourself, but enjoy it without me in it.”