To the rest of the city, Rose had been professional, coldly academic, and dedicated to her research. She’d kept Salem’s elite at a distance. But she’d been different with the girls and even more different with Callie.
Callie remembered how Rose would pick her up from school and the two of them would go walking all over the city together before they made their way back to their house on Daniels Street. It had always been Rose who came for her, or almost always. It certainly hadn’t been her mother, Olivia. She could see Rose’s long braid swinging as they strolled and felt her own shorter, curly ponytail keeping the same rhythm. Auntie Rose had liked to tie Callie’s hair with a satin ribbon, a different color for every day of the week.
Callie took a right onto Derby Street, careful not to miss it this time, and turned right again on Central, following it to the police station. But the station had moved; the building was condos now. She pulled into a space and leaned out the window, asking the first man who passed by for directions, smiling flirtatiously to get his attention and nodding encouragingly as he gave her directions to the new station. She felt his disappointment as she pulled the car away.
She had to circle Riley Plaza twice before she spotted the broadcast vans blocking the stairs. She found a space, locked the Volvo, then elbowed her way through the news crews and up the stairs to the front desk.
“I’m here to see Rose Whelan,” she announced.
“We told you all to wait outside,” the desk officer said. “We’re not dealing with any more reporters today.”
“I’m not a reporter,” Callie explained. “I’m her niece.”
It was a small lie but an effective one. The officer looked surprised. Then he picked up a phone and punched in some numbers.
“I’ve got a girl out here says she’s the banshee’s niece.”
A moment later the door opened and a tall man who seemed to duck more from habit than from necessity stepped through the doorway. He was muscular with bristly dark hair and brown eyes, good-looking in a rough way. He looked as if he were born with the jaded expression that defined his face.
“Rose has no family that I’m aware of,” he said.
“My name is Callie Cahill,” she said, working to keep her demeanor smooth; her therapists had always told her she was very good at hiding her anxiety. She could tell he recognized the name. “I’m not technically her niece—”
“John Rafferty,” he said, holding the door for her as he showed her into his office, then closing it quickly against the officers who had started to gather.
Though he knew the name, he was still suspicious. “You sure you’re not just some reporter pretending to be Callie Cahill?”
“Far from it,” she said. Instead of explaining further, she shoved her hand across the desk, opening her clenched fist to expose her palm.
The stigmata. This was the part of the story that everyone had heard about and what everyone wanted to see. The nuns at St. James’s had claimed it was a miracle when they found Callie the morning after the homicides, calling her a “sacred child” who had been saved from death by the mark of Christ. They’d worked closely with DCF to have Callie entrusted to their group home in western Massachusetts, promising to find her suitable foster care. They had probably thought they’d discovered a church miracle right here in Salem. But later, as the murder investigation had gotten under way and the grim details of the Goddess Murders had come out, rumors had begun to circulate about the “occult ceremony” the young women and Rose had performed on that Halloween night, and she remembered how quickly the narrative had turned.
Rafferty averted his eyes as if the looking itself was a violation. “Is it painful?”
His question took Callie by surprise. She considered it for a long moment before answering. “Sometimes.” She felt awkward and quickly changed the subject, bringing it back to Rose. “How did the boy on the hill die?”
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
“The news called Rose a killer banshee.”
“Yes, they did.”
“What does that mean?”
“Rose says she had to kill the boy because he was turning.”
“Turning? What does that mean?”
“At this point we don’t know what she meant by that. She also claims to have killed him by screaming at him. Which we all know is impossible.”
For a moment, it occurred to Callie that Rafferty might be wrong. The human voice could shatter glass, couldn’t it? Hadn’t she heard something about governments testing sonic weapons with the capacity to both maim and kill? Sound certainly had the ability to heal; she’d used it herself many times at the nursing home. If sound could heal, couldn’t it also kill? But even if it were a possibility, the Rose Whelan that Callie remembered was not capable of intentionally killing anyone.
“Who is the boy?”
“He’s—was—the grandnephew of a local Brahmin.”
“What do you mean?”
“A bad kid from a good family.”
“Does Rose say why she thinks she’s responsible?”
“Rose isn’t saying anything at the moment. I think she believes a banshee that lives inside of her killed him.”
Callie stared at him.
“How much do you know about Rose?” Rafferty asked.
“Up until today, I thought Rose was dead.”
Rafferty looked surprised.
“That’s what the nuns at the children’s home told me. My mother and Cheryl and Susan were all dead. And so was Auntie Rose. Or so they said.”
“They lied to you?”
“Evidently.”
“Rose isn’t well,” Rafferty explained. “She hasn’t been the same since that night in 1989.”
“I’ll bet,” Callie said. How could Rose be the same? How could anyone?
“You were there that night. What happened? What kind of ritual were you performing up there?”
She stared at him. His tone sounded vaguely accusatory. It reminded her of the nuns. “We went there to bless the unconsecrated grave of our ancestors,” Callie replied. “Five accused witches who were executed on July nineteenth, 1692.” She’d recited the story so many times after the murders that it seemed almost like one of the poems she’d memorized as a child.
“Rose had a breakdown,” Rafferty said. “She was in a state hospital for a long time. When she came out, she wasn’t the same woman. She also believed it was a banshee that killed your mother and the others.”
“I just heard that,” Callie admitted. “I’m not quite sure what that means. Especially in relation to Rose.”
“According to Irish folklore, a banshee is a kind of specter who appears to those left behind when a loved one dies. But Rose’s mythology takes things a step further. She believes banshees can kill, if they inhabit a human host who is ‘turning.’?”
“What does that mean?”
“Rose thinks it was a banshee that killed your mother and the others that night, and, after that happened, the banshee jumped into Rose, who has been holding her captive for all these years in an effort to keep her from killing again.”
“That’s crazy.”