Chapter 19 – Friends with Familiarity
There was the smell of something sweet in the air, something in the steam coming from the now familiar mug the vicar set down on the table beside her, placing it on a crocheted coaster with a beautiful pattern reminiscent of a sunset over the ocean. It must have been a creation of his wife, Danni supposed. A thump of something heavy being set down on the floor brought her attention back around to look at the vicar and she vaguely heard something sloshing around in it. From within, he pulled out a bright yellow rag and, starting from her temples and slowly moving down her face, he dabbed at her skin.
It was just a strange feeling, being cleaned like this. Yet his hand never wandered. It was gentle, careful, never going too close to her eye or mouth. Almost like a mother cat grooming her kitten with sure, firm movements that left her skin feeling clean, but her soul still felt weighed down. Was that what she was feeling, in that deep pit in her chest? Was that her soul?
Her head rested limply against the edge of the chair, eyes glazed over. A part of her wondered if she should start crying, if she was wrong for not falling apart like Maggie had. When was the last time she had cried? Not in front of her parents, that was for certain. But since coming here? She couldn’t remember. It had been so very long, everything before she had come here was a messy blur that didn’t make sense to her. She tried to summon the feeling, reaching for what might bring the tears bubbling up but there was nothing. She felt dry, broken, cracked down to the core.
The rag barely brushed her earlobe, and, despite herself, it tickled and she let out a small huff of laughter. It was involuntary, more like a hiccup than a a real sound but it brought a smile up to the Vicar’s face. He wet the towel again, wrung it out and ran it behind her ear, over her temples, her forehead, down her nose, her eyes fluttering closed at the touch. But he never touched her glasses, never tried to remove them, only moving around her lenses, first over then under.
“Do you do this for all the distressed girls you bring here?” She asked teasingly, finding her voice suddenly.
“It’s just something my mother would do whenever I would go through something shocking. I think, but I could be wrong, that you and I have the same problem. we find it hard to cry.” He said it so matter of factly, Danni could only stare at him. He placed the rag back down in the tub, moving it to the side before taking his place in his own chair across from her. To the untrained eye, it looked like he was taking on the role of a therapist. “It’s a little unorthodox, but sometimes, this can be just as cleansing as a good long cry, but the problem is you need two people to do it right. You also need to trust each other; it can very easily go wrong after all.” He explained, wiping his hands dry on what looked like a face towel next to his chair.
Danni shifted in her chair, pushed up her glasses to sit better on her nose from where they had slid down during the ‘cleansing’ and pulled her knees in close to her chest. The vicar didn’t complain about her putting her booted feet up on his couch, seeming to understand that she was too distressed to follow the social protocols.
“So… I don’t suppose that you might want to talk about what you saw?” If she had, Danni’s jaw clenched like a bear trap when someone stepped on the trigger. Instead, all she could do was shake her head. She knew she would need to say something, that eventually the details must come out, but there was a new fact that had just danced into her head.
Cesare… Erik… Victor…
What if… it had been one of them?
They had said that they were feeding on cows before now but, what if… they had gotten tired of it. Everyone could get sick of eating their favourite food if it was the only thing they ate day in, day out. What if one of them had decided to strike out on his own, had gone prowling around for something new…and found an open window. Hers couldn’t have been the only exception to the rule about invitations. What if it had been all three of them? They could have slipped out so easily whilst she was asleep, eager to be resting in her own bed and, deciding that they couldn’t attack her, had gone after the first person with an open window that they found.
“I… I don’t understand… how… what… I just… none of this makes sense…” It had started as a whisper. But her voice had gained steam the longer she went. “I don’t… Who… Who would have done this?” Joey was loved by everyone!” She finally exclaimed. “Who could have wanted to do this? Joey was so happy, he loved everything he had, this village, the shop, everyone who saw him could see that he was happy. I’m convinced he wasn’t…” The word caught in her throat. She couldn’t say it. To say it would make it all real, just as it had when she had accepted the vampires as being real.
“Even the sunniest of skies can have clouds on the horizon.” Said the vicar sagely, leaning back in his seat and tenting his fingers.
“You think that Joey… No! I do not believe it. Not for a minute.” At some point, Danni had gotten onto her feet and begun to pace the floor. “I don’t, for a second, believe that Joey would have… done that to himself. I saw the wounds; I saw the scene… it was all too… I don’t believe it. I can swallow a lot of things, but I can’t… not this…” Her mouth was running away on her. “You know him better than I, can you honestly look me in the eye and say that Joey is the type to do this?”
The vicar could only shrug in response and that only spurred her on, though this time her voice was laced with real anger.
“Don’t give me that crap! I don’t believe, for a damn second, that he could have ever done this! Something else must have done this! Someone else! I know it! Something about this doesn’t feel right and I just… I just… No! This doesn’t make sense! I don’t believe it; I won’t believe it! I can’t!” She insisted, turning in such rapid circles, she was spinning more than pacing.
“Sounds like you’re taking this personally.” The vicar remarked.
Danni’s hands shot to her hair, her fingers running through it again and again, racking her nails over her scalp, down her neck, pressing into her shoulders and the junction where the two met.
“Sounds to me… like you may have been feeling something more than just Philia.”
“Fee… What?” Caught off guard, Danni spun around to look at him and her eyes widened when she realised he was smirking at her.
“ Philia, it’s a Greek word meaning brotherly or friendly love. I don’t think you held those kinds of feelings, and I think that’s why you’re so focused on this.”
“It’s not like that… Whatever ‘that’ is. What did you call it?”
“ Philia?”
“Yeah, Philia, that.” It took a minute for her to realise what she had said and immediately backtracked. All of her thoughts were a tangled mess she was fighting to undo. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”
“The Greek people of long ago believed in a great many kinds of love. There’s Philia , brotherly or friendly love. Agape which means unconditional affection. Storge meaning the love between a parent and a child. There’s Xenia, better known as guest right or the laws of hospitality.”
“Yeah, I know that one. I remember reading about that in Homer, the suitors abused it by invading Odysseus’ palace and terrorising Penelope and Telemachus. They couldn’t throw them out because they were, technically, guests in their house and I remember there’s that myth about Zeus punishing that King who tricked the Gods into eating his son, breaking guest right… Ta-Tan-Tantalus! That’s him! Demeter… ate part of his shoulder because she was depressed.”
“You know your Greek mythology.”
“I read them when I got sick of fairy tales… It was just about the only thing that held the same appeal.”
“And you know Homer.”
“I preferred the Odyssey over the Iliad, mostly because Agamemnon can’t seem to breathe without making things worse for the Greeks…”
“Have you read Vergil?”
“The Aneiad? Parts of it, I got a bit bored when I realised that he was just rehashing Homer… Bu-bu-bu-but I don’t understand what this has to do with me. All these Greek words and uh… What does this have to do with me and Joey?
“In your case, there is a type of love called ‘Eros’ . Nowadays, it’s come to mean ‘sexual love’ but in this case, it means romantic love. There were sparks flying between the pair of you, even if you didn’t realise it just yet. When Joey and I checked out your place and found you on the floor, he had you on his back before I could suggest anything and said he was taking you to his place where it would be safe. You didn’t see it, but he looked like his birthday, Christmas and every holiday in between had come at once. He was living a dream in that moment.” Danni’s jaw dropped.
“By having me on his back?” She asked, sinking back down onto the chair and wrapping her arms around herself.
“By being close to you. I don’t think you saw it and I don’t blame you, but being around you could make his eyes light up like Bonfire night fireworks.”
There was no excusing it this time. The heat coming off her head had to be blushing.
“I think that’s why, even if you didn’t realise it, you were so sure about something about this being off. You were starting to get the warm and fuzzies for him as well. That’s why you’re so sure that he didn’t ki—.”
“Don’t say it!” As wild as her head was at that moment, she couldn’t bear to hear that word. The words had come out harder than she intended, and she shrank in on herself.
The vicar didn’t seem put off by her outburst. Instead, he had a look of laser focus.
“So, what is your plan?” He asked, picking up his mug and taking a long sip of his drink.
“What?” Danni asked.
“Well don’t you have a plan?” The vicar replied.
“A plan for what?” She repeated herself.
“Think about it like this. Doesn’t this sound like it would make a very interesting story?” That caught her attention.
“You think… you think that I should write about this?” It was a strange feeling, having someone actually encouraging this.
“Perhaps, I think that you should keep an open mind about it. If you were to to turn this into a story, what kind of plan do you think you would need for this?”
“But I can’t do this. I’m not a detective.”
“No, but what if you imagined yourself in the place of a detective? You could always say that you are looking around under the guise of doing research?”
“I need… suspects. I need to find who were the last ones to see Joey alive…then I need… I’m going to need to find clues… see if the police missed anything… If there is anything I can find that they couldn’t…” The idea of walking back into that room, going up those stairs again, seeing those rooms the same but irrevocably changed, was almost too much for her.
“I can’t do much about the clues, I imagine you’ll need to speak to an officer about that, but I have some information you might find intriguing.” He started, setting his mug down.
“What? What do you know?” Danni asked but the vicar held up a hand.
“First, you need to sit down and take a drink. You look like you could use something fortifying in you and I know you’ll like what I made for you.” Doing as bid, Danni squirmed back into the chair, picking up the mug and her nose caught the familiar smell of his hot chocolate. She downed half of it in a single pull, rolling it over her tongue, almost wishing that she could sink her teeth into it. It was so thick, she kept thinking she could chew on it. Swallowing, she set the mug down and focused her eyes on the vicar, pushing strands of hair that had fallen into her face out of the way.
“Alright, what can you tell me?” She asked, her hands resting under her chin and her thumb playing at the corner of her mouth, legs pulled in close to her body. Not the most conducive position for thinking, but it was comfortable for her.
“First, off the top of your head, who would be your prime suspects?” The vicar inquired.
Danni cast about in her mind. At that second, she didn’t actually have any suspects. Like she had said, she didn’t know anyone who might have had it out for Joey. The more she thought about it, the less believable it seemed that someone would actually do this. Joey ran what looked to be the only food shop in town, the only other probably being in the city where she had first arrived. He was damn near vital to the community, so who would be so cold blooded as to kill him. Who might he have pissed off so badly, they’d do this? Was Joey capable of pissing someone off? The closest she had seen to him being in a bad mood was when he had explained about his sister arriving.
Maybe she was looking at this from the wrong angle.
“I don’t know… Who is there? Who would have it out for Joey?”
“Well, there is an obvious suspect. A few I could throw out, now it occurs to me.” The vicar began, getting up. Danni mirrored him, watching him grab a notepad from a side table and flip to a fresh page. Pen in hand, he began to scribble.
“First, there is whoever is behind those burglaries I’m sure you must have heard about. Maybe they tried to break in and Joey caught them. There might have been a struggle and Joey lost.” The idea made Danni’s stomach turn over.
“That’s disgusting…”
“But plausible. You can’t deny that.”
She nodded mutely.
“Okay so that might be your best chance at a prime suspect.”
“Alright…” Danni began to pace again. Whoever this person was, they operated in the quiet, in the dead of night. Finding them would be damn near impossible. She was not the best at staying awake through the night and she couldn’t trust Cesare, Victor or Erik. Not whilst they were suspects. Turning to look at the vicar, she folded her arms, eyebrows knotted together. Letting her eyes meander over him, she wondered if he might be hiding something. Was that kind face belying a ruthless monster who would attack an innocent man? “You’d know this town better than anyone, who do you think would have it out for him?”
The vicar smiled back at her, planting himself down in his chair and beginning to write again.
“Yesterday, I found myself wanting for sugar, you’ve seen that I have a proclivity towards sweet treats and so I went down to the grocer. When I arrived, I found Joey having a heated argument with someone. When I got a little closer, I saw that it was Widow Samuel’s, I’m sure you must have heard of her.”
“I heard how she was one of the first to raise the alarm about the burglaries and apparently gave the poor guy the fright of his life.” Danni explained, remembering what had been said at the house party. The idea of the vicar doing something so pastoral as venturing down into town for a cup of sugar ignited something intense in her chest.
“You heard right. The woman is a spitfire, has been as long as I’ve known her and probably even longer.”
“Do you think that she would have done something like this?”
“Who knows. I just know that when I saw them, I thought that they were about to come to blows. Widow Samuel’s certainly looked ready to, as your generation might put it, throw hands at him.”
“How did Joey look?”
“Well, when she walked past me, cursing a blue streak I might add, I saw him looking positively exhausted. Whatever they had been talking about it, it had run him ragged, far from an easy feat as you can imagine.”
“I can… He must have looked like Boxer trying to build the windmill all on his own…” Danni’s folded arms came apart to wrap her arms around herself instead.
“ I will work harder. ” Recited the vicar and a sad smile broke over Danni’s face.
“Too bad it didn’t work out for him in practice.”
“Yes…” the Vicar replied, the tip of his pen tapping steadily against the page.
“Do you really think that she could have done something like this? Wouldn’t she be too old?”
“You never know. Mothers have been known to pull Mach trunks off their pinned infants. Adrenaline can do so much to the human body that we could never have known was possible. Rage can be just as powerful a motivator as maternal love.”
“ Storge… ” Danni said under her breath, but apparently it wasn’t quiet enough. The vicar burst out laughing, slapping the notepad down on his knee.
“Exactly! Oh! I am hoisted upon my own petard!”
Despite all the emotions, Danni found herself grinning anew.
“Do you know anyone else? Anyone else with a motive?”
“Well don’t you sound like quite the Poirot? Or would it be Miss Marple in your situation?” He remarked, tearing out the page, folding it and offering it to her.
Danni took it, sliding into her pocket to be perused later. “I think I would call myself more of a Nancy Drew. I never intended to find myself in this situation, it just happened to me.”
“You make it like you’re going to make it a habit to solve cases.” The vicar commented, putting his pen and the notepad away.
“Well… not in the literal sense. But I’ve been playing these detective games for years. I don’t think that those count as experience, though.”
“There are detective games? Do you mean like Cluedo? I used to be a champion at that!”
“No, they’re PC games. I used to play them whenever I had a spare moment and the computer was free.” Danni pulled out her phone and tapped on the screen a few times, bringing up a video of a commentary free playthrough of a game she used to watch all the time. When the theme music sounded, she turned the screen towards the Vicar, perched herself on the arm of his chair as he took it and they began to watch together.
“What is this wonderful creation?”
“One of my favourite games. I’ve been playing them since I was 10.”
“Have you played them all?” He enquired,
“I did during the pandemic. I needed to do something to keep my brain ticking over whilst I was trapped inside.” She explained, both of them going quiet as the protagonist launched into her opening monologue, reading the contents of a letter she had written. They remained like that for half an hour, watching the screen together in comfortable silence.
“I’m going to have to play these myself, they look so interesting!”
“Do you have a computer? I can get you all set up with a way to play them all.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about. Mist, right? I’ve been using it for years. I don’t have a lot of games, though. I just play them to decompress when I’m not serving the community or writing speeches for services.” From down the side of his chair, he picked up a sleek black laptop, much like her own, with a number of stickers on the case and opened it. It made a sound as it was powered on and he opened the familiar gaming program. After searching the name of the series, they found that a number of them were on sale.
“Oh, this is just too tempting.” The vicar remarked, looking up at her.
“I was able to get through each of these in about an hour or two. Might be a good way to spend an afternoon if you have some free time.”
“Think you can lend me a brain cell If I get stuck?”
“Of course!” Danni agreed. She slid back into her chair and drained her drink, though it had gone cold a while ago. “You know, I never thought that you would be much of a gamer.”
“I wouldn’t say that I am, but we all have hobbies. My wife has her multitude of crafts; I have my games. It’s quite a nice existence we have.”
“It really is… I’ve probably mention it before, but you truly do have a beautiful place and you both look so happy with each other.” She expressed, remembering how his wife’s face had lit up when she had arrived the last time. “I think… I should head back to my place. I think I have a lot to ponder and… today’s been long enough.”
In truth, she didn’t want to go back to the house. Since the vampires had made themselves at home, it hadn’t felt as safe as before. But she had no other choice. One way or another, it was only there that she would get answers.