The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

FORTY-TWO

“That was delicious,” Emmaline said after sopping up the last bit of gravy with a crust of Italian bread.

She was a font of local history, it seemed. The trio had spent a half hour talking about mashed potatoes, the early sunsets and most of all the history of the River’s End library, which oddly enough had been born out of a shipwreck just up the coast in Delilah that left behind two crates of wet but otherwise usable books. One of River’s End’s founders had brought those books back and started a loaning library out of his home. When he died, he left the house and all of the books to the town.

Jenn smiled. “Thanks. It was my dad’s recipe. I’m amazed we didn’t all get to be two hundred and fifty pounds growing up the way he cooked. I mean, he didn’t drain the grease when he fried bacon up for a recipe, he put the rest of the food in right on top of it.”

Emmaline laughed. “I think the most common spell people wanted from your aunt was something to help them lose weight. You’d think it would have been something to help them find true love, or a potion like that, but no, people are always concerned with their looks. Vanity.” She shook her head.

“What exactly did Meredith do for them?” Jenn asked.

Emmaline’s face was stern. “I’m sure she mixed some hot peppers and the ground-up bones of something foul and told them to put it in their refrigerator.”

“Would that work?”

“That’s the kind of curiosity that got your aunt in trouble,” Emmaline replied.

“Well, I can’t help but be curious,” Jenn said. “There’s some kind of supernatural serial killer that’s been stalking me for the past two months. My aunt had something to do with magic, and so I’d kind of like to know what. It seems like the best way to protect myself.”

“Getting away from this house would be a good start,” Emmaline announced. “The evil draws its power from here.”

“That didn’t stop it from coming to Chicago and killing my dad,” Jenn complained. “And leaving signs for me as well. The Pumpkin Man—supernatural or not—was in my apartment just before I flew out here. There were pieces of pumpkin at the foot of my bed! I’m not safe anywhere.”

Emmaline opened her mouth to say something but then thought better of it. There was an uncomfortable silence at the table until Nick broke it.

“I’m taking her to San Francisco in a couple days, but the last time we were there her best friend vanished. We . . . we’d like to think she just wandered off, but that doesn’t seem very likely. We think the Pumpkin Man probably came for her. So, if you know of a way to keep Jenn safe, tell me. Even if it’s that she never comes back to this place again. I want to protect her, and I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Jennica looked at Nick in shock and happiness. He’d just said the words of someone who genuinely cared. Not that she hadn’t realized he cared, but in some ways she’d felt like maybe he’d been staying with her out of pity. This sounded very much like love. He’d do anything?

“We have to stop the Pumpkin Man,” Jenn told Emmaline. “How do we do that? It sounds like you don’t want me to follow in my aunt’s footsteps, but how can I protect myself if I don’t? Running away just isn’t going to work.”

Emmaline stared at her. Finally she said, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what Meredith did to bring him here. But I do believe this is a supernatural being and not a serial killer, and I promise I will try to find a way to bind him and keep him from hurting you. But . . . promise me that you’ll leave here no matter what. This house rests on generations of darkness. So long as you are here, you are vulnerable to the pull of that history. If you stay, you will become a Perenais just as your aunt did. You’ll become everything bad that I barely escaped. I cannot caution you enough.”