Chapter Three
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Barrett thought back to that day a week before when he’d followed Minerva Goodnight down the street like a lost puppy. He still couldn’t explain the pull. The compulsion. But the little apartment had been exactly what he’d needed, and the location allowed him to see everything that happened along the main stretch of road. He hadn’t seen Minerva again since then, as if she’d never existed at all.
He’d moved his meager belongings into the loft-style apartment and felt right at home. His typewriter sat on the long trestle table in front of the window—he’d never owned a computer, and even with his success refused to purchase one. He liked the feel and sounds of the typewriter keyboard clicking away beneath his fingers. The ding after each line was written and the clatter as he pulled each finished page from the machine. It felt more real somehow. More tangible.
After Matilda had handed him the key and told him to slip a check under her sister’s door to cover the rent, he’d ventured out only long enough to by food and other necessities at the grocery store. Something about Cauldron’s Hollow made his creative juices surge—the vision that had greeted him upon his arrival had only grown in strength and vividness as he slept—and he knew he’d have no peace unless he wrote the story.
So he’d written—for days at a time with nothing more than a quick nap or a sandwich to sustain him. He knew better than to fight the urge when it came. He’d crash eventually, but for now the words were flowing. His novels tended to run toward the macabre, and this one would exceed his reader’s expectations—curses, and witches, and death.
“Oh, my,” he said, under his breath, chuckling at the quip. Then he shook his head. “Too much time alone when you’re making jokes as bad as that one, Delaney.”
Barrett stretched his arms above his head and looked at the clock. It was well past midnight and he knew there was no point in venturing outside. Everything in Cauldron’s Hollow shut down by six o’clock except for the pub and the church. He guessed their thinking for the late closings was that everyone needed food for the stomach or the soul, but even those had a ten o’clock curfew.
He heard a thump come from the apartment next door, and just as he had been the first time he’d heard it, his curiosity was piqued. His landlady kept unusual hours. In fact, he wondered if she slept at all. Not that he’d had the chance to ask her. He had yet to run into her face to face or speak to her at all. Sometimes he got the impression that she was avoiding him altogether.
But he could admit he’d spent some time looking out the big window in front of his desk as she dashed in and out and about town. She was pure energy, and never seemed to slow down. And there was something—familiar about her. He kept watching, hoping it would click into place, but so far he was drawing a blank.
And he never in a million years would’ve guessed she was related to Minerva. They couldn’t have been more different in looks if they’d been born on different planets. Eloise was constant motion. Her fiery red hair was cut in a close cap around the elfin features of her face. She was tiny, but the way she moved made it seem like she could accomplish a thousand things at once. He hadn’t gotten close enough to her to see her eye color, but he envisioned them as a rich brown.
The truth was, Eloise was playing havoc with his system—this unknown woman who fascinated and distracted him. The way she went about her business and her life with such determined focus, as if she was working off a debt of some kind.
And he was ashamed to admit the fascination had manifested itself into dreams—erotic dreams that woke him in the middle of the night with the taste of her on his lips and the feel of her skin against his. Her pale limbs wrapped around his body, the sheets tangled around them, and her soft cries of pleasure as her nails scored his back were as vivid as all of the other visions he’d had since coming to Cauldron’s Hollow.
His body tightened at the memory and the urge to give himself the release he needed was tempting, but he hadn’t given in to the need, no matter how strong the urge became over the last few days. It hadn’t seemed right when he’d never even met the woman, though plans to change that and change it soon were already formulating in his mind. The compulsion to know her grew stronger by the day.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and unbuttoned his jeans to make room for the part of his body that wouldn’t listen to reason.
“Christ. The curse of an overactive imagination. Snap out of it, Delaney. You’re not a fourteen-year-old kid looking for his first score anymore.”
Annoyed at the memory, he pushed back from his work and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. A loud thump came from next door and then the sweet scent of cinnamon and cloves wafted through the shared vent between their apartments.
He’d gotten used to the different smells that had permeated his space for the past week, except for that one evening when licorice seemed to be what was on her menu. He hated licorice, and he’d almost left the book in the middle of a scene to escape the apartment and the smell.
Still, the middle of the night seemed like an odd time to cook anything. But night after night, he could hear the clang and thump of pots and pans, followed by the occasional mutter through the vents. Though he wasn’t able to understand the words clearly, only the sentiment behind them.
Barrett took one last moment to think of her before going back to work—her face flushed with the heat from the kitchen and damp tendrils of hair curled around her face.
Eloise Goodnight was planted firmly in his mind. He only hoped she found him half as appealing.