Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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We ended up at a house in a neighborhood I'd never visited before. Something tucked away, sprawling on curved streets with grass so green one wondered if they'd ever seen real green before. Most of the houses were white, but then we turned down another street, and they were all brick.
They actually had mailboxes sitting by the curb. I had never lived in a place with a mailbox at the end of the driveway.
"This one?" I asked, just as a crack of thunder shook the sky.
I looked around warily, noting only the soft yellow backdrop, the vivid buzz of humidity in the air. None of that belonged in the month of November, but this was what life was like now. And apparently, it decided we got thunderstorms out of nowhere in the same month that millions of Americans basted a turkey while yelling unhelpful pointers at brightly-clothed football players on a screen.
We were miles from downtown, but this neighborhood looked as if it also had National Guardsmen rolling down the wide streets, barking out orders to abandon their vehicles and get inside.
Little did they know, this was where the perpetrator lived.
It didn't fit Patty's aesthetic. I wondered if any of her braver neighbors had called the police, naming her as a potential witch. Not just because of the way she dressed, though I'm sure that was evidence aplenty for some. I wondered just how comfortable Patty allowed herself to get, wondered what she'd let slip that she hadn't noticed, all because she was tired of hiding. She was probably the least cautious of her entire coven.
What a fine leader, if discovery could so easily lead to their demise.
"...I think so..."
Kirishima glanced at the address on his phone, matching the same numbers as the one on the red brick backsplash by the front door. It jutted under a tiny porch area with dark red railings, chipped paint leaving veins of gray iron.
To be fair, the street name we'd searched had stopped and picked up in a different place than was unconnected to this portion. Kirishima was unused to such a phenomenon. Apparently, Japanese cities had better urban planners.
Mayhop was known for streets that ended abruptly and picked up three blocks down or around a curve and down a mile. It was a relic of the past, when the city was being founded.
"The number matches?" I clarified. Kirishima nodded.
"The street matches," I confirmed, remembering how we'd had to loop around three times to land on the right one.
"Must be it, then," he muttered.
I took a deep breath. The world felt so quiet, as if everyone was waiting by their windows, looking out to see who would be traveling at this time of day. Would they call the police on us for walking up to a house and ringing the doorbell? Suddenly, such a normal thing didn't feel okay.
