The apartment was a disaster. Nancy stepped inside, wrinkling her nose. Ripe garbage and a hint of mildew. She nearly closed the door, leaving a strip of glaring sunlight showing between it and the frame, and took a tentative step inside, nudging a pair of crumpled pants aside with the toe of one shoe. The floor was littered with what appeared to be hastily discarded clothes, practically carpeted in them; a milk crate served as the base of a tilting stack of sagging pizza boxes. Sunlight slashed through the blinds, painting shifting stripes over a nondescript sofa and a pile of crumpled tissues, the edge of a ragged rug.
Nancy wasn't even sure what she was looking for, and in this mess, she seemed unlikely to find it.
She checked the fridge and found grease-stained takeout coupons and menus curling under the magnets, no notes, no helpful clues. Given the stench of the trash can, she wasn't about to take her chances on the refrigerator's interior.
Nancy shook her head, her jaw set. Ned had probably never been here.
"Jesus." George's muttered comment was quiet, but it carried in the hot stillness. Nancy glanced over as her friend appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"Yeah," Nancy agreed, absently. She rubbed the tissue she had tugged from her own pocket to avoid leaving fingerprints, between her fingers.
All signs pointed to Serena. But nothing made sense.
Ned had been missing for a day and a half. Nancy knew it was possible that he had stumbled onto a mystery and was following some leads, but she didn't think so. His phone had been left in his room at the Omega Chi house. He had missed classes, practice. He'd missed a date with her. And between them, Nancy was the one who missed dates, not Ned. Not unless something was terribly wrong.
This place read as terribly wrong.
Nancy nudged open another flimsy door without touching the cheap doorknob and found the bedroom. The same hurricane aftermath, blackout curtains, a musky perfume hanging in the stale air. Fumbling in her pocket, Nancy pulled out a penlight, then shrugged, dropped it and flipped on the overhead lights.
She had heard George approach, so she wasn't startled when the other girl sucked in a swift breath, then coughed. "Damn."
Nancy nodded, her gaze locked onto the opposite wall.
She recognized the image that papered it, the image that was repeated dozens of times. Glossy ads torn out with a delicacy that was missing in the rest of the apartment, clean precise lines to mar as little of the background as possible.
She knew every bit of it. A framed version of it was on her bedside table at her home back in River Heights.
The man in the advertisement was Ned. His burgundy sleeves were pushed up to reveal tanned forearms, and the sunlight was at just the right angle to touch the five o'clock shadow on his jaw with coppery gold. He was glancing away from the camera, caught mid-laugh, showing even white teeth. He wore a pair of gold-framed aviators and he looked ridiculously hot. The background was perfect autumn: the leaves swirled from vivid yellow to rich mahogany, through russet and pumpkin-orange, and before it he stood, both the perfect complement to it all and gorgeously unique. A man on the cusp of a new beginning, free and easy.
The rest of it, the pretentious tag line, the fine print, Nancy didn't care about. When she had seen him that day, during that shoot, the sight of him had completely stolen her breath. She had told him after that that just seeing him, she'd practically come.
The funny thing was that they had been visiting Ned's cousin Evan, and Ned had casually mentioned he needed to make some extra money for a trip he and Nancy wanted to take. When Evan had mentioned the one-day shoot, Ned had asked Nancy before he'd said yes—but nothing had come of it. Ned's uncle Lee had been visiting too, and the shot in question was from a candid Lee had snapped after the actual shoot, when Ned had been heading out to find Nancy, right after Lee had made some joke.
Nancy understood it. Ned looked... golden, almost otherworldly. The embodiment of masculine perfection, effortlessly gorgeous and impossibly ethereal. Even now, she sometimes caught herself gazing dreamily at that framed photo—another, more intimate take on the same one she saw multiplied here. It was a shot that they had joked would be their engagement photo. Lee had caught them laughing together. That same sunlight shot her hair through with golden threads, and Ned was gazing at her with such love—
Her heart hurt. She needed to find him.
"Stalker," George said, the hint of a question in her voice.
Nancy nodded, finally tearing her gaze away. How many magazines had Serena bought? Just to harvest all these photos. Just to make this shrine.
Of course Ned had never been here. God. At the sight of this, he would have moved as far and as fast as possible away from here.
George was wrinkling her nose as she poked around, and Nancy gave her entire body a little shake before reluctantly inspecting the bed. Nothing under the pillow.
The corner of the rag rug just beside the bed was flipped back. Given the state of the rest of the apartment, that was hardly noteworthy.
Tilting her head, Nancy knelt down.
The penlight confirmed it: a rough square of bare hardwood scuffed in the light layer of dust. Nancy reached under the bed and retrieved a tiny yellowed, brittle scrap of heavy paper. It was blank, and Nancy considered it.
Aged. The tattered corner of an old book.
Her heart skipped a beat. It was a lead, anyway. It was more than she'd had so far, and an old, decrepit book didn't fit anything else in this nightmare of an apartment. This reminded her of nothing else so much as a discarded temporary skin. No point in taking care of it, because it was never meant to be a home, just a place to sleep and plan. A den.
"Nan," George called quietly.
Nancy followed the sound of her voice to the kitchen. George had pushed one of the curling pizza coupons flat, and the magnet beneath it boasted a tiny calendar, the kind sent out by realtors and dealers at the end of the year.
Friday's date was bordered in red. That was the only mark on the entire calendar. A small circle noted that the date would be a full moon.
"It's probably nothing," George murmured.
Nancy snorted, fumbling with her penlight again. "His stalker has the next full moon circled on the calendar," she replied. "I don't find any part of that reassuring."
After going through the stacks of mail—Nancy checked in with Bess, keeping an eye on the door, who reported that the neighborhood was utterly dead and nothing seemed out of the ordinary—the three of them headed back to the Omega house, a few more clues in their possession.
"So?" Bess demanded, as soon as Nancy put the car in gear.
"The suspect had papered a wall of her bedroom in The Babymaker," George told Bess, deadpan.
Bess fanned herself, then made the sign of the cross.
Nancy, at the next stop, glanced between her two best friends. "'The Babymaker'? Really?"
"I instantly ovulated the first time I saw it," Bess replied primly.
Nancy snorted and shook her head. "Imagine being there in person," she said, after a beat.
That… that thought lingered, as Nancy half-listened to Bess and George's conversation. Everyone at Emerson knew that Nancy and Ned were a heartbeat away from an engagement. His status as the most eligible bachelor on campus had passed mercifully out of memory, revived only in the longing of nostalgia.
Serena had been at the Omega party; people remembered seeing her, and the security camera had caught her arrival. She had been dressed to kill, showing off creamy skin, long-lashed green eyes, fiery auburn hair falling in perfect loose curls down her back. Nancy hadn't been there, but she had stared at the freeze-frame: burgundy satin, black leather, dark eyelash lace. Serena had moved through the drunken throng slowly, finding the man she wanted, approaching with her hips rolling, a knowing smile curving burgundy lips. She looked dangerous, alluring, challenging.
Nancy didn't often spend time regretting her own appearance; with her own hair disguised, she was able to fade into most crowds and cover stories. She was no striking beauty, definitely not on par with Serena. Beside Ned, Nancy felt like a starstruck teenager, an utter mismatch for him, but when she gazed into his eyes, none of that mattered. Ned was hers.
Nancy wasn't able to see Serena approach Ned in the crowd; the video cameras didn't pick that up. But she imagined it. Imagined Serena remembering that circled date on the calendar. Imagined her smirking as she slipped something into Ned's drink, as she convinced him to help her start her car or some other bullshit. She had been smart enough to leave via the back door, slinking through shadows that gave only the briefest impression of her, with Ned stumbling behind.
The snatch of an old song returned to her.
"Jolene," Nancy muttered, and shook her head. "You better not fucking touch my man."
From there, it was a matter of public records, oddly enough. Maury tracked down a badly-scanned online document of the long out-of-print book that the library had sent letters warning Serena to return as overdue, the one that had presumably left the brittle scrap under the bed. After some squinting and deciphering the many typos, Nancy sat back with a long sigh and dragged her hand through her hair.
"So," Bess said, brow furrowed, "this bitch thinks that if she… bangs Ned…"
"Near running water, in the light of a full moon," George added.
"That she'll… what?"
"Depends on what version of the 'ritual' she tries," Nancy said, her voice nearly flat. "Become pregnant by him, maybe. Gain possession of his soul and his love for all eternity. Enjoy some form of immortality."
"That last one involves him dying." Maury almost sounded apologetic.
"Even if he's drugged? Wouldn't that somehow—I don't know, invalidate this bullshit?" Bess asked.
George snorted. "They probably require it. Mythical gods aren't known for their disapproval of rohypnol. Or disguises that wouldn't fool a toddler."
"None of the above sounds all that great." Nancy pushed her chair back and stood up, starting to pace. "She has no property in her own name. She has to keep him secured until Friday. I need to make some calls. Maury—"
"Family members," Maury nodded, reaching for his computer's mouse again. "Let me see if any of them own property nearby."
"Let me call again, see if her phone has pinged off any towers lately."
Bess stood and tugged the hem of her shirt down. "And I'm gonna pack some snacks."
George raised an eyebrow. "For?"
"Because we'll be on our way to wherever he is in thirty minutes, and I'm in the mood for some trail mix," Bess replied.
It took forty-five, but Nancy had a confirmation of the last ping on Serena's cell phone, and Maury had found three family members who lived in that area. Maury handed over the list, then coughed and reached into his desk drawer.
"Don't ask," he told Nancy, then handed her an envelope.
Nancy opened the flap, then raised an eyebrow at him.
"You might need to revive him quickly, if things get intense. Just use one. Two for mostly-dead."
Nancy chuckled at the reference, even though all of her was straining to get on the road. "Thanks, Miracle Max."
"Anytime. Seriously. Howie and Mike?"
"They're coming in Mike's car. Between us, I think we should be able to get him back."
The sky was all brilliant, searing crimson with scudding violet clouds catching the golden light, as they pulled up to the second property. The first was occupied, and Bess had taken that one, dressed in a white button-down and a black pleated skirt with a bow just-so in her hair, all wide-eyed innocence and eager desire to deliver magazines to the unbelieving. She had managed to get inside by begging for a sip of water to take an allergy pill, and her phone had been on in her purse, transmitting their conversation the whole time. A brief diversion had let Bess do a quick search, but nothing had appeared out of the ordinary.
The second… appeared all but abandoned. Maybe someone in Serena's family did own it, or had at one time, but now it was all weatherbeaten boards, a roof stripped of half its shingles after years of neglect, vines creeping up to dig tendrils under window sashes.
In other words, perfect. Because Maury had given Nancy the listed acreage along with the addresses, and this was a wooded two-acre plot. A pair of faint wheel-rut tracks led off beyond it, into the brush.
They caught the glint of metal through the trees, catching the burnt-orange sunset, and Nancy heard the angry throbbing hum of a generator. Her heart kicked in her chest.
They circled the perimeter, didn't see any vehicles, and left two sentries as the rest approached the place cautiously. They didn't spot any traps, any tripwires, and then Mike caught Nancy's attention and gestured up.
A security camera, red light winking. Well. That would never do.
Nancy pulled her phone out, zoomed in for a close shot, and sent it to Maury. No matter his reply, though, Nancy had no intention of leaving. This was the place. They had crossed the creek on their way into the neighborhood. Somewhere in the woods, even now, Serena was likely doing a little rehearsal, drawing in chalk on a wide, flat rock, tracing designs from an arcane book some asshole had likely written a hundred years ago as a joke.
Nancy wasn't leaving without Ned. She wasn't leaving him here to deal with that.
Nancy was gazing down at her phone, waiting for a reply from Maury, when Mike returned. He had a rifle in his hands.
Nancy gasped. "What—?"
"Target practice," he explained quietly. "Just remembered I'd left it in the trunk. Your gut telling you he's here?"
Nancy nodded.
"Be right back."
Mike found a good vantage point outside the camera's range, took aim, and fired. Two cracking shots later and the camera was dangling from a sparking cord. Given how far out they were, anyone overhearing it would ascribe the sharp cracks to an eager hunter.
The camper's door was padlocked shut. For that, George returned to the Mustang and approached a minute later with bolt cutters in her hands. She offered them to Nancy.
They were well past breaking and entering, and Nancy shook her head as she approached the camper's door and snipped through the padlock.
An air conditioner thundered in the corner, competing with the jackhammer-pounding of the generator, but it only managed to weakly wrestle back the searing heat, leaving the air inside the camper feeling like especially damp soup. It smelled metallic, like canned spaghetti rings and the memory of sodden carpet, sharp and bitter. Stiffened mildewed curtains blocked the high, small windows. The interior was dim, and Nancy waved away a cloud of flies with a frown of disgust.
A pair of handcuffs, open on the narrow bed. An uncapped syringe.
Nancy's stomach turned over.
"They're at the creek," she muttered. "Maybe she's doing a test run. I don't know. I don't care." She slammed open flimsy doors, just in case, but he was nowhere inside, no crumpled body wrestled into a cupboard. "He was here. Someone needs to stay here in case they get back before we find them."
"You're going after them?"
Nancy turned to George with fire in her eyes. "All we have to do is follow the creek," she said. "We know they're there. We're losing light."
They split up. George opted to stay at the camper; Mike and Bess went one way, since Mike's rifle would make up for Bess's lack of fighting skills, and Nancy and Howie went the other. Bess wasn't exactly useless in a fight, but she was definitely the weakest of the group.
Eventually, they lost all the light; then the moon rose, so nearly full, buttery-golden and enormous. Nancy kept checking her phone, but she felt it when they passed out of that last radius, when her phone completely lost service. They were on their own, but they had been before. And they had agreed: fifteen minutes out, fifteen minutes back to service again, reconnect.
Nancy was the first one to hear it, a low, droning chanting that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
She glanced up at Howie. He nodded.
They came to the edge of the trees, and there it was, just as the typo-riddled passage had specified: a low flat rock a few feet from the running water, its rough surface covered in chalked symbols. The scan of that page's illustration hadn't been great, but Nancy also hadn't cared for any detail; she had no intention of drawing her own. She could recognize them, though, and the sight made her eyes narrow.
And there was Ned. Slumped against the trunk of a nearby tree, chest barely moving. A burst of adrenaline had Nancy's heart pounding even harder in response.
Serena was dressed casually, in jeans and a black shirt whose sleeves she kept idly pushing up. She referred to the large book open near the rock, beside an open canvas bag. Serena pulled out a large white candle, brand new; the light caught on the plastic wrapper before Serena muttered in annoyance and began to peel it off. "Matches," she said to herself.
But—
Her hair, a mouse brown, was pulled back into a low ponytail.
It had all been an outfit, a disguise. Maybe she did see herself as a Jolene, but here, as her true self, she looked slender and petulant, not the voluptuous seductress who had sauntered into that party.
Nancy couldn't help smiling. Nancy might look ill-matched to Ned, but Serena… Serena looked nothing like the woman on the video footage.
Women definitely found Ned irresistible. But Serena would have had less than a chance with him. And if she had stood there, gazing at the man in that image, feeling that only he could solve everything wrong with her life…
Yeah. Nancy could understand. There was no way she would forgive this, but the desperation, she remembered. She remembered feeling a clawing need to impress Ned, being painfully aware that she would fall terribly short. She remembered the intoxicating joy of going on a date with him that first time, hands trembling in anxiety, the way her heart kicked when their gazes met. That was what Serena was trying to manufacture.
Serena dusted her hands on her jeans, then strode over to Ned. "All right," she told him. "Up-up, big boy. Gotta make sure the dosage is right."
Nancy clenched her fist and set off across the clearing. Serena was so engrossed in her work that she only glanced up when Nancy was a foot away.
"Good try," Nancy said.
Serena dropped Ned, whom she had been trying to pull to his feet, and raised her fists. Nancy gestured to Howie behind her back as she took a few steps away from Ned, giving Howie space to reach him.
"He's mine."
"Not yet. Not ever." Nancy smiled, a thinned twitch of her lips. "So what was the plan?"
Serena was glaring. She glanced over when Howie approached, and her eyes widened in alarm.
Nancy planted her weight and lashed out, her knee crashing into Serena's hip to keep her from confronting Howie. Serena let out an enraged cry and flew at Nancy, swinging toward her face.
Serena was furious, but Nancy was fighting for the man she loved. She used Serena's flailing momentum against her, leaning into it to flip the other woman over her shoulder, deflecting her well-telegraphed punches. On her next swing, Nancy maneuvered so that Serena landed in the water, and the other woman emerged sputtering, bellowing in rage.
Nancy crossed her arms. She was breathing a little faster, and her shoulder had a twinge in it, but that was all. "We could do this all night," she said, and cast a quick glance over at Howie. Howie had Ned over his shoulder. "But I'm walking away. We'll be filing charges. Kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, assault. Come at me again and I'll tack on a few more when I talk to the prosecutor."
Serena made a feint, and Nancy moved to block her path. "I've marked him," Serena told Nancy, and Nancy recognized that forced arrogance, that expression from the video she had watched and rewatched so many times. "Claimed him. No matter what you do, he'll come back here tomorrow night. He'll complete the ceremony. And then, we'll just see who he chooses."
Nancy, who had long practice at not telegraphing her own attacks, landed a solid punch and sent Serena sprawling. She shook out her fist. "Wait here, then," she told Serena. "Please. Eat your heart out."
Howie began to carry Ned toward their cars, and Nancy followed, continually scanning the woods around them for any sign of Serena. Occasionally she heard a crash in the underbrush, but the woods were incredibly dark around them, and keeping solid footing was enough of a struggle. Once they reached the camper and the cars, Nancy breathed a sigh of relief; Mike, Bess, and George were there, looking concerned, but their expressions cleared when they saw Howie carrying Ned and Nancy beside him.
Then Bess cried out in alarm. Nancy turned just in time to see Serena barreling toward her, and had just enough time to angle herself to reduce the force of the blow. She hit the ground, the impact knocking the wind out of her, and Serena was shouting in rage as she rained blows on Nancy.
"Get off her." Mike's voice was close, and he swung the barrel of the rifle, smacking Serena's arm. "Right now."
"I'm done with this," Nancy said, her breathing ragged as she tried to catch it. "Get the cuffs. Put her in the trunk. Let's gift-wrap her for the sheriff's office."
--
Ned snuggled deeper under the covers with a sigh. He felt like he'd been run over by a truck.
Then he sucked in a gasp, shuddering as he fully awakened. He sat up abruptly, and was surprised he could sit up without—
What the fuck had happened? His head was pounding, his mouth dry, and nothing made sense. He remembered feeling alarmed, on the verge of panic, but not much more. A long auburn curl. A derisive laugh. A persistent droning rattle that made his head pound and ache.
A figure stood—he was in his own room, or at least that's where the current phase of this nightmare was set—and he managed to pick out the facial features in the golden glow of his desk lamp. Nancy. At least, he was pretty sure it was Nancy.
She directed a small smile his way, brushing her flattened palm across the outer seam of her jeans a few times. Then she took a step toward him.
"What—What day is it?"
"Friday," she said, her voice low, and Ned identified the persistent throbbing ache in his arm: a recently-removed IV, the wound it left behind covered in a square of gauze and crossed strips of tape. A hospital bracelet was still looped around his wrist.
"What happened?"
"A woman came to the party on Tuesday night and drugged you. She kept you captive until yesterday night, drugged the whole time."
"You found me."
"With a lot of help from your fraternity brothers."
"What… happened?"
Nancy took another step toward him. He saw something in her eyes, something he didn't like, even though he was sure she had seen it in his own gaze quite a few times. Something approaching pity.
"I don't specifically know. When we found you we interrupted a dress rehearsal for what was supposed to happen tonight. She was still… setting the stage, as it were."
"For what?" Ned asked slowly, holding her gaze.
Nancy smiled briefly, but there was no humor in it. "Some bullshit pagan ritual that was gonna involve raping you in the light of a full moon."
"Oh." Ned rubbed his palm over his face. "She—the one with the red hair?"
Nancy nodded. "Turned out to be a wig."
He nodded slowly. "I don't remember anything after the party," he said, searching his memory and recovering only hazy, hallucinatory snatches. "Just… I don't even know if any of it's real. Feeling like I had to get out but not being able to focus on anything long enough to figure out how."
"Yeah. We took you to the hospital and they put you on an IV, made sure it was out of your system before we brought you home. You were dehydrated and hungry. No obvious signs of… anything else."
"And where is she?"
"In custody. Kidnapping, assault, everything Dad could come up with that could be pretty well proven. He said it's the weirdest case he's seen."
Ned smiled weakly. "Par for the course, huh."
Nancy took another step, and now she was close enough to touch, standing at the edge of his bed. "I went by her place. She had papered an entire wall of her bedroom, practically, in that ad—the one your uncle did the photo for."
"So what you're telling me is I need to absolutely never agree to appear in promotional materials for anything ever again, huh."
Nancy shrugged. "A part of me is always gonna be aware that I'm nowhere near good enough for you," she said, but her voice was light.
Ned reached for her hand. "You know that's not true."
"I do. I look at you and I think, 'why in the world is he with me, when he could have anyone?' You are always gonna turn women's heads. You certainly turned mine." She laced her fingers between his. "She saw herself as Jolene," Nancy added, more quietly.
"From the song?"
She nodded. "And Jolene's the other woman," Nancy replied. "That's what it was. That you were someone to be stolen. That she'd have to trick you, drug you, do some stupid ritual out of a rotting book to con you into being with her." She reached for him, cupping his jaw in her palm. "You've always seen all of me, and you've never flinched."
He just held her gaze, afraid to look away, afraid to break this. Afraid to even think about what would have happened if she hadn't made it in time.
"I think I need to give you that immunity potion again," she murmured, and brushed her thumb over his lips. "It seems to have failed."
He kissed her thumb. "I need a shower and a meat lover's pizza, and then I will definitely take you up on that. But, this time…"
She raised her eyebrows, waiting.
"Well, there were clearly some gaps the first time. So let's make up our own ritual."
"What will we need?"
"More like what we won't need," he replied, sliding an arm around her. She chuckled as she fell off-balance and into his bed, as he drew her to him for a long, slow kiss. She shuddered when his fingertips trailed up her spine, when he tugged on the back of her bra.
"Are you okay?" she whispered, when he finally broke the kiss.
Ned shook his head. "Ask me tomorrow. I still feel like I'm dreaming. Just don't leave me tonight."
She cupped his face, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and returned his kiss. "Never," she murmured against his lips, running her fingers through his hair. "Never."