Page 60 of Something Cryptid This Way Comes
“I don’t know that you can.” He pats my arm and I can’t tell if it’s in support, sympathy, or resignation.
“I have to try.” I can’t stand the thought of Bram hurting. My fingers drum the side of the mug. “Maybe I can get Agnes to record something, taking full responsibility for what happened and emphasizing that Bram had zero inside knowledge.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” Turning his head at the sound of Bandit’s approach, he sits back so he can give my dog scratches. “If you have enough of the hoaxers do the same thing, saying you and Bram didn’t know, and that they did it for love, that could be pretty convincing. But then again, I don’t think many people would voluntarily make a public statement admitting that they lied to fool others.”
“That’s true.”
What Bram said about me, and by extension, the inn, getting dragged into this because I co-hosted Cryptid Night, makes my stomach queasy, but right now, my priority is him.
I need to figure out how to help him, and hope that whatever happens, he’ll still want me.
CHAPTER 18
BRAM
With Hades at my heels, I burst into Trevor’s house, adrenaline coursing through my body, charging my resolve to fix things. Clutching my gift from Mabel, I drop my keys in the bowl. Hades slips past me and heads for the living room.
Footsteps on the stairs draw my attention to Trevor. He descends the last few steps, then pauses at the bottom, holding on to the newel post. His expression is sympathetic and concerned and he lifts his hand toward me before dropping it to his side. “Hi.”
“I saw Mabel,” I blurt the words with way too much volume. “She gave me this.” I thrust out the black stone.
He gapes at me. “What?”
“In the woods. Needed a hike to clear my head, and ended up on one of the trails we used all the time as kids. She wasexactlythe same as the two times I saw her before. The atmosphere was the same too.”
“You mean with the forest getting eerily still and silent?”
“Yeah. She stood ten feet away from me. The greenest eyes, iridescent skin. I talked to her and shenoddedat me. Like sheunderstood what I was saying.” Excitement sparks over my skin. I’m breathless and have so much to do.
“Wow, that’s incredible.” Voice soft, he runs the pads of his fingers over the stone. Then he raises his gaze to hold mine. Sadness shimmers in his brown depths. “This morning, the mess with Agnes…”
“Sucked. All of it sucks. But we’re going to get a handle on it.” I grab his hand and pull him toward the kitchen. My laptop is on the table. I carefully set the stone beside it. “Deleting the episode isn’t enough. People will have questions and want to know why, so I need to make a video explaining what’s going on.”
“Do you need to contact your sponsors if you delete a video?”
“I reached out when I got in my car to drive back here. I told them I received new information proving the cryptid stories were faked, and I would be pulling the episode and making a new video ASAP. They’re sticking with me, for now.”
He peers over my shoulder as I boot up my computer. “That’s good. Uh, before you delete the video, you should check the new comments. I was watching the video again because I wanted to see the faces of the people who lied, and if they gave anything away while they were spinning their stories. And, well, you’ll see.”
The video is at the top of the content on my podcast channel. Since the video aired, over two thousand people have commented. I try to read everything, but sometimes, interacting and keeping up with each one is tough to do. I sort the comments to most recent.
MaybeInMaplewood: A tipsy tap dance teacher I met last night at The Striped Maple said he and others were asked to lie about seeing the winged cryptid by a woman who just so happensto be Bram’s aunt. Was this dude drunk and delusional? Or was the smacked scarecrow cocktail a truth serum? Suspicious…
MonsterHunter99: Bram’s legit, so I doubt anything shady.
SweetTee: My hair stylist heard the same thing about the wolf-man being faked. Bram needs to address this.
“Oh, damn. Not good.” My stomach roils and a chill breaks out over my skin. I drop onto the chair, rubbing my hand over my jaw. My stubble scrapes against my palm and the roughness rouses me from thoughts of worst-case scenarios. “I need to delete it now, before even more people watch.”
“I was going to text you as soon as I saw the comments, but wasn’t sure if you still needed space, so…” He shuffles closer. “I thought about deleting them myself under my mod status, but didn’t want to do that until you’d seen them.”
“It’s okay.” An undercurrent of urgency swirling around me, I navigate to the video, delete it, then do the same with the audio version, my fingers shaking and nearly hitting the wrong keys. “I need to hop on social media and do a live video, let people know why I took the video down. That will buy me a bit of time to put together another video with a longer explanation, and put together a statement.”
He leans his hand on the back of my chair, and his knuckles graze my shirt. “I need to get started on dismantling the haunted house. I’ll take Bandit.”
Damn it, I told him I’d help with that. “I can?—”
“Record the video. We need to fix that first.” His shaky smile matches my own.
