The Devil's Bride (Book 1)

Chapter 24- The Dealer

REYNA

His voice continued to ring in my head. "You don't know an Olive Winters, do you?" He spoke to me on the phone after he apparently broke into the underground basement of the famed serial killer, and for three days I sat alone in my bedroom, sifting through stacks of archives and other files from the magazine building, looking for anything, looking for Olive Winters. Her name continued to be present in my dreams, and for those three days, I searched for her connection to the devil's bride, but I found literally nothing. Nothing until today.

For those three days, the Internet proved less-handy as I sifted through the content for a single mention of Olive Winters, but she was unnoticeable, and nobody claimed to know anything about her. Slowly, I thought she must have been dead and my course looking for her was simply a waste, but I still hadn't given up, because I trusted the power of the world wide web and I continued searching for the legend. For hours, I lost sleep and lost my mind, wrote sentences and wrote letters, sent messages to possible connections and waited for their replies, until I finally found the clue I needed. It came this morning, when a woman replied to a comment I posted on the local search website. I told her I was looking for my aunt Olive, and yes I lied, but this lady responded and it all worked out. Well, at least she told me where to meet her. She told me where to meet the dealer, as she told me. Then it all clicked, and then I knew who this woman who responded was, under a guest name. This was her, the infamous Olive Winters. The woman the serial killer wanted us to find.

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I walk alone towards the meeting place, the whistling howl of the wind coming towards me in the loneliness of the street. There she stood, her dark brown hair loose against her shoulders, her tight posture frozen against the concrete wall of the corner store. She held a small mirror in her palm, applying a light coat of crimson lipstick. My feet hit the pavement as I edged closer to the mystery woman, the picture Peter sent me inked into my brain. Her name, scattered continuously on the page, inked in my mind. She shifted her deep blue skirt as I approached her. This is my chance to find the killer, but in all my doubts, somehow I feel like all of this will fail. Somehow I sort of know this one clue will only lead me into a dead end row. This is my moment, I thought to myself.

She lifted a hand through her hair as I tap her on the shoulder. "Hello, Ms Winters?" She twirled to face me as the wind howled at her glowing skin, her radiant enigma of a personality beaming from her curved lips. She straightens the neckline of her midnight black top, battering her eyelids as she stares right into my eyes. I battle her with an equal stare, and she tilts her head only slightly before speaking to me.

"You must be Reyna Swindell. It's a pleasure." She spoke with such elegance that it was hard to believe that they referred to her as the dealer, something I learned from endless searches after she confirmed the meeting. Her voice, whispered and agitated, filled my ears as she pressed her hands against her stomach. "I hear you wish to know about the Devil's Bride." She whispered, staring around the mostly empty street. She ran her hands through her deep brown hair. Those words flooded my mind and suddenly the loneliness of the feeling that I would fail disappeared and I began moving towards the next question in my mind. It's time to find the killer.

"Yeah, my friends found this document file with your name over it about a thousand times and that's extremely suspicious. I mean, what did you do to her?" I saw her head tilt only slightly when I mentioned the idea that Olive Winters had done something to the devil, but she was only moving her head slightly in the uncomfortable situation. Her connection to the killer seemed to irk her more than I could imagine, and so it came to me as a surprise when she smiles and lifts her head into the cold wind. She felt the cigarette in her pocket and lit the tip. Something in her eyes seemed like she was finally ready to admit to the pain of holding this secret, and I wanted to know why the killer hated her so much, or why the killer decided to give her name as the clue. After all, the video footage and photographs were loose ends, really. We did search for Jemma, but it hurts to try and find someone who seemingly broke out of the basement of the garden shed all the while claiming her allegiance to the killer. No luck there.