“Ow,” Grant complained. “Are you okay?”
She checked. Apart from an anger that sort of lingered like a headache, she seemed to be fine, yes.
“Are you all right?” she asked, standing. He rubbed his neck.
“You fell out of nowhere. I was just coming in to see what you were doing.”
“You know how an evil eye works?” she asked. He grimaced and nodded.
“I’ve never seen one actually cast before,” he said.
“You look through it,” she said. “Only…” she shook her head. “This one’s weird. I want to talk to Jackson.”
“Everyone okay in here?” Jackson called.
“Fine,” Becca said, helping Grant to his feet. “Grant broke my fall.”
“We heard it from outside,” Jackson said. “Wasn’t expecting you to take that long to look at what it was seeing.”
“It’s weird,” Becca said, rubbing her back as she walked around the barn with Grant and Jackson. “I didn’t see anything that was out here. I saw a little town with pretty people in it. A long time ago, I think.”
Jackson frowned.
“That’s not good,” he said. “You need to tell Bella.”
“Tell me what?” Bella asked, looking up from her conversation with the others.
“I felt her mind,” Becca said. “She’s angry and she’s bitter, but she’s bitter at people who looked like they lived a long time ago.”
“What did you see, exactly?” Bella asked.
“It was dark, at first,” Becca said. “But once I started thinking like her, I could see wooden sidewalks and a dirt street, horses and women in dresses.”
Bella looked at Warner. He shrugged.
“The town has been here a long time, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“How long has the barn been here?” Bella asked.
“Just raised it last year,” Warner said. “Old one was on the other side of the property, and it was falling down.”
“Anyone ever put an evil eye on it?” Bella asked. Warner scowled.
“I’d have called you about it. You know that.”
She nodded.
“We need to know more about this place. Dawn, Quinn, do a survey and see if you can find anything interesting. Go until you can’t see the barn any more, at least, and anything that can see this side of it. All right?”
“You got it,” Dawn said, going back to the truck to get her bag.
“Anything else weird about this area?” Jackson asked.
“Normal kind of stuff,” Warner said. “People believe funny things. Old murders in a couple of the houses downtown, kids partying at the cemetery come home with strange stories. Couple of old ladies that may or may not be cursing the dogs that bomb their yards.”
“Should get a list,” Jackson said. Warner nodded.
“I can do that.”
“Anything else?” Jackson asked Becca.
“She was really, really angry,” Becca said. “Thought they’d ignored her or mistreated her or something, and she was going to make them pay for it. Lots of really angry thoughts about the people in town.”
Bella nodded.
“Not atypical for an evil eye. You may actually recognize her, when we meet her, though, so you should go with anyone who is going into town.”
Becca nodded, and Bella took off the necklace.
“And you should wear this. You should be fine, and you’re your mother’s daughter, but that kind of magic is contagious. Don’t let it get into you.”
Becca took the necklace without argument. Bella was right. Even as she stood there, she could feel the magic of the eye sort of curling and polluting inside of her. No worse than watching a bad movie or listening to someone compelling sell the same ideas, it would just take a day or so for her to get it out of her psyche.
“You should keep everyone out of line of sight of the barn as much as you can,” Bella said.
“You know I know that,” Warner answered. “I didn’t wash it off, either.”
“I know,” Bella said. “We’ve just made mistakes before, not saying the obvious. Keep everyone away from the eyehole in the barn, too. Becca’s a lot stronger than any of your people. You might not get them back, if it’s as powerful as it sounds like.”
Becca nodded, both because it was simply true, but also because she appreciated hearing Bella say something like that about her.
Becca glanced at Grant.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I’m glad you were there.”
“I am too,” Grant said. “You could have broken your neck.”
Becca was going to say something lighthearted about it, but when she realized how that would have looked, in light of what was going on with Bella, she swallowed it, feeling queasy.
“You should let Dawn look at you, anyway,” she said.
“Good idea,” Jackson said. “Both of you.”
“Heard that,” Dawn yelled from some distance away. “Before dinner tonight, both of you.”
Becca knew better than to fight that one, so she just lifted her arm in acknowledgment and waited for what was next from Bella.
“The three of you can head back,” she said. “We have what we’re going to get for now, and when Quinn and Dawn are done, we’ll bring whatever they find back to discuss it with the rest of the tribe.”
Jackson didn’t like it, nor did Becca, but it didn’t look like arguing was going to have any point. She watched him lift himself to his full height, preparing for the conflict, then he shook his head.
“Take care,” he said, not looking at Warner.
“I will,” Bella said casually, though Becca knew she heard the warning Jackson was giving her.
Jackson got out his keys.
“Is this more what you were looking forward to?” he asked Grant with a grin.
“Better than memorizing densities of crystals,” Grant said with a smile. “Yeah.”
“Let’s go get the rest of the camp set up,” Jackson said. “We may need to send someone into town, and I want Becca in the car when they go.”
“Thanks for coming,” Warner called after them, and Jackson held up a hand of farewell. Becca looked back at the field, seeing nothing but bent corn stalks, but imagining the town that had been there, through the evil eye.
Colin had the shopping list ready by the time they got back to camp. He’d been cooking in Bella’s kitchen for three weeks for a much reduced group of Makkai, so his list was considerable, now, and Becca stood to one side as Billy waited for Jackson to count out bills to pay for it.
“Stuff is expensive up here,” Billy observed and Jackson nodded.
“And they aren’t paying us for this one,” he said. “Need to get more of that money from the Gray. I never feel bad overcharging them.”
Becca thought of the cost of the hotel room that Lange had secured for her and shook her head.
“No, they’ve got more money than sense,” she said, earning a strange look from both Jackson and Billy. She shrugged.
In the truck Billy looked over at her.
“You been talking to Lange again?” he asked.
“Some,” she said carefully.
“Hope you know better than that boy,” he said.
“You aren’t here to give me life advice, old man,” she answered, drawing a grin.
“I may not be, but you’re going to hear it anyway,” he told her. “Look, I’m not one of those old fools who thinks that you must marry Makkai in order to be happy or truly Makkai. You marry who you like, and if it means you leave the tribe, well wishes to you. If it means you leave the Makkai, I understand. Wouldn’t be the first, and I hope the world is better to you than it is to most. But that boy. You don’t want any part of what the Gray have got going on. I haven’t had much exchange with them, because I don’t have to, but what I’ve seen is plenty. They’ve got no future, any of them, and they spoil every good thing that comes into reach because they’re so black inside.”
Becca didn’t think that was entirely fair, considering Lange had always been nice to her, but she didn’t think she could argue with him without tipping her hand.
“It’s good for me to keep a bridge open,” she said. “Argo is always good money, and Lange isn’t so distasteful that I can’t stand to do it.”
He grunted.
“I saw how he looked at you. I’m not your dad, and I don’t want to be, but if you can’t see it, someone needs to tell you.”
Becca smiled at the window. She’d seen it. She had, and she’d liked it, too. It didn’t mean anything.
“He’s old,” she said. “And I’m busy.”
Billy nodded.
“That you are. You saw the eye, then?”
“It’s on the side of a barn,” Becca said.
Billy nodded.
“Hide one small enough, you can target a farmer and his trade for a lifetime.”
“It’s as tall as me,” Becca said. “Taller.”
Billy glanced at her and she nodded.
“I looked through it,” she said. There was no reason she could think of to keep any of it secret from him, not for just a normal job like this, and she was much happier talking about an evil eye than either Bella’s situation or Lange. “I think I saw the past.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Billy said, “but it doesn’t mean that a clever witch couldn’t cast it on something that used to be there.”
Becca nodded thoughtfully.
“I should call my mom,” she said. “Dawn and Quinn were looking for any signs of something that was there before. If they don’t come up with anything, though, I don’t know anyone who knows more about evil eyes.”
“When was the last time you talked to her?” Billy asked. She shook her head.
“Christmas last year?” Probably her birthday, but close enough. Her mom had combined the two since she’d left her young childhood.
“You should call her anyway,” Billy said. “Something’s going on that’s putting a chill in my bones. Don’t want to let it get to be too late.”
“Yeah,” she said, not looking at him. It was no surprise the Makkai knew something important was going on, and important with the Makkai usually meant dangerous, but Billy was perceptive beyond the obvious, and Becca knew it.
“I’ll call her tonight, either way,” she said. She heard him grin.
“Just not where the tourists can see,” he said. “You know they’re disappointed we don’t turn up in covered wagons, these days. A cell phone would break their little hearts.”
“So we’re going to be putting on a show tonight?” she asked.
“Heard the woman from the house talking to Robbie about whether any of us would be telling fortunes.”
Becca shook her head. Some of the tribes made money at this. Not a lot, but they never had a lot of money, anyway. They would open up the campsite to outsiders, usually ones organized by a particularly energetic group of nostalgics or mystics, and they would just stage a carnival. Sell foods they never ate, tell tarot and palm fortunes, wear and sell trashy crystals that they bought specifically for the purpose, tell stories, do tricks. Since almost all of them were trained in throwing knives and some simple hand-to-hand, it didn’t take much to move on to showier stuff that a crowd would go for.
Bella’s tribe didn’t stoop that low. They’d put up the decorations, make a stew that was maybe more pungent than normal, like that, but they didn’t do fake magic.
It wasn’t awful, play-acting like road-show gypsies. They had a good time and so did the tourists, but in a way it was a little insulting. In another way it was distracting. They should have spent the evening working out the evil eye, trying to set a course to finding the witch who had cast it and dealing with her, not putting on a retro culture show.
It was what it cost them, though, to have a safe place to stay for the night, and it kept them in touch with the kind of outsiders who didn’t know anything about Makkai, the ones that they wanted to stay safely in the dark about this kind of thing.
She helped Billy fill a shopping cart with the things that Colin had on his list and they checked out. Becca kept her head up, looking at the other people in the store, but it was hard, without standing out, to really get a feel for whether they might have been the mind behind the evil eye. That and it was hard to imagine that the woman over there choosing between brands of laundry detergent might have wanted an entire small town to wither and die. She wanted the woman to be shriveled and cronish, warty, perhaps with a rumpled black pointy hat.
Witchy.
Thought the gypsy.
She shook her head. She would be a person, likely like any other person. Most of the people who cast evil eyes were. The really strong casters were often quiet, certainly, and sometimes a bit shy, but they looked and moved in a normal way.
They loaded up and went back to the camp, watching the sun set in the rearview. It was a pretty day. Becca wished people were that pretty, on balance.
They followed Robbie’s truck back out to the camp, parking along side it and getting out to walk the rest of the way with Bella, Dawn, and Quinn helping to carry groceries.
“What did you find?” Becca asked. Dawn shook her head.
“Off the charts,” she answered, and Becca tipped her head.
“Don’t start yet,” Bella said. “Once for everyone, please.”
Dawn nodded, and they walked faster. In sight of the camp, where the fire was already taller than the trailers, Robbie and Grant came to help them, getting everything unloaded where Colin could listen and get started on dinner. Dawn sat down as close to the fire as she could, tucking her fingers under the soles of her feet and waiting as everyone else sat.
“We have only a few minutes,” Bella said. “Be brief.”
Dawn nodded, glancing at Quinn and then turning her face to the fire. She hated speaking in front of the tribe even more than Becca did.
“We found energy,” she said. “Huge pools of it. We think we can map out the entirety of the town that Becca saw, based on where people stood, where they drank, where they walked. The eye is pointed right at them.”
“But how is it seeing them?” someone asked. Dawn shook her head.
“We don’t know, but I want to go back tomorrow with tools for the dead. We expected a live victim, and what we’ve found says that may not be right.”
“An evil eye on dead people?” someone else asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Who cares what the dead think?”
“Who’s jealous of them?”
Good points, to be sure, and Dawn flushed.
“We don’t know,” she said. “The magic says…”
She shrugged helplessly.
“She read it right, and so did I,” Quinn said from where she leaned against a trailer with her arms crossed.
“No one’s saying you’re wrong,” Billy said, standing behind Becca. “Just asking the next questions.”
“Who would be jealous of the dead?” Jackson asked. “If we really are dealing with an evil eye pointed at something that doesn’t exist any more, we’re talking about someone with a complex that’s so twisted they’re actually jealous of people who lived before them. From what Becca said, someone who thinks that those people were actually ignoring them. Either that or we’re talking about someone who is very, very old.”
“How old are we talking?” someone asked. They looked at Becca.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’d put it middle of the eighteen hundreds, but… Who can tell me what women’s dresses looked like by decade through the middle of the nineteen hundreds?”
“Blue jeans were the sixties,” someone offered, and Becca shrugged.
“Then it was probably before that.”
“Even the sixties,” Robbie said. “We’re talking someone who was old enough to develop a grudge at the time and is still tending it.”
There were looks around the ring.
“Are we talking about a demon?�
�� Grant asked.
“Demons can’t cast an evil eye,” Jackson said. “Not a bad thought though.”
“How about a ghost?” Quinn asked.
“Ghost in possession of a body can do about whatever it likes,” Billy said.
“Immortal,” Robbie said. “My money is on immortal.”
“Why?” Becca asked. “Why would an immortal be painting an evil eye on a barn in the middle of nowhere?”
There was silence, at this, and then the sound of voices. The Makkai split from the circle around the fire, going to find instruments and jewelry. It was time for outsiders.
She had to give it to them. They knew how to have fun.
The men and women that came the night before had brought wine and beer and they’d drunk and sang and danced until the sky began to turn gray again the next morning. The problem was that Becca was supposed to go back to the farm with Dawn and Quinn to map out the town and see if there was anything she could see or tell them that would be important.
She was still a little tipsy.
A young man had come with his parents the night before. It was pretty clear that he felt like he’d come to make sure that they didn’t do anything stupid, but instead he had spent a lot of the night talking and dancing with Becca. He’d had lovely blond hair that she’d wanted to touch and a laugh that came easily, as it often did when you were around someone you knew you weren’t going to see again.
There was a novelty to it, always being around strangers. She didn’t care what they thought of her, and many of them returned the favor, not trying to impress her or prove they were better than her, just having a good time right alongside her.
She caught Grant at one point leaning against the long side of a trailer with his arms crossed across his chest and she’d tried to get him to come join in, but he had seemed sour. The young man, he’d had a T-name, she was pretty sure, had been one of the last to leave. He’d tried to kiss her, but she’d batted him away playfully and sent him on with his parents, seeking the refuge of her bed before Jackson came to knock on the trailer door and send her on her way with Quinn mere minutes later.
She slept in the truck, but not for very long.
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