by Amber Kizer
“Or?” I dared, unable to figure out what tree she hid behind.
“Or I’ll decide not to tell you where your mother is?”
I growled almost as if I had no control over it. Fara squeezed my fingers hard as her head swiveled around us, silently surveying the underbrush.
“Ah, that got your attention, did it?” Ms. Asura’s perfume chased away the scents of spring.
“This is Sally,” I lied, hoping to shield Fara. “What do you want?”
“You need to be polite. Say please, and tell me, do you really believe that I’m senseless enough to buy that Sally isn’t Fara, your Protector?” She tsked.
I stayed silent. Who told her?
“You won’t live long, Fara, if you hang around here.” Ms. Asura actually sounded like she cared.
“You do not scare me.” Fara’s tone gave away nothing.
“Pity you’re as stupid as your friends.”
“She’s not stupid!” I shouted, standing.
“Sheath your claws, Juliet.” Ms. Asura laughed, bitter, fragile chuckles. “Do you love your idiotic little people, Juliet? Like you loved Kirian? Will it hurt you when they scream?”
“What do you want?” Be nice to her. As an afterthought, I added, “Please.”
“Good girl. I wish I had a cookie to give you.” The slap of running feet against pavement drew her attention. “Your father begged me to kill him. He couldn’t stand the idea of having a daughter such as you.”
Runners in matching blue and yellow tracksuits paraded by. A few gave us odd glances but kept going. “Ah, the little Greyhounds’ track practice. How cute. I wonder if they can outrun the Dark?”
“Of course they can. The Light always wins,” Fara said.
A hearty laugh carried far over the water. “That’s priceless. If I thought you actually believed that, well … Thank you, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages. Fara, your knives can’t hurt me.”
“The Light can.” Fara pulled me to my feet and shoved me toward the opposite bank. “You will not hurt Juliet again.”
Ms. Asura’s voice carried over the water. “We will meet again, Juliet, and you’d do well to have an attitude adjustment. Or your new daddy Tony will burn too.”
Fara helped me stay upright, dripping, my fingers and toes numb from the cold. She whispered, “I need to follow her trail, see where she goes.”
“Don’t leave me, please don’t,” I answered.
Tony’s voice rang solid and warm across the field. “Juliet? Juliet! Fara!”
I stood on shaky knees, hoping he wouldn’t notice the fear that made my tongue rough. “I’m right here.” I stepped toward him. Thank you.
He hugged me, crushing me against him, ignoring my sopping wet clothes. “Nelli called. I couldn’t find you at home. Couldn’t find Fara.” He babbled and I let him. He doesn’t deserve the worry I bring him.
Fara disappeared into the trees. I closed my eyes and hoped Ms. Asura wasn’t watching. She is. And always will be.
CHAPTER 19
After finding the college kid photographer a dead end on campus, we spent the rest of the day trying to track down a rare book about Renaissance art and symbolism at the university’s library. Turned out artists in the sixteenth century believed the adage “the eyes are the window to the soul” to be fact and painted windowpanes into the pupils of their subjects. They also painted clues to the history of Fenestras. Not easy slogging through that. My eyes crossed and my brain overflowed. The cottage lights were bright and shining when we arrived home. I want a bubble bath and kisses.
Tucked in the front door was a piece of creamy stationery.
Tens glanced around. Nothing seemed out of place or odd.
“Rumi probably stopped by to see if we found the book and any clues,” I said, reaching for the paper.
“Careful,” Tens cautioned.
I opened it to see the tree, exactly like the photographer’s hat, and the initials WoW. In beautiful calligraphy script, it read,
Gates open at seven.
Meet at Meridian Laine Fulbright’s stone.
—Woodsmen of the World
Huh? Clandestine meetings at the cemetery? The man who took pictures of the gravestones wants to meet? And calls himself a Woodsman of the World? Is this an ambush?
“What do you think?” I asked.
Custos barked off to our right. Startled, I dropped the paper. I felt goofy to be so jumpy until I heard her growl and the hair on the back of my neck prickled. Tens swore, pressing me back against the door.
Yelp!
Pow!
Snap!
A fight? Custos? I’d never heard these sounds before. Bushes along the trail creaked and cracked. Tens grabbed my hand and took off toward the sounds. I ran behind him, two strides to his one.
“Custos! Custos!” he called.
As we drew closer, the gut-wrenching sounds of snapping teeth against bone devastated the night around us. Nails scrabbled on the sidewalks. The fearful yelp of pain. Custos?
I wanted to scream. Stop! Stop!
“Stay behind me, Merry. Stay back!” Dropping my hand, Tens put on another burst of speed and drew farther into the darkness.
As we rounded a corner, we saw Custos with her back to us. Mini lay inert on the ground. They were surrounded by three mangy, starved coyotes growling low and holding their ground.
I stepped on a stick, cracking it. Their heads turned toward us, but one advanced on Custos while the others seemed to call dibs on Tens and me.
“Merry, climb the tree,” Tens commanded.
“But I can help.” A large stick, a rock, anything? I can help.
He didn’t raise his voice, but said, “Get out of the way. She’s protecting you.”
“You too.” I wanted to stomp my feet. She loves you more.
“Up the tree.” He kicked out as a coyote roared toward Custos’s undefended back. The coyote ricocheted against a bench and shook its head.
Tens leveled his gun, ready to shoot, but they lunged so fast that one minute they were by Custos and the next they were near me. Oh hell. This is what you get for arguing. I backed up. Swearing, Tens tried to get a shot, but there was little ambient light. I knew why he hesitated—he was as likely to hit Custos or Mini.
I grabbed the lowest branch of the tulip tree and half walked up the trunk, clawing my way onto the top of the branch to climb higher still. The leaves obscured my vision of the ground. But Minerva had disappeared from the sidewalk. I wondered if she’d crawled off to the safety of the bushes or used her ability to materialize and dematerialize. Why did she and Custos stay to fight? Why didn’t they disappear to safety?
The coyotes lunged, trying to take Custos down as a team. I smelled the metallic stink of blood. I broke off dead branches and hurled them down with all my strength. Tens winged one with a shot.
The suppressed blast allowed Custos to pin another with its belly up. She ripped at its guts, disemboweling it with a quick slice of her powerful teeth. The survivors raced off into obscurity.
Tens placed the muzzle of the gun at the dead coyote’s head and pulled the trigger. The suppressor kept the sound muffled, but I saw the force of the blow against the coyote. Better safe than sorry. I should be sad at the loss of life, but I can’t be. Custos and Mini are hurt.
Custos collapsed, blood and saliva dripping from her jowls. Tens knelt beside her, trying to check for injuries.
“Is she hurt bad?” I called down.
“A few bites. Nothing critical. Where’s Mini?” Tens answered.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her go.” I scooted along the tree. “I’m coming down.”
A plaintive meow grabbed my attention. I froze. Who was that?
Tens tilted his head, trying to place the sound.
I glanced toward the meow. Mini had made it onto a branch near me.
“She’s up here,” I said quietly.
“Can you reach her?”
Carefully I reached out, unsure of how to to
uch her. It was as if Mini’s claws had been ripped from her bloody front paws. One eye swelled shut, and the side of her face was mangled as if she’d had her head in the mouth of a monster and barely escaped with her life.
“Minerva?” I wrapped my legs tighter around the tree branch and reached for her. I had to get her before she fell to the ground below us. Please don’t let me hurt her more than necessary. As soon as she was in my arms, I felt her body relax and go limp. “Mini?” I felt her chest move shallowly; she was alive. Barely. The sticky warmth of blood dripped along the crease of my elbow.
“Tens?” I said.
He turned on a penlight and shone it up at me. Blood dripped off Mini’s tail. “How bad?” he asked, his arms extending up.
“Bad.” I let him take her from me, then swung down to the ground.
His expression full of worry and concern, he said, “Coyotes are timid animals. They don’t do this kind of thing.”
“I know, I know.” If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it.
Custos pushed herself to her feet and whined in the direction of our cottage.
“Okay, girl, we’re going,” Tens answered her.
“I don’t understand it.” We walked as quickly as we dared.
“Me neither. Things with the Nocti are definitely escalating. This has their stink all over it.”
“We need a vet first.” We laid Mini on towels and tried to get the bleeding to stop by applying pressure.
Custos limped over to us and cried, pressing her nose against Mini’s side.
“I’ll call Rumi.” Tens grabbed the phone.
CHAPTER 20
Juliet
If I can find my mother first, I can kill Ms. Asura. We can be free. Determined, I loaded the shovel and gloves into the back of Tony’s car. I’ll figure out how to kill her later.
“You can drive?” Fara asked. It was as if she appeared from nowhere, leaning against the lamppost in the parking lot.
Shocked, I dropped a spade, which clanked down on the sidewalk with a cake-falling clatter. “I’ll figure it out.” I have to. Lives depend on it.
Fara held out her hand. “Keys.”
When I hesitated, she said, “I know how. Safer.”
We got in, and she waited until I’d buckled my seat belt. “Where are we going?”
I hesitated. She’ll just badger me until I tell her. “Go straight, then left at the roundabout.”
Fara merely accepted my directions as they came, and soon we were at the gates of DG. I saw ghosts of the fencing and the echoes of the house outlined as if it still stood. Even the trees in my mind were their pretornado selves. It’s all still here. As if I never left. I blinked and it was dark, all gone.
Shadows grew limbs and crooked their fingers in welcoming seduction. Above our heads, bats flew low to and from the creek. In the distance, I heard the Wildcat calling me to sail away.
“We are back here again? This is your home, then,” Fara declared with a troubled frown.
No! “Not my home. Never a home.” Homes are full of light and warmth and love. Not fear and pain and cold.
Fara turned off the ignition. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating a crumbling foundation and the deep pit of the storm cellar beyond. She stared into me, her eyes eerie in their intensity. “Why do you keep coming back here? Home doesn’t always mean sweet and warm. It means where we are from, where we rise from.”
“More wisdom from your father?” My tone was snotty.
She shrugged, a very Meridian gesture that I hated. What does that mean? Shrugs say nothing.
I climbed out of the car and let her help me haul the tools to the old cellar. There was police tape on the ground, ripped and trampled. I wondered if local kids dared each other to come out here, go into the cellar, and come back out alive. Unlike my friends? Are they buried here somewhere?
“What are we doing here?” Fara asked again.
Making sure no one is waiting. I handed her a flashlight, picked up a shovel, and tripped my way down into the damp, dim cellar. “Howie and Aileen were dumped in old buildings.”
“Right.” Fara’s distaste for the place was evident.
“What if they had to take them somewhere else because there wasn’t enough room here anymore?” Makes sense to me—wouldn’t they start here?
Fara shook her head. “But you’ve been down here—the whole group hauled boxes out to Nelli’s. Yes?”
A few inches of water puddled near the door; mosquitoes attacked my face and arms. I nodded, my eyes on the muddy floor. I was looking for a glow, a white sign of bone. My mother?
I shone the flashlight at every wall, every corner. At the floor, the empty spaces. Where are you?
“No one saw anything before. Right?” Fara simply waited until I paused. “Juliet, no one’s down here.”
I broke. “You don’t know that!” I shouted. “What if they are? What if they’ve been here the whole time and we left them?” I pointed randomly. “There. Start digging.” I sliced my shovel into the dirt, hard-packed like cement; it sang up my arms. Damn!
After a few moments of watching me maniacally bang and hiss and spit, Fara pulled out a pair of leather gloves. They were her usual fingerless gloves, studded and padded. She wore them to protect her hands from the chains.
The sounds of carving earth—cutting through, lifting, and throwing—were punctuated by the drip of water. Our breaths mingled and competed with those of mice and spiders. After digging several feet down, I’d found only a few rocks the size of my palm.
I turned around and picked another spot. Hit the dirt with all my might.
“Want me to move too?” Fara asked. “There’s nothing here. Rocks. No people.”
“Yes, anywhere.” I bit the words out as sweat dripped into my eyes and down my sides.
I heard the frisk and squeak of rat conversations. I’m sure they were all around us. They probably came to watch the show. Who is the crazy girl digging?
“There’s nothing here, Juliet.” Fara’s voice blew across my spine and I shivered.
“Keep digging.” I won’t give up.
“Are we digging up the entire floor?”
“If that’s what it takes.” My mother? My father? Where are they? “I’ll know.”
Fara snorted. “You don’t know too much right now, cookie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I threw down my shovel and straightened, my hands fisting.
“You’re believing a Hashshashin over our kind. She’s playing you.”
“With me? She’s playing with me?”
“No, like a settar, a guitar. She say do and you do.” Fara’s fingers steepled, her palms pressed together in an entreaty I couldn’t allow.
“My mother is caught in the window because her bones are lost.”
“And you think she is here? That she would want you to give up your friends’ lives and safety for this? For her?”
I shook my head. “She’s in pain, not at rest. And they don’t care. They want to stop the Nocti more than they want to help my mother.” If I heard another homework assignment or lesson about fighting this grand battle of good and evil, I was going to hurl. I’m all I can count on.
“They’ve risked nothing for you?”
“Of course they did.” At the beginning.
“Ignored your questions for help?”
“Yes!” I shouted. They should know how important this is.
“Really? You have asked them? Told them of this great Asura and the threats she makes of you?”
“No.” Never. They’d never understand.
“Meridian, she uses you? Asura wants only what is best for you?” Fara’s voice stayed level and calm, sending my pulse racing.
“No!” You don’t understand.
“She is honest? You do her wishes and she will give you truth?”
“No!” Dammit, just leave me alone. Help me or get out of my way.
“Why are yo
u so angry at these people who love you?”
My heart stuttered and I felt the hair on my arms rise. A soul found me. I tried to sit down quickly but said instead, “Fara—” My knees gave out, but I stood at the kitchen window, holding the hand of a young girl.
“Where am I?” she asked me.
I thought quickly. “You are going on an adventure.” Explanations like these were new to me.
“Where?” she asked.
I pointed. “Through that window.” I watched kids and maybe her family members gathering. Outside my kitchen, we were at a park, in the summer, with a jungle gym and puppies running everywhere.
“Can I have ice cream?” she asked.
“Go find out.” I lifted her up and over the sill. I tasted chicken nuggets and tater tots.
She raced toward a couple. “Mommy! Daddy!”
“Juliet! Juliet!”
I turned and saw Auntie holding my mother’s hand. My mother seemed to speak out of the side of her mouth not crisscrossed by scar tissue. Quietly, so low I couldn’t hear her. I wanted to climb across the window and join her. Wrap her arms around me and have her sing me to sleep.
“She says she’s okay, to stop. She’s”—Auntie frowned—“in the shade.”
Mom shook her head. I heard yelling; a commotion brewed in the world behind me.
“Trust them. Meridian’s heart is your heart.” Auntie raised her hand, and in a moment I was back in the cellar, in my collapsed body.
Cold water soaked along my back, chilling my flesh. I blinked, trying to shake off the confusion that rattled me every time I moved back and forth to the window. Meridian said it got better with time and use, but I wondered. She’d only just begun staying on her feet a few weeks ago.
Fara’s voice was full of heat and spice. I blinked up at her.
“You can’t kill me with a shovel,” Ms. Asura offered.
“How about a knife?” Fara asked.
I realized I lay in Fara’s lap.
“Ah, Sleeping Beauty is awake.” Ms. Asura stood above us. The side of her face was puckered and webbed, but her mouth was untouched. Her black hair was loose and fell over her shoulders, seeming to ripple without wind. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She clicked her tongue. “It looks like you don’t trust me, Juliet.” She glanced at the holes we’d dug.