“He’s…I don’t know how to describe him. He’s scary, and I think he knows things that…that he has no way to really know. Like he’s psychic or something. I know it sounds crazy, Jeannie, but there’s something about him that’s different and strange, and I was afraid if I stopped anywhere close by, he’d find me right away, and maybe kill whoever tried to protect me.”
Jeannie sips from her mug, her eyes watching Lulu from over the rim.
“I know,” Lulu says, “so now you’re thinking, like, thanks for leading him here. I just didn’t know where else to go. I knew in my heart that there was…that Mommy and Dad and the boys…” She presses her knees together, digs at her eyes with the balls of her thumbs. If she starts to cry now, she might never stop. “Anyway,” she says after a while. “Now you know why I’m not so anxious to go back toward McNeal. He’s out there someplace, looking for me.”
“I understand, Lulu. Believe me, I’ve been terrified for you, so I know you’ve got to be just about frantic. But we can’t stay here. Maybe we can go toward Douglas, at least far enough to pick up a signal on my cell phone.”
Lulu likes that idea better. At the back of her mind, like a partially remembered fantasy, the white girl tugs at her, reminding her that she has to get down to the border. Douglas is the right direction; McNeal isn’t. She doesn’t want to tell Jeannie about that whole business, however. Not only would it be too hard to explain, but doing so might endanger Jeannie, if he found out somehow that she knew. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s head for Douglas.”
Jeannie leaves to find Lulu shoes and socks. Since Lulu’s feet are two sizes smaller, she returns with three pairs of socks and some white sneakers with red and white laces. Lulu pulls on the two pairs of white athletic socks—the plush cotton cradles her wounded feet gently—and as she slips on the pink anklets over those, she glances out the window and sees headlights bouncing through the front gate.
“Oh God, Jeannie!” she shouts. “Oh God, he’s here!”
4
Although at first blush it seemed as if the world had turned against him, in fact, the night wasn’t all bad. The cop’s death had given him an almost erotic thrill at the instant that it happened, though he was miles away. During his travels he had set up similar little surprises all across the country. Every now and then he allowed himself to be arrested for some minor transgression so that one or another of his addresses would wind up in the system. Making sure that cops everywhere had access to his information—as much as he wanted them to have, at any rate—was time-consuming and maybe slightly dangerous, but as long as it paid benefits like this—random, unexpected thrills of delight—then all that effort was worthwhile.
Still, he had to keep track of Lulu Lavender. Tonight, he was more and more convinced, was the night. The white girl would cross the border, and he would meet her and take her power for his own. Without meaning to, Lulu would lead him to her. She would never have voluntarily taken him, he had decided. But she thought she had escaped. As if he couldn’t even control his own bladder and had to use gas station bathrooms. She had struck out into the tempestuous night, never dreaming that she would guide him exactly where he wanted to go.
Lulu had proven more of a challenge than he’d ever expected, to be sure. She didn’t know the extent of her own powers and abilities, but the white girl wouldn’t have chosen her if she weren’t suitable. Maybe she was a descendant of the original model; he would never know for sure. He only knew that he had underestimated her, at first, but he wouldn’t anymore. She could be formidable.
She could also be just the ticket he needed to the future he wanted and deserved.
That was his plan, anyway. And no matter what her potential might be, he had long since passed the potential stage.
Before the sun rose again, he would have moved beyond his own current stage as well, into uncharted territory, knowing strength that no other human being ever had.
And Lulu, whether she knew it or not, would take him there.
5
Oliver didn’t break any speed records, except his own—given the weather and visibility, or lack thereof, trying to would have been close to suicidal, and while anxiety nagged at him, he had not lost all reason—but he drove faster than was entirely safe, sloshing through those “Do Not Enter When Flooded” dips even when the water came up to the green Subaru’s floorboards, and as his tires shimmied through the mud into his own driveway, an hour and ten minutes after talking with Stan, he was surprised to see so many lights on inside the house.
The rain had tapered off here, but it had come down long and hard enough to leave the driveway soupy. He parked as close as he could to the house and dashed to the overhang, leaving his briefcase in the car for now. He had tried calling Jeannie off and on, whenever he had cell service, and had not been able to get through. What had happened in the only other house on their road alone would have been enough to send him rushing home. Be okay be okay be okay, he thought as he drove. The scariest time of his life had been in the weeks after the whole Vivian affair blew up, when he hadn’t known for sure if Jeannie would stay or go. That fear had begun to fade when she agreed to move to Arizona with him, but it had never vanished completely.
That fear was totally eclipsed by his worry tonight, unable to reach her by phone.
Added to that, however, was his concern over what Stan had told him about Lulu’s blog. When not driving one-handed trying to reach Jeannie, he tried to reach Buck Shelton, with the same lack of success. Had his overwhelming impulse not been to get home and make sure Jeannie was all right, he would have detoured to Elfrida and stopped by the sheriff’s office there.
The front door was locked. That was new—until the mass murder down the road, they had only occasionally remembered to lock their doors at night. So far out of town, so isolated, the danger of break-ins seemed distant compared to what it had been in Southern California. Oliver dug into his pocket, brought out keys. On the third try his shaking hands managed to get the correct one into the lock. He turned it, twisted the knob and shoved open the door. “Jeannie!”
In the living room, Jeannie and Lulu stood (Lulu in ill-fitting clothes Oliver knew to be his wife’s) pointing kitchen knives at him.
Laughing, Oliver figured, would be the worst possible response he could have.
At the same time, it was the one that erupted from him first.
“You two are terrifying!” he said when he could speak. “I’m glad I belong here.”
“Oliver!” Jeannie shouted. “Do you find something amusing about us?”
He pocketed the keys and went to her, wrapping his arms around her unyielding frame. “No,” he said. “Well, a little. Mostly I’m just relieved, you know? That you’re okay, and Lulu…” He released Jeannie and turned to the younger girl, who launched herself against him. He caught her, squeezing tightly. “Lulu, I’m so glad to see you! Are you okay?”
“I am now, Oliver,” she said. “I was so scared, but Jeannie took good care of me and now you’re here and I know everything will be all right.”
“We thought you were the creep who kidnapped her,” Jeannie explained. A blush had crept up her neck and pinked her cheeks, and she twined her fingers together the way she did when she was embarrassed. Oliver hoped she didn’t slice herself open on the knife she still held.
“I was working around to that.” He released Lulu from the hug but held on to her slender arms. “So you got away from him? He isn’t in custody?”
“Or even, you know, dead,” Lulu said. “Which, to be honest, would have been my first choice.”
“Have you called Buck?”
“The phone’s been dead,” Jeannie said. “The storm—”
“Or you hope it’s the storm,” Oliver said. “And not him.”
“We thought of that too,” Jeannie said. “But then you showed up.”
“I think we should get out of here,” he urged. “We can go up to Elfrida, or—”
“No!” Lulu said, emphat
ic. “We can’t go that way!”
“That’s the direction he was last time she saw him,” Jeannie explained.
“Okay, down into Douglas then. There’s a sheriff’s office there, and the Douglas police.”
“That’s fine,” Lulu said, glancing away from him. He caught the motion and knew it meant something, although he didn’t know what.
“On the way,” he said, “you can tell me what you know about the statue of the white girl, and how it ties into Cabeza de Vaca, and what it’s all got to do with you.”
“It sounds like you know more than me,” Lulu said. “Maybe you should do the explaining.”
“Maybe I should. I have a feeling we both have a lot to tell each other.”
With Lulu in the backseat and Jeannie next to him in the front, Oliver drove again, even though it felt like he had been driving all night. He told them about what Stan Gilfredson had said, all about the white girl, the statue carved by Estevan of the Cabeza de Vaca expedition, the commonplace acceptance of magic in Mexico. In return, Lulu told him what she had already described to Jeannie—and more, he suspected, from Jeannie’s responses to details like the fact that the guy had killed a woman who tried to help her, and left her body in the same room she was kept in—of her captivity and escape.
As surprising as that was, it paled in comparison to the next thing she said. “We don’t have time to go to the police, Oliver. We need to get down to the border.”
“The border?”
“Yes,” Lulu said. “She’s almost there. I have to meet her.”
He tried to see her eyes in the rearview mirror, wondering if she was in shock from her experience, or having some sort of psychotic episode. She leaned against the seat back, however, and he couldn’t make out her eyes in the shadows. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lulu said. Her tone made a declaration of urgency. “We have to get there now. We might already be too late.”
“Do you know where?”
“Oliver,” Jeannie said.
“There’s stuff going on here we don’t understand,” Oliver said. “I think we have to assume she knows what she’s talking about.”
“But we have to tell the sheriff that she’s okay,” Jeannie reminded him.
“We could tell Buck on the phone, if he’d ever answer. Keep trying him, and if we don’t get him in the next couple of minutes, just call 911.”
“When we hit Fifteenth Street, go left,” Lulu said from in back. “Toward New Mexico. She’s coming east of town.”
She spoke with absolute certitude, and Oliver wasn’t inclined to doubt her. While Jeannie kept trying Buck, he followed Lulu’s directions, turning away from town instead of toward it.
He hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake.
6
A Klaxon that Barry had never noticed sounded throughout the ranch complex. Carl’s followers responded like firefighters. No one swore at the deafening din. Instead, businesslike, a bit tense, they all stubbed out smokes and abandoned drinks, hurrying to their barracks. They returned to the big common room just minutes later clad in camos, strapping on gun belts. It felt, Barry thought, more like a military operation than the military had been, in the hellish stew of Vietnam.
Whatever Carl had been talking about earlier, the night’s big event, he guessed it had arrived.
He didn’t have camos to change into, or a room to do it in, except for Connie’s. And he hadn’t seen her since she had brought him back to the ranch after he’d killed the Mexican guy. After a few minutes, however, she showed up in the common room with everyone else. She had put on an olive-drab ribbed top with a high neck and long, tight sleeves, and camo fatigue pants like the others. On her feet she wore heavy black work boots. A webbed belt around her hips held a black holster with a flap; steel showed under the flap, but Barry couldn’t tell if it was the gun he had used.
Noticing his stare, she tossed him a friendly smile. He didn’t return it, couldn’t think of anything he might want to say to her. Especially here, now, with her flanked by her comrades, everyone armed. And me just a sucker, I guess, getting used by people smarter than me.
Carl entered then, before the moment got any more awkward. “Fall out, people!” he shouted, sounding then just like Barry’s old DI from Parris Island. “Trucks are waiting in front!”
The assemblage shouted a “Hoo hah!” and ran in formation out of the room, down the hall toward the door. When they were gone, only Carl remained.
“You ready for this, Barry?” Carl asked with a warm smile. He touched Barry’s upper arm. “This is the real thing, bud.”
“Ready as I’m gonna be, I guess.”
“That’s good. Come on, then,” Carl said. “You’re riding with me and Connie.”
“Okay.”
Carl led him toward the same black Expedition in which he had first visited the ranch. Marc, as usual, sat behind the wheel. An olive-drab T-shirt hugged his muscular arms. Connie had already settled in back. Carl motioned Barry in beside her, then slid in and closed the door. “Go,” he said.
Without a word, Marc complied.
As the SUV jounced along a primitive road toward the border, Carl leaned toward Barry. “You know what I told you back there?”
Barry nodded. “Wasn’t that long ago.”
“Now that we’re out here, I can let you in on a little more.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of a succubus?”
Barry tried to scan his memory for the word. “No,” he said, glancing at Connie. She just smiled and stroked his arm. “What is it?”
“Never mind,” Carl said. “That’s not exactly what she is anyway, but there’s no closer word in English. Thing is, everything we’ve been telling you, about the threat from Mexican migrants, is true. But there’s more that we haven’t told you. It’ll be hard to believe, but hopefully by now you know you can trust us.”
“I ain’t sure what to trust anymore,” Barry admitted.
“You can trust Carl,” Connie whispered. Hearing her say the words, so close to his ear he could feel her warm breath, he wanted to trust her. He couldn’t, in fact, remember why he shouldn’t.
“It’s all true, like I said, but it’s even worse than we told you. There’s something happening tonight, like I mentioned, and if it doesn’t go the way we want it to, it could open the door to America losing all of Arizona to the Mexicans. Other states too. What would the good old USA look like without California, Texas and everything in between?”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Barry asked. “They got an army or something comin’ this way?”
“They don’t need an army,” Carl replied. “They have magic.”
Barry wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “They have what?”
“I know what it sounds like,” Carl said. “Believe me. It sounds fucking nuts. But you know, I can’t sugarcoat it for you. You’ve seen and done things these last few days you’d never have believed, so this shouldn’t be that much harder to credit.”
“But…” Barry didn’t know what else to say. Carl was right; it sounded crazy. At the same time, Connie rubbed his arm and her hot breath blew on his neck and they rolled along with a small army of their own headed toward the border, so what should he think? Every thought he had was crowded out by the next one that landed right beside it, and he couldn’t get a grasp on any of them, trying to was like fishing for minnows with greased hands.
“And I’m a magician too,” Carl added.
“I haven’t seen you do any tricks.”
“Are you sure? You never wondered how I found you at that bar, or why you came with me, or why you stayed?”
Actually, he had wondered about those things. He had convinced himself that it was all happenstance, the right two people bumping into each other at the right time. Maybe not, though. Maybe Carl spoke the truth now. It was just too hard to know for sure. Too hard to know anything for sure. Believing Carl and Connie felt like the eas
iest thing to do.
He decided not to fight it. “Okay, I guess you’re right.”
“Reason I’m telling you this, Barry, I want to be absolutely clear. When we’re out there, you do what I say. No hesitation, no questions, no doubts, okay?”
“I guess.”
“Not good enough.”
“Okay, Carl. I’ll do what you say.”
Carl chuckled dryly. “Actually, it’s not like you could do otherwise at this point if you wanted to. You will do what you’re told—it’s just you’ll be more efficient about it if you don’t try to fight against it. You hesitate, you could be killed out there. We all could. You, Connie, me, everyone. It comes down to you doing what you’re told; I want to know you’ll do it.”
“Doesn’t sound like I have a choice,” Barry said.
“Not so much,” Carl said. “When you put it like that, not so much choice at all.”
7
Scoot Brown drove through the night, nervous, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel in a pattern that Buck eventually came to realize must be from video game play. Buck looked away from his long, slender fingers at the rest of him: skinny, from the shoulders up he was all neck and nose, with a bulbous Adam’s apple and a beak to match. Scoot noticed he was being watched and swallowed anxiously. “You call your wife yet?”
“Shit,” Buck said, remembering. “I turned off my cell before we made the entry back there, and in all the excitement, you know, with Raul and being Cheneyed and all, I forgot to turn it back on.”
He had not called Tammy, and didn’t know that he wanted to. She often fell back on the cliché about how the Lord worked in mysterious ways. If she had been praying for his safety, could her prayers have put Raul in front of him at the doorway? Had Raul taken a load meant for him? He didn’t want to dignify that theory by worrying about it.
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