by AJ Scudiere
Kayla nodded. “We should head back. We can catch I-16 then hop over toward home.”
Merging carefully into another lane, Ivy nodded. Kayla, too, checked the mirrors, but she was looking for the green sedan, which was luckily nowhere in sight.
Ivy spoke only once on the way back toward Ebenezer. “I think we caught him with timing. He couldn’t climb back into his car when he’d just gotten out. He’d look suspicious if he didn’t go inside and at least examine something.”
Nothing more was said until they parked in the space between the buildings at Hazelton House. They had started keeping the cars out of sight so no one could tell when they were home and when they weren’t. They managed to get one car in the carriage house, but there was enough room behind the main house to keep the other two from being viewed from the street. So it was a short walk up to the back steps. She was thinking about carrying the magnets up to her room, because she didn’t want all the parts down in the blacksmith’s shop. Night was settling in, and it would become easier for someone to sneak down there.
She had two heavy bags in her arms and was crossing the back space, passing by the open small door to the carriage house, when it hit her. The thought—the idea—washed over her with certainty just as Reenie stepped out onto the back porch of the Overseer’s House. “Did you get all the magnets you need?”
Kayla nearly growled, but she couldn’t. “Nope, we didn’t find anything. In fact, I don’t think it needs magnets at all. I think it was brass inlay.”
The expression on Reenie’s face was clear as day. There were many of Reenie’s looks that Kayla didn’t understand, but she knew did-you-suddenly-go-batshit-crazy? when she saw it. Shaking her head ‘no,’ Kayla climbed the steps as fast as she could. She had to get to Reenie and shut her up.
Moving into the other woman’s space, she clearly mouthed, “Don’t say anything.” But she didn’t make a sound. Aloud, she wondered, “Did you make pie? My birthday is coming up.”
It was, and she did want pie.
“Sure.” The drawn out tone of the syllable left no doubt that Reenie was still parking Kayla in the crazy camp. But Ivy followed up the stairs with faith and silence.
As they entered the bedroom they’d been sharing—but that Kayla still thought of as Ivy’s—her friend whispered, “What’s going on?”
It was only possible to be so quiet when pushing bags laden with heavy magnets under a four-poster bed situated on an old wooden floor. But she did her best. Then she didn’t answer Ivy’s question. She wasn’t ready to commit to what she feared. “Do you have a gun?”
A frown that Kayla couldn’t interpret seemed to ask a question, but the answer was a statement. “I have a twenty-two and a shotgun.”
“Load them both.”
She pushed out the doorway, leaving a startled Ivy in her wake. Kayla was afraid. She was certain what she’d find. And she didn’t want to find it.
Dark was dropping like curtains as she made her way back out. Evan was coming in from the far field. Sweaty, he had clearly spent the whole day tending his cotton. But that meant he would have had an eye on her smithy while she’d been gone.
He smiled and wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. “Hey, Kay. How was your trip?”
“Useless. There were no brass fittings anywhere.” Evan recognized the evasion, the misdirection. He knew what she’d gone in search of. But instead of becoming confused, he grew wary. She’d imitated something Reenie said, borrowing the cadence and accent of the words. Hopefully the tones didn’t tip her hand to all around.
His eyes focused, and he mouthed some words to her. It took just a moment to interpret, “Do you need a hand?”
Yes, she did. The nod gave her answer but failed to tell him how to get started.
In her mind, she replayed the images that struck her on the walk in. When the man in the shiny shoes had come while they were digging up the privy, he had walked around the corner. His hand had touched the house, the wall, the railing.
Kayla went there first. Pointing, she turned her head, and carefully checked the wood. She motioned for Evan to do the same. Nothing.
Evan silently conveyed a question about a flashlight, but Kayla shook her head. With two fingers she motioned eyes all around. So they kept looking. When the porch didn’t play out, they moved to the next spot—the second place the man had stopped.
Fifteen minutes later, they found the first bug.
Evan rolled over in bed, his hand snaking up under the pillow to the gun that was waiting there. Reenie didn’t know about it; it was enough that he knew. He had a snapshot memory in his head of Ivy cross-legged on her bed, checking the clip on a nine-millimeter. Kayla had smiled at him as she stood at the edge of the window, having just peeked around the curtain, a shotgun propped beside her, no doubt loaded and ready.
The bug had scared them all. Reenie had been doubtful at first, but then—when Evan had pulled her over and quietly pointed it out to her—she’d gotten very still. Between the houses on Docket Street really being foreclosed and now this, she was starting to worry, too.
Tides of ideas came and receded. Why would someone follow Ivy and Kayla? It had to be tied to the forged diagram. But why would anyone forge the damn thing in the first place? Reenie wanted to tie the whole incident to the bloody clothes and a probably-murdered baby from nine generations ago.
Evan knew they needed to protect themselves, but the gun didn’t make him feel any better. It made things worse. It was tangible proof that things were wrong.
The first issue was the bug; the second issue was the man who put it there. He’d come to their place of business, their home, looked them in the eye, and lied to them. Then he’d placed surveillance listening devices and left. Someone was monitoring them and they were sleeping with guns.
All day he’d felt the hair on his neck rise as he worked the cotton field earlier. The field probably would have been fine without him. He’d planted several varieties of seed, as it was more important that he produce something. As long as it was cotton, as long as visitors could play with it, pick the seeds, run it through the gin, and take a piece of history home with them, it didn’t matter. But he desperately needed sprouts. So he’d hedged his bets and planted the most likely seed strains.
He’d spent time today, crouched down in the dirt, checking for saturation in the soil, checking that the earth was undisturbed. And his spine had prickled—that tiny change in sensation when you know something is about to go wrong, when you feel you are being followed. But he hadn’t seen anything. Well, not until later.
After he’d looked around, searched for faces in the nearby woods and found nothing, he’d seen footprints in the soft earth at the edge of the field. He couldn’t identify them nor could he rule much out. They could even belong to Kayla; she had relatively big feet, as she was somewhat tall. The prints might even be old, where he hadn’t plowed, and only partially imprinted. Only Ivy had small enough feet to be off his radar. Hell, the tracks might even be his own.
But they’d disturbed him, made him wonder.
Still, he’d quelled the unease. Told himself that he was being swayed by Kayla’s concerns. Kayla dealt in black-and-whites a lot. Kayla found things to be suspicious, so something must be suspicious. She knew it was unlikely, but the thing that was suspicious didn’t go away. She hadn’t overreacted and so neither had he.
Still, it had made him look twice into the woods to see if he was being watched. It made him pay attention to the feeling at the back of his neck, at the base of his spine. And it had made him shut up and look when Kayla had motioned what she needed.
If the diagram had been questionable, the bug was not.
Had Kay and Ivy really been followed? He didn’t know. But he knew enough to slide the gun—loaded—under his pillow. He knew enough that sleep was going to be hard won and that he’d never be able to forget the image of his sister, in another woman’s bedroom, smiling and saying go
odnight to him. Shotgun at her side.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the plantation at night. He heard crickets and owls. There were some scuttling noises and in the far distance coyotes voiced disapproval. But he didn’t hear footsteps, human sounds, or anything that would make him suspicious. Still, he was suspicious.
Evan took a deep breath and wondered if he could force himself to sleep.
Kayla chipped carefully at the wood in the gears she had made. At the time, the wood had been a cheap option, a lightweight way to build what was needed without investment of time or money. She hadn’t thought it would work anyway. And it hadn’t.
But she’d put the magnets into a backpack, in hopes that no one watching would know what she had, and she’d taken the food Ivy had packed for her and headed down to the smithy to tinker with it. The magnets couldn’t be altered, so she altered the gears to fit what she’d bought. And while Evan tinkered in the cotton field again—presumably to be able to keep an eye on her—she popped the magnets into place, one by one.
The gear grew heavier as she added the iron pieces to it. Carving each spot carefully, Kayla took into account any variations from piece to piece. They should all be the same, but she was snapping them into place, no glue, no fastenings of any kind. So she worked slowly, meticulously, not certain the magnets would make any difference, but seeing how they might.
She’d slept soundly next to Ivy, glad that she hadn’t gotten her own room yet, and beginning to wonder if she would. Sleep had been easier to find with the loaded guns standing guard. The creaks and groans from the old house were a comfort; they would hear anyone long before he reached the upstairs room. So she’d dreamed of magnets and cotton fields and schematics in lead ink.
She awoke and headed out, only to be stopped and mothered and handed a sack lunch by Ivy.
A glance outside revealed that the day had waned while she carved. So she pulled a sandwich from the bag and forced herself to eat it, if only to show Ivy that she’d paid attention and that the watchfulness was appreciated. It was peanut butter and jelly but tasted like nothing since her brain was elsewhere.
Finally, the gear was finished. A quick shake revealed all the new pieces to be tight in their homes, the gear itself ready to be reinstalled into the machine. It took a while to get the re-engineered piece situated, to shore up the struts meant to handle the weight of wood, not iron. Giving a test spin, she found a little oil cleared up the friction. But still the machine did nothing.
She spun the wheel several times, waiting for something to catch. Each gear turned another, eventually heading to a crankshaft that looked to be useful for output of some kind. It would be attached to a turnbar, or a generator, or . . .
Kayla was beginning to wonder if maybe she’d been wrong—if the machine wasn’t a generator at all. The magnetted gear didn’t turn anything else, because it wasn’t really a gear at all. And now she’d altered it to fit her cheap, blister-packed magnets, but it should be doing the right thing.
She then turned her attention to the bar that had also been altered in the second diagram. This time something about the lines and the way they’d been drawn grabbed her. In the original, she’d seen a change in the thickness of the lines and she’d duplicated it on her own forgery. It made her think there was a connection between the pieces she’d just spent the day fitting into place and the changes in the bar.
No one had asked for her help today; she’d come out to work on the machine, no questions asked. Ivy and Reenie had stayed at the house, though Evan had insisted that there be a loaded gun nearby and that they not answer the door to anyone. He’d told all the girls to call him; he wanted to be notified of anyone who made them nervous and anyone who didn’t.
Kayla had been left completely alone. But she’d been so engrossed in her work that nearly the whole day had passed. Ivy and Reenie had probably re-painted the front room in the oxblood shade that Ivy had chosen to match the chips of original paint they had found. The parlor would be a bright, rich yellow and beyond that, the sitting room would be coated in a soothing green. If they could get the edges right—Reenie insisted that they paint the borders by hand—they might have gotten through painting all three rooms while she’d been here today.
She reminded herself to comment on the work they’d finished and to find something nice to say about it when she got in tonight. She was spending the day wrapped up in her own projects, and they’d lost a hand to help with their deadline; the least she could do was say something kind. Maybe it would help her shift focus after a day here by herself.
Kayla had tinkered with magnets, taping them together and working on an idea. She resisted changing her original piece until she was more certain how it should work.
Three iterations later, she spun the wheel and this time it caught.
9
The Blacksmith’s Shop
Evan knew Kayla was fine the moment Ivy came in the back door. Ivy’s eyes had grown wide-eyed and dewy looking since she’d trotted off to find his sister.
A quick glance at Reenie revealed that she was irritated by the arrival of only one person, by the lack of attendance at her meal.
Ignoring Reenie’s dark mood if not the woman herself, he asked, “What?”
“She did it.” Ivy opened up a radiant smile and turned away. The now-empty doorway revealed the dark sky beyond, and the knowledge that Ivy was headed to the smithy.
When Reenie announced that she was tired of holding dinner and had insinuated that she was even more tired of holding meals for someone with no sense of time, Ivy had gone in search of Kayla. Ivy’s sudden solo return, the light on her face, and the hasty exit all indicated something big. “She did it” could mean anything, but Evan knew the machine was now working; that was the only reasonable “it” here. So, he too passed through the doorway with no further explanation and left it standing wide in hope that Reenie would follow.
He watched his footing, moving slowly through the deep gray. Unlike his sister, he didn’t know every blade of grass and dip in the ground. If he went faster, Evan would turn an ankle. But he risked looking behind him and saw Reenie had put on her shoes and was reluctantly following.
Stopping at the crest of the bridge, Evan leaned against the railing as she picked her way toward him, her slim form a shadow to his now-adjusted eyes. He held out his hand, a gesture of love, welcome and thanks. She’d come when she didn’t have to. She’d stopped what she was doing, interrupted a meal she’d fixed for everyone and been abandoned at. But still she put on her sneakers and come out to see “it.” She probably wasn’t even interested in the machine itself; but she was here, and he was proud.
“Oh!” Reenie startled as she finally spotted him waiting in the dark. Her hand came out and she laced her fingers in his, an old gesture from before the plantation started erecting walls between them even as they tore the physical walls down.
“Come on.” He tugged her along, offering stability and impetus. But he didn’t say more. The journey took a while and as they came around the trees, he saw Ivy in the distance. The light emanating from the smithy made her into a silhouette as she stepped lightly over the packed earth around the shop, much more familiar with the terrain than him. She disappeared through the doorway, and closed it, cutting off the illumination.
Warm air snaked currents around them and the sounds of the night closed in. Evan could feel Reenie inching closer, clinging as the darkness seemed to overwhelm them. She’d grown up in a town with nothing like the open spaces here. Her land had been populated with people and stores, not trees and insects and vacant historical buildings.
Just before he pulled open the door, he thought the wind brought him a scent of iron, as though the smithy still functioned in its former incarnation. Kayla was mostly working wood in there, no iron had been heated at all that he knew of. The heavy door swung open on its ancient hinges, revealing a scene he wasn’t all that comfortable seeing.
Kayla looked up at him, eyes bright. “She was right. It was exactly those two altered spots on the diagram that made the difference. I fixed the wheel, inserting magnets. The trick was to alternate the polarities in the gear. I’d already noticed it had an even number of cogs, so that was an option.” She pointed to the moving wheel, too involved in the work to count the number of sentences she was saying or to notice that no one else spoke. “This gear doesn’t attach to anything, so that didn’t make sense, except that it tipped me to the magnets, but even that didn’t make it work.”
“But the rest of it was right. Except the rod.” Ivy was looking at him and Reenie now. Reenie had remained silent, and Evan was grateful that she wasn’t criticizing.
“The rod was the final piece, it has magnets, too. I tried the round ones, but eventually found that the bar magnets worked better and they provided better balance, or the physical turning of the wheels and gears gets out of sync. I oiled it a lot, too. It has to be incredibly low friction or it doesn’t run very long. I had it running before but it petered out. I could almost directly calculate the kinetic friction coefficient from the angular velocity.” She didn’t even seem to breathe, the norm when she was so focused. “But then I oiled it, and oiled it again. And then I cleaned it and changed the oil to the synthetic engine oil I stole from your trunk, Evan.”
She didn’t apologize and he didn’t see the need to suggest she remember to ask before she took or borrowed things in the future. He was looking at the machine, listening while she spoke.