Polydegmon remained uncertain if he even wanted to know how this night's work had altered his feelings for Freddy.
He pushed all his ruminations aside and said, with a blithe cheerfulness he was very far from feeling, "Now, o faithful Hound, will you tend my hurts?"
Chapter Seven
Freddy stirred at the sound of voices, her brain foggy with sleep.
"You get five minutes," her dad said.
"Thank you," replied another voice, low and male, vaguely familiar.
A crack of light from her open doorway shot into the room, and she scrunched under her covers to steal more sleep.
"I'm standing right outside." Her dad's voice had gone all growly.
She grunted in acknowledgment and burrowed deeper, her brain not yet awake enough for speaking, only awake enough to be primitively annoyed at someone waking her.
"I understand, and I thank you for this." That was the second voice again, and the sound of it stirred the contents of her back-brain, prodding at Freddy. She ignored the prod and let the warmth of her blankets ease her back to sleep.
"Don't push it." Her dad closed her door with a sharp click.
"Freddy love, wake up."
Freddy stirred against the hand on her shoulder. Sudden well-being--a contented warmth--flooded through her, and she sighed.
"Frederica." The pressure became more urgent. She floated free from unconsciousness and brushed back the cobwebs sleep had spun around her mind. She cracked gummy eyes open, forcing her sluggish limbs to move, her achy body to sit up.
Her window blinds were open, and gray light filtered into her room. Deg sat on the edge of her bed, smiling at her.
Her heart rocketed into her throat. She launched herself into his arms. "You're all right."
Deg caught her against him with one hand, his other lay heavily bandaged at his side. He pillowed his head on hers. "Your guard dog did his bit well."
She burrowed closer to him, grateful he was alive and so, so happy he was here. "You should stay here and rest for a while."
He shook his head once, a tight jerk. "I cannot." He held her away from him. "After your brave services, it seemed wrong to leave without thanking you, without saying goodbye."
Disappointment jolted through her body, electric and stinging, leaving her insides feeling charred. "Goodbye?" She fell back on her pillows and frowned at him. "Again?"
"Nothing has changed." He picked at a loose thread on his bandage. "If anything, last night should show you it is better to stay away from me."
She huffed in annoyance at his ingratitude. "Last night showed me you can't take very good care of yourself."
"Yes. Long has my life been about my own selfish pleasures." Deg winced and avoided her eyes, his own shadowed and sad. "Combat and stealth are not my strengths. They never had to be. I never had to build anything of my own, do anything for myself. My parents' consequence has been enough to see me through life."
Anger kindled inside her at his lame excuses. If he doesn't want to see me again, he should say so. The thought stung, and so Freddy was overly tart as she tsked at Deg in mock sympathy. "Poor little rich boy?"
His smile flashed at her with fragile regret. "Something like that." He sighed. "The gods go with you, Frederica. Goodbye." He kissed her on the cheek, his lips warm and soft.
She shivered, her breath caught, but Deg pulled away. He creaked to his feet then limped to the door, favoring his uninjured leg. Embarrassed heat fanned over her cheeks. His rejection stung and throbbed, sharper than a slap to her face would've been.
He turned back on the threshold, and, mad as she was, she still winced at his pale face, battered with small scratches on his nose and cheeks. His hand was a lumpy bundle of bandages, and the eyes that met hers were dark-circled and bleak.
He started to say something, and she her breath but he only shook his head and kept silent.
Then he left.
Just left.
Freddy gaped at her bedroom door, physically paralyzed in her shock. That's it? 'Thanks and goodbye?'
Growling in frustration, she hurled a pillow at the closed door.
~~~
She managed to fall into a fretful doze after Deg's dawn visitation and slept through the morning. When she dragged herself into the kitchen she found her mom, barefoot in short shorts and one of Dad's old T-shirts, running a mop around the kitchen floor. She finished as Freddy entered and carried the mop and bucket outside.
The grotesque reminder of last night started a low ache in Freddy's gut, worry and fear gnawing at her. How can Mom be so matter-of-fact about mopping blood off the floor? Freddy plopped into a kitchen chair and sunk her chin into one of her hands, staring at the empty tabletop. Why did Deg run here? To me. How does Deg even know Dad? That last thought raised goosebumps all up her arms, and she hugged herself to keep the fearful chill back. There's a reasonable explanation. Dad will explain it. He'll explain everything.
Dad wandered in. He paused when he saw Freddy then sat in the chair across from her, watching her, his eyes squeezed at the edges with tension and puffy from lack of sleep.
Freddy dropped her hand to drum the table with her fingers, her nerves jittery with uneasiness, but she glared at her dad, forcing herself not to be intimidated by the still set of his face. "You should have let Deg stay here today. He couldn't stand without fainting last night."
"You'd be surprised how quick he'll heal." He sat forward and put on his best Stern Dad Face, lips pursed tight, eyebrows drawn down until they almost touched. "I don't want you to see him again."
Anger fanned through her. "No way--"
"Enough." Her dad matched the scary rumble in his voice with a swift cutting gesture of his hand, fastening her in place with his gaze. "Sweetheart, I know his kind, and I don't want you mixed up in anything to do with them. Or him."
Mom banged back into the kitchen through the screen door in time to hear this. "Your dad's right."
Freddy rolled her eyes at Mom. "You don't even know what we're talking about."
"Yes, I do." Mom went to the sink and filled a coffee cup with precise, deliberate movements. She hunched over, keeping her back to the table. "Listen to Colin."
Freddy snorted. "Okay. If you two know all about Deg, tell me who he is."
Mom's cup clattered against the counter, and Freddy jumped at the noise, eyeing her mom in sudden worry. What is going on? She bit her lip to keep from wailing the thought aloud like an overexcited baby.
Freddy's dad clenched his jaw, and turned over his shoulder to look at Mom, who clutched the sink so hard her knuckles whitened.
Freddy looked back and forth between her parents. The secrets coursing between them cluttered the air so badly she didn't know how she could still breathe.
She looked at Mom. For whatever reason, Dad, despite what he thought, wouldn't tell Freddy anything without Mom's permission.
Mom faced them, her face a sickly white, her eyes shimmering with tears. She chewed her lower lip and held one of the chair backs for support. "You--you wouldn't understand, Freddy."
Bright, burning anger kindled in Freddy's veins. She pounded the table with her fist, upsetting the salt and pepper shakers. "Why does everyone think I won't understand anything? Why not try telling me and see what I understand?" She cast a fuming glare from one to the other of her parents, but both avoided her gaze. Why won't they tell me?
Fear nibbled at the edges of her heart, picking at it piece by piece so the longer she sat there, staring at the blank, tense expressions of her parents, the sicker she became. Shoving her chair back, she stormed from the kitchen, holding hard to her anger to keep any of the fear from leaking in to poison her.
~~~
That evening, after a silent, sulking dinner--par for the course in her silent, sulking day--Freddy sat in her room, scanning Their Eyes Were Watching God for her AP AmLit class, reading the same page three times without absorbing anything. She flung the book aside, and turned her music on, but after
only two songs she switched the music off.
She flopped onto her back atop her comforter and stared at her gray stucco ceiling, desolate about how Deg had left and anxious over the answers her parents wouldn't give her. They're lying to me. Everyone I care about is deciding over and over again not to answer my questions, not to tell me the truth.
The sting of the realization made her angry. She perched on the edge of her bed, clutching the mattress edge with her fingers. But what could be so awful Mom and Dad would rather lie than tell me about it? She gathered her blanket around her to huddle in its warmth.
Hours passed in a mind-dizzy blur. Late evening rolled around.
She itched to get away from all the tension in the house, itched to be away period. The woodsy paths around her house called. Freddy longed for the wind's touch to tease across her face and through her hair. She wanted to let the moonlight pour down onto her face.
She also wanted answers, and she'd figured out how she might get them--Deg.
~~~
Once she'd made her decision, the first thing she did was troop out to the garage with a laundry basket. Dad read the paper in the living room while Mom watched bad reality TV on cable. Neither one looked up as Freddy stomped into the garage to get her laundry.
Freddy's mom went to bed at last and, a half-hour after her mother's door closed, if she strained her ears, Freddy could make out Mom's soft snores coming through the walls.
She waited and waited but, though Dad did go to his bedroom, from the gentle stirring sounds in his room, he didn't seem to be sleeping. In fact, the floorboards in his bedroom creaked while he paced. Probably expecting me to sneak out.
She told herself to abandon her plan to find Deg. No matter how brightly the moon bathed the land in an enticing glow, no matter how every molecule of her skin pined to be outside, no matter how badly she wanted to find Deg, and no matter what kind of answers she thought he would give her, the information wasn't worth anything if Dad caught her.
It wasn't.
It really wasn't.
~~~
Freddy went to the garage to grab a bow and a quiver of arrows. If she was going skulking out and about at night, she was going armed. She grabbed a training sword and tucked it with her other weapons behind the trash can in the kitchen.
She crept to the kitchen sink, waiting for her dad and silently counting to in her head. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Si--
Dad padded into the kitchen. He didn't even pretend surprise at seeing her up so late. "Bad dreams?"
She filled a cup with tap water, shrugged, and gulped some down. Her nerves prickled with nervous tension.
He gave her a lop-sided smile. "Can't blame you after last night. All the same, you're a growing girl. You should be in bed."
She tilted her head, and ignored the "growing girl" comment. At nearly six feet, she sincerely hoped her growing had finished. "You didn't get much sleep last night either, did you?"
Dad shook his head, his eyes stern. "I'm not going to get much tonight if you try this prank you're planning."
She set her cup down with a sharp click, projecting absolute innocent outrage. "Dad, what?"
"How 'bout you put my sword back in the garage? Bow and arrows, too."
Her mouth fell open in surprise.
He stifled a smirk. "Mom told me. She's got Maternal ESP…and she woke up when she heard the garage door open."
"So why didn't she come to stop me?" Freddy pulled the weapons from behind the trash can, hunching her shoulders and clenching her jaw in a sulk. But she tried not to lay it on too thick.
"She knows I've got more stopping power." Dad supervised Freddy as she schlepped back to the garage and stowed the weapons in their proper places. He hummed the Jeopardy theme while he watched, and Freddy had to bite back a smile to keep her pouting expression in place. He folded his arms and drew himself to his full height. "I can also bodily carry you back to your room if I have to, which is not something Mom wants to attempt."
"Me being a whole foot taller than her and all?"
"Exactly." He put his arm around Freddy's shoulders. "Back to bed." He frog-marched her to her room and tucked her into her bed, as if she were a toddler. He leaned over her and waited. "Okay, what's up? Sneaking out is not like you."
Freddy blinked at him, keeping her face blank, her eyes innocent. A small niggle of guilt corkscrewed through her gut at her dad's worried expression, but she pushed it away. I need answers, and Dad isn't giving them. He doesn't get to make me feel guilty right now.
He pursed his lips. "Stonewall me if you like." He stalked to her door and ominously raised one eyebrow. "We'll talk in the morning. Good night." Dad turned off her light and closed the bedroom door with a loud click.
She counted to one hundred in her head, waiting long enough for her dad to move away from her door. At the count of one hundred and one, Freddy threw back her comforter and got up, her nerves buzzing with guilty excitement.
Misdirection is a wonderful thing.
Dad had reclaimed his weapons, but he'd forgotten she sometimes kept her own bow in her room. Earlier in the day, she had carried in one of the lightweight swords and a quiver full of arrows along with her clean laundry.
She stripped out of her PJs and into an old pair of jeans and a black T-shirt that said, "Never judge a girl by her T-shirt." She tugged her dark blue Drama Club sweatshirt over her head, yanking the sweatshirt's hood over her hair. Carefully, she eased open her window then lowered her weapons to the grass outside. As she slithered off her windowsill to the ground, she gave silent thanks her parents had only bought a one-story house. She had never snuck out before, so her gut twinged with shame as her feet hit the dirt, but she needed answers and her parents weren't talking.
Something crunched beneath her sneakers. Freddy bent over, gently touching the petals of a half-crushed flower. The blossom was one of a cluster of flowers beneath her window, bright red blooms she had never seen before. As she straightened, a dark splotch on the wall caught her eye. A handprint. Freddy held her palm just over the bloody mark, trying to determine the size. She let her hand fall. That's Deg's handprint.
She stared down at the trail of red flowers, which continued around the side of the house and down the path into the woods. The back of her neck prickled and goosebumps popped out on her arms despite her sweatshirt. The flowers hadn't been there before and they…they followed exactly the path of Deg's blood.
No way. She swallowed, and wet her lips, trying to get some moisture back into her mouth as her head pulsed with sudden panic.
Her dad stirred in his room, knocking something over, and the sound spurred her to action. She stared down at the red flowers, her nerves jittering, then shook her head, pushing aside the worry. Okay, so the flowers are seriously weird. But at least finding Deg had suddenly become a lot easier.
Quietly, she shouldered her bow and arrows, strapped the sword over the waist of her jeans, and headed into the night, following the trail of red flowers to find Deg.
He'd looked ten kinds of awful when he left her room. She hadn't believed her parents for a second that he would be strong enough to fend for himself. First and foremost, Freddy meant to find him tonight to make sure he was all right; the weapons were in case any more of those freaky dogs showed. She hurriedly pushed that thought away. Any tiptoe of the freaky dogs through her brain made a clammy, nervous sweat pool on her skin, and she needed to focus, not look over her shoulder every few seconds to check for zombie-dogs.
The first step away from her house, the air changed. Energy thrummed all around her, an excitement, a power, an expectation stretched from the high heavens down to the dead leaves crunching under her feet.
She walked to the side of the worn forest path she followed to school and back every day, trying to focus her mind. Deg. You're looking for Deg.
But all around her the woods called, their leaves whispering her name. The trees begged to be climbed. The grass ached to have her bare feet trip across
it. The wind longed for her to surrender. Her senses seemed expanded somehow, deeper, broader, and the whole world soothed her with its voice so she seemed to float down the road, her face broken wide in a giddy grin.
Her veins jolted inside her at a clatter of hooves around the corner, breaking the spell. The riding club always locked the stables after dark. Riders out this late at night weren't up to any good. She stepped from the path and crouched out of sight behind a prickly bush, its leaves stained yellow from pine pollen, the dry stuff tickling in her nose.
The moonlight revealed two creatures and their companion dogs, and she swallowed a scream, her whole chest burning under the pressure of holding it down. Freddy's mind panicked as shock and revulsion warred for dominance. They…they can't be human.
The horse looked normal enough, but its rider couldn't be classified as "normal" by even the wildest stretch of the imagination. Covered all over in reddish brown fur, the rider had a foxish face and a long tail tipped with white that whipped from side to side on its saddle.
The other one was a bent, twig-thin creature with green skin and appendages that might be horns or branches sticking from his head. The thing stood about as high as Freddy's knees and appeared to be master of the hounds. He shuffled along with a bent back, clutching the leashes of three of the grotesque dogs. They skulked in a huddle down the trail, sniffing the ground.
She cringed by the edge of the path. I wish I had never gotten out of bed. Never left the house. Never met Deg. Oh please, please, let these nightmare things leave me alone. Please.
"Nasty night," chirped the dog-minder in a high singsong. "Nasty, nasty."
"Shut it." The fox aimed a kick at the gnarled stick-man but missed. As the fox-man spoke, his pointed snout snapped open to reveal sharp teeth that glistened with saliva. "I had a peach of a selkie girl all wet and ready for me. I swear I could skin the Ol'Stag alive. Sending us to patrol during the Revels."
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