by Dima Zales
The thought of Ben’s girls being like me came as a shock. I guess it made sense — if Justine was a Second, her kids would be half. They might’ve inherited some weirdness. It just hadn’t occurred to me.
I headed up the stairs and told Ben I could stay with Madisyn while he took the others to school. That pleased him, since Madisyn, whose preschool started later, was still in her PJs and steadfastly ignoring the order to get dressed.
When she saw me, her face lit up.
“Aunt Beth! Nanny Hansen’s doggie says you can find Mommy! Daddy said I couldn’t tell you. But now I did. So can you?”
I glanced at Ben, who was rubbing his forehead. Actually, he was rubbing his eyes.
“Oh, Ben,” I said, and put my arms around him.
We stood there for a good while with Madisyn looking up at us and occasionally tugging on my pant leg and saying “doggie” in a loud whisper. The other kids gathered at the door and peeked in, looking sad and a little scared. Finally Ben pulled away from me and throatily told Tiff, Jazzy, and Lia to go get in the car. He followed them out without speaking to me. I didn’t hear any shrieks from downstairs, so apparently Zion had gone unnoticed.
Once I heard the car pull out, I knelt down in front of Madisyn.
“Sweetie, do you think I should meet Nanny Hansen’s dog?”
“Yeah!”
She took my hand and led me downstairs and out into the back yard. She looked around carefully, then crossed over to the fence separating Ben’s yard from the neighbor’s to the west.
Whoever lived there — Mrs. Hansen, I guess — had a large, overgrown piece of property. Last year’s dead grass was thigh-high in places and all gone to seed. In other spots, the snow had packed it down into wet humps. A huge stand of sumac had taken over the back of the yard, and a thicket of honeysuckle covered another part. A big maple and a pine loomed over the small house itself, looking like they could take it out completely, given a big enough storm. Compared to Ben’s neatly groomed lawn, it was a jungle.
Madisyn gathered herself. I half expected her to display some strange ability, but all she did was holler.
“Doggie! Doggie! Doggie!”
For several minutes, nothing happened. Then, just as I was deciding Madisyn’s canine friend must be imaginary, the sumac swayed gently, as though touched by wind. The honeysuckle rustled, then parted to expose the biggest dog I’d ever seen. It was at least as tall as a wolfhound, but massively boned instead of leggy. It must’ve weighed more than three hundred pounds. I recalled that Madisyn had said its fur was glass. That could be the case, if glass were flexible and floaty. Whatever the animal’s coat was made of, it was translucent white and shone softly in the morning light. The creature’s eyes were golden, like a wolf’s.
It studied me for a while in silence, then approached the chain-link fence.
Madisyn gave a little squeal and ran over, completely unafraid. “Doggie!”
“Madisyn,” the creature said.
I noticed that its mouth didn’t move. I felt like I was hearing it in the normal way, though — not like it was speaking inside my head.
Madisyn stuck her little arms through the fence and buried her hands in the beast’s coat.
“Hi, doggie. You’re a good doggie. Good doggie.”
The animal nosed Madisyn’s arm. It seemed friendly enough. Slowly, I came over.
“Hello. I’m Madisyn’s aunt. My name is Beth Ryder.”
“I know you. You are interesting.”
The look it gave me out of its unblinking golden eyes was unreadable.
“Madisyn told me you think I can find her mother, Justine.”
“Yes,” the creature said.
Madisyn didn’t react to the beast’s confirmation. She just ran her hands through its fur and murmured “doggie” under her breath.
“Madisyn, would you mind if I spoke to …”
I hesitated. The beast hadn’t introduced itself, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t a dog. I decided to go with a pronoun and glanced down. “If I spoke to him alone for a minute?”
She looked up at me. “Grown-up stuff?”
“Yeah. It’s important.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, and retreated to the back stoop. I watch her go, then turned back to the not-dog.
“I’ve told you my name. May I ask yours?”
“Call me Ghosteater.”
I suppressed a shudder. Why couldn’t this one have gone with something like “Bob”?
“Ghosteater, I’d like to ask you a question, but I’m afraid I’ll offend you.”
“You will not offend me.”
I nodded. He didn’t seem to have Bob’s formal impulses.
“Do you know what my sister-in-law is, exactly? There’s a tracker here with me, and she’s having trouble sensing anything special about her. She says Justine feels like a human woman to her.”
Ghosteater cocked his head. “She is unfinished. She smells of fragment.”
“Fragment?”
The beast just looked at me.
“Right. Okay. Thank you very much.”
The idea of “fragment” having a particular smell or essence trace or whatever seemed weird to me. I hoped it would be enough to help Zion.
“I will ask you a question, now,” the beast said.
That worried me a bit.
“When the man left you yesterday, where did he go?”
It took me a few seconds to compute. “Do you mean Graham?”
“The one with golden hair.”
How did he know about Graham? Had he been watching me? I wrestled down the impulse to ask. He’d answered my question. Fair’s fair.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know where he went. One of the others, Kara, said he had left town, but that’s all I know.”
“He went east in a car.”
That wasn’t very helpful. Half the state was east of here.
“Well, we’d just come back from Rib Mountain when he dropped me off. Maybe he went back there. Maybe he’d accidentally left something behind.”
Ghosteater looked at me for so long that I was sure he knew I’d given a bullshit answer and was considering eating me. Finally, he turned away.
I hurriedly added, “Thanks for being so kind to my niece.”
Ghosteater paused and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I am not kind.”
Then he turned away again, and I saw that he had no paws. His massive legs just faded out at the bottom. He melted silently into the bushes.
Well. You couldn’t get much higher on the creep-o-meter than that.
Suddenly the idea of Nanny Hansen living in that little overgrown house seemed unwise. I thought for a moment about knocking on her door and telling her to move the hell out because a monster was living in her backyard. But no. She wouldn’t move. Instead, she’d call the police and tell them a crazy woman was on her doorstep. Then Cordus’s people would kill me for breaking the rules.
Sighing, I went back to Madisyn and led her into the house. I turned on Sesame Street for her, then hurried upstairs to find Zion. I told her about Ghosteater and what he had said about the scent of fragment. She looked at me like I was losing it, but she did sit down on Ben and Justine’s bed and give it a try. After a few minutes, a look of surprise and comprehension washed across her face. She spent a minute just soaking it in with her eyes closed. Then she nodded, satisfied.
Just then, Ben got home, so I hurried downstairs with Zion following behind. I apologized again and took my leave. He nodded and patted me on the arm, clearly too worn out to keep chastising me, even though I deserved it. I left him trying to cajole Madisyn into taking off her PJs, the feet of which were now all wet. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice and realize I couldn’t even watch one of his kids for twenty minutes without muffing it up.
12
Ghosteater watched the she-pup and the other female drive away. Then he slid back into the silence and began moving east. He wasn’t the fastest of beasts, but h
e could run a very long way without tiring. He knew the place the she-pup had mentioned — the ancient rock. His nose would tell him if the one called Graham had gone there twice the day before. If he had, there was the interesting question of why.
13
Zion and I headed back to the cemetery to pick up my car. The Porsche growled grumpily through Dorf’s little streets. I could almost hear it muttering, I’m a supercar, not a golf-cart, damn it! What did Zion do that she could afford a car like this? I’d never been in anything so nice.
“So, what do we do now? Get the others and go find Justine?”
“Yes. Then we take her to Lord Cordus.” She glanced over at me appraisingly. “Her and you.”
Great. That’s just great.
“Where does he live?”
“His court’s in New York. He has an estate north of the city.”
Dread washed through me. I didn’t want to take Justine to Cordus. Who knows what he would do to her? And more importantly, I didn’t want to see him myself. Meeting that man, or whatever he was, and spending time in his home was at the absolute bottom of my to-do list.
Damned if I could see a way out of it, though. If I tried to run, Williams could easily overpower me, and if I did manage to slip past him, Zion could find me. She’d already found me once — I hadn’t told the others I’d be at the cemetery.
We reached St. Mary’s, and Zion pulled in behind my car.
I got out, fired up the Le Mans, and followed her back to Callie’s, pulling in behind the Porsche. I sat for a moment, watching her walk inside. Then I followed her, feeling ignorant, poorly dressed, and scared.
The entryway was full of luggage.
“… south-southeast, about fifty miles,” Zion was saying to Williams, who was standing in the living room. Graham was sitting in the kitchen, toying with a coffee cup. I wondered if he’d moved at all since I left him there.
“Let’s go,” Williams said. He looked at me. “Get Kara.”
I obeyed without even thinking about it. Callie was in the bedroom with Kara, who was sitting up in bed, looking ill.
“Hey, guys. A tracker named Zion showed up. She has a line on Justine, so we’re leaving.”
Kara groaned. “So long as I don’t have to ride with Williams. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to drain you,” Callie said, looking upset. “The fire just came so suddenly.”
“Yeah, well, he should’ve drawn more from you and less from me. Goddamn it. I feel like three-day-old shit.” She sighed. “Okay, help me up.”
Callie and I supported her out to the living room and set her down on the couch.
I thought about our travel options. There were six of us, and Justine would make seven, if we found her. Kara’s ride was a decrepit motorcycle. Williams’s van was back at the mill, trashed, and Graham’s car was out of commission. If he’d gotten a rental replacement, I hadn’t seen it out front. The Panamera seated four. We’d have to take my car as well.
“Who wants to ride with me?”
“Me,” said Kara immediately.
“I will,” said Graham, getting up.
Great. Many, many hours of guilt and awkwardness. I looked at Callie.
“Oh,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “I couldn’t possibly go. There’s far too much to do here. I have to get the Big Screen boycott up and running. I haven’t put any time into that for the last week.”
I stared at her in disbelief. She got to just stay here and pick back up with her normal life as Dorf’s moral gadfly? I looked around the room. No one else seemed surprised.
Williams stepped forward and touched her arm. “Thank you for letting us stay, Callie. And for helping with the strait.”
Well I’ll be. I wouldn’t have thought the man had one and a half vaguely gracious sentences in him.
“Yeah,” Kara said, “Thanks. And it was good to see you.”
Everyone trooped out. Over her protests, Williams just picked Kara up from the couch and carried her towards my car. I was left standing there with Callie.
“You’re really not coming?”
I felt bereft. Callie might be a little nutty, but I was pretty sure she was a genuinely good and brave person. She might be the only one who was. I wanted to have her with me.
She looked down. “I don’t go to New York.” She paused. “I suppose Lord Cordus regrets his fall, and that’s why he works with us. But he still feels evil to me. I won’t go near him.”
I didn’t understand why she got to make that choice. I said my goodbyes as graciously as I could, but I felt resentful.
“So why does Callie get to stay home?” I asked, once we were on the road. “Why doesn’t she have to suck it up and go deal with Lord Cordus, like the rest of us?”
No one said anything for a few seconds. I glanced over at Kara and saw her slumped against the door. She’d fallen back asleep.
Finally, from the back seat, Graham said, “Lord Cordus makes allowances for her.”
“Why?”
“Her ability is very unusual. It’s also quite useful, as you’ve seen.”
He sounded bitter. I realized he probably blamed Callie for his downfall — she was the one who’d called Williams, and Williams was the one who’d found me, and I was the one who’d ratted him out.
“But she’s fragile,” Graham continued. “If he wants to be able to use her, he has to be careful with her.”
I guess that made sense. I wondered if I could masquerade as fragile and get away from Cordus that way. Probably not. I’d never been very good at pretending. Besides, most “fragile” people he probably just got rid of. Head cases were a lot of trouble, and it’s not like I could see the future.
I chewed on it for a few minutes, then decided it was dumb to spend time envying Callie, even if she got to stay home. After all, I sure didn’t envy whatever experiences had damaged her. It had sounded like rape and torture the one time she’d mentioned it. I shut up and drove.
“Almost due west from here,” Zion said.
We were all standing on the side of a small road a few miles north of Stevens Point, on the east side of the Wisconsin River. Well, not Kara. She was still asleep in my car.
Zion squinted. “She’s less than half a mile away. She’s asleep, I think. At least, she hasn’t moved in a while.”
Asleep or dead, I thought with a shudder. What on earth was Justine doing out here? The area was all marshland.
When we left Callie’s, I’d followed Zion to the old mill. There were no firefighters in sight — I guess the strait really was closed. Williams had transferred some stuff from the back of the van into the Porsche. Then he’d set the van on fire. After that we’d driven over to Wausau and headed south on 39. About fifteen minutes ago, we’d gotten off the highway and onto the small local roads. We’d gone as far west as they could take us. The rest of the way would have to be on foot.
For the first time I could remember, I wished it were still winter — wetlands were a lot easier when everything was frozen.
Zion and Williams opened the Porsche’s trunk and started to suit up. Zion donned a chainmail vest. That was an eye-opener. Did she do her shopping at Renaissance fairs, or something?
Both armed themselves with knives and handguns. I would’ve guessed Williams would go for some big-dick gun like a Desert Eagle, but he had a pretty standard looking 9mm. Then he slid a scabbard onto his back and picked up a riot shotgun. Maybe that’s where he kept his big stopping power.
“Graham,” he said, as he started feeding cartridges into the shotgun. “No weapons.”
Graham shrugged, as though the idea were beneath contempt. “I don’t carry weapons. Never needed them.”
Williams shot him a look that said something like, A real man would carry anyway. Or maybe, Bet you never needed your cock either.
There certainly was no love lost between those two.
“Mandatory pause for male posturing: check,” I murmured. Then I
asked aloud, “Is Kara going to be all right if we leave her here?”
Zion shot me an amused look. Guess my murmur was louder than I realized. “Yeah. Williams will leave her shielded.”
She stepped into the brush. Williams gestured for me to follow her. He came next, with Graham bringing up the rear.
First came a roadside ditch with almost a foot of icy-cold standing water. It came in over the tops of my boots. Then came a field of impenetrable waist-high bushes that seemed to have talons instead of twigs. Then a series of marshy oxbows. It sucked. I couldn’t imagine why they hadn’t left me in the car with Kara. I had no weapons and no abilities, and I wasn’t particularly outdoorsy.
At least all the crashing around and swearing I did weren’t audible — we passed several large flocks of ducks that ignored us completely. But whatever the others were doing to hide our presence, I couldn’t sense it. What had happened at the mill hadn’t fixed me.
Eventually Zion stopped.
“In there,” she said, pointing to a small stand of aspens. The trunks were slender and densely packed. I had no idea how we were going to get through them. Or how Justine had.
We moved forward another twenty feet or so. Then Williams came to the front. His fingers twitched, but nothing happened, so far as I could tell.
“What did he do?” I asked Graham in a whisper.
“He put a barrier around the trees. She won’t be able to get out.”
Wow. Useful trick.
Graham was looking at me, puzzled. “Can’t you sense it there?”
“Nope. I still can’t see workings.”
The look of consternation on his face bothered me. I turned away.
We advanced on the stand and almost reached it before something crashed out the far side. I couldn’t see what it was at first, but eventually a terrified deer came running around toward us. It kept charging forward and then trying to leap away from the trees, only to hit some invisible wall, then picking itself up and trying again. Poor thing.
“Can’t you let it out?”