“You’re probably wondering what’s going on,” she said to Simon, leading him out onto the back porch. She cast one quick eye over the back of the ridge, but she was comfortably certain the attack wouldn’t come from that direction, so she turned back to make eye contact.
Simon shrugged. “When I got your letter, it took me a couple of days to even realize who sent it. You didn’t sign it, there was no return address—well, I guess I understand that.”
Caxton nodded. She was a fugitive from the law. An escapee from a maximum-security prison. The U.S. Marshals were after her, and they had a history of catching even the smartest criminals eventually. She had remained free this long only because she used to be one of them—a special deputy in the Marshals Service—and knew their methods.
“When I left the prison, I knew there was only one place I could go. It was a risk, but there weren’t any safe options. So I went to see Urie, in his place in Lancaster County. That’s what he calls his ‘city house,’ even though the closest town is an Amish village ten miles away. He took me in with no questions. We were old friends, and that counted for something. I was also the woman who killed Jameson Arkeley. Your father.”
Simon nodded, but he didn’t meet her eye.
Caxton had no time anymore for sympathy. “Jameson had killed Vesta Polder, Urie’s wife, and turned her into a half-dead. He appreciated what I’d done, he said, but he couldn’t keep me at the city house. So we moved back here—to his country place.” Pennsylvania was an old state and heavily populated, but it still had its wild places. Old strip mines had a reputation for being toxic and inaccessible, so the real estate developers stayed clear. The ridge was about as far as you could get from human civilization and still be inside the Commonwealth.
“He just packed up and moved for you?” Simon asked.
Caxton sighed. “The city place had been mostly for Vesta’s benefit. She had a profitable line in card reading and removing curses from farmers’ fields. Urie’s work is mostly by mail order, so it doesn’t matter where he lives. He can still get to the post office from this place, if he doesn’t mind driving an hour and a half. Anyway, he wanted to come here. This is a good place for him, where nobody stares at his wooden arm. Everyone who lives down in the Hollow is kin. They’re your family, too, though pretty far removed.”
“Witchbillies,” Simon said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Simon stared down at his feet. “That’s what my mom used to call them. Witchbillies. Like hillbillies, you know, but—well. She didn’t have a lot of respect for them. Said they were all bumpkins, and most of them couldn’t tell the difference between a real hex sign and something you would get at an Amish tourist trap.”
“They’re not so bad,” Caxton said. “They worshipped Vesta Polder, too. So they’re sympathetic to my cause. I’m safe here. Nobody enters the Hollow or comes up the ridge without being seen, and they let me know so I can go hide if I have to.”
Simon put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry you have to live like this. I know it can’t be easy. Listen, Ms. Caxton. You saved my life. When Dad—when he—he—”
“The word is killed,” she said. “Or murdered. Your pick.”
Simon went pale, but he didn’t object. “When my dad murdered our entire family, you saved my life. So I did what you asked. When I got your letter, I had no idea how to do what you wanted. I’d never been to a botanica before. Those places are weird. Little old ladies with eyes that look right through you. Jesus and Mary candles all over the place, and the stores all smell like vinegar and brimstone.”
“That’s how you know you’re in a genuine botanica,” Caxton said. “That’s the smell of bitumen.”
Simon shrugged. “Okay. Whatever. I went into a bunch of those places looking for the roots you needed and they had them, oh, sure. But they wouldn’t sell them to me until I proved I was Astarte Arkeley’s son. Even then they kept making signs against the evil eye and spitting on my shadow. I mean—I know magic is real. My mom used to do some pretty witchy stuff, and she even taught me a thing or two. But that was all about tarot cards and spirit rapping and … and …” He shook his head. “I’ve been trying so hard, trying to … to put this stuff behind me. This life, magic, all of it … I just … just …”
“You did fine,” Caxton told him. “And I appreciate it.”
“Like I said, you saved my life. I owed you.”
“Good.”
Simon turned to stare at her. “Good? You could say thank you, or—”
“I already said I appreciated it. I meant, good, because there’s more I need you to do. I have another list—don’t worry, this time it’s all stuff you can get at any hardware store. Small electronics, some building supplies we don’t have access to here. That sort of thing. I do need you to go back to the botanicas, but only because I need some information. Now that you’ve bought from them, those creepy old ladies will trust you, and maybe they’ll even tell you what I need to know. After that, I’m going to need you to spy on my old friends in the USMS for me, and find out what leads they’re working on.”
“Hold on, I—”
He stopped because the screen door creaked open and Patience Polder came outside onto the back porch. She wiped sweat off her forehead with her bonnet before putting it back over her golden hair. “It’s going to be a warm evening,” she said.
Caxton favored her with a tight little smile that left her mouth before it really had time to form. “Good afternoon, Patience. How are your girls?”
“Coming along nicely. Mr. Arkeley, we weren’t properly introduced before,” she said. She held out a hand, fingers down.
Simon reached for it, but he looked like he didn’t know if he was supposed to shake the hand or kiss it. He ended up bowing a little as he squeezed her fingers. Caxton and Patience both stared at him then, as if he’d instead chosen to tickle Patience under the chin.
Patience relented first, dropping her hand and beaming at the boy. She was five years younger than Simon, but she had done a lot of growing in the last few years and she was just about his height, Caxton realized.
“You’ll stay for dinner,” Patience said. “It’s a full moon tonight—the entire community will be dining together, down in the Hollow.”
It wasn’t a question. Simon sputtered out something about wanting to get back on the road before dark, but Patience had already turned and gone back into the house.
“You actually don’t have a choice here,” Caxton told him, and slapped him on the back. “Not when she has that tone in her voice.”
“Is she like in charge here or something?” Simon asked, looking pained. “I mean, is this like a—a cult, and she’s the holy child, or what?”
“You misunderstood,” Caxton told him. “She didn’t command your presence at dinner. She foretold it.”
[ 1715 ]
“There’s no fear within ye. None?” Vincombe asked.
Justinia said nothing.
“What’s wrong with ye, that ye won’t fight for life?” the vampire asked. He grabbed her up again, hauling her into the air by her throat. He pulled her close to those slavering jaws, to the enormous teeth and the burning eyes. She saw now that he possessed neither eyebrows nor lashes. That he was not so human as he’d looked before when he sat alone at her gaming nights. And she understood why he had never smiled. Too difficult to hide those gnashing teeth.
Those beautiful white teeth. They looked like the blades of Father’s shears. They smelled of blood.
The thought came unbidden to her mind. Red as diamonds, red as hearts. Red as rubies. She remembered the way the blood had been so warm. How nice it would be to bathe in her own blood. To let it wash everything away.
Vincombe threw her down in a heap. He stalked about the room, grabbing things up and smashing them—her plates, the bottles of cheap liquor on the sideboard. He took up the velvet bag and tore it to shreds and threw her cards at her so they clattered and fell across her where her fac
e touched the rug.
“Always they beg. Always! One more day, they pray me. One more hour.”
On the rug Justinia slowly sat up. She began to wonder if the vampire intended to talk her to death.
But his fury had left him as soon as it came on. He sank down in a chair behind her, where she couldn’t see him. She understood, and did not turn around.
“Death comes for us all, in its proper time,” she said. “Easier to turn the tide and make the sea swallow Ireland than stave it off one second. I’m not afraid.”
He groaned, and she wondered that she could give him such pains.
She could only speak the truth, though. “I am twenty years old, with pestilence inside me. I have the French pox. Is it not better to die now, young and beautiful, than to suffer on many years more as my nose rots away and the lesions cover my back?”
“Wouldst thou suicide, then?” he asked, his voice very soft.
She had to laugh. “Given a choice? No. I’d live on. But who has a choice?”
“I do,” he told her. “Ye talk of life as of a game of cards.”
“Is it not? We are each dealt a hand, and one rarely to our choosing. We play our tricks as we may, with shrewdness or with wild luck.” She shrugged. “And in the end, the final card turns, and we see what we have won or lost.”
“Some players cheat,” he told her.
Justinia smiled warmly. “Oh, yes.”
He was in front of her then. He moved so quickly it was as if he did not need to cover the intervening space, as if he could will himself to be somewhere and on the instant he arrived. He grabbed her by either side of her head and she felt the strength in his hands again. Knew that if he liked he could squeeze and crack her skull like an empty eggshell. Instead he just looked into her eyes. His own red eyes burned. She began to say something, but he laid a finger across her lips to silence her. She would not learn until later the vast importance of that silence.
He stared into her soul and she looked back with nothing inside her. No love or fear or hate, no sympathy or pleading, no warmth and no coldness. His eyes burned through her like coals.
And then he was gone. She felt only a little breeze as he moved, a stirring of the air. The door slammed shut behind him and he was gone. And she thought how strange it all was, and she thought it was over.
But nothing, at all, was over.
8.
There was still some human part of Laura Caxton that could appreciate fate joking around with human lives, and which enjoyed Simon’s frustration and surprise. The boy tried to flee before his appointed dinner with the witchbillies. He gave it his all—after saying a quick good-bye to Urie Polder, he hurried around the side of the house (the better to avoid Patience) and jumped back in his car, moving like devils were after him. The only problem was that the car wouldn’t start. He tried the ignition again and again, but the car just groaned and begged him to stop.
Urie Polder eventually came out and popped the hood. The conjure doctor knew cars pretty well, but after fiddling with the engine for half an hour he had to admit he was stumped. “One of these new computerized vehicles, ahum. No decent man can tell what’s the matter, less’n he’s half robot. And I’m half tree.” That made him laugh, a wheezing, burbling noise that made Simon grimace in distaste.
“She sabotaged my car somehow,” Simon said when Caxton came over. “Or you did.”
Caxton shrugged. “I’ll point out, for the sake of logic and rationality, that you’re an unemployed recent college graduate.”
Simon flushed. “Yes, and?”
“The kind of man who can’t afford a new car. So you bought this thing used, am I right?”
Simon stared down at the steering wheel. “I used some of the money from Dad’s life insurance. I couldn’t afford much.”
“So you bought a clunker. The kind of car that just breaks down sometimes. Also, you’re at a much higher elevation here than where you normally drive the car. That can cause vapor lock, or just mess with the carburetor.” Caxton shrugged. “I didn’t touch your car, and I doubt that Patience would even get within ten feet of it. She disdains modern technology. Face it, you’re staying for dinner.”
It was enough. Simon gave in.
The two of them headed back into the house. The Polder family always contributed to the full-moon dinners, which meant hauling a lot of food down to the Hollow. Urie Polder had gathered a bushel basket full of his tomatoes and cucumbers from his side garden, and ears of wild corn from a patch down the back of the ridge. Caxton helped him bring platters of chicken parts out of what he insisted was called an icebox (an antique but fully functional electric refrigerator) while Simon threw cold water on his face. As Caxton came out of the kitchen she was nearly stampeded by Patience and her acolytes, who came racing down the stairs with their bonnets in their hands, giggling and whispering among themselves. Caxton wasn’t completely sure, but she thought Patience was blushing.
Urie Polder scratched his head with one twig finger when he saw that. “Ye’d think she were a reg’lar gal for her age, wouldn’t ya? Somethin’s up, ahum.”
Caxton frowned. “I don’t think Simon’s going to like it, whatever it is.”
The Hollow, where they’d be having dinner, wasn’t far at all—even if it felt that way when you were carrying fifty pounds of produce. Still, it would mean giving up her vigil, if only for a few hours. When they reached the porch Caxton stopped and looked out over the valley at the ridge on the other side. Her eyes narrowed. “Your wards are all set?” she asked. She never felt right about these communal dinners. It meant far too long away from her aerie. She glanced at the blanket that hid her pile of guns. She had a pistol in a holster at the small of her back, but it would be little help if Malvern attacked during the dessert course. “The teleplasm cordon is intact? When was the last time you checked it?”
“All’s accounted for and correct, yessir,” Urie Polder said. “She hain’t comin’ tonight, Laura. There’s the full moon. Anyway, ye go ahead and smell the wind—it’s clean, ain’t no stench of unnaturalness.”
Caxton nodded, but her brow stayed furrowed. She said nothing more. When Simon appeared, lugging two huge ceramic jugs of moonshine, she set out down the hill and the two men followed. Patience and her disciples had already hurried down with their own burdens, moving with the speed of youth.
At the bottom of the hill lay the Hollow, a patch of clear ground where the brush had all been carefully cleared away to make room for a dozen little cottages, some of which could be called shotgun shacks if you were feeling uncharitable. Behind the shacks sat ten or so single-wide trailers up on cinder blocks.
“Smells like chrysanthemums,” Simon said, pulling Caxton back from her reverie. The three of them were approaching the center of the village, where picnic tables had been set up in long lines. Tiki torches ringed the common, their flames just a little more red than they should be. The smell came from the oil they burned.
“Special recipe,” Caxton said, nodding at the nearest torch. “Supposedly it’s better than citronella at keeping mosquitoes away.”
“Does it work?” Simon asked.
“Does citronella?” Caxton replied. “I always thought that stuff was a scam. Anyway, this mix smells better. You can put those jugs down over there,” she said, pointing at a spot near the edge of the common that was already heaped with coolers and a half keg of beer. “Oh, boy. Here they come. Remember to be nice, Simon. You’re a guest here.”
The doors of the cottages opened one by one, and the witchbillies streamed out to get their first look at Astarte Arkeley’s son.
[ 1715 ]
The pistol sat heavy in Justinia’s hand, a beautiful construction of oiled wood and blued steel. She had come to love the smooth, curved grip and the complicated matchlock, the octagonal barrel etched with a floral motif. It was a nobleman’s weapon and it had cost every last farthing she’d tucked away over years of gambling and selling her virtue. It was the last thing she wo
uld ever buy.
In the week since Vincombe had refused to slaughter her, she’d had many thoughts like that. This is the last candy I will ever taste, she would tell herself. This is the final time I will pluck my eyebrows. Or clean my teeth. Or powder my wig.
It was not so much the melancholy of loss as a kind of final bookkeeping. She was putting away the things of life, folding them neatly into a chest she would then throw into the river. Things she had cared about once, but no longer. Things she was happy to give away.
Vincombe’s curse was inside of her. She could feel it coiling like an asp around the stem of her brain. It wanted her to take her own life. That was the only way the curse could work. It made her see things differently. Every time she passed an open window, she thought of the immense freedom a bird must feel as it launches itself into the sky. Every time she ate a meal she wondered what rat poison must taste like. These things made her giggle.
Then she had seen the pistol in the window of a pawnshop not three lanes away. It had glinted in the morning sun, and it was like a beacon fire had been lit, just for her.
Vincombe had not returned to her since the fateful night. Despite the usual demand she had not run a game, or entertained a gentleman caller, since then. She had largely stopped eating or sleeping.
More things to put away. More things to let go.
The pawnbroker had been reluctant to sell the pistol to a woman. He assumed she was going to kill an unfaithful lover or a husband who refused to leave his wife. She’d had to spread her legs to convince him.
This is the last time I will let a man touch me, she thought.
She would never be married. Or have children of her own.
She had to put the pistol down, because mirth overwhelmed her and made her press her hands against her mouth, wipe tears of laughter away from her eyes. Such things had never been in the cards of Justinia Malvern.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 4