There was a light in Nerea’s eyes that made Clara feel queasy inside. She’d seen its like in the eyes of Vesta Polder and Vesta’s daughter, Patience, and she got the definite impression that Nerea could do exactly what she threatened.
“Okay,” Clara said, softly, and put the pad and the pen away. “I’m sorry. I’m … sorry. I only want to help.”
“You’ve got what you came here for,” Nerea said, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a painted skull. “Get out of my shop.”
Clara wanted to know more, wanted to ask a million questions, but she just nodded and left. Simon followed at her heels like a puppy dog.
“What’s our next move?” he asked.
Clara shook her head. His next move, she knew, was to go home and try to get sane again. She was definitely not going to bring him in on this investigation. This totally nonsanctioned, non-police investigation. What she was going to do herself was an open question. A pretty good one, too.
She knew one more thing, though, than she had before. One thing that scared the living shit out of her.
“Three months,” she said. “All in three months. Yeah. If it had been going on for two years, there’s no way the police could have missed it. I don’t care how far off the grid those people are.” She thought about the half-dead who’d jumped her in Altoona, and the van full of them in Bridgeville. “It doesn’t make sense. The smart thing for Malvern to do right now is to lie low. Minimize her blood intake and just hide out. Wait for us all to forget she ever existed, and then come back when it’s safe. But she’s not doing that. She’s taking chances right now. Big chances that put her at risk.”
“Yeah?” Simon asked, as if she’d been talking to him.
Clara walked over to the car, where Glauer was waiting to hear what they’d found. She reached for the handle of the passenger-side door. Then she dropped her hand, because she needed to stand still for a second while the whole world rolled around her.
“It means she’s about to go public. It means she’s going to do something so nasty and huge and bloody that the whole world will get to hear about it. And she’s going to do it now, in the next couple of nights, while we’re still not ready for her.” She turned and looked Simon directly in the eye.
“There’s no more time,” she said. “You have to take me to Laura. Right now.”
30.
Clara braced herself against the dashboard, pushed her feet down into the leg well of the passenger seat, even though Glauer kept their speed to a sedate forty-five, even on the back-country roads where pickup trucks thundered past them on the gravel shoulder. Glauer was right, of course—there was no reason for them to draw attention to themselves. Absolutely no good would come of them being picked up by the cops now. If that happened, Fetlock would hear about it instantly. And he would have far too many questions. Questions about what Glauer and Clara were even doing in the same car.
He’d really want to know about their passenger. In the back-seat, Simon Arkeley sprawled across the available space with no seat belt on, staring resolutely out the windows, only stirring when he needed to give them directions.
He took them south, through Amish country. Into the ridges that corrugated central Pennsylvania like a furrowed brow. Soon Clara was seeing the billboards on the side of the road that didn’t advertise cigarettes or family restaurants, but eternal salvation—the ones that implored her to save her soul before she lost her life. Those billboards had always creeped her out with their none-too-subtle messages:
HOT ENOUGH FOR YA? TRY HELL!
DID YOU TAKE A WRONG TURN? ONLY ONE ROAD LEADS TO GOD
YE ARE ALL SINNERS! REPENT NOW!
There was almost no traffic on those roads, except for the occasional horse and buggy, each emblazoned with an orange reflective triangle to tell motorists to slow down. The farmers in the buggies stared at them with suspicion, but that was alright. There was nearly no police presence at all in Amish country—the farmers resented any attempt by the government to meddle in their affairs, and they voted reliably every year not to fund an actual police department. If they actually needed help, they relied on the county sheriff, or whatever units of the state police happened to be nearby at the time.
“I don’t get it,” Clara said, as she had a dozen times before. “If I was Laura, on the run, this is exactly where I would come. It’s so obvious. You’re telling me Fetlock didn’t think of this, too?”
Glauer shrugged. “These ridges all look so close together, but they’re deceptive. There’s a lot of country down here, and not many roads. You can hide an awful lot in the hollows between them. Somebody who didn’t want to be found could pick a lot of worse places to hide.”
Laura could have been living an hour away from Clara the whole time. She stared forward through the windshield. Ahead of her fields of corn shimmered in the heat of the day, while the air conditioner pushed an icy breeze into her face. “Are we at least getting close?” she asked.
“Kind of,” Simon told her. “We’re only a couple miles away. But it’ll take about an hour more to get there.”
He didn’t explain what that meant, but she found out soon enough. They took a side road that led over one of the ridges, the car’s engine chugging as it crested through the thin air. On the far side the road narrowed down to one lane, and that barely paved. Glauer grunted as he dropped the car into low gear and rumbled down the side of the hill again. At the bottom, in a shady hollow, he had the choice to turn right or left. Both roads looked the same—one lane of unpainted blacktop.
“Which way?” he asked.
“It doesn’t actually matter,” Simon said.
Glauer put the car in park and turned around to face the kid. “Tell me you mean that this road joins up again in a bit. That left and right go to the same place.”
“No,” Simon said, looking sheepish. “Just—just pick one. I could explain, but I don’t think you’d really believe me.”
“How about me? I believe in lots of things,” Clara said.
Simon squirmed inside his shirt. “Look, it’s magic, alright? I don’t like it any more than you do. But it’s magic.”
“Magic,” Clara and Glauer said in unison.
“You asked earlier how Laura could hide back here. Why nobody ever thought to look for her in these ridges. Well, I’m pretty sure they did. Probably lots of times. But the Polders aren’t crazy about visitors. So they kind of mess up reality over here.”
For a second nobody said anything. Clara tried to catch Glauer’s eye, but the big cop seemed to be lost in thought.
Eventually Glauer smoothed down his mustache with his fingers. Then he reached across Clara to open the glove box. He took out a GPS unit and switched it on, then held it patiently while it found the necessary satellites.
“Huh,” he said, finally.
“Care to share?” Clara asked.
He handed her the GPS. It showed the road they’d just taken over the ridge, but not anything beyond their current location. The fork in the road didn’t appear on the screen—there weren’t even any dashed lines to show seasonal or unpaved roads in the vicinity. As far as the GPS was concerned they’d reached a dead end.
Clara stared through the windshield, severely annoyed. “It doesn’t look magical. It looks like two fucking roads, and we have to pick one.”
“Yeah,” Simon said. “It’s pretty subtle. If you come here with bad intent—and no, don’t ask me how a magic spell can read your intentions like that, it’s not my area of expertise—but if you do, then you’ll think you’re supposed to turn one way. And the road will twist and turn through some very pretty views for a while, and you’ll end up back on top of the ridge. If you come here for the right reasons, then you’ll pick the right direction.” He shrank down in his seat. “So you just—just pick one.”
It was Glauer who came up with the solution, though. “Simon. You said that Caxton asked you to come back. She invited you. So which direction would you pick?”
Simon hemmed and hawed for a while. “Left, I guess.”
“Good enough.” Glauer put the car back in gear and turned left.
The road led into a stand of trees that quickly became a dense grove. It twisted around until Clara was certain they were headed back to where they’d started, and she began to worry that the spell would keep them away. But eventually the trees fell away from the sides of the road and they crossed a rushing stream and up ahead, in the shadows of the trees, Clara saw signs of human habitation. A row of mailboxes, rusting on top of a wooden fence. A tractor abandoned in a ditch on the side of the road, weeds sprouting from its engine compartment and the split leather of its seat. Up ahead she saw trailers parked on cinder blocks, and a couple of tiny bungalows.
She’d seen a hundred little hamlets like this in Pennsylvania. They sprang up around every fishing hole and picturesque waterfall, in clusters around the state parks and tourist caves. This one looked a little different, though. It took her a while to realize why. “I don’t see any satellite dishes,” she said.
“What’s that?” Simon asked her.
Glauer nodded. “She’s right. It’s weird.”
Clara tried to explain. “Places like this can’t get cable TV—they’re just too far from the trunk lines. So you always see huge satellite dishes on their roofs. Sometimes you see places that still have outhouses and wells, but they’ve always got huge satellite dishes to get TV reception. But not here. No telephone lines, either.”
“Huh,” Simon said. “I never noticed that. But if you think that’s weird, you haven’t met these people yet. Get yourselves ready, if you can.”
“We’ve met weird people before,” Clara said.
Yet even she gasped when a woman walked out into the middle of the road and held up a hand for them to stop. She had a shaved head and wore only the briefest of shorts and a bra for a top. Every square inch of her exposed flesh was covered in tattoos.
She didn’t look very welcoming.
Glauer stopped the car and waited. The woman just stood there, looking in at them, not smiling.
Simon rolled down his window. “Hi,” he called, leaning out into the heat. “Hi—you’re Glynnis, right?”
The woman came striding over, not exactly hurrying. She peered at Simon for a while as if trying to remember his face, then shot a look at Clara and Glauer in the front seats. “Simon, nobody said you could bring guests.”
“Caxton will want to see these two,” the boy protested.
“I kind of doubt that.” Glynnis ran a finger along the roof of the car, as if checking it for dust. Clara felt the air around her thicken and warm up. Maybe it was just because Simon had opened his window and let all the air-conditioning out. Yeah, it might have been that. “I guess it’s her call, though,” Glynnis said, finally. “Yeah, okay. You go ahead and drive up to the big house. She’ll be there expecting you.”
“She’s really here?” Clara blurted out.
Glynnis stared at her with pure hatred. She said nothing to Clara, though. Instead she leaned down toward the boy and said, “Simon, you remember how to get there?”
“There’s only one road,” the boy said.
“Yeah. So you stay on it, and don’t try anything.” Then she nodded and stepped back to let them pass.
“Friendly folk back here in rural PA,” Glauer said, as he started the car again.
“They’re not all like that,” Simon promised.
Clara didn’t care.
She was going to see Laura again. In just a few minutes. She felt like she might have a heart attack on the spot.
31.
Glauer drove up the side of a ridge to a house perched at its top. The house didn’t look like anything special—the paint was peeling, bits of the gingerbread had broken off, the screen doors were torn and patched with duct tape. Compared to the shacks down in the Hollow, though, it was a mansion, an enchanted castle, a fortress on a hill. Glauer pulled into a driveway that ran around the side of the house and killed the engine.
“This is safe, right?” he asked, and flicked the power locks on the doors before Clara could jump out of the car and run inside and find Laura. “Those weirdoes down there aren’t going to try anything, are they?”
Simon shook his head. “No, they’re harmless. Just—look out for the little girl.”
The big cop turned and stared at him.
“I mean, she’s not going to hurt you. But if she offers to read your future or, or, or something, just. Just don’t take her up on it.”
“Uh-huh,” Glauer said.
“And the guy with the wooden arm. He’s in charge,” Simon added. “He kind of creeps me out.”
“Sure.” Glauer sighed and looked over at Clara. For way too long. “Too late now to say this, but—”
“So just don’t,” Clara told him.
He nodded and flicked the locks open. Clara shoved her way out of the car and ran around to the front door of the house. She rubbed her hands on her jeans because her palms were suddenly sweaty.
The door swung open, but it wasn’t Laura who emerged. It was Patience Polder. Clara had met the girl before, though it had been years earlier. The girl had grown into young womanhood and lost all her baby fat. Her face would have been pretty if she smiled, but her expression was severe. She wore a long, modestly cut white dress and a lace bonnet that covered some of her hair. She looked at Clara with eyes that held an almost infinite sadness, but very little compassion. Three other girls trooped out after her, their hobnail boots crunching on the wooden boards of the porch. They were dressed in similar clothes, though in different drab colors.
“Okay,” Clara said. “Hi, Patience. Is Laura home?”
The girl in white studied Clara’s face for a long time. The girls beside her tried to do the same, but they couldn’t match that probing stare.
“I want you to know,” Patience said, finally, “that we don’t blame you for what’s going to happen. Your motives, at least, are pure.”
Clara felt her cheeks grow hot. “Now, what the hell is that supposed to—”
“Seriously!” Simon called out, running up to stand next to her. “Do. Not. Ask.”
“Ooookay,” Clara said. “Um, can I talk to Laura?”
“Yes,” Patience said, but didn’t move from where she stood. Slowly she turned to face Simon. Her expression softened and she gave him a trembling little smile that made Clara cringe. She knew what that look meant. Patience must have a crush on Simon or something but she was trying her best not to show it. Trying—and failing.
“Hi, Patience,” Simon said. He folded his arms tightly across his chest and looked up at the second floor of the house. It was just as clear to Clara that he wasn’t looking up there to see if anyone was in the upper windows. He just wanted to look away from Patience’s eyes.
There was clearly a lot going on there. Deep emotions and a complicated history.
Clara did not give one shit.
She got tired of waiting and pushed past the girls, pushed open the screen door and stepped inside a parlor with dusty wallpaper and a really loud ticking clock. There was probably some incredibly important rule about not just shoving your way into the Polder house, but she didn’t care. She headed through the house and into a kitchen and looked around but didn’t see anybody. For a moment she just stood there, watching sunlight come in over the kitchen sink and light up twists of dust in the air. The house was creepily quiet, so quiet the clock sounded like a pounding heartbeat just behind her head.
Then she heard someone come clomping down the stairs. She knew that sound. She knew the shoes that made that sound. She knew the rhythm of those footfalls oh, so very well.
This is it, Clara thought. This is the moment when I turn around and it’s just like the first time. Like when I made her kiss me the first time. It will all still be there, all the feelings I tried so hard to get rid of, all the love. She’ll come to me and take me up in her arms and kiss me, just—just kiss me, on
ce, and I’ll feel in that kiss all the time we’ve been apart and why it doesn’t matter at all.
She turned around slowly and Laura was there. For real. Laura’s dark hair had grown out a little, so it hung around her ears. There were a few more lines around her eyes, and a lot more muscles in her arms. She looked sexy as freaking hell.
Clara imagined a million things she could say and rejected them all, in the time it took her to open her mouth. When she did speak—when she could—all that came out was one word.
“Hi.”
Laura nodded at her. Then she took a step toward Clara. She was visibly trembling when she spoke. “You little fucking idiot,” she said. “This is the worst thing you have ever done to me, coming here.”
[ 1804 ]
Sometimes, Justinia thought she had gone to hell.
Time and travel had not been kind. She had been transported a great distance by sea, sealed up in her coffin and jostled about so violently that her head had nearly come loose from her neck. It had taken the better part of a decade to repair that damage, now that she had no blood to help heal her—even after she reached her final destination and her coffin was pried open so she could be put on display.
Her one eye had grown dim, and she could make out only fuzzy shapes around her, but they were evil, threatening shapes. The skeletons of enormous reptiles loomed over her, claws stretched toward her face, massive jaws craned open to swallow her whole. Yet they were frozen in place, for it seemed that time had stopped, here in this eternal prison. Everything had stopped, except her thoughts.
Inside her brain she had a kind of life still. A grasping, desperate need that would not die. The refrain of blood, blood, blood was a kind of psychic heartbeat. Her need, her inexorable thirst, would not let her die. There was no hope in this place, no possibility of hope, no succor, but as well no release.
At least … not until he began to visit her.
His name was Josiah Caryl Chess. He introduced himself to her like a proper gentleman. He explained that he had purchased her bones at an auction, the previous owner having no idea just what a marvel he’d possessed. She’d been found in Easling’s rooms and the men who took her had assumed she was dead. A grisly trophy of Easling’s depredations. They had understood she was not strictly human, and therefore they did not just bury her—instead they had placed her up for sale.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 16