by Cate Tiernan
If I were a cop, I wouldn’t release a minor to a nonrelative, but maybe the police knew Dray’s mom and were taking pity on Dray. At any rate, they allowed me to sign for her and gave her a manila envelope with her worldly possessions in it.
We pushed through the glass door and went out into the brisk night air.
“Okay, later, dude,” said Dray, and started to saunter off.
I grabbed the sleeve of her jacket like a snake striking. “I don’t think so. You got me up in the middle of the night, made me go to a police station, and this is all because you were breaking into my property again? You’re not going anywhere.” I pushed her toward the car, made her get in, then drove us a bit away from police eyes and stopped.
Dray yawned, looking out the car window. Since I had often performed that exact same I don’t care move, she didn’t fool me.
“Really, this on top of you and your lowlife friends crashing in my building?” I said. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I wanted a place to sleep!” she snapped, then looked out the window as if she hadn’t meant to say that much.
So, not at her mom’s, and she must still be broken up with her jerk boyfriend.
“We just got the lock replaced! It took me a day to clean up your crap!” I remembered that day, when I’d seen the creepy couple again, and I became aware that I was parked on a dark street, out in the open. I needed to get back to River’s Edge, but right then inspiration struck. “And you’re gonna work it off.”
That got her attention. “What?”
“You’re going to show up at the work site tomorrow and report to Bill,” I said, liking this idea. “And you will do whatever he tells you to do until you work off what you owe me for damage. Like two hundred dollars.” I pulled that number out of the air.
“That’s bullshit. I’m not going to do that!”
I started the car. “Let’s go back to the cops.”
She tried to open the car door, but I kept punching the locks on my side. It was ridiculous, and I felt like a Keystone Kop. Finally she gave up.
“I can’t do that,” she said sullenly. “I’ve got to make my jewelry and stuff.”
“I’m going to throw your jewelry and stuff out into the gutter,” I said callously.
“You can’t do that! Luisa rents the shop. If she wants me there—”
“I am the owner, Dray. How about I tell Luisa she’s no longer welcome?” Which I couldn’t do, legally—she had a lease. But Dray probably didn’t know that.
Dray was silent.
“Because of you.” I was being a hard-ass, but I was also wondering what would have happened if someone had done this to me, say, decades ago. Just really had me in their clutches but used it to make me do a good thing instead of some bad, blackmaily thing. Probably nothing, right?
“Do what for Bill?” Still oh so sullen.
“Whatever he needs. Sweeping. Carrying out trash.” Dray’s face hardened. “Fixing windows. Putting up sheetrock. Painting.” She looked a tiny bit interested. “Laying stone in the new little park. Planting plants. Helping to make a fountain.” She looked at me speculatively.
“That might not be so bad. But what happens after I earn the two hundred dollars, which, by the way, is way overpriced?”
“If you’re a good worker and don’t piss Bill off, you’ll be on his crew, working with them. Being a carpenter or something. His sheetrock foreman is a woman, and so is her number one. You can do anything those guys can do.”
Months ago I’d told her to leave town, which of course had seemed like a cinch to me and totally impossible and intimidating to her. But here was an option to stay in town and earn money. Without being a waitress, which she would suck at, with her nonexistent people skills. Since she’d probably shoplifted from most of the stores in town, I doubted any of them would hire her.
“I need a place to stay.” She said it so quietly, I barely heard it.
“No way am I letting you into one of my apartments. You can put that thought out of your head.”
Mulish expression. Ugh. It was like watching a home movie.
“I think you have two options,” I said. “One is the women’s shelter, and one is asking Luisa if she’s a big enough sap to let you sleep on a cot in the back room of her shop. I wouldn’t, if I were her.”
“I’m not a battered woman.”
“You don’t have to be battered. Just a female in need of a safe place to stay.”
I could practically see thoughts and arguments scrolling across her face.
“Okay.”
I whipped the car into gear and raced to the women’s shelter before Dray could change her mind. She got out, and I made sure she went inside the building before I drove away. I didn’t know if she would immediately sneak back out or show up to see Bill tomorrow. Some things a person has to do for herself, and people can only change when they’re ready.
’Cause I’m an expert, right? I’m so together myself? Who was I kidding?
Getting back to River’s Edge seemed to take a long time—I was nervous and checked my mirrors obsessively. If I could just get back without getting kidnapped/spelled/attacked…
With relief I turned into the long driveway, trying not to look at the dense trees lining the drive. Trees where anything could be hiding. Bigfoot. Werewolves. Evil immortals. I was so busy looking that I didn’t notice that the car’s engine-temperature light had come on, and the needle was at the top of the uh-oh red area.
Right as I was getting out, I noticed it. Crap—someone had forgotten to put water in the radiator or something. Then I saw the flames darting playfully out from beneath the hood. Oh no—I’d ruined River’s car! What had happened? There was a fire extinguisher right in the front hallway—I turned to run to get it… and the car exploded, knocking me off my feet, making me sail exhilaratingly through the air about ten feet, and then dropping me into a much less exhilarating crash landing. A fireball sixteen feet across curled up into the night sky as I blinked stupidly at the gravel that had so suddenly appeared under my face. By the time I had blinked a couple more times, lights had started popping on inside the house, and then River, Ottavio, Reyn, and a couple others were racing outside in their nightwear.
“Nastasya!” River said, sinking to her knees next to me. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, or at least it felt like I was nodding. My ears were still ringing, and her words were a bit fuzzy, as if my head were wrapped in cotton wool. Now my cheeks stung, and so did the palms of my hands and my knees. Slowly I pushed myself up, getting new pain signals from all over.
“What happened?” That was Ottavio.
“You sure are hard on cars.” Asher, on the other side of me.
Reyn had the extinguisher from the front hall, and he put out the engine fire.
That’s when we saw them: the farm truck, the other car, the four-wheel-drive SUV that River kept for heavy snow. Their hoods were up, engines ripped apart, windows broken. Not a single one was functional. Which meant we had no way out of there except on foot.
CHAPTER 28
For millennia, people traveled on foot. On foot and on horseback and by boat. A fast horse was worth much more than a serf or a slave. A fast horse was worth more than many landholdings, farms, cows, wagons. A fast horse could be life or death.
Everything, the world over, had been geared to the speed of a man walking, a horse running. Nowadays, of course, people run for sport or for fun. People decide to walk across a country for charity or as a strange but admirable life adventure. They allow themselves as much time as they need. It’s a choice, an anachronism.
Here, tonight, in western Massachusetts, having no vehicles, no option but to go anyplace on foot or on horseback, it seemed shocking and scary. Not fun, not picturesque, not charming.
“Could this have been done by locals?” Amy was wrapped in a fleece robe, her long, dark hair tousled around her shoulders.
Asher was examining the truck,
its ruined engine. “What’s the point of this!” His loud exclamation startled us all. “Why are they toying with us? What do they want? Why not just attack?” He rubbed his eyes with one fist. “I’m just so… fed up. I want this to be over.”
River went to him and put her arm around his waist, murmuring softly to him. He nodded brusquely a couple times, saying, “I know, I know.”
“How long ago did you leave?” Reyn asked.
“Yes, Nastasya—where did you go at this hour?” That was Ottavio. “Why would you leave the safety of the farm to go out by yourself in the middle of the night?” He looked down his nose at me, and I wondered if he really thought that I would suddenly break down and confess everything, prove him right on every point. I mean, come on.
My palms were scraped and bleeding; I assumed my knees were, too, and possibly my cheeks.
“I left a little after one,” I said. “My friend Dray, from town, got arrested trying to break into my apartments. Again. I went down and read her the riot act, then dropped her at the women’s shelter, then came straight back.”
“It’s barely two,” said Amy, nodding.
“My point is that this happened between one and two,” said Reyn. “They wouldn’t have spared one car—they had no idea someone would take it. They would have done all of them. So it must have happened between the time Nastasya left and the time she returned.”
“If she even went anywhere,” said Ottavio.
“Ott,” I said tiredly, “you can check with the cops, check with the women’s shelter.”
“Good grief, Ottavio,” said Amy. “Don’t be stupid.”
Dark eyes flared, but he pressed his lips shut and didn’t respond.
“So someone was physically here, wrecking the engines, just a while ago,” said Joshua, and Reyn nodded.
“And if they hadn’t done the little car, but then saw it coming back and quickly did something to it to make it explode, then that person was right here,” said Reyn. “And could be here still.”
“Everyone get inside,” said Daisuke.
Every moment of that endless night will be stamped on my memory for a long, long time. Basically we all went back into the house and got ready for a battle. Reyn, Joshua, and Daisuke scoured the area for any signs of who might have destroyed all the vehicles. They reported seeing not a footprint, not a handprint—and they were all experienced trackers. The rest of us got what weapons we had and camped in the front hallway, where there were no windows to break except on the front door. A group of four stayed in the kitchen, where the other outside door was.
River, Daniel, and Jess got Molly and the other dogs and brought them into the house as well. The dogs remained calm, though alert, with no raised fur, no growling, no tense listening for anything.
It was incredibly nerve-wracking and incredibly weird, sitting there with my sword and my amulet—there was no way to not feel like a poser with either one. But I’d much rather be a poser than a helpless victim. For the first hundred years of my life, I’d felt like a victim a lot—until Eva Henstrom, the woman I’d met in the tailor’s shop, had opened my eyes and facilitated a sea change in me. Since then, I’d constantly worked toward being in control of my own life; keeping what was mine, getting out of anyone’s influence. There had been big ups and downs, of course. But until now, I’d never stayed for a fight or battle of any kind.
And now here I was, committed to staying there, willing to fight. It wasn’t like Brynne was Tinna, and I’d kill anything that threatened her. Jess wasn’t Háakon, innocent and deserving of protection at any cost. River wasn’t my mother, beautiful and terrible and the person I’d loved most until I’d had Bear.
But I stayed. I kept awake with the others and knew that, sooner or later, we would be fighting side by side. And during that fight, one person would reveal him- or herself as a traitor.
We were not attacked during the night. We were not attacked the next morning, when tow trucks hauled the ruined vehicles away. We were not attacked when Amy and Roberto left with the tow trucks and bought a large, four-wheel-drive SUV and a large van that could seat eight people. I recognized them for what they were: emergency escape vehicles. How were we going to keep them safe?
The day was quiet, subdued. There were things that had to be done, animals that needed tending, apocalypse or not. Our work was hurried, almost silent, and very tense.
Many of us were too anxious to eat, but River insisted, going on about blood sugar and energy levels and whatnot. I picked at my sandwich, trying to get a few swallows down.
“We think our enemy is trying to wear us down, scare us—put us off-balance so that when they attack we’ll be considerably weakened,” said Joshua. His appetite hadn’t been dimmed—he was on his second sandwich.
“So far it seems like a good plan,” Jess said drily.
“Yes,” River agreed. “It does, doesn’t it? Joshua, Reyn, and Daisuke, as our three most experienced fighters, have developed some countermeasures.”
“Oh good,” Brynne murmured. I wondered if she was still interested in Joshua or if the little swordsvaganza had upset her too much. After this life-or-death thing, we would have to chat.
“We will take turns keeping two people on watch in the cupola on the main building,” said Joshua.
“I didn’t know you could get up there,” Amy said.
“You can,” said River. “The glass has a film on it so that we can see out, but no one can see in. There’s a telescope up there, and someone will be on lookout at all times, with a partner to relieve him or her. I wish this had started before the trees began to leaf out—it would have been easier to see.”
“You need a Gatling gun up there,” I said, poking at a piece of bread.
“I wish,” said Reyn, and we met eyes for a second.
“We will also be doing some focusing exercises,” said Anne. “We need to be calm and alert—we can’t let fear fog our abilities.”
Too late, I thought glumly.
“We will be practicing spells of war,” Asher said simply. “Disarmament, subterfuge, illusion, and weapons.”
“In addition to these, we’ll keep as normal a schedule as possible,” said Solis. “We need to eat. The animals need care. We need to look as if we think the cars were just one more sally, but not like we’re actually prepared for war.”
You know, in addition to never caring enough about anything to want to fight for it, I also just don’t like war. Sometimes it brings people together, makes people rise to their finest hour, blah blah blah—but mostly it’s just really scary, incredibly destructive, and humanity at its worst. I hate it, don’t want to be around it, don’t want to experience it in any way. This totally justified my lifelong pattern of flight: It was so much easier and less painful. I mean, I was hating being part of this. Part of River’s troop.
But if I didn’t stay, I knew that there would be no more hope for me ever, and my life would be a grim, bleak, endless wasteland of despair and loneli—
Okay, okay, you’re right, that’s pushing it. Basically, staying was better, though it was harder and more painful. I hate life contradictions like that.
Reyn had written up a list of who would do what when—people were assigned to watch or lessons or practice, and then I noticed my name hadn’t been called yet. It was a little like being the last one chosen in school, though I don’t know what that’s like.
“Nastasya? Can you come with me for a minute, please?” River stood up.
“Sure.”
In the hallway River headed toward her office, and I saw that Ottavio was already inside. Jeezum, what now? Like my nerves weren’t rattled enough. Swallowing a sigh, I followed her. Her office was quite small, and with Ott taking up much more than his fair share of space, I felt a little hemmed in.
Weirdly, River locked the door after us, turning the key slowly and silently.
Uh… what was going on?
Then River ran her fingers lightly along the underside of her desk.
She said a few words, and the wooden side of her desk rose, like a hatch. I stared. I’d been in her office lots of times—I’d seen her pull those file drawers out. Silently she pointed, and I bent and looked. There were stairs going down into the darkness. This was a trapdoor to a hidden passage.
River reached in and flicked a switch. A dim string of lights illuminated at least twenty stairs. Ottavio motioned for me to go down.
“You first,” I whispered.
Dark gull-wing eyebrows slanted severely over his long, straight nose. But he went, swinging himself through the small opening and then standing up once he was on the stairs.
River gave me a nudge.
Okay, I’ve gone through underground tunnels before, like in France during World War II, and that speakeasy in Chicago. In general, they get my vote. They’re good things. But my very first experience with a hidden tunnel had been the night my family died. I’d been standing there in a burning room, my feet soaked with my mother’s blood, and I’d seen a door open—a door I’d never seen or known about. My father’s steward and his wife had saved me. I’d snatched my mother’s broken amulet from the edge of the fire, wrapped it in a cloth, and tied the cloth around my neck so I would have my hands free. It had burned through the cloth and seared its image onto my neck, and that was my scar that will never heal.
This tunnel was really quite like my first tunnel.
“Go,” River urged.
This was River talking to me. Though I had no idea what this was about or what would happen now, I crouched down, went through the hatch, and stood up on the stairs. Ott was already twenty steps below.
Large eye hooks were screwed into the stone wall, and a thick length of rope swooped from hook to hook. I held on to the rope as I made my way carefully down the stone steps—they’re always stone, aren’t they?—feeling River right behind me.