Eternally Yours (35 page)

Joshua got eighteen stitches. Reyn wore butterfly bandages for a few days to hold his cheek together. Anne made him drink some tea as well.

I will never understand men. I mean, a thousand years
from now, I will still have my head cocked sideways like a dog, going “Huh?”

I was woken at one
AM
by my cell phone playing “Copacabana,” which meant that someone—probably Brynne—had pranked me by changing my ringtone.

“Hello?”

“Yeah. I get one phone call, so I decided to treat you to it.” The voice was young, brash, and scared.

“Dray?”

“Yeah. Who were you expecting, the Easter Bunny?”

“I wasn’t
expect
—” There was some fumbling, and then a woman’s voice came on and said, “Is this Ms. Nastasya Crowe?”

“Yes.”

“Your pal here was caught breaking into one of the apartments on Main Street. She says you gave her permission. Like, permission but no key, right?”

“Oh.” Again? Dray was screwing me over
again
? Okay, where was my sword?

“Are you going to come get her? It’s you or her parents.”

The dead silence I heard after that told me Dray would do anything to avoid calling her alcoholic mother. Calling her dad wasn’t an option—she had no idea where he was.

“Yeah. I’ll come get her.” And boy, will she be sorry.

It was weird setting off into the night in the farm car—I hadn’t left River’s Edge in more than a week. It occurred to me that it probably wasn’t smart to go out by myself,
especially at night, but since when has “not smart” stopped me from doing anything?

It wasn’t hard to find the West Lowing Police Station, though I’d never been there. It was the only one in town, in a small, unassuming building that looked like it used to be an auto-repair garage. Anger and cold had woken me right up, and as I parked in front of the station, I was rehearsing all the furious things I would say.

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.

F
or 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?