Into the Woods (67 page)

Her mother huffed, setting the last rinsed plate to drip. “What do you think? I managed okay, but we’re going to need to let a nest or two of eggs go to hatching. I was up all night thinking of how we could snare Penn without having to burn the woods.” Her gaze went distant as she looked out at the fields, seeing nothing. “I love that woods.”

She turned as the dishwater gurgled out. “Running water will hold him as much as stone, so I forced him into that tree on Rock Island, and once he was there, I shifted the water course back where it was when your grandparents moved here. The dam was almost rotted anyway. We lost the creek running by the house, but that’s a small price to pay. Even in drought, Rock Island is going to be surrounded.” Her expression softened. “The girls are safe. We all are.”

Then who did I trap in the cave?

Seeing her horror and not understanding, her mother reached out and touched her shoulder. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s not the first time I’ve been locked in a henhouse.”

Lilly reached for the table, her balance leaving her. Kevin. She hadn’t killed him, had she? “You couldn’t have trapped him in a tree. I trapped him in a cave,” she said, feeling nauseated and sinking down on her chair at the table.

Her mother turned from putting the plates away, her confident smile fading. “What?”

What if she’d been wrong? She looked up, blinking. “He was with me this morning. At the caves by the north pasture. I trapped Penn in it behind a rock slide.”

“You couldn’t have,” her mother said, her face pale. “I trapped him on Rock Island.”

Lilly looked at the table, her fingers spanning the little red apples the plastic and felt tablecloth was decorated with, horror making it hard to breathe.

“Lilly . . .”

Had she killed Kevin by mistake? Oh God, what if she had!

Her mother’s hand was shaking as it touched her shoulder, the older woman looking out through the kitchen window when a dusty police car eased into the yard. “It’s Aaron,” she said, her voice quavering.

Kevin’s dad? Oh God
.

Her mother gave her shoulder a warning squeeze. “We don’t know that wasn’t Penn in the cave. He might have escaped before I got the water to rise. You did good, Lilly. I’m proud of you.”

Lilly stood, her chair scraping. “But it might have been Kevin! Mom, he might still be trapped. Alive!”

“What does Kevin have to do with this?”

A car door slammed, and Lilly scooted closer to her mother, almost frantic. “Penn looked like Kevin. Mom, what if it really was him?”

Lips a thin line, her mother flicked her attention to the porch. “It wasn’t. Hush up!”

“Mom!”

“I said hush up!” It was an angry hiss of a sound, and Lilly jerked as her mother pinched her shoulder painfully. “What are the chances that I could trap him a second time? I’m an old woman, and he doesn’t love me. Penn was with you. That was
Penn
with you before sunrise. If we open that cave up now, Penn will escape and he will be on Meg and Em before the moon rises. Now stop looking guilty!”

The last was accompanied by a savage squeeze, and then her mother let go, beaming a welcoming smile at the heavy steps on the porch and a soft knock at the screen door.

“Aaron, come on in!” her mother almost crowed, wiping her hands off on her apron and going to the door. “Let me get you a cup of coffee. What brings you out here this morning?”

The man looked tired as he pushed open the screen door, his officer uniform hanging wrinkled and a little loose on him. He was her mother’s age, and working mostly because he knew everyone and he couldn’t bring himself to retire. Pepper had gone to him, and he absently fondled the dog’s ears as he nodded first at her mother, then Lilly. “Morning, Em. Lilly. You haven’t seen Kevin this morning, have you?” he drawled, his cigarette-rough voice holding a hint of worry as he glanced at the unused place setting.

Fear struck Lilly, and she froze. They would take her children. Lock her away. “Last night, why?” she managed as she gathered the silverware, her fingers shaking. Behind her, her mother went to the coffeepot.

Aaron shifted from foot to foot, looking nothing like a police officer and everything like a worried father. “We found his truck this morning over at Perrot’s pasture, his thermos of coffee still warm. You saw him last night?”

Oh God. She’d killed him. What if she had invented Penn all along, a delusion fueled by her anger and her mother’s dementia, striking out at Kevin instead. Maybe she had
wanted
to kill him. What if she was crazy herself? “About nine,” she heard herself say as she carefully put the knife and fork away, marveling at the even tone of her voice. “The girls were going to bed. I wanted to talk to him about . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to mention her earlier worries about her mother being crazy. “. . . something,” she finished as she turned and went back for the pale white plate. “But he left. He didn’t make it home last night?”

“By the looks of it, yes. You know anything about the explosion I heard this morning?” he said, and fear shifted through her.

“That was us, I’m afraid,” her mother said, setting a steaming cup of coffee at table and putting a warning hand upon her shoulder. “I know I should have gotten a permit, but I was hoping that if we blew the dam early enough, no one would notice.”

Lilly marveled at her mother’s calm lie, wondering if she had ever known her at all.

“We shifted the creek back to its original bed this morning,” she said as she gave Lilly’s shoulder one last squeeze and returned to the coffeepot. “The girls are getting older, and I want to try beans in the lower field next year. We have enough to get by, but Meg is going to need tuition in a few years, and the creek isn’t making us any money running in front of our house.”

“You were both at Rock Island?”

Aaron didn’t sound convinced, and Lilly turned to him, somehow managing a smile as she leaned back against the counter, the dust and dirt of the explosion covering her like the lies she was saying. “All morning. You’re not going to turn us in, are you? That was the last of the dynamite.”

Aaron’s gaze shifted to her mother, then back to her. “Lilly, I know you and he had words.”

Fear flashed through her. They would take her, lock her up. She’d never see her girls again. “He wanted to know how he could make it better. I told him to leave,” she said evenly.

“I would hope so!” her mother said as she forced a steaming cup of coffee into Lilly’s grip and putting a hand upon her shoulder. “I love your son as if he were my own, Aaron, but he’s a fool who doesn’t know how to keep his pants zipped. If he’s not hightailed it out of Greenwood out of pure embarrassment, I’m sure he’ll show up before long. I poured you a cup. You want to sit a spell?”

Aaron took a long look at her mother standing beside her. From outside, the sound of the girls playing in the drying creek came in, and Pepper whined, wanting to join them. “Thank you, Em. Don’t mind if I do,” he finally said, his eyes narrowing in mistrust as he sat down.

“I’ve got some biscuits,” Lilly said, heart thudding. “Fresh out of the oven, Officer Aaron. Let me get you a plate.”

And smiling, Lilly held it out to him, proud that her hand didn’t tremble at all.

Grace

The character of Grace has a curious history. She began before the Hollows found publication in a preindustrial setting that had far more scope than I gave her here. Her world was originally smaller and the narration of her story was split between the protagonist and antagonist. I had intended to leave those first hundred pages of text forgotten in the back of my closet after I fell in love with the faster pace and more modern feel of urban fantasy, but the characters of Grace, her lover, and the protagonist refused to be forgotten and Grace successfully made the jump from medieval to modern, proving to me at least that the character is all and the setting is just the framework of the tale. Originally Grace came to me as an older character, but I give you a glimpse of her now when she is young and full of hope so you can understand her better when she falls.

ONE

E
ars down, Hoc hung back as Grace and Boyd got out of the shiny black sedan with its one-way-locking back doors and secondary restraints masquerading as seat belts. Most times they didn’t need the extra precautions, but the dog’s behavior as he reluctantly jumped from the front seat and padded alongside Grace told her that this was not going to be an easy acquisition. Not that any of them were.

“Hoc’s edgy.”

Grace gave Boyd a wry smile. The thin, older man was almost a head taller than she was, a bad cop to her more youthful good cop—at least that was the appearance they usually went with. Sun glinted in his silvering hair, and his long legs easily took up the distance as he came around the car to meet her on the sidewalk. They weren’t cops, but the thought was there, especially since they were both in dark navy suits, the stark white of Boyd’s cuffs and collar matching her blouse in an almost uniform consistency.

“I noticed.” Grace waited, her hand on Hoc’s head, soothing her canine partner with a gentle warming flow of energy. He was agitated at something in the house. It wasn’t the same excitement he showed when they visited kindergartners looking for unregistered throws among the kids, oblivious that their lives might change if Hoc loved them too much. Like a drug dog, he would go into doggy delight when finding an unbalanced throw, attracted to the tiny surges of electricity most gave off. No, this was something else, and Grace squinted up at the two-story, four-bedroom, two-car garage house.

Suburbia at its best, and she felt a brief pang. She’d grown up somewhere very close to this—until it had all fallen apart.

Hoc’s ears pricked as three kids on skateboards rumbled down the shady road with loud voices and not having a care in the world. It was nice, peaceful.
Well, we can change that
, Grace thought as she pushed off the black car and fell into step beside Boyd.

The walk was cobblestone, matching the drive in a show of wealth as it gently sloped upward to a large porch decorated for Halloween. Frowning, Boyd checked his watch. The innocuous-looking instrument actually functioned as an informal erg meter as well as a timepiece. If the watch was running, he had control of his balance, if it was stopped, he knew he’d lost it somewhere.

Grace glanced at her own watch, seeing the second hand sweeping the face smoothly, but she knew things could change fast—especially when they were escorting an unregistered throw. That’s what humans who could shift the balance of energy existing naturally in the human body were called. Throws, or throwbacks. That Grace and Boyd were throwbacks themselves never seemed to mean anything to those they tried to bring in.

Head down, she hit a button to tag the time for the medics as one where her watch’s time might be impacted by the kid they were after. The medics checked it weekly, and if her time was off by more than thirty seconds without a reason, she had to go in for a refresher course on control. It hadn’t happened in six years. Hoc had her on edge. The boy was older than usual. It made things tricky.

They mounted the stairs together, Boyd’s steps in perfect time with hers and the border collie’s nails scraping.
It’s for his own good
, she thought as they left the tidy green yard, the absence of toys and bikes saying as much as the report in the car that there were no other children. Most parents stopped having kids when one showed signs of being a throw. But then, most parents brought their kids to a Strand “party” to be assessed after they shorted out the TV one too many times, charting their life for service in the Strand if they had enough control and/or aptitude, or quietly adjusted to remove the ability if they didn’t.

Still, there would always be misguided parents who managed to hide their children’s abilities until a mistake was made and an anonymous call brought Grace or any one of the Strand’s envoys to collect, instruct, and administer to—in that order and not always with the parents’ or child’s approval.

Grace and Boyd were collectors. She was good at it, though it chafed that she was still doing the same thing after four years. Her knack in evaluating potential initiates was to blame. “Attention to Duty” her yearly evaluation said, but the honest truth as to why she was so good at bringing in the difficult cases was because she had run herself and she knew what scared the shit out of them.

“You okay?” Boyd asked as he tagged his own watch for possible disruption and knocked at the door. On the knocker was a smiling pumpkin with Happy Halloween stenciled on it. Grace’s brow furrowed. It was too perfect here, like a Hollywood set.

“Fine,” she said, hearing the dull echo of fiberglass. Hoc’s ears pricked as he stared expectantly at the door.

“I just don’t want you messing with my times,” Boyd said distantly. Again he knocked, then rang the doorbell. “I’m having enough trouble staying in norms as it is.”

Grace turned, seeing his avoidance. “You’re having balance issues? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He glanced at her and away, his wrinkles making him look old to her for the first time. “I just did,” he said, then cleared his throat at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Sure, but only when I can’t say anything
, she thought, as the door opened and a tall woman in jeans and a baggy sweater looked out at them. Her haircut was short, styled and highlighted in the latest middle-aged fashion. Expression questioning, she took in their suits, paling as she saw the car behind them. Hand gripping the door, she ducked behind it, almost hiding. “Can I help you?”

Can I help you
, Grace thought. Not
no thank you
, or
not interested
. She knew who they were and what they wanted, and Grace’s skin tingled. At her heel, Hoc wagged his tail, and she suppressed her excitement. Excitement didn’t unbalance her erg strength, but it didn’t help maintain it, either.

“Mrs. Thomson?” Boyd said, his deep voice rumbling.

“Yes?” She was scared, and Hoc’s tail slowed as it brushed the porch. “What do you want?”