Running with the Demon (45 page)

Why?

Because Gran had thought it more important than anything else. Because she knew what was going to happen.

Which was more than Nest could say.

What did the demon want with her?

She rolled onto her back and stared at the flat surface of the ceiling.
Use your magic. Trust Wraith
. As if the magic had done Gran any good. And where was Wraith last night when she was fighting to keep her sanity as the feeders crawled all over her? Why should she believe either one would be of any use against the demon? Questions buzzed in her mind like gnats, and she closed her eyes against their persistent whine. The answers that would silence them were nowhere to be found. God, she was going to miss Gran. Her eyes filled with tears immediately. She still couldn’t believe her grandmother was gone, that she wasn’t sitting there at the kitchen table with her orange juice and vodka and her cigarette and ashtray, that she wouldn’t be asking Nest what time she planned to be home
from the fireworks that night, that she wouldn’t be there to talk about the feeders and the forest creatures and the magic in the park.

Nest sobbed quietly. She could still see the look on Gran’s face as she lay lifeless on the porch, the shotgun clutched in her hands. She would always see that look, a cold haunting at the fringes of her warmer memories. She had known the truth about how Gran died the instant she had seen her face. The note only confirmed it.

She turned on her side again, staring at the curtained window and the clouded sky beyond. The back of her throat ached with what she was feeling. She would never get over this, she thought. She would never be the same again.

Footsteps approached along the hallway beyond her room and stopped outside her door. A moment later the door opened, and someone stepped inside. She lay without moving, listening to the silence. She hoped that whoever was there would go away.

“Nest?” her grandfather called softly.

She did not respond, but he crossed to the bed anyway and sat down next to her.

“Did you sleep at all?” he asked.

She closed her eyes against the sound of his voice. “Yes.”

“That’s good. I know it wasn’t easy. But you needed to get some rest.” He was quiet for a few moments, and she could feel his eyes on her. She remained motionless beneath the sheet, curled into herself. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“There’s a lot of food out there. People have been stopping by all morning, bringing casseroles and tins filled with everything you can imagine.” He chuckled softly. “Looks like some of them emptied out their entire kitchens. We’ve got enough food to feed an army. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all of it.”

His hand rested on her shoulder. “Why don’t you get up and come out and keep me company?”

She was silent a moment, thinking it over. “I heard voices.”

“Friends. Neighbors. Everyone’s gone now. It’s just you and me.” He shifted on the bed, and she could hear him sigh. “They say she didn’t suffer, Nest. She was gone almost right away. Massive heart attack. I spoke with the doctor a little while ago. He was very kind. I’ve got to go down to the funeral home and pick out a casket this afternoon. A notice has already been sent to the paper. Reverend Emery helped prepare it. He’s agreed to speak at the funeral on Thursday.”

He trailed off, as if he didn’t quite know where to go next. In the silence, Nest could hear the old clock ticking down the hall.

After a moment, her grandfather said quietly, his voice filled with sadness, “I just don’t understand.”

She nodded without offering a reply, thinking that she understood better than he did, but didn’t know how to explain it to him.

His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You might have heard some comments last night, loose talk about your grandmother. You’ll probably hear more. I don’t want you to pay any attention to it. Your grandmother was a special person. A lot of people didn’t understand that. They thought she was peculiar. I guess she was, but she was good-hearted and caring and she knew how to look after people. You know that. And I don’t care what anyone says, she wasn’t out there shooting that shotgun at nothing. Your grandmother wasn’t like that.”

“I know,” Nest said quickly, hearing the despair build in his voice.

She twisted about so that she could see his face. It looked careworn and tired, the age lines more deeply etched, the thick white hair mussed and badly combed. When she looked into his eyes she could tell he had been crying.

His voice shook. “She was fine when I left her, Nest. She was worried about you, of course, but she was fine. I just don’t know what happened. I don’t think she would have brought out the shotgun if she wasn’t in danger. She hasn’t even looked at it in years.”

He paused, his eyes searching her face. He was waiting for
her to speak, to respond to his comments. When she stayed silent, he cleared his throat, and his voice steadied again.

“Your young friends said something strange when they came by the house to ask me to help look for you last night. They said you were chasing after someone who was poisoning trees in the park, someone I’d told you about. But I don’t know anything about this.” He looked away a moment. “The thing of it is, Nest, I get the feeling I don’t know anything about a lot of what’s going on. It wasn’t so important before.” His eyes shifted back to her. “But after what happened last night, I guess now it is.”

His eyes stayed locked on hers. Nest felt like a deer caught in the headlights. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know where to begin.

“Can we talk about this a little later, Grandpa?” she said finally. “I just can’t do it right now.”

He considered her request a moment, and then nodded. “All right, Nest. That seems fair.” He rose, his eyes traveling about the room as if seeking something. “Will you come out and eat?”

She raised herself to a sitting position and forced a smile. “Sure. Just give me a minute, okay?”

He went back through the door and closed it softly behind him. Nest sat in the bed without moving, staring into space. What could she say to him? She got up finally and went into the bathroom and took a shower. She let the water wash over her for a long time, her eyes closed, her thoughts wandering off to other times and places, then returning to focus on what lay ahead. She dried off and began to dress. She had just finished pulling on shorts and a T-shirt and was bending down to tie her tennis shoes when she heard a scrabbling sound at the window.

“Nest!” Pick called urgently.

“Pick!” she exclaimed in relief, and rushed over to push aside the curtains.

The sylvan was standing on the sill looking disheveled and grimy, as if he had been rolled in dirt. His leafy head was soiled and his twiggy feet were caked with mud. “I’m sorry to be late,
girl. I’ve had a dreadful night! If I don’t get some help, I don’t know what I’m going to do! The balance of things is upset in a way I’ve never seen! The feeders are all over the place!” He caught his breath, and his face softened. “I heard from Daniel about your grandmother. I’m sorry, Nest. I can’t believe it happened.”

“Was it the demon?” she asked quickly.

“Of course it was the demon!” He was so matter-of-fact about it, so unshakably certain, so
Pick
, that she smiled in spite of herself. Pick scowled. “The stink of his magic is all over your front yard! He must have come right up to the front door! How did he do that? Where were you and your grandfather?”

Quickly she filled him in on what had happened—how she had been lured away from the dance by the demon, how Danny Abbott and his friends had stuffed her in a burlap bag and hauled her down to the caves, how the demon had come to her there and taunted her, how her grandfather had been summoned by her friends to find her, and how Gran had ended up being left alone.

“Oh, that’s a nasty piece of work!” Pick spit indignantly. “Your grandmother would have been a match for him once. More than a match for him, fact of the matter is. I told you as much. Would have split him up the middle if he’d tried something like this!”

Nest knelt at the windowsill, her face even with his. “So why didn’t she, Pick?” she asked. “She always said she had magic, that we both did. Why didn’t she use it?”

Pick scrunched up his seamed face, his sharp blue eyes narrowing, his mouth disappearing into his beard. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t have needed a shotgun if she’d had the magic. She was powerful, Nest—strong-minded and able. She’d studied on her magic; she’d learned how to use it. She might not have been as strong as he was, but he would have come out of a fight with her with a whole lot less skin! And there wasn’t a sign of her magic amid the leavings of his!” He rubbed his beard. “Truth is, I haven’t seen her use it in a
long time—not in a very long time, girl. Not since your mother …”

He trailed off, staring at her as if seeing her in a new light.

“What?” she asked quickly.

“Well, I don’t know,” he answered vaguely. “I was just wondering.”

She let the matter drop, choosing instead to tell him about the note. She took it out of her pocket and unfolded it so that he could see that it was Gran’s writing, and then she read it to him. When he heard the words, his face underwent a strange transformation. “Criminy,” he whispered.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Stop making me guess what you’re thinking, Pick!”

“Well, it’s just that …” He shook his head slowly, his lips still moving, but no sound coming out.

“Why would the demon be coming after me?” she pressed, poking at him insistently with her finger.

Then the bedroom door opened, and her grandfather looked in. Pick disappeared instantly. Nest stood up, smoothing down the front of her T-shirt, composing her face.

“Your friends are at the back door,” her grandfather said. “I think you ought to see them.”

Reluctantly Nest came out of the bedroom and followed him down the hall. The old grandfather clock marked the cadence of their steps. As they passed the living room, she glanced in at the pictures of her mother and Gran resting on the fireplace mantel. Gran’s cross-stitch project rested on the arm of the old easy chair, unfinished. Her crosswords sat in a pile on the floor beside the chair. There were small pieces of her everywhere. Dull slants of gray light wedged their way through the drawn curtains and window shades, but the room felt musty and empty of life.

In the kitchen, dozens of containers of food sat unattended on the table and counters like forgotten guests. Her grandfather slowed and looked vaguely at the array of dishes. “I better see to this. You go on outside. It might be more private for you in the backyard.”

She went the rest of the way down the hall to the screen door and opened it. Robert, Cass, and Brianna stood waiting for her. Cass held a bouquet of daisies, mums, and marigolds.

“Hey,” she said by way of greeting.

“Hey,” they replied in jumbled unison.

Cass passed her the flowers, dark eyes bright with tears. “Sorry about Gran, Nest. We’ll all miss her.”

“She was the best,” Brianna agreed, wiping at her nose.

Robert shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at his shoes in a way that suggested he had never seen them before.

“Thanks for coming by.” Nest sniffed at the flowers automatically. “These are really pretty.”

“Well, daisies were always her favorite,” Cass said.

“You remember when she laid into me for cutting down that stand out back?” Robert asked suddenly. He seemed surprised he had said something and gave Nest a quick, hopeful look. “Man, she was upset. But when you told her I was taking them home to my mom, she said right away that it was all right, and she took us inside and gave us milk and cookies. Remember?”

“I remember when she helped me make that Cinderella costume for Halloween when I was six,” Brianna said, smiling. “She did most of the work, but she told my mom we did it together.”

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Cass said.

They were silent a moment, and then Robert said, “What happened to her anyway, Nest? There’s all kinds of stories floating around.”

Nest crossed her arms defensively. “She had a heart attack.” She tried to think what else she could say. Her gaze shifted away from Robert and back again. “I suppose you heard about the shotgun.”

Robert shrugged. “Everybody’s talking about that part, and you can guess what some of them are saying. But my dad says people will talk no matter who you are or what you do, so you might as well get used to it.”

“People are mean,” Brianna said to no one in particular.

No one spoke, eyes shifting uneasily in the silence.

“Thanks for not leaving me last night.” Nest tried to change the subject. “You know, for getting Grandpa to come back over and find me.”

She told them what had happened to her, only leaving out the part about the demon, then adding at the end that she was all right, no harm had been done, and they should all forget about it.

“What about the man who’s poisoning the trees?” Brianna said, her brow knit anxiously.

Nest shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s still out there.”

“Danny Abbott is a butt-face.” Robert muttered angrily. “You should have let me punch him out when I had the chance, Nest.”

Hearing him say it made her smile. She came through the doorway, and the four of them walked out into the shady backyard and sat down at the old picnic table. Thick, gray clouds floated overhead, drifting out of the west where the sky was already darkening. Rain was on the way, sure enough. In the park, the first of the softball games had started up. Families were arriving by the carloads to set up their picnic lunches and to settle in for the day’s events and the evening’s fireworks. Nest watched a line of cars crawl down Sinnissippi Road past the townhomes.

“Where’s Jared?” she asked, wondering for the first time why he was missing. No one said anything. Nest saw the discomfort mirrored in their faces. “What’s wrong? Where is he?”

“He’s in the hospital, Nest,” Cass said, her eyes lifting. “That’s what we came to tell you. It was on the news this morning, but we thought maybe you hadn’t heard.”

“George Paulsen beat him up real bad,” Brianna said softly.