by Tess Grant
“Cute shirt, Kit,” Deb said. Her bleached hair was pulled up in a voluminous ponytail, and her shorts were short on both ends. “Get it at the yard sales?” The way she said yard sales was the way Anne Irish would have said tomato worm.
Kitty sat rigid.
“So, Jenna,” Joe entered the conversation suddenly. “Haven’t been hearing much from you since summer started.”
“I know. Let’s do something.”
Jenna’s eyes didn’t turn away from Joe, and for the first time since grade school, Kitty felt like she might be the odd man out. She could also feel a slow burn at the way Joe’s face was on a level with Deb’s flat bare abs.
“Did you guys come for pizza?” Sam asked brightly. He had always liked Jenna. “You can sit with us.”
Not if I have anything to say about it.
“We saw Joe’s car and decided to stop and say hello. We should get going.”
Deb nodded in agreement and said, “I’ll get the car.” She strutted out of the restaurant.
Kitty watched her leave and said in a rush. “Are you hanging out with her all the time now? That girl must have to go out and pick a peck of snide every night to recharge.”
“What?” Jenna asked in obvious confusion, but Joe smiled and Sam giggled.
“Dr. Seuss. Green pants,” he said laughing harder. “I love that story.”
Jenna’s back stiffened, and Kitty’s heart sank as she realized Jenna thought they were laughing at her. “It’s just…” she started.
“I have to go. The phone runs both ways,” Jenna said, and the doorbell jangled behind her.
Phinney watched the girls leave then settled back in the booth, raising an eyebrow at Kitty. “Pleasant girls.”
Kitty wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. “They sure are,” Kitty said. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Fifteen
The full moon was due at the end of the week, and Kitty felt crummy. She thought she was upset about the little scene at the pizza place with Jenna or coming down with some nasty twenty-four-hour flu. She figured it out when the closed caskets marched through her sleep that night. The monstrosity in the woods had gotten bigger—much bigger. She could hear it breathing, a rhythmic in and out that made the trees move in time. A new addition to the dream was a cricket—not Phinney’s World War II noisemaker—but an actual bug. It started the journey toward the trees with her but at some point it stopped, little wings whirring. All that came out was a metallic snick. She could hear it somewhere back over her shoulder, clicking away. Something pulled her forward, weaving her through the obstacle course of coffins toward the trees, and she couldn’t swing around to go back. At the tree line, when she finally managed to fling a look backwards at the cricket, her father was standing next to it.
The next day, she sent Sam up the hill to Eric’s house again. Honest, she promised herself. I’ll have him stay home tomorrow. Once he was out of sight, she locked the door and slipped off through the trees with Maddie to Phinney’s. He waited on the porch, shoulder against one of the columns supporting the roof. As she crossed the meadow, he flapped a hand at her—come on in—and disappeared into the cabin.
She let herself in. As Kitty’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior, she noticed papers spread all over the kitchen table. Phinney bent over them, pen in one hand, coffee cup in the other. Maddie headed straight over and settled underneath with a humph. Kitty squinted at the jumble. Maps. They were crowded with overlapping circles of red and black ink and block handwriting. A few coffee rings were superimposed over it all.
“Get you something to drink?” Phinney asked, putting his own cup down.
“Sun tea?” Kitty looked at some of the circles. Phinney’s handwriting was surprisingly legible. August 23, 2002, female, Log Jam Point was written in black ink. Sept. 10, 2003, male, off Cade’s Road—black ink. May 4, 2004, dead deer in red ink. July 11, 2006, police notified in red ink. Written over top of that one was a name—John Crowfoot. Kitty put her finger on the name. “Black ink is a dead werewolf. Red ink is…” She paused. She didn’t know whether to use the word something or someone, so she settled on a safe alternative. “What they’ve killed?”
He came toward the table carrying a pint and handed it to her. “You got it. These are topographic—topo—maps of the surrounding national forest. They give us the lay of the land. I plot out their kills in red, my kills in black, circle and date.” He saw where her fingertip rested. “Sometimes I put in other information too—whatever I have.”
Kitty took a sip from her jar. “So we have the silver. All we have to do is make bullets, right?”
“We’ll get to that. First thing, we have to find a safe zone—a place to set up a little nest of punji sticks to stay in. We’ll plot in the latest news I’ve gotten from spotters and take a look at what we’re dealing with, so we know where to set up.” He pulled a couple sheets of paper toward them, taking a few with handwritten lines himself and sliding the others her way. Hers were photocopies of articles from The Observer dated to a day or two after the last full moon.
She flipped through the sheets. Not much really. A farmer had reported his goat missing south of town. A girl who had graduated last year from Kitty’s school had been reported missing around ten p.m. but her roommate found her home in bed the next morning. “Missing goat.” Kitty slid the papers back his way. “Missing girl who wasn’t missing. Do those count?”
Phinney rifled through the sheets. “Hmmm. If we knew where the goat ended up, maybe. The girl…,” he rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Probably a fight with her boyfriend or something.” He shoved the papers aside and tapped a spot on the map. “Let’s concentrate up here. I’ve got a dead dog off Sutton’s Road between Ninth and Tenth Streets. That’s north of here.”
“I don’t know.” Kitty shook her head doubtfully. “Mom won’t let Sam ride his bike up on Sutton’s Road. There’s a pit bull and a Rottweiler up there. I’ll bet they tag-teamed that dead dog.”
Phinney made a noise deep in his throat. “Except the pit bull’s the dead one. Let’s go take a look.” He started for the door.
He went down the stairs holding the rail tightly. Kitty had never walked beside him, and she slowed her pace to match his as they crossed the lane. She dropped behind him as he cut into the woods on a narrow trail directly across from the cabin, a strip carved out of the tangle of wild grapevines and deadfall.
“What are we looking for?” Kitty asked.
Phinney lost his slow careful walk here under the trees, seeming to suck power straight from the trunks and branches. He’d dropped twenty years by crossing the borderline and was already three steps ahead of her. He looked back over his shoulder. “Think of that bowl where you found me. We need a clearing so that we have room to shoot. We need something to put our backs against. It’s gotta be small and easy to defend.”
Kitty nodded. Small clearing with a wall. Small clearing with a wall. She ran the words through her head. This side of the lane was far less traveled than the south side, and it made for difficult going. She concentrated to keep from stumbling, throwing glances here and there to find their safe zone.
Twenty minutes and a half of a mile into the woods, Phinney stopped. Kit, busy staring into the trees and seeing nothing, almost ran into him. He cocked his head to the right. “See it?”
She didn’t. The place he pointed out looked just like every other place, maybe with a few less trees. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Looks great.”
Phinney rolled his eyes skyward and shook his head. “Just like a female. You don’t see it at all, do you?”
“No,” she confessed. “I don’t.”
He wound his way off the path into a clear spot. Two huge oaks had fallen on one side of the clearing. Their roots and branches were so tangled together that when one had gone down it had taken its partner with it. Phinney painted the picture and she started to see it. The jagged wall of roots would protect their backs. They would tuck down into the hole left b
y the trees’ uprooting. The punji sticks would go there and there around the rim, maybe a few over there too. The moonlight would be coming from the east side—not perfect but enough to see by.
Phinney pulled out his flask and took a swig, shoving it back into his pocket. He stared up at the oaks’ trunks. “Let’s put a few pointing backward. I suppose the wolves could come up the trunk, but usually they’re pretty straightforward.” He leaned his back against a sapling, running a hand over his crew cut. “I’ll be glad when this is done.”
“How do we know when it’s done?” Kitty pushed a poison ivy vine away from their nest with a stick. “When the spotters don’t find anything anymore?”
“Remember this place. Gotta bring the sticks up here.” Phinney walked back toward the trail. “Thompson’s kind of an interesting guy—you should meet him.” He reconsidered, shrugging. “Maybe not. Odd might be a better word for him. He keeps in touch with me. Says he met another werewolf hunter—claims he can tell ‘em by the way they walk. Sounds like he just sits around in the retirement home and starts weird conversations to me.”
Behind his back, Kitty grinned. She knew all about old men and weird conversations.
“Anyway, this old boy tells him that withering thing they do…” He shuddered a little. “I don’t like that part. Supposedly that is some transfer of power to the other wolves. Makes ‘em bigger and meaner. Don’t know about that—they’re all pretty big and mean if you ask me.”
Kitty agreed with that, even if she had met only one.
“This guy tells Thompson that these things run in groups, that the body of the last wolf left will stay. Nobody left to transfer to, I guess. So I keep looking for that one carcass that stays. Haven’t seen it yet, but the kills are slowing way down.”
Phinney wilted as his boots hit the gravel of the lane, feet dragging a little, shoulders slumping. Whatever energy the trees had given him, they took it back now. He dug into the cargo pocket of his pants, pulling out something and lobbing it in Kitty’s direction. “Heads up.”
She shot a hand out and caught his car keys in the air. “What are these for?”
He pulled heavily on the railing to the cabin to get up the stairs and sat down on the glider couch, blowing out a sigh. “Need to get the sticks up there. Don’t have to be in place, just hidden and ready to go.”
“How are we going to do that anyway? They’re stuffed under that rock down there.” Kitty jabbed her thumb over her shoulder.
“I think that’s a decision you’re going to need to make.” Phinney shifted sideways, hoisting his feet up.
It was nice of Phinney to let her have some say in the matter, making her feel like a real partner. “Well,” Kitty drew the word out, screwing up her forehead in thought. “I guess we could haul them to the road down there at the curve, drive them up here and hike them in.” She bit her lip. “I’m not sure. What do you think?”
Phinney’s voice was muffled by the arm covering his face. “I think that’s a decision you’re going to need to make.”
Understanding dawned. “Who does this job for you when I’m not around?”
A soft snore answered her.
“Probably one of the spotters—a young spotter.” Kitty looked down at the dog sitting at her feet. Maybe she could rig up a travois for Maddie. The retriever’s body was a tube—straight back from her shoulders to her butt. If there were any muscles under there, Kitty couldn’t see them. “Guess I’m the one pulling the travois, huh?”
Maddie wagged her tail.
“Let’s get it done.” Kitty put a hand on the rail and jumped down the stairs. She hoped she could find the right clearing. Once this job was done, that left only the silver bullets for later this week.
That and the actual hunting.
* * *
“This is how we do it,” Phinney said. “Hand me those metal shears.” He waved vaguely at the jumbled mess on the table.
Kitty grabbed the only thing that looked like shears—big wicked blades honed silver against the rough black of the handles. She slapped them into the palm of his hand, feeling like one of the surgical nurses her mom knew at the hospital.
He grinned at her and nodded. “That’s them.” He began to work at the base of the fat candlestick, gnawing small cuts into the gray metal.
“Crucible,” he said holding out his hand. Kit, not knowing what he meant, ran an inventory of the items on the table. C-clamps she recognized from her dad’s workshop. Molds she recognized from art class. Cooking oil, propane torch, matches, rags. That left some sort of a ceramic bowl attached to a metal rod with a wooden handle. She picked it up. Turning, she saw Phinney had been watching her run her mental checklist.
“Common sense,” he said approvingly, “is a good thing to have.”
He took the crucible and began shaving small curls from the candlestick into the cup. “Go ahead and take those molds and oil the chambers inside. Then we’ll fit them together and clamp them tight.”
Grabbing one of the rags, she tipped a little oil out on the dirty surface. She sure hoped he didn’t cook with this stuff. There had to be some contamination going on somewhere. She ran the grease around the inside of each piece then fitted the sides of the mold against each other. Sliding the metal bands around them, she let him tighten the oiled halves together.
“Let’s fire her up.” Scrabbling around in his never-empty pocket, he pulled out a lighter and slid it across the table. She snagged it as it neared the edge—a scratched metal Zippo. It looked as old as Phinney. Nearly telepathic, he stated, “Got that when I was heading off to fight the good fight. Still works like a charm. Kind of like me.” His little boy grin lit up the room.
Gas hissed out of the propane torch, and the flame leaped blue-orange from the nozzle as she brought the Zippo close. Phinney played with the adjustments. “I’m mixing some oxygen in. We want a nice feathery flame. The bluer it is, the hotter it is.”
He was satisfied soon enough, though Kitty didn’t see any difference. He handed her the torch as he pulled on stained leather gloves. Crucible in one hand, torch in the other, he moved the flame in circles beneath the ceramic bowl.
“Put on some safety glasses,” he commanded as she came in close. “Impurities will pop. Give you a nice little burn.”
The grayish curls in the crucible straightened, liquefied, streaming toward each other in an effort to rejoin until a liquid bubble formed in the center. He stepped past her gingerly and with a soft touch of the crucible poured the bubble into the mold. After pouring two, he set down the crucible, turned off the torch and held it out to her.
“It’s all yours.”
Kitty nicked away at the base of the candlestick. Phinney sat at the table, hands folded in front of him, watching her. He offered very few pointers, standing up once to help her adjust the torch. He was a hands-off kind of teacher. For most of it anyway. The curls in the crucible were melting when there was a sudden snap, and a molten drop burrowed its way into her forearm.
Phinney swept her arm with a clean rag. “Cheap yard sale silver,” was all he said.
They made bullets all afternoon, the molds lining up on the kitchen windowsill. As they solidified, Phinney loaded them into shell casings with primers and powder. He counted the pile of glittering ammunition lying on the scarred wood table. “We’ve got quite a few here, probably more than we need.” He handed her a Mason pint of tea. “‘Cause really if we can’t kill it in one or two shots, we may as well hang it up.”
Chapter Sixteen
A dark blue bowl of a sky streaked with lights hung above her. She tilted her head back to take it in, and the sight made her brain spin. A lighter blue rim still circled the tips of the trees. Not so late yet that everything was black. She stopped for an instant to look, knowing there wasn’t much time.
But enough time to answer the litany of old questions. Where’s the Big Dipper, Kitty? Where’s the North Star? The Pleiades?
One by one, she raised a finger to each a
nd found solace in the ritual. First the Big Dipper, tracing its pointing arc to the North Star. And there, Orion’s belt. Cassiopeia over there. It had been the standard quiz of late summer nights. Her father’s quiz, before they would uncap the jar of hard-won fireflies and head to bed or a sleeping bag in a lopsided tent. She needed to know she still knew the answers. What stars did her father see? Maybe she should ask him in her next email. She should quiz Sam to make sure he was up to speed. Not good for Dad to come home and find out Sam forgot. Maybe Mom would come too, lying on a blanket in the grass like she did when Dad was giving the quizzes.
Some heavy branch rubbed restlessly against its neighbor in the nearby trees, and the reedy creak startled her. The groan snapped her back to the here and now. It wasn’t star gazing time as much as she might wish for it. Her mouth and a gut reaction had gotten her into this, and it was going to take a whole lot more to get her out.
She tilted her head back down to earth, to the packed gravel of the lane leading to Phinney’s. There was no starlight down here.
****
Kitty had sat in her room, fully dressed, leaning against the wall. The full moon sent a broad shining path through the window, but she was off to the side in the darkness. She had claimed a headache and gone to bed early, waiting until she heard both Sam and her mother climbing the stairs. They wished each other a good night, went to bed and still she waited. Even so, when she finally crept down the stairs and out the kitchen door, it was only ten thirty. There had been a single bark from Maddie, and Kitty paused in the shadow of the big maple hoping she would quiet. She did, and Kitty had slunk off the lawn and jogged to the cut-off for the lane.
It was there she had lost her head in stargazing. And it was from there that she started her trek up to Phinney’s.
