Wild Country
Page 23
Abby stepped outside. “You need help?”
“The new neighbors do. Because of the kids, their house needs to be cleared out of everything but the furniture.”
Abby nodded. “I’ve got a job now as a cleaner. I told them I prefer doing office buildings to houses, but we’re all coming over to give that house a good scrubbing because of the girl.”
Because of the girl. Normally, Barb would have responded to the curiosity and the question under that statement by telling her friend about the girl. But Jana was sincerely spooked about people finding out about Maddie, and it did seem odd to single out one of the kids when they’d barely been seen, so Barb said, “I heard someone was going to do the cleaning, but the house needed to be cleared first. That’s why I’m asking the people on the street to go over and help. The faster it’s cleared out, the faster Kenneth and Evan and the kids can move in.”
When Abby didn’t respond, Barb wondered if the other woman had some objection to the new neighbors.
Abby said, “All right. I’ll go over with you and help for a while.”
“That’s great.” But it didn’t feel great.
Abby hesitated, then shrugged. “I guess I don’t have to lock it.”
“Do you want to leave a note for Kelley?”
“What for?”
Abby sounded so sad, Barb didn’t know what to say. She just headed for the house across the street and a few doors up from her own home.
“Don’t they want any of this stuff?” Abby asked when they entered the house and looked around.
“They might, especially some of the books and food and linens. For now, Zeke and Fagen are bringing two of the vans they’ve been given for their businesses and will drive all the goods over to the community center. Evan and Kenneth will look over everything and bring back the things that will be useful for their family.” Barb took a scrunchie out of her jeans pocket and pulled her hair back in a short ponytail. “The guys can pack up the living room and family room when they get here. Hannah and Sarah Gott said they would take care of the kitchen. John can pack up the books since he’s in charge of the bookstore. You and I should pack up the bedrooms and bathroom. That’s where the really personal stuff will be.”
“I’ll start in the bathroom.” Abby took one of the smaller boxes.
“Let’s see if there’s a shoebox in one of the bedrooms that you can use for any prescriptions we find. Those need to be boxed separately from everything else.”
They went into the master bedroom. Easy enough to find a shoebox. The woman who had lived there must have bought a couple of pairs of shoes just before . . . things went bad. Barb removed one pair of shoes and turned to hand the box to Abby—and wondered why Abby looked like the top of the dresser was filled with venomous snakes instead of a scatter of pendants and bracelets.
“You okay?” Barb asked.
“Yeah.” Abby grabbed the shoebox. “Fine.” She bolted out of the room.
Barb found suitcases tucked under the bed. As she filled them with the nicer clothes in the closet, she wondered why a woman who felt such revulsion for jewelry would marry a jeweler.
* * *
* * *
Abigail stared at the items in the medicine cabinet. What were they supposed to do with an open bottle of aspirin or cough syrup? If people threw the things out, would they regret the waste a year from now if the companies that made those things didn’t exist anymore? But who wanted to use aspirin or cough syrup from a stranger’s house?
She reached for a pill bottle. What about prescriptions? The mayor and sheriff had approved this house for the new family, but had whoever vetted it known that the woman who had lived in this house had used pills in order to sleep? She hadn’t found anything besides over-the-counter drugs in her house, but that didn’t mean sleeping pills were uncommon. Prairie Gold had been just as close to the Elder Hills as Bennett, and everyone had a sleepless night on occasion, but the people in Prairie Gold hadn’t felt—and still didn’t feel—threatened by the Others. Maybe the people here had always felt threatened. Maybe that had made it easier for them to side with the HFL.
She opened the bottle of sleeping pills. A quick search in the cabinet that held personal kinds of supplies netted a bag of cotton balls. Stuffing a cotton ball into the pill bottle, she closed it and slipped it into the pocket of her dress, then shimmied a little to make sure nothing rattled.
Hurrying now, she cleaned out the medicine chest and cabinet. She filled one of the larger boxes with towels that looked almost new and just needed a wash.
By the time she returned to the master bedroom, Barb had the bed stripped down, had the suitcases standing near the door, and had filled two boxes with clothes from the dresser. As she stepped into the room, Barb opened one of the top drawers, removed a large jewelry box, and set it on top of the dresser.
“There are two jewelry boxes here,” Barb said. “Maybe one was for costume jewelry and one for good?” She opened the box on the dresser. “Oh, this is so pretty. Maybe I could buy it.” She held up a necklace made of turquoise beads on a gold chain.
Abigail could feel the dissonance between Barb and the stones from where she stood, and anything that brought even a little darkness into Barb’s life would also bring it too close to hers. “Put it back. Don’t touch it.”
Barb looked puzzled and a little hurt. “I don’t think it’s an expensive piece. And it would suit me.”
No, it wouldn’t.
“I’m not going to pocket it,” Barb said. “I’ll just put a note in the jewelry box to say I’m interested and ask Kelley what it’s worth.” She moved her other hand to cup the turquoise beads.
“No!” Abigail screamed. “Don’t touch it. The stones are soured!”
Startled, Barb dropped the necklace.
Abigail started to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But you’re so . . . bright . . . and happy, and those stones have been soured by someone who was neither of those things.”
“But . . . this house is supposed to be okay for . . . the kids. Joshua told everyone it didn’t have a stain of darkness.”
“Maybe the place doesn’t. Maybe nothing happened here that he would recognize as a stain.”
“Why do you?”
Abigail pointed at the jewelry box and made her hand shake. “The stones. And these.” She took the pill bottle out of her pocket.
Barb looked at the bottle. “Were you going to take that bottle without telling anyone?”
“Yes.”
Barb wasn’t an Intuit, but she had an older brother who was a cop. “Is this connection you have with stones the reason why there’s friction between you and Kelley?”
“He doesn’t know. No one knows.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you told someone about what you can sense?”
Abigail shook her head. “If people know, something might be said and the wrong person will overhear it—and then I’ll end up dead. I’ve been running since I was seventeen, but there aren’t that many places to run anymore, even if I could get there.”
“You’ve been hiding since you were seventeen?”
“Yes.”
Barb sat on the bed. “Abby, you have to tell someone. The Others aren’t going to care if you can sense whatever you sense in jewelry, but they’ll care a lot if they think you’re keeping a secret that ends up causing trouble here.”
Abigail forced herself to move, to sit beside Barb. “I can’t. Barb, you don’t know them. You don’t know what it’s like to be controlled by them.” She closed her hands around Barb’s in a bruising grip. “I can’t support myself in Prairie Gold. If the Sanguinati decide I can’t stay in Bennett, where will I go?”
“Tolya will listen,” Barb said. “And if you can’t tell him directly, tell me, and I’ll tell him.”
Ally and advocate. Yes, that would work nicely. She
would become another secret. Like the girl.
Abigail released Barb’s hands and said, “Have you ever heard of the Blackstone Clan?”
CHAPTER 20
Earthday, Messis 19
Sitting across from the three women, Tolya studied the way Abigail Burch clung to Barbara Ellen—and the way Deputy Jana rested one hand on Abigail’s shoulder.
Was that hand on Abigail’s shoulder a gesture of unspoken support or was it something else?
Barbara Ellen had called him last night, saying there was something important she had to tell him, something that might have an impact on the whole town. That was the reason he had called the town council to meet this morning and hear what Barbara Ellen had to say, despite Earthday being everyone’s rest day.
Now he wished he’d asked Jesse Walker to drive up from Prairie Gold to listen to whatever would be said. She understood human females, and what he was seeing in the three females sitting across from him made him decide that, Earthday or not, he would call Jesse to relay whatever was revealed here.
Virgil sounded disappointed.
Tolya continued to study the women as rest of the Sanguinati arrived and filled the chairs.
Not how he would have described it, but it matched his thinking. Jana must already know what Barbara Ellen wanted to tell them—and she was keeping watch instead of standing with her friend.
Even in the picture, Deputy Jana had been keeping watch.
Tolya looked around and realized one of them was still missing.
Tolya didn’t smile. Did. Not. Smile. He did, however, find it fascinating that the Wolves displayed such a high tolerance for certain humans. He couldn’t imagine Virgil or Kane allowing any other child to brush them to make them pretty. Maybe it was Becky Gott’s simplicity and innocence. Maybe Wolfgard young—at least the ones who were able to shift to human form—did the same kinds of things as a way to learn. He’d probably never know, but he did understand that every human Virgil tolerated made him a more dangerous threat to the rest of the humans because he was taking them into his pack—and having lost one pack, he would kill anything that threatened this new one.
Tolya said, “Shall we begin?” When they all nodded—all except the three human women—he focused on Barbara Ellen. “There is something you need to tell us?”
Barbara Ellen looked around the room, just as he had a moment ago. But her skin was so pale now, the freckles were the only color left in her face.
“I didn’t expect . . . I thought . . .” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Can I tell it as a story?”
“This is a teaching story?” Virgil asked, leaning forward and bracing his forearms on his thighs.
“A family story to impart information rather than entertain,” Jana replied.
All the terra indigene nodded. Tolya wondered if the females understood how closely their words would be heeded. Entertainment, if not appealing to an individual, could be ignored. A teaching story never was.
Barbara Ellen glanced at Abigail. So. This story was not about Barbara Ellen or her family. She was the designated teller—but had Jana helped shape the information into a teaching story to make sure he and Virgil heard what they needed to hear?
“Once upon a time,” Barbara Ellen began, “there was a young Intuit girl who came from a family of gamblers and swindlers. Being Intuits, the gamblers used their abilities to sense things that were tied into their skill with cards and other games of chance. They knew when to bet and when to fold—and sometimes they cheated by folding when they could have won a hand so that the people playing with them wouldn’t start to wonder about why they won so much. And the swindlers always sensed who would be most vulnerable to whatever con they were playing.
“Sometimes they worked different swindles in the same town or split up and worked in a couple of towns close to each other. Sometimes the whole family would work one con. But they always stayed in touch and they always left the area around the same time because moving around was safer—and because there was less chance that one of the youngsters might say something that made a mark realize he was dealing with Intuits.
“See, their being Intuits was the big family secret, the thing you could never ever tell anyone else.” Barbara Ellen looked around the room. “You could never tell. And if you were a part of the family, you could never leave.”
“And if you did leave?” Tolya asked softly.
“Death,” Abigail whispered, her blue eyes blind and staring. “If you’re out of the life, there’s always the chance you’ll snitch on the rest of them, so . . . death.”
Barbara Ellen resumed the story. “The girl’s Intuit gift was unusual. Some people believe that gemstones of all kinds have healing or magical properties and can help the person who wears them. But the girl knew exactly which stone would resonate with a particular person. Even if a hundred stones were on a table, she could tell which one truly suited a person and would bring good things, positive things, into that person’s life—or help keep bad things away. But just as some stones would be good for a person, other stones would open a person up to bad things. Sometimes little things, like spilling coffee on your shirt just before an important meeting or missing out on having lunch with a friend because your car had a flat tire. Little things, day after day. And not so little things. Like sitting down at a poker table and gambling away your family’s life savings.
“The girl and her uncle had a particular part to play in the rest of the family’s endeavors. They would rent a booth at a fair or an open market. The uncle would repair jewelry and clean jewelry while the girl did the patter about choosing a stone for luck or love or good fortune. Some of them were tumbled stones you would keep in a bowl while others had a hole through them so they could be strung on a cord or a gold or silver chain—which the uncle would sell to the mark. And because the girl was young and pretty, people never suspected they were being cheated in some way.
“The thing was, if the uncle had a feeling the mark had money or something else of use to the family, he would signal the girl to select a dissonant stone—something that would sour the person’s life in some way and make them vulnerable. And the girl did it because she was young and they were her family and she depended on them for her survival. So someone would carry his ‘lucky’ stone into the saloon where the girl’s father was playing poker—and end up owing so much to all the players at the table that he would be ruined financially. Or a woman would wear a necklace that was supposed to bring her good fortune and end up being dragged into an alley where she’d be roughed up—and sometimes worse—before having her purse stolen.
“The girl didn’t understand these things when she was young, but when she reached her teens and realized what happened to the people who were given bad stones . . .”
“She ran away,” Abigail whispered. “She kept running and hiding, choosing places too
small to be of interest to the family, or hiding in larger cities, doing whatever work she could to get by. She was in one of those cities when she met a kind man who fell in love with her. She married him but she was too afraid to tell him the truth about her abilities or her past, and when he found out, he . . . didn’t love her anymore.”
Tolya noticed Barbara Ellen’s face settling into a tiny frown—noticed Deputy Jana’s sharp look.
A tear ran down Abigail’s face. “They’ll come here. On the train. Her father likes to travel by train. Sooner or later, they’ll come. To gamble, to plunder. To kill. They’ll come.” She was still telling a story instead of admitting she was talking about herself.
“What are these humans called?” Tolya asked.
“Blackstone. They’re the Blackstone Clan.”
Abigail and Barbara Ellen leaned against each other, exhausted. And Jana?
“Thank you for this story,” Tolya said, addressing the humans. “You have given us many important things to consider.” More than you realize. “I hope you can put this aside now and enjoy the rest of your day off.”
“We’re all helping Kenneth and Evan at their house,” Jana said with a strained smile. “Today’s plan is to haul the rest of the personal belongings out of the house so the cleaners can come in later this morning and scrub it from top to bottom. Then we’ll give the children’s bedrooms a fresh coat of paint.”