by Lis Wiehl
There were more of these beasts than they’d thought—a lot more. Tommy got the sense that though the creatures were avoiding the light, when push came to shove, it wasn’t really going to bother them. They weren’t afraid to attack. They were waiting for something to happen, just as Quinn had said. It seemed Tommy had little choice but to wait as well, whether he liked it or not.
He stepped back and shut the 9000 off, but the eyes in the woods continued to shine a bright red, like coals in a fire.
He could feel those eyes watching him all the way back to the house.
“Let’s call Julian, just to make sure they’ve made it to the airport,” he said.
“I just did,” Quinn told him. “It went straight to voice mail. Either he’s talking to somebody, or they’re somewhere where there’s no signal.”
3.
December 21
12:02 a.m. EST
“Looks like they hit a deer,” Frank DeGidio said. “Ray hooked the car up and hauled it to the yard so you can tell your insurance guy he can take a look at it, but trust me, it’s totaled.”
Tommy had known Frank and Ray DeGidio since middle school. Frank was a local cop and Ray owned a towing service. Tommy glanced out the window at the flashing lights of the police car.
“Are you okay?” he asked Reese.
“I’m a little shaken up, but yeah, I’m okay.”
“The EMTs looked him over and said he was good,” the cop said. “I thought he should go to the hospital and get himself checked out, just to be sure, but he wanted me to bring him here.”
“I’m a doctor,” Quinn volunteered. “I’d be happy to have a look at him.”
“Okay then,” Frank said.
Tommy donned his coat. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
They stood next to the squad car for a moment, DeGidio looking up at the snow, which had just started to fall.
“Snow’s going to make it hard to write up the accident,” he said. “Once the skid marks get covered over, you have to wait until a thaw, and if you wait too long, a good lawyer can claim the evidence has been compromised ’cause you didn’t get to it in time.”
“Do you have any sense of what happened?”
“Looked to me like they hit something first, and whatever it was busted the windshield, ’cause there was glass inside the car. Then they slammed into a tree, bounced off and crossed the road, and T-boned into a cliff on the other side.” DeGidio used his hands to illustrate what he was saying. “The kid got thrown clear, but the other two went through the windshield. That’s just a guess. I’m really sorry about your friends. If it helps, the EMT said it looked like they went fairly instantaneous. They didn’t suffer.”
“I appreciate that, Frank,” Tommy said.
“Can I ask you what George Gardener was doing driving your car?” the policeman said. “I never seen him driving anything but that beat-up old pickup.”
“They were heading for JFK,” Tommy said. “To catch a flight to England. That’s where the boy is from. I told George to take my car because I was worried his truck wouldn’t make it to Kennedy and back.”
The cop nodded. Tommy knew he hadn’t really answered the question, but Frank let it go.
“You have contact information for the old guy? The Englishman?”
“I can get it for you,” Tommy said. “If you need to, you can bill me for whatever it costs to send his body home.”
“I’ll pass that along. George have any heirs?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Man. It’s gonna be crazy if he doesn’t. All the people who’ll be going after the Gardener Farm. I’ve heard it’s the most valuable piece of land in Westchester.”
“You think it was a deer?”
“Don’t know. The car was burned pretty bad. Whatever it hit got wedged in the grill and burned up with it. I told Ray if he found any filet mignon to save it for me.”
In the kitchen, Quinn was shining a small flashlight in Reese’s eyes and asking him simple questions to make sure he was fully oriented. He turned to give Tommy a thumbs-up.
“He’s good,” Quinn said. “Banged up his knee a little, but nothing serious. It sounds slightly miraculous.”
“Do you remember any of what happened?” Tommy asked the boy.
“It happened pretty fast,” Reese said. “One minute everything was fine, and the next everything was upside down and flying.”
“Did you see anything afterward? Or hear anything?”
“No,” Reese said. “Once I figured out what was happening, I found Dr. Villanegre’s phone—mine burned up in the car—and dialed 911. Then I just waited.”
“Just wondering. We got some odd signatures on the security cameras,” Tommy said. “We’re still trying to figure out what they mean. You didn’t see anything?”
Reese shook his head.
“Should we wake the others?” Quinn asked.
“Let them be,” Tommy said. “It’ll keep. We’re going to need all the sleep we can get.”
There was a spare guestroom for Reese across the hall from Quinn’s room. Tommy showed him where the towels were and where the bathroom was and then left him to his own devices, adding that he’d be up in the kitchen keeping watch if anybody needed a glass of warm milk to help them nod off.
At the monitor in the kitchen, Tommy scanned the surrounding woods again, but he couldn’t see more than thirty or forty yards beyond his property, even when he zoomed. A quick Google search led him to a website and a gadget he believed could solve the problem. He found his credit card and ordered one.
His other problem was less easily solved. He couldn’t believe the accident was, well … an accident. It was true, deer on the roads were a problem in East Salem, but he’d driven here all his life and never hit one. It was too much of a coincidence. George and Julian were dead, but the more he thought about it, the less sense it made that they’d been targeted and more likely that they were collateral damage. He’d believed Reese when the boy had said the people who ran St. Adrian’s Academy were trying to kill him. Dani believed him too. If that was true, then it was more likely that Reese was the target—but they’d failed to take him out.
Why?
Reese had survived the crash. Between the time of the crash and the time Frank DeGidio or the EMTs showed up, Reese had been alone. Vulnerable. What happened during that time? If someone or something had tried to kill him, why didn’t it try again when it had the chance? He wanted to believe the kid, but his story didn’t make sense. Maybe he simply hadn’t finished telling it yet, though Tommy had given him ample opportunity.
He decided he’d see what Dani had to say about it in the morning.
In his room, Reese read from his Bible, reviewing the part in 2 Corinthians that talked about false apostles and deceitful workers and how Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, and how his agents often masquerade as “servants of righteousness.” He’d learned that he couldn’t trust anybody. The people he was most suspicious of were the ones who wanted him to trust them the most, the ones who said they were his friends, or who claimed to be on the same side he was—the ones who claimed to be servants of righteousness.
He hadn’t decided yet about Tommy Gunderson or the others. He’d learned of them when they came to campus to investigate the murder of the girl on Bull’s Rock Hill, and they’d figured out that his classmate, Amos Kasden, had done the killing. Then Amos tried to kill Dani, but Tommy killed Amos before he could hurt her. A simple syllogism—the enemy of evil must be good—suggested that he could let down his guard and take the things Tommy and Dani and the others were saying at face value, except … that could be a trick too. Reese reminded himself that he had to be careful. They called Satan the great deceiver, not the so-so deceiver.
It was safer to keep his intentions to himself and assume everyone was in league with the devil. He would tell them whatever they wanted to hear, play the part of a shy English schoolboy, and when he got the information he was af
ter—he was gone.
4.
December 21
7:23 a.m. EST
Dani sipped her tea—Earl Grey, milk, and two Sweet’N Lows—while Tommy gulped down the last of his protein smoothie, made with milk, three eggs, whey powder, two bananas, and a cup of blueberries from his greenhouse.
She was still taking in the news that Julian and George were dead. She could tell herself they’d lived long fulfilling lives, but it didn’t ease the shock. She understood from the work she’d done as a psychiatrist that grieving moved at its own pace and that it was different for everyone, but right now there wasn’t time to process all the feelings she had—that would just have to wait. She was in the kitchen along with Quinn, who was playing back the footage taken by the security cameras the night before, after Tommy had filled the woods with light from the Helios 9000.
Dani stared at the images on the screen. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“At least,” Quinn said, frowning. “We still can’t get an exact count.”
“And we still don’t know why they’re here,” Tommy added.
“Maybe they’re after Reese?” Dani said.
“Maybe,” Tommy said. “He doesn’t remember anything from last night, but I think that ‘accident’ was an attempt on his life.”
“Not Julian’s?” Dani asked. “Did they know he was a member of the Curatoriat?”
“Probably,” Quinn said. “But they’d had plenty of other opportunities to kill Julian. Better opportunities. I’ve been thinking the same thing as Tommy—Reese is the new addition to the equation. They must be afraid of something, or they’d just storm the walls and take him.”
“Don’t forget what happened the last time they tried to storm the walls,” Tommy added, referring to the angel who’d come to their assistance. He turned to Dani. “You’ve worked with kids. What do you think of Reese?” He paused and looked up at the ceiling, listening. The boy was still asleep.
“He needs to trust us, and he needs to know we trust him,” Dani said. “As Dr. Villanegre pointed out, if Reese were a demon outright, or possessed by one, he wouldn’t be able to hold a Bible in his hand. I just wonder …”
“What?” Tommy asked.
“Well, just that we’re sort of at a crossroads. Between faith and science. We’re talking about something that was true a thousand years ago, or five hundred, but now—you know how in the old vampire movies, Dracula would cringe when Van Helsing held up a cross? Today, you could put Dracula on fluoxetine or citalopram and he might not have a problem with it.”
“And blood thinners as an appetite suppressant,” Tommy said.
“It’s an interesting question,” Quinn said. “Is it possible to create a medication that could enhance morality, for lack of a better word? It seems our friends at St. Adrian’s have been striving to do the opposite. Either way, I doubt pharmaceutically induced morality would be a substitute for the real thing.”
“Do you think Reese is telling us everything?” Tommy asked.
“He’s scared,” Dani said. “We should give him time to adjust. He needs love, and grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate milk.”
“Don’t we all?” Tommy said. “A lot of the time the troubled kids I’ve coached know what they need and try to tell us, but we’re too busy telling them what’s wrong with them for them to get a word in edgewise.” In the time since he’d retired from football, his goal as a trainer and coach for youth sports had been simply to treat everyone fairly and make himself accessible.
“Tommy’s right,” Quinn said. “Reese may also need to flush any medications he might have been on without knowing it from his system. If he was eating from the school cafeteria, there could have been any number of things they were putting in his food. There may be withdrawal symptoms.”
“Whether it’s Reese these things want or not, they’re gone now,” Tommy said, gesturing toward the monitor. “They don’t seem to stick around during the day. We’ll see if they come back tonight.”
Reese entered the kitchen a few minutes later, accompanied by Cassandra and Ruth.
“There’s the man of the hour,” Tommy said. “You hungry? Bacon and eggs?”
“That would be nice,” Reese said. “Did they find out any more about the accident?”
“I’ll get it,” Aunt Ruth said to Tommy, taking a frying pan down from the hook. “Cassandra?”
The actress shook her head. “I’ll just grab some coffee.”
“No one’s called,” Tommy said. Dani had explained to him that often when people tell a lie, they voluntarily bring it up a second time to see if the lie was believed. Was that what Reese had just done?
Tommy and Dani sat down at the kitchen table opposite the boy and watched his eyes light up as Ruth first prepared and then set the food down in front of him. He ate as if he was famished, pushing the last piece of bacon into his mouth, and then set his plate aside and leaned back.
“You good?” Dani asked him as Ruth cleared his plate.
Reese nodded, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I appreciate what you’re all doing for me.”
“Tommy told me what happened last night,” Dani said. “I’m sorry.”
“I wish I hadn’t fallen asleep. Maybe I could be more helpful to you,” Reese said. “I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.”
“Were they able to fill you in on what’s going on?”
“They started to,” Reese said.
Dani moved her chair closer and faced him, her arms uncrossed, her body language open and nonthreatening.
“You need anything?” she asked. “Do you have family you’d like to call?”
“My parents have passed on,” Reese said. “In a car accident. There’s irony for you. They were killed and I was spared.”
“I’m sorry,” Dani said.
“It’s all right,” Reese said. “I’ve had a long time to get over it.”
Dani detected deception, but not mendacity—it was the sort of lie people tell themselves as a way of coping with something unbearable. No one gets over the early loss of their parents. They just find a way to pretend. She let it go.
“So you were raised by relatives?”
“We had a housekeeper in England,” the boy said. He seemed calmer now and didn’t fidget or look away. “Mrs. Carlyle. And Mr. Simons manages the house. You said last night that you think the school is planning something?”
“We do,” Dani said. “We think it has something to do with Linz Pharmazeutika and Udo Bauer, your distinguished alum.”
“The man who owns the painting?”
Dani nodded. “What made you come to us?” she asked. “I mean, how did you know about us?”
“You and Mr. Gunderson came to the school to investigate Amos Kasden. You’re with the police, aren’t you?”
Ruth refilled Dani’s tea and Tommy’s coffee and set a small pitcher of milk on the table.
“Technically, I work for the district attorney. Did you know Amos?”
“Not very well,” Reese said. “No one did, really. I was friends with his roommate, though.”
“A boy from Mexico, if I recall correctly?”
They’d been given access to Amos’s laptop by Dr. Wharton, the school’s sinister headmaster, but a search of the hard drive turned up nothing. They later learned that Amos had used his roommate’s laptop to coordinate his activities.
“Oliver,” Reese said. “He was from Costa Rica. He was my best friend. Even though he’s Man U and I’m City.”
Dani gave Tommy a puzzled look.
“Those are English football teams,” Tommy said. “Soccer rivals. Is City your local?”
“Tottenham,” the boy said, rolling his eyes and sighing heavily. “Don’t ask.”
“So Oliver was your friend?” Dani asked. She added milk to her tea and stirred it.
“After Amos … after he died … ,” Reese said.
Dani couldn’t help but flinch. Amos Kasden had died in her kitchen, having come
there to do to her what he’d done to Julie Leonard. He might have succeeded if Tommy hadn’t come to her rescue. “After Amos died, then what?”
“I couldn’t reach Oliver at all,” Reese said. “He disappeared. I tried all his telephone numbers and e-mail addresses and Facebook pages. Even the secret ones his parents didn’t know about. He doesn’t answer. One day he was in school and the next day he wasn’t. I think they killed him because he knew.”
“What did he know?”
“He found the files Amos had left on his laptop. He knew that Amos was one of the Selected.” The boy looked around the room as if he expected a reaction.
“The Selected?” Tommy asked, looking to Dani for permission to interrupt. She nodded; Tommy continued, “Who are they?”
“A group of boys at the school,” Reese said. “There’s an initiation. Only boys who show special talents are chosen.”
“Boys like Amos Kasden?” Tommy said.
Reese nodded.
“What does being ‘selected’ mean?” Dani asked.
“Well, for one thing, you’re allowed to move into Honors House,” Reese said. “Oliver couldn’t have been happier. He said Amos gave him the creeps.”
“How so?”
“He just wasn’t normal,” Reese said. “Oliver loaned Amos his school scarf once, and when he got it back, he realized Amos had used it to wipe up something he’d spilled. Most people would apologize and offer to have it cleaned, but Amos couldn’t imagine why Oliver was upset.”
“We think Amos might have fallen somewhere on the autism spectrum,” Dani said. “An inability to identify or understand someone else’s feelings. He’d disassociate.”
“That certainly makes sense,” Reese said.
“What happens at Honors House?”
