by L. L. Muir
He stepped forward and took Skye’s hand and someone tisked.
“Come on, Skye. Let’s get out of here.” Over his shoulder he called, “Sorry, to have bothered you.”
Thankfully, Skye didn’t resist. In fact, if he’d have gotten out of her way, she probably would have beaten him to the front door. She seemed genuinely frightened, and even if she had always believed she had nothing to fear, that Somerled woman had gotten to her too. The fact that Skye should be able to trust these people, but didn’t, creeped Jamison out big time.
Finally they were out the door and headed across the lawn, but they froze in unison.
The car was gone.
With all the Stephen King movies he’d seen, Jamison thought the smartest thing to do would be to run like hell. Screw the car. Knowing how these people could manipulate the police, he’d never see his old beater again, no matter what he reported; he had the feeling Lanny’s suggestions, in the mind of the local sheriff, would drown out Skye’s any day.
His cell vibrated. Did he dare look down long enough to read it?
He and Skye stood back to back. No Somerleds in sight. He opened the message and read it out loud.
“Daddy’s asking for u. Hard time w/ treatment. Are you far?” His stomach lurched.
Skye squeezed his hand. “Oh, I shouldn’t have left, or brought you with me. And now there’s no car.”
Jamison couldn’t fall apart. He needed to get home. He’d explain to these people that he had no time for their Twilight Zone games. Leaving Skye behind wasn’t an option, he didn’t care if they were Somerleds or a farm full of harmless Amish. He wouldn’t leave without her. Besides, Granddad would be as happy to see Skye as he would to see Jamison.
“Skye?”
“Yeah?”
“Is there any way you can, um, like, transport yourself to the hospital from here?”
She snorted. “No. No beam-me-up-Scotty-tricks up my sleeve. And even if I could, I wouldn’t just leave you here.”
“It’s not like they’re dangerous, though. Right?”
“Who knows? They might try to take your memories, drop you on a corner somewhere.”
“Not very Christian.”
“Funny.” She looked up at the house. “I have no idea what their primary duties are. I can’t guess what they can or can’t do. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t kill you. Does that make you feel better?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I thought that Lanny woman might have been considering it when I wouldn’t get out of her kitchen.”
His phone vibrated again.
Jamie, can you come?
He typed out his reply, sick that he couldn’t tell his mom what she wanted to hear.
Sorry mom. We’re hours away. Tell him we’ll be there by morning.
Jamison prayed it was true.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As they walked to the drive leading around the South end of the house, he didn’t look at Skye, but held her close to his side, to reassure them both that neither was alone. For Granddad’s and Skye’s sake, today he would fear and fight.
A large white barn was set far back from the house, and like the house, was built upon its own rise. Two dual-wheeled pickups were backed up to the open doors and a line of men, all dressed in white, led from each truck into the wide opening. While he and Skye made their way up the rise, large sacks were passed down the line into the building.
Between sacks, the men looked and pointed, but the work continued.
One man, standing in the rear of a truck, straightened as they approached.
“You’re Skye.” The man smiled warmly and Jamison was almost tempted to relax, but not quite.
“Yes.” Skye looked up, wary.
“I’m Buchanan. I worked with Marcus each fall.” He looked over at Jamison and frowned.
“I’m Jamison Shaw.”
The man’s frown changed from displeased, to confused. “Kenneth’s grandson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he still among us?”
Jamison thought the guy could have been a little more tactful, but he was glad the man knew his granddad; it would be easier now to convince them to give them back their car and let them go.
“Not for long, sir. We need to get back right away. He’s asking for us.” Jamison held up his phone as proof.
A young Somerled, probably around their own age, or supposed to appear their own age, came around the truck. “Here you go, Uncle Bu.” He tossed a set of keys to Buchanan and merged into the line of men. Jamison’s red carabiner hung with the keys.
“I’m sorry, son. It’s not for me to say. You’ll have to speak with our leader. Or at least Skye will.” He turned toward the young kid. “Shawn, show Skye to the...library.” To Jamison he said, “Take the boy’s place, Jamison. Let’s see if you’re half the man your grandfather thought you would be.”
Jamison looked at Skye. She seemed to have come to the same conclusion; if they were going to get out of there, they’d have to play the game. Even Buchanan couldn’t help them. And they had to think of Granddad.
“I’ll be fine, Jamie. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I told my mom to tell Granddad that we’d be to the hospital by morning.” He said that more like an announcement, to anyone who was listening, or might give a rat’s ass.
He headed toward the back of the truck and passed Shawn. He suspected, since Shawn was technically called of God to do something or other, it was probably his own shoulder that stretched out to knock into Shawn’s. Jamison acted as if he’d felt nothing. Shawn laughed, then laughed more when he put his arm around Skye’s shoulder to lead her away.
Jamison was amazed at his own reaction. Fear and fight morphed into simply, fight, but he wouldn’t. And as he took his place in the gap left by the too-handsome-to-be-believable teen angel, fight morphed into don’t drop the freaking bag and embarrass your granddad.
Fear didn’t return for an entire minute, until he heard a familiar laugh sneak out the back door as Skye was led inside.
“Buchanan?”
“Yes, son?”
“I don’t suppose your leader is a woman?”
“Yes, son.”
***
Skye was petrified as Shawn led her down a long hall toward the sound of Lanny's laughter.
“Oh, don't worry, cousin. She can't harm you, can she?”
Skye stopped and looked deep into the boy's eyes. “I don't know. Can she?”
He just laughed and pulled her along.
“I guess I should warn you, though. More than a few of our cousins have been drawn here and not returned to their own communities.”
“You mean they chose to stay?”
“I didn't say that, now, did I?”
He slapped her on the back and the momentum pushed her into a large white room. When she spun around, Shawn was gone and the door was closing. She reached for a handle, but there wasn't one.
“Hey!” She beat on the door, then pushed her ear flat against it. Shawn's laughter diminished quickly. Joking. He was joking. He had to be.
Skye took off her shoes out of habit. The carpet was white enough to be painful and she wasn't going to be the one to soil it. It was so deep and thick her feet bounced, as if she were walking on tiny fleece springs.
Even the air was...soft. Creamy wallpaper with velvet swirls covered the walls. Fine chairs with oval backs were upholstered in silk stripes, white on white. Their wood bases were intricately carved, the white paint thick, shiny and flawless. Mirrors on the walls reflected other mirrors, their beveled edges broadcasting and multiplying the sunlight filtered through endless layers of sheer fabric that covered floor-to-ceiling windows. The curtains were raw silk and their natural flaws...uniform.
A desk the size of a bed spread along the final wall. The legs matched the smaller chairs, the top was white and off-white granite with golden flecks winking from its depths. Its surface reflected the chandelier, a work of art; egg-sized crysta
ls, the shape of fleur de lis, were suspended in the pattern of a giant chrysanthemum, and the spaces between them were filled with the sharp reflections of a million prisms.
It would have been Heaven itself if not for the woman seated behind the desk in a tall wing-backed chair of white leather. She'd changed into formal robes, much like Lucas’s, and waited patiently while Skye took her fill of the room.
Couldn't be done.
Skye closed her eyes and committed it all to a memory she hoped she would be able to keep. The image couldn't do the room justice, even while she stood in the center of it.
“Skye.”
“Ma'am?”
“Sit.”
Skye chose the seat away from the door.
“Not paranoid, surely.”
“Not trusting, ma'am, of a people who would steal someone's car.”
“Steal? I beg your pardon! You know better—”
“Do I? I'm not sure I know much of anything lately. Not much could surprise me now.”
Skye could feel the woman probing at her memories of the last few days. Having never felt the need to shield her thoughts before, she was helpless to stop her.
“I see. And the explosives?”
Skye was surprised at the first question, then like a gift dropped into her lap, she suddenly knew who—or what—she was sitting across the desk from. Lanny was a Primary! Skye would’ve never imagined it, so the information must have been offered by the Primary herself.
Skye had heard of them, of course, and had even hoped that one day her path would cross one. When she'd first met Lori Shaw she'd been reminded that there were females whose sole purpose in life, and happiness, revolved around the safety and happiness of others.
And this abrupt woman was one of them. She didn't lead these Somerleds, she cared for them.
“I care for all, missy. What about the explosives?” Lanny's voice wasn't as gruff as it might have been, had they been anywhere else in the house. But this was not a room for gruffness.
“It was a bluff. There were antique dynamite boxes in his grandfather’s basement. He never touched them.”
Lanny nodded and closed her eyes, so Skye took another drink of the room.
Lucas had such a “library” at home, passed down from Marcus, of course. There was no doubt about it; the room at home had been designed by a man, this one had the charm and taste of a woman—not just a woman, but a Primary. This Place of Perfection made the one at home less perfect, but both rooms were intended for solemn matters, and a place to sooth—
“The soul.” Lanny cleared her throat.
Skye supposed she should stop thinking so the woman wouldn't have so much to read.
“All right, Skye. It's time to ask what you've come to ask.”
“Sounds like you already know my question.”
“Ah, but do you?”
“I thought I did.”
“Give it a try, then. I can’t ask it for you.”
“Okay. You must already know what Lucas and Jonathan told me, that they are not allowed to interfere, or give me council.”
“I am aware.”
“My question is, do you know of this happening to anyone else? They couldn't tell me.”
“Yes, it has happened to others. But you must look closer.”
“Closer at what?
“At what you just said.”
“I asked if it happened to others.”
“And...”
“And...I don't understand.”
“Remember what you said after the question.”
Skye listened again to her own memory.
“I said, ‘They couldn't tell me.’”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Ah, you see? You've found your question.”
It wasn't a new question. Skye had wondered it since the second Jonathan had walked away.
“Why can't they tell me anything? So they don't influence me?”
“You’ve missed the point, child. When you heard they couldn't help you, you found an alternative.”
Holy cow. “I came looking for you.”
“Ta da. You're smarter than I thought.”
“Okay, so why did I need to come here and get Jamison's car stolen—I mean relocated—and keep us from getting back to his grandfather?”
“Because you needed to know what I know. Do you think The Father doesn't have a plan for everything? And every...one?”
“You're saying Lucas and Jonathan were told not to interfere just so I would come here, that for some reason, The Father wants me to hear something from you?”
“That's it exactly.”
“Why would I need—”
“Indeed. Why would you need? But that's just it. You do. You...need.” Lanny leaned forward and pulled Skye’s hand across the glassy expanse. “You are also important in the scheme of things, Skye Somerled.”
Skye snorted, then was ashamed for such irreverent behavior in the Place of Perfection.
“My dear, you have a choice to make. And that young man, that dog to your cat, has much to do with it, I think.”
“Jamison?”
“Jamison.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jamison passed on the last bag of feed and unlike the rest, who just walked off to another task, he stretched back and forth and swung his arms like windmills to make sure everything would work right again. Those suckers were heavy.
Buchanan walked up behind him and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Thanks for your help, son.”
Jamison was glad he hadn't stumbled beneath the friendly blow.
“No problem.” He looked back at the house. “Doesn't look like she's done yet, what else you got?”
Buchanan laughed. “Come on.”
Jamison followed him like a puppy, but what else could he do? He wouldn't leave without Skye and if he was left alone to worry about her, he'd end up breaking down the door and pissing off that female bull, Lanny. Better to distract himself with a bit of mindless work.
Two hours later, Jamison was standing in waders, butt-deep in a pit filled with things much filthier than mud, helping bring a disgusting and alien blob into the world that he was promised would turn into a calf once it was freed from the disgusting parts. A cow had become mired in a ditch and had begun calving. Thanks to some watchful Somerleds, they'd stopped her from lying down in the muddy water and eventually drowning herself and her offspring. With three men to each side of her and a sling under her belly, she'd been forced to calve standing up, with Buchanan and Jamison standing at the ready, like a couple of big league catchers.
Jamison got the nose end. Buchanan bravely wrapped his arms around the middle. Together they got Junior up out of the ditch and laid him on the grass where Buchanan took over. Jamison considerately walked away from the crowd before he puked.
The unhappy mother was exhausted and the men panicked when she started going down. The men holding the wide sling couldn't prevent it, nor could the men at her sides; her legs simply gave out.
A lone man grimaced as he held her head above the water line, but by the complaints of the cow, it didn't look as if she would put up with that for long. Behind him, others frantically scooped water and dumped it above, but the water just kept coming.
Jamison had an idea.
“Hold her up. Give me just a minute!” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran toward a pile of rubble at the edge of the field, about fifty yards from the chaos. He'd hauled something odd to that pile an hour before, and he'd only remembered it because it had been so out of place there, in the middle of a green field.
It was heavy and he probably looked pretty dumb waddling back with his knees bent and that thing on his head.
Shawn grinned at him and came to assist. Together they plunged the hood of a Volkswagen Bug into the ditch just ahead of the cow like a giant blue dam, embedding it in the soft mud beneath the water.
At first, he didn't think it had worked, but after the six l
arge men crawled out from around the cow's middle, the water level dropped quickly and the man holding the animal's head lowered it to the ground.
Its eyes closed.
After the water had trickled away, four men jumped back in the ditch and started digging around the cow's feet, but to Jamison it appeared they were only rearranging the mud.
The animal's side barely rose and fell.
“She's not bleeding, that I can tell.” Buchanan squatted behind her and patted her side. “All right, Flossie. It's all right now.”
Jamison wondered if cows could understand such things, if coming from a Somerled, of course.
Still, her eyes remained closed. She paused a second between breaths. Jamison did the same.
Behind the wall of men standing along the bank came Junior’s pitiful wail.
The wall turned to see the calf squirming around on the grass, complaining like a spoiled and pissed off brat.
The men scattered as a determined, muddy cow pulled herself up out of the ditch—with very little help from behind—and came to stand over her calf.
“Morris? We're going to need a lot of gravel to line this ditch.” Buchanan frowned at the deep valley of mud. “I guess she's not Dutch.”
“Done.” A short man walked toward the barn.
“Jamison?”
Jamison started. “Yes, sir?”
“Your grandfather would be proud. Quick thinking.”
“Inspired,” someone shouted, and the rest of them laughed.
“Sir?”
“What?”
“What did you mean, she's not Dutch?”
Buchanan smiled. “In Holland, cows won't cross water, so they don't use fences; they just dig small ditches and keep them full. The cows stay in their fields.” He reached between his hip waders and pants and pulled out a familiar key ring, then tossed it over.
“What? All I had to do was save a cow?” Jamison grinned.
“Nah. Skye's ready to go. I'd wash real good before you let her see you.”
***
“Unbelievable.” Jamison assumed he was in mild shock, since he'd said it half a dozen times and he and Skye hadn’t gone yet a mile from the ranch house. An army in white had taken great pleasure in washing him down, with a hose powerful enough to clear dried mud from a four-by-four in ten seconds flat. Only after a few Somerleds had taken their turn and Shawn was reaching for the sprayer did Jamison protest. Then someone had had the brilliant, although belated idea that Jamison be given clean clothes to wear home.
