Pat was shaking a very thick pillow into a fresh pillowcase to add to the one already on the bed. It would take three Abequa pillows to match the size of either of these plush cushions. Maggie lifted one and cradled it in her lap.
“Are you about through?” she snapped at Pat.
Pat ignored her and dropped the pillow at the head of the bed. She shook out a rich comforter and draped it across the fleece sheets.
Maggie knew she was being churlish. She couldn’t help it; she was so tired. Thank God Elena, the nurse, made everyone stop grilling her so she could get some sleep. She looked around the “guestroom,” as Becca called this spacious suite. Maggie had lived in cramped rooms she shared with a dozen cousins, in detox, and in cells in juvie lockups. That about covered it. She’d never slept on a bed as grand as this. She was willing to toss Pat Daka through a window if it meant she could try it out soon.
“So are you their maid too?” The moment the words were out, Maggie was appalled at herself, but she couldn’t take them back. She knew she’d struck home by the way Pat’s face filled with color.
“I work for Joanne Call. I live in a trailer out back.” Pat checked the window on the far wall to be sure it was tightly latched. “You said tonight that Selly’s job is finished, Maggie. And this morning, you told me something happened when we were with her. Are you ready to clarify either of those statements?”
Maggie slumped on the mattress and closed her eyes. This was her punishment for the maid crack. “I don’t know. Don’t ask me what I meant.”
“I’m afraid that’s not good enough.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s happening.” Maggie just wanted to be young. Would she never be allowed to be young? “I know what that crazy old woman believed. I know what my inbred, two-steps-from-the-tepee family believes. And it’s all a bunch of fucking ghost stories used to scare little kids.”
“Then why did you come?”
Maggie squeezed the thick pillow to her chest, angry at the tears filling her eyes, angrier still at her own cowardice. She was more like her yellow father than she would ever admit. “I’m afraid here, Pat.”
After a long moment, Pat sat on the bed next to her. Apparently, she slept in T-shirts, tight white T-shirts. She rested her elbows on her knees, the hard, rounded muscle of her shoulder an inch from Maggie’s. The gold light of the lamp beside the bed bathed her austere features in a muted glow. Maggie breathed in the silence between them, and it calmed her.
“Don’t you feel it?” Maggie asked softly. “In this huge house? It feels exactly like Selly’s room now.”
Pat started, then appraised her with sterner eyes. Maggie saw a war going on behind them, the same war raging in Maggie’s mind. But whatever Pat saw when she looked at her allowed her to reveal a flicker of her own fear. Her own acknowledgement that Maggie was telling the truth. Maybe it was being Native, maybe only the two of them could feel it, but at least Maggie wasn’t alone in this.
There was some weird, odorless pollution here tonight, beneath this vast and splendid roof. Maggie had never set foot in the place, she had no idea what the mansion had been like before, but she doubted it felt like this.
“After my mother ran out,” Maggie said, “I was brought up by that old wretch you met this morning. And I grew up sick with fear, all the time, from her stories. So I got away, as soon as I could. But they needed me too much, see? I kept coming back.”
Maggie turned her head, cursing herself, and swiped a hand across her eyes. She sounded about eight years old. “I came here to warn you guys. Something bad is happening. It’s been happening for a long time, for whole generations. But now it’s going to happen to you, all of you. And honest to God, Pat, that’s all I know. Please, can I just be alone for a while?”
Maggie gave in to her impulse, though she gave in to many of her impulses and lived to regret it. She rested her forehead briefly on the top of that warm, broad shoulder. Then she sat up.
Pat’s face was blurred through the tears in Maggie’s eyes. Pat brushed the flat of her thumb very gently across the high crest of her cheek, lightly, the touch of a feather on her skin, catching a tear. Then she cleared her throat, a muted rattle of a sound, and stood up.
“I’ll let you get some rest. The others will sleep in too. Count on lunch, rather than breakfast.” Pat hesitated at the door and turned back to her. She hitched her thumbs in the belt loops of her jeans and regarded Maggie thoughtfully. “I like all of these women, Maggie. They’re good people. And they were only trying to help your family. They deserve your help now too. Right?”
“Yeah.” A deep sigh escaped Maggie, and she nodded miserably. “You’re right.”
“Okay.” Pat smiled at her, a small sun breaking through the pervasive gloom. “Sleep well, sewa.”
Maggie frowned. “Who?”
Pat looked puzzled. “I’m sorry?”
“Never mind.” Maggie didn’t know who Sewa was and she didn’t care. She was asleep before she folded her legs onto that soft, sweet bed.
Chapter Seven
Jo dreamed.
Her hands were curled beneath her chin, Becca’s mild scent still on her fingers, which usually made for pleasant dreaming. Not so tonight. Jo’s sleeping self tried to make sense of this.
Could that be the faintest trace of blood she smelled, along with the warm familiarity of Becca’s scent? Impossible. Neither of them were menstruating. But in memory—or was Jo hearing it now, in the quiet of their shared bed, that hitch in Becca’s breath that indicated tears?
First, Jo remembered quickly, Becca rarely hid her tears from her, so if there was something wrong, surely she would have said so, before they slept? Their lovemaking had been unusually passionate, quite excitingly so. Jo was sure of this.
But Becca had stopped her. For the first time since their very earliest gropings, when poor Becca was training a forty-year-old virgin in the art of lesbian lovemaking. She had pushed her away, ordered her to stop, and the shame of that swept Jo. She curled more tightly on her side.
Damn it. She couldn’t be too badly hurt. Becca was a sexual free spirit to a degree that had always amazed and intrigued Jo. A little rough foreplay was not all that new to them, nor was harmless domination fantasy. Jo continued to dissect this in an analytic sense, to drown out her humiliation and sorrow. She had hurt Becca.
Her mind turned methodically to her dream, the scarcely remembered and disquieting fragments of it. Then she was…
Following through cold night skies.
Sharp talons stretched wide. Howling gusts billowing out withered cheeks. Her withered cheeks.
Flying fast on wind, soaring, spinning. Rattle-whistle-rattle of wind through bony ribs.
Then even these fragments faded, and Jo slept.
*
“Look, Seattle dykes are a bunch of complete whackos.” Maggie craned over her shoulder and frowned at the far-off yelp of Elena’s laughter. “Are they all in menopause or something?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Pat grumbled. She had no real quarrel with Maggie’s assessment; she’d decided Jo and her friends were crazy as loons too. The loaded bag of sandwiches almost toppled off the bend of her arm, but Maggie’s quick grab saved it. She perched the sack, with the rest of their hastily packed lunch, on the deep snow filling the steel trough.
Why Becca insisted they eat way out here, this far from the house, was beyond Pat. Why they had to tramp through this fresh snowpack, and why in the world four mature women were now sledding down a hill on inner tubes, was more than Pat could fathom on little sleep.
She and Maggie worked side by side in the grudging silence of two servants preparing lunch for their rich mistresses. But it was tough to hold on to that illusion; Becca had all but twisted Pat’s arm off, and Maggie’s too, trying to get them to join in.
“Come on,” she’d taunted, a wicked sparkle in her green eyes. “You guys aren’t going to let us punk you youngsters? Scared of a wee hill like this?”
> “Uh, no, you go on and enjoy yourselves.” Pat eyed the black rubber tube Becca had slung over one shoulder. It was almost as big as Becca. “We’ll set up.”
“Why do these two get to stay down here with the turkey loaf,” Grady complained, “while you drag the rest of us off a cliff?” Her words were muffled by the scarf wrapped around her face. Blinking in the high noon glare coming off the snow, Grady’s spectacles made her look like a more feminine and martyred Harry Potter.
“Enough bitching, Wrenn.” Becca gave Grady a gentle smack on the butt with her foot. “Heft that tube, climb that hill…”
Elena’s laugh was light music as she took Grady’s arm to steady her, and Pat began to wonder if Becca had the right idea. Even Jo cracked a smile as Grady pretended to slip again so she could drape herself over Elena. Jo took the tube Becca carried and slid it gallantly onto her own shoulder, then offered Becca her arm. The crystal beauty of the day, the cloudless blue bowl of sky overhead, began to filter through Pat’s sullen sleepiness.
Judging from the shouts and laughter sounding from the rise behind them, Becca’s enthusiasm had won out; they were obviously having fun up there. A lot of fun. Pat sighed. Maybe she would sneak back here with a tube later, if things were quiet. She hadn’t been tubing in years, and she used to love it.
“Becca’s nobody’s dumb blonde, you know?”
To Pat’s surprise, Maggie seemed to track her thoughts.
“I’m glad she herded us out of that house.” Maggie hugged herself against the brisk chill and leaned back against the trough. “It’s really pretty out here today. Reminds me of the best of home.”
A dimple appeared in Maggie’s cheek, a glimpse of the still-girlish sweetness she couldn’t always hide. To Pat’s relief, she seemed none the worse for her rough tackling the night before, or at least not visibly bruised. The lines of Maggie’s body were supple and relaxed as she lounged against the trough, sensual even in the rare moments she wasn’t trying to project sensuality. Watching her, Pat felt a small warmth pulse at the crest of her shoulder, where Maggie’s forehead had rested so briefly the night before.
The silence between them stretched long, but it was the almost pleasant, tingling silence Pat remembered from intense high school flirtations. It had been that long, that many years since she felt such pure attraction to another woman. She had never experienced a human connection that seemed almost cellular, bred in the bone, and it frankly scared her spitless.
Low, whooping laughter echoed close by, and Pat turned to see two dark tubes stuffed with four women sliding toward them at precarious speed. It might have been a race, and if so, Becca and Jo were winning, the tube they rode gliding over the snow like a hockey puck across glazed ice.
Pat stared at Jo’s face, and two thoughts hit her in the same moment. The first was a memory—the only other time she had ever seen Jo look happy. Pat had been four years old, Jo in her early twenties. There was an old photograph of the two of them sledding down this same hill, a bundled little Pat cradled in Jo’s lap, her long arms around her. The cheap camera caught Pat’s delighted toddler grin, and this same expression on Jo’s face—unguarded. Purely happy.
Pat’s second thought brought unashamed tears to her eyes. Jo had found Becca, and Becca brought Jo that happiness now. Not just a rare, adrenaline-charged moment of it, but maybe for the rest of her difficult life. Pat had never dared hope for this, that Jo would escape her loneliness, and the gentleness and protectiveness of her arms around Becca told her she had. The truth of it sank in, and Pat grinned at them broadly and rested one boot on their tube as it slowed to a stop at her feet.
Then she was startled by a truly amazing stream of curses ringing through the air. They were in Spanish, but there was no doubt they were profane, and they were gushing from Elena in an unbroken howl. She had toppled onto her back in Grady’s lap, her boots flapping in the air, and their tube was still going great guns. Grady couldn’t stop laughing long enough to help her screaming wife; she was too busy holding them both on the streaking tube.
Pat started to laugh too, until she saw the trajectory the tube was taking, and she lunged for Maggie a second too late. The side of the tube smacked heavily into her ankles and Maggie went airborne, then crashed into a snowbank on her back.
“Oh, gosh!” Grady steadied Elena and peered over at Maggie anxiously as their tube spun to a halt. “Maggie! Sorry about that. You all right?”
“What the fuckity-fuck is it with you people?” Maggie screamed from the snowbank. “This is twice I’ve been knocked on my ass since I met you!”
Pat chuckled and crunched her way over to her, waving reassurance to the others. At least Maggie had chosen a deep bank. She was pretty well buried. Pat grasped one flailing hand and pulled carefully, and a sputtering Maggie emerged, white flakes showering from her dark hair. Maggie was laughing, that distinctive cackle that tickled Pat as she helped her step free of the slush. She realized she had done this before, more than once, helped this laughing woman to her feet after a fall in the snow. A mild wave of dizziness swept Pat, and for the space of a second, Maggie’s face was more angular, her hair darker and down to her waist. Then she was Maggie again. Pat shook her head hard to clear the static from her thoughts.
“You let them beat us, Grady!” Elena’s cursing had stilled while they waited to see if Maggie was okay, but now it resumed, a colorful muttering as Grady hoisted her up. “My mamá is right about you, you useless gringa. I want a divorce now!”
“We creamed you guys good, Elena. Not even close.” Becca heaved out of the center of the tube with a helpful push from Jo. Her cheeks were flushed with high color, and all of them looked more lively than they had in the past two days.
Grady unsnapped the breast pocket of her windbreaker and took out a silver ring, the duplicate of the one she wore, and handed it to Elena. Elena lifted it to her lips before slipping it on her own finger. Apparently, Elena entrusted her ring to Grady before they embarked on dangerous quests like sled runs, and accepting its return must signal her grudging forgiveness for their defeat. She gave Grady’s cheek a quick smacking kiss.
“Perhaps we should turn to business now.” Jo sounded almost reluctant, but she was eyeing the spread of food hungrily.
“Alas, perhaps you’re right.” Becca snapped out a blanket and spread it over the snow by the trough. “Here, this’ll soak through, but we’ll be dry long enough to eat. Man, you sure were scared up there, Elena. You shrieked like a little baby girl. Don’t they have any hills at all in New Mexico?”
“We live in the desert, pendeja. Not a lot of snow or hills there.” Elena settled cheerfully on the blanket next to Becca and blew on her hands to warm them. “We’re very sorry that Becca and Jo plowed you down like that, Maggie.”
“Honey, I believe we’re the ones who did that.” Grady brushed some snow off Maggie’s shoulder apologetically. “It was an accident.”
“Yes, that was you.” Maggie slapped Grady’s hand away playfully. “You and Elena take the turkey loaf sandwiches. I think I spit in both of them, but it was an accident.”
Becca handed around sandwiches, smiling, but Pat saw her shoulders slump in apparent relief at shedding her cheerleading role. She understood that Becca had been working hard this morning at her trade, some kind of social work. She had brought them together as a cohesive group, laughing now under a harmless blue sky, and last night Pat would have thought such a feat was impossible. But Becca was obviously tired. There were shadows beneath her eyes.
Jo didn’t seem to notice Becca’s weariness, or anything other than the food before her. She dug in with a joyless determination, chewing silently, her eyes lowered.
Grady took the lead with the natural authority that must come easily to a college professor. She didn’t sound superior as she spoke to Maggie, though. She just sounded kind. “Maggie, I want to tell you again I’m real sorry about Selly’s death. That must have been a bad shock.”
“And you found her, c
hica?” Elena asked the question gently, and Pat winced, imagining that gruesome discovery.
Maggie shrugged. “Of course I found her. Who else would find her? I’m the one who cut her down too.” She started to say more, then just shrugged again and bit deeply into an apple.
Elena rested her hand on Maggie’s hair. She was only a few years older than Maggie, but in that brief moment she was her mother, the mother she should have had.
“We’ll get you home as soon as we can today,” Grady said. “You probably want to be with your family.”
“Huh, there’s no home here,” Maggie snorted. “My family is driving those ramshackle heaps back to Minnesota right now. Those stinking little hovels up the road are deserted. There’s nothing there except the body of an old woman with a broken neck, wrapped in a blanket because the ground’s too frozen to dig…”
Maggie trailed off, and sat still beneath Elena’s touch caressing her hair.
“You’ve been through a lot.” Grady was quiet for a moment. “Pat can help you make arrangements for Selly, Maggie. We’ll help all we can.”
“Of course,” Pat murmured.
“I keep wanting to thank you, and I’m not even sure why.” Grady rested her elbow on her knee. “You trekked all the way out here last night in the middle of a blizzard. You took a big risk, because you wanted to warn us that we’re in danger. Maggie…what danger?”
Maggie sighed. Pat watched the child drain out of her, and the woman sat straighter. “Selly told you ‘what danger,’ yesterday. The Spirit of the Lonely Places. The Cannibal Beast.”
They waited. Jo ate stolidly, but Pat and the others had lost interest in lunch.
“Selly told you that one of our ancestors was possessed by the Windigo,” Maggie continued. “Like, two hundred years ago. This guy killed and ate his wife, but their baby lived to grow up and spawn its own kids. Kids like those charming brats who threw snowballs at her yesterday.” Maggie jutted her chin at Jo. “My whole sorry family has been convinced forever that we’re cursed. That the Windigo will come back someday to finish the job on us, because of that baby who lived. Selly made us run all the way out here to escape it. The Windigo has a heart of ice, she told us, and it doesn’t like being robbed of a kill.”
Windigo Thrall Page 9
