“We’re here.”
I wasn’t dozing, not really, but the voice was jarring nonetheless. Too many winding Georgia roads, too much hot sun through the windows. I last remembered a spill of rotten fruit along an orchard we’d passed. Red, gold, and brown, the peaches had rolled free of a wicker basket. As pictures went, it was sad in a way, wistful, but it was beautiful, too.
“Where’s here?” I muttered, rubbing tired eyes. “The hole in the ground?”
“Yes, Carlson Caverns. Sawney Beane’s American summer home.” Hector stared through the windshield, and his mouth twitched minutely, which I’d come to recognize as his version of a scowl. “Tourists. Look at all the tourists.”
It was more than a few. There were dozens of people milling about the gravel parking lot in front of the path that, per the huge sign, led to the cavern.
“What are you, a vacation Grinch?” I yawned. “And who the hell is Sawney Beane?” The name actually sounded vaguely familiar, but I was tired and starving and not in the mood to chase the thought around my weary brain.
He checked his watch, decided the tourists weren’t going to dematerialize to suit him, and turned to address my question. “He was head of a legendary family of cannibals. The Beane clan supposedly lived in a Scottish cave in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Sawney and his highly incestuous family killed thousands of innocent travelers, dragged their bodies back to their cave, hung them on hooks, and ate them.” His pale eyes considered me. “Did I already say supposedly?”
“Yeah, you did.”
Note to self: avoid Scotland. Avoid it like the fucking plague. The hell with supposedly; better safe than sorry was my rule.
“You’re not telling me this place is the equivalent? Because, Allgood, guess what? I really don’t want to hear that.” I made no move to get out of the car, although I sincerely doubted that Georgian cannibals had once roamed the area. I was simply tired and cranky as hell. Rubbing dry, tired eyes, I grabbed the last folder and opened it. After scanning the two pages, I thought about fighting the impulse to roll my eyes. I didn’t fight it long or hard. “I can’t believe we dragged our asses all the way here for this crap. It’s right up there with the Headless Horseman or, hell, the Great Pumpkin.”
“I never figured you for a Charlie Brown fan, Jackson.”
“Oh, shut up, would ya?” I complained, my drawl thicker with weariness. “Bottom line is you don’t need a psychic to vet this one. It’s pure bullshit. Historical bullshit, maybe, but still bullshit. Not to mention a total waste of my time.” As the entire damn day had been. “I’m beat.” I pulled the lever on the side of the seat and dropped it into the reclining position. “Bring me back a rock. I’ll read it, and then we can finally grab some lunch.”
A large hand reached across me, opened the door, and gave me a firm shove out. I didn’t fall on my ass; the force of the push had been very carefully calculated on Hector’s part in consideration of the fact that I’d just that morning crawled out of a hospital bed. The effort didn’t stop me from giving him a poisonous glare.
“Is that your way of saying ‘or we could walk to the cave’?”
“You are a psychic, aren’t you?” Hector closed his door, checked his watch again, and added, “Let’s go buy a ticket.”
The tickets were ten bucks apiece. Ten bucks to see a muddy, frigid hole in the ground. Needless to say, I didn’t pay. There was a tour guide, potbellied in shorts, a Carlson Caverns T-shirt, and tube socks. With a booming voice that issued out of a gingery beard, he led the way into the cave. “Carlson Caverns was first discovered in 1771 by an expedition led by …”
I tuned him out. I wasn’t particularly interested in who had been the first unfortunate bastard to trip and fall through the cave entrance while screaming like a banshee. I was interested in lunch, sleep, a whole lot less of Hector, and that was it. And sun … sun would be good. Forget that I’d just been cursing the hot, sweaty grip of it. Standing in a nature-formed grave freezing my ass off made me appreciate a heat that baked you to the bones. Sighing, I shifted from foot to foot and folded my arms against the chill. A little boy standing at his mother’s side looked over at me. About seven, with a baseball cap and a backpack, he grinned cheerfully. An all-American boy, missing front tooth, freckles, skinned knee—and then he flipped me off.
All-American, all right.
Snorting, I looked over at Hector. “I’m starving. Let’s get this over with.”
I stripped off a glove, bent down, and picked up a rock. Freezing. Bored. Paid ten bucks for this? Tourist thoughts, and unsurprising ones at that. I dropped it, took a few steps, and picked up another one. Same thing. I wandered a little farther out toward a side tunnel off the main cavern. Mr. Carlson himself was finally getting to the legend as I walked.
“And in 1864, a Confederate Army deserter holed up here to hide from his unit. Hart Renfrow. Apparently, ole Hart wasn’t right in the head to begin with, because he lived in this Georgia tomb for seven years, just sure as can be that his fellow soldiers were still looking for him, waiting to string him up. And when winters got hard and game was scarce …” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guide’s mock leer highlighted by a flashlight under the chin. Je-sus. I was glad the ten bucks hadn’t come out of my pocket.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, when game was scarce, he ate people.” His voice sank to a horrified whisper. “Crept over to the outskirts of Carlson City and stole them. Women and children, mainly, but the occasional man. In those days, they thought bears or wolves had gotten the missing, but you and I and Hart Renfrow, we know better.”
He went on, but I’d heard more than enough. What a colossal waste of time. Hector had followed me, and I glared at him over my shoulder as I reached for the stone wall of the tunnel for the last check I was going to bother to make.
“Milk shake and fries, you got it? And I want a huge-ass hot fudge sund—”
The world went away. This world. But there were always other worlds, weren’t there? This one had the stench of boiling flesh hovering on a winter chill, half-skinned naked women hanging from racks lashed together from tree limbs, and bones littering the floor to crunch with every step. Yes, every slow and sure step you took as you prowled closer to the five-year-old girl hiding under her mother’s body. She was screaming for her daddy over and over and over. Screaming and screaming and—
The sun.
I blinked. Blue sky and sun and a warmth that could melt any chill, even that of Carlson Caverns, an atypically bitter Georgia winter, and Hart Renfrow.
“Hunhh,” I mumbled less than coherently. There was more heat under me, intense and so goddamn wonderful I could’ve lain on top of it for the rest of my damn life.
“You with me, Jackson?”
I turned my head slowly to take in Hector’s wary expression. Was I with him? Was I here? Good question.
“She wanted her daddy,” I said blankly as I looked away back to the sky. “Renfrow thought she tasted good. Tender. Went way too fast, though. The little ones always do … always did.” It was like a nightmare now that contact was broken, but not a fresh one—an old one from years and years past. Thank God, except I’d never thank anyone who’d made me see what I had seen.
I sat up to see that I’d been lying on the hood of Hector’s car, just your average overloaded psychic taking in the sun.
Hector wasn’t looking wary any longer, he was looking flat-out worried as hell. Worried about my mental health or about my ability to do the job—it didn’t matter which. In the end, they were one and the same.
“Get a T-shirt, Allgood.” I rubbed my mouth, hoping there was no drool. “What you’re looking for doesn’t get more righteous than this.” Not when you were trolling for massacres, serial killings, and explosions of violence.
“Yes, the eyes rolling back in your head and the Exorcist whispering before I dragged you out gave that away.” He held out a hand to help me down. My glove had been replaced, but I still ignored the offer
and slid down on my own. My knees wobbled a bit as I hit the ground, but I locked them in place and managed to stay upright.
“Whispering?” I repeated cautiously. “Me? What was I saying?”
He pulled the car keys from his pocket and looked at them with far more focus than they required. “Little girl.” He shook his head and squared his shoulders. “You were saying, little girl. Come here, little girl. Come here, sugar and spice and everything nice. Come here. And you sounded … hungry.”
I looked back toward the entrance of the cave, past the curious stares of tourists waiting for the next tour, past cars, and beyond the modern world. “He was,” I said simply. “Always hungry. No matter how much he ate, how many he ate. He was always hungry.” I turned my back to it, physically and mentally, to grimace faintly. “Me, on the other hand, I think we can forget lunch.”
As it turned out, my body didn’t agree with that notion. I’d been working it steadily today, and psychic exertion was considerably more draining than the physical kind. By the time we reached the diner, I was sweating buckets, and it wasn’t from the heat. Clammy and soaked with cold sweat, I knew my blood sugar had taken a serious dive, and I ripped into the complimentary crackers the second we hit the table. Annie’s Big Fat Fannie was a barbecue joint, but there was enough in the way of side orders there for a vegetarian to get by. Potato salad, macaroni salad, cole slaw, a cheese sandwich, fried biscuits with apple butter, strawberry-rhubarb pie, and pint jars of sweet tea garnished with a frozen slice of peach. As for Annie’s generous fannie, the woman was damn proud of it. Good for her.
She was a whirlwind in the tiny restaurant, bustling from table to table in jeans and a sparkly halter top about thirty years too young for her. She treated the three waitresses like daughters, scolding and praising in one breath. Greeting regulars with hoots of joy and hugs and greeting strangers just the same, she was nothing but grins and sass and good heart. One regular in dirty clothes with a permanent alcohol glaze in his eye was given free food and a hug the same as everyone else. The world needed more Annies.
“You boys doing okay?” She beamed as she wrapped an arm around Hector’s shoulders and squeezed before leaning on the edge of the table. Waist-length platinum-blond hair was teased into a stiff, hairspray-coated, billowing cloud, turning her into a Rapunzel of the Bible Belt. As for her fannie, I wouldn’t say it was fat, but if you were an ass man, there was more than enough to catch your eye. Earlier, I’d seen her catch a few country boys gawking from the counter. She’d turned to slap it briskly in their direction. She’d laughed. “Double helpings, boys, and more than pups the likes of you can handle.”
“Doing good, Miss Annie,” I said politely, sliding a look toward Hector as I wondered how to insinuate that he was a fan of the fannie. From the stone-faced glare I received in return, it was plain to see that he was doing a little mind reading of his own. Letting the opportunity at humiliation go, I added, “Best fried biscuits in Georgia.”
“Damn straight there.” She beamed even brighter behind thick pancake makeup and bright green eye shadow. And before I could anticipate it, she wrapped her hand around my bare wrist as it rested on the table. “What’s with the gloves, cutie-pie? You look like O. J. Simpson.”
“Um. Poison ivy.” I gave her a plastic smile. “Nasty case. Don’t want to give it to anybody.”
“You poor thing. You have the calamine? Nothing works like the calamine, except for an oatmeal bath.” She let go of my wrist to give me the same hug she’d given Hector. “You be sure to do that tonight before bed. Coat up good with oatmeal. It’ll do right by you, you’ll see.” And then she was gone, and my hand flashed out to yank Hector’s plate of barbecue away before he could take a bite.
“What are you doing?” he asked, baffled, already reaching out to pull it back.
“You don’t want to eat it,” I said darkly. “Trust me.”
He let his hand drop and said cautiously, “Do I even want to know why?”
“Probably not.” Annie was over at the counter with an arm around each of those blushing boys and laughing like a loon. It seemed that our good-hearted hostess didn’t like the dogs that ran in the neighborhood. Loud, digging in the garbage, giving those stupid dog grins when she chased them with a broom. No, Miss Annie didn’t like that at all. And if the little shits were stupid enough to come up to you when one hand was filled with food and the other held your old butcher knife, well, it couldn’t be a sin to do what had to be done, right? Worthless creatures. Even God made a mistake once in a while. And waste not, want not.
“Let’s just say Miss Annie is the reason they don’t need an animal shelter in these parts.”
I made my way methodically through the side orders in front of me, only because I doubted I would’ve been able to get up from the table under my own power if I hadn’t. My appetite had taken some serious blows today, no way around it.
Hector, meanwhile, let it alone—the situation, the barbecue, and everything else on his plate—as he turned green. Normal people. They were so damn lucky. I remembered what it was like before I was fourteen, before Tess’s shoe. Ignorance was bliss—one of the oldest clichés around, and it had every right to be. Nothing was more true. Finally, Hector chanced one biscuit, saying wearily, “We’re done for the day. And tomorrow …” He turned his glass jar of tea one way, then the other. “Tomorrow, if our calculations are correct, Charlie will try to come through, somewhere.”
I wondered if it was still Charlie, the way he had been. Intelligence, emotion, memory—was that what was trying to return home, or was it a blind amorphous urge and nothing more? Just a leftover instinct with nothing behind it?
“How will that go?” I asked with reluctant curiosity.
“We’ll have teams at the most logical locations. The ones authenticated and with the highest violence quotient. The higher the latter, the more extensive the ‘fraying.’ The teams will move in if a violence cycle begins to repeat and, hopefully, prevent any further deaths. You’ll have a few of Charlie’s things and see if you can pinpoint it when he does come through. If you can get the location the moment he appears, that team can move in immediately, and we can rush the equipment in.” He exhaled, one corner of his mouth twisting. “Piece of cake, right?”
Since he didn’t believe it, either, I wasn’t going to make the effort. “Why doesn’t every team have its own Charlie-busting device? It’d make things a helluva lot easier.”
“It cost three and a half million to build the one we have, and we’re not exactly high on any politician’s funding list.”
Good reason.
• • •
Back at headquarters … I’d always wanted to say that as a kid. That’s the way it had always gone in the superhero cartoons or the buddy cop shows. Back at headquarters was where you figured out what you’d learned, regrouped, then went out to kick ass.
At that moment, I couldn’t have kicked anyone’s ass unless they were under four and in the middle of naptime. I eased onto the narrow bed, bit back a groan, and lay back to stare at the ceiling. Meleah had said that I’d have residual muscle soreness from the seizure. She knew her stuff, unfortunately, Meleah did. Meleah, not Dr. Guerrera … and that’s why I ignored Hector’s offer.
“You can stay in the infirmary, Jackson,” he repeated. “There’s plenty of empty beds, not to mention painkillers and muscle relaxants at your fingertips.”
When you move like an eighty-year-old man, apparently people will notice. And while the infirmary was a slightly nicer cage, it was still a cage. I could deal with that, at least for a while, but I didn’t want to deal with seeing Meleah with too-familiar eyes and wondering where Charlie began and I ended.
“I’ll be okay.” I covered my eyes against the buzzing light with a forearm. “Turn that out before you lock me in, would you? It’s like a laser beam from hell.”
“I’m not locking you in.”
I moved my arm enough to give him a disbelieving glance. “You’r
e kidding, right?”
“No. Fuck regulations.” Hector showing he was the big dog and Thackery could kiss his ass. “I think your clearance level has gone about as high as it could go now.” His pale eyes were tainted with exhaustion, like dirty ice. “I’m through being an asshole because circumstances dictate it. Charlie wouldn’t be happy with me, and I’m not too happy with myself.” He moved to the door and opened it. “You’ll stay because we can help your sister and because you want to help Charlie, whether you admit that or not.” He shook his head. “Even to yourself. I’ll send Eden with some pills. See you at five.”
Five A.M.? I groaned mentally as he shut the door. It was easier to focus on that than on the grab bag of goodies he’d thrown in my lap. My cage door was open. Of course, Glory was the real cage; they had never needed a locked door to keep me here. But … I looked at it—gray, metal, ugly, and unlocked—and suddenly, I could breathe. The claustrophobia was still there, but knowing that I could open the door anytime lifted it enough to let me breathe without feeling as if I were strangling.
As for the other things, Hector giving me his trust and being so sure that I would’ve stayed regardless if only to help Charlie—as if he thought he knew me now. Knew who I was on the inside. He ignored my snark and was acting more like his brother. Too damn perceptive. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I’d let Abby in. I didn’t think I had room for any others.
• • •
Once I was loaded up with Tylenol, muscle relaxants, and more of Eden’s sympathetic pats and anger at my condition, the night passed in a blink, and I was faced with the ugly reality of too-damn-early. There was the smell of eggs and toast under my nose, and I pried up eyelids with a mind of their own and fifty pounds of concrete on their side. At least, it felt that way. I did get them open, though, to see the blurry vision of gray scrambled eggs and limp soggy toast.