“It’s scary to be down here all alone, isn’t it?” a voice whispered.
Nest jumped inside her burlap prison. The demon. She swallowed and exhaled quickly, noisily.
“All alone, down in the dark, in a black pit where your greatest enemies dwell. Helpless to prevent them from doing whatever they choose. You hate being helpless, don’t you?”
The demon’s voice was soft and silky. It rippled through the silence like bat wings. Nest closed her eyes against its insidious sound and gritted her teeth.
“Will someone come for you, you must be wondering? How long before they do? How much more of this must you endure?” The demon paused as if to consider. “Well, John Ross won’t be coming. And your grandparents won’t be coming. I’ve seen to that. So who else is there? Oh, I forgot. The sylvan. No, I don’t think so. Have I missed anyone?”
Wraith!
The demon chuckled in a self-satisfied way. “The fact is, you have only yourself to blame for this. You should never have tried to follow me. Of course, I knew you would. You couldn’t help yourself, could you? It was all so simple, making the suggestion to young Danny Abbott. He’s so angry at you, Nest. He hates you. It was easy to persuade him that he could get even with you if he just did what I told him. He was so eager, he didn’t even bother to consider the consequences of his act. None of them did. They are such foolish, malleable boys.”
The demon’s voice had shifted, moving to another part of the cave. But Nest could not hear the demon himself move, could not pick up a single footfall.
“So, here you are, alone with me. Why, you might have asked yourself? Why am I bothering to do this? Why don’t I just … drop you into a hole and cover you up?” The demon’s voice trailed off in a hiss. “I could, you know.”
He waited a moment, as if anticipating her response, then sighed anew. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I want to teach you. That’s why I brought you here. I want you to understand how helpless you are against me. I want you to realize that I can do whatever I like with you. You can’t prevent it. Your friends and family can’t prevent it. No one can. You need to accept that. I brought you here so that you could discover firsthand what I was talking about yesterday, about the importance of learning to be alone, of learning to depend only on yourself. Because you can’t depend on other people, can you? I mean, who’s going to save you from this? Your mother is gone, your grandparents are old, your friends are feckless, and no one else really gives a damn. When it comes right down to it, you have only yourself.”
Nest was awash with rage and humiliation. She would have killed the demon gladly if she had been free to do so and been offered a way. She hated the demon as she had never hated anyone in her life.
“I have to be going now,” he said, the location of his voice shifting again, moving away. “I have things to do while the night is still young. I have enemies to eliminate. Then I’ll be back for you. Danny Abbott won’t, of course. By morning, he will have forgotten you are even here. So you have to depend on me. Keep that in mind.”
Then the voice dropped into a rough whisper that scraped at her nerve endings like sandpaper. “Maybe it would be wise if you were to use your time among the feeders to consider what’s important to you. Because your life is about to change, Nest. It is going to change in a way you would never have dreamed possible. I’m going to see to it. It’s what I’ve come here to do.”
The silence returned, slow and thick within the dark. Nest waited for the demon to say something more, to reveal some farther insight. But no sound came. She sat wrapped within the hot blackness of the burlap, embittered, frightened, and alone.
Then the feeders returned. When the touching began anew, her resolve gave way completely and she screamed soundlessly into the tape.
CHAPTER 24
Old Bob was finishing up the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune when the doorbell rang. He’d begun the paper early that morning before church and spent his free time during the course of the day working his way through its various sections. It was part of his Sunday ritual, an unhurried review of the events of the world with time enough to give some measured consideration to what they meant. He was sitting in his easy chair in the den, his feet up on the settee, and he glanced immediately at the wall clock.
Ten-forty. Late, for someone to be visiting.
He climbed to his feet and walked out into the hall, the first stirrings of anxiety roiling his stomach. Evelyn was already standing in the foyer, rooted in place six feet from the front door, as if this was as close as she dared to come. She held her cigarette in one hand, its smooth, white length burning slowly to ash, a silent measure of the promptness of his response. The look his wife gave him was unreadable. They had come home together at dusk, bidding John Ross good night and leaving Nest with her friends. They had unpacked the leftover food and eating utensils from the picnic basket, unloaded the cooler, and put away the blanket. Evelyn had barely spoken as they worked, and Old Bob had not asked what she was thinking.
“Open it, Robert,” she said to him now as he came down the hall, as if he might have been considering something else.
He released the latch and swung the door wide. Four youngsters were huddled together in the halo of the porch light, staring back at him through the screen. Nest’s friends. He recognized their faces and one or two of their names. Enid Scott’s oldest boy. Cass Minter. John and Alice Heppler’s son. That pretty little girl who always looked like she was on her way to a photo shoot.
The Heppler boy was the one who spoke. “Mr. Freemark, can you come help us find Nest, please? We’ve looked everywhere, and it’s like she dropped into a hole or something. And we tried to find John Ross, like she asked, but he’s disappeared, too. I think Danny Abbott knows what’s happened to her, but he just laughs at us.”
Robert Heppler, Old Bob remembered suddenly. That was the boy’s name. What had he said? “What do you mean, Nest has dropped into a hole?”
“Well, she’s been gone for close to two hours,” Robert continued, his concern reflected in his narrow face. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and ran a hand through his unruly blond hair. “She went off after this guy, the one who’s been poisoning the trees? The one you warned her about? She thought she saw him, so she …” He bit off whatever it was he was going to say and looked at the Scott boy. “Jared, you were there; you tell it.”
Jared Scott looked pale and anxious as he spoke. His words were slow and measured. “We were dancing, me and Nest, and she saw this guy, like Robert says. She gets this funny look on her face and tells me he’s the one who’s been poisoning the trees, and I have to find Robert and Cass and Brianna and then we have to find John Ross and tell him to go after her. Then she runs off after this guy. So we all go looking for Mr. Ross, but we can’t find him.”
Old Bob frowned, thinking, Someone’s poisoning trees?
“So, anyway, we can’t find Mr. Ross,” Robert interrupted Jared impatiently, “so we start looking around for Nest on our own. We try to find where she went, going off in the same direction, and that’s when we run into Danny Abbott and his friends coming toward us. They’re laughing and joking about something, and when they see us, they go quiet, then really start breaking up. I ask them if they’ve seen Nest, and they get all cute about it, saying, ‘Oh, yeah, Nest Freemark, remember her?’ and stuff like that. See, we had this run-in with them just the other day, and they’re still pissed off. ’Scuse me. Upset. Anyway, I tell them this isn’t funny, that there’s a guy out there poisoning trees, and he might hurt Nest. Danny says something like ‘What guy?’ and I can tell he knows. Then he and his Neanderthal pals push me and Jared down and go right past us and back to the dance. That’s when we decided to come get you.”
Old Bob stood there, trying to sort the story through, trying to make some sense of it, still stuck on the part about someone poisoning trees in the park. It was Evelyn who spoke first.
“Robert,” she said, coming forward now to stand in front of hi
m, her eyes bright and hard in the porch light. There was no hesitation in her voice. “You get out there right away and find that girl and bring her home.”
Old Bob responded with a quick nod, saying, “I will, Evelyn,” then turned to Nest’s friends and said, “You wait here,” and went into the kitchen to find a flashlight. He was back in seconds, carrying a four-cell Eveready, his walk quick and certain. He touched his wife on the shoulder as he brushed past, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find her,” and went out the door and into the night.
When John Ross was able to stand again, Josie Jackson helped him walk back up the hill, bypass the crowded pavilion, and maneuver his way to her car. She wanted to drive him to the hospital, but he told her it wasn’t necessary, that nothing was broken, which he believed, from experience, to be so. She wanted him to file a police report, but he declined that offer as well, pointing out that neither of them had the faintest idea who had attacked him (beyond the fact that they were probably MidCon union men) and that he was a stranger in the community, which usually didn’t give you much leverage with the police in a complaint against locals.
“John, damn it, we have to do something about this!” she exclaimed as she eased him into the passenger seat of her Chevy, dabbing at his bloodied face with a handkerchief. She had stopped crying by now and was flushed with anger. “We can’t just pretend that nothing happened! Look what they did to you!”
“Well, it was all a mistake,” he alibied, forcing a smile through his swollen lips, trying to ease her concern and indignation, knowing it was the demon who was responsible and there was nothing to be done about it now. “Just take me back to the hotel, Josie, and I’ll be fine.”
But she wouldn’t hear of it. It was bad enough that he wouldn’t go to the emergency room or file a complaint with the police, but to expect her to take him back to the hotel and leave him was unthinkable. He was going to her house and spending the night so that she could keep an eye on him. He protested that he was fine, that he just needed to wash up and get a good night’s sleep (ignoring the pain in his ribs, a clear indication one or more were cracked, and the throbbing in his head from what was, in all likelihood, a concussion), but she was having none of it. She could see the deep gash in his forehead, the cuts and bruises on his face, and the blood seeping through his torn clothing, and she was determined that someone would be there for him if he needed help. Her own face and clothing were streaked with blood and dirt, and her tousled hair was full of twigs and leaves, but she seemed oblivious of that.
“If I ever find out who did this …” she swore softly, leaving the threat unfinished.
He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the highway. He was upset that he had been caught off guard by the attack and forced to use his magic to defend himself, but he was encouraged as well, because it implied that the demon was worried about him. Planting a suggestion in the minds of a bunch of MidCon strikers that he was a company spy was a desperate ploy by any measure. Perhaps his chances at stopping the demon were better than he believed. He wondered if he had missed something in his analysis of the situation, in the content of the dream that had brought him here. Josie told him to open his eyes, not to go to sleep yet, because concussions were nothing to fool with. He did as she advised, turning his head so that he could look at her face. She gave him a quick, sideways smile, warming him inside where thoughts of the demon had left a chill.
She drove him to her home, an aging, two-story wood frame house overlooking the Rock River at the bottom of a dead-end street. She parked in the driveway and came around to help him out. She walked him up the steps, her arm around his waist as he leaned on his staff to support his crippled leg, then guided him through the door and down a hall to the kitchen. She seated him at the wooden breakfast table, gathered up clean cloths, hot water, antiseptic, and bandages, and went to work on his injuries. She was quiet as she repaired his damaged face, her dark eyes intense, her hands gentle and steady. The house was silent about them. Her daughter was staying at a friend’s, she explained, then quickly changed the subject.
“You really should have stitches for this,” she said, fitting the butterfly bandages in place over the gash in his forehead, closing the wound as best she could. Her eyes left the injury and found his. “What happened out there? That white flash—it looked like something exploded.”
He gave her his best sheepish grin. “Fireworks. I had them in my pocket. They spilled out on the ground during the fight, and I guess something caused them to ignite.”
Her eyes moved away, back to his damaged face, but not before he caught a glimpse of the doubt mirrored there. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said, trying to ease past the moment. “I was enjoying myself.”
“Me, too. Hold still.”
She finished with his face and moved down to his body. She insisted he remove his shirt, against his protests, and her brow furrowed with worry when she saw the deep bruises flowering over his ribs. “This is not good, John,” she said softly.
She cleaned his scrapes and cuts, noting the way he winced when she put pressure on his ribs, then applied a series of cold compresses to the more severely damaged areas. She made him hot tea, then excused herself to go wash up. He heard her climb the stairs, then heard a shower running. He sipped at the tea and looked around the kitchen. It was filled with little touches that marked it as Josie’s—a series of painted tea-kettles set along the top of the cupboards; pictures of her daughter, tacked to a bulletin board; drawings taped to the refrigerator that she must have done at different ages, some beginning to fray about the edges; fresh flowers in a vase at the window above the sink; and a small dish with cat food in it sitting by the back door. He studied the bright print curtains and wallpaper, the mix of soft yellows, blues, and pinks that trimmed out the basic white of the plaster and woodwork. He liked it here, he decided. He felt at home.
He was beginning to grow sleepy, so he refilled his teacup and drank deeply, trying to wake himself up with the caffeine. If he went to sleep now, he would dream. If he dreamed, he would be back in the future—only this time, because he had used the staff’s magic to save himself in the present, he would be bereft of any protection until he woke. He knew what that would feel like. It had happened before. It would happen again. It was the price he paid for serving as a Knight of the Word. It was the cost of staying alive.
Josie came back downstairs in fuzzy slippers and a white bathrobe, her long, light hair shiny with dampness. She gave him her best smile, radiant and embracing, and asked how he was feeling. He told her he was better, admiring the fresh-scrubbed glow of her skin and the high curve of her cheekbones. She asked him if he was hungry, laughed when he told her no, made him some toast anyway, put out butter and jam, and sat down across from him to watch him eat. She sipped at her tea, telling him about the way her grandmother always made her toast and tea late at night when neither of them could sleep. Ross listened without saying much, finding he was hungry after all. He glanced once at the clock. It was after eleven, later than he had thought.
“Are you tired, John?” she asked when he was finished eating. “You must be. I think it’s safe for you to sleep now.”
He smiled at the thought. “I should be going, Josie.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Not a chance, buster. You’re staying here tonight. I’ve got too much invested in you to let you wander off to that hotel room alone.” She paused, realizing the implication of what she had said. She recovered with a shrug. “I thought I made it pretty clear that I would feel better if you slept here tonight. Do you mind?”
He shook his head. “No, I just don’t want to be underfoot. I feel bad enough about what’s happened.”
She stood up, tossing back her hair. “In more ways than one, I bet. You come with me.”
She put her arm around his waist to help him to his feet, then kept it there as she guided him down the hall and up the stairs. The house was mostl
y dark; the light from the kitchen stretched only as far as the first half-dozen steps. After that, they were left in starlit gloom. Beneath their feet, the old wooden stairs creaked softly. Ahead, from farther down the hallway that connected the second-story rooms, lamplight glimmered softly. Ross felt his way up the stairs with his staff and Josie’s surefooted guidance, taking his time, leaning on her even when it wasn’t necessary, liking the feel of her body against his and the smell of her hair against his face.
“Careful, John,” she cautioned as they made their way, her arm tightening about his waist, trying to stay below his injured ribs.
He winced silently. “I’m fine.”
At the top of the stairs they paused for a moment, still locked together. “Okay?” she asked, and he nodded. She lifted her face and kissed him on the mouth. His lips were bruised and swollen, and her kiss was gentle. “Does that hurt?” she asked, and he shook his head wordlessly.
She eased him down the hall and into a darkened bedroom, a guest room, he decided, the large bed neatly made, the cushion of the love seat smooth and undisturbed, the dresser top bare. She left him just inside the doorway, moved to the bed, and pulled back the spread and covers. Then she came back for him and walked him over. He could hear the soft throbbing of an air conditioner in the window and feel the cool air on his bare arms and torso. The room was dark and the only light came from down the hallway and from the stars that shone faintly through the curtained window. She eased him onto the bed, bending close to kiss him on the forehead.