I nodded at Shannon. “Tell her the way is clear.”
Who knew if removing the symbol of her imprisonment would be enough? The girl relayed the message, standing up to thrust an arm through the triangular window. A queer pop emerged from the radio as if something had passed through its ancient speakers, and then wind gusted outward.
Surely we’d set her free. In another moment, we had our answer. Though it was too late in the year for fireflies, they twinkled outside the house, glimmering in sequence to spell out the words, “Thank you.”
Shannon whispered, “Good-bye, butterfly girl.”
The radio went dead silent. In response, Shannon clicked it off. I stretched, arms over my head, just as we started to hear commotion downstairs.
“Where the hell are they?” Jesse asked.
“Hell if I know.” Chance wasn’t a morning person, let alone a middle-of-the-night person. “Did you hear a car pull up?”
“Didn’t hear anything,” he answered. “The Forester and the Mustang are still here. You think someone took them?”
Chance’s voice became panicked. “They wouldn’t have gone out to the woods without us?”
That tore it. If we let them, they’d go running around looking for us, trying to play heroes, and wind up lost. Then we’d have to go save them before the demon scared the piss out of them and they broke their necks falling in the gully like Rob Walker.
“We should nip this in the bud,” I said.
Shannon grinned. “Yeah, they’re about to have twin aneurysms.”
In response, I unhooked the catch and gave the ladder a good kick. It dropped with a thunk; then I waited. Both guys came running, armed with makeshift weapons. Their fear turned in unison to absolute exasperation.
“What are you two doing up there in the middle of the night?” Chance demanded.
Shannon told him pertly, “Exorcising a ghost.”
Excellent. I couldn’t have done better myself.
Jesse thought better of whatever he’d meant to say. “Did it work?”
“Yep.” I knew I sounded smug. “Didn’t you feel all that wind blow through here?”
“Well,” Chance muttered. “Yeah. It woke me up, in fact.”
“But I thought something was wrong and that the windows were open when they shouldn’t be,” Saldana added.
“That’d be a reasonable assumption under any other circumstances . . . ,” I began.
“And with any other combination of people,” Shannon finished.
Lord, I loved this girl. I gave her a quick hug around the shoulders, surprising both of us. Sheepish, I grinned and indicated with a gesture that she should precede me down the stairs. We went into the kitchen and fixed pancakes, even though it was a few hours before dawn. It didn’t look like any of us would get back to sleep anyway.
The guys bitched us out soundly for not waking them, but neither of them had much to say when I asked, “Just what would you two have contributed to the occasion?”
Frankly, Shannon hadn’t even needed me. Unless she wouldn’t have thought to open the window. In that case, I’d been mildly useful.
After conceding the point, Chance made a pot of his deluxe coffee, and I didn’t try to talk Shannon out of having some, well doctored with sugar and powdered milk. I figured we both needed the warmth and the kick, after the serious eeriness of the last hour.
An hour later, Dale staggered in and put away two mugs of java and two plates of pancakes. He didn’t seem to suffer from hangovers in the usual sense, but he did ask for some aspirin. None of us had any, and we were apologizing for that when a knock sounded at the front door.
I think our collective response to that was . . .
Oh shit.
At this hour, it couldn’t be the twelve, coming to invite us to partake of our civic duty. Somehow I wasn’t a bit surprised to open the door and find Sandra Cheney standing there, perfectly groomed even at six in the morning. Not a single blond hair stirred from her attractive bob. Her fingernails shone pearly in the half-light.
She fixed a smile on her face as I might hammer a nail into a walclass="underline" doggedly and with force. “I’ve heard Shannon is staying with you. I’ve come to take her home.”
Behind me, the girl made an awful little sound. I made a show of looking at her. “Do you want to go?”
“Fuck no,” she answered deliberately.
“I’m pretty sure you can’t remove her against her wishes,” I said with saccharine sweetness. “Is that right, Jesse? How does the law stack up on that?”
“Once kids turn eighteen, they can’t be forced to return to a home they’ve left,” he agreed. “And I think her wishes are clear at this point.”
I smiled. “It was kind of you to come out and check on her, though.”
“Well then.” Sandra fidgeted with her pocketbook. In her icy eyes, I saw livid anger. She wanted to rant and say we’d all rue the day, but that wouldn’t be polite. Plus, you shouldn’t threaten people you actually meant to harm. Sandra might be evil, but she wasn’t stupid.
“I’m so distressed to hear that, Shannon. I know we’ve had our share of troubles, and you think I don’t understand you, but the truth is, your father and I love you very much. He’s going to be so sad to hear this.”
“He’s been sad a long time,” Shannon muttered pointedly. “And it wasn’t because of me. I’ll write to him when I get settled.”
Sandra ignored most of that. “No idea when you’re leaving, then?”
“Probably soon,” Chance said,. “I believe we’ve just about tapped the tourist attractions around here.”
To say the least.
“Then take care. I love you, sugar bean.” To my surprise, Sandra said that with evident sincerity. Her two-inch ladylike heels clacked as she hurried across the porch and down the stairs toward her shiny, understated luxury automobile.
When she drove away, I honestly didn’t know what to make of the visit. “Could you be wrong about her?” I asked Shannon, shutting the door. “Could she have started sleeping with England when she realized you had a gift, trying to save you?”
That didn’t clear her of the charge of trying to kill us and deliver us up as alternate sacrifices, but it might mean she wasn’t as bad as we thought. It was a rare she-viper who could slay her own young without batting an eye.
Shannon thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Don’t know. Possible, I guess, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.”
Well, neither would I.
“Come on,” Dale roared from the kitchen. “Time’s a-wasting! Will you ungrateful devil-seekers come look at the book or not?”
As it happened, we would.
“Waiting for Godot”
The book was a gold mine.
Crazy Dale Graham had all kinds of news clippings coinciding with the December 21 disasters. He also had a mess of pictures documenting the secret meetings, and everything he’d compiled corroborated our theories. Mainly, it was good to see pictures of our enemies; we’d be out in the woods with a bunch of different people today, and I didn’t want collateral damage if we could help it, so I memorized names and faces.
This would be a different sort of final showdown, not of weapons, but of wits; not of action, but attrition. I didn’t intend to fight fair.
After the sun came up fully, I took the list of casualties to Shannon. “Can you call them to you?” I asked. “I know it’ll take a lot out of you, but I think it’ll be worth it. We’ve got a stash of chocolate you can have if you need it.”
“Everyone but Mr. McGee,” she said. Right, the blockage. “Why?”
I told her.
“Oh, that’s fiendish,” she breathed. “I’m on it. What’re you going to be doing?”
“Waiting for Godot.”
At nine a.m. sharp, he arrived in the form of Sheriff Robinson. When I opened the door, he doffed his hat and twisted it in his hands. His brown uniform pulled across his gut as he fidgeted. I didn’t make things easier on him, but just stood there studying him.