She stepped around a sleeping Mr. Scratch and crossed the yard quickly, eyes determinedly forward so she would not look back. She felt as if her grandfather had read everything she was thinking in her eyes, and she did not want that. She felt as if everything was kept secret from her, while she had no secrets of her own. But there was John Ross, of course. She was the only one who knew the truth about him. Well, some of the truth, anyway. Maybe. She sighed helplessly.
She was pushing her way through the gap in the bushes when Pick dropped onto her shoulder.
" 'Bout time," he grumbled, settling himself into place. "Some of us have been up since daybreak, you know."
She gave him an angry look. "Good for you. Some of us have been trying to figure out why others of us aren't a little more truthful about things."
The wooden brow furrowed and the black–pool eyes crinkled. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She stopped abruptly beside the service road and looked off into the park. There were families laying out blankets and picnic baskets on the grassy lawn farther east where the shade trees began. There were baseball games under way, softball pickup contests. Two boys were throwing a Frisbee back and forth and a dog was running hopefully between them, giving chase. It was all familiar to her, but it felt quite alien, too.
"It means you were awfully quick to disappear last night after the spirits of the Sinnissippi appeared." She glared at him. "Why was that?"
The sylvan glared back. "Bunch of mumbo jumbo, that's why. I got bored."
"Don't you lie to me!" she hissed. She snatched him off her shoulder by the nape of his twiggy neck and held him kicking and squirming before her. "You saw the vision, too, didn't you? You saw the same thing I did, and you don't want to admit it! Well, it's too late for that, Pick!"
"Put me down!" he raged.
"Or what? What will you do?" She felt like tossing him out on the grass and leaving him there. "I know who it was! It was Gran! I knew it from a picture on the fireplace mantel! I thought it was Mom at first, but it was Gran! You knew, didn't you? Didn't you?"
"Yes!" He lashed out.
He stopped squirming and stared balefully at her. Nest stared back. After a moment, she placed him in the palm of her hand and squatted down in the grass next to the service road, holding him up to her face. Pick righted himself indignantly, brushing at his arms and legs as if he had been dumped in a pile of dirt.
"Don't you ever do that again!" he warned, so furious he refused even to look at her.
"You stop lying to me and maybe I won't!" she snapped back, just as angry as he was.
His mouth worked inside his mossy beard. "I haven't lied to you. But it isn't my place to tell you things about your family! It isn't right for me to do that!"
"Well, what kind of a friend are you, then?" she demanded. "A real friend doesn't keep secrets!"
Pick snorted. "Everyone keeps secrets. That's part of life. i None of us tells the other everything. We can't. Then there f wouldn't be any part of us that didn't belong to someone else!" He tugged on his beard in frustration. "All right, so I didn't tell you about your grandmother and the feeders. But she didn't tell you either, did she? So maybe there's a reason for that, and maybe it's up to her to decide if she wants you to know that reason and maybe it's not up to me!"
"Maybe this, maybe that! Maybe it doesn't matter, now! She told me when I asked her, even though she didn't want to! She told me, but it would have been easier if it had come from you!" Nest shook her head, and her voice quieted. "She told me about the demon, too. Is it the same one that's here now?"
Pick threw up his hands. "How am I supposed to answer that when I haven't even seen him?"
Nest studied him doubtfully for a moment. "He probably wouldn't look the same anyway, would he?"
"Hard to say. Demons don't change much once they're demons." He blinked. "Wait a minute. You haven't seen him, have you?"
Nest told him then about the encounter in church, about the appearance of the feeders and Wraith, about poor Mrs. Browning, and about John Ross. When she was done, Pick sat down heavily hi her palm and shook his head.
"What's going on here?" he asked softly, not so much of her as of himself.
She looked off into the park again, thinking it over, searching for an answer that refused to be found. Then she stood up, put him back on her shoulder, and began to walk once more along the edge of the service road toward the east end of the park. "Tell me about my grandmother," she asked him after a moment.
Pick looked at her. "Don't start with me. I've said all I have to say about that."
"Just tell me what she was doing with the feeders, running with them, being part of them." Nest felt her voice catch as the ugly vision played itself through again in her mind.
Pick shrugged. "I don't know what she was doing. She was young and wild, your grandmother, and she did a lot of things I didn't much agree with. Running with the feeders was one of them. She did it because she felt like it, I guess. She was different from you."
Nest looked at him. "Different how?"
"She was the first to have the magic in your family when there was no one to guide her in its use," he replied. "She didn't know what to do with it. There wasn't any balance in her life like there is in yours. Not then, at least. She's given you that balance, you know. She's been there to warn you about the magic right from the first. No one was there for her. Opal, the last before her, was dead by the time she was eight. So there was only me, and she didn't want to listen to me. She thought I was out for myself, that what I said didn't mean anything." He pursed his lips. "Like I said, she was headstrong."
"She said she was in love with the demon."
"She was, for a time."
"Until she found out the truth about him."
"Yep, until then."
"What did she do to keep him away from her?"
Pick looked at her. "Didn't she tell you?"
Nest shook her head. "Will you?"
Pick sighed. "Here we go again."
"All right, forget it."
They walked on in silence, passing the east ball diamond and turning up toward the parking lot that fronted the toboggan slide. Ahead, the trees shimmered hotly in the midday sun and the river reflected silver and gold. In the backyards of the houses bordering the park, people were working in their flower beds and mowing the grass. The smell of hamburgers cooking on an open grill wafted heavily on the humid air.
"I shouldn't tell you," Pick insisted quietly.
"Then don't."
"I shouldn't."
"All right."
Pick hunched his shoulders. "Your grandmother," he said wearily, staring straight ahead. For a minute he didn't say anything else. "The demon underestimated her, too bad for him. See, she understood him better than he thought. She'd learned a few things running with him, being part of his life, those nights in the park. She knew it was her magic that attracted him to her. She knew the magic was everything to him. He wanted her because she had it. She was very powerful in those days, Nest. Maybe as powerful as he was. So she told him that if he stayed in the park, if he kept after her, she'd use it against him. She'd use it up, every last bit of it. She'd kill him or herself or both of them. She didn't care which."
He paused. "She would have done it, too. She was very determined, very tough–minded, your grandmother." He scratched his mossy beard. "Anyway, the demon was convinced. He backed down from her. He hated her for that afterward. Hated himself, too. By the time she was finished with him, he didn't want anything to do with her anymore."
Nest tried to imagine Gran confronting the demon, threatening to kill him if he refused to leave her alone. Frail, weary old Gran.
"Now, that's all I'm saying on the subject," Pick interjected heatedly. "If you want to know anything more, ask your grandmother. But I'd think twice about it, if I were you. Just my opinion. Some things are better left alone, and this is one of them. Take my word for it. Let it be."