“It won’t hold,” I tell the twins, breathless. “The door. There’s too many, and they’re not natural.”
Rissa looks up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this swarm is not natural.” I catch my breath a little before I continue. “I don’t believe it.”
“There’s been locust swarms in the past. Famous ones, that last days and cover a hundred miles. There’s no reason to think this isn’t one of those. I mean, they’re destructive, but they’ll pass. We just have to wait—”
“It looked right at us.”
Grace stops her stomping to stare at me. “What?”
“The giant locust inside the bar,” I say, sheathing the sword. A little tricky the first time, but I manage. “Before I killed it. It looked right at me.”
“It’s a bug. Be serious.”
“It—it did.” Ben sniffles, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She rocks slightly to comfort herself. “I felt it too. Like a presence. It was. . . . smart. It knew we were there.”
Rissa looks grim. “What are you saying?”
“That this door isn’t going to hold. That they know we’re here and it’s only a matter of time. They’ll find another way in. There’s no waiting them out because they’re not going away.”
“So we fight our way out,” Rissa says.
“To where?” I ask. “You said it yourself. This swarm could be a hundred miles wide.”
“The tunnels,” Grace says.
We all turn to Grace. She may look feeble, but her eyes are sharp and her mouth is set in a determined line.
“Mom?” Clive asks.
Grace drops her broom and heads for the back bedrooms. Clive helps Ben to her feet, and we all hustle after her, the steady beat of insects striking the side of the trailer all around us.
“Help me move the bed, son,” Grace says once we’re in her bedroom. Dutifully, Clive pushes the mattress to the side. Rissa and I move to the other side to pull, and soon the floorboards are exposed. Sure enough, there’s a trapdoor there, square and big enough to fit a person through. The lock is rusted shut, like it hasn’t been used in years.
Grace goes to the dresser next to the bed and opens the top drawer. Pulls out a small key, the kind that would fit into a padlock like the one on the trapdoor. “Open it,” Grace says, handing the key to Clive. He bends to fit the key in the lock. It takes a little muscle, but he gets the lock to turn. He slips the bolt off, and the door swings inward. Stale air wafts out, rich with the smell of dirt and age.
“Where does this go?” I ask.
“It’s an old smuggling tunnel,” Grace explains. “Used to use it to move bootleg booze and the occasional human when the Wall first went up. This is checkerboard land—Navajo police got no jurisdiction at the All-American—but there’s plenty of jurisdiction between here and the Wall. So we needed a better way.”
“Are you saying this tunnel goes all the way to the Wall?”
The older woman lifts a shoulder. “Used to. Now, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s caved in.”
Rissa says, “The Wall’s twenty miles east of here. We’re not crawling underground in the dark for twenty miles.”
“And it’s the wrong direction,” I say. “Caleb and Kai’s trail goes west toward Tse Bonito.”
“We’re not crawling,” Grace says. “The tunnel also goes right out to the garage, where there’s some perfectly fine motorbikes that can certainly outrun a bunch of damn bugs.”
Clive grins. He picks his mom up and twirls her around, planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Put me down,” she complains, slapping his hands away. “Good Lord. You’re going to break something.”
Rissa laughs. “You’re full of secrets, Mom.”
She sighs as her son sets her gently on her feet. “A woman’s got to keep secrets. Else who is she?”
“You can’t come back here, you know,” I say. “At least for a while.”
The Goodacres look at me like I spoiled the party. I look pointedly at the walls, the ceiling, where we can still hear the constant noise of locusts.
“Grace, you can go to my house in Crystal. Tah’s there, and it’s safe enough. Thirsty Boys can help you out if there’s trouble. And the rest of us will stick to the plan. We go after Kai. And Caleb. The locusts will follow us.”
No one says anything. Rissa still looks dubious, like maybe I’m a little crazy. Like I haven’t been fighting supernatural creatures since I was fifteen.
“You think this is a coincidence?” I hiss, my voice angry. “You think some guy calling himself the White Locust just shows up, steals your son away, and then coincidently, a monster swarm of killer locusts shows up and tries to break your door down?”
“What?” Rissa and Clive say at once.
“How the hell do you know that?” Rissa asks.
“Who is the White Locust?” her brother asks at the same time.
Grace is staring at me hard, part like it’s the first sign of hope she’s had in days and part like I was keeping secrets and she’s pissed. “You better explain, Maggie.”
“There’s not really time,” I say.
“We’ll make time,” Rissa says through gritted teeth.
Grace motions her daughter to silence. “Just tell us the basics, Maggie. We have time.”
I want to argue. The locust swarm has become a black mass pressing against the windows, and that tells me different. But Grace asked, and she deserves an answer. “Hastiin and the Boys were hired to find this guy, the White Locust. It was one of his followers who killed Hastiin.”
“Hastiin’s dead?” Grace asks, surprised.
Ben whimpers somewhere behind me.
I nod, grim.
Grace makes a little motion, touching her head and her chest. “Then what, Maggie?” she says, voice subdued.
“Then I saw the videotape, the one from the guardhouse, and I think I recognized the woman on the tape. I think she’s the same woman who killed Hastiin. She has a clan power or something similar that gives her the ability to sing this song. . . .”
I can tell Grace isn’t following.
“Anyway, I’m sure it’s the same people. The ones who killed Hastiin and the ones who took Kai and Caleb. And they all tie back to the White Locust.”
“You still haven’t told us who he is,” Clive says.
“He’s a cult leader,” Ben volunteers. “Believes in the end of the world, cleansing Dinétah of its sins or something like that.”
“What does he want with Caleb, then?” Clive asks.
“Maybe nothing,” I admit. “Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You mean he came for Kai and Caleb was in the way.”
“So it is Kai’s fault,” Rissa says, jaw clenched.
“You don’t think Caleb’s dead, do you, Maggie?” Grace asks.
“I don’t. You know Kai, Grace. He wouldn’t let Caleb die. He’s a healer. He . . . wouldn’t.”
“Unless he’s the one who hurt Caleb to begin with,” Rissa says, “because your theory about a cult leader is great, but there’s only your word for it. And it doesn’t explain the bloodstains. Or what he said on that tape.”
Rissa knows. She knows what Kai said to me. And in her mind, he left because he did something terrible, something unforgiveable, like kill Caleb. She believes it was his good-bye, and while I don’t believe he would hurt Caleb, it’s hard to argue with the rest.
“No,” Grace says, voice firm. “Maggie’s right. I know Kai. He’s a good young man. He wouldn’t hurt Caleb, and if Caleb was hurt by this White Locust man, Kai would heal him. I know that.”
“How can you know that, Mom?” Rissa asks.
“Because he did the same for you.”
Mother and daughter lock eyes for a moment. The room is quiet except for the growing song of the locusts outside. We all hold our breath.