“Go on, Ned,” Uncle Dave said.
Ned looked at him. “I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I think it was pointing to something, both times. It came out, waited for me to see it, then it turned around and faced the mountain and looked back at me. And then it went off. I didn’t know what was going on. And…and this is weird, but the first time was before Beltaine. Before anything even happened. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“Time can be funny in these things,” his aunt said.
“So you think she’s by this chasm,” Ned’s mother said calmly. “All right. Good. That’s our first stop tomorrow. We get directions and go look.”
Ned shook his head. His hands were trembling again.
“Mom, no. I have to go now. One of them’s going to figure this. They’ve had so much longer with her, with Ysabel. They heard her say sacrifice too. And they know that place.”
“Ned…” his father began.
“Dad, I’m really sure. I’m shaking with it, I’m so positive.” He held up his hands to show them.
His father looked at him. “That’s not what I was going to say. Ned, I believe you. There’s something else. You’re forgetting.”
“What?” Ned said.
It was Steve who answered him. “Dude, you can’t go up that mountain.”
“I have to.”
“Ned,” Greg murmured, “we saw you there. You looked like you were dying, man. I haven’t seen anyone throw up that hard since…since whenever.”
Ned stopped. He took a steadying breath. He swore. Neither parent said a word.
He had forgotten. Or, he’d half remembered because he knew he’d been sick when Melanie told him about the garagai, but he’d blocked out what it would mean to go back there. To climb.
Even the recollection made him feel ill, right here. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I have to try. I need to go, like, right now.” He was almost twitching with the need to be gone.
His father’s tone was gentle. “It’s past four o’clock, Ned. You can’t do it in the dark.”
“Won’t be dark. I’ll get my sweats and I’ll run. I’m a runner, Dad. I can do this. And maybe”—a sudden thought—“maybe I’ll be better when I get higher up? My problem was the battlefield. I think.”
He looked at Greg and Steve.
“And maybe you won’t,” Greg said, shaking his head.
“Dude—” Steve began.
“All of you listen!” Ned said. He heard his voice rising. “Melanie is gone if we screw this up. Look, I’ll take four Advil or whatever, and sunglasses, and my phone, and I’ll run. Please stop arguing. We can’t argue. We need to move. I have to know exactly where this place is.”
Kate Wenger, without a word, got up and went to Melanie’s maps-and-books file on the computer table.
Ned was looking at his mother. He saw something in her eyes that went so far beyond concern he couldn’t even put a word to it.
“Mom, please,” he whispered. “I need your help.”
“I know,” Meghan Marriner said. “I just don’t want to give it.”
He looked at her. She shook her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how little I like this. What do you plan to do when you get up there, if you get up there?”
“No idea.”
She let herself smile a little. “Well, that’s honest.”
“I’m being honest, Mom.”
Meghan looked at him another moment, then turned to her husband with a crisp nod. “Ed, get your two Veras in here, while Kate’s looking for maps. If they live here they may know.”
Her husband shook his head. “Let me try something else first.”
He crossed to the desk beside Kate and checked a phone number on Melanie’s corkboard, then dialed.
Ned found that he was breathing hard already—it looked, amazingly, as if they were going to help. But he was remembering the mountain now: Pourrières, and the worst feeling of his life. That screen of blood, filtering the world, and the smell of it.
His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for.
His father said, “Oliver? Ed Marriner. Am I interrupting anything?” He waited for whatever reply he got, then said, “I won’t keep you long, before drinks.”
The Englishman answered something, and Ned’s father managed a fake laugh. “Well, if you have one already, I needn’t rush. But I have a question that’s come up…something to photograph, maybe. Do you know a place called the garagai? Up on Sainte-Victoire?”
Another pause, a longer one. Oliver Lee was launching into a story, Ned guessed. Ned could picture him, reading glasses on their chain over his chest, drink in hand, holding forth.
Edward Marriner opened his mouth to interrupt, closed it, then plunged in, “Well, yes, I’ve read a bit about all that, and I was thinking of going up to have a look.” He paused. “I know it is a climb. Yes, I’ve heard it gets windy. But…Oliver, do you know where it is, up there? Have you been?”
The room fell silent. Edward Marriner looked at his son, his brow furrowed. It never unfurrowed. “You haven’t? So you wouldn’t be able to give me directions?”
He looked over at his wife. “Yes, of course, we’ll chase down a topographic map, or I can call the mayor’s office. They’ve been helpful.” He stopped. Lee was saying something. “No, no, it is hardly a shocking confession, Oliver. My people told me Cézanne never climbed it either.” He paused again. “Yes, of course, I’ll give your regards to Melanie.” He looked at Ned again. “No, I think I’ll let you tell her that yourself, Oliver.” Another small, forced laugh. He said goodbye and hung up.
Ned looked across the room at his mother. She was gazing at him, staring at him, really, with an expression he couldn’t remember seeing before. As if he were a stranger. It bothered him. He tried to smile at her, but didn’t really succeed.
“Ned?” It was his aunt. “Two things. If you’re right, and there’s urgency here, it’s because one or both of them may get there first. And they may do that by tracking you.”
“They were going to Arles,” he said.
“Yesterday evening. Ned, they both seem to think you’re a key to this. You’ll have to screen yourself when we leave here. But you need to let it go at times, you can’t hold the screening too long.”
He hesitated. “I was kind of counting on the screen to help me with…my problem there.”
“I thought you might be. But you still need to let it go some of the time or you’ll make yourself ill.”
He cleared his throat. “Phelan told me that too, last night.”
“Kim, what if they’re watching us? From out there?’ Meghan gestured towards the windows.
Her sister frowned. “I don’t think…” She looked at Uncle Dave.
He shrugged. “Might be. They know where we are, they know we’re looking. Either they’re tearing around searching everywhere, or they’re checking us at intervals. Checking on Ned to see if he’s doing anything.”
“Could they have anyone watching for them?” Steve asked.
“Don’t think so,” Kim said.
“But we aren’t sure,” said her sister briskly. “All right, assume they are watching, what do we do? And first of all, how do we find out where he has to go?”
“I can tell you that,” said a voice from the kitchen door.
They turned.
Veracook, in her usual black dress, was standing there. She’d spoken in English.
“You…you speak our language?” Edward Marriner said. He looked a bit stunned, as if too many things were happening too fast.
Vera smiled a little. “The owners are American. I learn a little.”
“But you never…”
“You always speak French.” She shrugged.
Kimberly walked towards her. “Do you…do you understand what we’re talking about here?”
“Climbing the mountain?” A slight flicker of the eyes.
“That, and why.” Kim’s voice was direct. “Why we need to go up.”
Vera looked at her. Nodded her head. Her own voice was cold.
“Something happened on the Fire Night. I had rowans by the windows, to protect the house. She should not have gone out.”