Night World 1 (23 page)

“She said that you were a bad little boy, and that you were probably going to grow up even worse.”

“Well, she had
that
right,” Ash said, and his expression softened a bit—as if he were on more familiar ground.

Mary-Lynnette's heart was slowing. She found that if she concentrated, she could make the strange feelings recede. It helped if she looked away from Ash.

Deep breath, she told herself. And another. Okay, now let's get things straight. Let go of what just happened; forget all that; think about it later. What's important
now
?

What was important
now
was that: 1) This guy was the brother of those girls; 2) He might be in on whatever had happened to Mrs. B.; and, 3) If he
wasn't
in on it, he might be able to help with some information. Such as whether his aunt had left a will, and if so, who got the family jewels.

She glanced at Ash from the side of her eye. He definitely looked calmer. Hackles going down. Chest lifting more slowly. They were both switching gear.

“So Rowan and Kestrel and Jade are your sisters,” she said, with all the polite nonchalance she could muster. “They seem—nice.”

“I didn't know you knew them,” Claudine said, and Mary-Lynnette realized her stepmother was hovering in the doorway, petite shoulder against the doorjamb, arms crossed, dish towel in hand. “I told him you hadn't met them.”

“Mark and I went over there yesterday,” Mary-Lynnette said. And when she said it, something flashed in Ash's face—something there and gone before she could really analyze it. But it made her feel as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff in a cold wind.

Why? What could be wrong with mentioning she'd met the girls?

“You and Mark…and Mark would be—your brother?”

“That's right,” Claudine said from the doorway.

“Any other brothers or sisters?”

Mary-Lynnette blinked. “What, you're taking a census?”

Ash did a bad imitation of his former lazy smile. “I just like to keep track of my sisters' friends.”

Why?
“To see if you approve or something?”

“Actually, yes.” He did the smile again, with more success. “We're an old-fashioned family. Very old-fashioned.”

Mary-Lynnette's jaw dropped. Then, all at once, she felt happy. Now she didn't need to think about murders or pink rooms or what this guy knew. All she needed to think about was what she was going to do to him.

“So you're an old-fashioned family,” she said, moving a step forward.

Ash nodded.

“And you're in charge,” Mary-Lynnette said.

“Well, out here. Back home, my father is.”

“And you're just going to tell your sisters which friends they can have. Maybe you get to decide your aunt's friends, too?”

“Actually, I was just discussing that….” He waved a hand toward Claudine.

Yes, you were, Mary-Lynnette realized. She took another step toward Ash, who was still smiling.

“Oh, no,” Claudine said. She flapped her dish towel once. “Don't smile.”

“I like a girl with spirit,” Ash offered, as if he'd worked hard on finding the most obnoxious thing possible to say. Then, with a sort of determined bravado, he winked, reached out, and chucked Mary-Lynnette under the chin.

Fzzz!
Sparks. Mary-Lynnette sprang back. So did Ash, looking at his own hand as if it had betrayed him.

Mary-Lynnette had an inexplicable impulse to knock Ash flat and fall down on top of him. She'd never felt
that
for any boy before.

She ignored the impulse and kicked him in the shin.

He yelped and hopped backward. Once again the sleepy smugness was gone from his face. He looked alarmed.

“I think you'd better go away now,” Mary-Lynnette said pleasantly. She was amazed at herself. She'd never been the violent type. Maybe there were things hidden deep inside her that she'd never suspected.

Claudine was gasping and shaking her head. Ash was still hopping, but not going anywhere. Mary-Lynnette advanced on him again. Even though he was half a head taller, he backed up. He stared at her in something like wonder.

“Hey. Hey, look, you know, you really don't know what you're doing,” he said. “If you knew…” And Mary-Lynnette saw it again—something in his face that made him suddenly look not fatuous or amiable at all. Like the glitter of a knife blade in the light. Something that said
danger….

“Oh, go bother someone
else,
” Mary-Lynnette said. She drew back her foot for another kick.

He opened his mouth, then shut it. Still holding his shin, he looked at Claudine and managed a hurt and miserable flirtatious smile.

“Thanks so much for all your—”

“Go!”

He lost the smile. “That's what I'm doing!” He limped to the front door. She followed him.

“What do they call you, anyway?” he asked from the front yard, as if he'd finally found the comeback he'd been looking for. “Mary? Marylin? M'lin? M.L.?”

“They call me Mary-Lynnette,” Mary-Lynnette said flatly, and added under her breath, “That do speak of me.” She'd read
The Taming of the Shrew
in honors English last year.

“Oh, yeah? How about M'lin the cursed?” He was still backing away.

Mary-Lynnette was startled. So maybe his class had read it, too. But he didn't look smart enough to quote Shakespeare.

“Have fun with your sisters,” she said, and shut the door. Then she leaned against it, trying to get her breath. Her fingers and face were prickly-numb, as if she were going to faint.

If those girls had only murdered
him,
I'd understand, she thought. But they're
all
so strange—there's something seriously weird about that whole family.

Weird in a way that scared her. If she'd believed in premonitions, she'd have been even more scared. She had a bad feeling—a feeling that
things
were going to happen….

Claudine was staring at her from the living room. “Very fabulous,” she said. “You've just kicked a guest. Now, what was that all
about
?”

“He wouldn't leave.”

“You know what I mean. Do you two know each other?”

Mary-Lynnette just shrugged vaguely. The dizziness was passing, but her mind was swimming with questions.

Claudine looked at her intently, then shook her head. “I remember my little brother—when he was four years old he used to push a girl flat on her face in the sandbox. He did it to show he liked her.”

Mary-Lynnette ignored this. “Claude—what was Ash
here
for? What did you talk about?”

“About nothing,” Claudine said, exasperated. “Just ordinary conversation. Since you hate him so much, what difference does it make?” Then, as Mary-Lynnette kept looking at her, she sighed. “He was very interested in weird facts about life in the country. All the local stories.”

Mary-Lynnette snorted. “Did you tell him about Sasquatch?”

“I told him about Vic and Todd.”

Mary-Lynnette froze. “You're joking. Why?”

“Because that's the kind of thing he asked about! People lost in time—”

“Losing time.”

“Whatever. We were just having a nice conversation. He was a nice boy.
Finis.
”

Mary-Lynnette's heart was beating fast.

She was right. She was sure of it now. Todd and Vic
were
connected to whatever had happened with the sisters and Mrs. B. But what was the connection?

I'm going to go and find out, she thought.

F
inding Todd and Vic turned out not to be easy.

It was late afternoon by the time Mary-Lynnette walked into the Briar Creek general store, which sold everything from nails to nylons to canned peas.

“Hi, Bunny. I don't suppose you've seen Todd or Vic around?”

Bunny Marten looked up from behind the counter. She was pretty, with soft blond hair, a round, dimpled face, and a timid expression. She was in Mary-Lynnette's class at school. “Did you check over at the Gold Creek Bar?”

Mary-Lynnette nodded. “And at their houses, and at the other store, and at the sheriff's office.” The sheriff's office was also city hall and the public library.

“Well, if they're not playing pool, they're usually plinking.” Plinking was shooting at cans for practice.

“Yeah, but where?” Mary-Lynnette said.

Bunny shook her head, earrings glinting. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She hesitated, staring down at her cuticles, which she was pushing back with a little blunt-pointed wooden stick. “But, you know, I've heard they go down to Mad Dog Creek sometimes.” Her wide blue eyes lifted to Mary-Lynnette's meaningfully.

Mad Dog Creek…Oh, great. Mary-Lynnette grimaced.

“I know.” Bunny raised her shoulders in a shiver. “
I
wouldn't go down there. I'd be thinking about that body the whole time.”

“Yeah, me, too. Well, thanks, Bun. See you.”

Bunny examined her cuticles critically. “Good hunting,” she said absently.

Mary-Lynnette went out of the store, squinting in the hot, hazy August sunlight. Main Street wasn't big. It had a handful of brick and stone buildings from the days when Briar Creek had been a gold rush supply town, and a few modern frame buildings with peeling paint. Todd and Vic weren't in any of them.

Well, what now? Mary-Lynnette sighed. There was no road to Mad Dog Creek, only a trail that was constantly blocked by new growth and deadfall. And everyone knew more than plinking went on there.

If they're out there, they're probably hunting, she thought. Not to mention drinking, maybe using drugs. Guns and beer. And then there's that body.

The body had been found last year around this time. A man; a hiker, from his backpack. Nobody knew who he was or how he'd died—the corpse was too desiccated and chewed by animals to tell. But people talked about ghosts floating around the creek last winter.

Mary-Lynnette sighed again and got into her station wagon.

The car was ancient, it was rusty, it made alarming sounds when forced to accelerate, but it was
hers,
and Mary-Lynnette did her best to keep it alive. She loved it because there was plenty of room in back to store her telescope.

At Briar Creek's only gas station she fished a scrolled fruit knife from under the seat and went to work, prying at the rusty gas cap cover.

A little higher up…almost, almost…now
twist
…

The cover flew open.

“Ever think of going into the safecracking business?” a voice behind her said. “You've got the touch.”

Mary-Lynnette turned. “Hi, Jeremy.”

He smiled—a smile that showed mostly in his eyes, which were clear brown with outrageously dark lashes.

If I were going to fall for a guy—and I'm not—it would be for somebody like him.
Not
for a big blond cat who thinks he can pick his sisters' friends.

It was a moot point, anyway—Jeremy didn't go out with girls. He was a loner.

“Want me to look under the hood?” He wiped his hands on a rag.

“No, thanks. I just checked everything last week.” Mary-Lynnette started to pump gas.

He picked up a squeegee and a spray bottle and began to wash the windshield. His movements were deft and gentle and his face was utterly solemn.

Mary-Lynnette had to swallow a giggle herself, but she appreciated him not laughing at the pitted glass and corroded windshield wipers. She'd always had an odd feeling of kinship with Jeremy. He was the only person in Briar Creek who seemed even slightly interested in astronomy—he'd helped her build a model of the solar system in eighth grade, and of course he'd watched last year's lunar eclipse with her.

His parents had died in Medford when he was just a baby, and his uncle brought him to Briar Creek in a Fleetwood trailer. The uncle was strange—always wandering off to dowse for gold in the Klamath wilderness. One day he didn't come back.

After that, Jeremy lived alone in the trailer in the woods. He did odd jobs and worked at the gas station to make money. And if his clothes weren't as nice as some of the other kids', he didn't care—or he didn't let it show.

The handle of the gas hose clicked in Mary-Lynnette's hand. She realized she had been daydreaming.

“Anything else?” Jeremy said. The windshield was clean.

“No…well, actually, yes. You haven't, um, seen Todd Akers or Vic Kimble today, have you?”

Jeremy paused in the middle of taking her twenty-dollar bill.

“Why?”

“I just wanted to talk to them,” Mary-Lynnette said. She could feel heat in her cheeks. Oh, God, he thinks I want to see Todd and Vic socially—and he thinks I'm crazy for asking
him.

She hurried to explain. “It's just that Bunny said they might be down by Mad Dog Creek, so I thought you might have seen them, maybe sometime this morning, since you live down around there….”

Jeremy shook his head. “I left at noon, but I didn't hear any gunshots from the creek this morning. Actually, I don't think they've been there all summer—I keep telling them to stay away.”

He said it quietly, without emphasis, but Mary-Lynnette had the sudden feeling that maybe even Todd and Vic might listen to him. She'd never known Jeremy to get in a fight. But sometimes a look came into his level brown eyes that was…almost frightening. As if there was something underneath that quiet-guy exterior—something primitive and pure and deadly that could do a lot of damage if roused.

“Mary-Lynnette—I know you probably think this is none of my business, but…well, I think you should stay away from those guys. If you really want to go find them, let me go with you.”

Oh. Mary-Lynnette felt a warm flush of gratitude. She wouldn't take him up on the offer…but it was nice of him to make it.

“Thanks,” she said. “I'll be fine, but…thanks.”

She watched as he went to get her change inside the station. What must it feel like to be on your own since you were twelve years old? Maybe he needed help. Maybe she should ask her dad to offer him some odd jobs around the house. He did them for everyone else. She just had to be careful—she knew Jeremy hated anything that smacked of charity.

He brought back the change. “Here you go. And, Mary-Lynnette…”

She looked up.

“If you do find Todd and Vic, be careful.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know,” Mary-Lynnette said. She had reached for the change, but he hadn't let go of it. Instead, he did something odd: He opened her curled fingers with one hand while giving her the bills and coins with the other. Then he curled her fingers back over it. In effect, he was holding her hand.

The moment of physical contact surprised her—and touched her. She found herself looking at his thin brown fingers, at their strong but delicate grip on her hand, at the gold seal ring with the black design that he wore.

She was even more surprised when she glanced up at his face again. There was open concern in his eyes—and something like respect. For an instant she had a wild and completely inexplicable impulse to tell him everything. But she could just imagine what he would think. Jeremy was very practical.

“Thanks, Jeremy,” she said, conjuring up a weak smile. “Take care.”

“
You
take care. There are people who'd miss you if anything happened.” He smiled, but she could feel his worried gaze on her even as she drove away.

All right,
now
what?

Well, she'd wasted most of the day looking for Todd and Vic. And now, with the image of Jeremy's level brown eyes in her mind, she wondered if it had been a stupid idea from the beginning.

Brown eyes…and what color eyes did the big blond cat have? Strange, it was hard to remember. She thought that they had looked brown at one point—when he was talking about his old-fashioned family. But when he'd said he liked a girl with spirit, she remembered them being a sort of insipid blue. And when that odd knife-glint had flashed in them, hadn't they been icy gray?

Oh, who
cares
? Maybe they were orange. Let's just go home now. Get ready for tonight.

How come Nancy Drew always found the people she wanted to interrogate?

Why? Why? Why me?

Ash was staring at a yellow cedar weeping into a creek. A squirrel too stupid to get out of the sun was staring back at him. On a rock beside him a lizard lifted first one foot, then another.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

He didn't even believe it.

He'd always been lucky. Or at least he'd always managed to escape a hairsbreadth away from disaster. But this time the disaster had hit and it was a total annihilation.

Everything he was, everything he believed about himself…could he lose that in five minutes? For a girl who was probably deranged and certainly more dangerous than all three of his sisters put together?

No, he concluded grimly. Absolutely not. Not in five minutes. It only took five seconds.

He knew so many girls—nice girls. Witches with mysterious smiles, vampires with delicious curves, shapeshifters with cute furry tails. Even human girls with fancy sports cars who never seemed to mind when he nibbled their necks. Why couldn't it have been one of them?

Well, it wasn't. And there was no point in wondering about the injustice of it. The question was, what was he going to
do
about it? Just sit back and let fate ride over him like an eighteen-wheeler?

I'm sorry for your family,
Quinn had said to him. And maybe that was the problem. Ash was a victim of his Redfern genes. Redferns never could stay out of trouble; they seemed to tangle with humans at every turn.

So was he going to wait for Quinn to come back and then offer that as an excuse? I'm sorry; I can't handle things here after all; I can't even finish the investigation.

If he did that, Quinn would call in the Elders and they would investigate for themselves.

Ash felt his expression harden. He narrowed his eyes at the squirrel, which suddenly darted for the tree in a flash of red fur. Beside him, the lizard stopped moving.

No, he wasn't just going to wait for fate to finish him off. He'd do what he could to salvage the situation—and the family honor.

He'd do it tonight.

“We'll do it tonight,” Rowan said. “After it's fully dark; before the moon rises. We'll move her to the forest.”

Kestrel smiled magnanimously. She'd won the argument.

“We'll have to be careful,” Jade said. “That thing I heard outside last night—it wasn't an animal. I think it was one of
us.
”

“There aren't any other Night People around here,” Rowan said gently. “That was the whole point of coming here in the first place.”

“Maybe it was a vampire hunter,” Kestrel said. “Maybe the one that killed Aunt Opal.”

“
If
a vampire hunter killed Aunt Opal,” Rowan said. “We don't know that. Tomorrow we should look around town, see if we can at least get an idea who
might
have done it.”

“And when we find them, we'll take care of them,” Jade said fiercely.

“And if the thing you heard in the garden turns up, we'll take care of it, too,” Kestrel said. She smiled, a hungry smile.

Twilight, and Mary-Lynnette was watching the clock. The rest of her family was comfortably settled in for the night; her father reading a book about World War II, Claudine working conscientiously on a needlepoint project, Mark trying to tune up his old guitar that had been sitting in the basement for years. He was undoubtedly trying to think of words to rhyme with
Jade.

Mary-Lynnette's father looked up from his book. “Going starwatching?”

“Yup. It should be a good night—no moon till after midnight. It's the last chance to see some Perseids.” She wasn't exactly lying. It
would
be a good night, and she could keep an eye out for stragglers from the Perseid meteor storm as she walked to Burdock Farm.

“Okay; just be careful,” her father said.

Mary-Lynnette was surprised. He hadn't said anything like that for years. She glanced at Claudine, who jabbed with her needle, lips pursed.