The Hawley Book of the Dead (29 page)

I came up from the vision gasping, struggling against the deep green wall of vines and thorns. But there were no vines, only my office, bathed in dusky light. “Shit!” I must have fallen asleep. I must have slept for hours. My hands were throbbing. When I examined them, they were scabby, the blood congealed as if I had done battle with real thorns.
Something
had happened in the time I slept or had my delusions. I leapt up and ran downstairs. I found Caleigh asleep on the couch with a book tucked under her chin. Falcon Eddy was gone, and there was no sign of the twins. No twins in the kitchen making snacks. No twins in their rooms. I called Nathan’s cell, but he told me in a headachy voice that they hadn’t been to visit him.

My heart was pounding in my chest. One key card for the gate was missing from the hook by the door. I ran outside: Their horses were gone. I ran back to the house and woke Caleigh. Nathan came out of his apartment in his bathrobe, clutching a tissue box.

“They weren’t in the barn?”

“No. Neither were their horses.”

“And where’s Falcon Eddy?” I grilled Caleigh. “Did he go with them?”

“I don’t know where they all went,” Caleigh protested.

“Why didn’t you call me when they left you? You know I don’t want them to ride alone.”

“Oh, Mom,” Caleigh sighed, “I fell asleep. Anyway, they’d
kill
me if I told on them all the time.”

“They wouldn’t kill you. They’d just make life unpleasant for a day or two.” I strode to the mudroom. “Don’t you have any idea where they might have gone?”

She popped her head around the door. “You don’t have to yell.” I gave her the mad mother glare. “They’ll kill me anyway. But. When they went into the kitchen to get us snacks, they were talking about that old tavern. They were whispering. So I wouldn’t hear. But I did. The tavern where that boy they met at the fair said there were ghosts.”

“Thank you for telling me. Thank you for having sonar.” It was one of the few times I was glad of Caleigh’s unnerving superhuman hearing.

I yanked orange vests out of the closet. The girls hadn’t bothered to take theirs. Horses could sometimes look like deer in the gloaming. Which it was getting to be. The girls hadn’t bothered with the walkie-talkies, either. They probably had their cell phones, which wouldn’t work a quarter mile into the hollow. I punched in their numbers, and heard their phones ringing from the study. Tried Falcon Eddy’s phone, which rang and rang. What did I really know about him? He could be Voss’s partner in crime, for all I knew.

I reached for my riding boots, pulled them on. I grabbed my saddle pack, which contained horse treats, a map and a flashlight, a hoof pick, and vet wrap. Again, I noticed the girls had left theirs. They would never have been so careless in Nevada. What they
had
taken was their water packs. The one thing they probably wouldn’t need, but no one riding the desert around Las Vegas would be without water for even fifteen minutes. Old habits die hard, but I resisted the pull to take mine. I’d probably be gone less than an hour. I hoped. I gave Caleigh a quick kiss on her round cheek, said, “I’m going to find them. I’ll be home soon. Here, take this.” I gave her the other walkie-talkie. “And listen to Nathan,” who looked on, his face gray with illness and worry.

I was already halfway out the door when Caleigh ran and stuck herself to my legs like a burr. “Be careful, Mom.”

I smoothed her penny hair. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. Mothers are always all right. We have to be.” I kissed her, then ran out to the barn, pulled Zar from his grass paddock, and threw my saddle on a surprised horse.

“Don’t give me that blinky look. We have to find the girls.” He snorted as I adjusted the bridle, cinched the girth, and swung up. “Let’s go find your friends.”

I gave Zar his head. He might find them from the sheer horsey desire to be with the herd. At the end of the drive he swung down South Road at the Five Corners, heading toward the tavern site. I didn’t warm him up as usual, but pushed him into a fast trot.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I kept repeating under my breath. I blamed myself for leaving the girls alone even for one minute. I knew I was panicking but couldn’t stop, slow myself down, stop my hands from trembling. I nearly dropped the reins. I felt Zar’s muscles tense along with my tension. He rolled into a canter, without my asking, as if he could read my mind. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t taken the truck. I told myself it would be easier to look for the girls on the smaller trails on horseback, that sudden headlights might frighten their horses, but really, I wanted a companion in my search, the reassurance of another breathing creature as I plummeted through the woods. I tried not to think, not to feel, but it was Jeremy I really wanted.

The road was an arrow shot through the darkening canyon of trees, straight and ghostly white at dusk. It seemed to go on forever. My eyes began to ache from focusing to its end point among the trees, seeking without finding the forms of two horses, two girls. My head ached from willing them to appear. Something large and winged swooped over the road and I flinched, but Zar kept up his steady canter, his legs flying out over the ground. He slowed as we neared the old tavern road, grown over with tall grass. There was a disturbance, a flattening there. Some large animal had passed, or perhaps two. Surely it had been the girls and their horses. Zar seemed to think so. He plunged down the track, and I began calling for them. Bracken scratched at me, caught on my jeans. The darkness was closing around us, the trees loomed. I called their names as Zar pushed on, setting each hoof carefully on the narrow, rocky scrabble of the trail.

We came to the tavern cellar hole, a black pit opening up at the end of the track. I pulled the flashlight from Zar’s saddlebag and jumped off.

I shone the beam all down and around the rock enclosure, where nothing but weeds and fallen leaves lay. “Fai? Grace?” I called, while I aimed my flashlight into the woods, into crevices in the rocks, over the ground, searching for something, anything that might mean they were near. Suddenly the light picked up a clue, flecks of hay glistening from a mound of horse droppings that looked damp and fresh. Zar snuffed it, snorted, and shook his head, as if to tell me he didn’t know how to continue our search. But the fresh manure wasn’t what I smelled. I smelled lilacs.

A chill shivered up my back. I searched and called all up and down the tavern track and Poverty Road as night fell and the lilac scent pursued me. I called for the twins, listening for something besides my own voice in the tangle of trees. Finally, the thought that Caleigh would be worried made me turn Zar toward home. By the time I reached the gate, I had convinced myself that they were back at the house eating junk. A dark so complete had fallen that Zar had to find his way home without any guidance from me. Surely, the twins had, too.

But the barn, still blazing with light as I’d left it, was empty of their horses. I even looked over the tops of the stalls in case they were lying down, tuckered from their ride. All I saw was undisturbed bedding. I knew the horses weren’t out in the paddocks. They would have called to Zar as we came down the drive. But maybe they’d been benighted at some house on the main road, had already called home. I threw Zar’s saddle in a heap, secured him in his stall, and ran to the house.

Caleigh and Nathan were playing cards at the kitchen table, the phones and the walkie-talkie between them. They looked expectantly at me when I raced through the door. Caleigh smiled wide. “You found them, didn’t you? I told Nathan you wouldn’t come home without them—” She saw my face and the light in her eyes dimmed. She looked down, resumed her shuffling.

The kitchen door slammed, and I spun around, ready to scold the twins as they walked in as if nothing was wrong, as if they hadn’t scared us half to death. But it was Falcon Eddy, trailing vines, bleeding from deep gashes that tracked over his hands and face like roads on a map.

“Are they here? Have they come home?”

I shook my head.

He wiped the blood that was seeping into his left eye. “I saw them leave, but was bound by these dratted vines.” He pulled at one wrapped around his barrel chest.

I remembered my dream, of thorny vines climbing, twining through the window and into my office. “Vines here? In the house?”

“I was sitting right over there, and thick green vines grew up around me in an instant. Before I knew it they had me wrapped tight as a tick. My face, as well, and I couldn’t speak a word. The girls just walked out the door as if they didn’t see me.”

I looked at my hands, covered with scratches. I couldn’t call him a liar. I’d seen the thorny vines, too, felt their effects. “And then?”

“I struggled free, went upstairs to find you. You were wrapped in the vines, too. I couldn’t wake you. Couldn’t wake Caleigh, nor Nathan. Tried to use my cell to call for help, but the thing didn’t work. None of them did. So I went off to find them.” He sighed. “Don’t know yet if I did right. But while I was tracking them, I saw a man from a far bit away, called to him had he seen two girls riding. He was fiddling with something in the back of his car. When he heard me, he raised a gun. So I shot my bow. Winged him in the shoulder, thought that would be enough to give him pause.” He swiped at another trickle of blood. “Only, it didn’t. He pulled out the arrow, leapt into the car, and was away.”

I could barely breathe. “Were they … were they in the car?”

“Dearie, I’m just not sure. I’m not as fast as I used to be, but I ran and leapt onto the bumper, held fast to the roof rack. But the windows were tinted, full black. I pounded, listened for any sound. Tried to climb onto the roof, so I could get to the driver. He turned onto a dry streambed, blasted over the gullies. Lost my hold, got dragged the better part of a mile before I was jounced off altogether. So. I don’t
know
. Got the license plate, but that doesn’t seem like much at all.” He shook his head. “I did go back to the spot where I’d shot the bugger, looked for the horses, more sign of girls. Saw nothing. Hoped they’d be here.”

I’d started shaking as Falcon Eddy told his story. I reached for my phone, but it slipped from my hand. Nathan picked it up. I could see he was punching in 911.

Caleigh said, “I know. I’ll deal them in, then they have to come back soon.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, honey,” I said, trying for a steady voice. “You and Nathan go on playing, after he makes this phone call. Then you can have pickle and pimento.” Caleigh did not look up, even at the mention of her favorite sandwich meat. She was concentrating fiercely on bringing her sisters back to play their poker hands. But we would need stronger magic than that to bring them home.

Jolon wasn’t in uniform, and I was grateful for that, grateful for his tan chamois shirt, frayed at the cuffs, his worn jeans. He seemed like an old friend come to help us, not Hawley’s police chief. But two young women followed him, to collect “evidence” in Grace’s and Fai’s rooms. The word itself seemed cruel. More cruel still that my girls’ lives might be evidence of some crime, that other hands would touch things that were precious to them. Fai’s troll collection, Grace’s laptop with both Marilyn Manson and daisy stickers covering it. I felt how exposed they were, not only out in the night, not only to Rigel Voss, but in their own home. I felt like throwing up.

I gave Jolon photographs of the twins, a video of them at our last endurance ride. He faxed the photographs to the state police, the environmental police. I gave him their cell phones, which I’d already checked for photos or contacts or messages that might lead me to them. I’d read the recent texts, to their friends and to each other. I kept thinking that if we were in the real world they’d have taken their phones, and they would have been trackable now. But there the phones were, like pink and green sores I kept picking at.

Jolon brought me to the kitchen, closed the door. Falcon Eddy was there at the table, looking haggard and crestfallen. Jolon questioned Eddy first. He only raised an eyebrow at the mention of the vines.

He sent Eddy to talk to the sketch artist who’d just arrived, then made a series of calls. He ordered roadblocks set up, told us police in all the surrounding states were now looking for the car. The man Eddy had shot would be caught soon.

“You’re bleeding, Reve.” He took my hand. It
was
still bleeding, my palm pierced like a stigmata. I told him about the climbing vines that I’d thought were a dream.

“Do you believe what Eddy told us?”

“Crazy sounding or not, I know something of Falcon Eddy. Your Nan trusts him. She called me before she sent him to you.”

That was news to me. “Why didn’t she tell
me
? Why didn’t
you
tell me? The guy just shows up here, and I’m supposed to just trust him? What if he kidnapped the girls himself?”

“I don’t think so. He’s … well, let’s just say I’d be inclined to believe him. Most of his story, anyway. That he shot at the guy and hit him. Don’t know I’d go so far as to put it all down to enchantment, the way he seems to. But we’ll have a composite sketch soon.”

We heard the search helicopter that Jolon had called in whupping above us. There wasn’t much else to be done while night covered the forest, he explained, and evidence there needed to be preserved. The helicopters carried infrared detection gear that would sense heat. Horses were big enough that the sensors would pick them up if they were in the forest. They hadn’t yet. And the horses hadn’t returned riderless, so the twins were probably out of the forest, riding on the roads. They had to be. Any other possibility didn’t bear thinking about. The drone of the helicopter gave me a weird sense of vertigo, and of time standing still.

“I’ll have to ask you a lot of questions now, Reve,” Jolon said. “And some will be pretty personal.”

I stopped at a window, saw my own reflection in the glass, hair snarled, hands clenched around my elbows, holding everything in. My hope that some small accident had stranded the girls—a lost horseshoe, a minor puncture wound—was fading fast. “I can’t help thinking about them out there in the dark, hurt or frightened or—”