Capture (25 page)

CHAPTER 14

Hayden

T
wenty minutes later, we pulled into Grandma Letty’s driveway. Her house, a huge Victorian situated on a hilltop at the end of a winding dirt and gravel road, was a welcome sight. The driveway ended in a cement pad in front of a three car garage, giving Bud plenty of room to park the bus beside my truck. Slowly, with stiff movements of obvious soreness or fear or both, everyone got off the bus and gathered on the wraparound porch.

I rang the doorbell with no idea what to expect.
The last time I’d seen my father’s mother was at Damon’s funeral, and even then she hadn’t stayed long. Since he had become a senator, my father apparently hadn’t wanted anyone to know about his witch of a mother, though I used to think it was because she was a little too blunt to be politically correct. Contact with her had consisted of only a few cards each year on the holidays.

The door opened to reveal a stooped over old woman in brown slacks and a pink and brown polka dotted blouse with a floppy bow at the neck.
Her body seemed frail, but her gaze was still as sharp as I’d remembered it beneath that same perfectly poufed salt and pepper helmet hair.

“
Hi, Grandma,” I said. “Uh, I hope you were telling Tarah the truth about having room for about fifty people ‘cause...here we are.”

Her papery cheeks bunched into a big smile as she stepped forward to grab my shoulder.
“Hayden Shepherd. My lord, you’ve grown tall! Come here and give your grandma a hug.” She tugged me down to her height with a grip that was none too shabby. I awkwardly patted her back, afraid I’d break her bones if I patted too hard.

“
Is this Tarah?” she said, turning to her. “Yep, just as pretty as I pictured you from your voice on the phone. But my lord it’s cold out here! Come inside, please, everyone come on in.”

She led us all inside, where the group sort of spilled across the adjoining living and dining rooms, growing noisy as Grandma Letty insisted on make refreshments in the kitchen and Pamela, Tarah and a few other weary women helped her.
I joined them, needing to warn my grandmother about the bus driver and our church group cover story. I spoke to her in as low a voice as I could, praying she wasn’t deaf since the living room, only yards away from the open kitchen area, was closed off by only an L-shaped wall with large arched doorways leading to the kitchen and dining rooms.

“
I’ve got just the thing for him.” With a wink, she grabbed a tiny bottle from a nearby cabinet, poured a healthy dose of it into one of the hot chocolates the ladies were fixing trays of, and told Pamela to be sure the bus driver got
that
drink. Nodding, Pamela took the tray of drinks into the living room.

“
Grandma, we don’t want to kill—” I started to say, but she shushed me.

“
A potion of sleepy time herbs, completely harmless. From the looks of this group you’ve brought me, a few more could do with a dose of it too.” Her thin lips pressed themselves temporarily out of existence.

“
They’ve been through a lot,” I agreed, the memory of the dying cop flashing through my mind. “Right now, they probably just want somewhere safe to stretch out and sleep for a while.”

“
Let’s get them squared away then,” she suggested. “You can fill me in on it all later.”

I followed her to the living room, where Bud was already asleep sitting upright in a green wingback chair by the crackling fireplace, despite the noise of the exhausted adults trying to corral their equally fussy kids.
The adults who weren’t busy trying to calm down kids were nodding off where they sat or stood leaning against door jambs wherever they could. It was a lot of people to cram into this house, but Grandma Letty managed them like a general, working with the few remaining conscious parents to get whole families set up in the rooms upstairs or on pallets in the living and dining rooms.

Forty-five minutes later, the house was quiet and dim except for the occasional opening and closing of a bathroom door.
Tarah had shyly asked if she could take a shower, and Grandma Letty had sent her off to the master suite upstairs before nudging me over to a barstool at the kitchen island. Grandma Letty took a stool opposite me, and I finally had time to look around. Her kitchen wasn’t as big as Mom’s, the appliances regular sized instead of the industrial versions Mom preferred, the cabinets older, more traditional and less contemporary. Cozier. I could feel myself sort of melting into the barstool and had to fight the temptation to use the island as a pillow for my head.

“
Fifty people tucked in in under an hour,” I said, forcing a tired smile. “Even for a grandma, that’s got to be some kind of record.”

“
This was nothing. I had practice. Getting you and your brother to go to sleep when you were little was much harder.”

I had a brief memory of her hollering at us to settle down, back when we lived in our old house.
I’d forgotten she’d come to stay with us a few times when I was a kid.

“
You’ve sure gotten yourself into it this time,” she murmured before taking a sip of chamomile tea. “This is a lot of lives to take responsibility for, Hayden. I mean, I’ve heard of people creating their own careers, but this isn’t a career you’re building here, hon. It’s a life calling.”

Life calling.
The words sent actual chill bumps racing down my spine.

I
gulped. “This isn’t a career
or
a life calling. I just promised I’d get them here safely so they could figure out what to do next.”

One gray eyebrow arched.
“I see. So your grand plan was to get them through the woods to Grandma's house and then dump them off for me to deal with?”

I scrubbed my hands over my gritty face.
“I didn’t say I was going to abandon them. I’ll help them out if they need it.”

I didn’t like the way her eyes narrowed
at that.

She took a slow sip of tea.
“What about that cute girl you were standing so close to on my front porch? Does she have somewhere to go from here?”

I thought about my answer
to that one. “Tarah’s not really a witch. She can’t do magic, though she claims different. So she might be able to go back home with the right help from a lawyer to clear her name. She’s only guilty by association.”

Both her eyebrows rose.
“I see. So she’s just tagging along for the fun of it then?”

“
Well, it started with her trying to free her dad. He’s a scientist who got arrested at a protest while trying to convince some outcasts to let him test their powers. He got thrown into an internment camp out in west Texas. But then she ended up being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and got thrown into the camp too, along with everyone else here.”

“
Ah, now I understand. She’s why you broke everyone out of that camp, isn’t she?”

I nodded then told her about getting shot, waking up to see one of the
prisoners kill a cop at the gas station in Oklahoma, and having to work with that same outcast in order to secure the charter bus. As I summed up the mess of events, the house shifted and creaked from the temperatures dropping still further outside.

“
So you did it all because of her,” she whispered, her eyes widening beneath their saggy hoods of loose skin. She was silent for a few seconds before shaking her head and sighing. “Such is the power of love.”

Love.
The word did weird things to my stomach and chest. A random memory flashed through my mind of Tarah’s lips softly curving into a smile…

In a firmer voice Grandma Letty asked,
“What about Tarah’s father? You didn’t say what happened to him. Were you able to free him from the camp too?”

“
Yeah. He went back home to get Tarah’s mother and take her into hiding somewhere. Tarah should have gone with them, but she’s sticking with this group for the story. She wants to be a journalist like her older brother. Probably thinks she’ll get the Pulitzer for it.” I stared down into my mug.

“
Is this the same Tarah you and Damon used to play with every day?”

“
Yeah. How’d you know about that?”

“
Your momma and I have always kept in touch. By the way, you and Tarah should probably bunk in my room since it’s just about the only space we’ve got left by now. She’s short enough that she should be able to fit on the loveseat in there without much trouble. You okay with a pallet on the floor beside her?”

I nodded, turning my mug around and around in silence, the sleeping arrangements the last thing on my mind at this point.

“Okay, so you saved the girl, you saved her dad, you saved a whole bunch of others, and you got ‘em all here in one piece. You ought to be grinning like the Cheshire Cat right about now. So what’s with the long face?”

I sighed.
“This situation’s no good for Tarah, but I don’t know what to do or even if I can do anything. She needs to be with her family. I’d try to change her mind about staying with this group if I thought she’d listen. But she’s way too hardheaded. She thinks she’s lucky to have been mistaken for an outcast and thrown into the internment camp and forced to go on the run with them. Like it's some big career making opportunity for her or something.”

I looked up at her, expecting to see some sympathy on her face. Instead she was scowling at me.

"You make having a little ambition sound like a sin," she said.

"Well, it's certainly nothing worth risking your life over."

"Sometimes a little ambition can be just what you need to drive you to do the great things in life. You think I would have ever hooked up with your grandpa if not for my wanting to help lead the way towards a better world for all of us?"

I remembered the crazy story of how they met, my grandfather a legal aide in the district attorney's office rushing up the courthouse steps late for a trial and bumping into
my rabble rowsing grandmother as she led a protest for women's rights.

"Things are different now, Grandma," I muttered. "You can't just go out and protest and make a difference anymore."

"Don't I know it. Your grandpa's probably rolling in his grave over what we've done with our country's so-called democracy lately."

“
What I don't get is why people aren’t trying to do something to stop the government.” I settled back in my stool, crossing my arms over my chest.

“
But you did. You freed an entire camp of Clann people.” She beamed at me like I was two years old and had just learned how to walk right before her very eyes.

“
That was one camp. There’s probably hundreds of them all over the country. I can’t free them all. We need a change in how the masses think about the Clann in order to force the politicians to change. Why isn’t the media covering these camps and showing everyone what’s really going on inside them?”

“
You said Tarah wants to be a journalist. There’s your first inroad with the media.”

I glared at her.
“I meant someone other than her.”

“Because she’s not good enough?”

My scowl deepened. “Because it’s not safe for her.”

She snorted. “Sounds like she begs to differ.”

Since glaring at my grandma wasn’t changing anything, I stared gloomily down at my mug instead.

Sh
e let out a heavy sigh. “As for stopping the government, well, normally I’d be the first one to advocate that we get a team of lawyers and take this all the way to the Supreme Court if we had to. But the world’s gone mad, Hayden. Things are crazier than I’ve ever seen them, and that’s really saying something. I imagine you haven’t seen the news in a while?”

I shook my head.
We hadn’t even listened to the radio, sticking with CDs or an oddly comfortable silence instead.

“
People are dying out there now,” she said. “Right there in America’s streets, trying to fight our government over this Clann crackdown. But it’s like trying to stop a tsunami. The more the Clann people fight back for freedom, the more the government and the media portray us as a danger to everyone else’s safety. Now the whole world’s split right down the middle, and either you’re with the government or you’re a threat that has to be locked up and hidden away as soon as possible.”

Her mug shook as she lifted it for a slow sip of tea.
She had to use both hands to set it down on the counter again. The dull thud was loud in the kitchen, which was silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room. “No one’s listening to reason out there anymore. All they know is fear and hate.”

A too
familiar anger warmed back to life in the pit of my stomach. “What happened to the Bill of Rights and all that? I mean, Tarah and her dad weren’t even given a chance to call a lawyer or anything when they got arrested. The soldiers just assumed she and her dad were Clann too, pumped them full of drugs and locked them up with the rest of them.”

“
That's because the police and the military don’t have to worry about first amendment rights anymore. The Patriot Act lets them arrest anyone even remotely suspicious, and if you side with the Clann, that definitely makes you suspicious. No such thing as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion now when it comes to protecting the U.S. government. To them, talking about using magic is the same as if you were talking about assassinating the president herself. There’s no guaranteed phone call, no promise of legal representation. Heck, if someone even demonstrates an ability to use Clann abilities in public, that’s seen as equal to trying to set off a nuclear weapon. You can be shot on sight now for that. The Supreme Court can’t rule fast enough to overturn even a hundredth of what our government’s pulling every single second of the day. Your grandpa would have worked himself into another heart attack over this mess if he hadn’t already passed away.”