The Thread That Binds the Bones (11 page)

The raven flipped its wings and flew up to a low branch in a nearby tree. After a moment it returned. “I can’t leave her alone, because she is not alone; she is with you. This has no meaning.”

“Goodbye, Carroll,” said Tom, standing up.

“No! No. No one at the Hollow can unspell this. What do you want? Say it again.”

“Say you won’t bother Maggie.”

“I won’t bother Maggie,” it said, then hissed something.

“Swear by the Powers and Presences,” Tom said.

“I do so vow,” it said, and bobbed its head.

—Peregrine?

—Yes, Tom.

—Is it safe to release him?

—No. It never will be, especially when he has modified this promise with a whisper; nevertheless, you must release him.

—I could turn him into something else if he bothers us again.

—Next time he will be armed against it. But I suspect you could overcome such armor.

Tom leaned forward, studying Carroll with Othersight. A shadow of his human form crouched above the bird; the bird was wrapped round with silver threads as intricate and beautiful as snowflakes under a magnifying glass.—Silver, Tom thought, and felt the web wake to him.—Silver, let the Carroll shape come back. Relax, so that he no longer feels you, but stay with him wherever he goes. Carroll. Carroll.

The shadow Carroll and the bird melted into one another within the embrace of silver, and then Carroll stood up, naked and human, and stared at Tom. His hazel eyes looked thoughtful. He pursed his lips, then held out his hand.

—Is that a trick? Tom asked Peregrine.

—I don’t know.

Tom shook hands with Carroll. Carroll’s hand was cool, his grip strong but not punishing. Tom said, “I assume you can get home from here.”

“Yes.” Carroll dived up into the air and flew away.

Tom sighed, shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and walked back to the car.

Chapter 9

“Well?” Maggie asked Tom as he climbed back into the driver’s seat of the cab. She was sitting in the middle of the front seat; Eddie sat quiet beside the window.

Tom looked at her, wondering who she was, this utter stranger. He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them again and saw her just the way he had before: a girl, hugging herself, one shoulder hunched higher than the other, head bent toward the higher shoulder, her brows drawn together above her nose.

He reached for the key, which was still in the ignition.

“Please,” she said. “What did you do with him?”

“I let him go.”

Both her shoulders hunched higher. She stared out the front window as he started the car. He saw a single tear travel down her cheek, but she made no sound.

They drove in silence for a while. “He said he rescued you from someone who was hurting you. What did he do to the guy he took you away from?” he asked presently.

“He cast a most magnificent hurtful spell on him,” she whispered.

He hesitated, then said gently, “Maggie, I’m not Carroll.”

She relaxed, sagging back against the seat. “I know.” She touched his arm. “I know. That’s what’s good about you.”

After another silence, he said, “But how could you know that when you said you’d take my protection?”

“Watched you with your wife.”

“What?”

“You asked her questions, and listened to her answers. You don’t trust her yet, but you do listen.”

He stared at her, then back at the road. An utter stranger, full of threat and promise, and she carried his mark in her hand.

They bucketed up out of a dip in the dirt drive and came suddenly upon the patched asphalt of Lost Kettle Road. Tom turned right, then pulled over and glanced back. The lane leading to Chapel Hollow was almost invisible, a dirt trace between trees, underbrush dipping over its edges. “No mailbox,” he said.

“They got a p.o. box in town. Mr. Dirk picks up the mail a couple times a week,” said Eddie. “He’s a lawyer. He makes sure none of the zoning or anything interferes with the Hollow.”

“Huh,” said Tom, frowning. “Eddie, you were living in Arcadia when I got there. You remember hearing about these people before you ran into Gwen?”

“Nothing real obvious. Pops used to say, ‘Beware the women.’ I just figured he got burned in his marriage, which he doesn’t talk about. Didn’t think it had anything to do with me.”

“Nobody told me anything about them, although people seemed to expect me to leave when I had no plans to. Maybe they expected the people in the Hollow to take me. I heard some guarded comments that I didn’t understand. I never asked what they meant.” He put the car back in drive and they headed out. “So what are we going to tell them when we get back? I don’t want them to know that I’m—that I’m—” He bit his lower lip.

“Related,” Maggie suggested.

“Right,” he said, smiling at her. “I mean, I have friends in Arcadia. You get the feeling these Chapel Hollow people are enemies of the Arcadians? Or what?”

“I talked to the other fetches,” Eddie said. “Delia’s been there the longest, and she sort of feels like they’re her family. She came there when she was about sixteen and watched a bunch of them grow up. She’s eighty now. Some of them are her pets, in a way. She talked about the Old Days a lot, how the Hollow people had real power then and used it to help townspeople. Chester came to Arcadia when he was a teenager and nobody clued him in that this could happen to him, that those Hollow people could come steal him. He could tell there was something weird between Hollow people and townspeople, but he didn’t know what it was. So when Miss Sarah started fetching him, he fell hard. Like I did with Miss Gwen, maybe. Aren’t they the foxiest women you’ve ever seen?”

“I don’t know if I’ve seen those two.”

“Trust me.” Eddie sucked in a breath. “And every bit as sexy as they look. And much, much meaner.”

“Some of the Hollow people are nice,” Maggie said. “Jaimie. Meredith.”

“Shoot, Maggie!” said Eddie, staring at her again. “I still can’t believe you can talk! How did you keep quiet all that time? You could have told
us.
”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Knew if I had a secret it would keep me strong. Done that before, used a secret as my backbone. If it’s a good secret, if it’s
my
secret, it gives me power even when I dort’t feel like I have any. If I told anybody, even Barney, some
Ilmonishti
could make them tell, and then I’d lose my power.”

“So how come you stopped keeping it up now?” Eddie asked.

She leaned forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand. “Don’t know, just had to,” she said. “The time came. Now I got to find another one. Here’s one. It’s a secret Tom can do stuff like the
Ilmonish
.”

“Yes,” said Tom. “I don’t know how people in town feel about the Hollow people, but if half of what Laura told me about how normal people get treated out there is true, I imagine they’re not too happy. I mean, Fred was scared of Laura when she came into the bar. If he found out about me, I don’t know if he’d even let me in there again, and that’s where I spend a lot of my time.”

Eddie stroked his chin. “Tommy, I’m starting to remember something. It didn’t make sense to me at the time. Mr. Hal came into Fred’s bar one day. This was before I knew who he was. You were there, too; we were arguing about movies. We rented
The Hidden
on video the night before, remember? Or was it
The Terminator
?
Anyway we were talking and all of a sudden nobody else was, and you turned around and looked at the door, and shushed me, and this guy had walked in. We turned around and there he was, a red-headed guy with a mustache, nothing much, walks to the bar, smiles at Fred, and out comes a glass of Fred’s private reserve, no questions asked. Remember?”

Tom frowned. The moment came back to him, the sudden cessation of everybody else’s speech, the change in atmosphere he had learned to be alert for, the arrival of the undistinguished man. He remembered surveying the faces of the others in the bar for clues, information about what made this event distinct from others. Raising of eyebrows, thinning lips, shuttering of faces, blanking of expressions: the air whispered “threat.” Tom had gestured to shut Eddie up, and Eddie responded even though he wasn’t usually sensitive to undercurrents. The man smiled, a kind of wry, don’t-take-me-seriously smile, walked to the bar, and said, “Hi, Fred. I was just in town checking about the new seed. Got anything for a dry throat?”

Fred, silent, got out the bottle, poured a shot. The mild man drank it, glancing around the bar, smiling. Heads turned away, eyes not meeting his. Tom ducked his head too when the stranger’s gaze came his way. Protective coloration.

“Thanks,” said the man after he finished his drink. “Is it ... thanks, Fred.” He had walked out without paying.

“Yeah,” Tom said to Eddie, coming out of the memory. He tried superimposing the mild man’s face over the face of his new father-in-law, got a match. “I sure don’t want it to turn into something like that.”

“We’re going to have to tell ’em something, though,” Eddie said. “I don’t think people ever get away from the Hollow.”

“If anybody asks me,” said Maggie, “don’t think I remember much, except catching a ride with you when you were running away from them.”

Tom grinned at her. “That’s a version I can live with.”

“Just come out of the wilderness like idiots?” Eddie said, widening his eyes and letting his face go slack. “I could probably handle that,” he added.

“Let’s try it, anyway. Maggie, where do you go from here?”

“Don’t know.”

“Home?”

“Not while my dad’s alive,” she said in a tight voice.

“Oh.” They went a ways, made a left turn onto Rivenrock Road, finally a road with decent pavement. “How old are you?” Tom asked.

“Be sixteen sometime soon. Sort of lost track of time.”

“So you should be in school?”

She laughed. It grated, edging toward a sob, but not getting there. “Have to play catch-up. Haven’t been to school since seventh grade. Not sure I want to go back.”

“What do you want to do? Where do you want to live?”

She looked down at the silver mark in her left palm, then up at him. “Take me,” she said, holding out her brand. “I’m yours.” She gave him the smile of a much older woman.

Chilled, he said, “Stop it.”

She relaxed against the seat back, leaving her palm open, its silver mark still visible. She gave him a young smile. “Give me crash space. Can find some kind of job, dish-washing, waitressing. Don’t feel up to long-range planning right now.”

“Uh—”

“He doesn’t have crash space,” Eddie said. “He lives in this little tiny room over the taxi garage. You can stay with me, Mag. I got a fold-down bed in the living room in my trailer.”

“All right,” she said, but the smudges under her eyes darkened.

Tom glanced at her. A big pothole jarred the steering wheel out of his hands. For a little while he concentrated on driving. At length he glanced at her again. “Maggie?”

“What.”

“Why is Eddie scarier than I am?”

She turned away, staring out through the windshield, shrugged. “Not scared. Just tired.”

“Tired of what?”

She frowned and muttered something.

“What?” said Tom.

“Screwing around.”

“Did I ever hurt you, Maggie?” Eddie said, pain in his voice.

“No, not really.”

“You came to my bed. You never said no. I thought we were comforting each other.”

“You were warm. Carroll was cold even when he was in me. You were nice, and he hadn’t been nice to me in a long time. But a hug would have been enough.”

“You never told me.”

She closed her eyes. “Secret was more important,” she said in a weary voice.

“Eddie, can I stay with you?” Tom asked. “Maggie can have my room.”

“All right,” said Eddie.

Maggie put her hand on Tom’s arm. “Don’t want to be alone,” she said. Her eyes were wide and miserable.

“All right,” Tom said. “We can work something out.”

They came to the highway, and drove north in silence. When they reached the outskirts of town, Tom looked at Eddie. “Where to?”

“Is my trailer still set up in back of Pops’s garage?”

“I think so,” Tom said.

“I-I feel—”

“What?”

“Real people—what’s it like to talk to real people? I can’t remember.”

“Guess we could find out sooner instead of later,” said Tom, and he drove to the Dew-Drop Inn. After he parked and turned off the engine, he and Eddie and Maggie looked at each other a minute, and that was when people came out of the bar and pulled open the cab doors.

Chapter 10

Judging from the number of people around the taxi, the bar must be pretty crowded for an early Friday afternoon, Tom thought. Maybe it was lunchtime, or maybe they were having some kind of special meeting. Sam Carson, the city marshal, was present, though he was out of uniform. Bert Noone, Tom’s boss, was the first to pull a taxi door open. Young Dr. Alton (as opposed to Old Doc Hardesty); Trailer Court Hank; Ruth the librarian, who only opened the library three days a week; Gus, the guy who manned the desk at the bus station for the few hours a day it was relevant; some guys from Diggers Dumpers Delvers Sand & Gravel; two men from the volunteer fire department; and a few assorted others, including the midday regulars, were present. People came to the Dew-Drop on their lunch breaks; Fred’s wife Tizzy was a wizard at making sandwiches and nachos. She whipped up a mean guacamole.

Everybody present was excited.

Bert patted Tom’s shoulder. He was grinning.

“Tom! Tom? How’d you—what’s that you’re wearing?”

“Eddie, you okay?”

“Did you come from the Hollow? How’d you get away?”

“We could use a drink,” said Tom as he, Maggie, and Eddie climbed out of the taxi.

“Just a darn minute,” said Sam, the city marshal, “how old’s the girl? She looks like a minor.”

Maggie clung to Tom’s arm and stared at Sam.

“Shut up, Sam,” said Fred. “You’re off duty now. What’ll you have, Miss?” He held the door open. Tom, Eddie, and Maggie went into the welcome smoky darkness, and everyone else followed.