weapon slipped beneath the surface. Instead of disappearing from sight, however, they slowly rose.
As Vivian and Finley followed Cora into the lake, Abilene said, ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ She dived off the side of the platform, plunged into the lake and kicked her way toward the bottom. The rays of sunlight slanting down through the water were cloudy with swirling motes. So much debris had been stirred up by the storm that she couldn’t see past the wrists of her outstretched arms. But the boat should be straight below her unless it had glided away after Cora cut the line.
Slimy tendrils suddenly slid over her hands, up her forearms. Weeds. As they lapped her face with slick tongues, she shut her eyes and groaned.
Screw the shoes.
She swept the weeds away from her face, arched her back, and kicked for the surface.
Moments later, she was sucking fresh air into her lungs. She trod water while she fought to catch her breath, then began to swim with an effortless breast stroke.
The others had already reached the end of the dock. Cora mounted the ladder there. She waited on a low rung, water to her knees, while Finley cut through the ropes binding the shotgun to the oar and thrust the barrels up at her. Cora released the ladder with one hand, grabbed the weapon, and hoisted it onto the dock.
They were all sprawled on the weathered planks by the time Abilene climbed to the top of the ladder.
‘No luck with the shoes?’ Finley asked.
‘Too many weeds down there.’
‘I had to go barefoot last time,’ Vivian pointed out. ‘It wasn’t that bad. The socks help.’
Abilene sank to the boards and lay back, folding her hands under her head. ‘Somebody always ends up shoeless when we visit Batty,’ she said. ‘Ever notice that?’
‘I managed to leave my tire iron behind,’ Cora said.
‘At the cabin?’ Abilene asked.
‘I put it on the floor when we sat down.’
‘You would’ve lost it in the drink anyway,’ Finley said.
‘Probably.’
Abilene shut her eyes. There seemed to be no breeze, but the heat of the sun felt good. For now. Especially good was the feel of flat, motionless wood beneath her back. She heard the quiet lap of water against the pilings.
‘I wonder if Batty’ll come after us,’ Vivian said.
Finley let out a soft laugh. ‘Probably hot-footin’ it through the woods right now, hot for our blood.’
‘I doubt it,’ Cora said.
‘Too bad I missed.’
‘You wouldn’t want something like that on your conscience,’ Vivian told her.
‘Oh yeah? Try me. The weird fuck tried to kill me.’
‘We were stealing from him,’ Cora pointed out.
‘Him? He had boobs. Did you see that? Shit. A hermaphrodite.’
‘I really think he’s gonna come after us,’ Vivian said. ‘Maybe we oughta get going.’
Abilene didn’t want to move. She felt too weary, too comfortable sprawled on the dock with the sun warming her. Keeping her eyes shut, she said, ‘Batty won’t come after us. Probably too busy calling down another curse. Plans to let the forces of magic nail us.’
‘I guess we’re doomed,’ Finley said.
Though Abilene couldn’t help smiling at the remark, she was surprised to hear Cora and Vivian laugh.
‘Next thing we know,’ Finley went on, ‘we’ll have flocks of birds dive-bombing us.’
‘More likely bats,’ Abilene said.
‘I think maybe we should get out of here,’ Vivian said.
‘Batty can hex us till hell freezes over,’ Cora said. ‘It’s just bullshit.’
‘That storm wasn’t bullshit,’ Abilene said.
‘It was just a storm. Batty didn’t make it happen.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘Christ, Abby.’
‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’
‘That’s not what I mean, anyway,’ Vivian said. ‘It’s not curses and hexes that… I think maybe we should get out of here before something else happens. I mean, we could’ve drowned. Finley almost got stabbed. Cora, you got tom up by that damn cat. I killed it. We attacked that poor freak. Abilene broke his arm. Finley, you got so crazy you actually took a shot at him. It’s all… out of hand.’
‘It’s out of hand, all right,’ Finley muttered. ‘Someone murdered Helen.’
In the silence that followed Finley’s words, Abilene rolled over and pushed herself off the boards. She sat cross-legged, facing her friends. They were already sitting up.
‘You want to leave leave?’ she asked Vivian. ‘Not just go back to the lodge, but… really leave? Hike out of here?’ Lower lip clamped between her teeth, Vivian nodded. Her green eyes looked solemn, thoughtful. ‘Nothing we do is going to bring Helen back,’ she said. ‘If we stay… I’d rather get out of here alive, with all of you, than stay and try to get revenge. Look what just happened to us. Just so we could get our hands on a shotgun.’
‘We got it,’ Finley said.
‘And a lot of good it did us when the boat sank.’
‘I guess I go along with Viv,’ Cora said. ‘Hell, I was ready to walk a couple of hours ago until everyone talked me out of it. You included,’ she told Vivian.
‘Things have changed. I never realized…’
‘We always got payback,’ Finley said.
‘Nothing ever got this heavy,’ Cora said.
‘Nobody ever butchered one of us before. I want to kill the son-of-a-bitch that did it to her. And now we’ve got the gun. All we need to do is stay the night and ambush the bastard when he shows up. A piece of cake.’
‘Right,’ Cora said. ‘A piece of cake like stealing the gun from Batty. Let’s just call it quits. I want the four of us to make it out of this alive.’
‘What about you, Hickok?’
‘I’ve had enough.’
‘God! You’re all gonna woos out on me?’
‘You were one second from having a knife in your back.’
‘Sure, but you…’
‘You would’ve been as dead as Helen. If I’d been looking the other way. If I hadn’t been quick enough. It was just too close.’
‘Like they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.’
Nobody smiled at her remark.
‘Besides,’ Abilene continued, ‘now we’ve got Batty on our case. I don’t know if he’s got any special powers. It sure did look like that storm was meant for us. But, regardless, I don’t think he’s gonna just leave us alone after all we did. He’ll want to nail us one way or another. So we’ve got Batty and the killer to worry about.’
‘Batty might be the killer,’ Finley pointed out.
‘It was that kid,’ Vivian said.
‘We’ll never know if we don’t stay and find out.’
‘Then we’ll never know,’ Cora said. She wrapped a hand around the shotgun barrels and stood up. ‘We’d better get started.’
‘This really and truly sucks,’ Finley muttered.
‘It’s the only smart thing to do,’ Vivian said as she got to her feet.
‘I don’t feel good about it either,’ Abilene said, forcing herself to stand. ‘But we’ve already pushed our luck. Let’s just hike out and let the police handle things.’
‘A lot of good the cops’ll do.’
‘Come on, Finley,’ Vivian said.
Finley frowned at the three of them. She shook her head. She muttered, ‘Shit,’ then stood up.
