“Him. Is he any good in the sack?”
“Matt, look at this.” Elena held up a small tube of glue. “I think she actually did PermaStick that stuff to her skin. We have to call Child Protective Services or whatever, because nobody took her to the hospital right away. Whether her parents knew about this behavior or not, they shouldn’t have just left her.”
“I just hope they’re all right. Her family,” Matt said grimly as they walked out the door, with Tami coolly following them to the car, and shouting lurid details about “what a good time” they had had, “the three of them.”
Elena glanced at him uneasily from her place in the passenger seat — with no ID or driver’s license, of course, she knew she shouldn’t drive. “Maybe we’d better take her to the police first. My God, that poor family!”
Matt said nothing for a long time. His chin was set, his mouth grim. “I feel somehow as if I’m responsible. I mean, I knew there was something wrong with her — I should have told her parents then.”
“Now you’re sounding like Stefan. You’re not responsible for everyone you meet.”
Matt gave her a grateful glance, and Elena continued, “In fact I’m going to ask Bonnie and Meredith to do one other thing, which proves you’re not. I’m going to ask them to check on Isobel Saitou, Jim’s girlfriend.You’ve never had any contact with her, but Tami might have.”
“You mean you think she’s got it, too?”
“That’s what I hope Bonnie and Meredith will find out.”
Bonnie stopped dead, almost losing her hold on Mrs. Forbes’s feet. “I am not going into that bedroom.”
“You have to. I can’t manage her alone,” Meredith said. Then she added cajolingly, “Look, Bonnie, if you go in with me, I’ll tell you a secret.”
Bonnie bit her lip. Then she shut her eyes and let Meredith guide her, step by step, farther into this house of horror. She knew where the master bedroom was — after all, she had played here since childhood. All the way down the hall, then turn left.
She was surprised when Meredith came to a sudden stop after only a few steps. “Bonnie.”
“Well? What?”
“I don’t want to frighten you, but—” This had the immediate effect of terrifying Bonnie. Her eyes snapped open. “What?What? ” Before Meredith could answer she glanced over her shoulder in fear and saw what.
Caroline was behind her. But not standing. She was crawling — no, she was scuttling, the way she had on Stefan’s floor. Like a lizard. Her bronze hair, unkempt, hung down over her face. Her elbows and knees stuck out at impossible angles.
Bonnie screamed, but the pressure of the house seemed to choke the scream back down her throat. The only effect it had was to make Caroline look up at her with a quick reptilian movement of her head.
“Oh, my God — Caroline, what happened to your face?”
Caroline had a black eye. Or rather, a purplish-red eye that was so swollen that Bonnie knew it would have to turn black in time. On her jaw was another purple swelling bruise.
Caroline didn’t answer, unless you counted the sibilant hiss she gave while scuttling forward.
“Meredith, run! She’s right behind me!”
Meredith quickened her pace, looking frightened — all the more frightening to Bonnie because almost nothing could shake her friend. But as they lurched forward, with Mrs. Forbes bouncing between them, Caroline scuttled right under her mother and into the door of her parents’ room, the master bedroom.
“Meredith, I won’t go in th—” But they were already stumbling through the door. Bonnie shot quick darting glances into every corner. Caroline was nowhere to be seen.
“Maybe she’s in the closet,” Meredith said. “Now, let me go first and put her head on the far side of the bed. We can adjust her later.” She backed around the bed, almost dragging Bonnie with her, and dumped Mrs. Forbes’s upper torso so that her head rested on pillows. “Now just pull her and put her legs down on the other side.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t! Caroline’s under the bed, you know.”
“She can’t be under the bed. There’s only about a five-inch clearance,” Meredith said firmly.
“She’s there! I know it. And”—rather fiercely—“you promised you’d tell me a secret.”
“All right!” Meredith gave a complicit glance through her disheveled dark hair. “I telegraphed Alaric yesterday. He’s so far out in the boonies that telegraph is the only way to reach him, and it may be days before my message gets to him. I had an idea that we were going to need his advice. I feel bad, asking him to do projects that aren’t for his doctorate, but—”
“Who cares about his doctorate? God bless you!” cried Bonnie thankfully. “You did just right!”
“Then come on and swing Mrs. Forbes’ feet around the bottom of the bed. You can do it if you lean in.”
The bed was a California king-size. Mrs. Forbes was lying at an angle across it, like a doll thrown on the floor. But Bonnie halted near the foot of the bed. “Caroline’s going to grab me.”
“No, she won’t. Come on, Bonnie. Just get Mrs. Forbes’ legs and give one big heave….”
“If I get that close to the bed, she’ll grab me!”
“Why should she?”
“Because she knows what scares me! And now that I’ve said it, she definitely will.”
“If she grabs you, I’ll come and kick her in the face.”
“Your leg’s not that long. It would bang on the metal bed-frame thin gummy—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Bonnie! Just help meheeeeeeere!” The last word was a full-fledged scream.
“Meredith—” began Bonnie, and then she screamed, too.
“What is it?”
“She’s grabbing me!”
“She can’t be! She’s grabbing me! Nobody has arms that long!”
“Or that strong! Bonnie!I can’t make her let go!”
“Neither can I!”
And then any words were drowned in screaming.
After dropping Tami off with the police, driving Elena around the woods known as the Fell’s State Park was…well, a walk in the park. Every so often they would stop. Elena would go a few steps into the trees and stand, Calling — however you did that. Then she came back to the Jaguar, looking discouraged.
“I’m not sure that Bonnie wouldn’t be better at this,” she said to Matt. “If we can brace ourselves to go out at night.”
Matt shuddered involuntarily. “Two nights were enough.”
“Do you know, you never told me your story from that first night. Or at least, not when I could understand words, spoken words.”
“Well, I was driving around like this, except almost on the other side of the Old Wood — near the Lightning- Split Oak area…?”
“Right.”
“When right in the middle of the road something appears.”
“A fox?”
“Well, it was red in the headlights, but it wasn’t like any fox I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been driving this road since I could drive.”
“A wolf?”
“Like a werewolf, you mean? But, no — I’ve seen wolves by moonlight and they’re bigger. This was right in between.”
“In other words,” Elena said, narrowing her lapis lazuli eyes, “a custom-made creature.”
“Maybe. It sure was different from the malach that chewed my arm up.”
Elena nodded. Malach could take all sorts of different forms, from what she understood. But they were siblings in one way: they all used Power and they all needed a diet of Power to live. And they could be manipulated by a stronger Power than they had.
And they were venomous enemies of humans.
“So all we really know is that we don’t know anything.”
“Right. That was the place back there, where we saw it. It just suddenly appeared in the middle of the — hey!”
