small white paper bag, I crunched across the shells, my boots falling silent on the grass. I smiled down at Aggie, her face unlined, her black hair pushed back behind her ears. She had cut it into a pageboy that just brushed her shoulders, and it glistened like liquid onyx in the sun.
Aggie wasn’t surprised to see me. But then, little really surprises Aggie. She’s like a leaf on the surface of a stream, floating along in the eddies, sliding across rapids, untouched by it all, and serene. “I have no idea what that kind of serenity might feel like,
“You are covered in dried blood. Are you injured?” she asked.
I touched my shirt, crusted through with blood. “No. Not mine. And no one else is hurt either.” At her disbelieving expression, I added, “Some vamps tried to bite me last night.” Which was true. I just didn’t add the part about them being successful.
“Are they dead?” she asked.
“Not any more than they were before they tried.”
Aggie’s mouth twisted into what might be the start of a smile or a grimace, and tilted her head in acceptance. “Come inside. My mother asked to see you this morning when she woke.”
“Uh. Sure.” But Aggie’s mother scared me witless.
I dropped my eyes, though Beast pressed her claws into me, painfully. She didn’t like showing submission to anyone, but this was the tabby’s den, the cat a new addition since the last time I’d been inside the house. I smelled her now, over the potpourri. I didn’t enter the room, but stood at the entrance, eyes down. The cat settled slightly, uneasy, and kept her eyes on me.
Aggie stuck her head in from the kitchen. “I see you met the queen. She showed up here a few weeks ago and moved in. Sweetest cat I ever saw. ’Til now.”
“Cats don’t like me,” I said.
Aggie looked at me strangely. “Queenie likes everyone. Even the dogs.” I grunted as Queenie showed me her teeth again. Aggie’s brows went up at the threat from the house cat. “Hmm. My mother is out back on the porch. Come.”
I trailed Aggie, and Queenie dropped heavily to the floor, following us through the house with regal disdain. Her scent came strongly then, heavy with hormones and faintly with blood. I said, “You know she’s pregnant, right?”
Aggie turned back and stared at the cat. “Well, darn. I knew she was getting fat.”
“She’s due soon.” Like today, but I didn’t say that. Queenie was already in early labor, but since I had no way of knowing that, except my extra-good nose, I didn’t say that either.
Aggie made a long-suffering sound, half sigh, half snort, something I remembered from The People, the
Aggie placed a glass of sweating tea in front of her mother, a single mint leaf in the bottom; two identical glasses went to the side. One was clearly mine. “Jane says Queenie is going to give us kittens soon.”
“Oh?”
“Um, thank you, no,” I said, with my best Christian children’s home manners.
Aggie carried the pink basket back onto the porch. It was really pink—flamingo—with a pink bow on top. The basket was about three feet wide, with a huge hoop handle, the biggest basket I had ever seen, and Aggie placed it at
“I brought you gifts,” I said. I tilted up the paper bag, and two small foil-wrapped packages fell into my hand, each one tied with hemp string. I placed the silver foil–wrapped one in front of Aggie, and the gold foil–wrapped one in front of
“I’d have brought them to you on my last visit, but I didn’t come inside.”
“The amethyst came from a small mine near the Nantahala River,” I said, “on Cherokee land. A Cherokee silver artist named Daniel Running Bear did the silver work. Daniel
Aggie and her mother draped their necklaces over their heads in gestures that looked choreographed, the twin actions of people who had lived together for many years. Aggie looked at me with a smile, the first one I had seen on her face today. “They are beautiful. Thank you,
“Oh yes. This is pretty. Pretty, pretty!”
I nodded formally to each of them. “You are welcome,
“Mama, you wanted to tell Jane about your dream.”
“Yes.” The old woman nodded, her hands busy once again with the beans. “I have many dreams as I get older. Some are nothing. Some are something. This one was something.” A prickling ran up the back of my neck, as if cobwebs trailed across me. I placed the tea glass on the table, my hands curled around it, wet with condensation, cold from the ice.
I shook my head, waiting on the dream. The dreams of the elders were important, not to be ignored.
“This dream was strange, even for me. It was about a man hanging over a fire.”
I stilled, slowly dropping my hands into my lap, my tea glass forgotten. “A white man?”
She nodded, returning to the beans. “Dirty. Naked. He had a beard, like he needed to shave. His mustache was longer, like he had it first. Brown hair. Brown hands. He was dead. He had been cooked over a slow fire for many hours.” She looked at me from under her brows. “This was not the way of