stances. If you really want to hit targets, you hold it like a rifle, bring it up to your eye, like this. If you can brace against a corner, that's even better; gives you some cover, too.' She lowered the weapon to just above her waist, leaned forward on the balls of her feet. 'Hipshooting isn't very accurate, but if you've got to charge through a door, it makes the bad guys duck. And a Thompson throws so much lead you'll probably hit something. This is the way.' She leaned into the gun and fired a burst, tearing the midsection out of the paper silhouette at the end of the range. She handed Danny the gun. 'Try it.'
He did. The Thompson bucked like a firehose under full stream, but he clenched hard and got some of the bullets into the target.
' 'S'okay,' Katie said. 'What do you think made all those other holes in the wall-moths?'
'How long did it take you to learn?'
'Awhile. But I was handling a chainsaw when 1 was four. It's all in the control.'
'Four?'
'My folks are loggers, up in Michigan. The Peninsula.'
'That's the skinny north part, right?'
She laughed. 'Right. How about you?'
'Farmers. Iowa.'
'Came 'bout as far. Call strong down there?'
'What do you mean?'
'The call to come here. You know, to where the magic's strong. My Mama calls it medicine. She's Ojibwa. Try changing out the magazine.' As Danny did, Katie said, 'I didn't know what it was at first. I just had some dreams, and a funny feeling when I saw clouds in the south. But Mama knew. She said to Dad, 'Girl's had a vision. She's gone go.'
'My dad, he's a big old Finn, but he's got medicine of his own… Anyway, Mama packed me up, and said goodbye. Dad drove me to Green Bay, to the train station, and he said goodbye. Don't think he could have done it with Mama there. The way he did it, he could go back home and tell Mama I'd gotten on the train all right, everything was fine. So what did your folks say, when it happened?'
'They didn't want me to go.' Danny put the gun down, thinking hard. He thought he'd gone away on his own account. What did it change if something had made him do it? 'We argued a lot about it.'
'Oh.' Katie chewed on her lip, and then said, 'I got scared, on the way. I got off the train when it stopped in Milwaukee, and I thought about just not going on. But it was dark, and when I looked out on the lake and saw the Fire glow… I got back on. I don't know what would have happened if it had been daytime.'
Danny told her about the old man at the truck stop, with his box of Bibles. 'Maybe… there's always a last chance to change your mind.' He wasn't at all sure he believed yet in a call, but he couldn't deny that it made sense.
'Turn back, O man,' Katie sang without much of a tune, 'forswear thy foolish ways.'
Danny said, 'Do you still hear from your folks?'
'Mama writes every month. Dad's not much of a writer, but he always puts a line or two in. Sends a photo, sometimes. You know what a bloodstopper is?'
'No.'
'Some people can stop bleeding, with a word, sometimes just by willing it. This is old, long before the elves came back. All the loggers know about it; somebody'd take an ax in the foot, or a bucksaw right through the hand, and they'd call the bloodstopper. Even if he was on the phone, he'd work the charm, and the bleeding would just quit.'
'You've seen that?'
'Yes. My dad can do it, and on the drive to Green Bay he taught me. A man can only teach a woman, and a woman has to teach a man.' She paused, put her hands together. 'I haven't worked it. Shade medicine's strange- the elves' and ours both. I'm not sure of it. Not like Tommy.' She touched the gun. 'The Ojibwa say that everything you are is a gift from the spirit world, and until you have those gifts inside you, you aren't really anything.'
Katie smiled crookedly at Danny, as if she wanted him to answer that.
He smiled back, and nodded. He didn't have an answer. wver a late lunch Monday, Stagger Lee said, 'How long has it been since you went to a movie?'
'A while.' It had actually been two years. There was no theater in Adair; every chance they could, Danny and Robin had hitched to the drive-in a county over. Rob usually talked them in for half price, since they wouldn't be taking up a car slot: the guy at the gate looked dubious, but Rob had always been good at getting his point across.
Danny couldn't remember what the movie had been.
Stagger Lee said, 'The Biograph's showing The Train with Burt Lancaster. That's supposed to be first-rate, and even if it isn't, it's Lancaster. And it's Monday, so Laughs Lost will be running Chaplin all afternoon.'
'I don't care.'
'Biograph, then. I'm not that big on Charlie. Keaton's on Tuesday: that's different.'
The theater was only a few blocks away. No prices were posted at the box office, which was manned by a halfie in a brass-buttoned jacket and an odd round cap. Damn saw people in line pa) with silver coins, little scrolls of brown paper, a bundle of exotic weeds. Stagger insisted on paying for both of them, with a tarnished quarter. He scooped up the tickets and waited.
'Change, Johnny,' he said finally.
The boy behind the glass said, 'What, Mr. Lee?'
'There's only two of us for one show. Besides, I saw you palm the dime the World lady gave you.'
The boy pushed it across.
As they walked through the doors, Danny said, 'How could he do that?'
'What? Cut a deal? Same way I did. Down on the Levee, nothing has a fixed price, and nobody pays retail. Allow me to demonstrate further.' He went to the snack counter, waved at the young man behind it.
'Afternoon, Mr. Lee. What can I get for you?'
'Your neon box is stuttering. How about two giant double-butter popcorns for a recharge?'
'Just a moment, Mr. Lee.'
The counterman tapped on a side door, spoke with someone within. 'Manager says sure thing, Mr. Lee. You know the way?'
Stagger Lee waved a reply and led Danny to a door marked employees ONLY. Beyond it was a service room lit by a steel-shaded bulb, meters and junction boxes around the walls. Some of the boxes had red-lightning warning labels, others a tilted-spiral mark and the words CAUTION SPELLS ACTIVE.
Stagger Lee rapped his knuckles on one of the spell boxes, cocked his head as if listening for something. Danny couldn't detect any change in the room's overall hum.
Danny said, 'Should I-you know, watch this?'
'Nothing secret about it. You don't need hocus-pocus when the trick really works.'
Stagger opened the box. Inside was a flat brass ring ten inches across, surrounded by other bits of shiny metal and glass. The ring rotated about a turn to the right, then back as far to the left. At each reversal the rest of the machinery ticked and flashed. The big ring didn't seem to be physically connected to anything else; the devices made no obvious sense at all.
Danny wondered how he would explain a fuse box to someone who'd never heard of electricity: You mean the little wires are supposed to burn up?
Stagger brought the silver dime out of his pocket.
'Does that-'
'Just a second, please. Gotta concentrate.'
Carefully, Stagger held the coin in the center of the brass ring. He put two fingers of his other hand on a flattened sphere of red glass, and muttered something Danny couldn't hear.
A blob of darkness appeared around the coin, and Stagger pulled his fingertips away. The red glass glowed, not very brightly, and Stagger let it go as well.
The darkness filled the ring, and the coin vanished into it. The blob was like a blind spot in the eyes after staring at the sun; Danny looked away. Stagger exhaled loudly and shut the box.
Danny said, 'The coin's fuel?'
