“This town actually likes its punks?” I asked.
“We run the library. Vasilis and Isola are from here too. Well, Vasilis is from Greece but he’s been here twenty years. People don’t really understand us, but they also don’t really mind that they don’t. If that makes sense.”
It did. I’d never really stayed put long enough to get that kind of feeling in a town, but I’d met a few folks who had over the years. It sounded nice. A bit lonely, though. Living in one place always sounded kind of lonely to me.
It took us maybe ten minutes to bike out to the western edge of town. It had been a tourist town, that was easy to see. The gateway to the great outdoors or some shit. We must have been closer to Glacier than I realized.
The last block of town held four bed-and-breakfasts in a row. One of them, the first one we passed, even looked like it was still probably operational: the lawn was maintained and a little fountain shot water up about a foot from some rocks in the front yard. The other three B&Bs, though, were boarded up and overgrown and, to my eye at least, all the more beautiful for it.
“This one’s it,” Heather said, parking her bike along the wrought-iron fence of the last house on the block. The building itself was small, barely more than a cottage, but its yard was expansive and it backed onto forest. If I was rich, I’d live somewhere like that.
Or, you know, since I was poor, I’d squat someplace like that. It would be nice to live somewhere where you didn’t have to worry about the cops kicking down your door, but the trade-off of being law abiding didn’t sound worth it.
We didn’t lock the bikes. We didn’t even have bike locks.
“You two might want to go up there alone,” Heather told us. “I think if Isola wanted to talk to me, she would have by now, you know?”
So Brynn and I opened the iron gate and started up the front walk.
“Never been on a zombie’s doorstep,” I said, after I rang the doorbell.
“I figure it’s more like Lazarus’s doorstep.”
“The guy Jesus resurrected?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’s the story with him?” I asked.
“Hell if I know. Just that Jesus brought him back from the dead.”
“Why was he so special?”
“Go away.” This last bit came from inside the house, right on the other side of the door.
Brynn and I looked at each other.
“We, uh, we come in peace?” I offered.
“We’re not cops or nothing,” Brynn added.
“Yeah, I didn’t think the two crust punks at the door were cops. But I’m not trying to talk to anyone.”
“Why not?” I asked. That’s a shitty question to ask, and I knew it. Isola wanted to be left alone. She’d made that clear in a thousand ways. Yet here we were, prying.
“I’m going to open the door, but only because I’m too tired to yell through it,” Isola said. “You can’t come in.”
“Alright,” Brynn agreed.
The door swung open.
I don’t know why I expected her to look like a zombie or something. I mean, I’d met Gertrude already, and she looked normal enough. But I legit assumed Isola was gonna look like a zombie.
Isola didn’t look like a zombie.
She looked, instead, like, well, one of us: she wore a slip dress that showed off her full figure, and her hair was tied up in a loose bun, revealing tattoos across her neck even though she probably wasn’t a day over twenty-two. She had a claw hammer in her hand. No, wait. Both hands. She had a claw hammer in each hand, it’s just that only one of the two was raised.
Instant friend-crush.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked. “You’re going to get yourselves killed.”
“On a long enough timeline,” Brynn agreed. She had her hand hovering near the folding baton on her belt.
“No. I mean, if anyone sees me talking to you. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You might wind up dead.”
“That’s an argument for letting us inside, then,” I offered.
“That’s an argument for y’all leaving,” she countered.
“True,” I agreed. But we didn’t go. “Who would kill us? Barrow?”
“I don’t know.” She thought about it. “No. Not Barrow.”
“What happened to you and everyone up at Glacier?” I asked.
She put the hammer down and met my gaze, unflinching. Somehow, this was even more intimidating than when she’d had the weapon raised.
“We all died.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
“Okay.” I waited for her to tell me more anyway.
“Look, you’re wasting your time talking to me.”
“Who should we talk to, then?” I asked. “Gertrude? What’s she got to do with it?”
“No, no. Gertrude’s innocent. I don’t think she knows anything.” Isola sighed, then set the hammers down on a table near the door. “Look. If I tell you where to look next, I’m guessing you’ll die. Magic is too fucked up to be safe, at all, for anyone. Hunting down madmen with access to it, that’s worse. You really, really should just skip town and never look back. Forget the name Barrow. Forget the name Pendleton. Forget me, forget Gertrude.”
“Ain’t gonna happen, though,” Brynn said.
“You want to know what’s going on, you want a man named Sebastian Miller.”
“Gertrude’s husband?”
“Ex-husband,” Isola said. “He runs the gift shop, on the east edge of town.”
“With the dinosaurs?” I asked.
“With the dinosaurs. Don’t confront him. Don’t let him know you’re investigating him. Don’t let him know you exist. Don’t tell him I talked to you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She started to close the door.
“Wait,” I said. “I still have so many questions to ask.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got about three more seasons of Xena I plan to watch while I pretend like I don’t exist. So I’m afraid I’m too busy for questions.”
“I’m sorry,” Brynn said, as the door was closing. “I’m sorry about whatever happened to you.”
The door hesitated.
“Thank you.”
The door closed.
* * *
We reconvened with Heather, out by the street,
