Kate grimaced again, took a last long drag, and stubbed out the butt. Then she shut off the ignition, opening the truck door and climbing down, wincing as she stepped wrong and put all her weight on that hip.
Kate felt that sense of watching again, something or someone this time, different, hostile. Before, it had just been . . . watching. Waiting. Neutral. But she couldn't see anything out of place, uphill or down, field or woods.
She studied the woods. Glacial till, all right, boulders poking through the dead leaves to make humped lines and shadows and corners under the broad oaks.
Right-angled corners. Kate blinked and shook her head until her brain reset. Glaciers didn't leave straight lines and right angles behind when they headed back to Canada for another load of rocks.
She was staring at abandoned buildings, probably the reason for the old road. Abandoned buildings of thick stone masonry, worn down to waist-height or lower by centuries of Maine winters and by old-growth oaks splitting the walls. Small buildings, one- or two-room houses, maybe four rooms if they'd originally stood tall enough for an upper floor, and small sheds or barns likewise built of stone. Not like any Maine farm she'd ever seen.
She stepped off the road and shuffled through dry leaves, nosy-poking, as much curious mason as cop. She knew Maine construction. The only thing like this she'd ever seen in these parts was Morgan's Castle back in Stonefort. And that heavy plain stone tower was older than any history book would admit. If you believed Alice, it dated back to Welsh refugees from Edward the First.
The nearest wall felt cold and damp, mossy, flakes of lime plaster stucco and mortar crumbling at her touch and rattling down into the leaves. The stones slept. To Kate, they felt almost as if they had been left by the last ice age, no memory of the men that laid them. Alice said that stone and wood liked Kate, that they wanted to please her. More of her magical mystical bullshit. Kate just paid attention to grain and gravity. Knowing her materials didn't count as witchcraft.
She moved along the wall to a corner, estimating distances with a practiced eye. Yes, two rooms, if it had been a house. Two small rooms. No sign of a chimney, so it might have been an outbuilding. Or maybe they just used a smoke hole in the roof.
Her foot dropped out from under her and she jolted down to mid-calf depth, fire stabbing through hip and shoulder. Black dots swam through her sight. She leaned against the stone and panted, sweat cold on her forehead and tears stinging her eyes. Then she stood up, slowly, carefully, painfully. Fox or woodchuck hole, hidden by the fallen leaves. She rocked her weight from side to side, listening to her body and hating what she found.
Step by limping step, she eased back out to the road, pausing halfway to lean on an oak. She didn't dare explore the rest of the ruins. Not by herself, not in her condition. If she fell into the old privy, odds were she wouldn't be able to climb out.
She wasn't used to being careful, and it galled. She'd been hurt before, hurt bad and damn near killed, and it hadn't taken her this long to recover. She was getting old. Old like those stones, weathered, silver hairs scattered through the blonde.
Then a picture flashed in her head, and she knew where she'd seen stonework and a farm like this before. In a book or magazine, Irish farmsteads abandoned since the Famine, a Scots crofter's cottage fallen to ruin, fishing villages on out-islands in the Hebrides, left open to the wind and winter when all the children moved to the mainland and the cities. Only difference was the trees. Those out-island photos showed bare heather and grass.
Walking seemed to ease the pain in her hip, and she couldn't face cramming herself back into the truck. If she sat for an hour right now, most likely her body would seize up like a rusty winch. And something about the high field drew her, those stones on the crest of the blueberry barren. The spacing looked regular, as if they related to the ancient farm.
She climbed, slowly on the stiff incline and stiffer hip, and felt strength flow back into her from the land. She belonged to this place, belonged to all of Stonefort. Her body had grown from its land and sea. So her people had only lived here for a few hundred years, as opposed to maybe a thousand for the Morgans or ten thousand for Alice's Naskeag ancestors. That was still long enough that she could lay claim to the title "native" in Maine lingo. Long enough for the stone and dirt to know her blood.
Something fluttered on the crest of the ridge, flashing white or silver in the breeze. Trash? Here? Then another thought shot across her mind, and she froze — nearly turned back to the truck to get her gun and badge. Dopers grew marijuana deep in the woods, scattered plants or whole fields of the demon Weed. That might explain occasional traffic on an abandoned road. And those fields usually had guards or booby traps protecting them . . .
But they'd had frosts already, even a hard freeze. Bird season started next week, thousands of blaze orange snoops wandering through the Great North Woods looking to commune with nature through the barrels of their shotguns. Any dopers would have harvested their pot plantation long ago.
Besides, she was more than halfway there. Her hip didn't want her to climb down and then back up again. And she couldn't see any tracks through the brown grass and mounded purple swathes of blueberry bushes. Not even a deer trail, or the swirled and matted beds they'd leave. Odd. She sniffed. That flinty tang was back, sharp through the mixed
