Cotton cloth for padding, and a bit of hemp twine to tie the wood into a makeshift frame. Anita had sorted through the additions and logged them in without a quibble. As long as Caroline didn't take anything out of the vault that she hadn't taken in, the Big U didn't care. Garbage in, garbage out.
And Caroline built the frame and padded it and displayed a whiteware bowl on it at the best angle to photograph the decoration, so everything checked out. And she photographed the rest of her meager gleanings, little more than a footnote on Professor Stevens' research, nothing to justify airline hell, and put the last of the artifacts away.
Hair prickled on the back of her neck. She turned, and the generic Indian woman stood there.
"You have finished."
Caroline took a deep breath and forced some steel into her spine. This was as bad as wakening the Spring in Aunt Alice's cellar. What ever gave her the idea that being a witch was fun? "I have finished."
"Bring wood and cloth and twine. Place them next to the Hunter."
She played a good little girl, an unaccustomed role, and did as she was told. The doll lay on the vinyl floor tiles, next to a couple of one-by-fours and the other stuff, and her sight blurred and the one-by-fours lay on the left instead of on the right.
Well, that solves that problem.
She'd been winging it and had thought she'd have to take a bunch of photos of the doll and carve a substitute to leave behind, however she managed to make the substitution. Getting it in, getting the Hunter out, those were questions she'd been going to answer once she'd cased the joint, once she even knew that she'd found her goal. Answers that probably involved Gary, at a minimum, and maybe other Morgan resources.
The Hunter didn't need Morgans. Just needed a set of human eyes, human hands, human feet to order around. Nice work, being some kind of god.
Just do what the nice Spirit Woman tells you, and nobody will get hurt.
She picked up the one-by-fours, now tied up in a bundle with the twine and cloth. They felt hot, smelled of hot rosin, and she wondered if she really ought to stow them next to the camera. Radiation? The "obeah" felt hot, as well. The vinyl tile had bubbled a little where they had lain. Caroline started to whisper the "Our Father" out of old habit, and then stopped short. She decided invoking one god was enough for the day.
She gritted her teeth and put the substitute "obeah" away in its proper bin, G-53, she double-checked against the catalog. "Is this thing going to turn back into a pumpkin as soon as the clock strikes midnight?"
She turned around, and the Hunter was giving her that "slug on the roses" look again. Note to self — except for Coyote, gods don't like smart-asses.
"It will hold its seeming."
And then the woman vanished. Gone. No fade, no shrink into the distance, no smoke and swirl of wind, no smell of brimstone. Vanished. Here one second, gone the next like a switched-off hologram. Just by "coincidence," Caroline heard the click of locks echoing down concrete corridors. She gathered up the rest of her gear and waited for her jailer.
Anita then sorted through everything and watched Caroline pack it up, verifying that nothing went out of those doors that Caroline hadn't brought in with her. Didn't give a second glance to the disguised Hunter. And the shared courses and letters from the dean spared Caroline a strip search.
Sure helps to have a god weaving illusions around you.
They climbed echoing stairs out of the subbasement, up to the stale-sweat basement locker rooms and then the gym level, Anita locking doors behind and resetting touch-pad alarm systems and not even bothering to screen the code she punched in. Damned lax security, not up to assault by Morgans. Which Caroline wouldn't need, after all.
And then they were out the door, the world surprising her with cool darkness and reminding Caroline that her body had reset time zones just in time to get thrown off again. Anita had some place she needed to be, went one way, and Caroline went another.
And stopped in a shadow out of sight to take a few deep breaths and work the tension kinks out of her shoulders. She'd done it. She hadn't known how she'd do it, but the Hunter had taken care of that. Check one item off her list. If only the others went as smoothly.
"Caroline? Caroline Haskell?"
She climbed down out of thin air and turned to the voice. Someone else she knew? A faceless shadow formed out of the still-darker bushes, and Caroline tensed, her heart racing. The laptop bag could serve as a club . . .
The shadow held up both hands. I come in peace. But Caroline didn't relax. The shadow couldn't have seen her face, not here, not under a pine grove and shielded from the streetlights. And only three people should know she was on campus — Anita, the museum director, and Gary, if he'd read his emails. Which Ben said he hadn't. Even Ben hadn't known when she was flying east.
The shadow didn't move. "I'm Jane, Jane White. Gary told me about you. You look like him."
Holy shit . . . Now her mind raced after her heart. "Do you know where he is? Is he okay?"
The shadow turned and slid sideways at an angle, not coming any closer, very pointedly not threatening. "I was hoping you knew. I need to talk to him."
I damn well knew life was getting too easy. "You got any idea what's going on with him?"
The shadow seemed
