A shiver ran down Caroline's back, a touch of winter in the air, and she looked up. A big white SUV ghosted past on the road, slow, windows tinted next thing to black, and she felt something in there watching. Something hostile, something nasty, watching and waiting and taking notes. The shiver came and went again, and the car rolled on like a passing cloud that left the warm September sun shining again in the dooryard.
That Peruvian brujo, that Tupash, had driven a truck like that. He'd kidnapped the girls as weapons to get what he wanted from their father. But he was dead.
Caroline shook herself and turned back to where Kate and Alice had slumped into chairs, on opposite sides of the old maple table. She wondered if either of them had the strength left to hoist a spoon, or whether she'd have to hand feed them.
She stood there, hands on her hips, and glared from one to the other. "Why don't you just shoot yourselves? It'd hurt less and be over a damn sight quicker."
Kate didn't even look up. Alice stirred, shook her head, and glanced wistfully at the pot of chowder.
"It's my job."
Caroline ignored her chowder for the moment. Bowls broke too easily. Instead, she grabbed a loaf of still-warm bread, slammed the cutting board down on the counter, and hacked off four or five thick slices. Cutting something, anything, felt deliciously destructive.
"Which job? ER nurse? Ambulance? Guardian of every woman and child in Sunrise County and protector of small furry critters? I add that up to maybe forty hours. Every goddamn day."
As if summoned, Atropos padded across the floor and bounced up into Kate's lap. The calico catlet kneaded her chosen pillow with her front paws, claws snagging gently in Kate's jeans, and then settled down to purr.
"Our people need me."
Caroline slammed the butter dish down in the middle of the table, clattering a couple of knives after it. Sterling silver knives, gifts to some ancestral Haskell Witch.
"You're scaring the cat."
Actually, it was Kate who'd twitched. But Caroline took the message and reined her anger back a notch. She dished out chowder and handed spoons around. She filled glasses with water, cool water brimming with the Power of the House's Spring. She leaned her back against the cold metal of the refrigerator, and glared.
"Our people don't need you dead. Or laid up in the hospital again. And I need you healthy enough that I can get back to having a life. Professor Stevens is getting twitchy."
Aunt Alice chewed her mouthful of bread, swallowed, and sighed. "I thought you'd conned him into another semester free."
"There's a limit to how long he'll swallow the story. I let him fill in the blanks — single mom on the rez, likes men and the bottle a bit too much, raised by the saintly aunt who's lying at death's door, can't get a nurse to stay here on the backside of nowhere, the whole nine yards. Amazing how many stereotypes you can fit into the head of a man who should know better. But he could make one phone call and blow my whole game to shit. He is a cultural anthropologist, you know. He's used to asking questions."
That drew a wan smile. "Lainie will love what you've done to her reputation."
Caroline shook her head. "She thinks it's kinda cool. Suggested most of it in the first place. Laughed and quoted that 'Nobody loves a drunken Indian' bit."
"My sister has a twisted mind. Always did. You take after her."
"I thought you said I got that from my dad."
"No. He gave you a genetic predisposition for carrying a set of picklocks in your purse."
Kate scraped the bottom of her bowl and tilted it for the last spoonful. She looked better now, her back straighter and color back in her cheeks. Maybe it was the food, maybe the water, maybe just sitting and the restful conversation. Maybe the goddamned House. Caroline took a hint and refilled the bowl.
Goddamned House. Caroline felt her anger building again. "I still don't see what good killing yourself does for the Sovereign Naskeag Nation. Or Aunt Kate and the rest of the paleface types, either."
Kate had become "aunt" by custom and courtesy, just like she'd be "uncle" if she were male and married to Caroline's real aunt. And all of Stonefort called the Haskell Witches "aunt" anyway, whatever the blood ties and age, and Kate had moved solidly into the "witch" category with their fight over at the Pratts. Aunt Alice might have shot that brujo through the heart with a silver bullet, but Kate had been the one who actually killed him. She'd drawn on the Power of the whole Stonefort peninsula to burn his body down to ash. The surge had blown out the power grid for miles around.
Neat jiu-jitsu trick, giving him way too much of what he wanted. Even if she didn't believe in magic.
Kate cleared her throat. Both Caroline and Alice focused on her — the big woman didn't talk much, particularly when aunt and niece were bickering. "Funny you should mention that. I had a long talk with Dr. Adams one afternoon, a little after your aunt and I got shot."
She paused, pain twisting her face, and then went on. "Just after Jackie shot us. Anyway. He said he'd run a statistics program on the hospital computers. Odd thing. Based on what he saw, somewhere between five and ten people a year owed their lives to Alice. That's how many fewer patients died while she was on shift, compared to the averages of every other shift. Ten year average. It didn't matter who she was working with, what part of the hospital she was in, ER or OB/GYN or Oncology or Pediatrics. If she was on duty, fewer patients died." She paused again.
"I wouldn't be sitting here if she hadn't been riding the ambulance late
