Gary squatted there on the deck, hands open and relaxed, the same sort of deceptive calm and friendliness. He looked up into her eyes. He shook his head, face turning sad, and nodded.
"You're still afraid. Afraid of me, afraid of all of us. You're still a barn cat." He nodded again. "Keep the gun. Give it to Aunt Alice when you feel safe. She'll know what to do with it."
And then he finished loading the mesh bag with expensive weapons, with Ben's body armor and clothing, with a couple of radios, with other stuff. He was trusting her. He turned his back to her and stripped off his wetsuit, adding it to the load. He turned his back on her and her gun.
Trust. Caroline had said to trust him, trust Aunt Alice. Nobody else. But I've never trusted anyone. Not since Mom and Dad. I don't dare trust anyone . . .
God. Give the gun to Aunt Alice, she'll know what to do with it. The instant I think I have a grip on this, it twists around in my hands. Aunt Alice knows about this stuff. She seemed so strong, so calm, so safe. I haven't felt that safe since . . . I can't remember. Ever.
Trust Gary. Trust Aunt Alice.
He trusts me.
I have to start somewhere. Even if it kills me.
Jane unwrapped her fingers from the gun's grip, one by one, forcing them to relax. Her hands shook, and she didn't dare check the safety or clear the weapon. She gritted her teeth. She took one step out of her corner, and then another, and then another, until she stood behind Gary and knelt down on the deck and reached around and added her gun to the pile in front of him.
And let go of it.
She let the slow heave of the deck move her until she leaned against his bare back, warm and sweaty from the wetsuit, smelling his male sharpness and the gasoline of the boat and the tang of the sea. He held still. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and closed her eyes and shuddered and let the tears come, silent and shaking until she had to cling to his back to hold her up.
Tears felt better this time.
He stayed. He didn't leave me. He chose me instead of his father.
He didn't leave me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caroline shivered. Part of it was the damned whipsaw between Arizona heat and Maine frost, part was the gloom under ancient spruce and pine and oak at dusk. Old trees, old road, old land, old stones that barely remembered people. Aunt Kate's trees and road and stones and people. Not Naskeag magic. Caroline couldn't touch it, but she felt it building to a low-pitched hum around her.
This was getting complicated.
How would the Hunter fit into this? She was another part of the shiver; Caroline could feel that Generic Indian riding in the truck cab with them. So could Kate, apparently. They both sat scrunched away from the middle of the bench seat, both unwilling to set butt or arm or hand into that space. The so-called "obeah" rode behind the seat, safely veiled and padded in a nylon duffel, but it didn't, She didn't, seem to want to stay there.
Too many variables, not enough equations. How the hell did I get into this mess?
The answer seemed to be, she'd been born a Haskell. And then Aunt Jean and Aunt Alice had laid hands on her soul, found it fit to certain kinds of crime. Maybe Mom had had some kind of precognitive flash, understood what this generation would need, choosing ol' Tomcat Ben to father a Haskell girl.
Complicated.
Aunt Kate seemed so calm and concentrated, driving down this road to blood and death. Grim as a grave, maybe, but calm. The sort of calm you associated with the early Christian martyrs, sure of resurrection and a place at the right hand of God, facing a real bad day at Nero's office but no worse than a pin-prick compared with the reward.
Or maybe that was the same calm that Caroline mimicked, a mask hiding the shivering seething fear underneath. How could you tell? Maybe even Aunt Alice was an Oscar-class actress, not all-knowing, all-seeing, always seeming to have everything under control. God, that thought scared Caroline.
The truck rolled across a stone bridge, deep in the dark cedar-smelling hollow between two knolls, and Caroline could feel the clean cold water flowing under her. Spring-fed. Strong. Calling to her nature. Too many kinds of magic — stone and water and air and fire, Welsh and Naskeag and Satapai, Inca and Maya. Aunt Alice would know what to do, how to weave this basket with so many different powers under her fingers. What form it should take, what burden it should carry.
Aunt Alice lay sleeping, next thing to a coma, and wasn't available for weaving baskets. Or blankets. Time for Caroline to earn her keep. Apprentice turned journeyman. She shivered again and concentrated on her breathing, concentrated on not hyperventilating. Scared.
The truck climbed out of the hollow, slow, quieter than Caroline ever remembered, headlights boring through the gloom under the forest's arch pressing in thick and close on either side, the new muffler and engine smooth and strong. Caroline had never ridden in it since the rebuild, and it felt both strange and familiar, new and ancient. Like the world. And then there was the box Kate had slipped behind the seat, next to the Hunter in her shroud. That box radiated age and strength and faith and hope. Caroline had looked a question
