Dan stood there, eyes narrowed. "Benjamin Morgan, sometimes you are not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. I told you what Alice said about that thing, about that kind of thing. Didn't you hear a word I said?"
"But now that we know . . ."
"We know that damned thing bled when Gary shot it. You heard Jane. If you had the brains God gave an animal cracker, you'd be pushing to depth-charge that whole fucking range on the off-hand chance the goddamned flint wasn't dead already. Not looking to pull it up and clean it off and sell it again."
Bled. Some of that was his blood. Ben shuddered, remembering how his blood had vanished from the stone. Into the stone. And he still wanted the flint back. Well, the ache would probably die with time. At least Gary said that he could feel the damned thing before he shot it, and couldn't afterwards. It must be dead.
But he still could think of some people who deserved to own it. Or vice-versa.
Dan was staring at him with narrowed eyes. "Don't even think about it, you asshole. Maybe I'd better ask Alice to send Caroline out there to check on the bastard. She knows how to defuse that sort of bomb." He paused and grinned. "Besides, I've wondered how fast Caroline could Change, water magic and all. Healthy young bodies . . ."
Ben wasn't ready to think about Caroline Changing. Or Ellie or Mouse, for that matter. The Dragon had taken a couple of centuries to make up her mind — couldn't he have at least a couple of years?
*~*~*
Caroline pulled her old International Scout into Aunt Alice's dooryard and let it sputter to a stop next to Aunt Kate's truck. Monday morning, no sign of Gary's Subaru, he and Jane would be safely off to Naskeag Falls. Okay for Ol' Sheriff Kate to come back.
Caroline stepped down from the high seat, slammed her door to be sure of latching, and patted the blunt white metal nose of the hood. This was the car she needed out in Arizona. Tough as hell, and already so beat-up that another scratch or dent wouldn't even show. Lots of ground clearance, narrow, short wheelbase, low-range gears that would crawl up the steepest so-called trail. Totally reliable, it had started at first crank after sitting unused for over a year. Simple mechanics, no damned computers, even a dumb Indian girl could keep it running.
She double-checked the roof rack mounts and the lashings on her canoe, travel tech a few centuries older than the old car. Safe. Birch-bark and cedar tended to be more . . . delicate . . . than fiberglass or ABS, and she had about ten miles of bad road ahead.
Music reached out to her before she touched the kitchen door. Dave Brubeck, "Take Five," the extended version with Joe Morello's drum solo.
She took a deep breath and relaxed. That music, Brubeck and a few others, Aunt Alice only played them when she'd settled back into her center. Not manic. Not depressed. Not stressed tighter than a catgut fiddle string.
She stepped into a cloud of onion soup, double-reduced chicken stock, guaranteed to rout the meanest flu or cold bugs and send them fleeing into the woods. Another good sign. Aunt Alice didn't turn domestic unless she had a clean slate ahead. Making soup meant she wasn't even on call with the ambulance.
Nobody in the kitchen, just the stockpot simmering its seduction from the back of the iron cook-stove. She stepped through into the parlor, the new parlor added around the Civil War, and found Aunt Alice and Aunt Kate sitting, staring at a wooden box on the coffee table between them, Atropos purring on Kate's lap. Caroline got the sense that all three of them had been waiting for her, sort of a Christmas-morning-why-aren't-the-parents-up-yet-I-have-to-open-that-box anticipation.
Aunt Kate. Aunt Alice wasn't sure what was up with Aunt Kate — traumatic amnesia from whacking her head on a rock, repressed memories, or god-fingers tampering with her brain. Mix and match and take your choice. But the big woman only remembered snatches of the fight, freeze-frame flashbacks, and didn't have any coherent memory of killing Jackie's body and the brujo inside it.
She knew what had happened. She mourned with a bleak blank determination, marching straight ahead with a shell-shocked vet's hollow-eyed thousand-yard stare while doing the next thing and the next. She needed the House and Aunt Alice even more than Jane White did. Aunt Alice called them both "walking wounded."
One day at a time, that was her prescription. That, and onion soup. Concentrated love simmering on the range.
The box. Caroline felt it, the closer she got, the same vibrations of strength and faith and serenity that Kate had tucked behind the seat of her truck. And old, old like the stones in that circle, older than the House.
Old like the Hunter. Caroline shivered. She'd be real glad when they got that ugly old "obeah" home where She belonged. The fetish lurked.
"If either of you see Mom before she gets home, I left her a note. Tell her don't bother calling the cops. I stole my own car."
Kate lifted an eyebrow. "Don't suppose you bothered to register it and pass inspection?"
Ha! Got her, for once. "Farm vehicle tag. Road use is incidental to travel on private tribal land. You got a legal bitch with that, take it up with the Tribal Council." Which boiled down to Mom. Naskeags still lived in a matriarchy.
Kate shrugged. Auto licensing didn't come under her definition of important laws. Not unless she needed the excuse to hassle someone she felt deserved it.
Caroline turned to Aunt Alice. "One other thing I stopped by to tell you — I called that number out in Arizona. If anyone shows up asking for the Hunter, you know where She's sleeping. Let them take Her out of the duffel. Hell, let them take the bag 'as is.' There's nothing in there I'd
