Leaving the register, Charlotte makes her way upstairs. Both the sheriff and her mother stop talking and look her way when she opens the basement door. Tabitha’s mouth opens, most likely to tell her that they need privacy.
She doesn’t give her time to get the words out. Her mother isn’t the only one with thoughts ringing through her head all the time. She’s not the only one whose thoughts have grown ever more urgent and insistent. The difference is that Charlotte isn’t as tied to this place as her mother. Yes, she loves it and it’s her home, but it’s not the same thing.
“Mom, the only way we’ll be safe is if we go to one of the government facilities.” She shrugs and looks at both adults. “You know it. I know it. There is no other safe place left.”
Willa
Their tribe is thirty strong as of today. Two men and one woman have joined them permanently. There are now two intact families to go with the remnants. Claire’s father, Jeff, is one of those men.
It’s bittersweet for all of them. Without him on the outside, a vital link in their supply chain has been broken. At the same time, most of the tribe breathes a sigh of relief because there will no longer be any need to constantly chase down Claire, who has grown wilder over the winter months. Spring has come and with it, more Claire antics. Some of those antics are dark ones.
Jeff finishes dropping off his things at his bunk, then joins them at the fire. The outdoor fire is their de facto meeting spot and it shows. The ground has been worn free of green in a wide circle and the earth packed tight by so many feet. His breath steams in the morning air as he smiles at them, chafing his hands together to bring up some warmth. It may be spring, but the mountain is cold before the sun has a chance to shine on them.
The morning coffee ritual is underway and Jeff has already decided he’s a member of the strong coffee group. He holds out his mug for his two jiggers of coffee as Willa pours, then sniffs at it with a sigh. “Nectar of the gods.”
Bee chuckles. “Indeed it is.”
There’s an awkward pause and a few furtive looks passed while they all decide who’s going to bring up the topic they need to discuss. It’s the reason Jeff is here. It’s the reason that breaking a big section of their supply chain was necessary.
The reason is Claire. And murder.
Perhaps Jeff senses the tension, because he sips the steaming liquid then says, “I’ll watch her now. If it happens again, it will be on my head.”
Ever the peacemaker, Beau pats the man’s shoulder and says, “It’s on no one’s head. That wolf-child will do as she likes, and who’s to say she didn’t do a good thing.”
All heads turn toward him in surprise. These are thoughts Willa has had privately, and guessed others had too, but to have it said so openly is something of a shock. What Claire did was murder, but was it a bad murder? These are questions Willa has tried to answer over and over in the two weeks since they discovered what Claire did.
The girl often disappears. It’s so common as to be normal. Even in winter, the girl would take to the woods around the camp. Usually, she returned with a bag of small game or plump birds. At first, she’d returned with mushrooms that had to be thrown away because there were always poisonous ones in the mix.
One of the supply runs brought with them several good volumes on mushrooms, plus a journal with paper specifically milled to better accept spore prints. Claire had delighted in creating prints from the samples she collected. They had all studied, but even now, many species are too close to their poisonous look-alikes for them to feel comfortable eating them.
Claire had absorbed too much of that information, which became clear two weeks ago.
When the girl had not returned from one of her tramps around their wooded area, concern turned to panic as darkness fell. Claire always returned before dark. It was the one rule she obeyed. Unlike any other time in the world, they could not roam the woods and shout her name to find her either. All of them would have been exposed if someone heard them.
Instead, Beau and the few men at camp had gone in search of her, calling out “Wolfie” as necessary. She would answer to that and know they meant her if she heard it. Anyone not of their group would hear the name and think the men were looking for a dog.
Their biggest fear was that she’d been found or that she’d lifted her face to the sky.
Almost thirty-six hours later, Beau followed the smell of a fire to a campsite a couple of miles away from their clearing. He found Claire feeding the small fire with sticks and three dead men laying nearby. Beau had told the group that while he stood there trying to understand what he was seeing, the dirty girl had only pointed at a pot of congealed stew on the ground and said, “Don’t eat that.”
Later, she told them that she’d stayed to watch the dead men turn colors. It was a chilling recitation of facts. She’d poisoned their food with mushrooms she’d torn into tiny bits after setting up a distraction to draw them away from their camp. It had been done with clear thinking. That made it worse.
When they asked Claire why she did it, her only answer was an unconcerned shrug and a vague, “They knew we were here somewhere and
