shoulder bouncing against her stomach. But her hands… She let out a tiny whimper and pulled her knees closer to her chest. Unfortunately, my rib cage was between them.
“Ease up on me,” I said gently. I had to gasp for air between every word, and I wasn’t sure she could hear me through her pain. “Ease up.”
She did. We reached the van. I unlocked the passenger door and lifted her into the seat. I pulled the shoulder strap of her satchel over her head and threw it onto the floor, then clicked her seat belt over her.
At the same moment, I felt the now-familiar twinge against my chest. Memories were being erased. Was it because of the fight we’d just lost, or was another kid being killed across town?
I ran around the front of the van, got in, and started it up. Within seconds we were on the street.
“Annalise,” I said. She didn’t respond. Her hands were blackened and shriveled. Her face was pale and covered with sweat. I touched her cheek. Her skin was cold. She was going into shock.
I pulled over. We were only a block and a half from the plant, but I needed to get her feet elevated or she was going to die on me.
“What are you doing?” she said. She didn’t look at me. “Remember the supermarket we passed on the way into town? Go there.”
I did remember it, but only vaguely. I pulled back into the street and drove north until I hit Main Street, then turned right. It was only another half mile or so to the gas station where I’d bought the map, then another few hundred yards to the market.
I parked as close to the entrance as I could and took the plastic from Annalise’s glove compartment. She told me the PIN and said to buy lean beef for her. Lots of it. I laid her down between the seats and wadded my sweaty windbreaker under her feet. “Hold on,” I told her. “I’m going to be back as soon as I can.”
“We can find you,” she said, “if you don’t come back. I put those spells on you and they don’t come off. Any peer in the society can find them, and you.”
I closed the door.
With a couple bucks’ worth of items from the house-wares aisle, I could have stolen any of the cars in the lot in less than twenty seconds. I’d done it hundreds of times before. I could have been halfway to Oregon in an hour. Leaving Annalise to die-and I had no doubt that without help, she would die, and very soon-would solve many of my immediate problems, what ever her threats. But I wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t just that I had no idea what would happen to the spells she had put on me, and it wasn’t just that the peers would hunt me down and tear me apart, although both of these were damn solid reasons. And it wasn’t just the power Annalise had, although power like hers was irresistible to me.
It was also Justin Benton. Someone had to stand up for Justin Benton.
I followed signs to the meat department, then started loading beef into my basket. I didn’t know much about choosing cuts, but I knew the white stuff was fat, the hard stuff was bone, and the red stuff was meat. I picked packages that were mostly red. I selected about ten pounds’ worth, then grabbed a wide plastic cutting board from a hook above the case and hurried to the checkout line.
There were two people ahead of me. I had a little too much time to think.
Hammer knew we were coming after him now. He would either move against us right away or withdraw to somewhere safe, maybe somewhere out of town. If I were him, I’d be trying to figure out a way to kill us before the hour was up, but judging by the way Hammer had looked as Annalise had done her thing, I didn’t think he’d be that together. I figured he’d run.
It was my turn at the register. “Nice town you have here,” I said to the middle-aged cashier.
“Thanks!” she said.
“Isn’t there a family somewhere still around here, the one who founded this town? The Hammer family?”
She looked immediately suspicious. “Maybe.”
“They live in town? Where would I find them?” I asked, figuring that the town wasn’t small enough for everyone to know everyone, but it would be small enough for everyone to know their first family.
“What do you want with the Hammers?” the man behind me said. He was about forty, with a thick biker’s beard and heavy muscles in his arms and shoulders.
I hadn’t thought this through, and it was turning sour. I swiped Annalise’s card and punched in her PIN. “I just wanted-“
“Don’t bother,” the cashier said. “I know exactly what you want.”
“And you ain’t gonna get it.” Biker Beard stepped up very, very close to me. “Ain’t nobody in this whole town gonna answer a question like that for you.”
The cashier glared at me. “Time for you to go.” She held the bag out to me, then dropped it on the floor.
I turned back to the big guy. My adrenaline was too high and I’d spent too many years behind bars to back down from him. Annalise was dying out in the van, and her medicine was lying on the floor beside me, all spilled out of its flimsy plastic bag, but I couldn’t turn away. I was risking everything, but I couldn’t turn away.
A little old lady came around the end of the counter and picked up my groceries. “Oh, enough of that, you two,” she said, and took hold of my elbow.
Her grip was strong, but she couldn’t have pulled me away unless I let her. I did. There were half a dozen good reasons for me to back down from Biker Beard, but the one that really mattered was that I didn’t want to be the guy I was in jail. I wanted to be someone better.
The old woman had tiny half-glasses perched on the end of her nose and a thin, pinched mouth like a snapping turtle. I took the grocery bag from her when she handed it to me and I followed her outside. “You must be having a barbecue or something?” she asked.
“Thank you,” I said.
