Crowbones

CHAPTER 82

Julian

Moonsday, Novembros 5

Do you think Ellen Wilson is related to that professor staying at the Mill Creek Cabins?” Osgood asked as he drove to the woman’s house. “I mean, Cardosa isn’t that common a name. Maybe in Hubbney or Toland, but not around here. Do you think she’s really involved in those killings?”

“I’m not thinking,” Julian said. Not about anything I’m willing to discuss right now, he added silently. What he was thinking about circled around one word: brainwashing.

Humans couldn’t fight the terra indigene and survive. The Great Predation last year proved that. But what if you could find individuals among the terra indigene who were malleable and rebellious enough that they could be turned against their own kind? What if you discovered a talent for manipulation and control, perhaps had an Intuit ancestor and had inherited just enough of that ability to sense what other humans couldn’t see, and used it to exploit other beings?

Cardosa and Roash had worked at the same college. That’s why they were sharing the cabin leased to that college. On Trickster Night, Roash had told Julian how he’d convinced Cardosa to come with him to observe the Others. Had Roash really done any convincing, or had Cardosa deftly inserted himself into Roash’s plans in order to use the man’s interest in the Crowbones folklore as a way to study fear that could be generated in the Others? If everything had gone as planned, Adam Fewks would have played his role as Crowbones and disappeared, all the academics would have left last Firesday, and the police, having no leads except the intensity of Roash’s interest in the subject matter, would have put it down as a prank.

Maybe the other things that had happened since Trickster Night had been intentional. Maybe they had been nothing more than someone taking the opportunity to cause more mischief. But when the Elders and Elementals closed off the area in order to hunt down a contamination, the mischief makers had escalated their efforts, trying to create sufficient turmoil so that they could escape.

And what better place to create turmoil than at The Jumble, which was its own kind of experiment of humans and terra indigene working together?

Then again, Julian still wondered if things would have escalated so fast and with such ferocity if the trouble hadn’t started at The Jumble.

Osgood pulled up at the Wilsons’ house, blocking the driveway. Two people—one from across the street and the other next door—rushed toward the police car the moment Julian and Osgood stepped out.

“I just called the station,” the man said, holding up his mobile phone.

“I was about to call,” the woman said, also holding up her phone.

“Lots of shouting,” the man said. “More than usual. But just Mrs. Wilson. Haven’t heard Theodore.”

“I think he’s in the house,” the woman said. “But he’s a quiet boy. Never has much to say for himself when he’s outside.”

Julian felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and fought the urge to look around. Something out there, watching them. Something powerful—and silent. By all the gods, had Ilya contacted one of the Elders, or was this one here for its own reasons?

Or was he jumping at shadows?

No. He was an Intuit. He didn’t jump at shadows unless the shadows hid something. Something dangerous.

“Did you hear the shouting from the front of the house or the back?” he asked.

“Back,” the woman said. “And Mrs. Wilson—you never call her Ellen—was louder than usual. I couldn’t make out what she was saying because my dog goes nuts when he hears her voice, so all I heard was the angry tone.”

The man nodded agreement. “I was at the curb, putting some bottles in the recycling bin, and I could hear the shouting. And then the dog.”

And yet neither of these neighbors had approached the house to find out what was going on. They had called the police rather than check on Ellen Wilson on their own.

“Go inside your houses and stay there,” Julian said quietly, trying to remain in the here and now and not slip back into the memory of an alley where he was badly wounded and bleeding—and had felt the presence of . . . something . . . that slaughtered the men who had been trying to kill him. “Walk calmly. Do it now.”

The two neighbors jerked, had that look of panic when they realized what he was saying.

“Calmly,” he said again. “You helped the police by providing information and now you should go back inside your houses.” He looked at the woman. “And get your dog inside.”

Osgood stared at him, all the color leaching from his brown skin.

“You good?” Julian studied the rookie once the neighbors had headed back to their houses.

“Is one of . . . them . . . here?” Osgood asked.

“Maybe. That’s not our concern.” Until it was their concern—or until one of them was dying because he had miscalculated the reason for terra indigene presence.

Julian started up the driveway, then stopped, looked toward the corner of the house where he sensed that presence, and said quietly, “We’re going to enter the house by the back door. It would help the police—and Miss Vicki—if anyone who tried to escape out the front door was contained so that Chief Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati can question them.”

No answer. He didn’t expect one. But his sense of place gave him strong feelings that within the boundaries of this house and yard, any and every human was on dangerous ground. He just hoped whatever watched them understood about containing in a way that meant still alive. And he hoped no one thought to ask him how Vicki figured into apprehending this woman. He just used her name in the hopes of getting interested assistance instead of a violent response.

With Osgood beside him, Julian headed around the house to the back door. He hadn’t heard Ellen Wilson since they’d pulled up to the house. Now the ranting began again.

“You stupid boy! You stupid, stupid boy! I told you. Didn’t I tell you? And now look what you’ve done, after all the years I invested in you!”

The glass storm door was closed but the kitchen windows and the wooden door that provided entry into the kitchen were open despite the brisk temperature. Julian drew his weapon, quietly opened the storm door, and rushed inside. Then he froze for a moment as he took it all in.

Theodore, on the kitchen floor, eyes staring, flecks of foam around his mouth. A broken cookie jar on the floor next to him, cookies broken or crushed around him.

“Osgood, call the EMTs,” Julian said as he went down on one knee to see if he could find a pulse—although the smell of voided bladder and bowels was evidence enough that he wouldn’t find one—his eyes never leaving the red-faced, wild-eyed woman. “What happened?”

“I told him I made those cookies for the neighbor’s nasty little dog,” Ellen Wilson shrieked. “I told him he wasn’t allowed to eat any of them. I told him! But he snuck in the kitchen and gobbled some, the greedy pig. And now look. Look! Years of effort ruined. Now I’ll have to find another one and spend all those years training it until it’s old enough to be useful.”

Find another one? Julian stared at the woman and thought, Oh gods. What has she done? How many children has she “found” over the years? And where are they?

“EMTs are on their way,” Osgood said.

Julian nodded. “Read Mrs. Wilson her rights and handcuff her.”

“You have no right!” Ellen Wilson shrieked. “Get out of my house—and take that with you!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw Osgood stare at the woman, then at the dead boy. And he saw the rookie harden just a little more as her words sank in and he realized why this woman was treating the boy who was supposed to be her son like a broken tool that was easily disposed of and replaced.

“It’s your fault, you know,” Ellen Wilson snarled, spitting the words at Julian while Osgood put the cuffs on her. “If all the visitors had been allowed to leave, none of this would have happened. But you just had to go and muck up everything because you’re just so stupid.” She looked at Theodore and started laughing. “Yeah. This one was stupid too. Stupid and too willful to live. All those little acts of defiance. Like eating cookies when I told him not to. Not like my other boys, my lovely monstrosities.” Her eyes fixed on Julian, full of hate. “But I lost them too—because of you.”

Monstrosities.

Julian thought about the four teenagers who had come to The Jumble looking to cause trouble. “Your . . . experiments . . . were killed when they tried to blow up Chief Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati?” He wondered if three of those boys had killed the fourth. Because they wanted to? Or because she had told them to?

“Dead now.” She looked irritated. “Then again, when I sent them to the cabins, they had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, and they still killed the wrong man, so they weren’t that useful anyway.”

She blinked, looked at Julian—and started raving again about Theodore being a greedy boy.

Julian holstered his weapon and pulled out his mobile phone as he followed Osgood and Ellen Wilson to the patrol car. The presence, whatever it had been, had left. Thank the gods for that.

Seeing the EMTs arrive, he waved them toward the back of the house. “Wayne? We’ve got a problem.”