38
“When I put on those clothes, I washim,” Nick said. “I looked in the mirror and saw his face, but it was my face, like I’d stepped into his skin. I had his thoughts about beating people, disciplining them. That whip in my hand felt like the most powerful weapon on the planet.”
“Evil,” Raven said for perhaps the fifth time. They walked shoulder to shoulder through the woods, away from the Overseer’s cabin. Birds flitted through the treetops, disturbed by their advance through the forest. “I got a bad feeling when you went in there, like you were sinking into a deep hole and you’d never get out. We never should have gone there in the first place. Sorry.”
“I’m glad you got me out when you did,” Nick said, “but I needed to see it for myself. Don’t be sorry. I feel as if I learned something important.”
“Learned what?” Raven stopped, standing beside an elm tree. Her gaze probed him. “What’d you find out that’s important?”
“I learned about the power of this place, this land.” He swept his hand around them. “It can remake itself and make you see things that you couldn’t have imagined.”
“Oh, okay.” She started to turn forward, stopped herself, squinted at him. She looked far, far older than her years. “That’s it, then?”
“Yeah.”
He was lying to her, and he believed she probably suspected his dishonesty. She was young, but she had witnessed a lot in her short life and knew how to read people, and he had never been particularly good at lying anyway. Back in college, when his group of friends played Texas Hold’em, his buddies had always been able to call his bluff.
But he was too afraid to share what he was really thinking.
Grandpa Lee says we’re bound to this place. After spending time in the Overseer’s cabin, wearing his clothes, slipping into his skin, dipping into his thoughts, I’m starting to figure out why—and it disturbs the hell out of me.
“Where are we going now?” Nick asked, wanting to change the subject. “We need to get Amiya out of the house.”
“We can’t stroll up to the front door and ask her to come out,” Raven said. She laughed, a bitter sound. “They’ve got helpers walking around outside, usually two or three. We took down Jimmy but we got lucky. They’re already looking for us, too. Then?—”
“Then what?”
“Then, if we get into the house, we gotta deal with Miss Lula.” Raven let out a deep sigh, kicked a broken branch at her feet. “That’s not a fight we can win.”
“But both of us have guns,” Nick said. “A rifle and a shotgun.”
“I don’t know if a gun would hurt her,” Raven said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I used to work in the kitchen in Westbrook. I saw Miss Lula take a cake out of the oven with her bare hands and it didn’t bother her one bit. She’s a helper, but it’s like she’s more than they are, too.”
“Like an uber helper,” he said.
“Something like that, yeah. She’s the most respected out of all of them. They seem scared of her, too.”
Nick couldn’t help but worry about how Amiya was coping in such circumstances. He loved her, but she had an uncanny knack for knowing how to push someone’s buttons, and if this Miss Lula was the one in charge it was unavoidable that Amiya would have tried to work her somehow, to gain an advantage. It sounded as if doing so would have been a mistake.
Amiya, I’m sorry for bringing you here. All of this is my fault.
Nick decided that if he ever saw Amiya again—whenhe saw her again, he chastened himself—he would come clean on everything with her. The money they owed to Shango, his plan to persuade Grandpa Lee to sell the property so he could pay him off, the whole sordid tale. She would be angry and might even leave him for good. He wouldn’t blame her if she did.
But first he had to get her out of Westbrook.
“I agree that we can’t knock on the front door and demand that they send Amiya outside,” Nick said. “That would be suicide. What else did you have in mind?”
“I had help when I escaped,” Raven said. “We had gotten some keys, but that wasn’t enough. We still had to slip out without anyone noticing.”
“You created a diversion,” Nick said.
“Right.” Raven smiled a little. “It was my idea. I put something in the oven that blew up. When Miss Lula and another helper were checking that out, we made our move. No one tried to stop us.”
“Clever girl,” Nick said. “If it worked once, why not do it again?”
39
Daylight was slipping away, the sun fading like a dying ember. Nick estimated that full sunset was less than an hour away.
