“They’re back.” Finn scooted to make room for me at the window, and I saw the problem immediately. We’d slept on the third floor of what was once a small-town courthouse, and the vantage point gave us a view of half the town, and of the crumbling two-lane road leading into the badlands.
About a mile outside of town the nomads had set up camp with four vehicles, two dozen tents, and about twenty horses. They hadn’t been there when we’d settled in the night before.
“Two days in a row.” Maddock frowned. “We can’t keep calling it a coincidence. They’re following us.”
I picked up the empty can at his feet. “Maybe they want to help us. Or warn us about something.”
“Or rob us blind and kill us in our sleep,” Devi offered from across the room, where she was stuffing her bedroll into her bag.
“If that’s the case, why make their presence so obvious?”
She shrugged. “It can’t be easy to hide an entire herd of horses.”
I stood by my theories, but Finn and Maddock hardly seemed to know I was there. The farther west we’d come—two-thirds of the way in two days, thanks to prewar roads kept passable by the Church—the more tense they’d grown.
Tobias, on the other hand, seemed happier with each mile that passed beneath our tires.
“How are we fixed for gas?” Reese added Devi’s duffel to the three others hanging from his shoulders.
“Too low to pass by the next station without filling up,” Finn said. “If I remember correctly, there’s a fuel depot a couple of miles south of town. With any luck, it’ll be locked but unguarded.”
Assuming the Church hadn’t anticipated our westward shift.
Maddock stood and hefted his pack onto his back. “Devi and I will take the SUV. Reese, you take the truck.”
“I’ll go with him.” Grayson rushed ahead before anyone could object. “I’ll stay in the truck, but I’m going. You can’t keep leaving me behind.”
“Oh, let her go,” I said. “Finn and I will hold down the fort here.”
Reese only relented when he realized he was outvoted.
“Watch the nomads,” Maddock said on his way out the door. “If they come any closer, call on this.” He tossed me one of our handheld radios.
I gave him a mock salute and clipped the radio to my waistband. As soon as they were gone, Finn took up watch at the window while I knelt to help Tobias with his—formerlymy—sleep roll.
“Hey, Tobias, how long had you been with your new parents before we found you? Do you remember?”
He shrugged, and I held my finger in place over a length of black cord holding the bedroll closed so he could form a clumsy bow. “I dunno.”
“And you don’t remember your new parents’ names?”
Anabelle shook her head at me from across the room, where she was taking inventory of our hygiene supplies. But I couldn’t leave it alone. If demons adopting kids was going to be a new trend, I wanted to know as much as I could about how they were pulling it off.
“They just said to call them Mommy and Daddy.” Tobias stood from his messy but functional nylon bow and pressed his knees together in a stance any first grader would recognize. “I gottago.”
The courthouse had half a dozen restrooms, but none of them had been functional in decades. “Hang on, and I’ll take you out—”
But he was out of the room and halfway down the first of two dusty marble staircases before I could even stand.
“Tobias, wait!” I called, and Mellie rolled over on her bedroll but didn’t quite shake off sleep.
The rapid patter of the child’s footsteps echoed below me as I stomped down the spiral stairs after him. A second later Finn’s boots clomped from above as he followed both of us. “Tobias!” he shouted, but the boy’s footsteps didn’t slow.
When I hit the first-floor landing, I stopped to listen for the echo of small shoes to figure out which way he’d gone.
Down the back hall, toward the rear door.
I followed Tobias into the back of the building, marveling at how well the courthouse had held up under a century of neglect. Stone floors and walls didn’t crumble or mold like carpet and drywall, and though many of the windows were broken, most of the doors were still intact, which had kept out the larger animals. And because the building had been stripped of furnishings shortly after the war, there was nothing left inside to rot or mildew.
