A hot spot the size of an apple on the back of his leg.
Jem rolled onto all fours, scrambled up, hand dipping into his pocket for the telescoping antenna.
On the floor in front of him lay a spare blanket.
The closet door was open.The closet empty.
Tean was on his feet, jaw dropped.
They were alone.
Jem took a step, winced, and massaged the back of his leg.“What the fuck?”
“I-it was t-that w-woman,” Tean said.“T-the one w-who was w-watching me at the b-bar last night.”
10
Nothing was missing because there wasn’t anything togomissing.
“She wanted something,” Tean said from where he perched on the fieldstone hearth.He wasn’t shivering anymore, and his teeth had stopped chattering.Jem still wouldn’t let him move, even though his back was getting toasty.“She was looking for something.”
Jem was still making his way around the room—for the third time now—inspecting everything like he was going to spot something he’d missed: opening drawers, shifting the phone across the desk, crouching to search under the bed.When he got to his feet, he stopped to rub the back of his leg.
“Let me look at that,” Tean said.
“It’s fine.I just bumped into that chest thing and fell on my ass like a fucking clown.”
“Come here.I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“It’s nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, then come over here and let me take a look.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Jem, I’m upset and a little frightened.Would you please come over here?”
There was some grumbling, but Jem made his way over to the fireplace.Hedidlimp a little, but Tean suspected that might have been for pity points.
“Here?”Tean asked, touching the back of Jem’s leg, the fabric of the chinos whispery under his touch.
“A little higher.”
Tean ran his touch up, and Jem grunted.For a few minutes, they stood there, Tean massaging what he suspected would be a bruise, Jem with his hands on his hips, glowering into the middle distance.
“She caught you by surprise,” Tean said gently.
“She sure fucking did.”Jem sounded like he wanted to stop there—the statement had a brutal punctuation mark at the end of it.But more words screwdrivered out: “If she’d had a knife or a gun, I’d be dead.And what the fuck would have happened to you?”
“I’d probably be dead too.”
Jem shook his head, but more in anger than disagreement.
“Look at the bright side,” Tean began.
“No.I refuse.”
“The bright side is that if we’re already dead when the generators fail, we won’t have to go through the ensuing societal breakdown into tribalism, internecine warfare, and inevitable cannibalism.”
