The moon was just past full, and although the tent canvas was too thick to let a lot of light in, it gave me enough to make out the fact that a man had entered the tent.
“What— Who the hell are you? And what are you doing here? This is my personal tent, sir, and I—”
“Help me,” the man croaked, dropping to his knees. “They want…kill…”
Startled, I rolled off my sleeping bag, but before I could even process his dramatic statement, male voices called urgently to one another behind me, out by where the RVs were located.
“Help…” The man’s voice wavered as he swayed.
I don’t know what possessed me at that moment. It makes no sense to me now, and it didn’t then, but despite that, despite the fact that I had no idea what was going on, or who this mysterious man was, or why he was in my tent, despite all forms of common sense, I flung my sleeping bag to the side, grabbed the stranger by his arms, and more or less dragged him over to the air mattress. He collapsed on it facedown without a sound. I hurriedly arranged his legs so they lay on the mattress, as well, pulled his arms down to his side, then spread my sleeping bag on top of him.
It looked like a sleeping bag oozed over a man-shaped mattress. “Damn,” I whispered to myself, then apologized softly. “Sorry, mister, but I hear people, and that means—”
Hurriedly I lay down on top of the sleeping bag/man arrangement, and pretended to snore.
Nearby, a man shouted something in a language I didn’t understand. I screwed up my eyes tight, sprawled as best I could to cover as much of the sleeping bag (and man) as possible, and snored even louder.
“Kiya? Kiya, are you all right?”
“Hruh?” I tried to sound groggy and surprised when Gregory stuck his head into my tent. “Whosat?”
“It’s me. Gregory Faa. You didn’t happen to see a man skulking around here, did you?”
“A man?” I didn’t have to work to make my voice sound high and sketchy with shock. “What man?”
“A prowler. We caught him trying to break into my grandmother’s RV.” Gregory pulled his head back and spoke quietly with one of his cousins who was obviously just outside. He leaned in again and I saw the brief gleam of his teeth in the moonlight. “Sorry to disturb you. Go back to sleep.”
“Are you kidding? You think I’m going to be able to sleep knowing there’s some strange man running around?” Again, I didn’t have to work to sound like I was on the verge of freaking out. I was, and one part of my brain—what Carla calls my superego—told me I was an idiot, and yelled like crazy to tell the very nice, very normal Gregory that there was a strange man lying underneath me who had delusions of paranoia. My id, however, told me that something about the man’s claim sounded entirely realistic, and to go with my gut instinct. My ego—the part of the psyche that Carla says is all about realism—simply pointed out that I was probably smothering the man, and needed to get off him pronto before he asphyxiated.
“I will zip up the door to your tent,” Gregory said all the while my brain was bickering with my psyche. “If you see anyone, yell and we will be right here.”
I said nothing as he zippered up the tent flap—which I had left loose to encourage air to flow—but the second his shadow moved away, I rolled off the man and yanked the sleeping bag off him.
“Mister?” I said softly, poking him in the arm. “Sorry I had to lay on you, but it was the only thing I could think of. You OK? I didn’t smother you, did I?”
The man didn’t reply. I wanted badly to turn on my camp light to see his face, but knew that would alert Gregory and the others to something being awry. “Hey, you OK?” I asked, and with a stifled grunt, grasped his arm with both hands and heaved, rolling him over onto his back.
He didn’t make a sound. In the dim light, I could only see the outline of his face, no details. “Holy carp on rye, I squashed you to death!” I whispered, and put my hand on his chest to feel if he was breathing.
Something warm and wet and sticky smooshed beneath my fingers. I pulled them back and squinted at them. “This had better not be blood, because if it is, and you’re dead, that means I laid on top of a dead guy, and that’s grounds for a full-fledged freak-out. Hey, you. Wake up. Please wake up.”
Wiping my hand on the sleeve of his shirt, I felt along his chest again, almost sobbing with relief when I felt him breathe. “Thank the gods and goddesses and all their little minions,” I said in a whisper as I patted the man’s face. “Hey. You’re not dead. That’s good news. But you’ve been hurt. Was it one of Mrs. Faa’s family? Hello?”
I spoke the last word in the man’s ear as I continued to pat his face, having a vague memory of black-and-white movies wherein people chafed wrists and patted the faces of women who had fainted. It seemed to work, too, because after a couple of stressful moments during which I envisioned him dying right there before me, he made a moaning noise deep in his chest.
“Shhh,” I said softly, gently clasping a hand over his mouth. “Mrs. Faa’s family is searching for you, and by the sounds of it, they’re not very far away.”
What felt like a steel vise clamped on to my wrist, causing me to bite back an exclamation of pain. “Ow! You’re hurting me!”
The vise loosened its grip enough for me to reclaim my hand. “Who the hell are you?” he asked in a rough whisper. “And for that matter, where am I?”
“Kiya Mortenson. This is my tent. You staggered into it claiming Mrs. Faa’s family was trying to kill you. At least I assume it was them you were referring to. Are you bleeding?”
“Yes. I was stabbed. Twice. The first time was when I entered my motel room. The second when I ran into an ambush outside of Lenore Faa’s caravan.”
I jerked my hand back from where it was gently feeling his upper torso. “Holy jebus!”
“Did you just say—” Suddenly, the man pushed me back and sat up, his quick intake of breath indicating the truth behind his claim of having been stabbed. “You’re the woman who thinks she’s Elizabeth Taylor. The one with the bag of dog shit.”
“The popsy?”
“Hush!”
I goggled at his silhouette (really all that I could see of him). “What…who…was that someone else speaking? Or are you like a ventriloquist or something?”
“No.”
“But your voice just sounded different than when you said popsy. And did you just tell yourself to hush? Wait—you’re the man who jumped out at me in the woods, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. What are you doing in a tent? Why aren’t you with your husband?”
“What husband?”
“The one you married, obviously. Stop touching my chest. You keep poking the stabbed area.”
I jerked my hands back from where I had been trying to gently feel how badly he had been injured. “Sorry. I’m not married, hence no husband.”
“What are you doing here, then?”
“I told you—I’m working for Mrs. Faa.”
“I know you told me, but I didn’t believe you.”
How annoying he was. And also, how warm, and how nice smelling he was, too. “Well, thank you very much,” I said softly. “I do not lie!”
“Pfft. All people lie.”
“I don’t. My foster mom taught me that people who lie pay the price in the end. Karma, you know.”
“I’m very familiar with karma, thank you. You needn’t lecture me on the history of our people.”
What the hell? The poor man must be delusional with pain or fever or whatever it is that stab victims get. Blood loss, maybe.
“If you are working for Lenore Faa, what are you doing out in the middle of the woods?”
“I’m not in the middle of the woods.”
“You’re not?”
“No. OK, William set up my tent as far away from the RVs as he could, but still, I’m technically on the mill grounds. Just on the fringes. And I’m here because the family has some weird cleanliness fetish, and evidently I don’t meet their standards. What a
re you doing running around getting stabbed? And what is your name, anyway? I can’t go around thinking of you as ‘the guy with violet eyes who jumped out at me in the woods,’ and while we’re on that subject, I never said I thought that I looked like Elizabeth Taylor.”
“My name is Peter. You are not a Traveller?”
“Well, not really, no. I was on my way home when my car broke down and Gregory—that’s Mrs. Faa’s grandson—rescued me. One thing followed another, and I’m taking care of the dogs until I can get my car fixed.”
“Gregory,” the man named Peter muttered under his breath.
“Yes. He’s very nice.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Yes, it is what I think. That’s why I said it. I do things like that. It’s called polite conversation. You might want to give it a try when you’re not busy being stabbed or leaping out at unsuspecting women. Wait a sec.” I blinked at him, all shades of surprised. “You know him?”
“I do.” The man grunted with pain as he tried to get to his feet, but the tent wasn’t big enough to allow him to stand at full height, which I figured must be a couple of inches over six feet. “I must leave.”
“Where do you intend on going?”
“There’s a spot in the woods where I was to meet—no, that isn’t safe. They almost caught me there. It will have to be the motel in Rose Hill.”
“What’s at the motel? Other than people who stab you. Just why were you stabbed? Was it a burglary? Or something else?”
Peter made a face. “Do you do anything but ask questions?”
“No. Why do you want to go back to the motel so badly if that’s where you were stabbed?”
He sighed a long, put-upon sigh. “I wish to return because it’s entirely possible that the friend I arranged to meet here, but who may well have been attacked by the same people who stabbed me a second time, might have gone there to find me.”
“Dude, you got stabbed there. You can’t go back!”
He waved that away just like it didn’t matter. “The person or persons who stabbed me were gone when I recovered consciousness. They have no reason to return, especially if they are the same person or persons who attacked me here. Stop holding my arm, and kindly allow me to get up.”
I let go of him, not sure what to say. I was appalled that someone had attacked him—twice. And yet he was so calm and cool about the whole thing. If I’d been stabbed, I sure as hell would be making a huge fuss about it!
“Whoa!” Peter weaved violently to one side. Luckily, I caught him before he fell. “You are in no shape to be marching off anywhere, not if you’ve been stabbed all over the place. Which reminds me, you didn’t say who attacked you.”
“No, I didn’t. It’s called not having a conversation. I prefer to do that when I’m busy being stabbed and stumbling around in the dark attempting to escape with my life.”
I might have taken offense at his smart-ass answer, but for one, the memory of those violet eyes haunted me, and for another, his words were very breathy and labored. I figured he had about thirty seconds before he passed out again.
“Well, got that one wrong,” I murmured as Peter, with an odd little choking noise, keeled over onto his face. I bit my lip as I considered rolling him onto his side to make him more comfortable, but since I didn’t know exactly where he had been stabbed, I hesitated to do much that might aggravate the wounds. “And now what am I going to do with you?”
What I wanted very badly to do was to help the man. I shook my head at that notion—I knew nothing about him other than his first name, and that he was most likely a policeman. But if so, where was his backup? His partner? His whatever it was that police had these days?
Maybe he was an undercover cop. It wasn’t out of the question that he was nosing around Mrs. Faa’s family given that folks in town felt they were a bad sort. Was that why one of her family had attacked him? Or had that happened somewhere else? He said something about a spot in the woods where he had been attacked. “Dammit, you didn’t tell me who hurt you. Now I don’t know who I can trust to get to help with you. Annoying man.”
I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out what to do. I had just decided to search his pockets for ID, but when I eased my hand into his front pocket, my fingers encountered some sort of object like a joy buzzer. It zapped my fingers, causing me to jerk my hand back.
“Well, that’s odd.” I squinted at the pocket in question. A faint glow seemed to flicker for a few seconds before fading away. “Must be some sort of anti-pickpocket thingie. OK, think, Kiya. What are you going to do with him?”
After a few minutes of concerted thought, I emerged cautiously from my tent, glancing around the camp in case murderous Faas were standing around with sharp daggers at the ready.
There was no one to be seen. Not even the cars were present, which meant that some of them, at least, had gone somewhere. I must have been so busy talking with Peter that I didn’t notice the sound of them leaving.
An idea blossomed in my head, one so bold and audacious that for three minutes I mentally argued with myself over its brilliance (sometimes, I really wish Carla hadn’t taught me so much about the inner workings of my brain, because it just seemed to make all those ids and egos and all the other bits and pieces argumentative and unruly), but in the end, I told all the inner voices to shut the hell up, and rolled Peter back onto the mothy sleeping bag.
I had almost made it to Eloise when a soft voice spoke, making me jump for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day.
“Good evening, Kiya. Or perhaps I should say good morning since it’s after midnight. What is it you are dragging behind you?”
I dropped the end of the sleeping bag upon which Peter lay unconscious, and spun around, fear causing my heart to feel as if it had leaped into my throat. “Gregory?” It was more of a question than a statement. What on earth was I going to do if he flung himself on the immobile Peter and attacked him? Hurriedly I moved between the two men, blocking the latter with my body. “Er…good evening. Morning. Whatever. I thought you were gone with the others.”
“My cousins, you mean? The ones who seek the man who attempted to break into my grandmother’s caravan?”
“Yes.”
“They have gone to search for the interloper.”
“Ah. Um…” I looked around quickly, wondering if I could find something to use as a weapon in case Gregory tried to attack either me or the wounded Peter.
My id, ego, and superego all screamed at me that I was insane for even thinking of protecting a man who was clearly not what he appeared.
“Kiya?”
“Hmm?” I tried to adopt an innocent expression, not that much of it would be visible, since I was standing in the moonlit shadows cast by the tall firs and shrubs surrounding the camp.
“What is it you’re dragging so stealthily to your car?”
“My sleeping bag. See?” I tipped up one corner to shield Peter, and pulled the edge of the bag around to show Gregory. “It’s…uh…it’s just too mildewy. I figured I’d take it to a cleaner to see if I can get the smell out.”
“At one twenty-seven in the morning?” Gregory suddenly jerked to the side to see around me. I jumped sideways, as well, wincing a little when the quick movement caused what sounded like a human-sized body to roll off a sleeping bag and into the shrubs, the resulting dull thunk indicating something very like a head had collided with a tree trunk.
“I hate to be late. See?” I pulled the rest of the now Peter-less sleeping bag around in front of me, using it as a form of downy shield. “Sleeping bag.”
Gregory sighed. “What did Peter tell you to make you protect him this way?”
I gawked at him for a minute, then shoved the sleeping bag through Eloise’s passenger window, and gestured toward the dark shape that was sprawled in the shrubs. “Did you stab him?” I asked as I stood next to where Gregory squatted over Peter.
“Me? No.” The surprise in his voice was quite genui
ne, I was sure. “He is hounding my family under the auspices of the Watch, but I did not do him physical harm. Not this time, at least.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t like the sound of any of it. Although at that moment there were more important issues at hand—like getting Peter to a doctor. “Well, he seems to think that someone in your family did. He’s been stabbed. Twice.”
“I gathered he was harmed when I saw the trail of blood around my grandmother’s caravan.” With a slight grunt, he hefted Peter up in his arms and turned toward the RVs. “My grandmother has some healing skills—”
“No!” I said quickly, catching him by the arm before he could take Peter away. “We have to get him away, Gregory. He’s not safe here.”
He looked down on me, the moonlight giving his golden hair an odd, washed-out hue. “Are you implying my grandmother would harm him?”
“No, of course not, but I wouldn’t trust your cousin Andrew farther than I can throw a shot put. There’s bound to be a doctor or clinic in town, or a phone we can use to call for a paramedic.”
“Peter would not want paramedics called,” Gregory said, annoyance making his voice brittle. He turned toward the far end of the RV crescent, then paused. “Christos. Andrew has my Jag. We’ll have to use your car. I assume it’s running?”
“Yes. Mostly. So long as we don’t get wild. Here, let me climb in first, and then you can stuff Peter through the window and I’ll guide him onto the backseat.”
Never having tried to shove an inert six-foot-two-inch-tall man through Eloise’s passenger window, and maneuvered him onto her short backseat, I had no idea just how difficult that feat was going to be, but after about fifteen minutes of both Gregory and me swearing, sweating, and occasionally making grimaces of sympathetic pain when Peter’s head bashed into the roof, window, or side of the car, we finally got him placed more or less in a fetal position.
“I just hope to god he doesn’t die because we had to cram him into the backseat,” I said as I gave Eloise’s ignition wires a couple of flicks, jumping when the electrical charge zapped my too-close fingers.