The Unwanted

  He was telling her the same things he’d told Miranda—telling her what a jerk his old man was!

  And she was listening to Eric, too, just like Miranda had. And why wouldn’t she? He’d seen what the little tramp was after right from the beginning, staring at the boy with those big brown eyes and getting him into all sorts of trouble, cutting school and being wise with his father. Cassie Winslow and Miranda Sikes were two of a kind. Well, he might not have been able to do anything about Miranda, but he knew what he could do about Cassie Winslow.

  He already knew Rosemary Winslow didn’t like her. So tonight he’d go pay a little call on Rosemary. With her smart-ass husband gone, she’d pay attention to him. He’d tell her exactly what Cassie was all about, and let her know what would happen if she didn’t see to it that Cassie stayed away from Eric. If she wanted to live with a nut in the house, that was fine with him. But she’d damn well keep the kid away from his son.

  And after they’d talked …

  Ed’s eyes glistened as he thought about what he might do to Rosemary Winslow.

  Hell, he thought, she probably wouldn’t even scream. She’d probably like it. She’d sure given him the eye enough times.

  He opened the little icebox next to the sinkful of dirty dishes and fished around for a beer. When there wasn’t any, he slammed the icebox closed and locked the Big Ed.

  The Whaler’s Inn always had beer, and people to talk to. Good people—people who liked him.

  Not sluts like his wife, and Rosemary Winslow, and Cassie.

  Well, he’d show them. He’d show them all. And he’d start tonight.

  Chapter 19

  The hawk cocked his head, his pink eye fixing on Cassie, the feathers on his neck ruffling nervously.

  The cage had been completely invisible as they approached; indeed, Cassie hadn’t even been sure toward which bush Eric was leading her. To her eye the entire area to the west of the hillock seemed choked with vegetation, and the path Eric had followed had been all but completely grown over with vines and reeds.

  But a few moments ago she’d felt a tingling sensation come over her, almost as if there were unseen eyes watching her. She’d paused, looking around, and Eric had looked at her sharply. “You can feel him, can’t you?”

  Cassie hesitated. “I—I can feel something,” she said. “Are we close?”

  Eric nodded. “Over there. The big bush, with the clump of cattails growing out of it.”

  Cassie had scanned the area ahead, then spotted the bush Eric was pointing at. She’d started toward it, and the tingling sensation grew stronger. Finally, with Eric behind her, she’d knelt down on the damp earth and pushed her way through the dense foliage. The cage was hidden among the branches, near the trunk of the shrub.

  Inside the cage, his talons wrapped around a makeshift perch, Kiska had gazed warily at her, soft clicking sounds emerging from his throat.

  Eric crept up beside her, then fished in the pocket of his jacket. “Here,” he breathed. “Give him this.” He put something in her hand.

  Cassie glanced down, gasping as she recognized the small shape of a dead mouse sitting in her right palm. Her stomach recoiled and her hand jerked reflexively, the mouse falling to the ground.

  The hawk stretched up from the perch, its neck extending as it reached for the small gray form. Cassie looked fearfully at Eric. “What should I do?”

  “Pick it up,” Eric told her. “Hold it on your hand, but keep your hand flat. Then put your hand in the cage. He’ll take it right away.”

  Cassie swallowed hard, then gingerly picked up the dead mouse and laid it in the palm of her hand.

  Kiska clucked eagerly, his head bobbing and weaving as he kept his eyes on the furry shape.

  Cassie carefully opened the cage door just wide enough to slip her hand inside. Kiska’s head flashed forward, and suddenly the mouse was in his beak.

  Cassie quickly pulled her hand out of the cage and shut the door. Then, as they watched, the bird began eating the mouse.

  He dropped it to the floor of the cage and pounced on it, his talons puncturing the creature’s hide, sinking into its flesh as his curved beak began tearing chunks of skin and meat from the small skeleton. As soon as a piece came loose, the bird jerked his head back, his tongue stuffing the morsel back into his throat. Even before the first piece was swallowed, he was tearing at the corpse once more. In seconds the mouse had disappeared, even its bones torn apart and forced down the bird’s gullet.

  “Did you ever see anything like it?” Eric breathed, his eyes still on Kiska, who was back on his perch now, methodically preening his feathers with his beak.

  Cassie, still fighting a wave of nausea, shook her head. “You’ve really been doing this every day?” she asked. “Where did you get the mice?”

  Eric said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “The cellar of our house. Dad dumps everything down there, and there’s mice all over the place. I just set some traps. A couple of days ago I had three for him.”

  “But what are we going to do with him?” Cassie asked. “We can’t just keep him out here forever.”

  Eric glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “And we can’t just let him go, can we?”

  “But he’s okay now,” Cassie said. “I know he is.”

  “But what about Templeton?” Eric asked. “If he sees him, he’ll shoot him again.”

  Cassie fell silent, her eyes fixed on the bird for several long seconds. Inside the cage Kiska stopped preening his feathers, standing perfectly still as he stared back at Cassie.

  The soft cluckings in his throat died away.

  Finally Cassie reached out once more and opened the door of the cage. Immediately the hawk hopped from the perch to the floor of the cage and extended his head through the opening.

  Slowly, warily, Cassie moved her hand down until her wrist was just outside the door.

  Kiska bounded onto her wrist, his talons closing around her flesh as they had around the mouse’s a few minutes earlier. But the pressure was light, and the needle-sharp points of his claws didn’t pierce her skin.

  A soft sigh escaped her lips, and she smiled at Eric. “It’s all right,” she said. “I can feel him, and it’s all right.”

  As if to prove her words, the hawk suddenly leaped from her arm, his wings spreading as he beat his way through the thick foliage and burst into the sky above the marsh. Cassie and Eric pushed out of the tangled branches of the bush and scrambled to their feet. Above them the hawk was circling higher and higher, his wings moving strongly as he searched for the wind. Then he found it and his wings locked into position as he soared on the breeze, his tail spread wide, a screech of excitement bursting from his throat. A moment later he dived, swooping low over the pine trees around the cabin, flushing a flock of ravens from their nests. Cawing loudly, the black birds fluttered into the air, streaking after the hawk. He rose high again, with the ravens chasing after him, then dived straight into the flock. Frustrated and furious, the ravens tumbled through the air then spread out, surrounding the hawk. One by one they darted in at him, but each time he dived away, gradually leading them out over the sea.

  “What’s happening?” Cassie asked. “What are they doing?”

  “He’s playing with them,” Eric told her. “First he flushed them out to make them mad, and now he’s teasing them. Watch!”

  The ravens tumbled around the hawk, rolling in the air as they darted toward the bigger bird, then dropping away before he could attack them. Finally he wheeled over the sea, found the wind once more, and sailed serenely back, ignoring the screaming ravens as he dropped to the peak of the cabin roof.

  For a few minutes the ravens circled him, attempting to lure him back into the air, but he sat calmly where he was, his beak once more methodically combing through his feathers. Losing interest at last, the ravens drifted back to their nests. Within a few minutes the marsh was quiet again, only the soft murmurings of the feeding ducks occasionally punctuating the rhythmic
washing of the surf beyond the dunes.

  Feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs, Cassie and Eric started walking slowly back toward the cabin. A deep sense of peace settled over Cassie, and once more she understood why Miranda had been able to live here by herself, why she’d loved the marsh so much. It was a universe sufficient to itself, teeming with life and activity, but somehow set apart from the rest of the world.

  Then, a second later, the quiet that hung over the marsh was shattered by a high-pitched screech as Kiska leaped from the roof, climbing into the air.

  “What is it?” Cassie gasped. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Eric said nothing for a moment as he gazed into the sky, one arm shielding his eyes from the sun. The bird spiraled higher, then leveled off, soaring across the marsh toward the park.

  A moment later he disappeared from their view.

  “Where’s he going?” Cassie cried. “If anyone sees him—”

  Eric grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he yelled. “I think I know where he’s gone. I’m sure of it!” Pulling Cassie with him for the first few steps, he began running through the twisted labyrinth of trails. Cassie hurried after him, doing her best to keep up, her feet slipping in the mud every few steps. As Eric reached the edge of the marsh and paused to catch his breath, she caught up.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Eric, where are we going?”

  “After Kiska,” Eric gasped. “Will you stop asking questions and just come on?”

  “Look!” Eric shouted. He came to a sudden stop, and Cassie had to throw herself to one side to keep from crashing into him. She stumbled, then she caught herself, regained her balance and followed Eric’s gaze.

  They had come up Commonwealth Avenue, and the square opened before them. But Eric wasn’t looking at the square. He was pointing off toward the Congregational Church.

  Cassie searched the sky for a moment, before finding what she’d been looking for.

  High up, almost out of sight, Kiska was circling in an ever-tightening downward spiral. Slowly the speck in the sky grew larger, and then Cassie heard once more the faint sounds of his screams as he cried out in preparation for an attack.

  “But what is it?” she asked. “It’s just the church—”

  “Not the church!” Eric yelled. “The graveyard! He’s over the graveyard, Cassie!”

  Her heart pounding anew, Cassie rushed around the corner then across the street and into the square. The little cemetery next to the church came into view, and she could see clearly what Kiska had somehow known and Eric had guessed.

  In the graveyard, crouched in front of Miranda Sikes’s grave, was Lisa Chambers.

  Around her were half a dozen of her friends. Cassie recognized Jeff Maynard and Kevin Smythe, along with Teri Bennett and Allayne Garvey. The others were faces she’d seen before, but had no names for.

  But she knew what they were doing, knew it just as surely as had Kiska and Eric.

  “No!” she screamed. “Don’t do that!”

  Lisa looked up, and when she saw Cassie and Eric, a cold grin spread across her face. “I can do what I want,” she taunted. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

  “Yes there is!” Eric shouted from behind Cassie. “Look!”

  He pointed into the sky. Lisa and her friends looked up, then froze where they were.

  Kiska was streaking down, his high-pitched scream of attack electrifying the air, his talons reaching out.

  Cassie gasped, staring at the strange spectacle, knowing what would happen in just a few more seconds.

  And she wanted to let it happen, wanted to let Kiska tear into Lisa the way he had torn into the corpse of the mouse only a little while ago.

  But once more Miranda’s voice welled out of her memory, speaking softly to her.

  She tried not to listen, tried to shut out the words. But she couldn’t do it.

  Miranda spoke, and she had to listen.

  “No!” she screamed out loud. “Kiska, don’t!”

  The hawk, already into his final dive as he prepared to attack the crowd of terrified teenagers, whirled in the air, flapped wildly for a moment until he caught the wind, then reversed his course and began climbing upward once more. A few seconds later he leveled off and wheeled back toward the marsh.

  Eric and Cassie watched until he’d disappeared, then Eric’s eyes narrowed. “You should have let him do it,” he said, his voice bitter.

  Cassie shook her head. “I couldn’t. Miranda—” She broke off, but Eric looked at her, his eyes penetrating.

  “What?” he pressed. “What about Miranda?”

  “She never wanted to hurt anybody,” Cassie said quietly. She started across the street to the graveyard, where Lisa and her friends were now backing away. As Cassie stepped through the gate into the cemetery itself, they turned and fled. But it wasn’t until they were gone, and she and Eric were alone, that she finished what she’d been saying. She looked down at the defaced headstone that marked Miranda’s grave, and the shredded remains of the uprooted flowers she’d planted there so short a time ago. “She never wanted to hurt anyone,” Cassie said again. “And she doesn’t want me to hurt anyone either.”

  Eric’s jaw tightened. “But she’s dead! She doesn’t care what you do.”

  Once more Cassie shook her head. “But I don’t feel as though she’s dead,” she said quietly. “I feel as though she’s still alive inside me, and sometimes I can … well, I can almost hear her talking to me. And she doesn’t want me to hurt anybody.”

  “Even if they hurt you?” Eric challenged.

  Cassie hesitated. “They—they can’t hurt me,” she faltered. “Not unless I let them.”

  “But they are hurting you,” Eric insisted. “When Lisa does something like this, it hurts you just as much as your mother hurt you and my father hurts me.” The bitterness in his voice hardened into anger. “Just because they aren’t beating up on you doesn’t mean they’re not hurting you. And they won’t stop as long as they know they’re succeeding.”

  She knew he was right, knew that what Lisa and her friends were doing stung just as much as any of the slaps she’d ever received from her mother.

  But how could she stop them?

  Then, slowly, an idea began to take shape in her mind.

  Maybe, after all, there was a way. Maybe Eric was right. If they thought they weren’t hurting her at all …

  Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she made up her mind. And when she told Eric what she was going to do, he nodded his agreement.

  “It’s perfect,” he said. “It’s just perfect.”

  Then they began repairing the damage Lisa had done to Miranda’s grave.

  It was almost eight-thirty when Cassie and Eric walked around the end of the school building and cut across the playing field to the gymnasium entrance. The double front doors to the gym stood open, light from the foyer spilling out onto the front steps and the yard beyond. A couple of kids were standing at the edge of the lighted area, passing a cigarette back and forth between them.

  Cassie paused in the comforting shelter of the darkness, then spoke quietly. “Maybe—maybe we shouldn’t go in at all.”

  “But we already decided,” Eric replied. “Besides, I can hardly wait to see their faces.”

  Cassie felt a knot of fear tighten in her stomach as she remembered the expression on her stepmother’s face when she’d come downstairs half an hour ago.

  Rosemary had been sitting in the little den at the front of the house. When Cassie stepped in from the foyer, she’d glanced up from her knitting and gasped, her eyes widening in shock. But before she could speak, Cassie had hurried out the front door and down the street, where Eric was waiting for her on the corner in front of the church.

  “Did she say anything?” he asked.

  Cassie had shaken her head. “She didn’t have a chance.” She’d chuckled. “For a second I thought she was going to faint.”

  But now, as the throbbing rhythms of rock
music reverberated from the building and she thought of the crowd of teenagers inside—all of them friends of Lisa Chambers—she was beginning to lose her nerve.

  As if sensing what was happening, Eric took her arm. “Come on,” he said. “You can’t back out now.” His grip on her arm tightening, he led her out of the shadows, and they hurried up the steps into the gym.

  Charlotte Ambler stood at the door to the gym itself, keeping a watchful eye on the crowd that covered the dance floor. So far everything seemed to be perfectly normal, and she was enjoying a brief respite from the tension that had permeated the school almost from the day Cassie Winslow had arrived. When she’d heard the rumor that Eric Cavanaugh had broken his date with Lisa Chambers for tonight and was planning to bring Cassie Winslow to the dance, she’d had a sinking feeling that something was going to go terribly wrong. So she’d made sure she got to the gym and taken up her station even before the doors had opened, hoping her very presence could avert whatever trouble might be brewing. During the last hour, with no sign of either Eric or Cassie, she’d begun to let herself relax. Apparently they weren’t coming at all.

  As the band wound up its first set of the night, the last electronic wailings of the synthesizer fading away, she sensed someone behind her and turned, prepared to welcome the latest arrivals.

  Turned and froze.

  Standing perfectly still, her face an ashen white, her eyes wide, stood Cassie Winslow.

  Except that it wasn’t Cassie.

  It was Miranda Sikes.

  The black skirt—the same black skirt Miranda had worn every day of her life—fell from Cassie’s waist to the floor.

  She wore Miranda’s thick black woolen sweater, and wrapped around her head in loose folds that almost concealed her face, was Miranda’s black shawl.

  She cradled Sumi in her left arm while the fingers of her right hand slowly stroked his fur.

  The cat’s eyes, large and golden, glowed dangerously in the soft light from the gymnasium.