Jennie mostly looked sad and tired. All the years she’d been gone, she had used to get smarter and stronger, but she was still Maggie Wise’s daughter.
“I think he’s right, Violet,” Jennie admitted. “The pieces just fit together. But I don’t like seeing her in pain like this. Whatever she might be now, part of her is still Momma. The closer we get, the more it’s hurting her. If you were back here with her… it’s like watching her being stabbed by invisible knives. The pain’s on the inside, but it’s brutal.”
Malcolm didn’t have to see. He could hear the noises coming from behind him. Maggie might be halfway to a monster now, but she whimpered, and he had to focus on the fact of her death to remind himself she was beyond saving.
From death, he thought.But you could save her some pain.
Maybe.
He started to sing again. With the muffled sounds of the snow on the road, the wipers, and the Frazer’s engine, the words blurred into nothing but soft melody, but he could almost feel Maggie’s pain ease. In the rearview mirror, he watched her right arm and leg relax. In the passenger seat, Benjy sniffled and then sighed, taking some comfort from the song for himself.
Halfway through the fourth time singing the same song, not another word spoken from any of them, he longed to try another tune. But Maggie had built this bit of witchcraft with purpose, and he didn’t know enough about any of it to deviate. So he kept singing, and it worked for a while, holding off the evil inside his mother and keeping her quiet. Keeping her painless. Keeping her dead.
Eventually, she began again to stir. She made a small sound that somehow seemed louder than it was, a sound so forlorn that it felt like a lifetime of surrender.
Violet said his name, her tone a warning.
He stopped singing. The wipers kept the rhythm going.
“What is it?”
Violet pointed at the windshield, over on her side. “I saw someone out there.”
“Someone?”
“Moving fast. On foot.”
“It was only a matter of time,” Jennie said, rolling her window down for a better look out into the dark. Snow and wind whipped at her face. “They knew our destination. They’re going to try to stop us.”
Violet shook her head. “How did they find us? You did that thing with the dust so they couldn’t track Maggie’s body.”
Malcolm nodded slowly. “Shediak is technically an island. There’s a narrow channel that separates it from the mainland, like a hundred other little islands around here. It’s got one little two-lane bridge to get out there by car. Otherwise, it’s a boat or a chilly swim.”
As he spoke, he saw something in the snow off to the left, moving through the trees on that side of the road. Tall and pale, it loped on two feet. He caught only glimpses, and he wondered if it knew they were there in the car. If it did know, why hadn’t it already tried to stop them? How weak had these things become, so close to Shediak?
Still strong enough to kill you, he thought.
The headlights picked out a sign ahead. The wind chose that moment to wipe away most of the snow that covered it.SHEDIAK 2 MILES.
A quiet, mocking laughter slithered up from the seat behind Malcolm.
Jennie jerked away from Maggie, sliding all the way against her own door. “Christ.”
“Sing, Malcolm,” Violet said. In her arms, Benjy pressed his eyes tightly shut, breath hitching as he tried not to see.
“Sing, Malcolm,” Maggie mimicked. “Useless daughter.”
“How bad is it?” Malcolm asked.
Violet had a good view of Maggie. “The cuffs are holding. She doesn’t want us to see how much pain—”
The monster in Maggie had woken up. Now it screamed, but in seconds, that scream faltered to a seething, spitting hatred. She couldn’t mask the pain racking her body as they traveled the last couple of miles.
But she laughed again. “Go on, then. Drive.”
Malcolm didn’t like the sound of that. He eased up on the accelerator and glanced at Violet, then back at Jennie. They’d caught an unsettling insinuation in Maggie’s words as well.
“There are others up ahead. In the road,” Violet said as if that was the end of things.
