Page 56 of The Devil Knows Her Name

There was a long silence.

“Okay,” he said finally. “They won’t notice.”

I didn’t know if he meant about his hand or the antibiotics specifically, but I nodded anyway. “You can always tell them you hurt it in gym or something. I’m certainly not going to tattle on you.”

Relief shone in his face again; the little lamb didn’t even realize he held the blade now. “Okay. Thanks.”

“But we have to get you to school before your free period is up. Is there somewhere I can drop you off where nobody will see?”

“There’s an old dirt road that runs behind the gym. We use it sometimes, but not during school hours.”

I knew the one; a remnant of Norman’s days, when access paths for the logging wagons crisscrossed through much of the land in Burrsville. “That’ll work,” I said. “Why don’t you go hop in the truck; I’m going to put that little beast away.”

He straightened up from where he was sagging against the sink. The color had come back into his face, but the uncertainty lingered. Once I was certain he was steady, I left him to go collect the fawn.

She was gamboling in the short grass that stretched between the back of the barn and the meadow, her bright eyes trained on a fat, lazy bumblebee that was making the most of the remaining dandelions. I strode across it, but hesitated just before I bent to scoop her up.

I picked her up often; she was becoming more independent, less inclined to follow at my heels, and I didn’t always have time to wait for her to decide she was ready to come in. But now all I could see was that long, flexible neck and how easily it might turn, putting my face, my ear, my neck within reach of those teeth.

“Why did you have to fucking do that?” I asked softly.

She didn’t even look at me, the only acknowledgment of my voice a little flick of her tail. I bent down, steeling myself, and lifted her up. There was a breathless, frozen moment where her head craned back to maintain her balance, and I anticipated the clamp of her teeth on my cheek, the ripping of flesh. It was all in my head, and she was silent and docile as I carried her to the house.

The boy was silent too, as I drove him down the hill to the school. I kept to the backroads, but even then I was tempted to tell him to duck whenever we passed a house or another car. The sun beamed beneath my visor like a watching eye.

“I’m really sorry,” he said as I pulled over at the edge of the access road. “I feel stupid. I almost passed out.”

“Don’t be sorry—it’s natural. There’s not much you can do about it.”

“You’re not going to put her down, are you? I’ve read stuff online about that, dumbasses getting bit trying to pet wild animals and stuff. I don’t want to be that person.”

“You’re not that person.”

“But you won’t, right?”

I stayed silent for a moment, watching fear darken his eyes. Fear made men vicious, I knew, but he was still just a boy.

“I won’t,” I said finally. “But it might not be in my hands.”

Chapter

18

The rest of the day and the one following, my options ran circles through my head. There were few.

The first was to drag another rehabilitator into this mess and send the fawn away; from there I could lie and tell Broder I had the fawn put down for testing, or simply hope that getting her out of Burrsville would be enough to satisfy him.

But I couldn’t send her to another rehabilitator without telling them about her strange appetite, and if someone still agreed to take her, they’d be risking their license too. I knew a few who would still do it, purely to spite the government if nothing else, but I didn’t trust those few.

The second was to hope that David would hold up his end of our implicit bargain. He was better, gentler than his father and grandfather; I’d seen his restraint, his desire not to hurt the fawn even as she was hurting him. Part of me believed he would keep this secret.

Another part of me knew that faith in him was idiocy, and so I had a third option, which was to claim that he was trespassing on my property. I had a gate for a reason, and wild animals could not be expected to behave like pets when someone broke in and went sticking their hands into cages.

Afternoon of the second day dimmed into evening. When my phone finally rang, fear shot down my spine like an electric shock, but it was just a harried-sounding mom from down in the village, asking for help with the skunk her dog cornered in the garage. In the background, I heard children wailing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “They’re really worried about the skunk. I’m pretty sure Moose got a piece of him.”

“I’m on my way,” I told her.