CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FLOCKING TOGETHER

STOPPING FOR GAS didn’t wake Steptoe even when Goldie switched to driving with much noise changing seats, filling the gas tank, and slamming the door shut. She raised an eyebrow at me. “Consorting with demons?”

“He doesn’t look like it to me. I think of him as a very well-dressed chimney sweep.” I found it hard to believe what others claimed about him, although I had not the slightest idea what he could be, otherwise.

She twitched a quick glance at him. “Really? I guess there is a slight resemblance. It’s the dialect, I suppose. There had been rumors that he’d slipped his chain from Zinthrasta and gone chaotic good, but I hadn’t believed them.”

“But it can happen?”

“Oh, yes. Usually for two reasons—a demon genuinely feels remorse for some of their acts and wishes redemption, because they’ve seen the consequences of their behavior and it’s frightened them, or, more often—it fits into the game plan of their master and being the trickster comes naturally to them. The jury is still out on Steptoe’s true motivation.”

“So the tribes are wary about him.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Other than flash-bangs and the coat, I haven’t seen a lot of what he can do, but he has grit and he’s helped me, often without even being asked. I judge him on that if I have to judge him at all.” I paused, with a short wonder about the tell-tales at home.

“As long as that works for you.”

That’s rather the way I’ve treated all of them since being introduced to the professor and then Brian succeeding him. I wasn’t sure if there was another method to go about it. How many strange things can you see in a day and accept? I changed direction.

“Did you know Morty well?”

“I was his wife.” The headlights of passing cars played over her face with light and dark shadows as she concentrated on the highway.

I decided to push through her short answer. “It seems dumb, I know, but sometimes people know each other and sometimes they don’t. I had questions I never got to ask him, even though he suggested once he might have answers for me when we had time. We never got that time.”

“Hmmm. We were close. It’s possible I might be able to supply a few for you.”

I flipped open my mental notebook. “It’s a family problem, and I didn’t realize it myself, but it started with my Aunt April. Dad’s aunt, actually, so that makes her my Great-Aunt April, and she is somehow the reason my father disappeared.” Actually, I was the reason, but I didn’t feel like disclosing our nasty argument.

“Sounds complicated.”

“It is. Aunt April likes to gamble. To the point where she is seriously addicted. Maybe it’s for the adrenaline, I don’t know, but my father found out and stepped in to help her. He ended up losing my college fund, his retirement, and our mortgage. I don’t think he was necessarily that bad a gambler. Mortimer mentioned something about identity theft. Then my father got involved in something that, more or less, disappeared him. Everyone thought he’d just abandoned us, but it’s more than that. He haunts my house. He seems caught between here and there.” I ran out of words, and she didn’t ask for a better explanation.

“Mortimer knew him through the work he did occasionally outside the clan?”

“Said he did.”

“And your father’s name?”

“Not memorable. John Andrews. John Graham Andrews.” I turned my face to look outside the window, feeling my nose sting and my eyes well up. I had him, but only barely, and if I couldn’t find the solution to bringing him back from whatever dimension he ghosted in, I should let him go.

“I’m afraid he said nothing to me, at least, not recently.”

I let out a puff of breath.

“No, no, don’t get discouraged. That doesn’t mean the end of it.” She patted the steering wheel instead of my arm. “Morty kept journals, very detailed ones. He wanted them passed to Hiram, but I doubt if he even told his son they existed. He could be private like that.”

“Wouldn’t they have been found?”

“Doubtful. I, however, have a good idea where they would have been stowed. The only difficulty there is the clan letting me back into Broadstone Manor to retrieve them.”

Knowing what I currently did, I muttered, “Good luck with that.”

“The nice thing about luck is we generally make our own, particularly if we prepare. Getting the Eye will greatly help to convince them to give me entrance. Once we do, the rest will open up.”

Harpies were optimists? News to me, but I’d take it. I needed it.

A soft snore sounded from the back seat. Steptoe, I’m sure, had never heard a word.

I leaned my head against the passenger window glass, and I think I fell asleep myself.

---

•   •   •

“We’re here.”

I rubbed my eyes open and could hear Steptoe stirring and fussing around. Here seemed to be pitch-dark, off the road, and the only things the car’s headlights illuminated were loblolly pines, which were everywhere. I cranked a window down to smell and hear the ocean. “We’re at the beach?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome.” I hopped out, kicking sandy soil as I did. The soft roar of waves hitting a shore I couldn’t see yet surrounded me, as did the heady smell of salt and something I couldn’t quite identify.

“Don’t wander. There’s quicksand and sinkholes hereabouts.”

“Bummer.” I spread my arms and turned about cautiously. If I could get to the shore itself, I could run along the sand, see the tide coming in or out, with that fluorescence edging waves sometimes held. From very far away, I thought I could hear a horse whinny. “We’re at Virginia Beach!”

“Nearly.”

“Thought I heard one of the wild ponies on Chincoteague.”

“Possible but not likely. More probable one of their tamed herd mates here on the coast. We’re at the edge of Westmoreland State Park, Colonial Beach.” Goldie had the trunk open on the car and arms inside, searching about. “No shovel?”

“No,” I answered deliberately. “Are we burying someone?”

She ignored me. “Should get a camping shovel. And a hatchet. Just in case.” Goldie closed the trunk lid and realigned her armor a bit. “We’ll just have to make do.”

Disappointed I wasn’t closer to the wild pony island refuge but glad to be out of the car and just about anywhere else, I trotted after her. Behind me, I heard a car door open and close. After a few moments, Steptoe caught up with me.

“Wot’s up?”

“Treasure hunting.”

“Oh? Indeed.” And Simon hummed a few cheerful bars but shut up when Goldie threw him a look over her shoulder. Something decided to take a bite of him and he slapped the back of his neck. He shot a glare at her as if she’d sent it personally.

Maybe she had. I gathered there was little love lost between harpies and those of Steptoe’s ilk.

She took us around what might or might not have been the edge of the park, which was a huge amount of acreage for camping and other recreation and sped up when we neared what looked like a logging road with a cabin waiting at the end of it.

Had been a cabin but now looked like a catastrophe. Even in the night, with nothing but a crescent moon to shine down upon it, it looked like little more than a pile of logs, tossed here and there, on what might have been a foundation. Goldie made a little sound as she came to a halt.

She stood, shoulders slumped a little, and muttered what sounded like “Stupid fucks” to me, but I decided not to ask her to repeat it. Finally, Goldie turned to me. “They’ve demolished my camp.”

“Looks like it. You didn’t have your, ermm, sister-eggs stored there, did you?”

“No. No, those stay at the main nest and no one would bother them. An egg is considered pretty much a blank start, and needed in our clan, as our population ever dwindles. No, the notion of who the mother and father are wouldn’t taint the egg. This was done to get to the Eye of Nimora. Damn them.” She strode forth then, angry as a harpy could get, which was pretty angry. Both Steptoe and I decided to stay out of her way and took a lesser path.

I could understand her feelings, having been through the destruction of the professor’s home with him. And having lost my own home when we’d been evicted. I remember my mother crying as she ran her hand down the inside of my closet door where she had penciled off major markings in my height and the year of my age and the calendar as she did. We took a picture, but it never seemed quite the same. I suspect she cried for a lot of other things, too, as we shut our door for the last time. We didn’t drive by again for months and months and when we did, she was shocked to see it had been “flipped” with all new landscaping and painted white with a forest-green trim, looking nothing like what we’d left behind. That made it both better and worse for me. It didn’t look the same, so it didn’t remind me. At the same time, there seemed to be a gigantic gap in the beginning of my life.

Goldie went to a side shed, pulling aside a door lying on the ground, and knelt with a hissing breath. It, too, had been shredded as I studied what was left. What could reduce a building to splinters? It hadn’t left tracks, whatever it was. She got up and paced about, then went to a knee again, running her hands carefully through nails and shards as sharp as any sword.

When she faced me again, I really didn’t want to be there, but I made an effort to stand still. Very still.

“Gone. It’s gone.”

I squelched that tiny voice at the back of my head that wanted to say, “Told you so” and kept quiet.

“Someone knew its worth and where I was likely to have kept it. I’ll return to my nest and ask among my sisters. We have to find it. Mortimer gave it to me as a wedding present, but I always knew the day would come when I’d have to return it and counted on that. Now someone has shattered my pledge.”

She looked back at the scattered timbers for a moment before adding, “I can’t rest until it is restored to the Broadstones and its taker is punished.”

“Impressive,” Steptoe commented. “But it’s likely to have been one of your sisters.”

I hadn’t dared say it, let alone as flippantly as he made it sound.

“Whatever it takes.” She turned and, with a half-shout, half-groan, unfurled her wings. She ran her hand along them, testing the flight feathers, and looked to me.

I had to ask. “Still bound?”

“Yes. But I would leave you here, if I could. We’ve both work to do.”

I rubbed my maelstrom stone. Brought back to mind the deer’s spirit which I had cut loose to free it from Malender. Took several steps to close on her, and examined her wingspread. My stone pulsed a little, and I held it up to show her. “This might work. And it might not.”

“Work how?”

“Slicing you free.”

Goldie frowned. “Have you done it before?”

“I’ve cut things with it before. I can see this shining coil running along here,” and I put my left index finger out to what I had found and plinked it. She shuddered and gave a gulp, laid her hand over her stomach.

“I felt that.”

“Hmmm.” Maybe, in the moonlight, I was seeing her essence tied to her winged ability. I moved my hand away. And then, at the lower boundary of her wing, I could see a dull red rope, a nasty looking thing, that pulsated in time with my stone. “Oh, no. I think maybe this is what I need to cut.” I plucked at that. As I did, her wings folded as if in fear, collapsing away from me, and she shuddered.

I didn’t intend to let the serpentine cord disappear on me.

“Careful,” Steptoe warned.

“I know.” I unwove a bit of it and showed it to him. His black eyes reflected the sickly glowing crimson.

“That would be it. Not natural to the shining beauty of the harpy’s true self.”

“Goldie? Give me permission?”

“Go for it.” She held her breath.

I pulled as much of it free as I could gather and then cut from the bottom of it, not far from the base of her spine. Then I just sliced and diced, watching it disintegrate as I did until nothing seemed to be left of it. The stone sputtered a bit as I finished.

“Well done.” Steptoe patted my shoulder. “All right? The stone protects your left hand, but your right might be takin’ in some of that nasty bit, so hold hands. Rub ’em a bit, to clean ’em.”

I did. Goldie hugged me. “I will send word!”

“Right and, uh, be careful.”

“Always.”

She took flight then, with a jump and a rush, her great wings beating in a glory of white and gold, and she disappeared into the moonlight.

“Wow.”

“Gorgeous, ain’t it? I could never understand why harpies could be so harsh and bitter.” Steptoe stood with his head tilted back a moment before turning. “Road trip?”

“Home. Where should I drop you?”

“Home. Yours, that is. I have a little place next to the garage if needed.”

I looked at him.

“Well, I do.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Does Scout know?”

“He must certainly does. I bribe ’im with dog treats not to tell anyone.”

I rolled my eyes. “Remind me to remind him what a guard dog is supposed to do.”

“But I’m friends. Almost family. Ain’t that right?”

“Yeah.” I kept pace with him as we found our way back to the car. “Definitely right.”

“Good. Put out your hand.”

I looked at him quizzically. He dropped something into it. “What—”

“That there is called a clue, I believe.”

When I got the car door open, I examined it in the light. “It’s a feather.”

“Black swan, mayhap. Although it could be taken for a harpy feather. But lookit this,” and his stubby nail pointed out a harsh thread wrapped around its base.

I squinted at it. “It looks like a hair.”

“Horsehair, I’d say, for tying the feather in place.”

I let thoughts run through my mind for a minute until it made sense. “So someone wore feathers as a . . . what . . . a disguise?”

“Dropped feathers as evidence. That was the second one I found. First was this ’ere.” And he showed me the long, black feather.

“Now this one looks like the real thing.”

“As meant.”

I took it from him as well. “If she’d seen it, she’d have gone after her own sisters.”

“Which, I imagine, was the intent.”

“Good thing you found them. She’s going after them anyway, but not to get even.”

He tapped the side of his nose. “And didn’t jump to conclusions.”

“Right.” I turned the odd feather over a few times. “Would sympathetic magic work on this?”

“Likely to take you to th’ bird they plucked it from, not the ones who did this deed. Although this,” and he scraped his nail against the horsehair. “Is a clue in itself. But I cannot tell you it will lead anywhere.”

“I need to know more about Hiram’s enemies, it seems. And Goldie’s.” I yawned. It would be a long drive home, and I needed to stay alert.

But then Steptoe discovered the car radio and the heavy metal golden oldies channel.