sixteen

“Mom? It’s Wren. Call me when you get this, okay? I have something to tell you.”

Wren hesitated. She didn’t want to share this news in a voicemail, but she was going to be telling it over the phone anyway and she knew that her mother would worry and imagine terrible things if she couldn’t get hold of her right away.

Wren’s mom had been a medications technician. Her dad had been with the Department of Conservation. They were calm, dependable people who’d lived in the same place for almost forty years, working and raising their family. The last thing she’d expected them to do when they retired was sell their house and become nomads. With a pop-up camper hitched behind her dad’s truck, they’d set out to see everything within driving range.

Her mom made stuffed animals and dolls and exhibited them at craft shows across the country. Her dad had won horseshoe tournaments in twenty-three states and counting. Neither of them had ever gotten the hang of technology. They weren’t even interested. They had a cell phone for emergencies, but tended to leave it off and buried in the glove box for days at a time. Wren was more likely to get a postcard or a box of random souvenirs in the mail than a phone call. She didn’t even know what state they were in. Last she’d heard, they were wandering around lost in the Appalachians.

She sighed.

“It’s Death,” she said into the phone. “He’s asked me to marry him. We’re getting married. Call me when you can and I’ll tell you all about it.”

She hung up and set the phone on the mantle in the Hadleigh House game room, noting that the battery was getting low and making a mental note to plug it in. The beautiful night had given way to a dreary, drizzly gray day. Nothing could put a damper on her spirits, though.

The game room was on the first floor at the northeast corner of the house. It featured a full-size pool table, two card tables with comfortable chairs, end tables, club chairs, a liquor cabinet that was still stocked with bottles she knew nothing about—she’d have to ask the twins what they were going to do with those, since they didn’t have a liquor license—and a bookcase full of vintage board games.

Wren set an open box on the pool table and started dealing out a fancy old deck of cards beside it, sorting it into suits to see if they were all there. She stopped on the king of hearts to admire her new ring again.

Death had bypassed the standard diamond solitaire in favor of something more personal. It was a low-profile, so it wouldn’t snag while she was working: a gold band inset with a design of linked hearts worked in sapphire, diamond, and opal. It fit perfectly and she was waiting for someone to notice it. Now that she’d told her parents, sort of, she felt that she could share the news.

So far, the only person she’d seen was Robin Keystone. He was walking around in a happy fog because he’d talked to Sarabeth Hensley the night before. Wren doubted he’d notice if a 747 came in for a landing on the lawn.

As if thinking about him had summoned him, the teenager appeared in the doorway.

“Wren? Do you mind if I go ahead and leave a bit early? Sarabeth’s meeting me at the library tonight, to study for our history test.”

She glanced out the window. The dark was gathering in early today and there were hints of lightning low on the horizon.

“Do you need a ride?”

“Nah. My dad’s over at Great Uncle Bub’s. I can walk over and ride back with him.”

“All right, then. Be careful. The wind’s picking up. Watch out for falling branches on the Vengeance Trail.”

He rolled his eyes and smirked and was gone.

Wren put in another hour, packing up board games and daydreaming about marrying Death, before she looked outside again and noticed the way the storm had darkened the afternoon into an early evening. She didn’t like driving on dark, wet roads, especially in the autumn when the deer were out in force, so rather than flipping on the lights she decided to call it a day.

Gathering her phone and her car keys, she locked the mansion behind her and paused on the porch, waiting for a break in the rain to make a run for her truck. After about five minutes she decided there wasn’t going to be one, so she made a dash for it and climbed into the cab, soaked and out of breath.

At least, she reflected, she had her truck up here close. She’d have to remember to thank Nichelle again for helping the men put up the bridge.

She shook the rain out of her eyes, tucked a strand of wet hair behind one ear, and turned the key in the ignition.

Ruhr ruhr ruhr ruhr.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

She tried it a couple more times, just in case it was, she didn’t know, a glitch in the matrix, maybe, rather than an actual problem. With the rain pouring down, she decided to call Death to come pick her up and worry about the truck in the morning. But when she pulled out her phone, it was dead and she couldn’t get it to turn on.

“The battery. I forgot to plug it in to charge.”

Cursing under her breath, she dug in the console. She’d left her big flashlight at home that morning, but she had a small but bright LED light on a headband that cast light on things while leaving her hands free. Putting it on, she popped the hood, steeled herself to a cold shower, and jumped down.

The ground squelched underfoot and the metal of the hood was cold and slick under her hands. She found the hood release, raised the hood, and leaned in under it, seeking some scant shelter as she peered at the motor, trying to see if she could see what was wrong.

The motor had turned over but wouldn’t catch. Since the truck had run fine that morning, her first thought was that corrosion had built up on the battery posts and was keeping it from getting a full charge. The posts gleamed in the bright blue glow from the LED, though. The battery could be dead, but it was practically new and she hadn’t left the lights on or anything.

Electricity, fuel, spark. The three elements of starting a vehicle. If it wouldn’t start, you eliminated them one by one until you discovered what was missing. The battery should be okay, and she’d gassed up only that morning, so unless someone had siphoned her tank she should have fuel.

That left spark. It should have started, or at least tried to start, with one or even two loose spark plug wires. She had no other ideas, though, so she moved over and refocused her light to check them.

They were gone.

The spark plug wires were gone.

The only way they could be gone was if someone had taken them. The only other person she knew had been on the property that day was Robin Keystone, but the missing spark plugs meant that she was alone and stranded twenty miles from town. That wasn’t a prank any of her friends would play on her.

With a sick feeling, Wren closed the hood, got her keys and her dead phone, and ran back to the house to lock herself in. Just inside the door, with her back to the wall, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The sound of the rain on the windows intensified, and she wondered who else was here and what they wanted with her.

_____

Death, in his office on the square, was deep in financial paperwork, figuring his quarterly tax payment. His phone, lying on the blotter next to his left hand, buzzed and vibrated.

“Hello?”

“Do you own your home? Let me tell you what vinyl windows and doors can do for you!”

“I’m not interested,” he said. “I’m on the do-not-call list. Don’t call back.”

He hung up, got up, and went to the mini-fridge in the other room for a can of soda. He’d just gotten back to his desk when he heard the door down at the street open and close and a set of familiar footsteps climbed the stairs. He kept his head down and kept working.

Randy crossed the office, came to a stop in front of him, and leaned down to put his face a couple of inches from Death’s. Death looked up finally, grinning hugely.

“She said yes?”

“She said yes. Well, she nodded. Same thing.”

“And the ring? Did she like the ring? Did it fit and everything? You didn’t drop it off the Ferris wheel, did you?”

“No, I didn’t drop it! I didn’t put it on her until we were back on the ground. And yeah, it fit and yeah, she likes it.”

Randy clapped him on the shoulder, beaming. “Man! That is so awesome!” He pulled up a chair and dropped into it. “Have you set a date yet? I better be your best man! Does Madeline know yet?”

“No, of course you are, and no, why would Madeline know?”

“You didn’t tell her? I’d have called and told her first thing.”

“What, like ‘nanny-nanny-boo-boo! I’m engaged and you’re not’?”

“Well, yeah!”

“Well, no.” Death laughed and pushed the paperwork aside. “What happened between Madeline and me is in the past. I have more important things to do than gloat over my ex-wife.”

“That’s a very mature and healthy attitude. So can I?”

“What? Gloat over my ex-wife?”

“Yeah. I want to tell her that you’re marrying Wren.”

Death took a drink from his soda. “Why?”

“Because she’s a bitch. And when you and she got married she was all smug and pleased with herself. And she told Wren, when you all thought I was dead, that it was karma because she didn’t like me so I deserved to die.”

“She said that? Really?”

“That’s what your fiancée told me.”

Death’s phone buzzed again.

“Bogart Investigations.”

“Do you own your home? You would be wise to listen to what I have to say!”

Death growled and hung up and tossed the phone in a drawer.

Randy frowned at him. “What was all that about?”

“Telemarketer. Keeps calling and trying to sell me vinyl windows.”

“Oh. Yeah, telemarketers are a pain in the butt. Kind of like Madeline.”

“Okay, fine! You can tell her Wren and I are engaged.”

“Awesome!” Randy grinned ear to ear. “I know. I’ll ask her if she’s interested in a job in show business. When she asks why, I’ll tell her I’m planning your bachelor party and I need a cheap stripper to jump out of the cake.”

Death dropped his head into his hands. “Oh god. Knowing Madeline, she’d probably do it. Congratulations, Randy. I think you broke my brain.”

“Well, it was never very sound to begin with.”

“Just don’t say anything to her until after Wren tells her parents. She wanted to tell them first, before we announce it or anything.” Death drained his soda, set the empty can down, and leaned back, kicking his feet up on the desk.

“Where are her parents? I’ve never met them.”

“Neither have I.”

“Oh!” Randy grinned. “Nervous much?”

“A little, yeah. They’re retired. They have a pop-up camper trailer they pull behind their truck and they just travel all over the US doing whatever they feel like doing.”

“Sounds awesome.”

On the desk between them, Death’s empty soda can started to jitter and vibrate. It rattled and shook and danced across the wooden surface. Death and his brother both sat up and stared at it as it moved, by fits and starts, toward the edge of the desk.

Death yanked open the drawer. His phone lay there, vibrating with an incoming call. He snatched it up with a curse and ran for the door.

_____

For the first time since she’d started working there, the Hadleigh House’s long, echoing corridors and warren of empty rooms frightened Wren. Leaning against the wall, just inside the door, she half expected the pretty, engraved-glass window light to come crashing in and a hand to reach in and grab her. Or a claw. Or a meat hook.

Trying to shake off the horror movie imagery, she held her breath and willed her pounding heartbeat to still so she could listen for any sounds that might betray a presence. A sign that she was not alone. Only the sounds of the storm reached her, wind and thunder and rainwater gushing down the gutter spout off the verandah and dripping from the eaves.

Her best bet, she decided, was to get to somewhere she could secure, then plug her phone in and call for help. She ran over the house’s blueprint in her mind. First floor would be better than second floor, she decided. If the person who took her spark plug wires was determined to kill her, the simplest thing to do would be to set the house on fire. While she really didn’t see that happening, she didn’t want to chance getting trapped on the upper floor if it did.

For that same reason, a room with at least one window she could escape from would be best. It would be a trade-off, though, because windows would render her vulnerable to an attack from outside. She needed a place with limited windows, a single door she could defend, and something she could use for a weapon.

She had a weapon in her truck, of course. As a hobby a couple of years earlier, she’d taken up using an atlatl that she’d gotten at an auction. The atlatl, a prehistoric spear chucker, was basically a short wooden stick that used the principles of leverage to add force and distance to a thrown spear.

Back in the spring, when she’d first met Death, she’d used the atlatl to help drive away an armed intruder. Ever since, she’d carried the weapon and a collection of six-foot-long spears in the back of her truck. It would have been simple to grab one, had she been thinking clearly, and she knew she would feel a lot better with a weapon in her hand. She was loathe to go back out into the dark now to fetch one, though.

That seemed like the sort of thing a character in a slasher flick would do, just before their friends started stumbling over their dismembered body parts.

“At least I don’t have a group of friends with me. I’m the only character in this movie. That should work in my favor.”

Perfectly aware that this reasoning made no sense, Wren forced herself away from the perceived safety of the front door and into the dark recesses of the old house. Ducking down to stay clear of the windowpane, she edged down the corridor, keeping near the wall on the left but careful not to touch it. She didn’t want the sound of fabric moving against wallpaper to betray her presence.

Halfway back, she came to the corridor that ran north-south. She hadn’t turned the lights on yet and she hesitated. The headlamp she wore gave her a bit of illumination, but it also might act as a beacon to someone stalking her. She had yet to hear anything other than the weather, though, so she decided to leave it on until she reached her destination.

Imagination running rampant with what might be waiting for her (and not all of the denizens of her imagination were living human beings), she ducked out quickly and looked down the corridor. The light on her forehead reflected back from the window in the nailed-shut door at the end of the hall, but the hall itself was empty. She had to pass three empty rooms—a morning room on her left and a study and a smoking room on her right—before she came back to the game room she’d been working in that day. At each doorway she paused and listened for movement or the sound of a breath, and then rushed past.

Finally, she was back where she’d started. Once she was inside with the door closed and certain that she was the only one there, she flipped on the light, turned off her headlamp, and took stock of her situation. The pool table was too heavy for her to move and the lighter furniture would make no barricade at all.

In addition to her atlatl, Wren was proficient with a slingshot. She had one that she’d disguised as a necklace, with throwing stones threaded on like beads, but she’d had to take it apart and use it when they’d rescued Randy in St. Louis and she hadn’t put it back together yet. She did have her dead cell phone and a charging cord still gripped tightly in her hand.

She searched the room for an outlet, plugged the phone in, and waited impatiently for it to power up. It cycled through introductory screens and the opening music began to play, an odd lyrical counterpoint to the dark and the wind. She put her thumb on the volume button, hastily turning it down to mute, and finally the lock screen came up.

She unlocked it and hit 911, but nothing happened. In the upper right-hand corner, the icon for “no signal” flashed.

Wren cursed under her breath. With the weather the way it was, she should have expected this. Still, it didn’t make her feel any better about being stranded, alone and cut off from civilization, at the mercy of whomever had sabotaged her truck.

It occurred to her that she could make a run for the veterans’ camp, through the rain and the darkness. But what if someone at the camp was behind this? What if that was what they wanted, for her to come running to them? She didn’t feel that the Robinsons were dangerous killers, but was that because they weren’t, or because she liked them and didn’t want them to be?

A brilliant flash lit up the windows and a deafening peal of thunder came simultaneously. Lightning had struck somewhere in the woods. Somewhere along the haunted Vengeance Trail. The light in the game room flickered and died, and Wren’s phone glowed briefly, flashed a dead battery warning, and shut down.

She stood in the darkness, hardly daring to breathe.

The storm sounds seemed suddenly muted, as if the blast had stolen all the energy from the atmosphere. Rain still drummed down, but without the sheer fury; the sensation of standing beneath a waterfall. The wind whispered around the dark corners of the old house.

Somewhere off in the distance, from one of the lonely, empty rooms, came the sound of glass breaking.