But no. He looked down at his hands, studying them. In the manner of one who has come-to terms with being shunned, he could ignore the pain of his banishment. Subconsciously, his fellow passengers had made a perfectly understandable decision.
You leave as many empty seats as possible between yourself and Death.
FRIDAY, JULY 1
CHAPTER 1
“Hssst! Nest!”
His voice cut through the cottony layers of her sleep with the sharpness of a cat’s claw. Her head jerked off the pillow and her sleep-fogged eyes snapped open.
“Pick?”
“Wake up, girl!” The sylvan’s voice squeaked with urgency. “The feeders are at it again! I need you!”
Nest Freemark pushed the sheet away and forced herself into an upright position, legs dangling off the side of the bed. The night air was hot and sticky in spite of the efforts of the big floor fan that sat just inside her doorway. She rubbed at her eyes to clear them and swallowed against the dryness in her throat. Outside, she could hear the steady buzz of the locusts in the trees.
“Who is it this tune?” she asked, yawning.
“The little Scott girl.”
“Bennett?” Oh, God! She was fully awake now. “What happened?”
Pick was standing on the window ledge just outside the screen, silhouetted in the moonlight. He might be only six inches tall from the tips of his twiggy feet to the peak of his leafy head, but she could read the disgust hi his gnarled wooden features as clearly as if he were six feet.
“The mother’s out with her worthless boyfriend again, shutting down bars. That boy you fancy, young Jared, was left in charge of the other kids, but he had one of his attacks, Bennett was still up-you know how she is when her mother’s not there, though goodness knows why. She became scared and wandered off. By the time the boy recovered, she was gone. Now the feeders have her. Do you need this in writing or are you going to get dressed and come help?”
Nest jumped out of the bed without answering, slipped off her nightshirt, and pulled on her Grunge Lives T-shirt, running shorts, socks, and tennis shoes. Her face peeked out at her from the dresser mirror: roundish with a wide forehead and broad cheekbones, pug nose with a scattering of freckles, green eyes that tended to squint, a mouth that quirked upward at the corners as if to suggest perpetual amusement, and a complexion that was starting to break out. Passably attractive, but no stunner. Pick was pacing back and forth on the sill. He looked like twigs and leaves bound together into a child’s tiny stick man. His hands were making nervous gestures, the same ones they always made when he was agitated-pulling at his silky moss beard and slapping at his bark-encrusted thighs. He couldn’t help himself. He was like one of those cartoon characters that charges around running into walls. He claimed he was a hundred and fifty, but for being as old as he was, it didn’t seem he had learned very much about staying calm.
She arranged a few pillows under the sheet to give the impression that she was still in the bed, sleeping. The ruse would work if no one looked too closely. She glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning, but her grandparents no longer slept soundly and were apt to be up at all hours of the night, poking about. She glanced at the open door and sighed. There was no help for it.
She nudged the screen through the window and climbed out after it. Her bedroom was on the first floor, so slipping away unnoticed was easy. In the summer anyway, she amended, when it was warm and the windows were all open. In the winter, she had to find her coat and go down the hallway and out the back door, which was a bit more chancy. But she had gotten pretty good at it.
“Where is she?” she asked Pick, holding out her hand, palm up, so he could step into it.
“Headed for the cliffs, last I saw.” He moved off the sill gingerly. “Daniel’s tracking her, but we’d better hurry.” Nest placed Pick on her shoulder where he could get a firm grip on her T-shirt, fitted the screen back in place, and took off at a run. She sped across the back lawn toward the hedgerow that bordered the park, the Midwest night air whipping across her face, fresh and welcoming after the stale closeness of her bedroom. She passed beneath the canopies of solitary oaks and hickories that shaded the yard, their great limbs branching and dividing overhead in intricate patterns, their leaves reflecting dully in the mix of light from moon and stars. The skies were clear and the world still as she ran, the houses about her dark and silent, the people asleep. She found the gap in the hedgerow on the first try, ducked to clear the low opening, and was through.