Children of the Earth (16 page)

20

THE
SNOWSTORM RAGED FOR
TWO
full days, which Janie and Owen spent snowed in at the Vein, sinking deeper into life with the Children of the Earth. Owen remembered, dimly, his promise to Daphne, but as the minutes melted into hours and the inches turned to feet in the parking lot outside, their pact grew fainter in the back of his mind. He was home at last, among his people and without worry or fear for the first time since his very earliest days. And with every bite of Freya’s stew, beat of Orion’s drum, note of Abilene’s singing, and word from Luna’s tongue the rest of the world faded further and further away until it, and Daphne, were nothing but a smudgy blur in the background of a long-forgotten photograph.

In the meantime, Daphne paced the claustrophobic Peyton trailer, biting her nails into nubs with each message to Owen that went unanswered. Something was wrong, but with the snowstorm raging outside there was nothing she could do. Jobs, schools, stores, and churches were all closed; even the rig shut down under the weight of the snow. The search party for the sheriff and Charlie was on hold, leaving the whole town on edge, and all Daphne could do was pace and pray and hope that when the snow cleared, Owen would reply to her texts and the sheriff and Charlie would be found and everything would go back to normal—or at least as close to normal as things in Carbon County could get.

On the third morning Daphne woke to the chug and scrape of the town plow clearing the road, and she opened her eyes to a blinding spray of sunlight. She tore out of bed and threw on the first clothes she could find, racing to the mound of snow burying her tiny hatchback to scrape and shovel until she was cherry-cheeked and breathless.

“Let me give you a hand with that.” Floyd struggled out the front door with an industrial-grade ice scraper.

“I’m almost done.” The car was on, puffing clouds of exhaust into the still morning, the engine’s heat slowly melting the last stubborn bumps of ice from the windshield.

“Well, gosh.” Floyd squinted into the sunlight. “Where are you on such a tear to, anyway?”

“Just out.” She couldn’t tell him the truth, and she didn’t want to lie.

“Guess you’re going a little stir-crazy from all that time snowed in with two old fuddy-duddies, huh?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Not at all.” She kissed his ruddy cheek. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“Grab some milk while you’re out!” he called as she backed down the driveway, tires skidding. Even caked in sand and sprinkled in salt, the road was still like an ice rink.

Around the last bend in the road before town, a line of stalled cars blocked her way. She slammed on her brakes, the car fishtailing to a stop just inches from an SUV. Up beyond the line of cars she saw a small crowd of people huddled at the base of the flagpole outside the Carbon County police station. They craned their heads skyward, staring at something waving in the wind where Old Glory should have been.

“Oh no.” Dread gathered in Daphne’s stomach as she reached the station and got a better look. Someone was up there, strung up and left to die in the storm. What if it was Owen, and she was too late? She pushed open her door and ran along the row of smoke-stuttering cars toward the police station, ignoring the sudden stitch knitting her side.

As she drew close she heard the murmurs, soft mooings of disgust and dismay. “What kind of sicko . . . ?” “. . . some Satanic ritual . . .” “. . . just awful . . .” “. . . strung up like yesterday’s laundry . . .” “. . . and to think, the boy is still missing.”

The stitch pressed hard into her gut, and she doubled over at the edge of the crowd, her breath coming in gasps. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she followed the assembled gaze up the flagpole, craning her neck until the figure came fully into view and bile rushed her throat.

Dressed in a clean plaid shirt and pressed chinos, the sheriff had been carefully threaded into a harness made from nylon rope. Snow coated his head and shoulders, and his skin was blue and bitten by the wind, his eyes staring out at some unknown nothingness deep in the mountains. A single, glistening red teardrop had been drawn in blood on his forehead.

Daphne tore her eyes away from the corpse, fighting the dizziness that swam in her head. She hadn’t tried hard enough to find him; none of them had. They shouldn’t have let a storm stop them, even if meteorologists claimed it was the heaviest snowfall to hit Wyoming in September in over a hundred years.

Now it was too late for the sheriff. It was most likely too late for his son, Charlie, too. Daphne could hardly bear to think about what it meant for Owen. Was it too late for him as well?

“Daphne Peyton.” Someone said her name, and the crowd under the flagpole turned imploring gazes upon her. She recognized them from Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery and the new diners downtown, faces vaguely familiar in that small-town way, but mostly she recognized them from church.

“Who was it?” asked a string bean of a man in a plaid hunting jacket. “Who would do such a thing?”

“And
why
?” A woman cradling an infant asked plaintively, tears trickling in freezing rivulets down her face.

The crowd murmured, bouncing on their toes, silent, waiting. She was their prophet, the one who supposedly had all the answers. Now they wanted to know why this had happened. They needed her to lead them in the face of this sudden dark stain on their community, this stark defiance of human life.

“I—” she began, and the crowd leaned forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something rustle in the window of the police station, a crack widening between two slats in the venetian blinds. The detectives were probably in there, she realized with a thought like a quick hiccup. And she was standing right outside, at the scene of the crime, their number-one suspect.

“Who?” The crowd persisted. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she choked. Now Detective Fraczek was striding toward her, eyes locked on hers, a sneer drawn out over his coffee-grounds stubble. Detective Madsen waddled in his wake, trying to zip a fleece jacket over his stomach.

“I have to go.”

She turned and ran, her feet sliding on the road’s slick surface, each step threatening to send her sprawling. The last thing she heard was Detective Madsen shouting, “What the hell!” and then she was squealing into a one-eighty, swerving away from the police station, driving as fast as her little car dared to go up into the mountains.

• • •

The door to the Vein swung open with a bang, and she stood for a moment in the doorway, breathing in the sudden warmth. The club had opened early that day to accommodate the town’s hardest drinkers, and now they were bellied up to the bar nuzzling glasses of whiskey and foaming steins of beer, looking as if it had been years since they had a drink instead of just two days.

Daphne took a step forward, but a meaty arm blocked her way. “Miss, I need to see some ID,” said a bouncer the size of a small cottage.

“I’m not here to drink.” Daphne pushed past him and stormed into the bar, quickly scanning the room. “Is Owen here?”

“Owen? Sure.” There was a smirk in the bouncer’s voice. “Right over there.”

She whirled, and there he was. Owen. Behind the bar, smiling as he wiped and stacked pint glasses. The look on his face was infuriatingly placid, as if three days hadn’t passed since they last had contact, as if she hadn’t been going crazy with worry and fear. As if nothing had happened at all.

“What the
hell
?” She started toward the bar, startling him. He fumbled with the glass he’d been cleaning but recovered it with a graceful swoop.

“Hey.” He draped the cleaning rag over his shoulder and leaned a casual elbow on the bar. “How’s it going?”

“How’s it
going
? Owen, what happened? Why didn’t you text me back?”

His face was different. In the club’s slow-changing lights it took a moment to realize what it was.

He looked happy. The tension was gone from his temples, and his jaw no longer held that tightness she’d come to expect as if it were a part of him, something he had carried with him from the womb.

“I’m sorry.” He shrugged, his smile fading but not disappearing. “I must have forgotten to charge my phone.”

“Ever since you came up here?” She swallowed angrily, not wanting to lose it in the bar, with the greasy prospectors pretending not to peer at her over their drinks. “I’m confused . . . I thought you were on my side.”

“Daphne. Hey.” He came around the bar and put his hands on her shoulders. “This isn’t about sides. You’re my girlfriend. They’re my family.”

She stepped away. Something was wrong: This wasn’t the Owen she knew. That Owen was a lot of things, but mellow had never been one of them. Something had happened to him, something to make him act the way he was acting. It was like he’d been drugged.

“What’s wrong?” His arms still dangled in the air, searching for her touch. “Look, Daphne. They’re not the monsters you think they are. They took me in and gave me work when I had nowhere else to go.”

“And what about the tablet?” Daphne’s whisper was tinged with fury. “We read it together. You know who these people are.”

Owen shook his head. “Who knows about the tablet, what it really means or where it came from? I’m telling you, they’re just a bunch of hippies. I’m happy here, okay? Can’t you be happy for me?”

Daphne paused, torn. Why
couldn’t
she be happy for him? Was she really so selfish that she’d deny him his right to be where he belonged, to be content with who he was? Did she really not want him to be happy just because he wasn’t happy in quite the way she wanted?

But there was something fake about his happiness, something off. He wasn’t the Owen she knew.

Taking his arm, she brought him into a dark corner of the bar, away from the prying eyes of the prospectors and bar staff.

“You remember why you came here, right?” she whispered.

Owen cocked his head, confusion clouding his eyes. “You wanted me to.”

“
You
wanted to.” She tried to keep the frustration, the pleading, from her voice. Maybe if Owen remembered why he’d come in the first place, it would jostle him back to reality, back to the world where he and Daphne were a team. “You wanted to find out about them, about what they’re capable of. Remember?”

He shook his head. “They’re capable of giving me work and making me feel at home,” he said finally. “I hope you’ll at least give them a chance.”

Daphne felt something crack inside of her. Hot tears of anger and frustration gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“I don’t understand. It’s like you’re a different person! It’s like . . . don’t you think it’s possible they’ve . . .
done
something to you?” she pleaded. She took his hand, searching his eyes, and brought her face close to his so their lips were just inches apart. Maybe the closeness, the way their bodies fell naturally together, would remind him of who he was and what they had, even if words couldn’t.

“Remember that night at the track?” she whispered. His eyes closed, and he pressed his forehead to hers. She could feel him starting to respond. “Remember . . .”

“Remember what?” Luna cut in, inserting herself into their corner of the bar. Gold dust glittered on her eyelids, and she was wrapped in a gold corset. She carried a hula hoop coated in dense gold glitter that sent pinpricks of light dancing on the club’s dark walls.

At the sound of her voice, Owen instinctively took a step back, leaving Daphne standing alone.

She wheeled on Luna. “You did something to him,” she said through clenched teeth.

Luna put a hand to her chest. “Nothing he didn’t already want.”

“I don’t believe you.” Daphne glanced at Owen placidly watching their conversation. “Look at him. He’s just standing there, letting us talk about him like he’s a child. He can’t even think for himself!”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “I took away his pain. I made him feel at home. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

“Not without him.” Daphne drew herself up tall and clamped her hand around Owen’s. But as quickly as she clasped it, he yanked it away.

“You don’t get it, Daphne,” he said quietly. “I want to stay. And I want that to be okay with you.”

Prickles filled the back of Daphne’s throat, stabbing as she tried to swallow them away. “Are you saying it’s over?”

Owen shook his head. “I don’t know why it has to be so cut and dried. Why can’t I be with you
an
d
be with my family?”

“Because . . .” Daphne started to say.

But before she could get the words out, Luna fixed her with a piercing emerald gaze. Blue light poured from Luna’s throat, and Daphne felt it coming for her, cornering her, bathing her in a feeling of warm relief like sinking into a sensory deprivation chamber where there was no more pain, no more blood, no more heart beating erratically in her chest.

“You want to leave Owen here with us.” Luna spoke in the quiet, measured tones of a hypnotist, and Daphne felt herself succumbing. So this was what had a hold over Owen: this sense of peace. It was wonderful, she thought, sinking deeper. No wonder Owen wanted to stay. Maybe she’d stay, too.

Daphne felt the blue light enter her like water, stirring dormant longings that had slumbered in the back of her mind since her earliest days. She relaxed into the sense of peace, letting it take her. It was wonderful not to have to fight anymore.

Dimly, Daphne realized that just as Owen could change objects with his mind, Luna could change people’s desires with her will. It was her power: the blue light, the hypnotic voice, all part of what made people do what she wanted. It was what had turned Owen to her side, and now she was trying to use her powers on Daphne.

Through the haze, Daphne suddenly understood how dangerous the Children of the Earth could be. They could control objects and minds—and probably other things—with their will. Between the thirteen of them, they likely held enough power to destroy the town . . . and possibly the whole world.

The thought broke a wave of blackness over her, and she felt her eyes start to roll back in her head. She had just enough time to feel for the door and stumble out into the snow before a third vision yanked her into another world, a world of booming voices and yawning chasms, of chaos, blackness, and fire.