Ysabel (44 page)

Kate Wenger, without a word, got up and went to Melanie’s maps-and-books file on the computer table.

Ned was looking at his mother. He saw something in her eyes that went so far beyond concern he couldn’t even put a word to it.

“Mom, please,” he whispered. “I need your help.”

“I know,” Meghan Marriner said. “I just don’t want to give it.”

He looked at her. She shook her head. “I can’t
begin
to tell you how little I like this. What do you plan to do when you get up there, if you get up there?”

“No idea.”

She let herself smile a little. “Well, that’s honest.”

“I’m being honest, Mom.”

Meghan looked at him another moment, then turned to her husband with a crisp nod. “Ed, get your two Veras in here, while Kate’s looking for maps. If they live here they may know.”

Her husband shook his head. “Let me try something else first.”

He crossed to the desk beside Kate and checked a phone number on Melanie’s corkboard, then dialed.

Ned found that he was breathing hard already—it looked, amazingly, as if they were going to help. But he was remembering the mountain now: Pourrières, and the worst feeling of his life. That screen of blood, filtering the world, and the smell of it.

His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for.

His father said, “Oliver? Ed Marriner. Am I interrupting anything?” He waited for whatever reply he got, then said, “I won’t keep you long, before drinks.”

The Englishman answered something, and Ned’s father managed a fake laugh. “Well, if you have one already, I needn’t rush. But I have a question that’s come up . . . something to photograph, maybe. Do you know a place called the garagai? Up on Sainte-Victoire?”

Another pause, a longer one. Oliver Lee was launching into a story, Ned guessed. Ned could picture him, reading glasses on their chain over his chest, drink in hand, holding forth.

Edward Marriner opened his mouth to interrupt, closed it, then plunged in, “Well, yes, I’ve read a bit about all that, and I was thinking of going up to have a look.” He paused. “I know it is a climb. Yes, I’ve heard it gets windy. But . . . Oliver, do you know where it
is,
up there? Have you been?”

The room fell silent. Edward Marriner looked at his son, his brow furrowed. It never unfurrowed. “You haven’t? So you wouldn’t be able to give me directions?”

He looked over at his wife. “Yes, of course, we’ll chase down a topographic map, or I can call the mayor’s office. They’ve been helpful.” He stopped. Lee was saying something. “No, no, it is hardly a shocking confession, Oliver. My people told me Cézanne never climbed it either.” He paused again. “Yes, of course, I’ll give your regards to Melanie.” He looked at Ned again. “No, I think I’ll let you tell her that yourself, Oliver.” Another small, forced laugh. He said goodbye and hung up.

Ned looked across the room at his mother. She was gazing at him,
staring
at him, really, with an expression he couldn’t remember seeing before. As if he were a stranger. It bothered him. He tried to smile at her, but didn’t really succeed.

“Ned?” It was his aunt. “Two things. If you’re right, and there’s urgency here, it’s because one or both of them may get there first. And they may do that by tracking you.”

“They were going to Arles,” he said.

“Yesterday evening. Ned, they both seem to think you’re a key to this. You’ll have to screen yourself when we leave here. But you need to let it go at times, you can’t hold the screening too long.”

He hesitated. “I was kind of counting on the screen to help me with . . . my problem there.”

“I thought you might be. But you still need to let it go some of the time or you’ll make yourself ill.”

He cleared his throat. “Phelan told me that too, last night.”

“Kim, what if they’re watching us? From out there?’
Meghan gestured towards the windows.

Her sister frowned. “I don’t think . . .” She looked at Uncle Dave.

He shrugged. “Might be. They know where we are, they know we’re looking. Either they’re tearing around searching everywhere, or they’re checking us at intervals. Checking on Ned to see if he’s doing anything.”

“Could they have anyone watching for them?” Steve asked.

“Don’t
think
so,” Kim said.

“But we aren’t sure,” said her sister briskly. “All right, assume they are watching, what do we do? And first of all, how do we find out where he has to go?”

“I can tell you that,” said a voice from the kitchen door.

They turned.

Veracook, in her usual black dress, was standing there. She’d spoken in English.

“You . . . you speak our language?” Edward Marriner said. He looked a bit stunned, as if too many things were happening too fast.

Vera smiled a little. “The owners are American. I learn a little.”

“But you never . . .”

“You always speak French.” She shrugged.

Kimberly walked towards her. “Do you . . . do you understand what we’re talking about here?”

“Climbing the mountain?” A slight flicker of the eyes.

“That, and why.” Kim’s voice was direct. “Why we need to go up.”

Vera looked at her. Nodded her head. Her own voice was cold. “Something happened on the Fire Night. I had rowans by the windows, to protect the house. She should not have gone out.”

“She had to,” Ned said. They were speaking French again. “It was my fault, but it was before sundown. It shouldn’t have been Beltaine.”

Veracook crossed herself when he said the word.

“How do you know about all this?” Meghan asked. She looked as unhappy as Ned could remember.

Again that shrug. “My grandmother. She told us stories. All of my family, we put out rowan on that night, and on the other night, in autumn.”

Another grandmother.

It was Dave who asked the question: “You said you can help. You know where this garagai is?”

Vera nodded. “But it is a bad place. And it is already late today.”

Ned’s father surprised him then. “It’ll be later if we hang around talking. My understanding is we need to get up there fast. Please tell us how.”

“It is the girl? Melanie?”

“Yes,” said Edward Marriner.

“She is gone? From the Fire Night?”

A hesitation. “Yes,” he said again.

Another sign of the cross. “You should not go inside this, then,” she said.

“We
are
inside it, Mme. Lajoie,” Ned’s father said. “Please, tell us what you know.”

“Who will go?” she asked.

“Me,” said Ned.

She looked at him. “You will take rowan for protection?”

“I’ll take anything you want me to take,” he said fervently.

She nodded, grim-faced. “For the girl, I will tell how you go. It is not far from the cross at the top, or the chapel. But you must be careful. It is easy to fall if there is wind.”

“Oh, wonderful,” said Meghan Marriner.

Ned ignored that as best he could.

Kate sat at the dining-room table with paper and pen and gestured for Vera Lajoie to sit beside her. She did so.

Then she proceeded to give extremely precise directions to the mountain chasm where Marius of the Romans had sacrificed a number of Celtic chieftains twenty-one hundred years ago.

NED WAS STUDYING
the directions, in Kate’s very neat handwriting. He lifted his head, saw his mother looking at him. “This,” she said, “is hard for me. I really want to forbid you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Or I want to come.”

He smiled a bit. “I’ll be running, Mom. Uncle Dave has a bad leg. Steve can’t run. Greg for sure can’t.”

“I can,” said Kate.

“No!” said Meghan and Kim, simultaneously.

“Don’t even think it,” Meghan Marriner added.
Kate bit her lip. Meghan looked at her sister. “Kim, can he even do anything?”

Aunt Kim had her arms folded across her chest again. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t think either of them mean him harm.”

“But you don’t know.”

“We
can’t
know, Meg.”

“Even with what you . . . ?”

Her sister shook her head. “I have next to nothing here. All I can tell you is that I do think Melanie’s gone if one of them finds her. And that Ned
is
inside this somehow.”

“I accept that. But I’m also his mother, Kim. You can’t imagine—” She stopped. Shook her head. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

Kimberly’s eyes were bright. “Don’t be. I have no children, but I
can
imagine what it might be like to let him go. I’ve seen it done.”

“Let’s do this,” Ned said, as confidently as he could. He didn’t think he was fooling anyone. “Who’s driving me?”

“Hold it,” said Greg. “If they might be tracking you, we need to do this carefully.”

“I’ll screen myself,” Ned said, “starting now. And we go out in two cars. Even three?”

“But if they’re watching the house?” Steve asked. “Like Dr. Marriner said? They’ll see you leave. They don’t care about the rest of us.”

“Ned and I swap clothes,” Kate Wenger said suddenly.

They looked at her. She stood up from the table.

“What do you mean?” Ned said. “You aren’t wearing anything that belongs to you, anyhow.”

Kate made a face. “Don’t be funny. I mean we’ll hurry out to two cars, but I dress like you, you wear the McGill thing . . .”

“That’s my own sweatshirt.”

“But they’ve seen me in it, last night and today, if they
have
been watching. You wear my brother’s white shirt under it, I put on that uncool windbreaker of yours, and your baseball cap.”

“It isn’t uncool,” he protested.

“Hush. She’s right, Ned,” Kim said. “It makes sense.”

“All right,” said Dave. “One car goes west or north, somewhere—the one that looks like it has Ned in it—and the other takes him to the mountain.” He smiled at Kate. “Very good.”

“Good?” she said, tossing her head. “It’s heroic. I
never
wear baseball caps.”

Ned’s father sighed. He looked at his wife, then at Ned. “Oliver said the same thing as Vera, you know. It’s apparently dangerous off the paths, Ned.”

“Falling off a mountain is the least of my worries,” Ned said.

“As to that,” said Aunt Kim, “here’s one thing.”

She took off the only bracelet she wore, the silver one with the green stone. “I have no idea if this will help, but there’s a chance.”

“What is it?” It was Meghan.

Kim looked at her. “A gift, a long time ago. It connects to all this, I guess you could say. It may help with the sickness. Or not. But it won’t hurt.”

Ned took the bracelet and slipped it on. He felt nothing, though the metal was cool on his wrist.

He shrugged. “Let’s do this,” he said again.

Vera came back from the kitchen. She was holding leaves, a bunch of them, tied together. Gravely, she gave them to Ned.

“Thank you,” he said.

He wasn’t about to say no, was he? He looked down at his aunt’s bracelet. Made a face. “I mean, like, what would have been wrong with a machine gun, eh?”

No one laughed.

His mother was staring at him. That same expression as before. As if Meghan Marriner were looking at her child and seeing someone she didn’t quite know, or else she was memorizing his face.

“Mom . . .” he began.

She shook her head. “Go,” she said.

CHAPTER XVIII

I
n the van, wearing Kate’s brother’s shirt and his own McGill hoodie over jeans, Ned did his best to focus. He had his small runner’s pack with him, would change into sweatpants and a T-shirt as soon as they hit the road east.

He’d screened himself before going out the door, so had Aunt Kim. Checking within, neither of them had sensed the presence of either of the two men—which wasn’t anywhere close to conclusive, he knew.

He’d taken three Advil and brought half a dozen more, and his sunglasses. Thinking now about how he’d felt the last time they went past the mountain dragged his thoughts pretty conclusively away from the scent of Kate Wenger on the white shirt. He felt scared.

Kate—in his blue-and-white rugby shirt and the slandered windbreaker and retro Expos baseball cap—was with Uncle Dave and Steve in the red car. Greg was driving the van. Ned’s father was up front, and Aunt Kim was beside him in back—because his aunt
would
be with Kate, not Ned.

Kate had worked this out, too. Detail person. Geek. Long legs. He had her written-out directions in his
backpack. Front flap pocket. He’d put the rowan leaves in there, too.

Ned’s mother had stayed in the villa. He wasn’t sure why, but the hug she’d given him at the door was fierce. Fierce enough to make him more afraid.

Greg hit the remote control and led the other car through the gates. They went down the roadway towards the street. They would split after the first turn there: the red car west and north to Entremont, the van to Sainte-Victoire.

“You have your phone?” his father said, from the front seat. He’d asked that already, in the house.

Ned nodded. “Got it, Dad, yeah.”

“It’s charged?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“You’ll call if
anything
comes up?”

“I will.”

This wasn’t the time, Ned thought, to be hung up on sounding like an almost-adult.

“Ned,” said his aunt, “listen to me. If one of them gets to you, either one, and he orders you to stop . . . honey, you have to stop. They won’t be at their best if they decide she’s up there. Don’t assume you’re safe.”

He looked at her. “I won’t,” he said.

Won’t be at their best
. One way to put it.

His father, looking back at the two of them, swore softly.

Then, a moment later, for a different reason, Greg swore, much more loudly, and hammered the brakes.

Ned looked back quickly, but Uncle Dave wasn’t
tailgating. He skidded the red car to a halt behind them.

Ned leaned forward and looked out the front windshield.

“Oh, God,” he said.

His aunt was already flipping open her cellphone, speed-dialing, and then, with more urgency than he’d heard from her yet, she snapped, “Dave, do
not
get out! Stay in your car!”