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I hardly notice when he leads us into a house nestled in the woods By that point, I feel like a walking zolass and so into the shadows He finds a bedrooently shoves me onto the bed

The world fades out the instant my head touches the pillow

~

I dreaain by the laundry barrels We’re soaked in laundry suds My hair is dripping and

The crowd is too close, hardly giving us roo too much teeth and too s like "Rip off her shirt!" or "Tear off her bra!" One guy keeps yelling frantically, "Kiss her! Kiss her!"

We roll into a laundry barrel and it co blood splashes everywhere It is warm and crimson as it soaksout of the barrel An impossible amount of it flows out like an endless river

Laundry floats by Shirts and pants soaked in blood, empty and crumpled, lost and soulless without their wearers

Scorpions the size of sewer rats ride the islands of criers with a drop of blood at the tip When they see us, they curl their tails and spread their wings with menace I’s, but I don’t have time to think about that because so the horizon, the sky darkens A dark, boiling cloud blots out the setting sun A low buzz like the beating of a s fills the air

The wind picks up and quickly grows to hurricane force as the churning cloud and its shadow race toward us People run in panic, their faces suddenly lost and innocent like frightened children

The scorpions take to the air They congregate and pluck sos She screae!" I juh the blood which is now ankle high and rising

But no et any closer to her as thedarkness

CHAPTER 24

When I open h theI as and arched s My first thought is that Raffe has left ht, and I can handle ht, can’t I? And I know to head for San Francisco, if Raffe is to be believed I give it a fifty-fifty chance

I pad out of the roo roohts

Raffe sits on the floor repackingstrands ofthe black My shoulder ht of hiht

For aI wonder what he sees as he watches h the s

I look away first My eyes roa else to look at and settle on a row of photos sitting on the fireplaceto do other than stand aardly under his gaze

There’s a family photo complete with mom, dad, and three kids They are on a ski slope, all bundled up and looking happy Another photo shows a sports field with the older boy in a football uniforirl in a prouy in a tux

The last photo is a close-up of the little kid hanging upside down on a tree branch His hair spikes out below hi teeth

The perfect family in a perfect house I look around at what must have been a beautiful home One of the s is broken and rain has stained the hardwood floor in a big semi-circle in front of it We are not the first visitors here, as evidenced by scattered candy wrappers in one of the corners

My eyes drift back to Raffe He is still watching me with those unfathomable eyes

I put the photo back into its place "What tiing through ?"

"Getting rid of things we don’t need Obidiah was right, we should have packed better" He tosses a pot onto the hardwood floor It clunks a couple of ti down

"The place is cleaned out of food, every last scrap has been licked away," he says "But there’s still running water" He lifts two filled water bottles He’s found a green daypack for himself, and he puts one bottle in it, the other inof cat food that I had carried in rab a handful of the dried kibbles onfor a shower but there’s soht now, so I settle for an unsatisfactory wipedown, toweling around e to wash my face and brush my teeth I pull my hair back into a ponytail and prop a dark cap on it