Yup, he’s right. Reynolds looked around the room and reached out, his hands palms up, like a beggar. “Ideas, anyone? Time is short here.”
“We reply that we are looking at any and all ways to satisfy his requests,” Abrams said. “And we tell him that we will keep our communications secret, as he’s asked.”
“Basically, we give the bastard the first round,” Reynolds said, “and hope that keeps him happy for a few hours.”
“I’m afraid so. It’s the best way to buy time and get you reelected. The last thing the world needs right now is a loss of your leadership.”
Reynolds harrumphed, but not because of Abrams’s toadying. A heretical thought had struck him: After spending more than a billion dollars on this campaign, it wouldn’t matter who was president if those missiles went airborne.
* * *
“Jason Robb, you are charged with the murder of Linda Pareles, also known as GreenSpirit.”
Sheriff Walker spoke formally to Jason in the command post for the joint federal, state, and local investigation into GreenSpirit’s killing. The sheriff sounded as if he’d never met the young man before. As if he hadn’t watched Jason come of age in this small town. As if the Sheriff’s daughters hadn’t gone to high school with the boy.
Walker hadn’t told the FBI or the New York State Police that he’d planned to arrest Jason. His move came after GreenSpirit’s blood had been identified on the scrap of bandana.
None of the agents and state police officers congratulated him. The sheriff’s brow wrinkled as he gazed at his colleagues.
“You want to make your call?” Walker asked Jason, like the kid was such an arrest veteran now that the sheriff didn’t need to explain that all he got was the one call.
“Sure,” Jason said jauntily. “This is bullshit.” When he spoke, the kid looked at the FBI agents. He didn’t sound remotely disturbed by the murder charge.
The FBI profiler, Barb Lassiter, appeared to study the young man. Not in disgust. Probing—that’s what it looked like, as if there were more for her to find out.
She might have suspected she was dealing with a serial killer in her midst. The murder of that Pagan in Vermont and GreenSpirit’s killing bore the same “signature,” as experts like Lassiter referred to it: eyeballs plucked from the skull and left on a floor in candle wax. And Lassiter had been told by Sheriff Walker that on the night of the Vermont murder Jason Robb hadn’t been seen by anyone in town. Not even by his parents. He’d taken off for parts unknown in that old truck of his.
* * *
At sundown, the Pagans gathered in the circle of white stones in which GreenSpirit had initiated Forensia and Sang-mi.
They’d set up the altar as she had instructed them only two weeks ago, using the twig broomstick called a besom, iron cauldron, boline, candles, incense, and the animal skin pentagram. Now they sat, hand-in-hand—for this could take all night—and began to chant a secret invocation, asking for GreenSpirit’s guidance. The world felt leaden with the worst eventualities. Forensia remembered feeling like this as a young teen, as if an apocalypse were about to rain down from the sky. But this felt worse because now she knew that it could really happen.
Another peculiar sensation swept over her: She felt watched again. She tried to dismiss this by reminding herself that Jason Robb had been arrested. And they were fully clothed.
But still the feeling persisted. It felt so strange that Forensia violated the rule against opening her eyes while trying to summon the dead.
Directly across from her, Sang-mi sat with her eyes open, too, but Sang-mi’s eyes were rolled up so that only the bottoms of her irises were visible. They looked like dark crescent moons in a milky sky. Sang-mi began to speak in Korean, beginning in a mumbled monotone, then becoming shrill and desperate sounding.
None of the other Pagans knew her language.
Akina whispered softly in the Korean’s ear, “Please speak English, Sang-mi. English.”
Sang-mi fell immediately silent. But her eyes remained rolled upward, and when she spoke again, seconds later, there was no mistaking her meaning:
“Tell the world. Tell the world.”
CHAPTER 21
Jenna watched Rafan sleeping on the portable bed. She’d cracked only a single bamboo blind, but it threw enough morning light into her wide, airy room to allow her to catch his peaceful expression. He looked grateful to have found respite, if only through sleep, from his considerable sorrows.