a girl,” Quint said now, and Clarey closed her eyes for a moment, hearing the words she’d been expecting.
“She’s come back,” she breathed, barely aware she was speaking aloud. “He promised me she wouldn’t. He promised me he’d leave her alone.”
She stopped speaking, feeling Quint Millard’s eyes upon her.
“But she’s one of us,” Quint said. “Soon’s I seed her, I knowed.”
“Did she see you?” Clarey asked.
Quint hesitated, then nodded, knowing he couldn’t lie to Clarey. “She tried to follow me. But she couldn’t, ‘cause she don’t know how. I kept close to her and didn’t let nothin’ happen to her.”
A heavy sigh escaped Clarey’s throat. “You done right, Quint. But I reckon the police’ll be snoopin’ around, and I don’t see no good in them talkin’ to either one of you two. So you just lay low, hear?”
Quint nodded, but Jonas’s empty eyes narrowed. “If’n they find me, what’ll I tell ’em?”
Clarey’s lips tightened bitterly. “You don’t tell nobody nothin’. Ain’t nobody’s business what goes on out here. An’ if ’n you say anything, I cain’t help you anymore’n I could help George Coulton. So you just lay low an’ keep quiet, just like always.”
Jonas was silent, staring sullenly at his lap. “It ain’t right,” he finally said.
A great wave of pity washed over Clarey. No, it wasn’t right. None of it was right. But that it wasn’t right made no difference. It was the way things were. “Go on, Jonas,” she told him softly. “Go on and find somewheres to hide. And don’t you fret yourself none. Ain’t none of it your fault.”
Jonas Cox frowned slightly, as if uncertain whether to believe her words or not. But at last he nodded as Quint Millard dipped the oars back in the water and leaned into them. Once again the little boat turned, and a moment later was swallowed up by the dense foliage.
Clarey waited until Jonas and Quint were gone, then went back into her house. The kettle of water was boiling on the stove, and she threw a handful of coffee grounds into the pot, then poured water over them. The grounds floated to the surface, and Clarey added a pinch of salt. In five minutes or so the grounds would sink to the bottom and the coffee would be ready, just the way she liked it.
In the meantime, she had some thinking to do.
She knew who the girl Jonas had seen was, and had prayed that this day would never come. But the girl had come back, and now the last of the children was in the village.
The boy and the girl would find each other, recognize each other the minute they met.
And when they did, they would begin to understand what they were.
They would come looking for her.
Her, and their brothers and sisters.
And the Dark Man.
They would be taken into the Circle, no matter the promises the Dark Man had made.
The evil she had been able to contain for so long would finally begin to spread.
The boundaries of the swamp would no longer restrain it, and once it was loose …
She put the dark thought out of her mind. It had begun here in the swamp, and it would end here, too.
For there were things Clarey understood that even the Dark Man did not.
Tim Kitteridge pulled into the parking lot outside the clinic at a few minutes after eight that morning. He lingered in the car, putting off the moment he would have to go inside and look at the body in the back room that served as a morgue.
This was the part of the job he hated most, and it didn’t seem fair that it had cropped up only a couple of months after he’d come to Villejeune. In fact, it was one of the reasons he’d taken the job as police chief of the little town in the first place. He’d considered it carefully, checking out the town thoroughly before making his decision. And he’d liked what he’d seen—a sleepy Florida backwater. Growing, but growing with retired people, a notoriously peaceful group. Not like San Bernardino at all, where the city was booming and the problems were growing even faster. The southern California city had changed in the years he’d been there, from a quiet farming town into yet another Los Angeles suburb. But with San Bernardino’s growth had come drug problems, and with drugs had come gangs. A year ago Tim Kitteridge had finally decided he’d had it, and begun looking for another job.