The Hunter Page 0,13
that house."
Summer blinked, her large blue eyes traveling over the pastel, basket-adorned walls of the Thornton living room. Then she looked at the Victorian paper house, with the seven paper dolls neatly arranged in the parlor like a group of guests too polite to go home. "Oh!"
She was just putting the card back when they all heard the noise from above.
Footsteps.
A quick light patter, like a child running on a wooden floor.
Summer shrieked and looked in terror at the ceiling.
Dee jumped up, her dark eyes blazing. Audrey stiffened. Michael grabbed at her, and she smacked his hand away. Zach's face was turned up; even his ponytail seemed to be tense. But Tom burst into laughter.
"It's squirrels," he got out finally. "They run on the roof all the time, don't they, Jenny?"
Jenny's stomach was knotted. Her voice wavered slightly as she said, "Yes, but-"
"But nothing. Somebody else take a card," Tom said. Nobody did. "All right, I'll do it myself. This is for you, Mike." He flipped a card.
"'You go to the door to get some air, but it seems to be stuck,'" he read. He looked around at the group. "Oh, come on. It's a game. Here, look." He stood up in a fluid motion and went to the sliding glass door that looked out on Jenny's backyard. Jenny saw his fingers moving, flipping the locks on the handle. A sense of dread overwhelmed her.
"Tom, don't!" she said. Before she knew what she was doing, she jumped up and took his arm. If he didn't try the door-if he didn't try it-the card couldn't come true.
Tom was jerking at the handle, ignoring her. "There's something wrong with it-there must be another lock."
"It's stuck," Michael said. He ran a hand through his rumpled dark hair, an oddly helpless gesture.
"Don't be stupid," Audrey snapped.
Dee's sloe eyes were glittering. Her hand darted
out and she took a card. " 'None of the doors or windows in this house will open,'" she read.
Tom went on yanking furiously at the door. It wouldn't budge. Jenny caught his arm again. She was trembling all over with a sense of danger.
"Take another card," Zach said softly. There was something strange about his thin face-it was almost trancelike. Zombied out.
"No!" Jenny said.
Zachary was taking the card himself.
'Wo," said Jenny again. She had to stop this, but she couldn't let go of Tom. "Zach, don't read it."
"'You hear a clock strike nine,'" Zachary read softly.
"Jenny doesn't have any clocks that strike," Audrey said. She looked at Jenny sharply. "Do you? Do you?"
Jenny shook her head, her throat clogged. Every inch of her skin seemed to be raw, waiting. Listening.
Clear and sweet, the chimes rang out. The chimes of the clock at the game store, the clock she couldn't see. It seemed to be coming from far above. It began to strike the hour.
One. Two. Three. Four.
"Oh, God," Audrey said.
Five. Six. Seven.
At nine, Jenny thought. See you later-at nine.
Eight...
"Tom," Jenny whispered. The muscles in his arm were hard under her hand. Now, too late, he turned toward her.
Nine.
Then the wind came.
At first Jenny thought the riptide had gotten her. Then she thought it must be an earthquake. But all the time she had the sensation of air rushing by her, as if a hurricane had come in through the closed sliding glass door. A black, roaring hurricane that burned even as it froze. It hurt her like a physical thing, shaking her body and blinding her. She lost track of the room. The only thing real was the fistful of Tom's shirt she held.
Finally she lost track of that, too. The pain stopped for a while, and she just drifted.
She woke up on the floor.
It was like the only other time she'd ever fainted, when she and Joey had both been home sick with the flu. She'd jumped out of bed suddenly to tell him to turn down that stupid cartoon-and the next thing she knew she was waking up with her head in a wastebasket. Lying on the carpeted floor of her room, then, she had known that time had passed, without being sure how she knew it. This was the same.
Painfully Jenny lifted her head and blinked to bring the far wall into focus.
It didn't work. Something was wrong. The wall itself, which should have been pastel-colored and hung with weavings and baskets, was wrong. It was paneled with some dark wood, and an Oriental screen stood in front of it. Heavy velvet curtains obscured a window. A brass