The Hunter Page 0,67

to throw the ring away. With the rest of this garbage."

In a single motion that brought Zach's head up, she crushed the paper house, smashing it flat and flatter. She put it in the white box, like filling an overstuffed suitcase, pushing it in where it wouldn't fit. She scooped up the game cards and jammed them in, too.

Then she took the ring off. It came quite easily, not sticking to her finger or anything. She didn't look at the inscription.

She dropped the ring on top of it all.

Then she put in the paper dolls of the Creeper and the Lurker. As she picked up the third doll she paused.

It was the boy with the shocking blue eyes.

They seemed to be looking up at her, but she knew they weren't. It was just a tagboard cutout, and the original was locked away under a rune of constraint that would hold, she hoped, forever.

She hadn't let go of the Shadow Man doll yet.

It was your Game. You hunted us. You told me to become a hunter. You just never expected to be trapped yourself.

What would this world be like without a Julian in it? Safer, certainly. Calmer. But poorer, too, in a way.

She'd beaten the Shadow Man, but it was strangely hard to consign him to oblivion. Jenny felt a pang of something oddly like regret, of something lost forever.

She put the doll in the box and crammed the lid on.

There was a roll of masking tape in with Joey's crayons. Jenny wound tape round and round the bulging white box, sealing it shut. The others all watched in silence.

When she finally ran out of tape she put the box on the table and sat back on her heels. A smile began somewhere in the group and traveled from one person to another. Not a partying kind of smile, just one of quiet relief and joy. They had made it. They'd won. They were alive-most of them.

"What are we going to say about Summer?" Tom asked.

"We're going to tell the truth," Jenny said.

Audrey's eyebrows arched. "No one will ever believe us!"

"I know," Jenny said. "We're going to tell them anyway."

"It'll be all right," said Dee. "After all we've been through, we can deal with it. As long as we're all together."

"We are," Jenny said, and Tom nodded. In the old days-last night-it would have been the other way around.

Audrey and Michael, who couldn't seem to separate from each other, both nodded, too. So did Zach, who was for once paying attention to the rest of them, instead of being off in his own little world.

I think it actually helped him, Jenny thought suddenly, to know that his grandfather was only calling up demons and not insane after all.

"We can call the police from the kitchen," she said aloud.

Chapter 16

It was Dee who made the phone call, because Audrey and Michael were looking out the kitchen window together, and Zach wasn't the talking type. Jenny and Tom had moved a little away from the others.

"I wanted to show you this," Tom said.

It was a tattered scrap of paper. It had several things drawn and then crossed out-Jenny thought one was a rat. The only thing not crossed out was in the middle, and Jenny couldn't tell what it was.

"I'm a rotten artist. I thought you could tell by the yellow hair and green eyes."

"I'm your worst nightmare?" Jenny said, only half joking because she was completely bewildered.

"No. It was hard to draw, but it was what I meant at the end when I told Julian I guessed it had to happen. The name of the Game was face your worst nightmare, and that was mine. Losing you."

Jenny could only look at him.

"I'm not good at saying it. Maybe I'm not even good at showing it," he said. "But-I love you. As much as he does. More."

All Jenny could think of was hibiscus bushes. Little Tommy in second grade. The boy she had decided she was going to marry-on sight.

Something was tugging at her inside, but she knew she had to put it-even the memory of it-away forever. Never think of it again. And never let Tom know.

Never.

"I love you, too," she whispered. "Oh, Tom, so much."

It was at that moment they heard the glass break.

Dee was hampered by being on the phone. Tom was hampered by Jenny. The others were just plain frozen.

Still, it was only a few seconds before they ran back to the living room, just in time to see two figures ducking out the broken sliding glass door with really astonishing speed.

The white box wasn't on the coffee table anymore.

Tom and Dee, of course, ran into the backyard. But even Jenny, standing by the broken door, could see there was no chance. The two figures were over the wall and gone before their pursuers got close. After climbing the block wall and looking around, Tom and Dee came slowly back.

"They just disappeared," Dee said in disgust.

"They were flying," Tom panted.

"You're not in the best of shape, either of you," Jenny said. "It doesn't matter. I didn't really want to give the Game to the police anyway. It probably won't work for anyone else."

"But who were they? Shadow Men?" Michael asked.

"Shadow Men in sneakers," Dee said, pointing to a muddy footprint on the tiles.

"But why would they want to-"

Jenny tuned him out. She was looking at the broken glass and trying not to think. Even from behind, those two guys had looked familiar.

But surely what she'd said was true. The Game had been meant for her; it shouldn't work for anyone else. Besides, it was squashed now, ruined. And even if it did work for someone else, what were the chances of them making it all the way up to the third floor, into her grandfather's basement? And even if they did make it there, what were the chances of them opening a white closet door?

"Good riddance to it," Tom said. In the early morning light his dark hair shone, and the green flecks in his eyes looked gold. "Everything I care about is right here," he said. He smiled at Jenny. "No more nightmares," he told her, with open love in his face, in front of them all.

Jenny went into the circle of his arms.

In a vacant lot, two boys were panting, looking behind them for pursuers.

"I think we lost them," said the one in the black bandanna and T-shirt.

"They weren't even trying," said the one in the black-and-blue flannels.

They looked at each other in a mixture of triumph and fear.

They didn't know what the box was, despite a night of watching the blond girl's house. It hadn't

been until dawn that they'd worked up the nerve to break in-and then the white box had been there on the table, waiting for them.

They knew only that ever since seeing it they'd been compelled to follow it, fearing it and wanting it in equal measure. It had dominated their thoughts, sending them after the girl, keeping them up all night.

And now they had it, at last.

One of them flicked out a knife and slit the tape.