Dead Heat (37 page)

So.

The fae would come out of the house with Mackie and discover that it could not use the cars to run. If it tried to walk out of here, Hosteen’s wolves would notice that. If they were still alive to notice anything.

The horses … maybe.

There was a truck in the back of the barn. They never left the trucks hitched up overnight, so it would be parked next to the trailer they’d brought Nix back in. Mackie would know that.

Probably the fae could get Mackie to talk.

Another fact, like Maggie’s fate, to absorb and not react to. He had to use his head if Mackie was to be saved.

Instead of running into the house as his heart wanted to do—
oh, Maggie
—Joseph ran toward the barn as fast as he could. Which was plenty fast. He couldn’t run like one of his beloved horses, or a werewolf, either, but he had run everywhere when he had been a young man.

He stabbed the tire of the truck and then ducked back inside the barn. There were a lot of empty stalls because the barn was where they kept the show horses. The breeding barn was a quarter of a mile down the road, along with the paddocks where the rest of the horses were kept.

He stared at Hephzibah, who stared back at him with wicked eyes. He caught her and saddled her. Then he put her back in her stall and hung her bridle next to the stall door. They did that sometimes with horses they were planning on taking out or showing to clients so that they could move from one horse to another quickly.

The rest of the horses in this part of the barn were yearlings and two-year-olds—none of them trained to ride. He was trying to figure out his next move when he heard Mackie’s screams.

Mackie liked most of the people at the day care. Miss Baird was her current favorite, but she liked Michael’s teacher, Ms. Newman, too. She was predictable and strong—like Ánáli Hastiin. When she said something, she followed up on it. She’d told Michael that. Michael didn’t like being away from his family at day care, but Ms. Newman made him feel safe so he didn’t get scared and make them get Mackie for him anymore. He was glad when Ms. Newman brought his class to the horse show so that everybody saw him ride.

Mackie wished that Miss Baird had come to see her ride.

Ms. Edison was scary. She would smile and say nice things, but Mackie didn’t think that her eyes were nice at all. Grown-ups liked her, though, so she seldom said anything about it—except to Max. Max listened to what Mackie said, and even if he disagreed, he didn’t make her feel stupid.

When she had told Max she didn’t like Ms. Edison, Max had said, “Listen to your instincts, pipsqueak. I trust them. She’s not your teacher, right? Okay. If she does something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you make a lot of noise. I mean, really scream. That one you have that makes Hosteen grab his ears. People should come running and when they do, you make them get Mom or your dad or me, right? You don’t shut up until you are happy with the situation.”

Max had given her a plan of attack. So when Grandma had fallen against the wall and Ms. Edison grabbed her arm, she did what Max said and screamed and screamed.

She screamed when Ms. Edison carried her out to the car, and kept screaming when the principal changed her mind and carried her down to the barn. Even when she knew that there was no one who could hear her. Max had said to scream—so she did.

She screamed right up until the thing wearing Ms. Edison’s face and body made her stop.

Charles gave Anna a wild look and hopped off Portabella, tossing his reins to Max.

“If I told you the fae was a woman,” he asked her, “who would you pick?”

“Ms. Newman,” she said. “Or Ms. Edison.”

“Mackie thinks Ms. Edison is bad,” said Michael. “She said I shouldn’t be alone with her.”

“Did she?” Charles breathed. “We should have talked to Mackie.” He changed then, in one of those instantaneous changes he could do when the need was great enough, and then he was off and running.

“What’s going on?” asked Max.

“Joseph called to tell us that the fae is here and
she’s
after Mackie,” Anna told him. “The man that they have in jail was a fetch, like the one who took Amethyst’s place.”

“She’s after Mackie?” Max said, and his horse settled back on his hind legs, ready to go.

Anna swung off her horse and took a good hold on Max’s gelding’s bridle. She kept an eye on him and one on Michael.

“Both of you stay right here. Mackie has your grandparents and Hosteen’s wolves, and Charles is on his way.”

“We’re miles away,” said Max.

“She’s going to get Mackie like she got Amethyst,” Michael said, sounding frantic. “We’ve got to stop her.”

“Charles is fast,” she assured them. “Max, do you have your phone?”

He nodded.

“You call Hosteen and you tell him that the fae is here. That its human shape is female. Probably one of the teachers”—she looked at Michael—“probably the principal from Mackie and Michael’s day care. Then you stay here and keep Michael away from that thing so we can minimize the damage it might do, okay? It’s not going to find you out here.”

Max took a deep breath and let it out. He hopped off his horse and took Michael’s reins. “All right.”

“I’m going to help Charles. I can’t change like Charles. No one changes like my husband. I’ll take Merrylegs and head back. You have the worse task, but it is the most important one. Stay here until someone calls you. Or until you talk to your dad or Hosteen and they say it’s safe.”

Max nodded soberly. Then he said, “Take Portabella, not Merry. Bella’s a lot faster. If you ride up the trail a hundred yards that way”—he pointed opposite the way Charles had run—“and take the left marked by a white flag, you’ll be on one of the maintenance roads. I’m not supposed to, but I run her on that road all the time. There are three gates across the road. You can dismount and open them; you can’t open those kinds of gates without dismounting. But she’ll jump them. I jump them with her all the time. You do much jumping?”

“No,” Anna said. She handed Merry over and took Portabella from Max. “A couple of times, but there were two-foot-high logs on the trail.” She shortened the left stirrup six holes and did a quick measure against her arm. It looked about right, so she rounded the horse to do the other side as she absorbed Max’s instructions.

“These are about four feet high and, fair warning, jumping in a western saddle sucks. Just make sure your butt is out of the saddle when she goes up. Keep it out until she’s all the way down. Keep your weight in the stirrups and your knees and not your butt. She won’t run out—just give her her head and don’t hit her in the mouth when she lands.”

“Got it,” Anna said, mounting up and gathering her reins. “Don’t hit her with my butt or my hands while she’s doing what she can to get over the fence.”

“That’s it,” said Max.

“Stay safe,” she told them.

“You, too,” he said.

She asked Portabella to go. The mare took three short strides as if to ask,
Do I have to leave my friends?

When Anna asked her a second time, she
ran
.

She was turning at the white flag before Anna asked her, obviously used to the path. Four strides and the trail connected to a narrow road, groomed and flat, and the mare put her mind to getting down the road.

At first Anna tried to ride this new gait like Charles had taught her to do, sinking her rump into the saddle and taking the movement with her back so her hands stayed steady. But a particularly hard stride pushed her up over the horse’s shoulders, where the ride was smooth as glass. She balanced there on her feet and knees and thought,
So that’s how jockeys can stay on a racehorse.

She didn’t even think about slowing for the gates. The first jump was a disaster, except that she didn’t fall off. Portabella pinned her ears and gave a half buck to complain about the way Anna had landed on her back. The second jump was better, even though the saddle horn hit her in the stomach. The third jump … was magic.

Charles ran flat-out for the house. He hit the front door and broke the door frame so the heavy old door swung free. He staggered a couple of steps and saw Maggie.

She was crumpled up against the wall, a small figure for such a big personality. It took no time at all to see that she was already gone.

Her knuckles were split; she’d hit her attacker at least once. He took one hard breath that hurt—but there was Joseph and Mackie to think about. He would mourn Maggie later, when her loved ones were straightened out.

He wasted a minute checking out the house and when he didn’t scent the fae anywhere except the living room, he followed Joseph’s trail out a window in the back of the house. When he encountered the disabled vehicles he thought, as he had once before,
You’ll do to ride the river with, Joseph.

Following the scent trail the fae had left, Charles ran for the barn.

It was hard to hide in the shadows and listen to Mackie scream. Joseph bit his lip and hunkered down in the empty stall. The staff had been busy and this stall hadn’t been properly cleaned. He was pretty sure that if the fae did have a good nose, the scent of horse urine would disguise the scent of one old man.

He caught a glimpse of them as the woman hauled Mackie out of the barn to the truck. He’d flattened the tire on the far side so she had to go all the way out to see. He heard the door of the truck open, and suddenly Mackie wasn’t making any noise.

The little girl had been like that when Charles and Anna had found her, he knew. It was magic, not death, that had silenced his Mackie. He held that thought close to him. He … she …
it
. He could think of the fae as
it
. It didn’t want to hurt Mackie, yet—not until it could use her. Left to its preferences, it kept its victims for a year and a day, Charles had told him.

Shaking and sweating, tucked behind the door of the horse stall, Joseph prayed that magic was why Mackie had quit screaming. After a few minutes a new noise filled the air, a woman’s frustrated cry.

“Where are you?”
She—she sounded like a she—roared the words out.

Yeah. Sure he was coming out, like he was still that dumb-shit kid in that bar in Phoenix. He’d learned a lot that day; some of it Charles had taught him. But most of it he’d learned from those World War II veterans who’d risked their lives for their country and came back to learn that their promises had to mean that they changed how they treated people who didn’t happen to look like them. They hadn’t learned that lesson until he’d taken them on and Charles had come to his rescue. His fists hadn’t taught them anything, but that soft-spoken, laconic Charles? His words, what few there had been, had
flattened
them and left them bleeding by the wayside. He’d bet that they never beat up on someone because they were a different color or different anything again.

Charles had had words for Joseph, too.

If you’re going to face someone bigger and stronger than you, kid, make damn sure you are better armed.
He could hear Charles’s dry voice as though it were yesterday instead of seventy-odd years ago.

The only weapons he had were the knife in his hand and the brain in his head, and the knowledge that Charles would be coming as fast as he could. Between the knife and Charles, Joseph was well armed, as long as he picked his fight.

That woman came back into the barn with Mackie slung over her shoulder like a leg of beef. He tightened his hand on the knife but stayed still. She paused beside Hephzibah’s stall and growled, “Horses.” She didn’t sound happy, and she didn’t sound very female anymore, either.

He had a pretty good view of her as she dropped Mackie to the ground—his granddaughter’s staring eyes met his through the crack of daylight between the half-open stall door and the door frame.

The fae grabbed the bridle he’d left hanging on the hook and opened the door. “Come ’ere, nag,” the thing growled.

He’d worried a little about making Hephzibah a target—what if the fae had been one of those who could ride anything? Hephzibah was quick and strong. If that fae could ride her, they’d have had a fine time trying to run her down—since he’d effectively disabled all the motorized vehicles in the place, except for the lawn mowers.

But no one who could ride like that would ever use the word “nag” to describe Hephzibah, at least not until she’d made them kiss dirt a time or ten. Kage had no trouble calling her a nag.

Hephzibah walked out of the stall quietly, her ears up. That was what caught everyone the first time. She looked happy to have someone saddle her up. She was quiet and well mannered until she wasn’t.

The fae grabbed Mackie by a leg and got on the mare. He’d given it a fifty-fifty chance whether the fae would ride out the back of the stables or go through the big arena and out the front. Hephzibah stopped right in front of his hiding place. She lowered her head and snorted at him.

Anyone would know she was telling them that there was an old man hiding behind the door. But the fae jerked Hephzibah’s head up with the bit. The mare didn’t even flick her ears. Yep. This was not going to last long. He wished he had moved Nix over where he could get to him, but there had been too great a chance that it would be Nix the fae grabbed. And on Nix, she might actually have escaped.

Joseph would just have to make sure that he stayed with them. His chance to grab Mackie would come. He’d grab Mackie and run and hope that Charles had had enough time to make it down here.

Charles could be watching them right now, biding his time like Joseph was. He’d believe that. It gave him hope.

The fae rode Hephzibah on past Joseph’s stall and out toward the big arena that lay between them and the front door of the barn. Joseph counted to five after the sound of the mare’s hooves on the hard-packed sand of the aisle gave way to soft thumps in the arena. Then he slipped out of the stall and followed them.

He figured that mare would trot peacefully about halfway down the arena, the better to sucker her rider, and then it would be all over but the crying. About a 30 percent chance she’d decide to stomp the fae, about a 68 percent chance she’d just bolt for the hills, and a 2 percent chance he didn’t want to think about that she’d go after Mackie if the fae dropped her while trying to stay on.