The Twisting (27 page)

Right, same Jeptha. Interested in males who weren’t interested in him. Daeryn dipped a nod. “Heh, keep dreaming.”

Jeptha shook his head, shooting Dae a grin at the same time. “Figured as much.”

“You’ll see him tomorrow. We’re about to leave.” He poked Jeptha and started walking. “Any minute, in fact. I’ll have a word with Wellspring’s owner, then introduce you two. What questions she doesn’t answer, I will when I return. I’m glad you’re here.” Their timing couldn’t be better. Having substitutes should ease Miz Gere’s concerns about him and Riv leaving—briefly, he’d stress—and hopefully get him a copy of that address on Mary Alice’s envelope.

* * *

Derbyshire

When Annmar and
Mary Clare walked through the Rowsley station, an appreciative whistle sounded, long and low. Annmar started, and contrary to the societal protocol she’d had ingrained in her before her teen years, she looked around.

Two men dressed in green suits lounged against the station wall, one with dark hair, the other redheaded. They laughed, and the dark-haired one winked.

Heat rose over her cheeks and spread across her chest.

Mary Clare nudged her. “Take ’em down a notch,” she whispered, “with, you know, your special technique.”

She shouldn’t…and yet, why not? At least it’d teach these two not to pester women. She delved into her Knack’s ready blue mist. Beneath the dark-haired man’s green trousers, she envisioned his hips and thighs and between, his manhood…hanging limp.

He grinned and beckoned her over.

A wave of irritation, at him and herself, broke her concentration.

“Go ahead,” Mary Clare murmured. “I’m watching the bulge at his front. I’ll let you know.”

Annmar pressed her hand to her collarbone and focused on the luminated threads. They formed up an image of his figure again. A few blue filaments darted through his flesh, seemingly under her control, like they’d been within Rivley…but they slipped off, disappearing along with the imagined likeness.

“What’s wrong?” Mary Clare hissed.

She couldn’t hold an image. Not with that man. She darted her gaze to the red-haired man, directing the warm blue Knack to him and the clear interest in his trousers.

Nothing happened. The audacity of what she was trying hit her. Engaging a man’s interest on the street was never proper behavior. Annmar dropped her Knack and averted her gaze, but not before seeing their leering expressions—and the gold insignia above their coat pockets.

She gaped. Shearing’s men?
No
.

Annmar spun away, arm linked with Mary Clare’s. Oh, Lord. Her Knack didn’t appear to work on Outsiders. What if it didn’t work on Mr. Shearing?

* * *

Once on the
Derwent Valley train, Mary Clare leaned into her, her eyes questioning, feelings of dread seeping from her.

Annmar frowned. “I couldn’t do it. The filaments slipped away, like…like they had nothing to anchor to. I recognized their coats. Those men are employed by Shearing Enterprises. Though he’s Basin-bred, he’s been living Outside, just like they do. What if...?”

Mary Clare gripped her arm, the trepidation flowing in her icy fingers.

Gently, but firmly, Annmar pushed her back. “I feel terrible enough on my own. Do Knacks only work on Basin dwellers?”

“Well, it appears
your
Knack only works on Basin folk.” The air cleared between them as Mary Clare forced her worry under control. “You suspect Mr. Shearing’s using a Knack, but that doesn’t mean it works like ours. He could be a mixed species, or even a hedge-rider.”

Annmar put her fingertips to her temples. “Maybe living Outside repels it, or kills it, like their oil did to the Harvester. But Mr. Shearing must have threads. He halfway succeeded in swaying me.”

“But how do the threads get into people and…there?”

“From the fungus in the soil. I saw them go into the doodems, move to plants and people. And between people. They connect the Basin residents. I think I just use my filaments to move ones already there when I heal someone. Those men didn’t have any themselves, just mine.”

“Wait!” Mary Clare put up a finger. “Then the threads weren’t
in
the machines. They were in the doodems, and our oil.”

“Right, Basin oil comes from Basin vegetables, Rivley told me.”

“If it’s in those vegetables, then it’s in our food, too? I mean our regular food.”

Annmar slapped a hand to her mouth. “I never looked.”

Mary Clare yanked a cloth-wrapped package from her bag and shoved a loaf of bread at Annmar. “Look!”

Nothing was in the bread or the meat, but the apples had filaments, and so did the butter.

Mary Clare was close to crying. “The only other things I brought are jars of the kitchen’s new pea nut spread and jam.”

“Patrice’s jam?” Annmar snatched the jar and opened it. The jam teemed with blue fibers running circles around the glass perimeter. One zinged from a blob at the edge to her finger. She started laughing, half relief, half sob.

Mary Clare hugged her. “Regular cooking must kill it. Miz Gere’s Knack chefs have a special process.”

The jar of pea nut spread also bore fibers, but not nearly so many. The newness of the vegetable, they decided.

Mary Clare packed everything away. “Very well. We eat only the meat and save the rest to offer Mr. Shearing.”

It couldn’t be as simple as Mary Clare said. “How can you be so sure this will work? I mean, how much does a person have to eat to have enough fibers?”

Mary Clare put a finger to Annmar’s lips. “Hush. I have to believe it will work, and you must, too. It’s all we’ve got.”

chapter TWENTY-NINE

Blighted Basin

The path ran
crookedly along the ridgeline, buried among the spruce trees growing on the Basin side of the mountain. Daeryn rode Jac’s ruff at her suggestion. He agreed, to save himself from losing the argument that her wolf form could outrace his polecat. Without a word, Rivley had flown to Maraquin and tightened his talons onto the downsized saddlebags carrying their best clothes and boots. Terrent’s red fox form led the way in a gallop.

Daeryn closed his eyes.
It’s working.
The plan had fallen into place, then the pack—
group
had come together. If they weren’t exactly pack, the feeling was close enough to settle his urges. Scent-marking Annmar brought them on, but sinking his teeth into Rivley stirred up even more feelings: desire to work in cooperation, the satisfaction of addressing a problem together…the comforts of the group. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them. Didn’t it figure they’d pull together just when the Collective was falling apart? If only the vested members could ride out the lean times without being at each other’s throats, Miz Gere could get Wellspring running again.

That is, if Mr. Shearing didn’t sway her and the rest of the Farmlands to his way of business.

They came to the end of a long ascent, and a rockier path lay ahead. Jac slowed to a walk upon entering a small clearing. Her nose lifted. His did as well, but before a scent reached him, movement at the ridgetop caught his eye. The conifers hid the source, but it was too big for prey. His hackles rose.

“Halt.” The man’s shout bounced off the looming rock, and he came into view. Pointing a gun.

Daeryn flattened himself to Jac’s back, the blood in his ears roaring. It was OverEdge all over again.

* * *

Derbyshire

Having devised a
way to increase Mr. Shearing’s blue threads—if necessary—Annmar settled onto the train to Derby and honed the other plans with Mary Clare. Then after she succeeded in making the excited redhead fall asleep, she hunched into the corner of the last window seat in the car. She didn’t want anyone to see her rude drawings of Mr. Shearing.

She didn’t know exactly what the man looked like without his tailored suits, but at least she had a better idea than two weeks ago. She certainly knew his features and general body shape. To set those firmly in her mind, she sketched different views of him over and over, filling pages that should have made her blush.

Today they didn’t.

Annmar held out her last figure drawing. His face looked just as she remembered it when he’d handed back countless rolls of parchment, his smile conveying more than pleasure at her work. His body… Well, it was masculine, proportioned to him and anatomically correct. Since her last healing drawings hadn’t required complete details, this should be enough.

Now to practice. She closed her eyes and reached for her Knack. The now-familiar lines appeared in an instant, blue filaments readily replacing pencil lines.

Her stomach wrenched. The image was
too
real.

She pulled out of her Knack, her hand covering her mouth as the image disappeared from her vision. Annmar glanced at Mary Clare, then around the passenger car to the half-dozen other riders.

No one noticed. She wiped her clammy hands on her handkerchief and then searched her satchel for her squirrel doodem to hold. Her fingers closed on a hard lump, but instead of her squirrel, she brought out another rock.

She’d found the glittering stone in Old Terry’s tunnel this morning and picked it from the wall. Little crystals in it sparkled blue and yellow in the window light, but that prettiness wasn’t why she’d taken the rock. This rock had been wrapped by a thread of the palest gold and still was when viewed through her Knack. Annmar touched the thread, and it squirmed around her finger. Unlike the blue threads, this yellow one flowed like a small snake: off one finger, to another, and explored her hand before returning to swirl its rock.

Annmar left it there. Her breathing had leveled out, so she put away the rock and checked for her remaining coins. Those, and three in her small, beaded reticule, were the last. It wouldn’t be enough to see them through a day in Derby and home again. As Mary Clare had suggested, Annmar had to persuade Mr. Shearing to pay her in advance. Knowing the magnate, it would take a negotiation. Annmar sighed. Surely only the first of many during the long evening ahead.

She re-opened her sketchbook to Mr. Shearing’s drawing. If she appeared to agree with him, would he see no need to use his Knack on her? He hadn’t ever succeeded in persuading her to follow his suggestions, but she had to keep a clear head to find out how his talent worked—and to use
her
Knack.

She had the skills to carry out her plan, but if she had to block his Knack, she would. Like Old Terry, he’d be able to tell, and that would end any hope of her learning more. She’d do her best to block him only as a last resort.

She had to. For Henry. For Wellspring. Maybe life in Blighted Basin wasn’t grand and proper, or even straightforward, but the little corner of it she’d found herself in operated with fairness and consideration. She would not let Mr. Shearing bring Wellspring—or the Farmlands, for that matter—to ruin because of her.

Annmar closed her eyes on that image of the rolling croplands. Then drawing a breath, she placed her hand on her collarbone and conjured the image of Mr. Shearing.

* * *

Blighted Basin

The blast.
Sylvan falling. Blood.

The horrific images flashed through Daeryn’s mind—until a streak of red fur cleared them. Terrent shifted forms and ran
toward
the man with the gun, shouting, “Don’t yous dare!”

Daeryn blinked. Sylvan wasn’t—

Jac shook, her changing form dislodging Daeryn from her back. He landed on four paws and dodged as the wolves rose on either side of him. Thickets of cover lay feet away, easy places to lose his small polecat form in the shadows. Shaking, Daeryn turned from the woods and pushed himself to shift. It took forever. Rivley stepped forward before he straightened.

“Sam,” Terrent said after too long a pause. “You know me. Let us through.”

“Yous, sure. Go,” said Sam. “You’re just going home. But the rest of youse—”

“Come off it,” Terrent snarled. “Let us by.”

Daeryn’s head stuttered at what his eyes and ears were telling him: This man with the gun was a Basin resident, a Forestridge dweller like Terrent. Damned if they didn’t have a wildly different way of guarding than his enclave down south.

“Please,” said a female who looked and sounded like Jac, except Jac never pleaded.

“Appreciate the manners,” said Sam, “but youse are still out of bounds. Go back.”

“Back?” The word burst from several of them, and Jac strode forward. “Now see here.”

Rivley darted. He grabbed Jac’s arm and yanked her behind him.

That wrenched Daeryn from his stupor. Though Rivley tried to stop her, Jac still advanced. So did Daeryn, saying, “Let’s just take a minute—”

Bang
.

Daeryn flinched at the gunshot from the woods. Where to run—

Another man, and another, darted from between thick conifer trees. Three…four men. The wolves shifted in an instant, ruffs standing on end and lips peeled back, and
five
men stopped.

None of the Wellspring group moved.

Hell
. The guns would win. And it would be his fault. Again.