Ilya shook his head. “But I’d have to be starving to spend more than a minute in the same room with her.” He paused. Considered. “Of course, if I was starving, I wouldn’t need much more than that before she lost enough blood to make her quiet.”
Grimshaw filed that bit of information away with the other things he’d rather not know about the Others but needed to know to do his job—and stay alive.
No reason for any of the Sanguinati to have encountered the village troublemaker. In fact, Grimshaw would bet Ellen C. Wilson made every effort to avoid being noticed by the residents of Silence Lodge while she manipulated her way through Sproing’s businesses.
Picking up the phone again, Grimshaw called Lettuce Reed. “Julian? I need you at the station right now. Make sure you’re carrying.” He hung up.
“Am I supposed to understand this?” Ilya asked.
“You will.” Grimshaw waited until Osgood walked into the station, quickly followed by Julian. “Officer Osgood, you and our deputized citizen are going to the home of Ellen C. Wilson to arrest her. You will also bring her son, Theodore, in for questioning.”
Osgood bounced as if he’d been stabbed in the ass. “Chief? Shouldn’t you do that?”
“No, you should do that because I told you to.”
“I’m not a cop,” Julian said.
“You’re a deputized citizen. Osgood needs backup who can move if he needs to move. My knee won’t hold up to that today, so you’re it.”
“I have a business to run,” Julian argued.
“Boris is sitting outside in the sedan. He can watch the store and answer the phone.” Grimshaw looked at Ilya. “Right?”
“Right,” Ilya replied. “Boris could even make up a new window display. Books about body trauma, perhaps. That would go over well when one of the Sanguinati is standing behind the counter.”
Grimshaw ignored the snarky tone, mostly because he was tired enough and hurting enough that the proposed window display held a lot of appeal—especially if it encouraged Sproing’s residents to behave.
“What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Wilson?” Osgood asked.
“Yes, Chief,” Ilya said. “What is Officer Osgood supposed to tell her that you haven’t shared with us?”
Grimshaw looked at the leader of the Sanguinati, then at the other two men. “You can tell Ellen Cardosa Wilson that she’s being brought in as an accessory to murder.”
CHAPTER 82
Julian
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Do you think Ellen Wilson is related to that professor staying at the Mill Creek Cabins?” Osgood asked as he drove to the woman’s house. “I mean, Cardosa isn’t that common a name. Maybe in Hubbney or Toland, but not around here. Do you think she’s really involved in those killings?”
“I’m not thinking,” Julian said. Not about anything I’m willing to discuss right now, he added silently. What he was thinking about circled around one word: brainwashing.
Humans couldn’t fight the terra indigene and survive. The Great Predation last year proved that. But what if you could find individuals among the terra indigene who were malleable and rebellious enough that they could be turned against their own kind? What if you discovered a talent for manipulation and control, perhaps had an Intuit ancestor and had inherited just enough of that ability to sense what other humans couldn’t see, and used it to exploit other beings?
Cardosa and Roash had worked at the same college. That’s why they were sharing the cabin leased to that college. On Trickster Night, Roash had told Julian how he’d convinced Cardosa to come with him to observe the Others. Had Roash really done any convincing, or had Cardosa deftly inserted himself into Roash’s plans in order to use the man’s interest in the Crowbones folklore as a way to study fear that could be generated in the Others? If everything had gone as planned, Adam Fewks would have played his role as Crowbones and disappeared, all the academics would have left last Firesday, and the police, having no leads except the intensity of Roash’s interest in the subject matter, would have put it down as a prank.
Maybe the other things that had happened since Trickster Night had been intentional. Maybe they had been nothing more than someone taking the opportunity to cause more mischief. But when the Elders and Elementals closed off the area in order to hunt down a contamination, the mischief makers had escalated their efforts, trying to create sufficient turmoil so that they could escape.
And what better place to create turmoil than at The Jumble, which was its own kind of experiment of humans and terra indigene working together?
Then again, Julian still wondered if things would have escalated so fast and with such ferocity if the trouble hadn’t started at The Jumble.
Osgood pulled up at the Wilsons’ house, blocking the driveway. Two people—one from across the street and the other next door—rushed toward the police car the moment Julian and Osgood stepped out.
“I just called the station,” the man said, holding up his mobile phone.
“I was about to call,” the woman said, also holding up her phone.
“Lots of shouting,” the man said. “More than usual. But just Mrs. Wilson. Haven’t heard Theodore.”
“I think he’s in the house,” the woman said. “But he’s a quiet boy. Never has much to say for himself when he’s outside.”
Julian felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and fought the urge to look around. Something out there, watching them. Something powerful—and silent. By all the gods, had Ilya contacted one of the Elders, or was this one here for its own reasons?
Or was he jumping at shadows?
No. He was an Intuit. He didn’t jump at shadows unless the shadows hid something. Something dangerous.
“Did you hear the shouting from the front of the house or the back?” he asked.
“Back,” the woman said. “And Mrs. Wilson—you never call her Ellen—was louder than usual. I couldn’t make out what she was saying because my dog goes nuts when he hears her voice, so all I heard was the angry tone.”
The man nodded agreement. “I was at the curb, putting some bottles in the recycling bin, and I could hear the shouting. And then the dog.”
And yet neither of these neighbors had approached the house to find out what was going on. They had called the police rather than check on Ellen Wilson on their own.
“Go inside your houses and stay there,” Julian said quietly, trying to remain in the here and now and not slip back into the memory of an alley where he was badly wounded and bleeding—and had felt the presence of . . . something . . . that slaughtered the men who had been trying to kill him. “Walk calmly. Do it now.”