Chapter 8 #2
Alice stares at my kitchen like it’s a three-headed dog. Or maybe it’s me, making BLTs, that’s got her panties in a twist. A mistake. It was a mistake to think about her panties. Now all I can think about is her panties. Fuck.
Only one way to stop this train of thought. “So, you had questions for me?”
She stays quiet for a second, chewing on what to ask, I assume. “Are there not aliens, then?”
I shrug. “Who knows? There might be. But the prevalent thought that alien life has been causing all the recent troubles? Nah. It’s Them. You’re right about that.”
That seems to stun the curiosity right out of her. In fact, it looks like she might burst into tears. I have the odd urge to hug her. I keep to the stove, flipping the bacon. “Why’re you here?”
Her eyes are empty and lost. “The missing hikers… Following a lead.”
I already miss the firecracker from the parking lot. That sad look in her eyes is too tempting. Fallon always says I’ll bring home any stray that makes eyes at me, and she’s not wrong. It’s how I got Fern, after all.
I plop a BLT down in front of Alice. “For school? Did you say you’re a grad student?”
“Sort of,” she says.
My phone rings. Then it stops. Then it rings once more. I get up before it rings again. “Hey,” I say as I pick up halfway through the next ring. “I’m handling this.”
“Who the fuck is she?” Fallon asks, her voice quiet. “She showed up at the same time as Sector.”
I turn away from Alice, who is most definitely listening to every word I say. “Yes, and either that means something or nothing. Let me handle this.”
“You have ’til dinner,” Fallon agrees. “I expect to see her at my table by sundown. With explanations at the ready.”
I am about to hang up when she adds, “Check her, Wyatt. You check her for it or I will.”
There’s no need to respond; Fallon’s already hung up. I try not to slam the phone down. When I turn back to the table, Alice has finished her sandwich.
“Are you going to explain what that was about?” she asks.
I shake my head. Everyone’s so direct today, and usually that wouldn’t bother me, but right now it feels a little overwhelming. “Let me get straight to the point. Are you Sector?”
Her eyes practically bug out of her head, and then she laughs. “No. Are you?”
“No,” I reply, feeling irritated all of a sudden.
“Not as though I’d answer truthfully if I was,” she adds.
I pluck my plate off the table, no longer hungry for my BLT. “What do you know about hedgeriders?”
Alice frowns as I put my sandwich in the fridge. “Isn’t that an old word for a witch?”
Either she’s very good at pretending, or she’s not Sector. I’m still gonna have to check, but we can talk first. “Follow me.”
Her footsteps are soft behind me as I take her down the back hall to my office. I push the door open and let her through. My hope is that if I tell her something about me that Sector would already know, she might reveal something about herself.
“Hedgeriding is a little like witchery, but has a more defined purpose,” I explain.
She’s staring at my books, at the knives in the armory, the herbs on the shelves. This isn’t anything compared to the stores we have up at the house, but it keeps me from having to go up there if I need to leave on short notice.
I let her look and keep talking. “Hedgeriders are medial. We walk between worlds. Keep the balance. Deal with Them, if They pose a threat. We keep humans out of things as much as possible, but since Reformation, it’s been getting harder and harder. They’re busier, somehow.”
“This is your…job?” she asks. That empty look still haunts her pretty face, and while I long to know what it means, I don’t ask.
I laugh. “I guess it is. More like the family business.”
Now she laughs, her spark back. It’s not a particularly nice laugh. In fact, she looks more guarded than ever as she leans against one of my built-in bookcases. “So, did your daddy teach you the family business?”
Sarcasm. I can’t tell if she doesn’t quite believe me, or if she’s working on some other theory. That was the point of telling her all this. So she’d reveal something of herself to me. Fallon’s way of getting things out of people sucks, and something tells me that Alice has been through enough.
If she wants to play the guarded game, we can do it. I snap back, “Hedgeriding is matriarchal.”
I pick up the photo on my desk and take three steps across the room to hand it to her. It’s a little worse for wear. Fallon carried it, and our small trove of family photos, in her backpack for months getting here. But the photo’s still clear. Alice’s eyes soften as she looks at it.
I tap the photo. Fallon was a head shorter than me at twelve, but her chin is jutted out, brave and fierce, her braid flipped over her squared-up shoulders. She’s got Cade on her hip and her arm slung around my waist.
The little bungalow in New Big Sur is in the background.
Mama took this the month before she died, developed the roll in our basement, like she always did when she could find film.
Most of the photos wouldn’t turn out, but the ones that did, she cherished.
It’s one of the few nice things I remember about her.
I don’t let myself linger on those thoughts. “That’s my little brother, Cade, and my sister Fallon. Our Mama taught us everything we needed to know about hedgeriding.”
Alice stares at the photo. “Did she take the photo? Your mother, I mean.”
I nod slowly. “She did. It was one of the last she ever took. Our parents are dead.”
“Oh,” Alice says, some flicker of complex emotion crossing her face before she remembers to add, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
I take the photo from her. “Thanks. Fallon’s in charge now. That was her on the phone. She’d like to meet you this evening, if you’re up to it.”