Chapter 17
Gram Ain't Having It
Oz
Morning finds me through a window thick with dust and spider silk. The light comes in amber and slow, pooling on the sandstone floor.
I spent the night folded into the corner of the holding cell, my body compressed to fit the space.
The iron bars are old, pitted with rust, and I could easily move through them the way water moves through a sieve.
But I stay, because leaving would confirm every fear Mrs. Pritchett holds and every warning she’ll carry back to town.
Maisie sleeps in a wooden chair three feet from the bars. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her chin tucked toward her shoulder, her breath even and shallow.
She refused to leave.
Said it once, with finality, and then sat down and stopped engaging with any argument to the contrary.
I watched her throughout the night—the set of her jaw, the stubborn angle of her shoulders, the way she positioned her body toward the cell like she could shield me from the room.
Mrs. Pritchett occupies a folding chair by the door. She also refused to leave, though her reasoning differs.
Someone must supervise the creature, she said.
Someone must ensure the town’s safety until proper authorities can be contacted.
She made coffee in a tin pot on a camp stove she keeps in her golf cart for emergencies, and she drank it in measured sips while watching me with the steady attention of a hawk reading a field all throughout the night.
Now the three of us wait in the morning silence.
A fly traces lazy circles near the window.
Somewhere outside, a truck engine turns over and dies.
Maisie shifts in her sleep, her spine popping. The wooden chair has done her no favors.
Mrs. Pritchett’s gaze moves between us.
Cataloging.
Calculating.
“Your grandmother’s going to hear about this,” she says to Maisie’s sleeping form.
A statement, not a threat.
Headlights sweep across the window, painting the dust in brief yellow stripes.
A door opens and closes.
Footsteps on gravel, then the creak of the jailhouse door.
Gary enters carrying a grease-stained paper bag that has the words “Rosario’s Diner” printed on the side.
The smell hits me before he’s halfway across the room: salt, fat, the char of a flattop grill.
Captain’s head pokes from the open collar of his flannel, the cat’s eyes half-closed, purring loud enough to hear from here.
Gary sets the bag on the folding chair Mrs. Pritchett vacates when he enters. He pulls out foam containers, opens one to reveal a hamburger, the cheese melted on the patty in orange ribbons.
A container of fries.
A second burger.
He looks from the food to me, his expression unreadable.
“Brought enough for everyone,” he says. “Figured nobody ate breakfast.”
Maisie stirs, blinking awake. Her neck cracks when she straightens, and she winces, pressing her palm to the side of her spine.
Gary pushes a container toward her, then turns back to me.
He picks up the second burger and extends it through the bars, holding it flat on his palm the way you might offer an apple to a horse.
“I don’t know if you eat,” he says. “But Rosario’s makes ‘em good, and I thought maybe—”
I reach through the bars.
My fingers close around the burger, and I feel the warmth of it, the soft compression of the bun, the slick of grease on the paper wrapper.
Gary’s hand flinches but holds steady.
The food begins to break down the moment it enters my body.
The bun dissolves first, the carbohydrates separating into particles that vanish into my mass.
The cheese follows, the fat absorbing in a bright burst I can taste like sunlight.
The patty takes longer—protein and iron and the complex molecules of cooked meat—but it, too, disintegrates, collapsing into nothing as my body takes what it needs and discards the rest. The wrapper crumbles last, a faint chemical residue dissolving into my palm.
Gary’s hand is still extended, empty now, his fingers curled around air.
His mouth is slightly open.
Mrs. Pritchett has risen from her chair. She stands rigid, both hands flat on the table, staring at the space where the hamburger was.
The color has drained from her face.
“That’s—” she starts.
“Minerals,” I say. “Protein. Iron. I absorb what I need.”
“You absorbed the whole thing.” Gary closes his fingers slowly, like he’s checking that they still work. “Wrapper and all.”
“It was easier than separating them,” I explain.
Mrs. Pritchett makes a sound, something between a gasp and a word. She points at me, her hand trembling, and her eyes are bright with tears.
“That could have been your cat, Gary.” Her voice shakes. “If I had arrived a minute later… That thing had Captain wrapped up in it, and it—it eats its prey whole—”
“Deb.” Gary’s voice is low and firm.
“Don’t ‘Deb’ me. I know what I saw.”
Maisie stands.
The chair scrapes back against the stone floor, and the sound cuts through Mrs. Pritchett’s rising voice like a blade through water.
“You saw him holding Captain,” Maisie says. Her voice is hoarse from sleep, rougher than usual, and there’s an edge to it I haven’t heard before. “He’d been holding that cat for minutes before you showed up.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s mouth opens, but Maisie keeps going.
“If Oz wanted to hurt Captain, he could have done it in the first ten seconds.” She takes a step toward Mrs. Pritchett, and the older woman retreats half a pace, her hand dropping to the table. “Instead, Captain is alive because Oz found him and kept him safe.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s jaw tightens. “It doesn’t change what it is, Maisie.”
Maisie turns to the cell, to me, and something in her expression shifts. Then she faces Mrs. Pritchett again.
“Those bars can’t hold him.” She gestures at the iron, the rust, the gaps between the metal and the sandstone.
“He’s stayed because he’s choosing to stay.
Because he knows leaving would make everything worse.
He’s been cooperating since the moment you showed up with your clothesline, Mrs. Pritchett.
You’re scared. I understand. But you’re scared of the wrong thing. ”
The room goes quiet.
The fly has landed on the windowsill.
The morning light stretches longer across the floor.
Gary looks at me. His expression is still unreadable, but something in his posture has shifted.
Mrs. Pritchett’s face works through several expressions before settling on something between indignation and uncertainty.
Her mouth opens, closes, opens again.
Then the jailhouse door bangs open hard enough to crack against the sandstone wall.
Gram stands in the doorway, her gray hair pinned up in a knot, her eyes sweeping across the room in a single efficient pass.
She takes in the cell, the bars, me in the corner, Maisie on her feet, Mrs. Pritchett rigid by the table, Gary and the cat.
She processes all of it in less than a second.
Her gaze lands on Mrs. Pritchett.
“Someone explain why my granddaughter spent the night in a jailhouse and I’m only just hearing about it now.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s hands find the table edge, grip it, release. “We caught it on the ridge. This monster. It had Captain. It… Well, I thought it was going to eat the poor cat.”
Gram’s gaze moves past Gary, past Maisie, past the bars.
It lands on me.
Her eyes are pale and sharp, the same shape as Maisie’s but with sixty more years behind them.
She holds my gaze for a long moment.
I brace for the fear.
For the flinch, the recoil, the sharp intake of breath that accompanies recognition of what I am.
It always comes.
Gram looks at me and her expression remains unchanged.
Calm.
Evaluating.
Like she’s reading a recipe and deciding whether to double the vanilla.
She turns back to Mrs. Pritchett. “You put Maisie’s friend in a holding cell? All because he found Gary’s missing cat? Good Lord, what is wrong with you, Deborah?”
Mrs. Pritchett’s chin lifts. “It’s a creature. An unknown. We have protocols—”
“Whose protocols?”
“The Neighborhood Watch—”
“The Neighborhood Watch.” Gram scoffs. “You and Gary and a clipboard. Is that what you’re invoking, Deborah? A clipboard?”
Mrs. Pritchett’s face flushes. “We have a responsibility to this community. People have a right to know what’s living among them.”
“And what is living among them, exactly?” Gram’s voice stays level, almost conversational.
“Eleanor, you can’t possibly—”
“I raised that girl.” Gram points at Maisie without looking at her. “Taught her everything she knows about reading people and reading situations. Are you questioning her judgment, Deborah?”
The silence stretches.
Mrs. Pritchett’s eyes dart between Gram and Maisie, something collapsing in her posture. “I—of course not, but—”
“Good.” Gram folds her arms. “Because if Maisie vouches for this individual, then that’s enough for me.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s voice comes out small. “Did you know? About this… monster? All along?”
Gram holds her gaze. “Since the day I came back to town.” She lets that settle. “The Lord’s got a bigger imagination than we gave Him credit for.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s mouth works around words that won’t form.
Her hands hang at her sides, empty of rope, empty of conviction.
The clipboard on the table might as well be on another planet.
Gram lets the silence do its work. She has the particular patience of someone who has waited out alpacas, children, and a husband who thought he could fix the plumbing.
Finally, Mrs. Pritchett speaks. “Eleanor, I was only trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do, Deborah.” Gram’s voice softens by a fraction. “You were protecting this town. That’s not nothing. But right now, you need to do something harder.”
“What’s that?”
Gram nods toward the cell.
Toward me.
“Thank him for finding Captain. Then let him out.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s face cycles through resistance, confusion, and something that might be the beginning of humility.
She looks at Gary, who offers the smallest possible shrug, one shoulder rising and falling while Captain purrs against his chest.
Mrs. Pritchett approaches the cell.
Her steps are measured, and she stops an arm’s length from the bars.
“I—” She clears her throat, then finds the strength to look me in the face. “Thank you. For finding the cat. And sorry.”
The words come out stiff, nearly military.
She fumbles for the keys on the table, her fingers clumsy, and works the lock with shaking hands.
The mechanism protests, then yields. The cell door swings outward with a groan of old iron. I unfold from the corner, stretching to my full height.
Mrs. Pritchett takes a step back, then another, but she holds her ground.
Her chin lifts, and there’s something like grudging respect in the set of her jaw.
“I’ll be watching,” she says. “This isn’t over.”
“Deborah.” Gram’s voice carries a warning.
“Watching in a neighborly fashion,” Mrs. Pritchett amends. “Concerned interest. That’s all.”
Gary is already moving toward the door, Captain secure against his chest.
He pauses beside me, his free hand resting briefly on the doorframe.
“Thanks,” he says.
The word is simple, unadorned.
Then he’s gone, the truck engine turning over outside, and Mrs. Pritchett is gathering her clipboard and her rope and the remains of the coffee with the efficiency of a woman retreating from a battle she can’t win.
Gram watches her go, then she turns to Maisie.
“Get in my car. Both of you.”
The morning light comes soft through the windshield, painting the desert in shades of rose and amber.
Gram’s hands grip the wheel, her back straight and careful as the highway falls away beneath the tires.
The silence in the car has weight and texture. Gram’s kind of quiet, intentional and absolute.
I sit in the back, compressed to fit the seat, my body pooled around me in a shape that approximates a passenger.
Maisie rides shotgun, her body angled toward the window, her fingers picking at the hem of her shirt.
The landscape slides past.
Somewhere out there, something old and green still pulses in a cave, waiting for company.
I can feel it like a pressure against my awareness, a frequency I almost recognize.
Gram turns onto the dirt road toward Maisie’s studio.
“Gram.” Maisie’s voice is quiet. “Thank you. For what you did back there.”
Gram nods once, her eyes on the road.
“But I have to ask.” Maisie turns in her seat, facing her grandmother directly. “How are you so calm about this? Any of it?”
Gram’s hands adjust on the wheel.
A small shift, almost imperceptible, but I notice the way her knuckles tighten.
“You want the long version or the short one?”
“Either. Both.”
“The short version is that the world is stranger than most people let themselves believe, and I stopped pretending otherwise a long time ago.” Gram pauses. “The long version involves a stiff drink. Possibly several.”
Maisie waits.
Gram doesn’t continue.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it for now.”
Gram’s gaze flicks to the rearview mirror, meeting mine for a brief moment, before she pulls up to the front steps of Maisie’s home and kills the engine.
The morning stretches around us, warm and still.
The ridge looms in the distance, and somewhere beneath it, something waits.
“You’ve had a long night,” Gram says. “You both get some rest now. We’ll talk when it’s time to talk.”
And that’s that.