Chapter 6. Jenny #2
I felt young again, focused and unstoppable. I moved silently down the brick sidewalk like a predator stalking her prey. I felt every crack and imperfection through the soles of my orthopedic sneakers. When I reached the back of the van, I crouched and sniffed the air.
The scent confirmed it. This was Ronnie Kensington’s van.
If he was smart, he’d have locked the door.
I pried up a sidewalk brick and hoped Denise and Walnut were the only ones still awake.
This was a residential street, and our profit margin at the store was thin enough without headlines like Local Bookseller Goes On Window-Smashing Rampage going viral on the internet.
I’d have to strike quickly. First, the window, then—
What are you doing, Winter? It would be so easy to let myself go, to punish this kid for what Annette had gone through tonight. This was what I’d been trained to do. Find the threat and take it out.
After three decades, how was it still so easy to fall back into old patterns? To let instinct and passion take over, knowing where they could lead?
I hadn’t stopped being a Hunter because I wanted to escape the violence. I’d stopped because it had gotten too easy to embrace it. To use it as a way to avoid the fear and the anger and the grief.
I retreated and sat on the curb where a parked SUV would hide me if Ronnie happened to check his mirror.
Once there, I let myself think about Annette, about every burn I’d bandaged, every flinch and gasp she’d tried to hide.
I stopped fighting the anger. Instead, I felt it, just like my therapist had suggested all those years ago.
After a while, I sank past the anger to the fear and helplessness beneath.
How close had I come to losing Annette tonight?
The brick clutched in my hand cracked. I unclamped my fingers, letting half of it clatter onto the curb.
Annoyance number thirty-two of being a Hunter of Artemis: accidentally breaking stuff.
Better a brick than this kid’s skull. I waited several more minutes until the worst of the fear receded.
Once I was calm—or at least calmish—I stood and walked toward the van.
I raised my half-brick in one hand to smash the window, then stopped myself.
On the off chance Ronnie was dumb enough to leave it unlocked, I grabbed the handle and pulled.
The door swung open.
To Ronnie’s credit, he only jumped a little at the sight of me standing there, and he recovered fast, swinging his binoculars at my face.
I blocked them with my sidewalk brick. The binoculars made a satisfying crunch. One of the lenses cracked and fell out.
He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, either. That made it easy to grab his jacket with my free hand and toss him to the sidewalk.
He rolled, jumped to his feet, and reached inside his coat, probably going for the knife he’d used against the harvester. I kicked his arm before he could pull it from its sheath. He stumbled and landed on his back again.
I tossed my broken brick aside. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you draw that knife, I’ll make you swallow it.”
Not my best banter, but it worked. He raised both hands so I could see they were empty. “You’re Jenny Winter. You work at that bookstore.”
“And you’re Ronald Kensington.”
His brows lowered, and his lips tightened. “How did you find me?”
“Traditionally, the one doing the ass-kicking asks the questions and the ass-kickee answers. What do you want with me and my friends?”
“Like you don’t know.” He scooted closer and kicked, trying to sweep my feet.
I planted my weight and let his foot slam uselessly against my shin. I’d have a heck of a bruise in the morning, but right now I wanted him intimidated. Preferably without me having to commit excessive acts of violence.
There was a familiar script to these encounters.
We’d gotten through the Introduction and moved on to the Reassessment, when the bad guy realized he’d badly underestimated me.
Next would usually be Indignant Protests with Gratuitous Insults, a nearly universal response to getting whooped by a skinny little Asian girl—or a plump middle-aged Asian woman, now.
He pushed himself up on his elbows. I could tell from his quickened breathing and heartbeat that he was shaken, but his face didn’t show it. “Exorcizo, te, inundissine spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio.”
He’d skipped Indignant Protests and jumped right to Trying a Different Tactic. “Is that supposed to be an exorcism?” I asked. “I think the word you’re looking for is immundissime, not inundissine. And that drawl is not helping your Latin.”
“You’re not demon-possessed.” He looked me over. “Are you a witch?”
“A witch in Salem. How original.” I circled him. “Let’s start with an easy question. Where can I find your three friends from the Gauntlet?”
He stared at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Mind-reading wasn’t one of my gifts, but he sounded sincere. I didn’t believe for a second that the timing of the attacks was a coincidence, but maybe things were more complicated than I’d thought.
Who was I kidding? Things were always more complicated. I switched gears and hit him with the facts I knew. “Last night, you attacked a harvester. Tonight you were spying on our store. Why?”
He got an arrogant, haughty expression on his face that made me want to punch it. “I’m trying to save the world.”
“They say you should start with baby steps. Have you tried composting?” I cocked a thumb at the van. “Or you could trade your stalker-mobile in for a hybrid.”
A porch light came on two houses down. Time to relocate. I lowered my voice. “I’m going to take that knife and any other weapons you’re hiding now. Then we’re going to walk to my place. If you want to walk out again, you’ll behave yourself and answer every question we ask.”
From behind me came the growl of an engine, followed by the crunch-and-rubber sound of tires on blacktop. The van accelerated toward me. The wheels jumped the curb.
I grabbed Ronnie, threw him out of the way, and dove after him. Ronnie must have had a partner hiding in the van. How had I missed that? It was an amateur mistake, completely unforgiveable.
The van jolted to a stop. The driver’s seat was empty.
Ronnie didn’t appear to be mentally controlling it or anything like that, but he wasn’t freaking out about his van coming to life, either. He scooted sideways, putting distance between the two of us.
The van pulled back and lunged at me a second time.
I dodged again. “Serious Christine vibes.”
Ronnie looked at me with his forehead crinkled.
“Stephen King’s book about a possessed car? They even made a movie about it.” I refused to be the middle-aged woman who grumbled about kids these days, but . . .“Seriously, put your phone away and spend some time at the library.”
More lights came on around us. A man shouted about calling the police.
The van’s side door slid open. Ronnie climbed inside, never taking his attention off me. With the driver’s seat still clearly empty, the van took off down the street.
I brushed dirt and grass from my pants. “That could have gone better.”
I imagined both Artemis and Felipe nodding in agreement.
“I want all of you to study these three pictures. I wasn’t planning to share these yet, but it seems some of you have gotten impatient. Meet Annette Thorne, Temple Finn, and Jenny Winter. They live on Chestnut Street, in Second Life Books and Gifts.”
“I know that place. They’ve got a shelf that’s nothing but boxes of old comics for like fifty cents each. I once spent twenty bucks for—”
“These people are dangerous. Especially Jenny Winter. You might think you’re hot shit, thanks to the gifts I’ve given you, but any one of these three could swat you like a mosquito. Do. Not. Fuck with them. Do I make myself clear?”
“I . . . I don’t think they’d try to hurt anyone.”
“You don’t know them. You see three old shopkeepers selling trinkets and used comic books. You don’t see the blood on their hands, enough blood to drown in.”
“If they’re so dangerous, shouldn’t we do something about them?”
“Ask Ethan, Noah, and Isaiah how that went. No, for the moment, as long as we leave them alone, they should leave us alone. When they become a problem—and they will—I’ll take care of it myself.”