struck him.
âOh, dammit!â he shouted. His right hand went up to his mouth and covered it. âDammit, how the hell is that possibleâ¦â He ran back to the desk and his eyes flew across the screen.
The enormous truck was obstructing the view for the yuppie couple and their movers, but it would only take one fool to walk around the loading ramp and theyâd see her. Code Fucking Red quadrupled. Theyâd call 911: a seriously mutilated, underfed womanâ yes, she looks disheveled; send an ambulance and the police . Or, worse: Theyâd try to help her themselves. Then the consequences would be vast.
âWhatâs she doing there, for Christâs sake? Wasnât she supposed to be with the Grant family?â
âYes, untilâ¦â Claire looked in her log. âAt least until eight thirty-seven this morning, when the kid apped that he had to go to school. After that the house was empty.â
âHow does the old bag figure it out?â
âRelax,â Warren said. âBe happy sheâs not in their living room. Sheâs standing on a lawn; weâll put the old umbrella clothesline on her, with sheets. You and Marty can be there in five minutes. Iâll call the folks from that property or one of their neighbors and ask them to cover her with a blanket till we get there.â
Grim ran to the exit and pushed Marty down the corridor. âWhat a clusterfuck.â
âIf they see her, weâll say sheâs part of the festival,â Warren said. He flashed Grim a smile that was more appropriate for a mojito at a salsa party than a situation where people could die, and failed abysmally in his goal to calm Grim down. âA joke from the locals to welcome the newbies. Ooo-ooo-ooo, what a little suggestion can do. Itâs only a witch.â
Robert Grim spun around in the doorway. âThis is not fucking Hansel and Gretel!â
Â
THREE
THE LAST WARM day of the year came and went. The semester was weeks under way and Steve Grant had begun to adjust to the rhythm of alternating between classes at New York Med and his job as project leader at the scientific research center. Jocelyn was working three and a half days a week at the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum in Cornwall and the boys had begun to settle into their new school year at OâNeill High School in Highland Falls, albeit with the usual reluctance. Tyler had made it through junior year by the skin of his teeth and was now taking extra math classes to keep on track for his finals. It made him irritable. Tyler was a man of words, not of numbers, and if he passed this yearâa big âif,â if you asked Steveâhe wanted to work with words. Journalism, preferably at NYU in the city, although that would mean commuting back and forth every day. A dorm room on campus, at such a distance from Black Spring, would be too dangerous. It would creep up on him slowly, almost imperceptibly ⦠but in the end it would hit home, and possibly too unexpectedly for him to see it coming.
Matt had waltzed through his first year of junior high and begun his second with the hyperactive mood swings of puberty. He surrounded himself with girls from school and seemed to share their endless giggling fits as well as their PMS rages, and would go into a funk at the drop of a hat. Jocelyn had expressed her concern that Matt might come out of the closet this year or the next, and although Steve had raised his eyebrows at the idea he suspected Jocelyn was right. The idea alarmed him, not because either of them held conservative views but because he still saw Matt as what he always had been: a sweet, vulnerable child.
Theyâre really growing up, he thought, not without a touch of wistfulness. And weâre growing old. No oneâs making an exception for us. Weâre all going to get old ⦠and it will be in Black Spring.
Plunged into a grave mood by this thought, he walked down the