Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

“My father always said they weren’t worth that much.” It was all right to mention her father, she decided; all parents were dead, pretty much, so that made her no different from anyone else. And if she could steer the conversation …

To Yeager’s immediate right, Ernst—Peter’s grandfather? Great-grandfather?—said, “What did your father do?”

“He was a cop.”

“Ah.” This seemed to please Prigge, the other bookend. He actually rubbed the knobbed twigs of his hands together. “A man who knew good from evil.”

She had never heard her father refer to any of the drunks or wife-beaters or scammers as evil, but she said, “Yes, sir. I guess so.”

“Well, that is also what we do here. Tell me”—Yeager cocked his head—“why do the dogs favor you? Why do they … recognize you?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I’m not a dog.”

“But you must have an idea,” Ernst said.

She nodded. “Probably the same way I recognize them.” But not Reverend Yeager or Jess—and why is that?

“And that is?” Yeager asked.

She decided to chance it. “I guess the same way you’re able to tell things.”

She heard Ernst’s sudden, involuntary inhale. Yeager’s vulture-eyes slitted. “Meaning?” Yeager asked.

She’d guessed right; she had him, and there was just the smallest crack in his blankness, that cloudy glass: something very wet and a little metallic, an odor that reminded her of the day the dogs had nearly killed her and Ellie.

Water? A river? No, that’s not quite it. More like … rain.

Rain? She remembered the day this had all begun, and those storm clouds to the southwest and the gray slashes that looked like rain.

Is that why he smells like wet glass? Because he was by a window, watching the rain when it happened?

“Meaning?” Yeager repeated.

She felt the intensity of the other men’s gazes burning holes into her brain, but she did not allow her eyes to wander. “Meaning you can tell if what I’m saying is true because you feel it, literally, through your hands.”

A beat. No one spoke. Yeager’s eyes raked her face and then he abruptly let go of her hands. His gaze clicked to a point over her shoulder. “Matt, wait outside a moment, will you?”

She’d completely forgotten Kincaid was there. “Uh,” Kincaid said, clearly surprised. “Okay.”

She felt a quick prick of fear. “Why can’t he stay?” she asked Yeager.

He ignored her. “Matt?”

“Sure. I’ll be right outside, Alex. It’ll be okay.”

Yeager waited until Kincaid was gone, and then he turned his searchlight gaze onto Alex once more. “Yours isn’t touch.”

“Why couldn’t he stay?”

“Because there are some things better kept behind closed doors,” Ernst said. Of all the others, he seemed to be the one closest to Yeager in authority. On Yeager’s right hand, she realized: pretty biblical. She wondered if Ernst’s first name was Michael. “The fewer who know, the safer for everyone,” Ernst said.

“What is it that you sense?” Yeager asked. His eyes pinned her. “Is yours touch?”

“No. But I can tell things like you can.”

“Such as?”

“I know what people are feeling sometimes.” She paused. “I know when they—the Changed—are around.”

“What?” Ernst said, startled. “You can do that?”

“Yes,” she said, but she kept her gaze on Yeager.

“How?” Yeager asked.

“The same way I know there’s a murderer in this building,” she said. “Because I smell him.”

49

He’d lost weight and grown a beard. His hair was much longer, too, well past his shoulders. Yet the smell she’d caught in the front hall when the ladies were let in with their food trolley was the same as on the day he’d shot Tom: stale tobacco, rotten teeth, and Jim Beam.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Glaring, Harlan balled a grimy rag in one ham-fist. On top of his normal reek, he also smelled of the bleach and ammonia he used to mop the floors of the jail cells. As the village hall janitor, Harlan had, Alex decided, found his true calling. Harlan jammed the rag into a grubby hip pocket. “I’ve never seen this kid before in my life.”

“Why would she lie?” asked Yeager. The others were still at their places on the bench, but he had descended, coming to stand alongside her. Yeager was smaller than she’d imagined, nearly half a head shorter than she. He had not taken Harlan’s hands, however, which Alex thought must be a test of some kind.

Not of Harlan, though. Yeager was testing her.

Harlan glowered. “Because she’s a kid, and she’s got some kind of ax to grind. But I’m telling the truth. I never seen her before just now.”

“Liar. What happened to Ellie?” Alex asked.

“I’m sorry. Who’s that? Relative of yours? A dog, maybe?”

From the bench, Ernst said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Let’s wait until—” Yeager broke off as the courtroom door opened and Peter hurried in, a bulging knapsack in his arms. Chris and Jet followed close behind.

“Sorry.” Peter’s hair was windblown, and his cheeks were ruddy with cold. He plunked the knapsack onto one of the courtroom’s long attorney tables as Chris dumped a second. “There was a lot of crap to gather up.”

“Hey,” said Harlan, “that’s my stuff. You got no right to go through my stuff.”

“On the contrary,” said Yeager, and nodded at Chris and Peter. “Open them.”

What tumbled out were clothes, mostly: underwear, jeans, sweaters, flannel shirts, long johns, socks. Peter had gathered up toiletries, shoes, two watch caps, a set of mittens, and several ratty magazines. “And a Bible,” he said, pulling the leather-bound volume from the knapsack.

“Anything you recognize?” Yeager asked her.

Alex shook her head. She’d felt a flare of hope, but a single glance told her that the Bible was not Aunt Hannah’s.

“See?” Harlan folded his arms over his chest. “You got the wrong guy.”

“No, I don’t,” Alex said. She looked at Chris. “There’s nothing else?”

“Just this,” Peter said, and reached into one of the knapsack’s side pouches. “Heavy sucker.”