My eyes burned with tears; I leaned over and kissed his big fat lip. Beneath mine, his mouth moved. I reared back, my own eyes widening when his opened.
“Grace?” His voice was thick, hoarse, confused.
“I?
??m here.”
“How?”
“My father didn’t leave me out in the mountains when I was four for nothing.”
“He what?” Ian jerked upward, then moaned and fell back.
“Hey, relax. I just meant I know how to find my way around, how to follow someone. She didn’t stand a chance.”
“It’s Adsila.”
“I know. She’s Quatie.”
His face screwed up, then straightened out as he hissed in pain.
“Killing young, healthy people made her younger and healthier. I saw a picture of Quatie when she was about my age. Spitting image of Adsila.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, great stuff,” I said impatiently. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She said she’d be back when the sun died and the thunder was born.”
The shadows had lengthened, and the storm had begun to swirl old dead leaves across the stubbly grass. “Soon. What did she do to you?”
“Tied me up and beat me bloody,” he said, as if what had happened were nothing more than a normal day’s activities. I had to wonder what his life had been like in Oklahoma.
“Why now?” I asked. “She knew I had Grandmother’s papers.”
“She also knew you couldn’t read them until I showed up; then she lit your house on fire.”
“How? She could barely walk.”
“She could fly.”
I recalled the blaze of sparks in the sky as I’d driven from Quatie’s place to my own. I guess flying instead of limping, growing younger instead of dying, was some kind of rationalization for why Quatie had decided being evil was better than being herself.
“She flew to my house and used the sparks flying out of her butt to flame my roof?”
“Or a match.”
I guess it didn’t really matter how she’d done it.
“The joke was on her because you’d already taken the papers.”
“Then we foolishly let her know we still had them.”
Whoops.
“Even though she didn’t think I knew how to kill her,” I said, “it would make sense, in an evil villain sort of way, to kill me, just in case.”
“She was fond of you, at least until the Raven Mocker took over completely. The more lives she ate, the less Quatie she became.”