Some ran, as he had. Others were carried. Another truck pulled up, and the man behind the wheel gestured ahead.
Others piled into the bed, boosted in by Eddie or Bill. Kids mostly, some women. He recognized one or two. Whenever they’d bothered to feed prisoners, the slaves had brought in the slop they called food.
The boy beside him, younger than the youngest in his own pack, shivered with the cold.
“Here, you can share my blanket. This is Joe.”
He heard the roar of an engine, saw the girl he’d run with on the back of a motorcycle, behind a boy. Dark hair like the girl’s, not as curly.
The one, Garrett realized, who’d helped Jan.
He swung the bike in a half circle, stopped. “We got all we could get—some just ran so we couldn’t pull them in. They’re going to be busy putting out fires, so the ones who ran might make it.”
“Jonah said move out,” Eddie called and hopped behind the wheel.
“We’ll take point. Flynn and Starr have flank.”
He roared off, dark hair flying.
Eddie opened the window to the bed, raising his voice as he pulled into the convoy. “Hi there. I’m Eddie, and I’ll be your driver tonight. Just settle back, ’cause we’ve got a ways to go. There’s water back there and blankets. Be sweet, everybody, and share.”
Garrett shifted closer to the window. “Who was that on the motorcycle?”
“Duncan. Tonia’s twin brother. Our resident hell-raiser. Get yourself some water, dude, catch a nap if you want. We’ve got a good hour’s drive—and food and medical attention once we get you there.”
“Marshall’s there? And everybody?”
“That’s a fact, Jack.” Eddie took a hand off the wheel, angled himself to reach a hand back through the little window, give Garrett’s a squeeze. “They’re all waiting for you, so you can chill now.”
Because more tears wanted to come, Garrett blinked hard. “Where are we going? Where is ‘there’?”
“My man, we’re heading to New Hope.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fallon mangled a basic incantation—twice—and very nearly added belladonna rather than bergamot to a simple potion before Mallick stopped her.
“Do you wish to poison an enemy?”
“What?” Her brow furrowed as she looked up. “No.” Then she looked down at the clearly marked bottle in her hand. “Oh.” She put the bottle back and, after a moment—too long a moment to Mallick’s mind—chose the bergamot. “So I made a mistake.”
He objected nearly as much to the dismissal of her carelessness as to the carelessness itself.
Both were unacceptable, but the dismissal showed weakness.
“A mistake with belladonna can kill. As a mistake with an incantation can have far-reaching and disastrous consequences. Your words and actions, the precision of them, matter.”
“Maybe if you didn’t expect me to remember everything, and stand around watching me all the time, I wouldn’t make a mistake.”
“Perhaps my mistake is believing you’d progressed enough to know the properties and uses of extracts, oils, and powders. Sit then, and we’ll start at the beginning.”
“I know the stupid properties, okay?” Because it shook, the snap in her voice lost most of its sting. “I just picked up the wrong bottle. And ingredients like belladonna and foxglove and other deadlies should be separated out into their section instead of everything together in alphabetical order.”
He inclined his head. “That is a fair point. You may begin that task now.”
“There are hundreds! It’ll take half the day.”
“Then you should begin. The task should help calm and focus your mind.”
“I don’t want to spend all day cooped up in here doing something you should’ve done in the first place. I want to go outside. I want some air. I don’t feel good.”
Clearly, he thought, she didn’t. The misery in her eyes, the sheen of tears in them unnerved him more than a little.
Why had he, a man who knew so little of children, and less about female children, been tasked with the care and training of a girl child?
For despite her power, she was still a child.
A female child, he remembered, and cleared his throat.
“Ah. Have you begun your monthly courses?”
“My …” It took her a minute, then misery flashed into disgust. Disgust edged right over into contempt.
“God!” Pulling at her hair, turning in a circle, she inadvertently had the candles flaming. “My mother was right. She was right! The minute a woman’s out of sorts or upset, men think or are even stupid enough to say something about her period.”
“I … am at a loss.”
“And until men start cramping and bleeding every month, they should just shut up about it.”
“Done.”
Fallon dropped her hands, then lifted them again to press her fingers to her eyes. “I’m just tired. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep very well.”
“You made a fine charm for quiet sleep. Take it, use it. I’ll help you reorganize our ingredients, as you’re right about the separation. Then we’ll make a sleep potion, a fresh one, for you. And you’ll take a ride later, in the air.”
He stopped because while the fire had gone out of her eyes, those potent gray eyes, the misery only increased.
More than a sleepless night, he thought. And he was a fool, bungling her care as surely as she had the incantation.
“You long for your family, and I am not your family. You wish for your mother’s comfort, your father’s shoulder. I can’t be that for you. But will you not trust me enough to tell me what troubles you?”
“I had dreams.”
“Dreams or visions?” He put up a hand when those eyes filled. Yes, he was a fool and a bungler. “No matter just yet. Come, sit. Sit,” he repeated. “I’ll make you tea.”
“I don’t want—”
“Only to soothe,” he assured her as he moved to choose herbs to steep. “I’ll have some as well. I can teach you and train you, I can guide and defend you. But I know little of young girls and their needs beyond the training. You must give me time to learn, to practice. Your dreams disturbed you.”
“I—I unpacked. I hung up Colin’s wind chime and put out Ethan’s flower. I put out the picture my parents had made for me, of the whole family. So the room is more like mine.”
She knuckled at her eyes, not at tears, Mallick noted, but at fatigue.
“I found Taibhse, and that was—it was the best. And, like I told you, I met Mick. He’s kind of a jerk, but …” She shrugged. “And I thought about tracking the wolf with the golden collar, and that would be fun. So if I have to do this, at least after I study and train and practice, I have Grace and now Taibhse, and jerky Mick. So maybe I can learn enough. Like building the beehive. It’s one step, one piece at a time. Like Dad says, you do this, then you do that, then the next thing.
“I felt happy.”
He brought the tea to the table, sat across from her. “Then you dreamed. Will you tell me?”
“The first was a place. It’s stupid.”
“The place is stupid?”
“No, no. I’ve never been there. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from the farm, so I’ve never been there, but I felt I knew the place. With the stones in a circle, coming up out of the fog, and the empty fields, the woods dark and close. Then a man walked through the fog to the stones. I know I’ve never seen him before, but there was something, and I felt … I felt something. He had dark hair, and a sword. And green eyes. Dark green like the shadows in faerie-land.”
“ ‘Faerie-land.’ ”
She flushed just a little, lifted her tea. “It’s what I call the glade where I found Taibhse. I know the color of his eyes because even though I wasn’t in the dream like you sometimes are, I wasn’t in it, he turned his head and he looked right at me. Like through a window or a mirror. And he spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”