Ineke laughed so hard she almost fell out of the chair. When she regained control of herself, she took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. “Want to bet on which woman is the first to sit down and make that discovery? Or how long it will take them to stop arguing about it so that someone makes an emergency run to Pops’s general store or the grocery store in Bristol?”

“No bets.” Personally I was hoping it would be the second Mrs. Dane who made that discovery.

“Spoilsport.” Ineke took her milk glass and dish to the sink. “In that case, let’s get the curtains on the rest of the windows and the dry goods into the kitchen cupboards. You want me to help you with the books?”

I shook my head and went outside, distracted by the sound of . . . bells? Ineke followed me out and we watched the goats for a minute. Well, we watched the goats that were grazing on the grass between Julian’s cabin and mine, and the donkeys that were grazing between the cabins on the other side. There were even a couple of those chubby ponies grazing nearby.

“If the ponies aren’t really ponies, what do you think the goats and donkeys are supposed to be?” I asked.

“Organic lawn mowers?” Ineke replied. “They cut the grass and fertilize it at the same time.” She gave me a one-armed hug. “Let’s tackle the rest of the ‘need this done today’ items. Then I have to get back to the boardinghouse, and you should sit outside with a book and catch your breath.”

Catch my breath. Get my blood pressure out of the red zone. I liked that plan.

Besides, tomorrow was soon enough to start thinking about what I was supposed to do with my life. Again.

CHAPTER 56

Them

Windsday, Sumor 5

“You need to send someone out to unplug a toilet,” Yorick said.

“Do you have a plunger? Have you tried to unblock the toilet yourself?”

“No, I don’t have a flipping plunger.” And he wasn’t about to put his hands in a bowl full of floating turds.

Damn Pamella. She just plunked her ass down and pooped before realizing there wasn’t a thing she could use to wipe her ass. So what did she do? She used the scarf she was wearing! Why was the woman wearing a long filmy scarf in this heat? But that’s what she had, and somehow the scarf went down before the turds—along with enough water that the turds didn’t end up floating on the bathroom floor. But now the only toilet downstairs was blocked, and none of the rest of the bathrooms in the main house had any flipping toilet paper either. So he needed the damn plumber to get off his ass and come out here to deal with it.

“Is that the only toilet in your house?”

“Doesn’t matter if it is or not, I want you out here pronto!” Gods, what a place. Couldn’t get service from anyone.

“We’ve got a full schedule for the next few days, but I’ll send someone out as soon as I can. Where are you located?”

“The Jumble.”

“Oh.”

Yorick waited.

“You’ll have to find someone else. Word around the village is someone stirred up the terra indigene in The Jumble, and I won’t send my son out there until things calm down.”

What the . . . ? He couldn’t believe it. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“A guy who plugged up his toilet.”

“I’m Yorick Dane, the owner of The Jumble. You’ve heard of my family?”

“Yeah, I have. You people have a reputation around here. We’re definitely not coming out.”

Yorick stared at his mobile phone for a full minute after the plumber hung up. How dare a sewer jockey speak to him like that? Refuse to do the work?

And where was he supposed to find a new phone book that covered Crystalton and Bristol, the two closest human towns to this place? He’d been lucky to find a phone book for Sproing. The damn thing was years out of date, so he’d been lucky that the plumber hadn’t changed the number. Had been lucky that the plumber was still in business.

That was the biggest problem. A new phone book hadn’t been issued since last year, and with the number of people who vanished during those terrifying attacks last summer, there was no way of knowing if a business had gone under or the owners had died—or had run to some other place to escape.

Leaving the kitchen, Yorick went to the office, trying not to resent Vaughn’s appropriating the desk to make some calls. Vaughn might have the vision of what they could do with this place, but Yorick owned this place, and if someone had to be shuffled off to use the kitchen counter, it should have been Vaughn.

Hearing the fury in Vaughn’s voice, Yorick leaned against the wall near the open door and listened.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if all your trucks are making deliveries today, and I don’t want to hear any whining about having to drive all the way to fucking Sproing. If you want to remain a club member in good standing you will load the box springs, mattresses, and frames for four double beds, and you will get them to a place called The Jumble before the end of the workday.” A pause. “If you move your ass, your men can get here, get the beds set up, and get back home before dark. If you drag your feet, they’ll end up sleeping in the truck at a rest station.”

Yorick shivered. There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. The rest stations were supposed to be a neutral place where humans could spend a night without being attacked or killed. But “supposed to be” wasn’t a guarantee.

The sun must have gone behind some clouds because the hall was suddenly darker than it had been a moment before. Gloomy. Forbidding. And Yorick had an uneasy thought: if The Jumble was considered wild country, were any of the people going to be safe here after the sun went down?

CHAPTER 57

Grimshaw

Windsday, Sumor 5

Sitting on Julian’s porch, working on his second beer, Grimshaw looked at the nearest cabin. Curtains in the windows; a chair and small table on the porch; the large pots of flowers placed along the walls that bordered the front yard. Vicki’s car was parked on the gravel rectangle that served as a driveway.

He’d eaten dinner at the boardinghouse, mainly to get a look at the new guests. A couple of salesmen who routinely stayed in Sproing to take orders from customers in the area. Two couples who wanted to get away for a few days and chose the village where they could see Sproingers and visit wineries. Nothing about any of those people made him think he needed to take a closer look, so he’d driven over to Julian’s cabin in order to sit back and have a beer—and to check on Vicki DeVine.

“She need any help?” he asked when Julian joined him on the porch.

Julian shook his head. “Yesterday afternoon, Cougar and Conan provided the muscle for setting up the bed and placing the heavier pieces of furniture, and Ineke came over today to help Vicki set up the kitchen and put up curtains, things like that. When I went over after work to see if she needed any help, she sounded shaky, which isn’t surprising, but she said she was okay.”

“I didn’t want to serve that eviction notice. It was bullshit.” Grimshaw took a couple of long swallows of beer. “Got to hand it to the terra indigene, though. They picked up on my warning and got a message to Ilya Sanguinati fast enough for him to arrive at The Jumble by the time Vicki opened the door to that dickhead Yorick Dane and his slimy friends or business partners or whatever they are.”

“You’re letting your ire surface, Wayne.” Julian sipped his beer. Then he sighed. “Truth is, I’m glad she’s out of there.”

“I had the impression that most of the people in the village were glad she had taken over The Jumble, including you.”

“We were all glad to see her doing something with the place. Having The Jumble up and running would be a shot in the arm for all our businesses. I mean, gods, have you seen the public beach on the weekends when everyone is looking to cool off or row out on the lake to fish?”

“I’ve been a little too busy to even think about fishing,” Grimshaw said.

Julian eyed him. “Do you fish?”

“Nope. But I’ve been too busy to even think about it.”

“You should come by some morning. We can walk down to the creek and throw in a couple of lines.”