spent too much of the past few months living out of a suitcase, not knowing what new horror the next day will bring.”
“Life goes on,” Bry conceded, as he glanced at Lakesh’s screen. “But you look like you’re puzzling over something there.”
“Brigid,” Lakesh said, ignoring the screen. “I fear that something has broken inside her, her spirit, if you will. What Ullikummis did took so much from her, and one can ill imagine what the effects of that are with her incredible memory. If she won’t let us help her, I fear we could lose her forever.
“Am I an old fool to worry so, Donald?”
Bry chuckled. “If you are, then I am, too,” he said. “Brigid’s not herself....”
“She’s more herself than she’s been in months,” Lakesh corrected. “That’s the problem. She’s grown—experience has shaped her. She almost bit my head off when I proposed she talk things over with Reba.”
“Maybe therapy isn’t the answer,” Donald said after a moment’s consideration. “One time when I was eight, my cat—Tiger—died. I really loved that cat, and my mom fussed and worried herself silly at what his passing would do to me. She asked if I would like a new cat, but I didn’t want one. Eventually, she tried to get me to see a child psychiatrist.”
“For a cat?” Lakesh asked.
“For a cat,” Bry confirmed. “So, I saw her—a nice enough woman, though I’ll be damned if I can recall her name after all these years. And we talked some, life and sorrow and all that. And it just made me realize that—you know, all I wanted was for people to stop asking me how I felt, to stop going on about it. I knew Tiger wasn’t coming back, and it wasn’t that I wanted a new cat. I just wanted to put that behind me and do new stuff.”
“What happened?” Lakesh asked.
“Eventually the therapy sessions stopped,” Bry said. “I probably only went for about four weeks, but that’s a long time when you’re eight. I think the shrink gave up when all I would talk about was some movie that I’d seen a trailer for. I can’t remember what the movie was now, either. Go figure.”
Lakesh laughed. “It was always something when you were a child, wasn’t it?”
Bry nodded. “You’ve tried to help, Lakesh, but maybe Brigid can just figure this out in her own way. No matter how much people care, probably all the questions aren’t helping her right now. Nor is being here, with reminders of what Ullikummis did to us there to see on every surface.”
“Perhaps not,” Lakesh said, his eyes flicking back to the image on his computer terminal.
Bry watched as a smile crept across Lakesh’s face. “I know that look,” he said. “What is it?”
“You may have provided the solution to two problems,” Lakesh said. “Rosalia requires the interphaser to travel to her next destination, but I am reluctant to leave it with her. However, if I were to send Brigid along for the trip, she could retrieve the interphaser and take a little time away from everything that’s happening here.”
Bry smiled. “Happy to help. Shall we say ‘eureka’?” he asked.
“Oh, why not?” Lakesh laughed, and the two men punched their fists in the air.
“Eureka!”
Chapter 5
Those old stones were a-rattling.
In the darkened area beneath the stage in the old aircraft hangar, Domi pulled her hand back from the box. Her eyes widened as a sound came from it like the clip-clopping of hoofbeats. But already she was too late. A rush of stones came with her, racing over her hand and up her arm like insects, moving under their own power.
“No!” Domi cried out, scampering backward with her eyes fixed on the dark shapes running up her flesh. Before her, the box continued to tremble just slightly, as though it had been knocked, its contents rattling like cooking kernels of popcorn.
* * *
ON THE STAGE ABOVE, the Stone Widow was speaking of salvation. “The future will need strength,” she proclaimed.
From his position in the jostling crowd, Kane watched as one of the three robed figures who were acting as the woman’s assistants brought a wooden box over to her from its place at the edge of the stage. The box was roughly one foot square, and though Kane couldn’t know it, it was an identical match to the one that Domi had just discovered beneath the raised stage.
“You all shall be that strength,” the woman on stage continued joyously.
The crowd cheered in agreement, pushing ever closer to the orator. On stage, the robed man nudged the lid of the box aside, opening it so that the Stone Widow could reach within. From where he stood, Kane could not see what was in the box but he could tell it was heavy.
* * *
JUST FEET BELOW, Domi gasped as the strange stones ran across her skin. She brushed at them as their dark shapes moved along her right arm, watching in horror as they clung to her hand, ringing her wrist with a caking of stones. She grunted as she tried once again to pluck them from her flesh.
Several of the stones were sinking into the flesh of her right arm where they had first touched her, digging in with their sharp edges, forming the beginnings of a shell across Domi’s skin. And all Domi could do was grit her teeth against the pain.
* * *
CLOSE TO THE FRONT of the stage, Edwards felt the pull of the box as the Stone Widow reached within. It seemed to be tugging at his mind, magnet to magnet.
“We are all grieving,” the woman on stage proclaimed. “Ullikummis ascended, and we are left to grieve the passing. But the future is right here, within me. Within us all.”
With the crowd transfixed, the Stone Widow plucked a handful of stones from the box, each one no bigger than her thumb joint. Kane balked as he realized that they were shards of Ullikummis. He searched the crowd for Edwards, saw the man reach a hand to his forehead and wince as if in pain.
The Stone Widow held her arm outstretched and, before Kane could do anything, opened her hand, palm down, above Edwards’s head. A single stone—just a pebble really—dropped from her hand, falling onto Edwards’s shoulders and the back of his neck. Edwards fell back, sweeping at the stone and brushing it away over the heads of the crowd. Beside him, another crowd member was receiving one of the living stones, arms outstretched to accept this precious gift from a god. But as the Stone Widow handed over the stone, there came a crash from below the stage and she turned.
One of the robed security men turned also, his brow furrowed beneath his hood. “What the heck—?”
Then there came more bumping from the underside of the stage as Domi bashed her head against it in her haste to get out, the living stones pouring across her skin, all the way up her right arm.
In front of the stage, Edwards shook his head to clear it of the buzzing before searching the crowd to locate his colleagues. “Kane—? Grant—?”
From his right, Kane came hurtling forward, swept along by
