438, it said now. Three days gone out of her twenty-one. Lots of time left. Plenty of time. Providing they find Dacre Shanks.
When eight rolled around, she was dressed and hungry. She went downstairs, following the aroma.
Teddy sat at one end of the table. Amber and Glen sat to his right, and Milo to his left. Glen kept his hand curled, hiding the Deathmark from sight in the same way that Amber’s bracelets hid her scar. When Ella-May was finished serving the food, she sat opposite her husband.
Teddy interlocked his fingers and closed his eyes. “Lord, thank you for this meal we are about to enjoy. Thank you for our guests – after some initial frostiness, they have proven themselves to be nice enough people, and they’ve paid in advance, which I always take as a sign of good manners. Thank you for no dead bodies today and no real crime at all, to be fair. Thank you for my beautiful wife, my wonderful daughter, and for the continuing wellbeing of my town. Amen.”
“Amen,” Amber muttered, along with Glen. Milo and Ella-May remained silent.
“So, Milo,” Teddy said as he reached for the potatoes, “what do you do for a living?”
“I get by.”
“That it? That’s all you do?”
Milo smiled like he was a normal, good-natured kind of guy. “I make ends meet, how about that?”
Teddy shrugged. “That’s fair enough. A man who doesn’t want to talk about his business shouldn’t have to talk about his business. Where you from, originally?”
“Kentucky,” Milo said.
“Aha,” said Teddy. “The Bluegrass State.”
“That’s what they call it.”
“You a farm boy, Milo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pigs? Cattle?”
“Some.” Milo’s smile was easy and his tone was relaxed. He was like a different person. “Ella-May, this is one humdinger of a dinner.”
Ella-May smiled. “Why, thank you, Milo. Humdinger, eh? Never heard my cooking called that before.”
Milo actually chuckled. “How long you two been married?”
“I was nineteen,” said Ella-May, “he was twenty-three. We were married in the summer. My father, who was sheriff, could not let his future son-in-law waste his natural gifts in an aluminum factory, so he made him a deputy and started him on the road to becoming the fine, upstanding law-enforcement official you see before you with gravy dripping down his chin.”
“Goddamn it,” Teddy said, dabbing at himself with his napkin.
“We were so in love.”
Teddy winked at Amber. “She was besotted.”
“Yeah,” said Ella-May, “I was the one going all moon-eyed. I was the one blushing and stammering and falling over bushes …”
Teddy pointed his fork at her. “Hey. I fell over one bush.”
“But it was a big one.”
“Damn near broke my neck,” Teddy muttered.
“I swear, my husband is brighter than he lets on.”
“I’d have to be,” said Teddy.
“Was your dad sheriff when Dacre Shanks was killing people?” Glen asked Ella-May.
Milo’s smile vanished. “Damn it, Glen.”
“What?”
“Boy, you have got to be the most tactless person I have met that I haven’t punched yet,” said Teddy.
Glen looked confused. “We were talking about cops and sheriffs and stuff. I’d have thought that’d be a natural segue into, y’know …”
“We don’t talk about that man at the table,” Ella-May said.
“Right. Um, sorry.”
She nodded. Teddy shoved another forkful of food into his mouth and chewed. Milo looked pissed. Thirty seconds passed where no one said anything. Amber’s wrist burned. She parted the bracelets and took another peek: 436 hours.
“We’re looking for him,” she said quietly.
“Looking for who?” Ella-May asked.
“Shanks,” she said. “We need to find him.”
Milo watched her, but didn’t say anything. Glen shot her a glare and kicked her under the table. She kicked him back harder.
“Ow! God!”
“We lied to you,” she said. Teddy put down his knife and fork and listened. “My life is in danger. I’m not going to tell you how or why or who is coming after me because, I’m sorry, but you’re safer not knowing. And I’m safer with you not knowing. We lied. We’re not family. We didn’t even know each other until a few days ago.”
“I’m not her cousin,” Glen said, rubbing his shin.
“They don’t care about that,” said Milo.
“But I am dying,” Glen added. “It’s just I’m not dying of lupus. I’m not even sure what that is. I’ve got the Deathmark, see, and—”
“They don’t care about any of that, either,” said Milo.
“Dacre Shanks is dead,” said Teddy. “Shot him myself. Me and three other deputies. One of the bullets caught him in the head. We never bothered figuring out who fired that one. But it took off the top of his skull.”
“We know he’s dead,” Amber said carefully. “But we also know there’s more to it than that.”
“You’ve been listening to too many ghost stories,” Ella-May said, getting up from the table.
“No,” said Amber, “but I have seen too many monsters.”
Amber went to bed and had a bad dream. Her demon-self was crouched over Ella-May’s dead body, and she was scooping out and eating the woman’s insides. Standing behind her were her parents, scooping out Amber’s own guts from a gaping cavity in her back.
She woke up and cried for a bit. When she stopped, she heard a creaking – slow and regular. She got up, looked out of the window, saw an ember glowing in the dark. She put on jeans and a sweatshirt, went out on to the back porch.
“Did I wake you?” Teddy asked from his rocking chair.
She shook her head. “I haven’t been sleeping too well, that’s all. I’ve never known anyone who smoked a pipe before.”
He smiled.
