Mertrice Stroup-Ogle’s last words knocked me into left field. My dad? She had talked to my dad about Belshazzar’s Feast? Why? When? That made no sense, as far as I could tell. What would my dad care about Belshazzar’s Feast?
I realized I was still standing on Mertrice’s porch, staring at my distorted reflection in the brass knocker. The wind whistled down out of the Bighorns, combing trembling lines in the knee-high weeds and bending them so that they rasped against my pants. Carrying away the wet vegetable smell of Mertrice’s lot, the wind left the taste of stone in my mouth. It was getting late, I realized; I didn’t have a watch or a phone, but the sun had shrunk to a hard yellow sliver on the horizon, and the shadows were long and deep. If I was going to go to Hannah and Tyler’s house, I needed to do it now.
As my feet carried me out of the foothills and away from those battered houses with their tilting chain fences, my mind replayed the conversation with Mertrice over and over again. The smattering of information I had provided about Emmett—my character witness, she had called it—seemed an incredibly low price for what I had gotten in return. True, Mertrice had seemed eager, even desperate, to talk. She had been carrying that burden for a long time. Since—
—the year of our Lord 1853—
—Hanshew’s death, at the very least. She hadn’t been threatened, she said. I got the feeling, though, that no one had needed to threaten her. Hanshew’s death had been message enough.
Some of what Mertrice had told me fit neatly with the rest of what I’d learned or assumed. Belshazzar’s Feast dealt in prostitution, drugs, probably gambling, and any other vice you could think of. They were part of the human and drug trafficking that passed through the Western U.S. Possibly, they were a major part of it. And there was a corrupt element of law enforcement that had killed Hanshew to silence him—and it really wasn’t too much of a surprise to learn that Fred Fort was a member of that element.
But the rest of her story had left me reeling. I tried to corral the facts and sort them as the foothills leveled out and I hit Vehpese proper. While it was true that Belshazzar’s Feast was involved in all the other illegal business that came through the state, it wasn’t drugs or gambling or prostitution that had put a young, idealistic Mertrice Stroup-Ogle on the trail. It had been the disappearance of a young boy: James Spencer.
The connection between Belshazzar’s Feast and the recent disappearances had seemed likely; after all, River’s ghost had tried to tell me as much when Mr. Warbrath was killed. But in light of Mertrice’s story, I now had to face the fact that the disappearances had been going on for much longer than I had thought—that the equally discomfiting fact that the connection between Belshazzar’s Feast and the disappearance was more intense, more . . . purposeful than I had ever assumed. That word, purposeful, struck me as correct, even though I wasn’t sure how it was true. There was some sort of purpose behind these abductions. And if Mertrice was right, they’d been going on for almost thirty years. Maybe for much, much longer, because that old tax ledger had the names of Urho Rattling Tent and Babria Lady Buckhardt, the same two names that Ginny had mentioned when I had asked her why there were so many people with abilities in the area. Who were they? What did they have to do with what was happening now, over a hundred and fifty years later?
More to the point, I thought as Vehpese High School came into sight, who was Jim Spencer? I mean, who was he really? I hadn’t known that he’d grown up in Vehpese. I hadn’t really even thought about it, although I supposed it made sense. Why had he been taken to Belshazzar’s Feast? Why had he come back? And why had he refused to tell anyone what had happened? The analytical part of my brain told me that I couldn’t trust Jim Spencer. Yes, he had saved my life, but it was possible that Makayla and the others had arranged for him to save me. It wouldn’t have been easy—no one had known I was going to the school that night, and Mrs. Troutt’s arrival seemed like coincidence too—but it could have happened.
My gut, on the other hand, told me that whatever other feelings I had for Jim Spencer—and there were a lot of them—suspicion wasn’t one of them. I had touched him. I had looked into that secret, inner part of him. I had found the fire that he kept hidden, but I had also found a radiant goodness. His refusal to talk frustrated me, as I’m sure it had frustrated Mertrice twenty-five years ago, but it didn’t make him a bad person. I hoped that, when push came to shove, he would help.
As I turned up 28th Street, my brain cycled back to the beginning and started working on my dad again. Why had he gone to Mertrice Stroup-Ogle? What had he wanted from her? And how had he known about Belshazzar’s Feast? The last question had a possible answer that flitted around the back of my head: Dad was a junkie, through and through. Maybe he had gotten in deep enough that someone hooked him up with Belshazzar’s Feast. Maybe he had been there as a customer. But still, why go to Stroup-Ogle?
This street of Vehpese had a certain aged stateliness. The houses were tall and narrow, with sharply peaked roofs and narrow windows. The lots were small too, pinned back by iron fences, and the iron fences in turn had left, over the decades, rusty stains across the sidewalk. Lights had come on in the windows, and in the gloom the houses looked a little bit like they’d been cut from a storybook. Peter Pan, maybe. The lost boys. I shivered as a gale cut up the back of my jacket. That was too close to the truth for comfort.
At the end of the block sat a house that, even in the shadows, had obviously already started the long, slow slide towards the scrap heap. The roof sagged where shingles and supports had rotted away, and the upper windows were dark, with the glass gleaming the way eyes gleam in the shadows. Part of the wrap-around porch had been ripped up, leaving a splintered hole that reminded me of a missing tooth. One of the front teeth, I thought. Maybe a couple of them. Not until I drew closer did I notice the screech of metal. It took me a moment to locate the sound: a verdigris weathervane in the shape of a rooster spun wildly on the roof peak. Whoever lived here, I thought, probably had a hell of a time with their sense of direction.
Of course, this house with the whirling weathervane belonged to Hannah and Tyler’s grandmother. 187 North 28th Street. In the scummy glow of a streetlight, I knocked on the door.
Brisk, confident footsteps came towards the door, and a moment later it opened. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light. A trim older woman stood there. Everything about her, from her coiffed platinum hair to her nails, looked like it took time and money. She cocked her hip against the door, and the movement made her seem much younger.
“I suppose,” she said, and her voice had a warm, mellow depth to it, reminding me of honey, “you are the boy that my grandchildren won’t stop talking about.”
“I suppose.”
She studied me for a moment. “Dinner’s not quite ready yet. I’m afraid you’ll have to work for your supper.”
Holding out my hands, I turned them over for inspection.
“Come in,” was all she said, and I followed her into the house.
In spite of the dilapidated exterior, the inside of the house looked remarkably well maintained. The floors were hardwood, and they shone from use and polish. The front room were dark, but Tyler and Hannah’s grandmother led me straight back to the kitchen. It had a classic—no, vintage—feel. The appliances clean and white, but with the slipstream design that I associated with the 50s. Black and white tile ran across the floor, and matching black and white curtains hung across the windows. In a family room that jutted off from the kitchen, Tyler was screaming in excitement as he played a video game, while Hannah curled up on the sofa with an iPad on her knees.
“Look who’s here,” the grandmother said, her body molding to the shape of the archway that opened onto the family room.
“Vie,” Tyler shouted, but his attention switched back to the video game almost immediately.
Hannah, for her part, offered a brilliant smile before returning to the iPad.
“It’s more than I get,” the older woman said, holding to her position in the archway as she watched her grandchildren. “They can’t wait to get on those stupid machines.” Then, shifting away from the wall, she said, “We’d better get started, or they’ll be screaming for blood in half an hour.”
At the kitchen island, she set up a cutting-board and knife and a red onion while I washed my hands. She set me to work slicing onions, while she checked on something in the oven. The silver brand name slanting across the white enamel read O’Keefe and Merritt, but I forgot about the name as soon as I caught a whiff of whatever she was cooking. It had chili powder in it, I could tell that much, and my stomach gave an anticipatory grumble.
“Well,” she said, busying herself with a pot and not bothering to look at me. “What’s your name?”
“Vie. Vie Eliot.”
“My name is Lucy Harwood. You can call me Miss Lucy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t suppose you’re all manners, are you? You’re a very good-looking young man. If you’re all manners too, well, you’re going to miss out on a great deal of fun while you’re young.”
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I just kept slicing onions.
“Hannah and Tyler haven’t stopped talking about you since they came to live here. They are convinced that you are the next best thing to Jesus, but since I’m not a church-going woman, that doesn’t hold much water for me.”
“They’re nice kids. They went out of their way to befriend me when I moved here.”
Miss Lucy was quiet for several minutes. Then she gave the pot a ringing tap with her wooden spoon and, for the first time since we had started cooking, turned to face me.
“I understand you fed them. Quite a lot, if they’re telling the truth.”
Gathering a handful of onion, I scattered the slices over the bowl of salad. Miss Lucy was waiting for something, so I shrugged.
“I’d like an answer. You don’t have to be all manners, but you can at least open that mouth and put it to use.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Sometimes.” There was color in her cheeks now, and she had crossed her arms over her chest. The posture ruined some of the elegance she had worked so hard to achieve, and for a moment she looked frail, as though life had hammered her paper-thin. “Sometimes, that’s all this big galoot will say.” She took a breath and met my eyes. “My daughter is troubled, Vie. That’s no excuse for how she’s treated those children, but it is the truth. You think I should have done something. I’m sure everyone does.”
I shook my head as I tossed the salad.
“She’s never talked to me,” Miss Lucy said after another pause. “Not about any of it. She won’t say what she does, where she works. Oh God, I know. I’m not blind or deaf and I live in a small town. But we don’t . . . we don’t talk. Not the way mothers and daughters should. She thinks I’m too—well, when I was young, the boys with their long hair and the girls who didn’t shave their legs would say capitalist, or maybe bourgeois. I don’t know what they say now. Too uptight, I suppose. Too proper.”
“Tyler and Hannah told me she’s back home.”
“Yes.” The word seemed to revive Miss Lucy; she straightened her back, swept a tea towel off the counter, and began folding it neatly. “She’s not well. She’s—well, I don’t need to dress it up for you, do I? You live in those awful apartments. You know the kind of people she hangs out with. You can imagine that dancing isn’t the only kind of work she does.”
“Is she sick?”
Miss Lucy cracked the tea towel like a whip, leaving a perfect crease across its length. “Thank God, no. She’s black and blue all the way to her piggy toes, and she can’t get anything but soup down because a . . . because she was hurt quite badly. She’s sleeping now, upstairs. The doctors didn’t give her anything to help her sleep, but I believe she has been self-medicating. She is . . . unhappy. No, that’s too kind a word. She has been cruel. But then, is that really any change?” The last few words were pronounced with a shade of old bitterness.
After hearing those words, I thought I could feel Shay upstairs: a dark thunderhead of pain and narcotics. Maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe it was my ability manifesting. Either way, though, I felt bad for the young woman.
“My dad’s a mess,” I said. “Drugs, mostly, but that means he’ll do just about anything else too. I can’t live with my mom.” My face heated, and I shook my head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you that except I think it’s good that Tyler and Hannah have you.”
“Yes,” Miss Lucy said, as though at a loss for words, and the tea towel dangled, forgotten, in her hand. “I’m sorry. There I go again, being the perfect bourgeoisie. Or whatever kids call it these days.”
I had no idea what the word meant, let alone what ‘kids’ said these days, so I nodded.
We ate enchiladas, and Mexican rice, and the big salad that I had helped finished. Tyler and Hannah each talked a mile a minute; some of it was fighting, some of it wasn’t. Most of it, though, was a mixture of their need for affection and their genuine—at least, so it seemed—liking for me. We’d barely finished by seven, when Miss Lucy sent them both upstairs to bathe and read before bed. Tyler’s face went purple with shame when Miss Lucy began reminding him of exactly where he needed to pay extra attention when washing, and he shot out of the room before she’d finished speaking. Hannah chased after him, repeating the instructions in a high, mocking voice.
“May I ask you a question?” I said as I helped Lucy clear the table.
“If you can sit through a dinner like that, you deserve to ask me anything you want.”
“Have you lived here your whole life?”
“I have, although there’s no need to make it sound quite so long.”
“Have a lot of children gone missing?”
“You mean like those high school girls the last few years?” Miss Lucy shook her head. “No, nothing like that. This was a nice town.”
“No, I meant, kids getting lost in the woods. Things like that.”
“Oh, I suppose. This is Wyoming. It’s got more moose than it does people. Pretty easy to get lost in all that emptiness. Most of them get found, though, or they wander back. A long time ago, there were some that ended real sad. You know, they never found the child, or they found him or her drowned in a river or torn apart by animals. It’s quieted down, though. Kids don’t go outside anymore. They’re always on their video games.”
I thought about that. It made sense, in a way. Fewer kids were playing outside, therefore fewer kids were disappearing. But what if it was something else?
“What else has changed?”
“Well, the mine’s been here for almost as long as I can remember. They used to do quite a bit of logging, but that ended years ago.” She smiled. “I know you’ll think that I’m a shameless shopaholic, but the best thing that’s happened as far as I’m concerned is the state highway.”
“The highway?”
“It used to be nothing. Barely better than a dirt road. Then, about thirty years ago, somebody in Cheyenne got the bright idea to dump money into the highways. We finally got an honest-to-God freeway, and that makes a quick jaunt to Billings much easier.”
The highway. Was it really that simple? Until the highway, Vehpese had been a flyspeck town in the middle of nowhere. Until the highway, Belshazzar’s Feast had been a local operation. Kids had gone missing, but not too many, and most of them had to be returned alive. With the arrival of the highway, though, things had changed. Strangers came through the area much more frequently. Big trucks made deliveries or simply passed through on their way to somewhere else. Traffic rose, and that meant more customers. And more victims.
I wanted to rush out of the house and talk to Becca, but I knew it could wait. Even if we could prove a link between the construction of the highway and a shift in the types of crimes and disappearances, it still didn’t mean anything. We didn’t know where Belshazzar’s Feast was. We didn’t know the connection to Mr. Big Empty or Makayla or Hailey.
With a start, I realized that Miss Lucy had finished drying the dishes and was staring at me. “I like a cup of tea at this time of night. You’ll have some with me.”
I shrugged and nodded. As she heated the water, Miss Lucy folded her arms across her chest, and again she looked small and vulnerable.
“What you said, about your father,” she began and then shook her head.
“You can ask me.”
Her laugh came out with a hollow, despairing note. “I don’t truly know what I want to ask. Is it different, do you suppose?”
“What?”
“Is it different for a child? Watching someone you love destroy himself, I mean. As a mother, it’s the absolute worst thing I could ever have imagined. Ask me that twenty years ago, and I would have said the worst thing imaginable is dying old and poor and alone.” She laughed again. “Here I am: not quite dead, but definitely poor and alone.”
“You have Tyler and Hannah.”
She hummed an assent, staring at the darkness beyond the kitchen window.
“I’ve never thought of it like that,” I said after a few moments.
My words startled her out of her reverie, and then the kettle whistled. She poured the hot water into two mugs and set the tea bags to steep.
I continued, “About my dad, I mean. Whatever is wrong with him, it’s his fault. He deserves it. He deserves a lot worse.”
Without a word, Miss Lucy handed me my mug.
“And why should I feel sorry for him? Why should I feel anything for him?” Part of me knew I was speaking too much. Part of me knew that, somehow, Miss Lucy’s pain had uncovered something inside me: a hot, furious, seething darkness. A black hole. “The shit he’s done. Pardon. The things he’s done. I don’t live with him anymore. DFS took me and put me in a stranger’s house because—” I bit off the rest of what I was going to say and sipped at the tea. It burned my mouth, and I set it down swearing.
Hot water slopped across the counter, but Miss Lucy’s hand covered mine when I reached for a paper towel.
She hadn’t said anything, but I wanted to get out of that house. Out of that house, and away from her, and away from her suffering, and Jesus Christ, away from how much she loved Shay in spite of all Shay’s fuckups. “I should go. My foster-mom worries.”
Miss Lucy followed me to the door, still holding my hand. When she let me out of the house, I turned to look back at her: platinum hair, perfectly coiffed; boutique outfit; manicured nails. I felt bad for what I’d thought when I first saw her.
“You’ll have to come to dinner again,” Miss Lucy said. “I’ll be cheery; I’ll drink a few glasses wine. I won’t ruin your evening.”
“You didn’t ruin my evening.” I wanted to hold back the next words. I bit my lip, but they burst out. “How can you still love her? After everything she’s done, how?”
The tips of two delicate fingers touched me under the chin, and one frail shoulder lifted in a half-shrug. A tear spilled from the corner of her eye, leaving a track through dusty makeup. “Love,” she said in a firm voice, that voice like warm honey, “doesn’t make any shit kind of sense. Not at all.”