Ink and Bone(54)

“She went riding today,” said Penny. “A big black horse with white socks.”

It was a picture she’d seen in Real Penny’s room. The picture was so old and yellowed, Penny figured it was safe to assume the horse was dead, too.

“Racer?” said Momma, with a pleased smile.

“That’s right,” said Penny, even though she had no idea.

That’s why they brought you here, Bobo had told her. Because you’re a Dreamer. Poppa can tell a Dreamer from a mile away. There’s a light that comes off, a golden shine. He collects Dreamers, for Momma, for himself.

Real Penny tilted her head back and her eyes were two black holes, empty, bottomless things. “Tell her to let me go.”

Penny closed her eyes, but she could still see two white spots looming like after you’ve looked at light that’s too bright.

“Tell her!” the girl shrieked, and her voice was like the sound of the wind wailing. Her mouth opened into a maw, and inside Penny could see the girl strong and alive, atop a great black stallion. Then Penny saw her kissing a boy with long black hair, watched as they got into his car. Then there was nothing.

“She says she loves you,” New Penny lied. “So much.”

Momma put her head to the ground and cried.

When Momma lets her go, said the voice, you can go home, too.





SEVENTEEN


“Is this the right place?” asked Finley. The house in front of her was isolated at the end of a long wooded drive. With the flowerbeds bare and the house in need of a coat of paint, the whole place had the aura of desertion, though a light burned in the downstairs bay window. A sadness hung around it like a fog, and Finley wrapped her arms around her center unconsciously.

“Yes,” said Jones, who was annoyed with her. He was about to open the car door, but he stopped and held her in that steely blue-gray gaze of his. “I can’t have you making a spectacle of yourself in there.”

Finley forced herself not to look away from him. He was used to making people squirm, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she lifted her palms.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. He came to her, after all. You can’t invite this kind of thing into your world and then hope to control it. Didn’t he know that?

“I wanted you to stay back at your grandmother’s.”

“I can’t do that,” said Finley.

She turned her gaze forward at the house, now. She knew she sounded as stubborn and intractable as Eloise could be. “I have to be here.”

“Your grandmother never comes along on interviews.”

“I told you,” she said. “I’m not like my grandmother.”

I’m not like anyone, she wanted to say but didn’t. Not my mother, not my grandmother. I am myself. Whatever that means.

Jones heaved the sigh of a man who was used to giving in to the will of women. A long-suffering release of the syllable “ha.”

“Well,” he said. “Let’s get to it then.”

He hefted himself out of the car and shut the door—slamming it a little harder than was necessary? She sat for a moment, looking at the gloaming and the towering trees, watching Jones as he approached the house.


*

When she’d returned home after her flight from Rainer (and everyone and everything else), Eloise was back, and Cooper’s SUV was in the drive, as well. She’d considered fleeing again—but she didn’t have anyplace else to go. So she’d gone inside to find them at the kitchen table. Jones had filled her in on his conversation with Merri Gleason and he told her that Abbey had experienced prophetic dreams, and had nightmares about coming to The Hollows.

“Is she a Listener?” Finley asked Eloise, surprised. Eloise had her own language for their thing. Finley and Eloise were Listeners, people who heard (and saw, and experienced) what other people couldn’t. Someone like Jones was a Sensitive—whether he knew it or not—someone with sharp instincts with the ability to see right through the layers of a person straight into their truth. In fact, Eloise and Agatha thought that everyone was on a kind of spectrum of psychic ability, from absolute Dead Head (Agatha’s word), to Listener or Feeler or Dreamer, depending on the particular ability. It was far from an exact classification system, more like a slang between them.

Thinking about this made her think of Rainer. And thinking of him made her tattoo ache, which in turn got her thinking about Abigail. What are you up to, girlfriend? Finley wondered. But Abigail was nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t know if she’s a Listener,” her grandmother said. She rubbed at her head with thumb and forefinger. “I’m not getting anything on this at all. It’s yours, dear. I’m sorry.”

Jones had handed Finley Abbey’s binky, a pink and gray puff as soft as powder. She held it to her face, but it was as devoid of energy as any of the old rags Eloise kept under the sink. She stuck it inside her jacket pocket anyway, found herself worrying it between her fingers.

“If she was a listener,” said Jones, “wouldn’t she just be able to reach out to you or something?”

“At her age? Probably not,” said Eloise. “Anyway, it doesn’t work that way. We don’t communicate telepathically. Whoever we are. If there’s a pattern to all of this, if there are rules and ways, I never learned them.”