The Only Good Indians(31)

It’s blank, doesn’t even have erased pencil marks.

Lewis studies the street and across the street, and both ways as far as he can see.

Shaney must be close, right?

Nothing moves, though. No big ears flick back in the trees, no large black eyes blink, no hooves shift weight.

Lewis takes the book back inside, sits at the kitchen table with it, and interrogates the cover, the spine, flips through the pages.

“Why the books?” is where he finally lands. That’s the part that doesn’t track, that’s the thing niggling at his mind, trying to poke holes in his theory, his suspicions. If—if Shaney is this young elk reborn or not yet dead or come back for unfinished business, then why is she interested in a fantasy series about a jewelry store worker trying to save the world from itself?

Lewis scans the back cover to be sure he remembers this one right. Yep. It’s the installment where the usher at the movie theater, the one who’s more than she seems, figures out that the food court is actually the front gate of the fairy prison. It’s maybe the best book in the series, really. It ends with Andy on a woolly mammoth, rampaging through the makeup and perfume department of one of the pricey department stores, and then it has that epilogue—rare for an installment in a series—where the dwarves discover carbonated drinks, and you can tell from the glimmer in their eyes that this is going to be trouble.

None of which applies in any remote way to the Thanksgiving Classic, to hunting in general, to the post office, to Gabe and Cass, to Peta. At least not in any way Lewis can track.

He shuts the book, ditches it on the stairs so he can grab it next trip up.

So it’s Shaney, then. If it’s not Peta, and it’s not, then Shaney’s the main and only one left. And maybe she didn’t crawl up from that killing field up on the reservation, maybe she had a whole real life before … before she stopped being herself, opened her eyes, and looked around with a different set of instincts. Maybe she was up in Browning for Indian Days, or maybe she clipped an elk on the interstate down here, or maybe she just signed on to the wrong job, took a cigarette break on the wrong stoop by the loading dock, breathed in more than smoke.

The how doesn’t really matter. What does is that she’s coming for him. And that she’s been trying to set Peta up, meaning Peta’s a target as well.

Lewis shakes his head no about that.

This ends here. Or, it ends where he wants it to end, not where Shaney wants it to.

To be sure, though, beyond a shadow, he has to somehow get Shaney into his living room one more time. He has to get her in his living room while he’s up on the ladder, so he can look down at her through the spinning blades of the fan.

And it’s probably best to do this when Peta’s not around. Meaning tomorrow, when she’s at work.

It’s leaving himself vulnerable, Lewis knows—it won’t look good if Peta walks in on them alone in the house again—but if Peta’s piddling in the kitchen while Lewis relays some made-up work news or whatever, then Shaney’s defenses will be up, and her real face might not show.

No, her real head.

But what will get her over here tomorrow, right?

The one thing Lewis maybe has going is that he’s half sure that on Tuesdays, Shaney doesn’t go in until noon. And that he, of course, won’t be going in either. For the moment, there’s more important things.

He paces and paces the house, looking in every corner for a reason to get Shaney over here. Something work? Indian? Basketball? Should he act like he’s ready to go the next step with her? Does he need some help keeping his sweats up? Would she even be interested, or has he been reading her completely wrong?

No, he finally figures out—not that he’s been reading her wrong or right—but, none of those options. There’s a better way to get her into his living room.

Silas.

He was the gift Shaney didn’t know she was giving him.

That’s the way it always is in fantasy novels, isn’t it? The evil wizard or dastardly druid builds his own doom into his plan, like he knows he really shouldn’t be doing this, or like there’s some magical realm rule where he has to leave a single scale off the dragon’s belly, to give the puny crew a one-in-a-thousand chance.

Harley biting Silas is that missing scale, that chink in the armor, that one chance he has in a thousand. Lewis thinks it through once, twice, and nods the third time through, when there aren’t any red flags.

This can work.

He digs around for the work directory, can’t put hands on it, so just calls the post office, talks Margie out of Shaney’s number because he’s coming back to work but his bike’s all taken apart, and she lives out by him, he can catch a ride with her.

Ten digits later, Shaney’s phone is ringing.

“Blackfeet?” she creaks after his Hello? Lewis listens for rustling in the background to see if she’s alone.

“Hey,” Lewis says. “Silas is back in the mail room, isn’t he?”

“Frankenface?” she says.

Lewis winces, is responsible for that.

“We were kind of short handed,” Shaney goes on, coughing like a smoker.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“What already?” Shaney says. “It’s my day off, man.”

“Thought you were off Wednesday,” Lewis says like the question it is.