The Way Home Page 3

  It wasn’t much. The place had doubtless been advertised as “furnished,” which would have appealed to the Covenant accountants who were responsible for getting him settled in his new home, and indeed, there was furniture: an empty bookshelf on the verge of collapse, and a large, overstuffed couch that might have been red once, before years of dust, cobwebs, and neglect had bleached it to an unpleasant shade of dusty wine.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, closing the door and looking toward the stairs. “I feel like I’m home already.”

  The sun was almost down, and Alice Healy had never been so lost in her entire life.

  It felt like she’d been walking forever. Her feet hurt, her legs ached, and her stomach was growling continuously. She hadn’t passed any good berry patches, and the few mushrooms she’d found had been poisonous. Most of the time the woods took care of their own, but this day seemed to have been designed to vex her in every possible way. At this point, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had decided to start snowing just to add that extra special little something to her trials.

  On the plus side, as long as she was wandering in the woods, her father wasn’t killing her. That was a good thing, right? Stay lost, stay alive. It was a plan that had its drawbacks, true, but it was a plan that didn’t end at the funeral home, and that made it all right by her.

  She did wish she had a flashlight, though. And since she had no idea where she actually was, or where she was going, she was starting to worry about looping back around and finding the salamanders again. Could salamanders hold grudges?

  Then, without warning, a light glimmered through the trees ahead and to the left. Alice hesitated. It was dark enough that people might be putting their porch lights on. She might have found her way back to human habitation. Or it could be a swamp light, or a will-o-wisp, looking to lure her to her untimely demise.

  “So’s everything else out here,” she said, and adjusted her path so that she was hiking toward the light.

  The trees began to thin. Alice kept walking, until finally—wonderfully—the trees stopped, and she was stepping out into the untended fields at the end of Old Logger’s Road. There was the Parrish Place, as decrepit and falling-down as ever, although someone had slapped a fresh coat of paint the color of swamp muck over the nasty old thing. She wrinkled her nose. Maybe it looked better by daylight. Probably not, though.

  And the porch light was on.

  Alice blinked. Someone was inside the Parrish Place? Someone had bothered to get the power turned back on? Maybe it was a ghost. A really stupid ghost who didn’t know that there were better places in town to haunt. Like anyplace.

  But her feet hurt, and her legs ached, and she was curious to a fault sometimes. Her Grandma always said that was the thing that would eventually get her in a heap of trouble: once something caught her interest, she just couldn’t stop poking at it until she understood what it was about. Alice squared her shoulders, ran a hand through her hair, and started toward the house.

  Thomas was attempting to figure out the kitchen plumbing—not to the point of calling himself an expert, just to the point of making himself a nice cup of coffee before he went to the garage and took his first ride in his new car—when someone knocked on the door. He paused, turning to look over his shoulder.

  Whoever it was knocked again.

  “Perhaps I’m in the wrong house,” he said, turning off the tap. “This one was too nice for me from the start.” Chuckling weakly at his own joke, he walked from the kitchen to the front room, and onward to the front door. He opened it. He stopped.

  “Er,” he said.

  The person on the porch was not the bank manager, come to tell him that he had the wrong house. Nor was it Shelly, come to deliver some of her delicious cherry pie. Instead, it was a teenage girl, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen, wearing a blouse that might have been white if it hadn’t been covered in thick mud, cut-off shorts that barely skirted the edges of decency, and a pair of surprisingly sturdy looking hiking boots. Her hair was blonde under the filth, and hung in mud-clotted hanks around her face. She was possibly the dirtiest person he had ever seen outside of a mud pit. She might qualify as a mud pit.

  She was lovely. But that was almost incidental.

  For her part, she looked as surprised to see him as he was to see her. “Um,” she said. “You do know this is the old Parrish Place, yes?”

  “For a country that is effectively still in its infancy, you Americans are terribly fond of labeling things as ‘old,’” he said. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, did friends of yours live here?”

  “I wasn’t even born when Mr. Parrish decided to kill his whole family in order to gain the favor of the god from the swamp,” said the muddy girl. “I’m only sixteen.”

  “My apologies,” said Thomas. “If you’re not looking for a friend of yours, do you mind my asking why you are on my porch?” Wearing half of a swamp as an accessory. Perhaps she was an acolyte of the god she had mentioned, and was here to preach to him of the glory of the marsh and fen. He rather thought he’d listen, if she could figure out how to turn the stove on.

  “Oh, yeah,” said the girl. “I sort of got lost in the woods, and your porch light helped me find my way out. Thanks for that, even if you didn’t really mean to do it. Um. I’m Alice.” She stuck out one muddy hand for him to shake.

  After a moment’s pause, he took it. “Thomas Price,” he said. “I’m afraid I bought the place sight unseen, and the real estate listing didn’t mention any brutal murders that may or may not have happened here. If I’d known about the entire ‘swamp god’ aspect of the property, I would have at least tried to get a better deal.”

  Alice squinted at him like she wasn’t sure whether he was kidding or not. She reclaimed her hand, which had left a thin layer of mud on his palm. “Well, welcome to Buckley. I recommend not getting lost in the woods.”

  She smelled, he realized, of an odd mixture of strawberries and apples. It could have been her perfume. Teenage girls were fond of perfume, were they not? Still… “Pardon me for asking, but you have a rather distinct aroma following you. Did you by any chance encounter an unusually large and attractive flower in the woods?”

  “About yea big?” she asked, sketching a distance of approximately four feet with her hands.

  Thomas nodded. “Yes, yes, that would be about right.”

  “Nope. That sort of thing wouldn’t be natural, and there’s nothing unnatural in these woods.” She was a remarkably good liar. If not for the sudden glossiness of her eyes, he might even have believed her.

  “I see,” he said. “Well, if you happened to see such a flower, I would suggest avoiding it. Swamp bromeliads are beautiful, but they’re quite dangerous, in their own way.”

  “Don’t I know it,” muttered Alice. Then she smiled at him, so brightly that for a moment, he could almost overlook the mud. “I know it’s an imposition, but do you mind if I just sit down for a minute before I start walking home? I can find some newspapers or something, so I won’t mess up your couch…”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure the couch will notice,” he said, and stepped to the side, holding the door open a little wider. “Please, come in.”

  Alice stepped inside. She looked around herself shamelessly, and when Thomas raised an eyebrow she explained, “I’ve never been inside the Parrish Place before. Grandma always said that people who go poking around in slaughterhouses wind up getting what they deserve, and it probably wouldn’t be flowers.”

  “What a charming lady she must be,” said Thomas. “Did you grow up around here, then?”

  “Buckley born and raised,” said Alice. She walked to the couch and sat down, closing her eyes in momentary bliss before she continued, “If you need someone to show you around, I’d be happy to. It’s a worthwhile trade for letting me muddy up your couch.”

  “I don’t know whether I should say ‘but not the woods’ or ‘especially the woods,’ given that you appear to have survived b
eing lost there for quite some time,” said Thomas. “Can I get you a glass of water? Forgive me for saying so, but you look exhausted.”

  “Water would be swell, thank you,” said Alice. She didn’t open her eyes.

  Really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he returned from the kitchen to find her sound asleep. Thomas paused, unsure of what he should do next. Then, with a shrug, he placed the water on the floor next to the couch, where she would hopefully find it upon waking, and moved his suitcase into the front hall closet, which had a lock. If she woke up and started snooping around the house, she might figure out where the bathroom was located. It would be doing him a favor—and right now, he had a social call to make.

  According to the notes he had received from the Covenant, the Healys lived near the edge of the wood, although not so near as he did. Getting to their house meant either a hike across several fields, or a pointlessly complicated series of turns down little country roads. Since he wanted them to hear him coming, he took the car.

  Really, he should probably have been grateful to the Covenant for supplying him with a vehicle at all, he mused, as he tried to coax his new car along the unfamiliar roads. The fact that it was a terrible vehicle was almost certainly accidental…and if he could convince himself to believe that, he could probably convince himself to go back to believing whatever he was told, like a good little soldier who didn’t have to be banished to the ends of the Earth.

  He pulled up in front of the Healy house, which was brightly lit, with open windows and solid, refreshingly well-maintained walls. He stopped the car and looked at the house for a long moment, weighing his options. Once he walked up to that door, he was committed: he would never be able to take this back. It was not, as yet, too late to go home, roust the sleeping teenager from his living room, and fulfill his mission as stated, instead of deviating, once again, in the name of preserving something unique and wonderful. He could still give himself the option of going home.

  He got out of the car.

  Walking up to the door was surprisingly easy, once he had made the decision to do it. He could hear voices from inside, muffled by the door. After a moment of consideration, he rang the bell.

  The voices went silent. Footsteps followed, and finally, the door was pulled open by an older woman with the distinct bone structure and slightly dubious expression of a born Carew—Enid Healy’s maiden name. She was wearing denim trousers and a fitted shirt that probably concealed half a dozen weapons, and while she was smiling politely, she didn’t look pleased to have him on her porch.

  “Good evening,” she said. “May I help you?”

  “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Enid Healy, of the Buckley Healys?” he asked.

  Enid’s eyes narrowed at the sound of his voice. She had to know what it meant when she heard someone who sounded like her old home—and England, while not the same as Wales, was very close to where she had originated. “You might,” she said. “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Thomas Price,” he said, and sealed his fate. The Covenant would never take him back now. “I’ve been sent to observe your family and report back to my superiors. As I feel that is a bloody stupid idea, I’ve decided not to do it, but thought I should tell you I was here anyway, just to prevent someone ‘accidentally’ slipping and putting a bullet in the back of my skull. I quite like my skull in its current configuration. A bullet would disrupt it.”

  Enid blinked slowly. Then, without turning, she called, “Alex? We’ve got a problem.”

  A man appeared behind her. He looked to be a little older than she was, and the years had worked deep lines into the skin of his face. He frowned at the sight of Thomas, assessing the other man in an instant before he asked, “Are you a Price boy?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Thomas.

  “He says the Covenant sent him to spy on us,” said Enid.

  “Yes to that as well,” said Thomas.

  Alexander blinked. “And you came here to announce it?” he asked, incredulously. “Son, I don’t know what they’re teaching spies these days, but this is a good way to wind up in a ditch somewhere.”

  “I thought that skulking about and trying to conceal myself from you seemed even more likely to put me into a shallow grave,” said Thomas.

  “Oh, come now,” said Enid. “We’d bury you properly. We’re not amateurs, and we’re not ill-mannered either.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Thomas. He looked to Alexander. “I have no intention of reporting on you to the Covenant. This is a punishment for my crimes, and I intend to endure my sentence without making life more difficult for anyone else.”

  “What did you do?” asked Enid.

  “I lied,” said Thomas. “I falsified information. I told the Covenant there was nothing of interest in places where there was quite a good deal to be interested in, because the people and creatures who lived in those places deserved to be left alone. I warned monsters of coming purges, and I followed my own judgment rather than obeying orders. I’m quite the villain, all things considered.”

  “My,” said Enid. “You have been a naughty boy.”

  Alexander coughed into his hand. “It seems we have a great deal to talk about, Mr. Price, but for the moment, you’ll have to excuse us. We seem to have misplaced our granddaughter, and our son is a bit upset.”

  “Now, dear,” said Enid. “Alice is perfectly capable of misplacing herself.”

  Thomas looked between them, his stomach sinking. And things had been starting to go so well. “Alice, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Enid. “About yea high,” she held up a hand, “blonde hair, blue eyes, and less sense than God gave to a bloodworm. She didn’t make it to school today, and her father’s set to give himself some sort of an attack.” She didn’t sound particularly worried. Alice must have wandered off with some regularity.

  Somehow, Thomas didn’t think that was going to help his case. He took a deep breath. “About that…” he began.

  Alice was asleep, dreaming, and not being eaten by anything, which was a considerable improvement over the past day. Because of that, she had no warning before she was being grabbed by the wrist and hauled bodily off the couch.

  Being a Healy girl, she woke up in a state of adrenaline-fueled combativeness, swinging her free hand as hard as she could for the probable face of her attacker while she was still trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes.

  Jonathan Healy caught her arm in mid-swing. Alice went very still, staring at her father.

  “Alice Enid Healy, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, and his voice was low and tight and cold.

  Thomas, standing near the door with Enid and Alexander, winced a little. “I didn’t intend to get her into trouble,” he said.

  “That, too, is something Alice manages nicely on her own,” said Enid. There was some sympathy in her tone, at least, and she didn’t take her eyes off of her granddaughter. “Thank you for making sure she got back to us safely.”

  “It was the least I could do,” said Thomas.

  Alice tried to pull away from her father. “Daddy, you’re hurting me,” she said.

  “How do you think I felt when you didn’t come home from school?” he demanded. “How do you think I felt when this stranger, this Covenant stranger, showed up at the front door saying he had you asleep in his living room?”

  “Covenant?” echoed Alice, eyes going wide. She looked past Jonathan to Thomas, and the expression of betrayal on her face was so profound that he winced again, almost recoiling. “He’s not Covenant. He just bought the old Parrish Place.”

  “So he could spy on us,” said Jonathan, finally letting go of her wrists. “This is what wandering away gets you. You could have been captured, or worse, taken back to Europe before we even knew that you were gone. Come along. We’re going home.”

  “I suppose that means it’s time for us to leave,” said Enid.

  “Don’t be a stranger, Mr. Price,” said Alexander.

 
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Thomas, still feeling faintly thrown by what he’d just witnessed. The girl’s fear when she heard that he was Covenant…

  Jonathan brushed past, with Alice trailing behind, muddy and miserable. She paused long enough to say, shyly, “Thank you for letting me sleep on your couch.” Then she was gone, following her father out into the night. Alexander and Enid went after them, heading for the car parked at the end of the driveway.

  Thomas watched them drive away. Then, still frowning to himself, he shut the door. They were never going to trust him, and he was never going to see that girl again if her father had anything to say about it: that much was perfectly clear.

  For however long Michigan was his home, he was going to be a very lonely man.

  Alice rode with her head resting against the car window, barely listening to her father as he ranted about her disobedience and lack of a survival instinct. She kept thinking about that nice Mr. Price, all alone back at the old Parrish Place. Sure, he was Covenant, but nobody was perfect in this world. And he had lovely eyes. He beat acid-spitting salamanders cold, that was for certain.

  The car rolled on through the night as Alice closed her eyes and started dreaming something new.