His parents had died in Medford when he was justa baby, and his uncle brought him to Briar Creek in a Fleetwood trailer. The uncle was strange-alwayswandering off to dowse for gold in the Klamath wil derness. One day he didn't come back.
After that, Jeremy lived alone in the . trailer in the woods. He did odd jobs and worked at the gas station to make money. And if his clothes weren't as nice assome of the other kids', he didn't care-or he didn't let it show.
The handle of the gas hose clicked in MaryLynnette's hand. She realized she had been daydreaming.
"Anything else?" Jeremy said. The windshieldwas dean.
"No ... well, actually, yes. You haven't, um, seenTodd Akers or Vic Kimble today, have you?"
Jeremy paused in the middle of taking her twentydollar bill.
"Why?"
"I just wanted to talk to them," Mary-Lynnettesaid. She could feel heat in her cheeks. Oh, God, hethinks I want to see Todd and Vic socially-and he thinks I'm crazy for askinghim.
She hurried to explain. "It's just that Bunny saidthey might be down by Mad Dog Creek, so I thoughtyou might have seen them, maybe sometime this morning, since you live down around there...."
Jeremy shook his head. "I left at noon, but I didn'thear any gunshots from the creek this morning. Ac
tually, I don't think they've been there all summerI keep telling them to stay away."
He said it quietly, without emphasis, but Mary-Lynnette had the sudden feeling that maybe evenTodd and Vic might listen to him. She'd never knownJeremy to get in a fight. But sometimes a look came into his level brown eyes that was ..: almost frightening. As if there was something underneath thatquiet-guy exterior-something primitive and pure and deadly that could do a lot of damage if roused.
"Mary-Lynnette-I know you probably think thisis none of my business, but ... well, I think you should stay away from those guys. If you really wantto go find them, let me go with you."
Oh. Mary-Lynnette felt a warm flush of gratitude. She wouldn't take him up on the offer ... but it was nice of him to make it.
"Thanks," she said. "I'll be fine, but ... thanks ."
She watched as he went to get her change insidethe station. What must it feel like to be on your own since you were twelve years old? Maybe he neededhelp. Maybe she should ask her dad to offer him some odd jobs around the house. He did them for everyone else. She just had to be careful-she knew Jeremy hated anything that smacked of charity.
He brought back the change. "Here you go. And, Mary-Lynnette ..."
She looked up.
"If you do find Todd and Vic, be careful."
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know," Mary-Lynnette said. She had reached for the change, but he hadn't let go of it. Instead hedid something odd: He opened her curled fingers with one hand while giving her the bills and coins with the other. Then he curled her fingers back over it. In effect, he was holding her hand.
The moment of physical contact surprised herand touched her. She found herself looking at his thin brown fingers, at their strong but delicate grip on her hand, at the gold seal ring with the black design that he wore.
She was even more surprised when she glanced up at his face again. There was open concern in his eyes-and something like respect. For an instant she had a wild and completely inexplicable impulse to tell him everything. But she could just imagine what he would think. Jeremy was very practical.
"Thanks, Jeremy," she said, conjuring up a weak smile. "Take care."
"Youtake care. There are people who'd miss you if anything happened." He smiled, but she could feel his worried gaze on her even as she drove away.
All right,now what?
Well, she'd wasted most of the day looking for Todd and Vic. And now, with the image of Jeremy's level brown eyes in her mind, she wondered if it had been a stupid idea from the beginning.
Brown eyes ... and what color eyes did the bigblond cat have? Strange, it was hard to remember.She thought that they had looked brown at one point when he was talking about his old-fashioned family. But when he'd said he liked a girl with spirit, she remembered them being a sort of insipid blue. And when that odd knife-glint had flashed in them, hadn't they been icy gray?
Oh,who cares?Maybe they were orange. Let's just go home now. Get ready for tonight.
How come Nancy Drew always found the people she wanted to interrogate?
Why? Why? Why me?
Ash was staring at a yellow cedar weeping into a creek. A squirrel too stupid to get out of the sun was staring back at him. On a rock beside him a lizard lifted first one foot, then another.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.
He didn't even believe it.
He'd always been lucky. Or at least he'd alwaysmanaged to escape a hairsbreadth away from disaster.
But this time the disaster had hit and it was a total annihilation.
Everything he was, everything he believed abouthimself ... could he lose that in five minutes? For a girl who was probably deranged and certainly more dangerous than all three of his sisters put together?
No, he concluded grimly. Absolutely not. Not in five minutes. It only took five seconds.
He knew so many girls-nice girls. Witches withmysterious smiles, vampires with delicious curves, shapeshifters with cute furry tails. Even human girls with fancy sports cars who never seemed to mind when he nibbled their necks. Why couldn't it have been one of them?
Well, it wasn't. And there was no point in wondering about the injustice of it. The question was, what was he going todo about it? Just sit back and let fate ride over him like an eighteen-wheeler?
I'm sorryfor your family, Quinn had said to him.
And maybe that was the problem. Ash was a victim of his Redfern genes. Redfern never could stay out of trouble; they seemed to tangle with humans at every turn.
So was he going to wait for Quinn to come backand then offer that as an excuse? I'm sorry; I can't handle things here after all; I can't even finishthe investigation.
If he did that, Quinn would call in the Elders and they would investigate for themselves.
Ash felt his expression harden. He narrowed his eyes at the squirrel, which suddenly darted for thetree in a flash of red fur. Beside him, the lizard stopped moving.
No, he wasn't just going to wait for fate to finish him off. He'd do what he could to salvage the situa tion-and the family honor.
He'd do it tonight.