“Want me to look?” Lynn asked, her voice carrying back to Joss, who had fallen behind. Joss slowed to a walk when she saw they had stopped.
Lucy nodded and sat on the boulder, resting her supposedly injured foot on Lynn’s knee. Lynn’s quick hands undid the laces, and she glanced over her shoulder to see if Joss was approaching.
“You’re foot’s perfectly fine, isn’t it?”
“Those weren’t her people back there,” Lucy said, as Lynn slipped the boot off her foot.
“You guessed that too?” Lynn pulled off Lucy’s sweaty sock and pretended to look at the blister that didn’t exist.
“That or they were her people and it didn’t bother her at all to see them hanging. She’s either lying or coldhearted. Whichever way, it makes up my mind as to whether I like her or not.”
“Oh, you can like her all you want,” Lynn said, wrapping a fresh bandage around Lucy’s heel. “Just don’t trust her.”
Lucy thought of her ash stick in Joss’ hands, the spark of interest that had flashed in her eyes. “I don’t.”
“Good. But my guess is she didn’t ever know those dead men.”
“Why would she lie about it?” Lucy asked as Lynn slipped the sock over her toes.
“Remember that time you had a tick above your ear, neither one of us noticed it ’til it was big as a grape?”
“Yeah?”
“Joss is like that, I think. Attaches herself to whoever looks like the best bet and sucks the blood out of ’em until they wise up to her.”
“She was left behind at Lake Wellesley,” Lucy said. “Whoever she was traveling with had her figured out.”
“I think so too.” Lynn nodded. “And she was lucky enough to come upon our fire. Now she’ll say she might as well stick with us, as her ‘people’ are dead.”
Lucy glanced back down the road, saw that Joss had stopped to pull a water bottle from her pack. “So what do we do?”
“Not much we can do, really. Hopefully something looks good enough to make her want to stay in a town we come upon. Or maybe a group bigger than our own that she’d feel safer with. I’ve tried sneaking outta camp a few times at night. Woman sleeps lighter than a grasshopper. So for now, we put up with her. She’s annoying, but she’s not a threat.”
The next words stuck in Lucy’s throat, not wanting to come out. “What if she were?”
Lynn held out a hand and pulled Lucy from the boulder. “Then she’s dead. You might have hem-hawed on whether or not you like her, but I never did.”
“So why’d you let her come with us in the first place?”
Lynn took a swallow from her water bottle and put it back in her pack before answering, eyes glued to the approaching figure of Joss. “’Cause of the way she came up on us back at the lake, so quiet and still. I figured she might have something to offer other than creeping. Turns out it’s her best quality.”
Joss was close enough to make out their conversation, so Lucy switched to another topic. “What’d you make of the field of corn?”
Lynn looked to the horizon, and the black storm clouds assembling there. “Trouble.”
Twelve
The rain was falling so heavily their water bottles couldn’t stand up in the torrent, and Lucy ran out to collect them. Joss had spotted an ancient brick house standing alone in the middle of a field, the drive leading to it as full of grass as the acres around it. They ran for the house as the clouds opened up, the fat drops spattering around them as they ducked under the eaves of the buckling walls.
Lucy guessed the house had been old even before the Shortage. The open spaces for high windows, broken now, reminded her of home, as did the plaster walls that were crumbling into dust. Miraculously, the stone fireplace still stood, and the soot traces there showed other travelers had used it as they passed. The flames flickered across the walls in the early shadows that had fallen.
The driving rain slipped through the cracks in the roof, dripping down onto their heads and finding their new place seconds after they’d moved. A fresh drop smacked Lucy on the nose, after she’d changed spots for the fourth time. She jumped up in frustration, swiping at her face. “Dammit!”
Lightning flickered, and she spotted an outbuilding in what remained of the backyard, overgrown by a lilac bush. “Building out there,” she said to Lynn. “Could be something useful.”
“Doubt it,” Lynn said. “Looks like people have stayed the night here before. Anything worth taking’s probably already took.”
“I’ll go check,” Lucy said, despite the fact that it was still pouring. Joss sat silently near the fire, her wordless presence grating on Lucy’s nerves.