“Say it is.”
She doubted it, but was flattered, anyway. “She’s with Sarey now, and the two of them are perfectly happy. But since we’re on the subject of Andi, she can help us. You know how. Spread the word but speak to her first.”
After he left, she locked the EarthCruiser, went to the cockpit, and dropped to her knees. She worked her fingers into the carpet between the driver’s seat and the control pedals. A strip of it came up. Beneath was a square of metal with an embedded keypad. Rose ran the numbers, and the safe popped open an inch or two. She lifted the door the rest of the way and looked inside.
Fifteen or a dozen full canisters left. That had been Crow’s guess, and although she couldn’t read members of the True the way she could read the rubes, Rose was sure he had been purposely lowballing to cheer her up.
If he only knew, she thought.
The safe was lined with Styrofoam to protect the canisters in case of a road accident, and there were forty built-in cradles. On this fine May morning in Kentucky, thirty-seven of the canisters in those cradles were empty.
Rose took one of the remaining full ones and held it up. It was light; if you hefted it, you would have guessed it too was empty. She took the cap off, inspected the valve beneath to make sure the seal was still intact, then reclosed the safe and put the canister carefully—almost reverently—on the counter where her top had been folded.
After tonight there would only be two.
They had to find some big steam and refill at least a few of those empty canisters, and they had to do it soon. The True’s back wasn’t to the wall, not quite yet, but it was only inches away.
3
The Kozy Kampground owner and his wife had their own trailer, a permanent job set up on painted concrete blocks. April showers had brought lots of May flowers, and Mr. and Mrs. Kozy’s front yard was full of them. Andrea Steiner paused a moment to admire the tulips and pansies before mounting the three steps to the door of the big Redman trailer, where she knocked.
Mr. Kozy opened up eventually. He was a small man with a big belly currently encased in a bright red strappy undershirt. In one hand he held a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In the other was a mustard-smeared brat wrapped in a slice of spongy white bread. Because his wife was currently in the other room, he paused for a moment to do a visual inventory of the young woman before him, ponytail to sneakers. “Yeah?”
Several in the True had a bit of sleeper talent, but Andi was by far the best, and her Turning had proved of enormous benefit to the True. She still used the ability on occasion to lift cash from the wallets of certain older rube gentlemen who were attracted to her. Rose found this risky and childish, but knew from experience that in time, what Andi called her issues would fade away. For the True Knot, the only issue was survival.
“I just had a quick question,” Andi said.
“If it’s about the toilets, darlin, the caca sucker don’t come until Thursday.”
“It’s not about that.”
“What, then?”
“Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to go to sleep?”
Mr. Kozy immediately closed his eyes. The beer and the brat tumbled out of his hands, leaving a mess on the rug. Oh well, Andi thought, Crow fronted the guy twelve hundred. Mr. Kozy can afford a bottle of carpet cleaner. Maybe even two.
Andi took him by the arm and led him into the living room. Here was a pair of chintz-covered Kozy armchairs with TV trays set up in front of them.
“Sit,” she said.
Mr. Kozy sat, eyes shut.
“You like to mess with young girls?” Andi asked him. “You would if you could, wouldn’t you? If you could run fast enough to catch them, anyway.” She surveyed him, hands on hips. “You’re disgusting. Can you say that?”
“I’m disgusting,” Mr. Kozy agreed. Then he began to snore.
Mrs. Kozy came in from the kitchen. She was gnawing on an ice cream sandwich. “Here, now, who are you? What are you telling him? What do you want?”
“For you to sleep,” Andi told her.
Mrs. Kozy dropped her ice cream. Then her knees unhinged and she sat on it.
“Ah, f**k,” Andi said. “I didn’t mean there. Get up.”
Mrs. Kozy got up with the squashed ice cream sandwich sticking to the back of her dress. Snakebite Andi put her arm around the woman’s mostly nonexistent waist and led her to the other Kozy chair, pausing long enough to pull the melting ice cream sandwich off her butt. Soon the two of them sat side by side, eyes shut.
“You’ll sleep all night,” Andi instructed them. “Mister can dream about chasing young girls. Missus, you can dream he died of a heart attack and left you a million-dollar insurance policy. How’s that sound? Sound good?”