Niceville

So I’m calling around—”
    Kate broke in.
    “Did you say
Abel Teague
?”
    “Yes. Abel Teague.”
    “Rainey was asking for somebody named Abel Teague?”
    “Yes. Kate, you sound funny.”
    “I feel funny.”
    No time to try to explain this to Lacy
.
    “Have you tried his beeper?”
    “A
beeper
? Who has a beeper these days?”
    “Nick does. It’s for just us. He hates the cell and a lot of times he just shuts it off for lunch. But the beeper he keeps on, in case I really need to get in touch with him.”
    “Oh jeez. I’m not using
that
, then. How about you just tell him, if he calls, to get in touch with me right away. Lemon is going nuts.”
    “I’ll do it, Lacy. And that is good news, about Rainey, isn’t it?”
    “I sure hope so. Does the name Abel Teague mean anything to you?”
    “Why?”
    “Because when I said his name your voice went all tight. What’s going on?”
    “Yes. The name means something to me.”
    “What?”
    “Lacy, when I know, you’ll know.”
    “Promise?”
    “I promise. Bye-bye.”
    Kate stared at the phone for a time, thinking about using the beeper.
    But Lacy was right. If it went off, Nick would jump a mile. If he was driving, he could fly off the road and die.
    On the other hand … Rainey Teague.
    Awake.
    She was still trying to decide what to do when she noticed that someone was standing at the bottom of her lawn, down by the pines, half in the shade of the slender trees. A girl, a full-grown girl, not a child, her arms down at her side and staring up at the windows of the conservatory. Quite still, her expression solemn and remote.
    Kate set the phone aside and stood up, going around to the glass doors that opened onto the lawn. She stepped out on the edge of the grass, shading her eyes against the afternoon sun, looking at the girl, who was about a hundred feet away, just standing there. She was wearing a sundress, pale green, dappled with what looked like poppies or roses or maybe strawberries.
    Just like the girl in her dream
.
    Or she was changing her memory to fit the girl, which people tended to do. She suppressed a superstitious shudder and stiffened herself. She wasn’t going to cower in her house like a frightened child.
    “Hello,” she called, opening the door and coming down the lawn, half afraid that she would frighten her away. “Are you lost, honey?”
    Kate was barefoot and she could feel the green grass, still moist from the rains, cool and wet between her toes. She was less than fifty feet away from the girl, who was looking at her with cool hazel-colored eyes, her full red lips slightly parted, as if she were … hungry. Nowthat she was nearer, Kate could see that the girl was old enough to have a full figure, curved and ripe and sensuous.
    The girl in her dream had been just a child.
    Hadn’t she?
    Kate was also close enough to see that the flowers on her pale green sundress were not flowers at all but stains, red irregular stains. She had seen enough pretty young women with those kinds of stains on them to know dried blood when she saw it.
    “What’s your name, honey? Has somebody hurt you? Come with me, we’ll get you all cleaned—”
    The girl—the young woman—turned away abruptly and stepped into the shade of the forest, a pale green flicker in the violet shadows.
    Dammit
, thought Kate, looking at her bare feet.
I can’t chase you in my bare feet
.
    Kate paused there for a moment, trying to decide whether to go back to the house and get some shoes or just to plunge into the woods and get hold of the girl, who quite obviously needed help.
    There was nowhere for her to go in there, just the creek, which was full of slippery stones and mossy roots, and then the hill on the other side, which was much too steep to climb.
    “Honey, please come out of there, will you?”
    Kate saw a shape deep in the tree shadows. The girl was still in there, inside the woods, watching her.
Waiting
for her?
    Kate heard a voice that seemed to come from inside her own head—a familiar voice, although silent for years.
    Lenore’s voice.
    Kate
, said her dead mother,
don’t go in there
.
    Unable to help herself, and angry at this sudden attack of female hysteria on her part, Kate spoke out loud.
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Mom. I’m not a child.”
    And the answer came back, in a voice less like her mother’s and more like her own.
    Neither is that
.

Byron Deitz Motivates His People
    Deitz was waiting in the fading sunlight outside Kwikky