“Why didn’t you get a prosthetic?” she asked.
“Too much nerve damage. Now, if you’re done playing nurse, we need to get started,” he told her.
“There’s much work to be done and we’ve already wasted two crucial days because apparently you don’t check your email anymore. I need you to call your captain and tell him you’ll be working on a new case for an indefinite time period. I’m sure they’ll understand in Harrisburg and if they don’t, I really don’t care. I still have enough clout to get you reassigned as necessary.”
“No,” she said.
He stared at her, his eyes frozen and unblinking. “No,” he repeated. “That’s not acceptable.”
“I helped you once. I was nearly killed. People I cared about were…killed.” She closed her eyes and let a wave of grief pass through her. When it had receded she looked at him again. “That ought to be enough.”
“It’s never over,” he told her.
“No? We killed all the vampires. Except her, of course. I’ve moved on. I’ve got a real job, doing real police work now.”
“And how is that working out?” he asked. “I was a real cop once, you’ll remember. I know what that’s like. It’s pointless. You chase around the same criminals you chased around the year before. You put them away for a while and then they get out and they repeat the same squalid little crimes. This is different. It’s far more important.”
Arkeley’s life had been taken over by the vampires. Every minute of his day he spent thinking about them, planning their destruction. She couldn’t let herself get sucked in like that. “What I do is important, too,” she said. She didn’t want to go into the details. She didn’t want to say what she was really thinking.
Her first raid might not have gone how she’d hoped, but she had survived it. When she was down and hurt people had worked to save her. He would never have dragged her out of the line of fire, she knew.
He would have pushed her further into danger. Was her resistance to his plea based solely on fear? Was she fighting him just because she didn’t want to get killed? She said, half trying to convince herself, “I protect the people of this state. I’m working drug law enforcement right now, keeping methamphetamines away from schoolkids.”
He shook his head. “Forget about that. When you hear what I’ve found you’ll—”
She interrupted him. “I don’t want to know.”
He looked as if he couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Caxton sighed, deep and long. She had no idea what he wanted from her, but she knew she wanted no part of it. “I’m glad you’re doing okay, and I’m sure whatever’s got you so worked up is important, really,” she said. “But I don’t have time to help you right now.”
“You don’t? Something else more important calling for your attention?” he asked. “Maybe you need to spend more time with your girlfriend? One of your dogs got sick? Well, that’s too bad. You’re needed elsewhere right now. In Gettysburg, to be exact. You’re driving.”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
The word lost all meaning when he repeated it like that. It would be easy to raise her hands in surrender and say yes instead—as she always had before. But she was a normal person now. If she wanted to stay normal, she had to stay strong.
He grimaced horribly and asked, “Why on earth not? You know me, Trooper. You know I don’t waste my time on trivialities. If I say this is important you should know by now that it is absolutely crucial.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, but couldn’t, for a moment, finish that thought. He was right—she knew he was right. He wouldn’t have summoned her just to catch up on old times. He had something for her to do, and it was probably something dangerous.
“I need you right now. I need you to drive me to Gettysburg today.”
She could say no to him. She was sure that she had the strength to do it. He was a weak old man now.
Yet she felt like she had to give him something. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride. But that’s all.”
He frowned but he didn’t fight her. She knew him well enough to realize that was a bad sign, but she didn’t know how to react. “Very well. Let me get my coat.” He struggled as he walked around the side of the bed toward the closet.
“What about her?” Caxton asked, looking at the coffin.
“As long as I’m back by nightfall she shouldn’t be any trouble,” he said.
8.
The life of a spymaster for the War Department had its consolations. For one thing, I was appointed a horse to ride, while it seemed every other man in the world must walk. All that day I rode while the Army of the Potomac moved past me in a never-ending line, a human chain that stretched as far south as vision permitted, and went away from me to the north just as far. The dust they stirred up with their boots made a pall that rose on the air and hung there, like some spirit host of Araby made of sand. All day they tramped by, with calls and halloos from the drivers of the mule trains, and some singing, though not much.
This was just after Chancellorsville, when all hope seemed vain. Though outnumbered, Lee had trounced us yet again without breaking a sweat. He seemed invincible; surely that was the common belief. The Union has never known a darker day. The war had turned against us and even I believed the dream of a unified Union was doomed. Perhaps this helps explain what we did, and what we dared.
I was headed deep into Maryland, and away from Virginia, for which I was glad. I’d learned much from my contacts behind the lines, and needed promptly to report. From some runaway slaves who’d been attached to Jeb Stuart’s supply lines, I’d heard that Lee was moving again, and this time the enemy was headed north.
A very charming Southern belle, who was in secret a hater of slavery, had told me even more.
Lee was headed for Pennsylvania. For the first time he intended to bring the war to us, to the North. Already the democrats in Congress were howling for an end to this war. Well, it looked as if they might get it, but on Jeff Davis’s terms.
—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER
9.
She followed him out to the parking lot. The clerk at the front desk gave them a cheery wave, which Arkeley completely ignored. The old Fed shoved himself into her little Mazda and in a minute they were off. It wasn’t a long drive to Gettysburg—it was the next town over from Hanover. Though they didn’t talk any more along the way, the atmosphere in the car never got too unbearable. She was just doing a favor for an old friend, she told herself. Well, friend was probably the wrong word.
He cleared his throat as they neared Gettysburg, but only to give her directions. “It’s on the far side of town,” he said.
She drove through the center of Gettysburg, a town given over almost entirely to history. She knew very little about the Civil War, but like most kids raised in central Pennsylvania she’d been dragged through Gettysburg on class trips as a child, so she knew it had been the location of a particularly important battle, the turning point of the war. Now it was a tourist destination.