"Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"
It all happened in seconds, and for the brief length of time it took, Nest Freemark was frozen with indecision. Her first impulse was to use her magic on the big man, the magic that caused people to lose control of their muscles and collapse in useless heaps, that she had used on Danny Abbott and Robert Heppler all those years ago, that she had used on her father.
But if she invoked it now, she risked setting Wraith loose. It was the reality she had lived with since she was nineteen. She could never know what might trigger his release. She had discovered that three years ago at the Olympics, and she had not used her magic since.
Now, it seemed, she had no choice.
She shouted at the big man, striding toward him, small and inconsequential in his shadow. He barely looked at her, but his shaking movement slowed, and he let Allen sag slightly. He was all misshapen, she saw, as if he had not been put together in quite the right way and his parts did not fit as they should, some too large and some too small. He had the look of something formed of castoffs and leftovers, the detritus of the human gene pool.
Nest shouted harder, and now the strange pink eyes fixed on her. Screwing up her courage and tightening her hold on Wraith, who was already awake and pressing for release inside her, she hammered at the big man with her magic, trying to make him take a sudden misstep in her direction, to lose his balance and release Allen. But it was as if she had run into a wall. He shrugged aside her magic as if it weren't even there, and in his eyes she found only an empty, blank space in which nothing human lived.
Nothing human...
He tossed Allen aside, and the realtor collapsed in a crumpled heap, head lowered between his shoulders like a broken fighter as he struggled to his hands and knees, Kathy racing over to kneel next to him, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The big man wheeled on Nest. "Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"
He came at her, and she hit him with another jolt of magic, eyes locked on his. This time he slowed, staggered slightly by the force of her attack. The kids were still screaming in the background, some of them calling to her to run, to get away, thinking she was paralyzed with fear and indecision. She stood her ground, watching as Kathy tried in vain to pull a battered Allen to his feet.
The big man snarled at her, an animal sound, a deep, throaty growl that brought Wraith right up into her throat, so close to breaking free she could see the tiger striping of his wolfish face and feel the thick, coarse fur of his powerful body. She backed away, trying to keep him in check. If she failed to do so, everyone would discover the truth about her. Whatever else happened, she could not permit that.
"Joy to the world!" the big man howled as he lumbered toward her. "Joy to the world!"
"Twitch!" a voice shrilled.
The big man stopped as if he had been reined in by invisible wires, jerking upright, his strange, misshapen head lifting like a startled bird's.
"You come right into this house!" the voice ordered. "You are so bad! I mean it! Right now!"
On the porch stood a solitary figure bundled in a heavy coat and scarf, frizzy red hair sticking out all over. It was the young woman who had introduced herself at church that morning, the one called Penny. At the sound of her voice, the giant slowly turned away and trudged back toward the old house. Nest took a deep, calming breath as the screaming behind her died away into hushed whispers and sobs.
The young woman stood aside as the giant lumbered past her sheepishly and disappeared inside. Then she came down the porch, shaking her head in exasperation.
"Nest, I'm really, really sorry about this." She came up and took Nest's gloved hand in her own and held it. "That's my brother. He isn't right in the head. He doesn't mean any harm, but he doesn't know how strong he is."
She looked over at Allen, who was finally climbing back to his feet. "Are you all right, mister? Did he hurt you at all?"
Allen Kruppert looked as if he had just climbed out of a working cement mixer. He tried to speak, coughed hard, and shook his head.
"I think he's okay," Kathy offered quietly, bracing him against her with both arms wrapped tightly about his bulky form. "That was a very scary thing your brother did, miss."
Penny nodded quickly in agreement. "I know. I should have been watching him more closely, but I was upstairs working. My grandmother answered the door, but she is so old and feeble she can't do anything with him. He just pushed her aside and came out." She looked quickly from Nest to the Krupperts. "He just wanted to play. That's what he thought all this was about. Playing."
Nest gave her a brief, uncertain smile. She had the oddest queasy feeling. Penny seemed sincere in her apology, but there was just a hint of something in her voice that suggested maybe she wasn't.
Nest glanced up at the house. "Do you live here, Penny?" she asked conversationally.
"Sometimes." Penny's red hair gave her the look of something that had shorted out. Her green eyes glittered. "Right now I'm just visiting."
"With your brother?"
"Yeah. With Twitch. We call him Twitch."
"Is it your grandmother who belongs to the church?"
Penny shrugged. "I suppose."
"What is your grandmother's name?"
Penny smiled. "I better get back inside, Nest. I don't like leaving Twitch alone after an episode. You know how it is. Thanks for coming by with the church group, though. It was really nice of you."
She walked back up the steps and through the broken door, closing the windowless frame carefully behind her. Nest watched until she was gone, then gave the windows a casual sweep as she swung back toward the others.
The interior of the house had gone completely dark.
She helped Kathy get Allen back in the Suburban, settling him into the passenger seat and buckling him in. He insisted he was all right, and it seemed he was. The youth group was noticeably subdued, and there was talk of calling it a night. But Allen wouldn't hear of it. There were four more names on the list, including the Northway Nursing Home. All those people were counting on them. Allen wasn't the sort to let anyone be disappointed on account of him. He insisted they finish what they started.
It was nearing ten o'clock when Nest finally got home. Everyone else, Allen included, seemed to have put the incident on West Third behind them, but she was still uneasy about it. Two encounters in one day with Penny Whoever-she-was seemed a bit of a stretch for coincidence and two encounters too many in any case. The whole business troubled her, particularly since it had forced her to confront anew what it meant to employ her magic as a weapon. It was something she had hoped never to have to do again. Tonight's incident suggested her thinking was incredibly naive.
She walked up the drive and slipped in through the back door. There were lights on, but the house was quiet. Hawkeye was curled up on his chair in the kitchen, the one he had adopted for this week anyway, and he did not even open his eyes as she passed through. She left her coat, scarf, and gloves in the hall closet and eased down the hall to the den, where the television was playing. Bennett was dozing in her grandfather's big leather easy chair.
She opened her eyes as Nest entered. "Hi," she murmured.
"Hi," Nest replied, sitting at the desk chair. "Harper asleep?"
Bennett stretched and yawned. "About an hour ago. She was pretty worn out." She stood up. "Me, too. I'm going to bed. Did Reverend Gask ever catch up with you? He was here earlier."
Nest went cold, her whole body stiffening. She had forgotten to warn Bennett about Gask. But then, what could she have said? "No, he must have missed me."