“No woman would ever go buy gas anyway,” said Cecile. Although she was fascinated by Mae, she’d also picked up quickly that there were some things Mae just wasn’t savvy to.
Mae got out of the van and stood on the side of the dark road. Night insects chattered around her, and a humidity reminiscent of what she’d grown up with dampened the air. They were surrounded by fields scattered with trees and had no other landmarks or signs of civilization. Looking up, however, Mae found guides in the sky. It was a perfectly clear night, filling the sky with more stars than she could remember having seen at once. Her father used to stargaze with her when she was younger and had taught her the basic constellations, many of which she could see now: the great bear, the small bear, the dragon. One in particular caught her eye, Cassiopeia—the queen. Mae remembered her father teaching it to her on a small tablet, which had overlaid an image of a crowned and enthroned woman across the stars. There was probably an old myth behind that constellation, one that Justin would know.
He lingered on her mind for a moment, but as Mae gazed at the cluster of stars and thought of that crowned woman, it was her guiding goddess who soon dominated her thoughts. This time of year, the queen was almost directly to the north. Now, it would seem, was the time for faith and divine favors.
Cecile came up beside her, with Monica and the girl whose coat Mae had borrowed not far behind. “What are we going to do? Some of the little girls are getting scared.”
“And they want to use the bathroom,” added Monica.
The girl Mae had traded coats with held out something. “This was tangled in your old coat,” she said nervously. Mae took it and saw Justin’s charm, the one that obscured her from being recognized as one of the elect. So. That explained why the Grand Disciple had reacted as he had. She fastened the necklace back on and couldn’t spare any extra worry for what the consequences of that slip might be.
Instead, Mae’s eyes focused on the stars a few seconds more, and then she fixed her attention on the dark shapes of the two girls beside her. “First, some of you are going to help me push this van off the road and out of sight. After that, we’re going home,” she said. “On foot.”
CHAPTER 22
A Long Two Days
Hannah’s disappearance wasn’t discovered right away, giving Justin some time to brief Lucian that their world had just been turned upside down. Ironically, Mae’s raiding of the salon down the highway caused enough of a stir that first night that no one in Carl’s family spared a thought for Hannah.
“They said it must’ve been a whole team of guys,” Walter told Carl. It was late, and most of the household would’ve normally been in bed if not for the breaking news. Walter and some of his other brothers had just returned from a local tavern where they’d gotten the scoop. “Everyone shot dead except one, all the girls taken. Heard there was a fire or something too—like maybe they tried to burn the place down to cover their tracks.”
Justin was lounging in a stuffed arm chair in Carl’s study, trying to appear casual, though anyone looking closely would’ve noticed the death grip on his untouched scotch. After the exhausting evening with Hansen’s followers, Justin couldn’t have stomached the alcohol if he’d wanted to, and the latest developments had only reinforced the need for sobriety. Across the room, Lucian’s drink was equally untouched, and his eyes met Justin’s at the mention of “a whole team of guys.” A whole team—or one Mae.
Justin almost felt bad for Lucian. Justin had at least been semi- prepared, knowing about Mae’s last secret visit to the salon and her niece. That didn’t make tonight’s developments any easier to handle, but Lucian had had it much worse when Justin had essentially told him in sixty seconds that Mae had run off to liberate stolen Gemman girls and left a fugitive Arcadian concubine in her place.
“Damn,” said Carl, stamping a cigar butt into his ashtray. “Pittsfield had some fine girls there too.”
“Is this common?” asked Phil, legitimately curious. He was, as of yet, blissfully unaware of the disaster unfolding in the Gemmans’ laps.
“Not usually around here, this close to the city,” said Carl. “Out in the real country . . . yeah, you’ll get all kinds of barbarism. People stealing their neighbor’s daughters. It’s savage. Makes me sad to see it happening here.”
“Someone must’ve thought it was worth the risk,” said Jasper, leaning forward with clasped hands. “Figured they could make a lot of money—or maybe they wanted to keep the girls for themselves.”
“What’s so special about this group?” asked Atticus.
Carl leveled a warning look at his sons. “Just a particularly pretty group. Smart thing would be to sell them. They lose half their value once they’re bedded.”
Justin felt mildly ill, but it was getting difficult to tell if it was from Arcadian gender politics or his continuing recovery from divine powers.
“Do they just raid salons?” asked Phil. “Any chance that prowler you had here the other night was connected? You said that place is relatively close, and I’ll come out and say it: our women are a particularly pretty group.”
Carl frowned, not liking the suggestion but unable to deny it. “I already upped the security, but I’ll have the boys do some extra watches too.” Said boys didn’t look thrilled about this but offered no complaint.
Lucian, however, had plenty to say afterward, once the Gemmans had retired to their guesthouse for the night. He ordered Justin to his room and immediately turned on him, after politely asking Val to step outside.
“If they increase security, Mae’s going to have a hell of a time getting back in here,” said Lucian.
Justin shook his head. “Didn’t you follow what I said? Mae’s not coming back.”
“No!” exclaimed Lucian. “And that’s the problem. I didn’t follow half of what you blurted out earlier. Why would Mae do that? Why would she abandon the mission to raid a salon and—so help me—kill a bunch of Arcadians! We’re supposed to be here to promote peace!”
“The salon was holding Gemman girls,” said Justin, trying to make a logical argument for something he knew was illogical. “Girls stolen from our country.”
“Mae couldn’t have known that,” argued Lucian.
“Come on, you only have to look at them to know! Plus . . . one of them was her, uh, niece.”
That took Lucian aback, and Justin sketched a hasty explanation of the Koskinen family’s sordid history. He blurred the details of how Mae had obtained her intelligence, though, citing a vague connection to the Swedish mafia, which wasn’t entirely a lie since Mae had once tried to work with them.
Lucian sat down on the bed, looking about as far as possible from the dazzling and cheerful politician Justin usually saw. “You know, she mentioned that she was looking forward to this trip, and I dared to hope—well, it doesn’t matter. She’s out there now, and I don’t know how the hell she’s going to get back home.”
“She’ll find a way,” Justin insisted, not that he had any idea either. “And in the meantime, there’s another situation you should know about.”
Lucian’s head jerked up. “Really? Something worse than one of our soldiers going rogue and forcing us to smuggle a defector back home, in order to save our asses?”
Justin considered that. “I guess it depends on how you define ‘worse.’ You know I had that meeting with the Grand Disciple, right?