Twenty-Seven Bones

6

Holly’s life had not been without its difficulties, even tragedies. She had been outed-humiliatingly-in high school by a girl she’d loved and trusted. She had buried both parents. She’d left behind everything she knew and loved in California to bury her sister and care for her niece and nephew.

But this-knowing your child had been kidnapped while you were locked in your room smoking dope-this was despair. Biblical, tear-your-hair-out and rend-your-garments despair.

If possible, Marley was in an even deeper circle of hell. Watching out for Dawn had only been Auntie Holly’s job for a couple years-it had been Marley’s ever since he could remember. And he was the one to whom their mother had whispered, Take care of your sister-it was practically the last thing she’d said.

When he’d heard Holly screaming in the Crapaud he had raced out into the storm in his pajamas. He’d banged on doors with his feet until there were no doors left to bang on, gone as deep as he dared into the forest, calling for his sister until his voice was hoarse, then searched the Core with his flashlight in his mouth until he spotted Pender’s gun by the side of the path behind Andy’s A-frame. And when Officer Winstone draped the yellow SLPD slicker over his shoulders and told him to watch over the gun, a team of oxen couldn’t have dragged Marley away, at least until Marcus Coffee’s Auntie Layla arrived to take charge of the crime scene.

For Dawson, who’d loved Dawn since birth and Pender since last night, Mysterianism just wasn’t cutting it any longer-she found herself praying for the first time in years to a God/Goddess/Whatever.

“Listen,” she told the God/Goddess/Whatever. “This isn’t about me. But I’ll make you a deal anyway-let them live, let them be okay, let this just be some kind of a misunderstanding, I don’t care how you work it, and I’ll…I’ll…”

But there was only one thing Dawson had to offer that any G/G/W she could have respected or believed in would have accepted. So she offered it-then she put on her poncho again, grabbed her twelve-volt lantern, and walked back out into the rain to search for her friends.