Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(140)
Author: Kim Harrison

"You were both at Rock Island?"

Aaron didn’t sound convinced, and Lilly turned to him, somehow managing a smile as she leaned back against the counter, the dust and dirt of the explosion covering her like the lies she was saying. "All morning. You’re not going to turn us in, are you? That was the last of the dy***ite."

Aaron’s gaze shifted to her mother, then back to her. "Lilly, I know you and he had words."

Fear flashed through her. They would take her, lock her up. She’d never see her girls again. "He wanted to know how he could make it better. I told him to leave," she said evenly.

"I would hope so!" her mother said as she forced a steaming cup of coffee into Lilly’s grip and putting a hand upon her shoulder. "I love your son as if he were my own, Aaron, but he’s a fool who doesn’t know how to keep his pants zipped. If he’s not hightailed it out of Greenwood out of pure embarrassment, I’m sure he’ll show up before long. I poured you a cup. You want to sit a spell?"

Aaron took a long look at her mother standing beside her. From outside, the sound of the girls playing in the drying creek came in, and Pepper whined, wanting to join them. "Thank you, Em. Don’t mind if I do," he finally said, his eyes narrowing in mistrust as he sat down.

"I’ve got some biscuits," Lilly said, heart thudding. "Fresh out of the oven, Officer Aaron. Let me get you a plate."

And smiling, Lilly held it out to him, proud that her hand didn’t tremble at all.

Grace

The character of Grace has a curious history. She began before the Hollows found publication in a preindustrial setting that had far more scope than I gave her here. Her world was originally smaller and the narration of her story was split between the protagonist and antagonist. I had intended to leave those first hundred pages of text forgotten in the back of my closet after I fell in love with the faster pace and more modern feel of urban fantasy, but the characters of Grace, her lover, and the protagonist refused to be forgotten and Grace successfully made the jump from medieval to modern, proving to me at least that the character is all and the setting is just the framework of the tale. Originally Grace came to me as an older character, but I give you a glimpse of her now when she is young and full of hope so you can understand her better when she falls.

ONE

Ears down, Hoc hung back as Grace and Boyd got out of the shiny black sedan with its one-way-locking back doors and secondary restraints masquerading as seat belts. Most times they didn’t need the extra precautions, but the dog’s behavior as he reluctantly jumped from the front seat and padded alongside Grace told her that this was not going to be an easy acquisition. Not that any of them were.

"Hoc’s edgy."

Grace gave Boyd a wry smile. The thin, older man was almost a head taller than she was, a bad cop to her more youthful good cop-at least that was the appearance they usually went with. Sun glinted in his silvering hair, and his long legs easily took up the distance as he came around the car to meet her on the sidewalk. They weren’t cops, but the thought was there, especially since they were both in dark navy suits, the stark white of Boyd’s cuffs and collar matching her blouse in an almost uniform consistency.

"I noticed." Grace waited, her hand on Hoc’s head, soothing her canine partner with a gentle warming flow of energy. He was agitated at something in the house. It wasn’t the same excitement he showed when they visited kindergartners looking for unregistered throws among the kids, oblivious that their lives might change if Hoc loved them too much. Like a drug dog, he would go into doggy delight when finding an unbalanced throw, attracted to the tiny surges of electricity most gave off. No, this was something else, and Grace squinted up at the two-story, four-bedroom, two-car garage house.

Suburbia at its best, and she felt a brief pang. She’d grown up somewhere very close to this-until it had all fallen apart.

Hoc’s ears pricked as three kids on skateboards rumbled down the shady road with loud voices and not having a care in the world. It was nice, peaceful. Well, we can change that, Grace thought as she pushed off the black car and fell into step beside Boyd.

The walk was cobblestone, matching the drive in a show of wealth as it gently sloped upward to a large porch decorated for Halloween. Frowning, Boyd checked his watch. The innocuous-looking instrument actually functioned as an informal erg meter as well as a timepiece. If the watch was running, he had control of his balance, if it was stopped, he knew he’d lost it somewhere.

Grace glanced at her own watch, seeing the second hand sweeping the face smoothly, but she knew things could change fast-especially when they were escorting an unregistered throw. That’s what humans who could shift the balance of energy existing naturally in the human body were called. Throws, or throwbacks. That Grace and Boyd were throwbacks themselves never seemed to mean anything to those they tried to bring in.

Head down, she hit a button to tag the time for the medics as one where her watch’s time might be impacted by the kid they were after. The medics checked it weekly, and if her time was off by more than thirty seconds without a reason, she had to go in for a refresher course on control. It hadn’t happened in six years. Hoc had her on edge. The boy was older than usual. It made things tricky.

They mounted the stairs together, Boyd’s steps in perfect time with hers and the border collie’s nails scraping. It’s for his own good, she thought as they left the tidy green yard, the absence of toys and bikes saying as much as the report in the car that there were no other children. Most parents stopped having kids when one showed signs of being a throw. But then, most parents brought their kids to a Strand "party" to be assessed after they shorted out the TV one too many times, charting their life for service in the Strand if they had enough control and/or aptitude, or quietly adjusted to remove the ability if they didn’t.

Still, there would always be misguided parents who managed to hide their children’s abilities until a mistake was made and an anonymous call brought Grace or any one of the Strand’s envoys to collect, instruct, and administer to-in that order and not always with the parents’ or child’s approval.

Grace and Boyd were collectors. She was good at it, though it chafed that she was still doing the same thing after four years. Her knack in evaluating potential initiates was to blame. "Attention to Duty" her yearly evaluation said, but the honest truth as to why she was so good at bringing in the difficult cases was because she had run herself and she knew what scared the shit out of them.

"You okay?" Boyd asked as he tagged his own watch for possible disruption and knocked at the door. On the knocker was a smiling pumpkin with Happy Halloween stenciled on it. Grace’s brow furrowed. It was too perfect here, like a Hollywood set.