Lauren Roy - Night Owls

The plan was solid. Even now, she knew she’d have made the same calls as Father Value had. Plans can go bad, Eleanor. That was one of his lessons, too.

Was the Creep standing in front of her one of the ones that did it? If he hadn’t pushed the old man to his death, had he been there to witness it? Had he laughed in that dry voice while Father Value’s life bled out on the pavement?

Headlights flashed along the road, their beams reflecting out over the water: the bus, on its late-night circuit. It trundled down the hill toward the stop.

Elly edged to her left, keeping the backpack out over the water. “You stay right here. Take one goddamned step and I’ll drop it.”

The Creep glared. His eyes caught the moonlight, two spots of amber glinting beneath his hood. But he didn’t move to snatch at her as she inched past him and back toward the beach. “We’ll find you,” he said, turning to watch her retreat. “And it will go as well for you as it did for the old man.” Those leathery lips peeled back into a grin. He sounded eager for that day to come. “Always remember you had a choice.”

“Screw you.” She backed up as quickly as she dared, feeling her way along so she wouldn’t have to take her eyes off him. At last, her sneakers sank into the coarse sand. Only then did she put her back to the Creep, as she took off toward the bus.

“Wait! Wait! Oh please, wait.” Father Value had always said she had a hell of a set of lungs. Her voice echoed off the closed-up clam shacks and the shops across the way. With every step, she expected the Creep’s hands on her shoulders, yanking her back. She put on one last burst of speed as she reached the sidewalk, hollering for all she was worth at the idling bus.

The driver heard her. He waited, one hand on the lever that opened and closed the doors, a grin splitting his face. She imagined what she must look like to him, winded and windblown, her mouse brown hair in wild disarray from her run. Her clothes were old and oft repaired, but clean. No one would have called her intimidating at a glance; usually they saw her petite frame and dismissed the possibility of danger altogether. That was usually their mistake. With the bus driver now, it worked to her advantage.

“Didn’t want to say good-bye to your boyfriend until the absolute last minute, eh?”

Fumbling for her wallet, Elly followed his gaze. Out at the end of the dock, the Creep’s silhouette was visible against the moonlit waves. He could have caught her. It wasn’t even a matter of him worrying that the bus driver might see and interfere. He let me go because they like to hunt. This was a head start to him, nothing more. She shuddered and fed a fistful of quarters into the collection box.

That had been another of Father Value’s lessons: Always carry bus fare.

THE BUS ROLLED into Edgewood a little after two a.m. It had picked up a few more passengers after Elly’s frantic boarding, mostly college kids coming off closing shifts at restaurants and coffeehouses. Elly watched them as they pulled out their cell phones and texted their friends or dragged huge textbooks into their laps for some after-hours studying.

She wasn’t much older than they were, and yet their world was so alien to her. She’d tried hanging out with normal kids once, a couple of years before. It had been easy enough to slip into the party, which had overflowed from the house into the street. All Elly’d had to do was walk in the door. Whenever anyone asked, she’d said she was “Mark’s friend.” No one had challenged her, which meant either there really was a Mark, or the other partygoers were also only loosely acquainted with the house owners.

She’d lasted maybe ten minutes.

She’d walked into the kitchen and plucked a beer out of a basin filled with ice. She’d stood at the edge of a gaggle of people and listened to the guy in the center holding court. She’d even laughed with the rest of them when he got to the punch line of his story.

But soon enough she found herself eyeing the doors and windows, planning exit routes and scoping out the décor for likely weapons. Silver and Pointy was a reassuring weight along her forearm. Her long sleeves hid the sheathed spike—she couldn’t help but wonder what people would say if they saw it.

She couldn’t help but wonder if she’d need it.

The walls had started closing in then, and from the sidelong glances the others were giving her, she knew she’d gotten twitchy. In the end, she’d deposited her half-drunk beer on an end table and fled out into the night before anyone could question her.

Father Value hadn’t known how to comfort her when she came home with red-rimmed eyes, hiccuping out her story between sobs. Not that she’d expected him to understand. That sort of life hadn’t ever been his.

That was what you gave up, being one of Father Value’s kids: being like everyone else.

Elly managed to hold it together on the bus ride, at least. She’d chosen a seat near the emergency window, the one you could pop out if the bus rolled over or plunged into a lake. If the Creeps decided to descend upon them, she had the instructions to get out of there memorized.

But that wasn’t the Creeps’ MO.

She made sure she was in the middle of the weary pack of late-shift workers when they disembarked in Edgewood. Anything looking to pounce on her would have to go through the coeds first, and while that wouldn’t buy her her life, it’d give her the opportunity for a good running start.

The streets were quiet, for the most part. Light spilled onto the sidewalk halfway down the main drag from a smattering of still-open shops. A coffeehouse, maybe, and probably a copy shop. The college kids shuffled along in that direction, headed for the campus on the other side of town. Elly had to fight the urge to shadow them—there was safety in numbers, and odds were at least one of them was a virgin.

But her destination was the other way, toward the huge white house on the outskirts of Edgewood. With a sigh, she turned away from the cluster of bodies and toward the one place Father Value had said might take her in.

Might.

She practiced speeches as she waited for someone to answer: I’m sorry it’s so late, sir, and I’m sorry to be leading monsters to your door. But when the silver-haired woman answered, all Elly could manage was, “Um, hi.”

Even though it was almost two thirty in the morning, the woman was dressed in jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled back in a bun. She might have been about to go out for a late dinner or a PTA meeting, to look at her. She regarded Elly with impatience. “Office hours don’t begin until eight, young lady.”

“Um,” Elly said again. “I’m not a student.” She shrugged off her backpack and held it to her chest as she opened the zipper. “I’m sorry to bother you so late, ma’am, but I need to speak to Professor Clearwater right away.” She let only the corner of the book show, enough so the woman could see that it was old. “A . . . a friend of his sent me.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, Elly was sure she was about to have the door slammed shut in her face. She choked down despair—she had nowhere else to go.

Then the woman’s shoulders sagged and the harshness left her eyes. “You’re one of his , aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“My name’s Elly Garrett. Father Value said that if I needed help, I could come to Professor Clearwater. Please, is he home?”

The woman shook her head. “Not at the moment, no. But if you’re here, alone . . . You’d best come inside.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Clearwater.”

The woman chuckled, a low, rueful sound. “Call me Helen. If things are as bad as I think they are, we may as well dispense with the formalities.”