Over in the living room, Gogo folded her book closed. She’d been listening. “It stinks of corruption bigger than one man on an ego trip,” Gogo said.
Vern shivered to hear Sherman reduced thus. He was her devil, her personal be-all-end-all of evil, but Gogo was right. He was but one man. “I’ve known for a long time Cainland’s had more power than makes sense,” Vern admitted. “I thought until now it was because Sherman was paying people off, but now I wonder, is it people paying him off?”
“And if so, which people is it?” asked Gogo.
Vern sifted through what she knew and what she didn’t, replaying conversations with Ollie, with her mother, and with Sherman in her head. It was too much to keep straight, but one memory stood out, something Reverend Sherman had said about his father. That he was treacherous. That Cainland had been a game to him. He was dead now, but maybe it was he and not his son who’d been in partnership with an outside power. Ollie had even mentioned Eamon Fields by name.
The children stymied further conversation with their bids to play. Addicted to the excitement of new friends, they coaxed Bridget and Gogo into wrestling, fort-building, and make-believe. When the stew heating on the stove—a concession to Vern’s bottomless belly—began to boil over, Vern was the one free to dash over and twist off the gas. She picked up the cast-iron pot to move it to a trivet on the counter so she could clean up. Glops of red broth splattered the burners and surface of the stovetop. She’d have to ask Bridget where the sponges were.
“Vern?” said Gogo from behind.
Stew in hand, Vern turned toward her. “Yeah?”
Gogo swallowed and took two cautious steps forward. “Please put that down.” She pointed toward the cast iron in Vern’s hands.
Vern frowned, put out by the sudden demand. She did what Gogo requested, but more out of confusion than compliance. She realized what troubled Gogo only when the pot was out of her hands. The scalding-hot iron had burned her palms. It was a sensation Vern was so accustomed to she rarely experienced it as pain anymore.
“Don’t worry. It’ll heal,” Vern said, a deep cleft forming between her eyebrows as she examined her hands.
“Say again?” asked Gogo.
“By tomorrow, it’ll be good as new,” Vern said, and shrugged. She’d stopped thinking of her ability to self-heal as extraordinary.
Gogo stood before Vern disbelieving, her mouth a perfect O.
“Mam always heals up,” said Howling from the blanket fort he’d built with Feral in the living room.
“That’s not healing up. What you’re talking about would be full-on regeneration,” Gogo said.
Vern spooned stew into her mouth and shrugged. “So? Mice can do it,” said Vern dismissively, playing the part of a girl casually in the know, thanking God of Cain for Carmichael and his endless fact-sharing.
“Exactly one genus of rodents and one strain of genetically modified mice,” said Gogo. Vern hadn’t expected her to know so much about it, but that had been a foolish miscalculation. Gogo’s interest in biology was deep enough that she had a friend she could call on to test samples of blood. It was dizzying to think about what kind of life someone like that had, so much larger in scope than Vern’s own. Upon leaving their forested home, Vern had told the children that there was more to life than the woods, but she wasn’t sure she’d understood the degree to which that was true.
“Look, why don’t you sit down?” asked Gogo.
Vern’s legs had started to wobble from the pain of standing upright. “Fine,” she said, and hobbled over to a chair.
Gogo sat next to her and looked her in the eye. “Tell me what else you can do,” she said.
Vern licked her lips and looked away. “Nothing.”
“Whatever Cainland is, it’s about you. You get that, right? It’s about what you are. It’s got to be,” she said, pleading. She dragged her chair closer to Vern until they were thigh-to-thigh. “Did you mean what you said earlier about leaving in a few days? Don’t. Stay here. Take the time to figure this shit out. Let me help. The more you know, the better you can fight, and you better believe it’s going to come down to a fight. It always does. What if they come for you?”
The antlered beast. Was it friend? Foe?
Sensing the truth in Gogo’s words, Vern willed her distrust and cynicism exorcised. “Okay,” said Vern. “I’ll start at the beginning.” The hauntings and her realization about what they really were, her strength, her endurance, her speed—she’d tell all.