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3
Less than a minute after Rose settled into a chair next to the big plastic bingo drum (with her cooling
mug of coffee beside it), the Lodge’s pay telephone exploded with a twentieth-century clatter that
made her jump. She let it ring twice before lifting the receiver from the cradle and speaking in her
most modulated voice. “Hello, dear. You could have reached out to my mind, you know. It would
have saved you long-distance charges.”
A thing the bitchgirl would have been very unwise to try. Abra Stone wasn’t the only one who
could lay traps.
“I’m coming for you,” the girl said. The voice was so young, so fresh! Rose thought of all the useful
steam that would come with that freshness and felt greed rise in her like an unslaked thirst.
“So you’ve said. Are you sure you really want to do that, dear?”
“Will you be there if I do? Or only your trained rats?”
Rose felt a trill of anger. Not helpful, but of course she had never been much of a morning person.
“Why would I not be, dear?” She kept her voice calm and slightly indulgent—the voice of a
mother (or so she imagined; she had never been one) speaking to a tantrum-prone toddler.
“Because you’re a coward.”
“I’m curious to know what you base that assumption on,” Rose said. Her tone was the same—
indulgent, slightly amused—but her hand had tightened on the phone, and pressed it harder against
her ear. “Never having met me.”
“Sure I have. Inside my head, and I sent you running with your tail between your legs. And you kill
kids. Only cowards kill kids.”
You don’t need to justify yourself to a child, she told herself. Especially not a rube. But she heard herself
saying, “You know nothing about us. What we are, or what we have to do in order to survive.”
“A tribe of cowards is what you are,” the bitchgirl said. “You think you’re so talented and so
strong, but the only thing you’re really good at is eating and living long lives. You’re like hyenas. You
kill the weak and then run away. Cowards.”
The contempt in her voice was like acid in Rose’s ear. “That’s not true!”
“And you’re the chief coward. You wouldn’t come after me, would you? No, not you. You sent
those others instead.”
“Are we going to have a reasonable conversation, or—”
“What’s reasonable about killing kids so you can steal the stuff in their minds? What’s reasonable
about that, you cowardly old whore? You sent your friends to do your work, you hid behind them, and
I guess that was smart, because now they’re all dead.”
“You stupid little bitch, you don’t know anything!” Rose leaped to her feet. Her thighs bumped
the table and her coffee spilled, running beneath the bingo drum. Long Paul peeked through the
kitchen doorway, took one look at her face, and pulled back. “Who’s the coward? Who’s the real
coward? You can say such things over the phone, but you could never say them looking into my face!”
“How many will you have to have with you when I come?” Abra taunted. “How many, you yellow
bitch?”
Rose said nothing. She had to get herself under control, she knew it, but to be talked to this way by
a rube girl with a mouthful of filthy schoolyard language . . . and she knew too much. Much too much.
“Would you even dare to face me alone?” the bitchgirl asked.
“Try me,” Rose spat.
There was a pause on the other end, and when the bitchgirl next spoke, she sounded thoughtful.
“One-on-one? No, you wouldn’t dare. A coward like you would never dare. Not even against a kid.