Jack Thompson's Arc

Chapter 7 of 25

The book gave them no scientist. It gave them a pressed sketch of a horseshoe wrapped in ribbon and a single line of ink: ask the old woman who tamed her own bad luck. Jack closed the cover. 13 shrugged. "Not what we came for." "It's a thread," Jack said. "We pull it." They followed the thread to a tall, weathered house with a crooked picket fence. Smoke still rose from a broken window. The front door hung off one hinge. Boot prints crossed the porch in fresh mud. Luna Eclipsed scouts had been here, and recently. Inside, a woman stood in the wrecked parlor with a stick raised like a blade. Silver hair. Orange dress. Her lower half was no longer human — pale flanks, hooves on the splintered boards. A dark horseshoe hung at her belt, still humming. Children peeked from a back hallway. "Stop where you are," Amelie CloudRunner said. Flat. Final. Orobas had not yet let her go. "We're not them," Jack said. He showed empty hands. "We came to ask about luck. About curses." Her eyes did not soften. "You came late." 13's hands drifted to his pistols. "Lady. Easy." The horseshoe at her belt pulsed once, and Jack felt his own thing inside him answer it — patient, pleased, leaning forward like a dog at a fence. 13 went very still. His jaw locked. "Friday's awake," he whispered. Complete sentence. The tell. Jack's hand shook around the shotgun. Blackjack pressed up under his skin, drawn by the demon in the room like iron to a magnet. Three pulls. Three leashes straining at once. Amelie saw it on their faces and lowered the stick a quarter inch. "Oh," she said quietly. "You're cursed too." She set the stick down. The horseshoe stopped humming. The pull eased — not gone, but quieter, like a door pushed mostly shut. "Sit," Amelie said. "I will tell you what I know about the things inside you. But the scouts will come back. And when they do, you will help me get the children out." Jack swallowed hard and nodded. They had their teacher. They had also just been drafted into her war.