Judy Hale's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Judy stood at the edge of the plaza with the second sunflower in her hand. The locket at her throat went hot without warning. It pulled forward, tugging her chin down, dragging her a step toward the far side of the square where a row of figures in reaper masks had gathered around a black staff covered in carvings. The metal burned through her shirt. She grabbed the chain and tried to hold it still, but it kept straining toward them like a compass needle that had found its north. A shape moved between two buildings across the plaza. Tall. Lanky. A black hound with eyes like lit coals stood watching her. Judy froze. She should have been afraid. She wasn't. The hound didn't crouch or snarl. It just held her gaze, and something in her chest loosened. The locket kept pulling toward the masked figures, but the hound's stillness felt like a hand on her shoulder telling her to wait. Then the masks began to turn. One of the reapers lifted the carved staff and started walking in her direction. Judy ran. She tucked the sunflower inside her jacket and shoved the burning locket under her collar and cut down the nearest side street. A chain link fence rose ahead of her, wrapped around a gothic wreck of a building surrounded by rusted cars and heaps of parts. The gate hung open. She slipped through and pressed her back against the inside of the fence, breathing hard, listening for footsteps on the cracked road behind her. A low growl started somewhere to her left. Then another, and another, until she was ringed by dogs. Seven or eight of them, lean and scruffy, their fur glowing in bruised purples and pinks and blues. They didn't lunge. They waited. A woman stepped out from behind a stack of car doors, dark coat trailing, hair lit gold at the edges. She looked Judy over once, quick and complete, the way someone checks a lock. "Locket," she said. "Take it off. It's screaming at them." Judy's hands shook as she lifted the chain over her head. The woman held out a strip of dark cloth and wrapped the locket in it before Judy could ask. The heat dulled at once. The pulling stopped. "Vixen Tremaine," the woman said. "These are mine. You're safe inside the fence as long as you don't lie to me." Outside, boots passed on the pavement and kept going. Judy sank down against a pile of tires with the wrapped locket in her fist. The sunflower was still in her jacket. The trail wasn't lost. She had traded the open street for a walled yard, a stranger, and a pack of dogs that had decided, for now, to let her stay.