“Poof?”
“Poof, he’s banished back to underhill, or wherever the hell he came from.”
Wherever the hell. Apt phrase, that.
“So we go to the store, get the supplies, come back, and that’s that. Easy,” Jeffrey said, grinning like we were planning a school prank.
Stockton put the list back in his pocket. “I think I remember seeing a convenience store a few miles back, at the last intersection. They’ll have some of this stuff. She didn’t say we need all of it, these are just the options. Why don’t you two wait here and keep an eye on things while I go get the stuff.”
“Sure,” Jeffrey said without hesitation. Stockton was already turning to go.
“Wait!” I tried to keep my voice down and sound desperate at the same time.
“You have a better idea?”
“I go get the stuff and you wait here?”
“I’ll be back in half an hour, I promise. Here, hang on to this.” He gave me the locket charm, then ran along the shelter of the trees, back to the road.
I had a bad feeling about this. “Split up,” I muttered. “We can take more damage that way. You know we’re stranded here once he takes the car.”
“Calm down, it’ll be okay. Smith’s wrapped up in whatever he’s doing in there and the guards haven’t spotted us. We’ll stay here, keep our heads down, and be fine.”
“You’re entirely too pleased about all this.”
“Of course I am! I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m usually cooped up in a TV studio or a book signing. But this—running around, investigating, spying. How cool is it?”
How did I get myself into these situations? “So, Jeffrey—you want to be a guest on my show?”
“Um—just what exactly would that involve?”
Inside the caravan, nothing happened. If this had been any other church’s revival meeting, there would have been singing, shouting, praying. I wouldn’t have minded hearing some speaking-in-tongues.
But there was nothing, except Jeffrey and me sitting in the dark and the cold, under a tree, waiting.
Enough time passed for me to think that Stockton had set us up. Somewhere, hidden cameras recorded us, and any minute now actors dressed as bogeymen would leap out of the woods, screaming and carrying on. I’d freak out, adrenaline would push me over the edge, and I’d turn Wolf, because that was what happened when I panicked in a dangerous situation. Stockton would get it all on film and broadcast it in “A Very Special Episode of Uncharted World: Kitty, Unleashed.” I didn’t know what Jeffrey would do. Get out of the way, I hoped.
Except the caravan of the Church of the Pure Faith was parked in front of us, and I wasn’t going to take my eyes off them. The bogeymen would have to wait.
Jeffrey tapped my shoulder and pointed at the road. A car pulled up—Stockton’s. The headlights were off, to draw less attention to it. I hissed a sigh of relief.
A few minutes later, he rejoined us, carrying a plastic bag. “Hi. Anything happen while I was gone?”
“Nothing,” I said. “They’ve been quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Jeffrey added happily.
Stockton pulled items out of the bag: a loaf of sliced sandwich bread, a shaker of salt, a bottle of Saint-John’s-wort herbal remedy, and a pill crusher.
“I figured we’d crush the pills up and sprinkle the powder,” he said. “I don’t think you can get Saint-John’s-wort any other way these days.”
I deferred to his supposedly greater knowledge, because I didn’t have any better ideas.
“Jeffrey, you take the salt. Kitty—” He handed Jeffrey the salt, and me the loaf of bread. While he took the pill crusher out of the package and dug into the Saint-John’s-wort, he explained. “We start at the north end of the caravan. Just sprinkle this stuff as we go, and that’s that. Which way’s north?”
The moon, a little over three-quarters, was rising. That marked east. I pointed to the left. “There.” It was just off from the entrance of the caravan.
Stockton exhaled a deep breath. “Right. Here we go, then.”