King Solomon's Wives: Hunted

Chapter 4: A House of Wives

Dilara

A young woman prowled the grounds of our secret home. She wasn’t a Hunter, obviously, and not a stray boy who’d seen one of my girls and followed her home. But she wasn’t supposed to be here, and she was here because of me.

Her name was Olivia, and fortunately, she’d called before she arrived, so I had turned off the alarm at the gate. I couldn’t have my girls worrying about her. At noon, the time of her professed visit, I informed my right-arm Ceydin that I was going to check the grounds. I walked the quarter-mile path to the gate and watched as Olivia rang the buzzer, which I’d also disabled.

Her tiny blond pigtails and pink T-shirt made her look younger than her twenty-two years. Even her tennis shoes were pink. Rhinestones on the pockets of her jeans sparkled.

From my spying place a hundred feet away, I took out my phone and dialed her. “Hi. Yeah, it’s me. I got your message... No, I’m not home. I’m in town now. Sorry, no one’s at the house, or, well, the women wouldn’t let you in anyway because they don’t know you... Yes, you’re probably scaring them. It’s a battered women’s shelter, you know, so they’ve been through a lot. They don’t like...right, they don’t like visitors. No, it’s okay, you weren’t thinking... Yes, you should probably leave... All right... Well, I don’t know about meeting tomorrow... I have to go, someone’s talking to me... All right, bye.”

After I ended the call, Olivia stared at her phone a moment, and then she rang the bell again and crossed her arms to wait. It wasn’t the first time an outsider had come to our house. Wives had secluded themselves here for almost thirty years, and I’d heard stories about the occasional curious stranger from town. The clan leader always took responsibility for making the stranger go away and never come back. I would have to get rid of Olivia somehow, too, even though she wasn’t particularly dangerous. She was an altruistic innocent. There was no way she understood all the trouble a person could get into by entangling herself in other people’s lives. She didn’t know there was deep, powerful evil in the world. She didn’t know about hiding from Hunters and couldn’t possibly understand a need for discipline or vigilance.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Olivia turned sadly and got into her car. I let out a sigh of relief.

So I had given her our address and accepted her donations of clothes and casseroles. So I had stopped by the Salvation Army store where she worked to say hello and ended up talking for an hour. So I had accepted her invitation to go for a walk around town. So what?

This morning, she’d called to say she might drop by for no reason, without a donation. I couldn’t allow her to cross that line.

Why was Olivia so persistent? I tried to remember if I’d ever touched her. We’d spent a good deal of time together the last couple weeks. She might have put her hand over mine or nudged my elbow with hers. Maybe she’d sipped from my drink when I wasn’t looking. I hadn’t been taking my Mitigation Pills, because, well, why would I?

Never in my life had I thought I’d need MPs. They weakened us. The combination of herbs and plant extracts lessened our addictive chemicals, but they also thinned our blood and stripped it of iron. We only took them when necessary.

Now, apparently, Olivia was starting to feel addicted. I would have to call her later, to end it, and I’d make damn sure I never touched her again.

***

Olivia’s appearance put me on guard. If it was so easy to interest someone and lure them to our home, perhaps none of us were being careful enough. My suspicions were heightened when I saw Pasha and Sasha, my rebellious sixteen-year-olds, lurking among some trees in the yard. They jabbered into their cell phones while smoking cigarettes. Maybe they were talking to other Wives, but maybe not. I whistled to get their attention and nodded them toward the house, and they ended their calls.