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“That one? No.”
    “Then there’s nothing to fear, is there?” I went to the stairs. “I’m going to wash up. I’m filthy.”
    When I came downstairs again, it was to find only Junius sitting at the table, sipping a cup of coffee.
    “Where are the others?” I asked.
    “They headed on back,” Junius said. “You want to tell me why the hell Bibi felt the need to come all the way out here to tell you about a dream?”
    I shrugged. “She wanted to give me a bracelet to wear.”
    “A bracelet?”
    “A charm, I think. Against the
skookum tomawanos
or something. It’s just a bit of twine from Garrett’s, with some abalone shell.”
    Junius laughed. “Yeah. That’ll be some powerful magic. What
tomawanos
is she talking about?”
    “The mummy’s, of course,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t told her about it, but—”
    “I didn’t tell her.”
    I frowned. “You didn’t?”
    “I wasn’t anywhere near Bruceport. I saw Dawes and Leach out on the whacks.”
    “Then how did she know?”
    “No idea. I’m sure she heard it from somewhere. How else?”
    How else indeed?
In my dleam
, she’d said. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
    “Johnson said we should start our own museum and charge a fee to see her,” Junius said.
    “Absolutely not,” I snapped.
    “I was joking, Lea. But people will want to see her. You might as well get used to it. She’ll be a curiosity for at least a while.”
    “As long as they don’t touch her,” I said. I saw Junius’s quick frown, but I was relieved when he said nothing.
    As the night wore on, it grew harder to banish Bibi’s dream or her warnings. I felt strangely haunted. I tried not to give in to the terrible urge to go to the barn, to check on the mummy, to look at her, to touch her. Time was my enemy, but surely not so much as I felt, that if I did not go out there
right now
I would somehow be letting the answers slip away. It was foolish, and I knew it. Speed was not my friend when it came to research. I must be slow and steady and complete. I was good at detail, and I was good at it because I didn’t hurry, because my father’s teaching had been thorough and strict, drawings sometimes done ten times or more before they satisfied him, measurements refigured, words rejected and recrafted. So this need for hurry was strange and new. I fought it—I could not afford to make mistakes, not with her. I sat and wrote down everything I meant to do, step bystep. To measure her and draw her, to explore and list every mark upon her skin. Slowly, as a true scientist would, as my father had taught me to be.
    But I couldn’t focus. What I wanted tonight was a story, to hear Lord Tom tell me something new, but Junius was here to criticize and I didn’t want that either. So I went to bed. The warmth from the stove and our bodies had risen, but it hadn’t completely banished the cold, and I shivered as I undressed and put on my nightgown and went to the bureau to brush and braid my hair.
    I stopped short. There, next to my hairbrush, was the bracelet Bibi had given me, the abalone glimmering in the faint light. I frowned. How had it got there? I had left it in my coat pocket. I hadn’t taken it out.
    I heard Junius’s footsteps on the stairs, and then the bedroom opened and he came inside. Before he could say anything, I said, “That bracelet, June, the one I told you Bibi gave me? Did you take it out of my pocket?”
    “Bracelet? No. Why would I?”
    I stared at the bracelet, confused and disturbed. I picked it up and let it fall into the carved horn bowl—my father’s—alongside loose buttons and a brooch, the only other piece of jewelry I owned. And then I turned determinedly away. It was late, and I was tired, and I reassured myself: it was easy to forget something so small, an action so thoughtlessly taken. It was nothing more than that.

CHAPTER 3

    T HE SERE GRASS was stiff and prickly beneath my bare feet where I sat on the hill overlooking the valley, a