Page 23 of A Resistance of Witches
“Then you can walk to Dordogne.”
Rebecca waited as Lydia considered her options and then got out,slamming the door behind her. For a moment, Rebecca was sure she would storm off, but she only stood by the back of the car, arms crossed, waiting. Rebecca got out and opened the boot.
“The moment we’re clear of them, you let me out,” Lydia said.
“Fine.”
Rebecca watched as Lydia arranged herself. She curled up on her side, then seemed to think of something.
“What if they look—”
Rebecca slammed the hatch and returned to the driver’s seat. She took a deep breath, gripping the wheel to steady her hands.
“If they look inside the boot,” she said, “then we are both dead.”
Ten
It had turned into a beautiful morning by the time they reached the town. The air was cool and crisp, and the sky had gone a vibrant, cloudless blue. Up on the hilltop, an old stone church looked down over the town, surrounded by bare trees.
Rebecca inhaled, taking in the sharp smell of burning leaves. There was something comforting about that smell. It reminded her of her childhood, when her father would pack the whole family up every autumn and take the train from Paris to the Alsace, where he’d grown up, for a week of grueling hikes and history lectures. Before her father had been forced to resign from his teaching position at the Lycée Henri-IV. Before the whole world had gone mad.
She kept both hands firmly on the wheel as she approached the center of town. Off to her left, she could see a gathering of uniformed milice, with their blue jackets and berets, congregating outside a school. Against the schoolhouse wall, a dozen townspeople stood in a line as uniformed men rifled through their papers. Rebecca watched as oneblue-clad milicien slapped an elderly man in the mouth, then shoved him to the ground and laughed.
Cruel, angry, impotent boys, Rebecca thought. She recalled the story of a village where a group of Resistance fighters had sabotaged the local power grid, wreaking havoc for the nearby garrison. The milice were never able to round up the saboteurs, so instead they went to the nearby town and filled the church with as many people as they could fit—women, children, the old and infirm. They asked them some questions, but no one knew anything about the saboteurs, so the milice took the people out back a dozen at a time and gunned them down, leaving their bodies where they fell. They left the corpses to rot in the sun, as a warning to those who would dare conspire with the Resistance. Even now, the thought of it filled her with a helpless rage.
Two miliciens stepped into the street in front of Rebecca and waved for her to stop the car. David had once told her she had a suspicious face, and so she forced herself to smile as they approached the window.
The taller of the two men had a mean, stupid face, like he’d been molded from putty by a slow-witted child. The shorter man was skinny, slouched and chinless, and seemed to wear a permanent smirk, as if he were always thinking of a particularly filthy joke. Rebecca wondered what it would feel like to drive her knuckles into his pronounced Adam’s apple.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” the smaller man said. “Where are you heading this morning?”
“Dordogne,” she said lightly. “I’m spending a few days with my cousin there.”
The shorter of the two men squinted into the distance as if he had not heard her. Behind him, the larger man loomed, looking slow but menacing.
“We’ve had some reports of Resistance activity in the area. Heardthey’re transporting guns from the coast. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, ma mignonne?”
Rebecca arranged her face in a mask of shock and outrage. “My God, no, I had no idea.”
Behind the men, another milicien hovered over a young girl as she shrank against the stone wall.
The larger man’s eyes settled on the hood of the automobile, and he pursed his lips in approval. “I like your car.”
“Thank you.”
The smaller man snickered. “Maybe we should requisition it, if you like it so much.”
Rebecca felt her throat constrict. “I’m afraid my boyfriend wouldn’t like that. The car belongs to him.”
“Oh? And who is your boyfriend?”
“His name is Hans. Captain Hans Müller.”
The man’s smile evaporated.Pathetic, Rebecca thought. These boys wanted so badly to play at being Nazis, but the idea of a Frenchwoman warming a German bed still filled them with disgust.
“Papers, please.”
“Of course.” Rebecca retrieved her identification, careful not to reveal the Browning semiautomatic pistol in her purse as she did. The papers had been crafted for her at great expense and bore her image—brown hair cut to her shoulders, downturned lips, permanent circles under the eyes, just like her mother—as well as a name that was almost hers, but not quite.
