Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

unlikely. But if there is a cure, it might be on that drive, too. I’ve crossed hell and earth to get it to you ’cause even though I think you might be one evil skank, I also think you love your people enough to want them to have justice. The World might have been able to ignore you out here in the ass end of America, but I guarantee no one will be able to ignore the necklace around my neck.”

The ice was gone, my rage was gone, I’d been able to sucker punch the Outlaw Warlord who burned my house down.

What was in my heart, Mama? Right then, what was in my heart? Not faith or love or hope, but peace. A whole lot of it.

I’d done it. I had followed through on my imperative. I’d done my bit.

June Mai Angel rose and sheathed her knife.

I closed my eyes. Now I could search for the flowers the bindweed grows, ’cause bindweed might be a weed, but it’s also known as the morning glory—a flower of hope. Hope for what? I didn’t know, but I knew I’d come through the worst of it. I’d gone crazy and come back. And I got my licks in along the way.

What else is there in the world?

June Mai still didn’t say a thing. She was prolly taking care of her nose, which if I was lucky, I’d broke. Evil skank.

I rolled onto my stomach, to sleep, to rest, finally. I’d earned it.

Then I smelled it. The stench of a cigar eclipsed the perfume of the cold sage, the dry dirt, and that winter smell of grass sleeping.

A pair of boots walked into my line of sight. Black boots. And jeans. And a long, black duster, and then ...

Pilate. Smiling. My Pilate, alive and right there.

I sat back on my legs. I regarded him for a long time, and he looked down at me. He was thin like me, his long hair gone, and the scars on his skull visible from the bullets he’d taken walking around with the luck of the Devil, rolling dice for purple cloaks and all the cities of Judea.

No, he couldn’t be there.

I was hallucinating. “Hey, Pilate. You’re not really there, are you?”

He smiled.

No, he wasn’t there. So, I said exactly what was on my mind. “You’re not there and neither is God. I bet you’d like me as an atheist. Well, I figure I’m one now. God can’t exist, not with what we’ve been through.”

I expected him to fade away, but he didn’t. He sucked in on his cigar and let out the smoke. Coughed a little, but not much.

“No, Cavvy,” he said, “I don’t reckon there’s a God at all in this fucked-up world.”

I heard him. He was there. Or I was experiencing an auditory hallucination as well—one that cursed and cursed bad.

He went on, “As far as what we’ve been through, well, of course there’s a God. How else can you explain us here and now, chatting?”

I didn’t point out that my house was gone and my ranch in ruins. Instead, I talked about horses. “Windshadow gave me a ride into town. He found me on the plains outside of Limon. He told me to say hi.”

Pilate laughed. “See? If anything, God is that horse. Let’s start the cult of Windshadow, but dammit, where was he when I needed him? Well, at least I didn’t have to walk much. It’s really useful to have lots of friends in Juniper.”

We let a quiet come down between us. No wind. Nothing but us breathing and the rustle of June Mai Angel putting her violin in a case.

“You hear that?” I asked Pilate.

“Yeah, I hear it.”

My eyes closed on their own. My atheism was short-lived, dang it. I was too tired to argue against a lifetime of Mass and Bible. “It’s God, isn’t it? That silence. And you and me talking in the silence. And Micaiah, he’s with you, huh? All of us God. And all of us just little pieces of God at the same time.”

Pilate nodded. “Little pieces of God, blowing on the wind.”

“Sharlotte said it. Cottonwood fluff on a river of woe.”

Pilate chuckled. “Your sister is quite the cowgirl poet. I’d imagine NPR is in her future.”

“No,” I said. “Nothing is in her future. She’s dead.”

He didn’t respond to that but said something else. “Micaiah is back in Burlington. And I see you’ve met June Mai Angel.”

“Yeah. I punched her. Called her an evil skank.” I stood up.

Pilate took my hand in his. He was alive. He was real. And if he was upright, Pilate was talking. “I’m here as well. And God? He doesn’t exist, only He must exist, only He can’t exist, and if He’s everything, He can be nothing, nothing at all. Atheists, saints, sinners, we’re all right when it comes to the Almighty Nothing above us, in us, and some impossible thing that is not there at all but is as close to us as the breath on our lips and blood in our veins. Forever and ever, Amen.”

I buried my head into Pilate’s shirt, smelling clean, smelling like a man, like my father, like Pilate, forever and ever, Amen.

If God ever needed a lesson on how to hold me, He could learn it from Pilate.

“Sharlotte, Wren, Rachel, they’re dead,” I whispered into Pilate’s shirt, as he held me.

“Are you sure?”

I moved back slowly and said carefully, “You’re not saying they’re here, too?”

He shook his head. “No, I have no idea where they are, but I can’t believe Wren would die without saying goodbye to me. And I promised Rachel I’d kiss her.” He grinned, and I saw a far-away look come into eyes. “Rachel, silly Rachel. She became almost magical in her innocence and kindness.”

He caught my glance and turned sheepish. “Not that anything happened between the two of us. You’d have been proud of me. I was celibate, like with real vows and everything. Jesus, it’s like I’m a Roman Catholic