“We need to do this for real,” Mort says. “How long has it been since we had a birthday bash? Couple of years?”
I can’t remember how the tradition started. One of us—Mort, probably—decided our birthdays didn’t count until we all turned that age, the milestone ones in particular: sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one. He was born in January, I’m July, and Jack is an October baby.
“Halloween?” Mort is scrolling on his phone. “There’s got to be something going on in the Twin Cities then. At the very least, at First Avenue. Yes!” He glances up, triumphant. As I said, all parties are Mort’s idea. “The annual Halloween party and costume contest. Start planning, Pansy-Girl. We need to win.”
I freeze, flute halfway to my lips. “I’ll be patrolling.”
“Just because Rose never took a day off doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“But—”
“If it makes you—and her—feel any better, Jack and I can drive out. We’ll triple-seal all the fissures. That should buy you a full week of parties.”
“We’ll do it,” Jack echoes. “I can get time off. Besides, I haven’t seen Rose in years.”
I swallow my second protest. I should tell them. I really, really should tell my two best friends in the whole world what’s going on. But I can’t. The resistance goes beyond the cryptic list my mother left behind. It’s the Sight, nattering louder and louder. I swear, all the words are there in my mouth, but my lips feel like stone.
Maybe, by October, things will have worked themselves out. I’m longing to see both of them again, in real life. Besides, if they do help me triple-seal the fissures before the first serious snowfall, winter will be so much easier.
So I raise my glass and say, “To Halloween!”
Chapter 17
Henry
Seattle, Washington
Monday, July 10
He had a week. A single week in which to accomplish the impossible. Henry sat in what was once his father’s study and was now, ostensibly, his own, and felt both time and opportunity slip through his fingers with alarming speed.
This would be a delicate operation, like catching and holding on to a single Screamer, something ill-advised and with any number of unintentional ramifications.
He leaned back in the chair, wingback, leather, and it creaked beneath him. The mahogany desk—which had once been his father’s as well—felt too large, as if he weren’t quite ready to step into those shoes. The evening was mild, but the air held a chill, the sort born from a house not lived in. He almost started a fire in the hearth but opted to warm himself with a scotch instead.
It hadn’t helped.
A rustling came from the umbrella stand near the study door.
“Are you suggesting we should have stayed?”
Another rustling, this one far more enthusiastic.
“Yes, your motivations are glaringly obvious.”
But the nudge went deeper than his umbrella’s affinity for Agent Little’s. It had taken Henry years to accept that his umbrella’s intuition was something not only to acknowledge but respect. Still, despite their mostly one-sided conversations, he had trouble discerning what its messages might mean.
Like now.
But he’d obeyed that prodding earlier, buying his own return ticket, powering down his phone and the umbrella’s GPS before leaving King’s End. Of course, the rental car might prove an issue, but he doubted anyone would check.
All those precautions might buy him a week.
A single week to draft his report. A single week to figure out all the implications of what he planned to say. A single week to prepare for the inevitable fallout. His thoughts kept revisiting those words from his phone call with Terrence.
The family line has been earmarked for retirement.
That wasn’t a clerical mistake, a slip of a key of someone like Terrence updating personnel data. That took intervention. It took approval from the High Council, or at least, a quorum.
