“Eli. Don’t ask me my last name. That’s all I remember.”
“Age?”
“Fourteen? Maybe fifteen?”
Joell muttered, “Can we please check the birth certificate next time we pick up a youth hazard?”
Katie was already steering Eli toward the meeting room. “C’mon, buddy. Time to get grilled.”
“Interrogated,” Rayna corrected.
“Interviewed,” Joell said, pointedly. “He’s not a suspect.”
“Yet,” Rayna added.
Joell shot her a look. “Behave.”
The meeting room had been hastily repurposed: whiteboard, magic sensors, a pitcher of water, and a tray of cookies that looked suspiciously like bribes.
Victoria was already on the monitor, arms folded, elegant in an impressionistic blazer that made her look like she should be running a Paris fashion house instead of remote-viewing paranormal hotspots. Magda’s square blinked on. The Australian time zone must have woken her out of a sound sleep, making her hair look like Bill the Cat. Sahara’s screen flickered on last. She looked vaguely annoyed to be summoned during a dig.
Katie sat beside Eli. “Don’t worry. They’re scary, but mostly in a ‘we contain unidentified evil’ kind of way. Not like, ‘looking for places to bury a body’ scary.”
Joell started. “Eli, we need you to tell us everything you remember about how you got out of the Between.”
Eli looked nervous. “I didn’t mean to come out. I was hiding. And thenshegrabbed me,” he said, pointing to Rayna, “And I woke up. I think? Only it was somewhere else, and people couldseeme.”
Magda leaned forward. “How long were you in the Between?”
“I don’t know. There’s no time in there. Just dreams. And walls. And sometimes graffiti that moves.”
Katie stiffened.
Rayna noticed. “Does that mean something to you?”
Katie didn’t answer right away. Her voice was low when she finally said, “I saw the graffiti too. Before I met him. It knew my name.”
Joell turned to Eli. “Did something mark you before you entered the Between?”
Eli hesitated. “Yeah. This guy. He didn’t have a face. He told me I was ‘ripe.’ Like I was a fruit or something. And then everything went gray.”
Victoria spoke for the first time. “The faceless one. I’ve found references to him. He’s a harbinger. A chooser.”
“Of what?” Rayna asked.
Victoria looked grim. “Of people who can rewrite the rules.”
A beat of silence followed.
Eli shrank back in his seat. “I don’t want to rewrite anything. I just want to go home.”
Rayna sighed. “Kid, that ship sailed the moment you tripped our sensors and lit up a subway tunnel with mystic graffiti. Home’s going to have to wait.”
Joell nodded. “Good work, Victoria. Sahara, Magda, did either of you turn up anything in your research?”
Sahara held up something that looked like a shrunken head. “I turned up this. I’m not sure what it is, but it definitely should not be here.”
“Bring it in. You’re coming for Ostara, right?”
