Page 45 of Some Kind of Haunted

“What do you mean your grandma hasn’t been the same?” Nora asks, looking concerned. She’s clearly in the dark about whatever is going on with Cleo’s grandmother. Cleo’s grandmother, who was my grandmother’s twin.

Cleo shrugs again, but it’s jerkier this time. “Just not all there. Grief, I guess. Dad and I are handling it.” She says this firmly. Like punctuation. A clear: don’t push.

“My grandfather is fully aware of what’s going on with the Feed, obviously,” Jack says, and I get the sneaking suspicion he is offering this up to redirect Nora’s attention—and worry—from Cleo. Like he’s that kind of a nice guy.

Maybe that’s how he is with locals. Maybe what I get from him is the tourist treatment.

Funny thing is that I don’t feel much like a tourist, sitting here discussing the town’s demon problem.

“My parents were never much for parenting and certainly don’t give a shit about the town or they’d still be here,” Jack continues.

If he has any emotional reaction to that—if he has some feelings around his parents apparently leaving town or being able to leave town and therefore leaving him behind—he keeps it under a careful mask.

But I can’t help but feel sorry for him. Maybe I never had a mother and maybe my father wasn’t ever what I needed, but he tried. He meant well. He loved me, no matter what a mess he thought, or feared, I was.

“That’s kind of how it goes with the founding families, though,” Jack continues. “A lot of the descendants get out. Not many of us are left.”

“Like our father,” I say. I don’t know why I feel a pang of guilt about this. Logan and I aren’t the ones who knew this place and left it. We’re not the reason we never knew our grandmother or Cleo or any of these Midas things. Our dad did that.

And if he knew about the Feed and all the demons, I’m not sure we can blame him for that.

Jack is nodding. “From our experiences and others we’ve found in the historical record, our theory is that if Midas lets you leave, and you do it, your memory of it changes. You remember the town, but you have an aversion to coming back. You remember your family here, but you think you’re estranged. You never have a reason to come back.” He indicates Logan and me. “We thought maybe you were the exception. But if your father didn’t tell you anything, I’m guessing it’s because he doesn’t remember that he should.”

That immediately puts my father in a new light. If it’s true that leaving this town means you don’t remember what you left, or you remember it only in a way that makes certain you won’t come back or keep in contact with anyone . . . Well, it explains a lot about him, doesn’t it?

And the fact we didn’t know our grandmother. The pictures suggest that our father kept her updated on us, but given he never updated us about her, I have to assume his memory tells him there’s a reason he kept us no contact.

So what do Logan and I tell him when we try to explain why we’re staying here longer?

Too many questions, and I don’t have the time to figure out the answers right here, right now.

“I don’t understand why we can’t just move everyone out of Midas and call it a day,” Logan says.

“Like we keep telling you,” Jack returns, giving him an impatient look. “Not everyone would leave no matter what we told them. Others can’t leave.”

“You saw the crash on the way here,” Nora adds quietly. “Whether it’s demons, people controlled by them, something else—it doesn’t matter. Some people are stuck.”

“What kind of people does Midas want to keep if it lets so many of its founding family members leave?” I ask.

“The ones who don’t see anything, won’t ask questions, and weren’t raised on family legends of demons on the flood wall,” Cleo says with a dark sort of laugh. “Guess why.”

“The town likes it when we leave,” Jacks says, those green eyes on me again, making me feel much too hot. “And it likes us to stay gone. I have to think that the only reason it let you two back in is because you’re the harbinger. The harbinger has to show up for the Feed to happen. Those are the rules.”

Logan doesn’t like this explanation. Probably not enough facts for him. But he pivots, because he’s always ready to create a plan of attack for any problem ahead. Even if it’s demons. “Okay, so we’ve got some parents and a couple of grandparents on our team. Surely that’s not it.”

Nora gives us a desperate little smile like she wants to make everything all right, but can’t. Because she offers no one else.

Logan is getting that flinty look that makes opposing counsel cower before him and makes me want to poke him. “So, to clarify. You’re telling me that there are demons in flood walls and mines and maybe even a clock tower. That it’s not safe at night. That demons who made a deal to leave the town alone have increasingly been fucking with people in between your Feeds. That creepy-ass crashes like the one we saw tonight happen all the time because some people are trapped. And we have . . .” He holds up his hands and counts off people. “Five able-bodied people who are aware these things are happening, two elderly people who do, too, and one guy who is going along with his daughter because he doesn’t see any of it himself and would rather play with engines. That’s what we’re working with against the rise of a horde of demons who plan to feed on the town?”

There’s another uncomfortable silence.

“It was just a handful of people who made the deal, so why shouldn’t the same amount of people be able to unmake it?” Jack says that unmaking part again, sounding less defensive than I might have expected. But then, judging by Cleo’s reply to me, I feel like this topic has come up before. He’s clearly had time to practice a response. “We just need a plan.” He eyes Logan. “Did you expect that doing something that no one has done in two hundred years would be easy?”

Jack and Logan have a kind of silent standoff, but Jack doesn’t engage with it long. He frowns down at the map.

Nora looks between him and Logan. “Jack’s working on a theory that the only people who can break the curse are founding family descendants. That’s us.”

She says this like it’s a great positive in all this. I’m not sure it’s positive at all.