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“How do we play this?” Dekka asked.
“We see what’s what. If Hunter’s gone nuts, lift him off the ground, keep him from running away. Bounce him off the ceiling, if you need to. I’m not looking to hurt him, just talk to him,” Sam said. He knocked on the open door, which swung away from him. “Hunter. You in there?”
No answer.
“Okay, it’s Sam, and I’m coming in.” He purposely did not mention Dekka. Dekka was a weapon he’d as soon keep in reserve. “I’m hoping there won’t be any kind of problem.”
Sam took a deep breath and stepped inside.
A painting of an attractive but serious-looking woman with luxuriant red hair hung in the entryway. Someone, presumably one of the current residents, had defaced the painting with a mustache carefully drawn on with a black Sharpie.
The hallway was a mess—a Frisbee on the side table, a dirty gym sock hanging from a chandelier, a mirror badly out of alignment and cracked. Not much different from most of the residences in a FAYZ without parents.
The first room, on the left, was a formal dining room, dark. The kitchen was ahead, down the hall, past the stairs. The family room was ahead and to the right. Dekka poked her head into the dining room, peered under the table, and whispered, “Clear.”
Sam advanced to the family room.
The family room was an even bigger mess than the hallway: DVDs strewn here and there, long-emptied soda cans, some sort of bright yellow Nerf projectiles, family photos—the red-haired woman again, and what was probably her husband—knocked over on the mantel, dust thick on bookshelves.
At first Sam didn’t see Harry. He had fallen between the couch and a heavy coffee table. But one step closer, and he came into view.
Harry was lying facedown. There was a deflating blister on the back of his neck. It reminded Sam of a balloon three days after a party.
Sam pushed the table aside, but it was wedged. “Dekka?”
Dekka raised one hand, and the table lifted off the floor. Sam gave it a shove. It floated aside till it was out of Dekka’s field, then it crashed to the floor.
Sam knelt beside Harry. Carefully avoiding the blister, he pressed two fingers against Harry’s neck. “I’m not feeling anything,” Sam said. “You try.”
Dekka glanced around, searching for what she needed, and came up with a small, mirrored box. She twisted Harry’s head to the side and held the mirrored surface close to the boy’s nostrils.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
“If he’s breathing, you’d see it. Condensation.”
“I think he’s dead,” Sam said.
They both stood up then and took a couple of steps back. Dekka set the box aside, careful, like Harry was asleep and she didn’t want to wake him.
“What do we do about this?” Dekka wondered.
“That’s a very good question,” Sam said. “I wish I had a very good answer.”
“If Hunter killed him…”
“Yeah.”
“The freak-versus-normal thing…”
“We can’t let it get like that,” Sam said forcefully. “If Hunter did this…I mean, I guess we have to hear what he says about it.”
“Maybe talk to Astrid, huh?” Dekka suggested.
S
am laughed mirthlessly. “She’ll say we should have a trial.”
“We could, you know, just make this go away,” Dekka said.
