In the next instant Panther reemerged from between the crates, carrying a box of the precious tablets, his prod cradled loosely in the crook of his arms.
He crossed the room to where the others waited, went past them without stopping, and started up the stairs.
"Come along, children," he sneered.
No one argued. They went up from the basement with hurried glances over their shoulders, crossed to the front wall of the building where Fixit was waiting, and climbed back through the broken window. Outside, they stood uneasily in the street and stared at one another.
"What happened?" Fixit asked in bewilderment, looking from one face to the next.
"Good thing you got me along to do the tough stuff," Panther declared, giving Hawk a meaningful glance. "Got to have someone who ain't afraid of the dark. Got to have someone to face down the bogeyman when he crawls out of his hole."
Hawk didn't reply, even though he wanted to tell Panther that he'd better not disobey him like that again, ever. Instead, he motioned them into the wing formation and they set off for home, moving back toward the center of the city.
Candle walked next to him and stared straight ahead, her young face tight and hard and her thin body rigid. Hawk left her alone. She knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that they had gotten away with something back there, even if Panther didn't believe it. He was thinking that they had been lucky. He was thinking of the dead Lizard and the nest of Croaks and the possibility that there was something new and dangerous in the city.
But he was also thinking of her vision of the previous night–that something was coming for them, something that was going to kill them–thinking that maybe the world beyond their underground home was closing in on them in a way none of them had anticipated.
Thinking that maybe they had better be ready for it when it did.
THIRTEEN
HAWK WAS STILL brooding over the incident in the warehouse basement when he arrived back at Pioneer Square. It was already growing dark, and he could not afford to be late for his meeting with Tessa, so he set out again almost at once. Owl caught the look on his face as he passed through the kitchen and grabbed a slice of the bread she had baked, but said nothing. The others were preoccupied and didn't notice. Except for Candle, who shared an understanding of what they had brushed up against in the darkness and somehow managed to avoid.
But Candle didn't say anything, either.
She would later, he thought as went out the door, Cheney padding silently after him. She would tell Owl everything. Owl was her mother, and she was her mother's little girl.
Theirs was a special relationship, made strong by the circumstances that had brought them together. Owl had been gone from the Safeco compound and living with Hawk and the first of the Ghosts, Bear and Fixit and Sparrow, for almost two years when she found Candle. Confined to her wheelchair and for the most part to the underground, there was no good reason for Owl to ever find anyone.
But against all odds, she had found Candle.
She had been outside that day, carried up by Hawk and Bear for a visit to the compound and Tessa, in the days before Tessa and Hawk had been caught together and Tessa had been forbidden by her parents to go out alone. They had arranged to meet just north of the compound at the edge of Pioneer Square in one of the buildings fronting Occidental Park. Tessa had been waiting when they arrived. The four had visited, then Bear had gone off in search of writing materials for Sparrow, who had been left behind with Cheney, and Owl had wheeled her chair out into the square to give Hawk and Tessa some time alone.
She was sitting in a pale wash of sunlight with her back to the building and her eyes lifted to watch tiny strips of blue sky come and go like phantom ribbons through breaks in the clouds when the little girl appeared. One moment she wasn't there and the next she was, standing in front of the building across the way and staring at Owl. Owl was so surprised that for a moment she just stared back.
Then she called over, "What's your name?"
The little girl didn't answer. She just kept staring. She was very tiny and so thin that it seemed she would disappear if she turned sideways. Her clothes were in tatters, her face smudged with dirt. She was such a ragged little thing that Owl decided on the spot that she would have to help her.
She took a chance then and wheeled herself over, taking her time, not rushing it, being careful not to do anything that would frighten the little girl. But the child just stood there and didn't move.
Owl got to within ten feet and stopped. "Are you all right?"
"I'm hungry," the little girl said.
Owl had no real food to offer. So she reached into one pocket, brought out a piece of rock candy, and held it out. The little girl looked at it, but stayed where she was.
"It's all right," Owl told her. "You can have it. It's candy."
The little girl's gaze shifted, her eyes a startling blue that seemed exactly the right complement for her mop of thick red hair. Her skin tone was porcelain, so pale that it suggested she had never seen the sunlight. It wasn't all that unusual to encounter such children in these times, but even so this little girl didn't look like anyone Owl had ever come across.
Owl leaned back in her wheelchair and put her hands in her lap. "I can't walk, so I can't bring it over to you. And I can't throw it, because if I do it will shatter. So you have to come and get it. Will you do that for me?"
No response. The little girl just kept staring. Then, all at once, she changed her mind. She came right up to Owl, reached down and took the candy, unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. She sucked on it for a moment, and then smiled. It was the most dazzling smile Owl had ever seen. She smiled back, so charmed that she would have done anything for the girl.
"Can you tell me your name?" she asked again.
The little girl nodded. "Sarah."
"Well, Sarah, what are you doing here all by yourself?"
The little girl shrugged.
"Where are your parents?"
The little girl shrugged again.
"Where is your home?"
"I don't have a home."
"No mommy and daddy?"
Sarah shook her head.
"No brothers and sisters?"
Another shake of her carrot–top.
"Are you all alone?"
The little girl hugged herself and bit her lip. "Mostly."
Owl wasn't sure what she meant by this, and neither was Hawk when the conversation was repeated to him later. He had reappeared with Tessa to find Owl in her wheelchair and Sarah sitting on the pavement in front of her, staring up in rapt attention as Owl finished another story of the children and their boy leader. By then, it was clear at a glance that the two had bonded in a way that couldn't be undone and that the little girl had joined the family.
But within days of Sarah coming to live with them in their underground home the Ghosts began to realize that there was something very different about her. She dreamed all the time, waking frequently from nightmares that left her shaking and mute. They would ask her what was wrong, but she would never say. Sometimes she would refuse to go into places, especially places that were dark and close. She wouldn't let them go in, either, throwing such a fit that it proved easier just to let her have her way.
Neither Owl nor Hawk could figure out what was going on, but they knew it was something important.
Then, one day, Owl was alone with Sarah in the center of Pioneer Square, sorting containers collected from a bin that Bear had dragged from several blocks away. Bear wasn't far away, but he wasn't in sight, either. Hawk and Sparrow were scouting new supply sources in midtown. Owl wasn't paying much attention to what was going on around her, concentrating on the job at hand, and then all at once Sarah hissed as if she had been scalded, grabbed the back of Owl's wheelchair, and pushed her swiftly into the interior of their building.