“Mrs. Behaim?” he asked. “I’ll need you to write down every guest you have here. Sort them by family unit?”
Identifying the children? Trying to find the caller.
My counterpart was at the front of the house. I slipped back towards the kitchen, peeking to see how things were going in there.
The diagram was gone. There was faint music playing.
Glamour? So fast? Masking an area like that?
It’s not real, I thought. It’s fake, it’s a trick. There’s a circle under there.
I could have blown things up, shattered the glamour, with just a few words. I could have gotten away with it. Theoretically.
But I couldn’t get over the fear that had seized me.
Fake fear. Glamoured fear that I didn’t dare mess with, lest the entire thing fall to pieces.
I watched Penelope and Jo talking. Low voices, looking concerned.
“The RCMP is going to need to talk to some people,” the officer said, “Quite a few, really.”
“We won’t be able to continue with the party?” someone asked.
“The evidence we received was serious,” the officer said. “We could do this by sending people home as we scratch them off the list, or we could bring the family units in question to the station, so those who remain could carry on.”
I backed away, sticking close to the woman from before.
“It depends on how many people you’ll want to talk to?”
“The families of Layton, Peter, Donald, John, Andrew, and Annabelle, please.”
I saw heads turn. Connections forming. The people at the center that I could make out…
All families with little boys.
“It sounds like you need to go with your mom and dad, okay?” the woman told me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I headed towards the kitchen, rounded the corner, and stopped.
Wait… wait… catch my breath.
I needed to figure out what the fuck I was doing next.
A girl my height came to a stop right in front of me. Auburn curls, a nice satin dress with a lace collar…
Leanne.
It took a second for something to click, for the mental gears to shift and click.
When they did, when she met my eyes, I felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my face.
Couldn’t see. My vision was distorted, as though I needed glasses to see and they’d shattered.
The rest of me…
Unchanged.
“Huh?” I heard her say.
“Shh,” I shushed her. “If you keep it a secret, I’ll show you later.”
I saw her head move. I could only assume it was a nod.
Stupid, stupid. Promising. I reached out, fumbling, and grabbed her hand. I pulled her in the direction of her waiting mother.
I was pretty sure it was her waiting mother. What had just happened?
“Back already?” she asked.
“Can I spend the night?” I asked.
“The night?”
“Sleepover,” I said. My heart was in my throat. Still couldn’t see. “Everyone might have a long wait at the station with lots and lots of questions.”
I stopped there. I was speaking too excitedly, not breathing in enough. I was a hair way from hyperventilating.
I could see the doubt on her face.
“Please,” I panted. “Please, can I come?”
“Please?” Leanne joined in. “Please can he?”
“This is a mess,” she said, to the nearest Behaim. She looked at me. “I’ll need to talk to your mom.”
“I can go ask,” I said.
“Go ask, then.”
I headed for the kitchen, rubbing at my eyes.
I felt the glamour rub away, instead of shifting into place.
I could see, but I was seeing out of a different set of eyes.
My own. Were they the wrong color?
Were they too old, as eyes went? Did I have bags under my eyes from recent nights with no sleep?
I touched the hair, found the boy. Through him, I found the parents. All in a tight group, two parents, son and older sister, the dad’s hands on the son’s shoulders.
“We’ve decided what we’re doing!” Laird’s wife called out. “I’m sorry, but we’re wrapping things up for tonight. If your name wasn’t called, we’ll have to bid you farewell. We’ll have another event, sometime next week.”
What did that mean? Had I bought myself a week?
Had I stopped the ritual?
People were heading for the front hall, to collect boots and jackets. When the mass formed a kind of traffic jam, the various families broke into clusters, to have hushed, intense discussions, eyes on the police and the front door.
I waded through the traffic jam, head down.
I was no less than ten feet from my double, the view of the two of us obscured by only a thin collection of people.
Through the connection, I could see that ‘Mom’ was more preoccupied, talking to another, heavy woman from the Behaim family. I wrapped my arms around her leg, and her hand settled on my head.
“Do you love me?” I piped up. One child’s voice in the din of conversation.
“Yes, of course,” she said, without even looking down.
With that done, I half-ran, half-skipped away, ducking between people’s legs to get back to Leanne and her mom.
“She said yes,” I said.
I received a tolerant smile in exchange. “Alright. We’ll make do. Come on, let’s get you ready.”
It was slow going, wading through the crowd, staying out of sight, but I reached the piles of boots and shoes at the front door.
Through the boy’s connections to his belongings, I found the right stuff and got myself ready.
I could feel something else break as I tested the glamour. Suspicion?
It dawned on me: I’d been too quick. Too competent in getting myself ready. I’d even done up my shoelaces with the kind of ease that came with twenty years of practice.
Reaching for my gloves, I saw the other telltale issues.
Cuts. Scrapes. A wound from a pen-stab to the soft bit beside my thumb on my left hand. A strategic cut where I’d drawn blood.
And there… a dark hair, and then another, near my wrist. Then five.
Dark, thick, adult body hairs on my hands and arms.
Time was up, it was all coming to pieces. Rose had warned me it would be ugly. Painful or drawn out.
I wasn’t sure how that would work in execution. I’d been momentarily blind, and in rubbing it away, I may well have accelerated the breakdown. What was next? What did I face, in being disabled, inconvenienced or hurt, as the glamour fell apart?
I reached into my pocket and grabbed a paper goblin, then pulled on mitten with the paper nestled against my palm, ready in case something came up. I yanked my hat down to help hide my eyes.
“I might have to duck inside,” Leanne’s mother said. “Ask your parents if one of them can get your car seat out of their car. Darn it, that’s going to take a while.”
“I don’t need a car seat,” I said.
“I think you do.”
“I was in a car a few days ago, and I didn’t have a car seat,” I said. Pretending to be proud as punch.
I fucking drove a car a few days ago and I didn’t have a car seat.
“Your parent’s rules aren’t my rules. And with my brother being chief of police…”
Was I going to be done in by fucking car seat laws?
“What if you drive real careful?” I asked. “It’s not far.”
I saw her frown.
“It’s going to take a long time, with everyone there,” I said. “If we have to go back in there and ask, we’re never going to get to your house.”