“Thanks for this,” Antigone said, and she poked an edge with her finger. Cyrus nodded in agreement.
Nolan moved across the small room and settled back into his low crouch, pale, gnarled arms wrapped tight around his knees. His smooth, river-rock eyes were on Cyrus and Antigone as they took their first tentative bites.
“So you think Rupert will find Dan?” Antigone asked.
Nolan ran a hand over the cobweb hairs on his jaw. After a moment, he shook his head slightly.
Cyrus stopped chewing. Antigone wiped her mouth.
Nolan shrugged. “But then Maxi Robes might not be running. He wants what he wants.” He looked at Cyrus and his worn eyes flickered interest. Then, as it faded, he stood. “You have much to see and much to do if you ever want to move out of my Polygon. But you’re tired.” He stepped toward the door. “Sleep. I won’t be gone long.”
When Nolan had stepped through the hole and the sound of creaking planks had faded away, Cyrus looked at his sister.
“Tigs,” he said. “We just ate cheesy bread in a crypt.”
Antigone nodded. “I want to know how Horace is doing. What do you think happened to the driver?”
“Gunner?” Cyrus shrugged and moved across the room to Nolan’s alcove. He squeezed in onto his back and propped his feet up on the painted yellow stone wall.
Gripping the keys at his neck, he hooked one finger around his soft snake necklace and pulled her free. For a moment, Patricia’s silver body was visible, lapping his fingers, but then she found her tail and was gone. It was hard to believe that she was real. He liked having her — another living thing in his life.
He held his hand flat, letting the weight of the invisible keys dangle from his palm. Feeling them with his other hand, he found the sheath and flipped it open. The tooth became visible, dangling in the glowing light of the ceiling lanterns, suspended in the air beneath his palm. Cyrus felt the now-familiar chill creep through him. What was this thing? What did it really do?
He glanced back at the toaster oven he had just resurrected. Shivering, he flipped the invisible sheath shut again, and the tooth disappeared. Closing his hand gently around Patricia’s body and the invisible keys, he let his mind grind through the past two days. Normal life at the Archer — at least normal for him. And then a man in a yellow truck, and Mrs. Eldridge with her shotgun. Gunner and the fast car. Gunner. Guns. Guns that spat fire and bullets that fell from the sky. Maxi’s smile full of worn teeth and Milo’s Pizza. He wanted one of Milo’s pizzas. He wanted all of Milo’s pizzas. The river and darkness and cables and Antigone throwing up. Flying bicycles crashing into a fountain.
“Tigs?” he said quietly.
He turned his head. Antigone was curled up tight on her side, arms around her legs, her chin against her knees. Her brows were down and her eyes were squeezed shut. Cyrus blinked slowly, and he didn’t want the blink to end. Warm darkness.
He could see the big man named Rupert — Blood Avenger, Avengel. A towering wall of portraits and a pale boy beneath them. Nodding. Shaking his head. Nodding.
He and his sister were Acolytes in the Order of Brendan. Whatever that meant. The O of B. He’d signed the hay-bale book. Cyrus Lawrence Smth.
Dan was gone.
Asleep, lost in a tangle of darkness, lost in dark water, holding his breath, he swam through an underwater maze behind a blindfolded woman. The water faded, and he was moving toward the light of a too-familiar dream.
The California house had pale wood floors, polished to glistening. Cyrus was in the kitchen. He could smell his mother’s lemon soap, and the counters were freshly cleaned. Antigone was in the living room, curled up on the couch, staring through the wall of quivering windows, watching distant spray jump the point on Elephant Island. Cyrus knew what was going to happen next. He waited for it. The kitchen door burst open, and his father slipped inside, smiling, brushing back wet hair, slapping his arms.
He handed Cyrus a note. “Give this to your mom for me, will you, Cy?” He sounded like Dan, but unafraid. “I have to run a friend to the island. And tell her we might have an extra at dinner.”
Antigone twisted around on the couch. “You’re going out in this?”
“That I am,” their father said. “But not for long. Back soon.”
Cyrus took the note and nodded. His father’s heavy wet hand slapped his shoulder and then ruffled his hair. “Look after Tigger for me.” Then he fired a kiss across the room at Antigone and slid back out into the wind. The door didn’t latch behind him, and the wind threw it open, banging it against the fridge. Cyrus slammed it.
That was it. His father was gone. Forever.
And then, for the first time in two years, the dream changed. Antigone didn’t get up and pace the room in worry. She was frozen on the couch. Time didn’t jump forward to his mother’s panic and the cold food and the storm breaking and the light of a heartless moon. Instead, the door blew back open.
Cyrus slammed it. It blew open again, and he slammed it again. It blew open again, and he pressed his back against it, pushing with both legs until he heard the click of the latch.
It blew open again. How long this went on, the dream Cyrus couldn’t say. Time had stopped. Antigone was frozen. Only he and the door and the storm moved on. Finally, frustrated and confused, he stepped back and watched. Rain was whipping around the doorway, but not one drop entered the house or spattered on the floor.
Cyrus walked out the door and into the swarming, stinging rain. His father, enveloped in rubber rain gear, was frozen midjump into the passenger side of a truck. Suddenly, the dream moved in. His father landed on the seat and slammed the door. The truck began to pull away. The driver was big and … blurry. He wouldn’t take shape. His profile should have been visible, but it was a smear of blankness. Cyrus squinted and cupped his hands around his eyes, but it wasn’t a question of seeing. Somewhere in his mind, dusty, hidden deep beneath piles of the forgotten, stored with memories he never knew he’d collected — things said in third grade, the color of his first gum ball, his mother rocking him and singing in a strange language — there was an image of that driver. And something had stirred it. Something wanted to dig it back up and have a look.
The truck moved down the gravel drive, hopping in the puddles and potholes as it went. The dream disappeared with it.
“Cy!”
Cyrus opened his eyes and tried to stretch his arms above his head, cracking his knuckles — and a slender snake — against cool stone. His hand closed around sharp keys. Wincing, he sat up. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than five minutes. Or an hour. Or two. He began to gently pull the snake loose from his fingers, but he stopped. Antigone was standing in the middle of the room, her cheek creased with sleep. Nolan was beside her, and his arms were full of ragged clothes.
Nolan set down his pile. “You shouldn’t sleep any longer. I tried to find you a way into some normal showers. But you two aren’t terribly popular, so you’re left with mine.” He nodded toward the hole in the wall. “Take turns outside. Stay on the planks. Not even a toe on the floor. I’ll be back.” He pointed at the grandfather clock. “Twenty minutes. I’ll find you an actual list of the 1914 standards.”
Tugging a stiffly folded towel and a brown brick of something soapish out of one of the alcoves, he handed them both to Antigone. Then he ducked through the hole and walked quickly down the bouncing planks.
Antigone opened her mouth to object, but the objections didn’t come. She was filthy. Horace’s blood was still caked between her fingers, and her hair looked like it had spent some time in a deep fryer. Even Cyrus had showered more recently than she had.