And I was truly undone.
At home, the music played on. Not one of the concertos, but Mozart’s Requiem. And yes, that was the sort of gallows humor my mother sometimes favored. The oxygen condenser breathed its steady, mechanical breath. A strange, primal anger washed through me. All I wanted was to shut everything down. I slammed my hand against the stereo and yanked the condenser’s cord from the wall. My body recoiled.
Silence was much, much worse.
But in that silence, a piece of paper caught my attention. A page torn from a yellow legal pad, attached to my mother’s pillow, deliberately, with a safety pin.
To my darling girl:
For as long as possible, do not report my “death” to the Enclave. I owe them nothing, and they’ll find out soon enough.
Have a funeral anyway.
If Adele hasn’t arrived, call her. (I suspect she’ll arrive.)
In the back corner of the pantry is everything you need.
In the coming months, you’ll also need to break some rules.
Trust that you’ll know which ones.
Always know that you are loved.
Lastly, memories are precious; keep them close.
The yellow legal pad meant she was serious. These rules brooked no argument, not that she was here to argue with. They sounded just like her, both explicit and cryptic. Except for that last one. That didn’t sound like her at all, minus the semicolon.
Her handwriting was painstakingly correct. The cost of this list—in time, in effort, in pain—must have been enormous. Had she composed it over hours? Days, perhaps? I unpinned it from the pillowcase, careful not to tear the paper.
This was how Adele found me. Standing in the middle of the room, feet bleeding, surrounded by silence, with the last thing my mother had written clutched in my hand.
Chapter 5
Pansy
King’s End, Minnesota
Saturday, July 8
My mother, as usual, was right. I did find what I needed in the pantry. The will, trust paperwork, and account information all secured in a fireproof lock box. Next to that was an urn, filled with what looked like sand. (At least, I hoped it was sand.) And yes, we held a funeral, one Adele helped me plan. As a nurse, she was able to finesse the death certificate, and deal with both the medical examiner’s office and the funeral home. It was days before I realized my mother and Adele had planned everything in advance.
I haven’t reported any of this to the Enclave. I haven’t even told my best friends from the Academy that my mother is gone. What would I say? That a stranger carried her off and that, together, they vanished? How do you explain such a thing?
Mind you, we do lose agents, mainly field agents, but a permanent post job can be dangerous, too. Those fissures that let the Screamers invade our world? While they pop up anywhere in the world, generally at the worst times, there are those the Enclave needs to tend. King’s End is rated a level one hot spot. If I don’t mend the fissures, especially those in the housing development, on a regular basis, they might hop over levels two, three, and four, and become a level five hot spot.
And one of those can suck an agent—or even a task force—into its depths. Once that happens, there’s no coming back. At least, that’s what they told us at the Academy. It’s also why we have six years of summer training there, at the Academy. It’s the reason for the umbrellas; they make excellent offensive and defensive weapons. I can spear Screamers with the tip or send out a pulse to repel them. I can hunker down beneath the canopy and catch my breath.
One thing that never happens? Strangers emerging from a fissure, picking up a retired field agent, and simply vanishing into the void. For weeks, I did a deep dive into our lore, into the stories that are more like fairy tales than fact, looking for something, anything, that might explain my mother’s disappearance.
There have been attempts to harness the power that comes through these fissures. Make no mistake. It is powerful. There have been strangers—travelers, they’re called—who fall through to our side. Although these stories, too, read like fairy tales. But nothing about actual abductions.
Now, I stand in the kitchen and ease the lists from beneath their magnets. It might hurt less if I did it quickly, like ripping off a bandage. But I can’t. Removing the lists feels like a betrayal, like sacrilege. I swallow back this sour task. No choice. I must hide them—along with my mother’s umbrella—before tomorrow’s breakfast meeting with Agent Darnelle.
With gentle fingertips, I hold the lists, wondering, pondering, questioning.
In the coming months, you’ll need to break some rules.
Okay. Fine. I can do that.
