Leave your Enclave phone on the nightstand. Bring the burner.
If you have one, bring a go bag.
Are we running away, then? To the housing development? Subterfuge and go bags. It’s like something out of a spy thriller. Then again, so is my best friend drugging me. The housing development after dark might be the lesser of our problems right now.
My phone buzzes again.
And eat. The food is safe.
Memorize this number, delete these messages, and then the contact.
Henry’s leaving nothing to chance.
If you’re caught, blame everything on me.
Oh, but I can’t do that.
If I’m caught, run. Maybe to Adele’s. You could hide in that basement room, but I’d like you farther away. But don’t tell me where.
Henry’s worry coils around my heart and squeezes. Is it truly that bad? I think of how he so readily kept my Sight a secret, how cautious he was in not sending data to the Enclave. I think of what the Enclave has done in turning Mortimer against me.
The text messages stop then, so I dutifully do as he says. I eat. I open a window and splash tea into the hydrangeas below. They’re hardy, mostly. I unearth a go bag because, yes, my mother always insisted.
I think about invoking the Sight, but I can’t risk it. So I sit on my bed, fists clenched, and wait.
Chapter 58
Ophelia
King’s End, Minnesota
Saturday, July 15
At one in the morning, Pansy’s farmhouse is full of secret night noises. Creaks and whispers, the scrabble of little feet. (She should look into getting a cat.) The ventilation system sighs its last burst of cool air before the morning sun will heat the space once again.
From down the hallway come rhythmic snores punctuated by the occasional elephant-sized snort. Mortimer, most likely. At least, Ophelia hopes it’s him and not her presumptive sister-in-law. Okay, a small, petty part of her does hope it’s Gwyneth.
Mort has left his bedroom door ajar as if he doesn’t trust any of the inhabitants, to no avail. Pansy already stands at the top of the staircase, her footfalls down the hall so quiet that Ophelia could barely track her. Pansy casts a glance around the dark hallway. In one hand, she clutches her umbrella. On her back, a field pack. She has the air of someone saying goodbye.
Ophelia wants to ask her if she’s used the Sight. Can Pansy see what Ophelia can’t? Or is Pansy going into this ignorant as well? The hallway is too dim to see any telltale signs of a bloody nose. But Ophelia thinks not. Pansy’s better with her Sight than Ophelia is, more cautious and more in control.
Pansy sits and eases down the first step. A well of laughter bubbles in Ophelia. This is obviously an old childhood trick, one Ophelia’s used many times herself. Something to do with weight distribution; Henry explained it to her once. But yes, Pansy reaches the bottom without creaking the floorboards of a single stair.
The rooms where Mort and Gwyneth are sleeping face the backyard, so Pansy slips out the front, slings her umbrella over her shoulder, and hops the rail around the porch. With a running start, she plows through her neighbor’s lilac bush.
Where she tumbles straight into Henry’s waiting arms.
They stand like that, embracing, and yet not. Henry steadies her with a hand on one shoulder and plucks a few leaves from her hair with the other. The lilac bush shrouds them, shielding them from the yellow glow of the street lamps and line of sight of everyone’s doorbell cameras. Not even Guy Gunderson, should he happen to peek through his living room window, will see them.
“How are you feeling?” Pansy whispers. “Are you okay?”
“Thanks to you, I’m more than okay.”
Pansy lets out an exhale full of relief. “I was worried you really weren’t recovering.”
“I was doing a bit of playacting.”
And spying.
