“Eight hours.”
In her tone, he heard the message: I can give you eight hours, but no more.
What did Gwyneth know? What had she figured out? Certainly not all of it. Henry shook off the thoughts, doubtful they’d get a chance to confer. But she understood Pansy was the key and was acting accordingly. Over the years, he’d felt any number of things about Gwyneth: admiration and annoyance, indifference and brotherly affection. This wave of sudden gratitude brought him up short.
“We should probably head back,” she added. “I’d like to get some ice on that bruise before her eye swells shut.”
But none of them moved. The sun flirted with the horizon, painting the sky magenta and orange, startling colors from a child’s box of crayons. Were they still too close to the housing development? Had he and Pansy triggered something irrevocable? Had Jack, when he spilled their—and his—blood?
No, it was Pansy herself. Henry knew that look. It had been brewing ever since they’d returned to their reality. And now? There was no stopping it.
Henry broke the spell, broke free of the strange, cloying inertia that crept from the development. He crossed to Pansy and—for the second time in less than a week—slipped an arm around her waist to break her fall.
Chapter 77
Pansy
King’s End, Minnesota
Monday, May 25 (thirty-one years ago)
I’m standing in the housing development. Or rather, where it will be. Now, it’s a meadow full of waving grasses, wildflowers, and gently rolling hills. Wild roses climb the fence that borders the cemetery, a robust pink reminiscent of strength rather than shyness.
My only thought is: What a shame. It was perfect like this.
A voice startles me, low and sonorous, a voice I recognize, one I came to dread during my summers at the Academy and one that dismissed me so casually to Henry not so long ago. But these words aren’t clipped. Instead, they hold a wealth of latent promise and suggestion.
“Look what I found. A wild rose for our wild Rose.”
There, in an outstretched hand, is the largest bloom from the fence. The man holding that bloom?
Reginald Botten.
Except the man standing there is barely older than I am. His build is powerful, but he lacks the gravitas of gray temples and frown lines along his brow. He could, at this moment, be anyone, go anywhere, and make different choices. Instead, he has his gaze trained on the woman before him.
My mother.
I’ve seen photographs, of course; most recently, the ones Henry brought to King’s End. They never captured just how startling her beauty was, or is. How full of life and energy and power she was. She must have intimidated the hell out of everyone in the Enclave. Except maybe for the man at her side, whose hand clasps her waist in a way that speaks of intimacy, the gesture adoring without being possessive.
Harry Darnelle.
Harry is a slightly shorter, more barrel-chested version of his son. But there’s so much of Henry in his expression that my heart lurches. If I squint, he could be Henry, right down to the dimples. He is studying not the rose in Botten’s outstretched hand but the expression on my mother’s face.
Perhaps this is why he misses the deception. Because it’s there, lingering behind the offer of the rose. It’s there when they move to what must be the epicenter, a cleared space of grass in the center of the meadow. It’s there when they each pull out a knife.
The blades glint in the sunrise.
“Soon, if we’re to do it,” someone says, although who, I can’t tell. The Sight is being particular about what I can see, what I can hear.
Mouths move, but if they’re chanting an incantation, I can’t discern the words. My mother tips her head toward the sky, eyes closed, but whether she’s praying or merely composing herself, I can’t tell.
The gravestones are obscured beyond the rose-covered fence. Behind me, I catch the flash of a red convertible but can’t see the gravel road it traveled. I open and close my hands, take a tentative step or two. I’m no longer frozen.
I am, however, transfixed.
When my father said Botten delivered a killing blow, I thought he meant figuratively. Some sort of fairytale curse that would incapacitate Harry Darnelle to the point of death.
Botten uses his knife. The arc of the blade sweeps through the sky at the moment the sun touches the horizon. The silver flashes. The point pierces skin.
