Unless you’re the one being kidnapped. “Puts a whole new spin on alien abductions.”
He snorts a laugh. “I suppose it does.”
While we’ve been talking, Henry has been smoothing the wrinkles from the lists. He has fine, strong hands, the sort that could land a punch or perform a piano concerto. On his left ring finger, there’s a pale swath, the color a hint lighter than the surrounding skin. I wonder if, in addition to losing his father, he’s suffered other losses as well.
“And Adele is?” He taps number three on my mother’s final list.
“My neighbor, my mother’s best friend.”
“The woman with the little dog?”
I nod.
“And possibly the same woman I debriefed yesterday?”
Regret leaves me with a huge sigh. “Yes, that too.”
“She knows a great deal about the Enclave.”
After yesterday, I’m starting to suspect Adele knows more than I do. “She’s lived here all her life. Really, things are different in King’s End. Everyone understands.” I wave a hand in the general direction of the neighborhood. “Even if they can’t tell you, exactly, what it is they understand.”
“I imagine life is different for a permanent post agent. Perhaps, in some ways, more difficult.”
Henry pushes back from the kitchen table, contemplating the space in front of him. He doesn’t stand. It’s as if he simply needs the extra space to think.
“I’ll be honest,” he says. “I’m not certain what to make of all this. I’d hoped your mother could shed some light on the situation. Something was obviously important enough for my father to leave me those photographs. I had it in my head that he wanted me to come here.”
I pull in a breath and tell Henry what Adele told me: all about that fateful patrol, his father’s injury, the strange, curse-like inability of either of them to talk about it, the mysterious third agent who never returned. My words are slow, hushed, and I’m careful not to embellish anything Adele said.
“We both thought it sounded like a curse from a fairy tale,” I add when I reach the end.
“Hm. That it does.” His eyes hold a knowing look, and I think I’ve stumbled into more classified information. But he doesn’t elaborate.
Instead, he asks, “Adele doesn’t know who that third agent was?”
I shake my head. “She didn’t remember … no, I’m sure that’s not right.” I stare at the ceiling, Adele’s words just out of reach. She said something else, something that, at the time, didn’t register. But now I realize it sounded odd. My eyelids flutter shut.
“Pansy.” Henry’s voice is a low growl. “If you’re invoking the Sight?—”
Damn. My eyes fly open. I catch a single drop of blood on the back of my hand, my pulse thrumming in my ears.
“Grab my wrists.”
Without question, he does. His grip is strong and sure and not the least bit overbearing. He is an anchor in a storm, and I navigate my way back to the present, the Sight tucked away, locked down. I can’t afford to deliberately invoke it so soon after an attack. That might put me into a coma.
I pull in a breath and gently ease my hands from Henry’s. “I’m okay. It’s locked down.”
He’s shaking his head, not in disagreement but in what looks like admiration. “Your ability to lock down the Sight is truly extraordinary.”
“But what Adele said feels important.”
He raises an eyebrow. Yes, that’s a trick of the Sight, no doubt. It might be important, but chances are, it would only serve to incapacitate me. The Sight doesn’t give without taking, and I’ve truly had enough of it today.
“Perhaps, but it’s something we could check,” Henry says. “If an agent died or vanished here in King’s End, that information will be in the archives. I’ll run a search. We can take this one step at a time, and we can do it without interference from the Enclave or your Sight.”
That doesn’t sound easy. Neither are the next words I’m going to say.
“What were you going to do? Back in Seattle? With my report?”
