Kyla only nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes from the mirror’s surface.
Ethan saw several places around the mirror’s edge where shards of the strange silver substance had been broken away. Two more pieces came away easily in his hand. He handed one to Kyla. She pulled her eyes away from the mirror with an obvious effort.
“What is this?”
“I think it’s the secret to fixing everything. I think it will let us remember everything when we wake up tomorrow.”
“Remember tonight, you mean?”
“Yeah. Like the twins can. We won’t have long to stop the ceremony, but maybe this will give us a chance.”
All this time, that plaintive moaning from the mountain had gone on and on. Kyla tilted her head toward it now. “Are you sure that’s what we want? To letthatbreak loose?”
“It doesn’t sound dangerous to me.” Ethan frowned. “It almost sounds sad.”
“Sad people do terrible things.”
Ethan studied the shard of silver in his hand. He let out a long breath.
“I spent my whole life trapped in a shithole. I’m not going to spend eternity stuck in another.”
He carried the silver fragment in one hand and the stone egg in the other. Back out of the room. Back down the stairs.
Kyla followed him, clearly reluctant, out into the night. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer her right away. The Guardians still stood where they’d left them, stationed in two parallel rows, but their heads had lifted, turned, to stare at the mountain.
Above the house, at the mountain’s peak, a silver light was beginning to shine.
A moan came, and the light trembled. The whole earth seemed to shake with it.
Ethan looked at his watch. 3:47.
Around the side of the old house, he found a large spigot set into the ground. Near the spigot was a heavy metal lid, almost like a manhole cover, and beneath the lid was a hole just wide enough a slim person could slip inside. In the starlight, he saw a metal tank resting beneath the hole. A massive crack had split the tank’s bottom half. Ruined it, no doubt.
“Some kind of septic system?” Kyla said.
“There’s probably one of those around here too.” Ethan rose, brushed his hands on his jeans, started back for the motel. “But no. Mom told me stories about when she used to live out this way. Every house had a tank like this. A big truck came once a week and filled it up with fresh water. She had a neighbor who drownedin one. They stopped making tanks like this—with wide lids like this—ages ago.”
“Didn’t Tabitha mention something about how her father and The Chief—the older Chief—had to install a new water tank when they bought the motel?”
Ethan smiled. “They did indeed.”
A tremor started in the earth, violent enough Ethan and Kyla had to pick their way carefully back to the motel. He shouted over the noise, “Did your headache go away when you remembered everything?”
Kyla touched her forehead. “Yes, actually. I don’t think I really noticed it in the office, but I know when I woke up the pain was totally gone. Why?”
Ethan nodded to himself, though it broke his heart. “Because my memories came back, and I’m clear as a bell.”
By the time they reached the motel, the noise from the mountain and the shaking in the earth were so loud Ethan had to shout into Kyla’s ear. “Look for a hatch in the ground. It’ll probably be buried in dirt after all this wind.”
The motel had burned down to cinders. Behind the place the cafe had stood, they found a blasted chunk of metal: all that remained of the generator. In the ruins of the kitchen, they saw several blackened chunks of a man. The remains of Thomas, no doubt, after he blew it all to pieces.
And there, maybe a yard from the kitchen’s back door, Kyla kicked away a patch of dirt to reveal a metal hatch with a recessed handle set into the ground. She gave the hatch a pull. It lifted easily.
Beneath the hatch was another water tank, but it wasn’t empty. A bedraggled face stared up at them from deep in the hole.
It was Penelope Holiday.
