Nora opened her mouth to take the woman up on her offer, but Charlie got there first. “Actually, I’m starving. Don’t suppose your kitchen’s open for business, huh?”
The woman gave him a look reminiscent of one often worn by their bubbie, one that said she was inexplicably endeared by Charlie despite his complete lack of charm. “Oh, of course, you must be famished. Let me whip you up some eggs and toast, and we can figure out the rest once you’ve got full stomachs, eh? I’m Juliette, by the way. Juliette MacLean. Where are you headed?”
“Virgo Bay,” said Charlie. “I’m Charlie Bird and this is my sister, Nora.”
Juliette’s saucer eyes expanded again. “You’re Birds, are you?”
Charlie nodded. Nora was still busy calculating when in this conversation she could jump in and bring the subject back to the hospital trip.
“And you’re looking for Virgo Bay?”
Charlie nodded again, a little slower this time. Even Nora let go of her preoccupation with a visit to the emergency room at the strange, hollow quality suddenly overtaking Juliette’s tone.
“Well”—Juliette wrung her hands—“aren’t you both in luck. You’re only a few miles from your destination. Virgo Bay’s just up the road a bit and down by the shore, if you follow that path in the grass just there.” She un-wrung her hands just long enough to point at a path through the window before wringing them again.
“Oh, thank god,” Nora said.
“Think old Johnny boy would take us there instead of the hospital?” asked Charlie.
“Oh.” Juliette took a step backwards. “No.” Then another. “But we sure can lend you an extra jacket. In fact, keep it. We’ve got a few old ones kicking around. It’s a lovely journey, I’m sure. Very scenic. Couldn’t be more than a couple hours’ walk.”
“Have you not been?” Nora watched, befuddled, as Juliette retreated another step.
“Me? No. No. It’s not for me to go. But you? You’re Birds.”
“What do you mean?”
The woman gave an awkward laugh and tossed her hand at them as though she’d just made a joke that didn’t land. “No, nothing, ignore me. I’ve been living here too long. Hey, why don’t I start on those breakfasts for you, eh? I’ll just be…” She took the remaining steps backwards and escaped into the kitchen.
“Okay, seriously,” said Charlie. “Why do people keep doing that?”
“I don’t know,” said Nora. “But I don’t like it.”
Juliette’s directions, which mostly consisted of vague gestures and the odd shout up the stairs to her husband, steered the twins down the hill and through a vast expanse of knee-high grass and nothingness. But their stomachs were full, their backs were warm with the thick, secondhand coats from the café, andeven the pain in Nora’s wrist was becoming such a staple part of her physiology she barely felt the need to acknowledge it. The thing was, through the exhaustion and the fear and the everything else Nora felt, the main thing she was feeling as they ventured farther into the grassy plains of the unknown was relief. Charlie was still alive. They no longer had a car for him to die horribly in. And they were so deep in the middle of nowhere that even the not-quite-explainable abilities of S.C.Y.T.H.E. would likely be stymied in tracking them down here.
By the end of the second hour of aimless wandering though, that relief began to waver, and Nora’s patented anxiety started to creep back in. Charlie was still alive, but they hadn’t checked his file in hours and his cause of death could have changed. They no longer had a car for him to die horribly in—or to get them anywhere, or as a means of escape in an emergency. S.C.Y.T.H.E. might have trouble tracking them down here, or they might not. There was so much about the company Nora still didn’t understand. And if they couldn’t track the twins down, neither could anyone else who might actually be able to help them.
Nora felt the hope drain out of her as the vast unfamiliarity surrounding them suddenly started crawling with danger. At the rate they were going, they could be lost out here forever, dead by starvation, dehydration, bitten to death by the cold. She was debating which she would prefer if given the option, when Charlie nudged her with his elbow. Nora looked up from her feet and followed his gaze. Roughly ten feet away sat a carved wooden signpost. It looked handcrafted and worn with age. Etched into the wood were the words “Welcome to Virgo Bay.”
Nora looked at her brother. “Did we do it?”
“I think we did it.”
They marched past the sign and down another hill. Nestled in the gulf beneath that hill sat a little cluster of houses in beige and various shades of blue. A farm with the stalks of long-ago-harvested crops and livestock grazing in far-stretching paddocks were just visible on the outskirts. A little stone church greeted them as they stepped into the tiny town’s perimeter, its churchyard a garden rather than a cemetery, the flowers still alive despite the season. Huddled across the street was a squat old general store beneath a hand-painted sign. A stone fountain stood in the dirt road between them, directing whatever passed as traffic here to either side. This handful of structures appeared to be the commercial district. Beyond them, all Nora could see were the small collection of houses in the shadow of surrounding hills and the bay itself tossing waves at the other end of town. They walked slowly down the road, each taking a different side of the fountain, examining their surroundings. Nora took a deep inhale, absorbing the tiny town their father had grown up in. The sun seemed to hit it differently, casting shadows in strange places, illuminating each structure with a stage spotlight. The twins met back up on the other side of the fountain, where the dirt road reconnected. Charlie tipped a head to the top floor of the house they were passing. When Nora looked up, a curtain twitched in the upstairs window. Someone was watching them.
Nora took a step backwards and chanced a look behind her. The house there was only one story, and completely dark, but the blinds in the window nearest them shifted. Nora moved closer to Charlie, spinning around, eyes on the houses surrounding them. In each she found movement in the windows, the occasional silhouetted face appearing behind the glass.
“Charlie,” she whispered, panic squeezing at her throat.
“I know.”
They stood back-to-back now, eyes bearing down on them from every direction.
“We should go,” Nora said.
Charlie nodded and they began their retreat just as a door opened from somewhere down the road. The figure of a man appeared, walking towards them. More doors opened now, more strangers filing out of their homes and moving slowly, zombielike, in the direction of the twins.
“Run,” Nora shouted. But before they had the chance, someone put a hand on Nora’s shoulder.
