“Not too much these days, but I played in there a bit as a boy,” he said.
Nora exhaled. If it was him, he didn’t seem about to own up to it, and she was definitely not going to press. She quickly got to her point. “There’s an old building of some kind in there. A house, I think. It seemed…I think it was inhabited. I just wondered who lives out there.”
This time Phil’s head peered over the hood of the car. He didn’t look at Nora, really; if anything he seemed to be looking through her. “Like I said, I haven’t been out there much in a long time.”
“But it’s such a small town,” Nora said, perplexed. “And you’ve lived here your whole life, right? Surely you’d know who’s living in the woods.”
“Well, I don’t,” Phil said, his tone the most animated Nora had heard it. “Now, you want me to fix your car or what?”
Nora took a step back in spite of herself, the uneasiness histone triggered in her tingling down her knees. Then it hit her. Phil himself could be the resident of that strange house in the woods. It would explain how he’d found the twins so easily that morning, it would explain why his truck was so beaten up and painted with mud. And surely, even in a town like this, a man of Phil’s age didn’t still live with his parents, but if he didn’t live with Pickles or at the farm with Vic and his family, or in one of the little clapboard houses around Patty, he had to be somewhere. Nora studied the top of his head, as though it would tell her what parts of his story were true and which were lies. Then he looked at her for another moment.
“You’re not from around here,” he said. “You have no idea what the wilderness holds in these parts. What harm could come to you out there. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of the woods.”
* * *
They returned home an hour later, Nora not dead. Phil had decided he’d work on the car the next day when he’d have more hours of sunlight. The weather had begun to turn sometime before they began their journey back into town, fat clouds rolling in. By the time they pulled up at the little red house, speckles of rain were dotting the truck’s grubby windshield. Nora waved a tight goodbye and hurried into the house as Phil drove off.
Inside, the fire was warm, Charlie curled on the couch in front of it like a cat, belly up, leg twitching slightly. Somehow he’d managed to nap while Nora was receiving threats from their hot but sinister cousin.
Ruby came down the stairs a moment later and tipped herhead in greeting. “He’s been like that for over an hour,” she whispered, indicating Charlie with her chin. “Should I be concerned?”
Nora shook her head. Of all the things in the world she had to be concerned about, and there were always many, Charlie napping wasn’t one of them. Charlie Bird was not a man of many talents, less due to inadequacy than a total lack of effort, but he’d always excelled at naps. One time in senior year he left school at lunch, planning to grab a few quick winks and be back for fifth-period biology. He didn’t wake up again until after breakfast the following morning.
Just to be absolutely certain, Nora approached her brother and shoved a hand under his nose. A steady rhythm of air hit her knuckles. He wasn’t dead, he was just Charlie.
“He’s fine,” Nora said. “And there’s really no need to whisper. Charlie’s slept through…” She thought back to the figure with the knife in their room last night and shook it away. “One time when we were little, I fell out of bed and broke my arm. Mom and Dad called an ambulance. The whole street woke up from the sirens and the flashing lights, but Charlie didn’t realize anything had happened until he saw me in a cast the next morning.”
“Lucky boy,” said Ruby. “I can hardly remember the last time I slept through the night.”
Nora nodded. Neither could she. It was one of the few things she had in common with the agents of S.C.Y.T.H.E. Death and all the terrifying unknowns that surrounded it had kept her up all night for years, long before she started her job in the field. But for her agent colleagues, modern-day grim reapers in many ways, who saw the effects of death firsthand on a daily basis, it was even harder to shake it off at the end of the day. Nora searched Ruby’s eyes. Was that why she couldn’t sleep too?
“Where’s Richard?” Nora asked.
“Your brother inspired him,” said Ruby. “He’s napping upstairs. I was just about to make some tea. Would you like a cup?” She moved towards the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” Nora said. She grabbed a pair of mugs and pulled the milk from the fridge while Ruby filled the kettle. As soon as the water was boiled and the room felt quiet enough for the question, she dove in. “Richard said you used to be in transportation before you moved here. What did you transport?”
Ruby plucked a couple of tea bags from a little jar beside the sink and plopped them into the waiting mugs. “Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that,” she said.
“Souls?”
Ruby froze in the middle of pouring the kettle. The water rose to the top of the mug and spilled over the side, steam swirling. She quickly put the kettle down and mopped up the water with a dishcloth before it had the chance to scald her foot below the counter.
“What did you just say?”
“Working in transportation” had long ago become a common euphemism among Collections Agents, who couldn’t directly state the nature of their jobs. Nora was only disappointed in herself for not picking it up right away.
“I saw the files,” she explained. She tried to meet Ruby’s eyes, but neither seemed quite ready for that.
“How on earth…how do you even know what those are?”
“So it’s true,” said Nora. “You did work for S.C.Y.T.H.E.”
Ruby shook her head. “I worked for the R.C.M.P.”
“Like…Mounties?” said Nora. “So they’renotjust in cartoons?”
This drew a small smile from her grandmother. “Not the Mounties, dear, the R.C.M.P. Removal and Collection of Mobile Phantasms. We’re a Canadian organization. We follow the same basic business model of international companies like S.C.Y.T.H.E., though we’re not directly affiliated. But how…?”
