“Where does he live?” Gallagher’s voice was so deep I could hardly understand his words. The van was suddenly filled with his rage. Thick with it, like smoke, but rather than suffocating, I found his wrath invigorating, a therapeutic counterpoint to the fear Oliver Malloy’s familiar features had resurrected in me. The fear I tried to deny with every breath I took.
Deep in my gut, thefuriaepurred in contentment. Because she could not execute justice on my behalf, she celebrated Gallagher’s drive to do that very thing.
“His corporate bio says he lives outside of DC. About half an hour from here, on an estate that’s been in his family for years. It’ll take me a minute to get an address.”
Gallagher turned the key in the ignition, and the engine growled to life. Warm air blasted from the air vents, but began to cool almost immediately.
“We can’t go after him now. We have to make a plan. Let everyone know what we’re doing. We need to find out what kind of security he has.”
Gallagher dismissed my objections with a huff as he shifted the van into gear. “First of all, you’re overthinking this. Keeping people alive and setting them free are difficult tasks. Killing people is simple. I need only a shadow and a target.”
A silent thrill resonated deep inside me, and I tried not to think about what that said about me.
“And second, we’re not going there now. I’m taking you back to the cabin, then I will go after Oliver Malloy alone.”
As we pulled into the narrow gravel driveway, the cabin’s front door opened, and its occupants spilled onto the porch. “Well?” Lenore asked the moment Gallagher helped me out of the passenger’s seat.
“Sunday is definitely the day to strike,” he said as we made our way up the porch steps. “There was a skeleton staff—only a couple of actual researchers—and almost no security. They took out the trash at a quarter to five, and twenty minutes later, they’d turned off the lights and locked up.”
Claudio closed the door when we’d all filed into the cabin. “So we’re going in after they close, one week from today?”
Gallagher nodded. “Since we don’t actually know where Mirela and Lala are being held, we’ll need time to look around. We also have the option of disabling whoever takes out the trash and going in then. We wouldn’t have to break in that way, but we would have to disable any other staff members we come across.”
“Which means more corpses,” Zyanya said.
“No, it means more witnesses.” I’d already made Gallagher promise not to kill anyone who didn’t have to die.
“What matters is that it’s a school lab, not a government lab or a private collection. They’ll be more concerned about keeping the subjects in than keeping people out.” Gallagher pulled a chair out for me at the table. “We’ll take out the exterior security camera. Then we’ll go in and grab Miri and Lala. Quick and easy.”
Unless they were expecting us. Unless the whole thing was a trap. But he didn’t want to say that in front of the others.
I sank into the chair and Lenore set a glass of ice water in front of me. I thanked her, then waved Rommily forward and pulled out the chair beside mine.
She sat, and when her gaze met mine, her eyes were completely focused, if red from crying. The oracle seemed to spend as much time in her head, trapped in her own visions, as in the here and now with the rest of us, but since she’d heard about her sisters’ capture, she’d been more reachable than usual.
“We saw the lab today, Rommily,” I told her. “We’re going to get Miri and Lala out next week.” I took her hand and squeezed it. “You and Eryx may have to share your loft space after that, but at least we’ll have them back.”
Hopefully unharmed.
“It is a bad bargain where both are losers,” she murmured.
A chill rolled up my spine. Her eyes were completely clear, but her words had the feel of prophecy.
October 4, 1986
Normally, at 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday, the only cars on the street in downtown Greenville would belong to mothers shopping for groceries and families on their way home from peewee football. But on that particular weekend afternoon, a procession of cars filed into the parking lot of the county courthouse, a forty-year-old one-story building that had once been the home of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Rebecca Essig and her grandparents were near the end of that solemn parade.
Grandpa Frank parked in the small lot to the east of the building, and as Rebecca got out of the car, her gaze caught on the front window of a diner across the street. There was a new sign on the window.
No Dogs or Cryptids Allowed
She’d eaten at that diner with her grandmother the week before. The sign hadn’t been there.
Down the street, taped to the door of the hardware store her grandfather spent most of his spare time in was another sign.
Humans Only
