“Delilah,” Lenore called as she hefted a plastic grocery bag from between the front seats of the van. “I have something else for you.” The strange way she was looking at me set off all my internal alarms.
“What is it?”
“Screenshots.” The siren slammed the driver’s door, then jogged across the small yard and followed me up the steps. “Your story broke too late to make it into print.”
“Mystory?” I took the bag from her in the kitchen and began unloading eggs, milk and toilet paper for Mirela and Claudio to put up.
“Yes. Literally. And it’s as weird as it sounds.” Lenore glanced around the cabin. “Where’s Gallagher? He’ll want to see this.”
“Right here.” He came out of the bedroom with his hair still damp from the shower, beneath his bright red cap. “Rommily’s still out cold. What did you guys give her?”
“Another shot of bourbon,” Lala said. “But it’s not that. It’s exhaustion. She’s hardly slept in two days.”
Lala had only been with us for half that time, but I knew better by then to ask how an oracle knew anything.
“Here. Sit. Both of you.” The siren pulled out two chairs at the table.
“What’s going on, Lenore?” I asked as I sat. Gallagher sank into the chair next to me, scowling. He appreciated neither drama nor suspense. But Lenore looked unfazed as she dug one of our shared cell phones from her pocket.
She pressed a button to wake it up, then opened the photos app and enlarged the first image. It was a screenshot of the main headline from my go-to news site.
Manhunt Is Over for Cryptid Fugitive Delilah Marlow
June 1991
The woman in the mirror eyed Rebecca with that impatient look her mother had always gotten when the phone rang in the middle of dinner. “You are not Natalie Essig.” Her voice sounded the way polished granite feels when you run your hand over it. Smooth. Cold. Unyielding.
Rebecca stared at the glass, and her reply caught in her throat as she struggled to process the absence of her own reflection. The mirror looked more like a door. No, a window.
A window into what? Into...where?
“Child? Can you speak?” the woman demanded.
“I’m Natalie’s daughter.” Rebecca finally spit the words out. “Who areyou?”
“I have no time for children playing in the mirror.”
“Wait!” Rebecca stepped closer to the glass when the surface began to shimmer again, blurring the lines of a simple blue shift dress that left no hint about the woman’s culture or age. “Please. I’m trying to find my little sister. Myrealsister. You... I think you took her.”
“You’re referring to the child Erica Ann Essig, born to Natalie Essig?”
“Yes!” Rebecca aimed a nervous glance in the direction of her grandmother’s room, where Grandma Janice was napping. “Please. Is my sister okay?”
“Of course.” The woman sounded insulted.
“I’m sorry. It’s just... I read that sometimes changelings are...eaten.”
The woman’s scowl was sharp like the edge of a knife. “You should not believe everything you read.”
“That’s probably true,” Rebecca said, and the woman seemed even more insulted that there might be any doubt of that. “I want my sister back.” She stood taller, squaring her shoulders. Trying to look and sound old enough that the woman would take her seriously. “She isn’t yours, and you can’t keep her.”
“In fact, Icouldhave kept her. But I did not.”
“You—? You—?” Rebecca gripped the curved edge of the linoleum countertop. “What does that mean? Where is she?”
“She is safe and well cared for, but she is not here. Thus, I could not return her to you even if I wanted to exchange the child I left in her place.”
“I don’t have that...child.”
