“Get in the car,” he whispered. “Tell Lenore to start the engine.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to throw her in the dumpster and soak up all the blood.”
Having spent most of my life as a law-abiding citizen, I felt like I should object to that on general principle. Instead, I squeezed his massive arm in thanks. Then, jaw clenched, I made myself look down at my doppelgänger one more time, and—
She no longer looked like me.
“Gallagher!”
He followed my gaze to see that the dead woman now had wide-set brown eyes, a narrow nose and no freckles. Her features were a more feminine version of the man I’d driven to kill himself in Malloy’s yard. And the one in the woods. And the man in the lab. She could be their sister.
She looked just like the women among the human forest in Rommily’s dream.
Gallagher aimed a nod over my head, and I turned to see Lenore staring at us in concern, the gas pump still protruding from our tank. “Get in the car. Tell Lenore to pull forward and pick me up here.”
I turned without another word and rounded the corner of the building, where the source of Lenore’s stress became obvious. There was a car idling behind ours, and the driver was giving her angry looks while she pretended to be having trouble with the gas pump. Trying to buy us time to get back.
“Pull forward and pick Gallagher up by the dumpster,” I whispered as I walked past her and carefully lowered myself into the front passenger seat, letting my hair fall forward so that all the other driver saw of me was my pregnant silhouette.
As I closed the door, Lenore returned the nozzle to the pump and closed our gas cap. Then she got in the car. “What’s going on?” she whispered as she started the engine and shifted into Drive.
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the road. Just go.”
She fastened her seat belt, then let the car roll forward until it passed the corner of the building.
Gallagher emerged from the shadow of the dumpster and slid into the backseat. “Go. Now. But not too fast.”
Lenore pulled us onto the road, headed toward the highway. “How worried should I be?” She glanced from Gallagher, in the rearview mirror, to me. “What happened?”
“I killed a woman who looked just like me,” I told her as we took the on-ramp onto the highway.
“What? Behind the gas station?”
“Everything’s fine,” Gallagher said. “I cleaned up all the blood and dumped the body in the trash bin. It won’t be found until it hits the landfill—if it’s found at all—and by then, they’ll have no idea which truck picked it up, much less which bin it came from.”
“I trust your crime cover-up expertise,” Lenore said. “I’m more interested in how the dead woman found Delilah and why they looked alike.”
“My best guess is that she was pulled toward me just like the men were, and the two hours we sat down the street at Sonic let her get close enough to find me in the bathroom.” I shrugged, shifting in my seat to try to ease the suddenly fierce ache in my back. “As for why she looked like me... I think she was Erica.”
“Erica, thesurrogate?” Lenore turned to me, and the car swerved slightly to the right.
“Watch the road,” Gallagher growled.
“Yes, Erica the surrogate.” I twisted in my seat, trying to see both of them at once. “You guys, I think they’reallsurrogates. All of those human shapeshifters. I think thefuriaeis pulling them toward me, so she can deal with them. I think they’re still glamoured to look like the babies they were originally traded for, and after they die, they’re reverting back to their true forms. Which happen to be eerily identical.”
“But why now?” Lenore asks. “Andhow? They were all arrested before you and I were even born.” She frowned. “Well, before you were traded for Elizabeth. So how are they just now free to stage a comeback?”
“Oh my God.”
“What?” The siren glanced at me, but I was already twisting in my seat again, trying to see Gallagher without the barrier of the rearview mirror.
“We did this.” I craned my neck until I could see into the backseat, and Gallagher’s grim expression confirmed what I’d just figured out. “The man in the cage at the lab. He was a surrogate. He said he was in a government lab, using Vandekamp’s collars, and one day they just stopped working. Gallagher, when we freed ourselves from the Spectacle, we also freed the surrogates. We set them loose on the world.”
“I’m afraid you might be right.” I’d rarely heard him sound so grim.
“That means thefuriaeisn’t helping me protect and defend the world. She’s helping me clean up the mess I made. Those people they killed... The people in the mall. The kids in school. They died because ofus.”
