The air feels as thick with tension as it is with smells, and my stomach growls, which surprises me, considering it’s also clenched. I have an urge to put things back in the cabinets, to clean the pots, to tell Sean to be more careful. But I don’t. I listen to the sizzles and the clanks and the clinks and the clatter and try not to feel as though my bones are cracking inside me from holding myself so still.
“Most people guessed you’re not dead,” Victoria says conversationally.
“You swore not to kill her,” Peter says. His hand tightens on my shoulder. “And that means you can’t do anything that will get her killed. You can’t tell anyone she’s here or that you saw her or where this house is or that she’s alive.”
“I didn’t set the mob on her,” Victoria says.
Peter scowls at her. “You didn’t stop them.”
“That’s part of the definition ofmob.Unstoppable.”
“Claire stopped them,” I say, and then I clamp my mouth shut.Peace,I remind myself.
“Claire’s adorable. I lack that quality.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Victoria was stunning, gorgeous even, but she wasn’t cute.
“You didn’t try,” Peter says. I cover his hand with mine, cautioning him. We don’t want to fight with these people.
Victoria scowls at us. “The Missing Man is gone, the void is encroaching, and the only difference in town is her arrival—”
“I helped you!” I point to her hand, the one with the star sapphire ring. “I’m not the enemy here. The void is the enemy!” Peter’s hand is still on my shoulder, soft, warm, bolstering me. On the counter, Claire has quit stacking spices and is waiting, tense. She’s in a crouch. Her hand is on her pocket near her knife.
Sean pauses in his cooking. “It was oddly peaceful in the void. I felt...strangely safe.”
With that change of topic, the moment diffuses. Victoria leans back against the wall. Claire lowers her hand. Peter says in a conversational tone, “It lulls you. It draws out your melancholy. It makes you think about what pains you. It wants you to give up trying.”
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s hungry. Always hungry. It has an insatiable need to grow. It wants to destroy all the lost places and subsume the souls within.” He says it so matter-of-factly, as if this soul-destroying substance weren’t just half a mile outside my house, as if it hadn’t been capable of delivering the ocean I was dreaming about to nearly my doorstep.
“It seems to be succeeding,” Victoria says.
“It’s simply following its nature. Misery likes company. You can’t blame it. Or Lauren,” Peter says. “But you can blame the Missing Man. After all, he’s done this before.” He darts forward and takes a stack of plates. “Claire, help me set the table.” He whisks them into the dining room.
“You can’t make a statement like that and leave the room,” Victoria says.
“Can and did.” Peter’s voice floats singsong into the dining room.
Victoria marches after him. I’m torn between wanting to tell Victoria to back the hell off and wanting to know what Peter meant. I follow her.
“Vic, go easy,” Sean calls after her. “He did find me.”
“And he brought a train!” Claire says, chasing us into the dining room. “I love my train! I’m going to be an engineer. A princess engineer who rules the tracks!”
Skidding the plates across the table, Peter sends each plate into position. Claire fetches napkins, all mismatched linen napkins that I found and scooped up once so we could be civilized while we ate. She sets with mismatched (but silver) utensils. He looks like an ordinary older brother performing tricks to entertain his babysitter, unconcerned with the irate dinner guests. I am certain he’s doing it to infuriate Victoria, and I stifle a smile.
Victoria scowls at Peter. She has an impressive scowl. On the opposite side of the table, Peter looks as if he wants to hop out of the window and run into the desert, and I don’t blame him. I suddenly feel as protective as I did when I defended Claire from the dogs, except there’s no trash can lid to fling at Victoria. “Leave him alone.”
Victoria crosses her arms. “He said it’s happened before. What happened? The Missing Man leaving? The void encroaching?”
I don’t expect Peter to answer, but he does. “Both.”
“What did you do to stop it?”
“Nothing. Couldn’t.”
I feel cold and suddenly want to change the topic. The look in Peter’s eyes...he looks as if he’s seen too much, knows too much, as if the weight of his memories has aged him. But Victoria doesn’t care or doesn’t see. She taps her foot, overtly impatient. “What happened? Spill, Finder.”
