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Chapter

Twenty-Five

The truck was gone and the house was very quiet.

Leo stood in the kitchen and considered.

There was something very odd about the way Nate had left, wasn’t there?

One moment they’d been making good progress, and the next the medium had acted as if something spooked him. Leo was used to spooking people, but not like this.

He drifted to the notebook that lay open on the table where Nate had left it. He saw a rough draft of his face, a mouth, two empty shapes where the eyes went.

Green, apparently.

Very green.

Nate had said it like it meant something. And then he’d looked at his mug, and then he’d looked at the counter, and then he’d gone into town for paint like it was suddenly urgent.

Leo turned away from the notebook.

Fine.

He had things to do. He had a house to patrol. He’d been neglecting the patrol for days, and the house didn’t patrol itself.

He made it as far as the kitchen doorway.

On the counter by the window sat one of Nate’s protein bars, wrapper peeled halfway down, one bite gone. Nate had grabbed his keys instead of his breakfast. Typical.

Leo wrinkled his nose at the bar. It still smelled off. Only Nate could like that.

Nate and the fox.

Maybe Leo could attract the fox with the protein bar?

The kitchen window was open. Nate had propped it with a paint stirrer weeks ago and never closed it, because the house was always full of dust. Now the morning air came through the gap, smelling of grass and warm dirt.

Leo focused on the protein bar. It was lighter than the seal, but heavier than the notebook cover. He could do this.

He put his hand under the end of the wrapper and thought about the fox’s stupid face and the weeding and the hole in the ground and very green, and lifted.

The bar came up off the counter.

“Yes.”

It wobbled. He steadied it. He floated it toward the window an inch at a time, wrapper flapping, the whole thing tilting as if it desperately wanted to obey gravity but Leo wasn’t letting it.

He got it to the window and pushed.

The protein bar hit the porch boards with a flat little slap.

Success!

Leo went out through the wall to sit next to it.

The porch steps were warm. The sun was most of the way up, and the flowers swayed with the breeze.

There was no fox.