The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(30)

“I won’t let you send him back,” said Zoe. Her voice was rising now. “I won’t.”

“I’m not sending him anywhere—except away,” her mother said. “He warned us not to take him in. It was the first thing he said. Look, I know he helped you and Jonah—”

“He saved our lives,” said Zoe. “From Stan—somebody you should have warned us about.”

“Don’t do that,” said her mother. “I made your dad stop speaking to that man back in Virginia twenty years ago.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?” Zoe asked.

“Because it’s not a pretty story,” her mother said.

“Yeah, well, I want to hear it anyway,” said Zoe. “Right now.”

Her mother sighed.

The truck had grown louder. X watched it rattle into view. It turned out to be a van and—unlike Stan’s pickup, which had been as corroded and sinister as the man who drove it—the sides were painted to resemble the top of a snowy, majestic mountain. Strapped to the roof was a wooden carving of a bear. It appeared to be a permanent fixture for it was positioned to look as if it were the king of the aforementioned mountain. It was a happy bear, smiling and waving as it rode through the countryside.

X knew nothing about transportation, but to him the van seemed … silly. For a moment, it stalled. The tailpipe coughed up smoke, like someone experimenting with his first cigarette. But the driver got it started again and resumed the climb. X chastised himself for having let the van distract him. He turned his attention back to Zoe and her mother.

“Stan was disgusting even as a teenager,” Zoe’s mother was saying. “But he could convince your father to do anything. They broke into a teacher’s house. They stole a garbage truck. Seriously: a garbage truck! You know what they did with it? They actually went around collecting people’s garbage. Have you heard enough now? Can I please stop—please?”

“No,” said Zoe. “I want to hear everything.”

“You don’t,” said her mother.

There was a brief stalemate.

The van labored closer.

“When they hit eighteen or nineteen, the crimes started getting less and less cute,” her mother said. “It was like Stan was trying to figure out how weak your dad was and how far he could push him. There was stuff so ugly that your father cried over it. Eventually, he and Stan got arrested for something—I don’t even remember what, I’ve blocked it out—and I gave him an ultimatum: him or me. We got married a year later. I don’t think he changed his last name to mine because he was some big romantic—I think he did it because he had a criminal record. Now, should I have told you all that when you were a kid, Zoe? About your father? Who was a big enough disappointment anyway? Should I tell Jonah? How do you think that would go?”

Zoe said nothing. X suspected she was crying. When her mother spoke again, her voice was hushed and kind.

“I’m grateful to X,” she said, “and that’s why I didn’t turn him in to the police. But, sweetie, I think Jonah’s getting too close to him.” She paused, as the van drew nearer. “And I know that you are.”

X was still waiting for Zoe to deny it when the van turned up the Bissells’ driveway, about a hundred yards away. The engine sounded absurdly, almost catastrophically, loud.

“Crap, it’s Rufus,” said Zoe’s mother. “What’s he doing here?”

“What do you think he’s doing?” Zoe said, still rattled by their conversation. “He’s obsessed with you, and it’s time for a new episode of World’s Slowest Courtship. ‘This week, Rufus starts growing a rose!’”

“Don’t do that,” her mother said. “If he heard you say something like that, it would really embarrass him.”

Rufus pulled up near the garage and killed the engine.

“Get X into the woods,” Zoe’s mother told her, “unless you think you can explain who he is to Rufus. Because I certainly can’t.”

The words jolted X. Why had he just been standing there, eavesdropping? He could not afford to be seen by yet another citizen of the Overworld. Every person who saw him was another person he endangered. He might as well have dangled them over a furnace.

He scanned the woods. He could reach them in an instant, but he feared he would alarm Jonah if he ran. He looked down at the boy. Jonah’s back was turned, and he was kneeling in the snow, fussing with Zoe’s scarf.

X headed for the trees. He forced himself to move slowly. It was agonizing. He was barely a hundred feet away when Jonah—apparently not as entranced by his game as X had imagined—stood up, brushed the snow off his knees, and began shouting: “Rufus! We’re in back! Come meet our new friend!”

Zoe came around the house and ran toward X.

“Is there any chance you can talk like a normal human being for even two minutes?” she said.

“I shall endeavor to do what the circumstances require,” he said.

Zoe rolled her eyes.

“We are so screwed,” she said.

Rufus came around the back of the house now, too, and saw them. He approached Jonah first, playfully baring his teeth and hissing like an animal.

“I am One Tooth, ancient ruler of the cat tribes of the tundra!” he exclaimed.