Sign Here(39)

But he didn’t.

Silas could recall each feeling Ruth experienced as she was experiencing it. He knew the bite of the open air like electricity, how she would feel cold everywhere outside of the thrum of water. The way the soap would slip in her hand, thin and cracked in places like tree bark, palm-perfect and worn smooth. The feeling of being exposed, wild in a safe way. Naked but unseen.

Silas knew exactly how she felt. So much so that he was practically there with her, all steam and wet hair pulled long and slick.

So much so that there was no point in keeping his eyes closed anymore.

So he didn’t.





PEYOTE





“LET’S JUST HOLD ON a second,” I said, taking in the room.

There must’ve been at least twelve of them. They all looked to be in their early twenties, except that they sat so still. They had varying skin tones and colors in their short-cropped hair, but somehow all of them looked the same—human bootlegs.

It was as if a Boy Scout troop had fallen into a communal coma a decade earlier and had just, communally, woken up.

“Here, I bet y’all are wanting these,” the man said as he tossed Cal a bottle of water. She opened it immediately. I flicked my wrist when he threw me mine, and everything stopped but the three of us, the bottle stuck mid-arc.

“Mr. Culver,” I said through a grin, “it’s great that you have so much support. But we don’t usually perform for an audience.”

“It’s Jason,” he said as he circled the water bottle midair. “Damn, that’s cool.”

“Okay, Jason. How about you tell me why you called us here, and we’ll go from there?”

I glanced over at Cal, who had moved toward the boys on the couch. She bent down in front of one and swept the hair from his stilled eyes.

“I need you to bring me someone,” Jason said. “He has something we need.”

“With all due respect, Jason, there are taxi services that charge a Hell of a lot less than us.”

Literally.

I heard Cal stand up and expected her to come to my side, but she moved around the room, fingers lingering over faces and in the dust on the shelves.

“And if I knew where he was, I would’ve called them. But he’s been dark for years. He’s not dead, though. I know it. We just can’t find him.”

“And who exactly is ‘we’?” I asked, glancing around the living room.

“He stole from all of us,” Jason said. “But from my understanding, you don’t need a scrapbook; you just need a soul. Am I right?”

My Trustworthy face faltered, but only for a second. There was no point in sugarcoating it: if he had called us with all of the information, he had already come to terms with what he would lose. Whatever he wanted was worth it. At least he thought it was, on this side of the dirt.

“How do you know the target is alive?” Cal interrupted. “That he still has what you’re looking for?”

“Just when we think he must’ve kicked it, he’ll show up. A connection of mine saw him a few years back, said he was masquerading as a preacher. He’s run since, but no doubt he’s just set up shop somewhere else. And he always has it.”

I felt Cal tense from across the room. I reached out my mind to hers like I had during our Grand Slam, but she blocked me with a shock.

Something was not right.

“Well, Jason,” I said, “if you want him dead, we can do that right now from this living room. But—and I don’t mean to be harsh—one soul is not enough to send us on a wild-goose chase.”

I put my hand on the doorknob and nodded to Cal. She was kneeling in front of a frozen boy on a folding chair. She traced the neck of his T-shirt, rolling between her fingers a thin chain that hung there.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait,” Jason said, almost walking into the suspended beverage in his kitchen. “What if you get all of us? What if you get fifteen souls?”

I hesitated.

“We’ll do it,” Cal said, tablet ready.

We were gone before the bottle hit the wall.





LILY





THAT AFTERNOON, LILY MEANDERED through the market’s floral aisle, touching petals when no one was looking. She took the car into town, the grocery list not nearly long enough to require a trip tucked purposefully into her shirt pocket. She had spent sixteen summers in the same place Sarah died, there the very minute, second, year after year. Never once had she and Silas done anything to acknowledge the day, except maybe pour their evening drinks a little early, a little strong. She paid for a bouquet of poppies in cash. She drove the long way back, and parked between their property and the Watersons’. She didn’t want to go to the clearing through the backyard. She needed to be alone for this.



* * *



—

THE DAY OF THE night Sarah died, Lily nursed her hangover on the float, diving off the edge whenever she needed to feel cold water. Madeline and the other girls joined her in the beginning, all rowing the canoe out so they could bring the stereo, but, as always, they abandoned their towels and tanning oil when they heard Phil’s bike.

“Not into the hog?” Sarah asked as she pulled herself up the ladder. She twisted her hair and shook it out over her shoulders. Usually, it was the color of a sunset or the forest floor in the fall, but sometime that summer, she got highlights that, to Lily’s delight, looked terrible.