Sign Here(43)

The air in the room got tight as soon as she said his name. Mickey felt instantly guilty, even though she hadn’t been the one who said it.

“Who’s Philip?” Ruth asked. Mickey snapped up, but Ruth had the sweetest face: all open and full of sparkle. So much so that Mickey wondered, for an instant, if she truly had forgotten.

“Phil was my big brother,” Silas said, digging his fork into the meat. “He was a wild child back in the day, always taking girls for rides on his motorcycle. The pretty ones, at least.” He winked at Mickey, who gave a weak smile.

“I’ve never been on a motorcycle,” Ruth said. “My mom says I’d like it too much.”

Silas laughed. “Smart mom.”

Lily cleared her throat, her knife scraping ceramic. “So, Sean, are the Watersons around this summer?”

Sean chewed in no hurry.

“Yup.”

“Oh, that’s good to know. I will reach out to them. Are you going to see them?”

“Yeah, at some point.”

“Who are they?” Ruth asked with the same innocence. But this time her knee hit Mickey’s hard under the table, and Mickey had to cough to keep from laughing.

“The Watersons own the house to the right of ours, through the woods. They’ve been there forever—since Evan and Rose first built the place. Good kids, right, Sean?”

“Whatever that means.”

“You should have them over!” Lily suggested.

Sean shrugged.

“That would be fun!” Ruth said, blotting her mouth with her napkin to hide her own grin. Her food was scattered and smooshed across her plate, but not eaten. Mickey pushed her own plate away.



* * *



—

AFTER THE PLATES WERE cleared, cleaned, and dried, Lily went upstairs to take a bath, and Silas followed, saying good night with a kiss on Mickey’s head. Mickey was ready to go up, too, to giggle under the covers with Ruth like they had every night before. But Ruth looped back into the living room and plopped down on the worn leather sofa. Sean wandered over to the bookshelf, touching the dusty spines with his brow furrowed.

“I have a crazy idea,” Ruth said as Mickey fell into the couch beside her, her foot sliding under Ruth’s bare thigh. “What if we had a séance?”

Mickey froze. She remembered the time she played Ouija board with Sean in elementary school. He moved the planchette just gently enough to make Mickey believe she was haunted by a clown. She had refused to go to the circus since.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Ruth said, lowering her voice, “what if we try to contact that girl, Sarah? The one you said your uncle—”

Sean spun on his heel, any pretense of distraction gone.

“You told her?”

“It’s fine, Sean,” Ruth said. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

“Yeah, Sean. Relax.”

“Dad will fucking kill you both,” he said, but he sat in the chair next to them, pushing himself to the edge so his knee touched Ruth’s.

“Not if we don’t get caught,” Ruth said.

She didn’t move her leg one inch.





PEYOTE





“I’M SORRY, DID YOU just say fifteen in one deal?” KQ asked, her eyes darting between Cal’s and mine. “As in, we do one thing and we get fifteen Quarter Pounders with fries? Just like that?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Well then, what the fuck are you doing in here talking to me? Go do it!” KQ shouted, waving her hands. “Right now!”

“There’s one catch.”

We agreed before we walked into her office that KQ was most likely to flex her power if she had another woman to flex it over. So Cal stood next to me, wearing downcast eyes and her most deeply beige sweater, the clothing equivalent of a dry, untoasted bagel.

“I don’t like catches.”

“If it were anyone but you, it would be tricky,” I said. “But you can take care of this, no sweat. We just need your John Hancock.”

KQ smiled, lapping up my bullshit like she’d never heard of table manners. “I’m listening.”

“We need to find this guy so we can find what the marks are looking for, and the only way to do so is to use the Looking Glass.”

KQ’s head shot up, her eyes in slits. I was about to ask her if she was okay, when she slammed her palms down on her desk.

“Fuck it. Fifteen souls in one deal are more than even those Sixth-Floor pricks could say no to. Give me the slip.” She held out her hand, wiggling her fingers. I handed her the clipboard and a fistful of pens, my heart in my throat.

After all of this planning and scheming, all I had to do was smile and ask real nice.

When we closed the door behind us, I tried to hide how my hands shook. I knew Cal would be excited, and I could share in the appropriate amount of that excitement. But I hadn’t forgotten who Cal was. Even in moments of success, she was smarter than anyone else I had encountered in Hell. If she caught on that I had my own agenda, the perfect balance of happenstance that had fallen into my lap could dissolve into nothing.

“Holy shit, that worked,” she said under her breath as she fussed with a pile of papers in her arms.