The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(31)

“I don’t. Really. When I first got here, I thought this was Canada.”

After scanning her for ridicule and finding none, Theo leaned his head back and laughed. His face twitched briefly, like he was shaking off a fly.

“I’d been riding all night from San Francisco,” he told her. “So I was already at diminished capacity when I met the guy. I’ll also admit that I wasn’t entirely sober.”

“Theo . . .”

“My point is that I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Theo, did this guy have white hair?”

He stared ahead serenely. At this point, he’d lost all capacity for surprise.

“Yeah. I guess you met him too.”

The van pulled to a stop along the curb. Hannah looked out the window. They were still downtown, in a decidedly less ritzy area than the one she’d arrived in.

“We’ll be back,” said Martin. “We got two signals, so you’ll be in good company soon.”

The Salgados disappeared down an alley, between a dilapidated post office and a grungy diner. Hannah and Theo fell into an awkward silence. Suddenly the actress felt an eerie chill on the back of her neck, as if someone was watching her. She turned around and scanned the street. No one.

Soon Theo’s head dipped and his eyelids fluttered erratically. Hannah left him to his twitchy nap.

“Azral,” she muttered, in a vacant daze. It was strange to learn the name of the white-haired man after all this time. He was no angel. As sure as Hannah knew she was alive, she knew he was no force of goodness.

Four minutes after leaving, the Salgados returned without company.

“What happened?” Hannah asked. “I thought we were getting more people.”

Martin hurriedly texted his daughter. “False alarm.”

Hannah could practically feel his tension. His son looked downright disturbed. She opted not to inquire further. She’d had enough agitation for one ride.

The vehicle started up again. Soon Hannah drifted off into uneasy thoughts. A floundering actress, a droll cartoonist, and a law school dropout who got plastered at bus stops. Why us, Azral? What could you possibly want from—

“He’s right,” Theo murmured.

Hannah looked at him again. His eyes were still closed. She couldn’t tell if he was addressing her or merely talking in his sleep.

“I’m sorry. Who?”

“Zack. He’s right. It’s not enough money to get to Brooklyn.”

She sat forward. “Wait, what?”

A few drops of blood trickled onto his sweatshirt. Then a few more. Then his nose became a faucet. It didn’t take a nurse to see that something very wrong was happening inside Theo Maranan.

—

While the first two floors of the Pelletier building had been converted to office space, the top flight stayed true to its hotel origins. Thirty suites remained fully furnished with beds, chairs, and dressers. Only the locks and lumivisions had been removed, by order of the new owner, Dr. Sterling Quint.

Amanda emerged from her shower to discover that one of the physicists had taken her clothes for study. All she owned now were her gold cross necklace and diamond wedding ring. She was willing to let science have the ring, if science asked.

She fastened her robe and crossed the hall into Hannah’s suite, listening to the running shower through the bathroom door. She pushed it open a crack.

“Hannah? You okay?”

Amanda could see her silhouette through the gauzy white curtain, the buxom shape that Derek had ogled fourteen hours ago. Hannah leaned against the tile in somber repose. The mood-lifters were wearing off, turning her thoughts to stucco.

“I’ll be out soon,” she said in a dismal voice.

“There’s no hurry, Hannah. I just wanted to check on you.”

“What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The quiet girl in the lobby.”

“Mia.”

“Yeah. Mia. She didn’t look very happy.”

“She just lost her whole family.”

“That’s what I figured,” Hannah said. “It’s got to hurt a little. I mean to see that we didn’t.”

Amanda sat on the edge of the sink and closed her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You know Mom’s dead, right?”

The spider-leg tingles came back to Amanda’s right arm. Her fingers twitched uncontrollably. “Hannah . . .”

“This wasn’t just San Diego. It was everywhere. A kid with a radio said so. The whole goddamn world.”

Amanda could hear her sister’s choking sobs over the water. “Hannah, you’re coming down off a very strong drug . . .”

“No, I’m coming down off everything! I’m crying about our mother! How come you’re not?”

A powerful chill seized Amanda’s hand. She pulled back her sleeve and gasped at the mad new blight on her arm. Her skin was covered in tiny white dots from her fingertips to her bracelet. The beads looked as hard and shiny as plastic, but they moved with a life all their own. Amanda watched with frozen horror as three flea-size spots shimmied up her thumb.

Oblivious to the crisis, Hannah rested her head against the wall. “I didn’t . . . Look, I don’t know what I’m saying right now, okay? Don’t listen to me.”