When No One Is Watching(77)

She nods, then continues to nod as if running through things in her head. “They’re gonna do something big tonight, something worse than what they’re already doing. That’s all we need to know.”

I check the gun to reacquaint myself with the feel of one and make sure there are no tricks to it. It’s a simple Glock, older model with a silencer screwed on. Sydney checks her revolver, too, loading bullets into the chamber to replace the ones currently lodged in her hallway and in the body of the man on the floor.

“Sydney? Sydney?” Someone is calling her from outside.

“Let’s go,” I say.

When we step through the front door, there are people gathered in the street and more arriving, the glow of the streetlights silhouetting them.

Of course they’re out there.

This is a neighborhood where people care about each other, and three gunshots went off in Sydney’s house.

Ms. Candace is front and center, hands resting on the head of her cane. “Sydney, what was that noise? Is that blood all over you? What in the—”

Her words drop off as the streetlights and every other light on the block blink out, leaving us in darkness.





Chapter 21

Sydney

WE’VE HAD BLACKOUTS AND BROWNOUTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD since I’ve moved back—when the grid gets hot, we get shut down so the richer neighbors can stay cool. The fact that the electrical company feels comfortable admitting that seems sinister given everything else going on.

I can think of a million possibilities tying this coincidence to all of the fucked-up things that happened this week.

Maybe the other power outages had been conditioning. We’re used to this happening now. We’re not supposed to worry that the rest of Brooklyn is bright in the distance, not knowing or caring what goes on in the dark at Gifford Place.

This knowledge combines with the darkness and the humidity, pushing me down into the asphalt. My heart was already beating out of my chest and now I get goose bumps despite the heat because this blackout feels different.

Drea is dead. She’s never coming back.

Rejuvenation.

A man just tried to kill me in my own home.

Clear out.

My breathing starts to come fast and shallow, the pain in my chest a seed of anxiety ready to sprout and bind me, choke the breath from me.

No.

I have to keep it together.

An image of Drea’s last words, in text, pops into my head. I force it away. If I think too much I will die. That’s the bottom line here.

I take a deep breath. And another.

Breathe.

“Well, shit,” Ms. Candace says from somewhere next to me. “This ain’t good.”

A hand closes around my arm, and even though I’m ready to bash anything that touches me, Theo’s low voice follows immediately. He squeezes my arm twice and then his hand slides down to grip mine.

“This reminds me of . . . one time, one of my mom’s boyfriends took me on a night hunt,” he says. “He got a kick out of chasing panicked creatures through the dark. This feels like that. Except I’m not one of the hunters this time.”

“Let’s walk Candace back to her place,” I say as, one by one, cell phones glow into the darkness around us, like giant blue lightning bugs floating up and down the street.

“Damn, I wanted to watch the game tonight but the network is down, too,” a man I don’t know by voice says, sighing dramatically as he waves his phone around. “Can’t even use my phone as a hotspot. Fuck outta here with this shit, man. Look. Look. Medical center been closed down for years, and they got electric?”

He waves his phone down the street.

His friend, standing beside him, laughs. “You think they got a TV that play ESPN in there?”

Their joking only adds to the sense of unreality, because when I look down the street, there are lights on in the old hospital.

“They’re having a meeting,” Theo says quietly. “And the lights are on in the hospital VerenTech just bought. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I swore I saw something in there the other night.”

“What was that noise that came from your house, Sydney?” Candace asks again, nudging at my other arm.

“Firecrackers. I think you need to go be with Paulette, Ms. Candace. She’s probably scared since she doesn’t like . . . Oh fuck.” Paulette’s ramblings about the ’77 blackout come back to me.

Earlier I was telling Theo how these things happen in cycles, white people clambering into a hood, be it the original Algonquin hood or closer in history, like Weeksville. If I’m right, what Paulette said makes this darkness even more frightening.

Break and build.

This is the breaking point.

I look down the street in the direction opposite the hospital in time to see more cell phone lights blink on in the distance—no, not cell phone lights. It’s the faraway mirror images of the cell phones near us on reflective surfaces.

“It’s the cops,” I say aloud, grasping toward where I last heard Ms. Candace. After snatching humid air a few times, I catch hold of her wrist.

On the other end of the block is a phalanx of cops—I assume. I can’t really make out much except for the reflection of light sources in their plastic riot shields and dark, bulky silhouettes.

I very briefly assume they’re here for me and Theo or the man bleeding out in my hallway, but no. They wouldn’t need this many cops, or shields, for that.