Chapter 3 #2
“For you.” He paused. “At least, that’s what she said. I think…I think it was hard for her, too. Seeing your face every time one of those cards arrived, I mean. She told me that you’d wait by the mailbox for days afterward, hoping there might be something else.”
I remembered that all too well, the hope that would bloom inside me every time I saw my father’s handwriting on an envelope, followed by the crushing disappointment that swooped in when there was nothing else, no letter explaining why he’d left or when he was coming back. Eventually, I’d learned to stop hoping.
“You could have fought her on it,” I said. “You could have kept sending them anyway.”
“I could have.” His shoulders lifted, and he added, “But Emily was here with you and your mother, and I wasn’t.
She knew what was best for you in ways I couldn’t, from hundreds of miles away.
So I deferred to her judgment.” A twist of his mouth.
“Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I should have fought harder. But at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Part of me wanted to rage at him, to tell him that nothing he’d done had been the right thing, that he’d made choice after choice that had left me feeling abandoned and unloved.
But another part of me — the part that had spent the last eight months learning just how complicated the world really was — could almost understand the impossible position he’d been in.
Almost.
“The money stopped about five years ago,” I said. “The checks from Grandma. I found records going back a decade…more than that, actually, to even before you left.”
Finn nodded. “Emily cut me off about five years ago. She said the precursor signs I’d been tracking had stabilized and that whatever I’d been worried about wasn’t materializing.
” He paused. “She was wrong, obviously. But by then, I’d built up enough independent resources to keep the perimeter running on my own. ”
“Independent resources?” I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer. Maybe most people thought being an accountant was kind of a boring occupation, but being certified in that field meant you could pick up work almost anywhere.
“Consulting work. Nothing illegal,” he added, as if that was supposed to reassure me. “But lucrative enough to fund the operation without Emily’s support.”
Ben, who’d been silent this whole time, as though he knew he needed to let my father and me hash things out, finally shifted in his chair beside me. “You mentioned DAPI earlier. You said they’d flagged me as a potential asset. How did you get access to their database?”
“I have contacts in various agencies,” my father said in a careful tone that let me know he wasn’t about to reveal any sensitive information. “DAPI isn’t the only organization interested in what’s happening in places like Silver Hollow. They’re just the most aggressive.”
Ben frowned. “And you’ve been feeding information to these contacts? About me? About Sidney?”
“Only what was necessary to keep them pointed in the wrong direction.” My father’s voice was calm, but I saw the tension in his shoulders.
“My goal was always to protect this family, Ben. Sometimes that meant giving people just enough information to satisfy their curiosity without leading them here.”
I was about to ask another question when the sound of tires on gravel cut through the morning quiet. All three of us turned toward the window, and I felt my senses reaching outward automatically, trying to identify whoever had just pulled into the driveway.
The bioelectric signature was familiar, sharp and controlled like a tightly coiled spring, and I relaxed slightly.
“It’s Rebecca,” I said.
Ben was already on his feet, heading toward the front door. I followed him, with Finn trailing behind us, and we reached the hallway just as the door swung open.
Rebecca Morse stepped inside, and for a moment, I barely recognized her.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers, and had been all business.
Now she was also casual, but in slim jeans and low boots and a wine-colored sweater that I thought might be cashmere.
Her blonde hair lay loose on her shoulders, and her amazingly long, dark lashes had been brushed with mascara.
I’d never been able to guess her age, had thought it could be anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five, but now she looked years younger.
Apparently, being shacked up with Eric Hargrove agreed with her.
She took in the scene in front of her with a single sweep of her gaze — me in my flannel shirt with a nose I guessed was still pink from the bloody nose I’d suffered earlier that morning, Ben and his defensive posture, and my father standing a few feet behind us like he wasn’t sure if he was welcome.
Her expression hardened as soon as she caught sight of him.
“Finn Lowell,” she said flatly. “I pulled your file from DAPI’s servers before I burned them. Impressive work staying off the grid for almost two decades.”
My father tilted his head. “Agent Morse. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but we both know better.”
“You two know each other?” I asked.
“We’ve never met.” Rebecca dropped the duffel bag by the door and moved into the hallway, her movements casual but also filled with a certain coiled menace.
“But I know who he is. DAPI had a file on him going back fifteen years. They could never pin anything concrete on him, but they knew he was out there, watching.”
“Watching and protecting,” my father said mildly.
“That’s one interpretation.” Rebecca’s tone made it clear she had others.
I stepped between them, holding up a hand. “Okay, everybody, just…stop. Rebecca, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Oregon.”
Her expression softened slightly when she looked at me, although I wasn’t sure whether that was because of the trauma that was no doubt reflected in my face, or the memory of the man she’d left behind.
“The seismic spikes triggered every sensor Eric and I set up along the border. Whatever happened this morning, it registered on equipment two hundred miles away.” She paused there before adding, “Eric’s running comms from Grants Pass, but I thought I’d better drive down here and make sure you weren’t dead. ”
“We’re not dead,” I said, summoning a tired grin. “Just…dealing with a lot.”
“I can see that.” Her gaze flicked to my father again and then back to me. “You covered your tracks well.”
“I had to.” Finn’s voice was quiet. “My daughter’s life depended on it.”
The kitchen fell silent. I could sense the tension between Rebecca and my father, the wariness that came from years of operating on opposite sides of a shadow war neither of them could fully acknowledge.
But I could also feel something else underneath it, a shared understanding of what it meant to sacrifice everything for a cause you believed in.
“The tremor this morning,” Rebecca said at last, breaking the quiet. “What caused it?”
“The Dragon,” I said. “It’s awake. Fully awake, and rising.”
Rebecca’s expression didn’t change, but I saw her jaw clench slightly.
“Eric’s readings suggested something big.
He’s been tracking anomalies in the ley line network for weeks, but this morning’s spike was off the charts.
” She paused, then went on, “But I don’t think either of us was expecting a dragon. So…how bad is it?”
“Bad.” I thought about the voice I’d heard in my head, that vast and ancient fury. “Whatever’s down there, it’s not happy. And I don’t think it’s going to go back to sleep on its own.”
“No,” my father said quietly. “It won’t.”
We all turned to look at him. He stood near the doorway, his dark eyes distant, and for the first time since he’d come inside the house, he looked truly afraid.
“I’ve been tracking the precursor signs for seventeen years,” he said.
“I knew something was building toward this moment. I just didn’t know what.
” He looked at me, his expression now haunted.
“Ignis Aeternus. The everlasting fire. It’s not just a creature, Sidney.
It’s a force of nature. And if it decides that humanity is a threat to the portal network… .”
No point in finishing that sentence, not when we all could visualize for ourselves what might happen when a creature of vast power and vast indifference to humanity thought we were more trouble than we were worth.
“Then we need to figure out how to stop it,” I said. “Or at least how to convince it that we’re not the enemy.”
“That’s not going to be easy.” Rebecca moved past us into the kitchen, her low-heeled boots tapping faintly on the hardwood floor.
“From what Eric’s been able to piece together, the Dragon — or whatever it is — has been dormant for centuries.
Something woke it up. Until we know what that something was, we can’t predict what it’s going to do next. ”
“The phoenix,” Ben said quietly. We all turned to look at him, and he went on, “The merge. When Sidney burned away the shadow corruption, she sent a surge of clean energy through the entire portal network. What if that surge is what woke the Dragon?”
It was the same theory we’d discussed that morning, but hearing him say it out loud in front of my father and Rebecca Morse made it feel much more real.
More damning.
“It makes sense,” my father said slowly.
“The Dragon has been sleeping beneath the ley lines for centuries, drawing power from them, maintaining some kind of equilibrium. If something disrupted that equilibrium — a massive influx of clean energy, for instance — it might have been enough to rouse it.”
“So this is my fault,” I said.
“No.” Ben reached over and took my hand, and I felt the familiar warmth of his bioelectric field brushing against mine. “You saved the phoenix. You saved the entire damn portal network. You couldn’t have known — ”
“Couldn’t I?” I pulled my hand away from his, suddenly angry. “I merged with a creature made of dimensional fire and sent a shockwave through the entire global network. Was I really stupid enough to think there wouldn’t be consequences?”
“There are always consequences,” my father said quietly. “For every action, every choice. The question isn’t whether you made the right decision. The question is what you do next.”
I stared at him, at this man who’d been absent for most of my life, who’d watched from the shadows while I grew up without him. And now here he was, standing in my kitchen and offering advice like he had any right to.
But the worst part of it was that he wasn’t wrong.
“Fine,” I said. “Then let’s figure out what we do next.”
Rebecca retrieved her duffel bag and set it on the kitchen table, then unzipped it, revealing an array of equipment — tablets, sensors, something I thought was a satellite phone.
“Eric’s been monitoring the ley line network since this morning.
He’s identified several points of instability that seem to be spreading outward from Silver Hollow.
If we can get ahead of the disruption — ”
“We can’t get ahead of it,” my father cut in. “The Dragon isn’t just waking up. It’s rising. That means it’s going to surface eventually, probably somewhere near the original portal site. We need to be there when it does.”
“To do what?” Ben asked, now looking dubious. “Fight it?”
“To communicate with it.” My father looked at me, and something passed between us…
an understanding, I thought, or possibly the beginning of one.
“Sidney, you merged with the phoenix. You’ve touched dimensional energy at a level no one in your family has done for generations.
If anyone can reach the Dragon and make it understand that we’re not its enemy, it’s you. ”
“And if I can’t?”
No answer…not that I was really expecting one.
I looked around the kitchen at the three of them — at Ben, steady and solid at my side, and then at Rebecca, who was already pulling out equipment and making plans. And my father, who’d spent seventeen years watching from the shadows and had finally stepped into the light.
Back in February, I’d been alone in this house, grieving my mother and grandmother, trying to hold together a life that had been falling apart ever since they’d disappeared. Now I had allies, people who believed in me.
Including a father I wasn’t sure I could trust.
He caught my eye across the table, and I saw the question there, the hope he was trying not to show. It was so clear that he wanted forgiveness. He wanted me to tell him that I understood, that the years of silence and distance had been worth it, that we could start over.
I wasn’t ready to give him any of that. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
But I could give him a chance to prove that everything he’d sacrificed had meant something.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”