Chapter 52
The daisy wheel (also termed a hexafoil or witch’s mark) has been used for centuries as a protective symbol.
Entities perceive the overlapping circles as an infinite loop with no exit point.
In field testing, I have found that a well-drawn daisy wheel can retain most entities for up to five minutes before degradation begins.
—Protective Sigils and Wards, a field manual by Donald Dellman
The picture of the man on Zoey’s screen pulls me so far out of the haze of my medication that she might as well have poured a bucket of ice water over my head. I nod.
“I started with the camera at the liquor store,” Zoey says, clicking through dozens of browser tabs. “Scrubbed backward from the hour before you called. Twenty cars drove by, but the resolution was shit. Couldn’t get a plate number clear enough to run.”
She clicks to another tab, scrubbing through footage of a parking lot at night. Cars speed in and out in jerky fast-forward.
“I pulled footage from the gas station you called from,” she continues.
“A gold sedan appeared in both that feed and the one from the liquor store at roughly the right times. I pulled the names of every cop in the greater Pittsburgh area who took time off during the four days you were missing. Cross-referenced that with anyone who owns a gold sedan. Came down to three possibilities. This guy?” Zoey taps the screen.
“Was out sick for all four days you were missing. His name is David Henley, and he patrols—”
“The strip mall where Greg and Rafael were dumped,” I say.
Zoey’s head swivels toward me. “Yup. You remember him?”
“Yeah.”
I remember DJ running comms in the van, updating us over our earpieces:
Good ole Officer Henley is still three blocks away.
I know David Henley is not a villain. He’s just as much of a victim as Nico and I were, but looking him in the face is practically impossible.
Zoey video calls DJ in for a team meeting, projecting her on the computer. I can see the ceiling light tiles above DJ’s head as she walks through a hospital hallway. My heart swells with fierce gratitude. She’s there with Nico. I can’t be there with him, but at least he’s not alone.
“Any change?” Griffin asks, bracing one hand on the table and talking loudly into the receiver.
DJ shakes her head, adjusting her ear buds.
“The swelling on his face is going down,” DJ says, holding the mic close to her mouth so she doesn’t have to speak loudly. “I’m getting nervous… but I can’t bring him home until he wakes up. The police will want to talk to him when he does.
I can barely concentrate on what anyone is saying when the meeting starts.
Griffin and Benji head out to start surveillance on David Henley’s house overnight.
I want to go with them so badly, but DJ tells me no.
I’m not allowed to go into the field properly until I’m out of the wheelchair.
I’d probably agree that it’s for the best if this weren’t the Game Master case, and it hadn’t become so personal.
Zoey offers to let Bob and me stay in her room with her overnight.
She even offers us the bed. I want to put up a fight about kicking her out of her own bed, but I’m in too much pain and I don’t want to be alone.
She throws Love Island up on her computer, which she insists on watching in complete silence, and settles on her bean bag chair with a blanket.
An hour in, Zoey makes a displeased sigh, breaking her silence rule to grumble, “That woman babbles as much as Daisy.”
I guess DJ wasn’t kidding when she said that Zoey doesn’t like her. One of the first things DJ told me was that she doesn’t like being called Daisy.
Zoey drifts off halfway through our second episode. By the time the third starts, there’s a heavy weight in my chest.
“I feel so useless,” I whisper to Bob, running a finger along the bridge of his nose right between his eyes.
“Do you think I’m less important to the team cause I don’t go into the field?” Zoey mumbles.
I didn’t realize she was awake to hear me.
“No,” I say.
“Course you don’t.” She stretches one arm up and yawns. “I can do something none of you idiots can, and I’m more useful from here. So are you.”
“Because here I won’t get in the way?”
“Yup,” Zoey says. “Go to sleep.”
I smile into her pillow and surrender to the pull of the drugs.
David Henley went to bed at eleven. By morning, there’s been no movement.
“Can’t you just go in there and get him?” I ask, rubbing my eyes to dispel the medication fog in my brain. I’m still in Zoey’s room, listening to Griffin and Benji over Zoey’s phone, which she has put on speaker.
“Not unless we know Morrow’s inside him,” Griffin says.
Benji yawns on the other side of the phone. “It’s unusual for a ghost to stay inside a body for extended periods of time so early in a possession. It’s unlikely Morrow has been possessing David Henley much longer than a week.”
“Henley’s still working,” Zoey says. “He has a shift starting at two this afternoon.”
“Makes sense Morrow would keep the job,” Griffin says. “Perfect hunting ground. Who questions a cop picking someone up?”
“Got into his email and pulled his sick day requests,” Zoey says. “Want to hear how boring they are?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer before reading aloud: “‘Requesting sick leave for January thirtieth through February second. Coming down with something. Thanks, David.’” She scrolls.
“Next one: ‘Still not feeling well, requesting extension through the third.’ And the last: ‘Feeling better, will return to work on the fourth.’”
Imagining Morrow sitting up in that control room, typing those emails out as Nico hung from that pole, makes the world pull sideways. I need to eat something, but I don’t know if I can keep it down.
“A host rarely maintains even a modicum of composure in their professional lives during a possession,” Benji says. “Morrow probably means to stay with David Henley for a long time.”
I think of Ed, how he was at the bottom of our list of potential hosts. If his neighbors hadn’t made multiple noise complaints, if he hadn’t been fired from his job, we might not have found Morrow before he killed again.
The difference between how Morrow treated his first and second hosts is crazy. Despite his stubborn beliefs, he’s adapted fast. I know the profile said Morrow thinks he’s smarter than he is, but he sure does seem smarter than any of us have given him credit for.
It goes quiet as all of us try to come up with a plan. I can feel Nico’s absence in everything. He’d know what to do.
An idea slams into my head.
“What if you use a sigil?” I ask.
There’s a rustling sound over the speaker, and Griffin answers. “In what way?”
“To set a trap,” I say. “Wait until he goes to work and draw a daisy wheel under his welcome mat. If he’s possessed when he comes home, the mark could trap him.”
“That… could work,” Griffin says. “Benj, you feel ready to do an extraction?”
“I’ve only ever observed,” Benji says. “I mean, I know the theory, and Nico’s been teaching me, but I’ve only been on the team for a year, and I—”
“I think you’re ready,” Griffin says. “I wouldn’t put you in this position if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
“Could DJ do it?” Benji asks in a small voice.
Griffin sighs. “Fine, but I want you with us just in case. Morrow’s a nasty sucker.”
“I’ll run comms,” Zoey says. “Eden can come so she’s not alone here, as long as she feels up for it.”
“I do,” I say. I’d crawl there if it meant watching the Game Master get trapped in a jar.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Griffin says. “It was risky enough having you in the van when we searched the buildings, but bringing you directly to Morrow for the extraction? What if the extraction fails? What if he sees you, Eden?”
“We’ll be safe in the van,” Zoey says firmly. “Morrow’s seen it before, so we’ll have to park out of sight, anyway.”
“It’s not like I’m going to wheel up to him screaming and waving at him,” I say.
“Underestimating Morrow is how you and Nico got taken in the first place, and Donny—” Griffin’s voice cracks.
“I get it, I do, but right now, Morrow probably thinks he’s killed half our team and scared us away,” I say.
“If the extraction fails, he’ll probably hide until he finds a way to pick the rest of us off so we can’t get in his way again.
If that happens, he’ll want us all dead, and it won’t matter if I’m in the van or stuck here because when he starts hunting you guys, he’s going to find me eventually. ”
“This is what we signed up for,” Zoey adds.
“Fine,” Griffin says. “Call DJ.”
Zoey looks like she just swallowed something sour, but she dials, and the phone rings twice before DJ picks up.
“What?” DJ snaps.
I flinch at her clipped tone.
“Hello to you, too, Daisy,” Zoey says flatly. “Got you on speaker with the team. Griffin wants you in the field for a possible extraction this afternoon.”
“Yes, I can—I’m coming—but, um—” DJ sounds out of breath. “Nico just woke up.”
Every muscle in my body tenses.
I roll my wheelchair closer to the phone. “Can I talk to him?”
“He’s resting right now,” DJ says. “The doctors gave him something for the pain, and he’s pretty out of it.”
“Please,” I beg, and Zoey casts me a sympathetic look over her shoulder. “DJ, please, can you just tell him I want to talk to him?”
“I’ll tell him,” DJ says. “I promise, Eden. He seems okay so far, but I’ll have more of an update this afternoon.”
Zoey drives my car to Henley’s neighborhood. I’m too preoccupied thinking about Nico to think of a single thing to say on the ride, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
What if Nico doesn’t want to talk to me? What if hearing my voice reminds him of everything that happened in that bathroom, everything he had to do? Everything I made him do?