Chapter Fourteen #2
both feel the intensity at the table. And besides, her hand is over her heart and she rubs that spot like something hurts.
“But Logan and I aren’t foundlings,” I say, wanting to take that hurt look off her face. “We’ve always had our dad. Always.”
“Your mother was a foundling, though,” Nora says quietly, and I see Logan stiffen at that. But it settles differently in me.
“It makes you part foundling, in a way. You’re connected to us, anyway. By blood.”
Part foundling. Part founding family. Somehow, that dichotomy makes sense without actually making sense to me. Everything
I learn is like little missing pieces of a puzzle that make up who I am. I can almost see the full picture.
Except I don’t like the way Nora said blood.
“Was our mother found at the clock tower?” Logan asks. His voice is raw, no attorney in it, but that tracks. It’s about Mom.
Nora bites her lip and shakes her head. “No. If . . . If memory serves, your grandmother found her at the mine.”
These places being the locations children are found does not fill me with a comforting feeling. At all. I can tell it has the same effect on everyone in this hangar. Including Logan, who was drawn to that mine in a way that
still creeps me out to think about.
“Who else is a foundling?” I ask. “If they dream, too, then they must know all this is happening. Or maybe they’re like me
and—”
“Nora is the only foundling since your mother,” Cleo says matter-of-factly. “There hasn’t been another one since, and the one before your mother never had children and died a few years back. If there are other foundling descendants, we’ve lost them somewhere along the way.”
This is met with another wave of silence. And because my head is reeling, I go over to the kitchen area, open the minifridge,
and find my own drink. A sad little wine cooler—but it’s better than a beer that I know in advance will make me feel gross.
I grab a beer for Logan, who loves to feel gross, and hand it to him.
He takes it and stares at it but doesn’t open it.
“The Feed happens at Halloween,” Jack is saying now. Back to business. “People come in from all around to attend all our fall
festivals, culminating on Halloween, and the demons take their fill. I was hoping we’d have years yet.”
He doesn’t glance at me, but of course, I’m the reason it’s not years.
“Luckily, Nora and I have spent our lives researching this with our grandfather,” he continues. “I’ve worked up some theories.”
“Why don’t you just cancel all the festivals?” Logan glares at the map. “Everyone stays inside their houses, protected in
whatever way keeps Nora from sleepwalking, and we call it a day?”
“Not everyone sees what’s happening, even if it’s right in front of their eyes,” Nora replies, also staring intently at the
map. I swear it looks like they’re both looking at the mine. “Even if they do, they think the town is haunted, maybe. Or they
think it’s in their own head. In Feeds throughout history the people who knew what was coming have tried all kinds of things
to get the town to fight back, or at least hide, but it never works. There are too many people who don’t buy in to it.”
“Okay, so what are we working with?” Logan sounds impatient now, like it’s his job to walk into this and solve it. Classic Logan. “Just how many people do we think both see what’s happening and are willing to try to stop it with Jack’s theories?”
There is a very, very uncomfortable beat of silence. Then another. Cleo looks at the ceiling. Nora frowns at her hands. Jack scowls into the dark
distance outside the hangar doors.
It’s ominous. Like . . . there isn’t anyone else.
Cleo is the first to look at us again. She clears her throat. “Well, my dad believes the stuff I tell him, but he doesn’t
see anything himself and anyway, he likes to tinker with engines and watch videos of airshows. He’s not a fighter. My mom
is the Darling descendant, but . . . She’s not here.” She shrugs. “My grandma is fully on board, but she hasn’t quite been
the same since Amelia died. You know how close they were.”
This is clearly directed at Jack and Nora, since I certainly don’t know much about either woman, but I can’t help but look
at Logan. He’s always been there. I’ve never considered the possibility of his not being there. No matter how old we get, I expect our twinness to continue, but that’s not guaranteed, is it? Someday, one
of us will have to deal with the loss of the other.
I hate even thinking about it.
“What do you mean your grandma hasn’t been the same?” Nora asks, looking concerned. She’s clearly in the dark about whatever
is going on with Cleo’s grandmother. Cleo’s grandmother, who was my grandmother’s twin.
Cleo shrugs again, but it’s jerkier this time. “Just not all there. Grief, I guess. Dad and I are handling it.” She says this
firmly. Like punctuation. A clear: don’t push.
“My grandfather is fully aware of what’s going on with the Feed, obviously,” Jack says, and I get the sneaking suspicion he
is offering this up to redirect Nora’s attention—and worry—from Cleo. Like he’s that kind of a nice guy.
Maybe that’s how he is with locals. Maybe what I get from him is the tourist treatment.
Funny thing is that I don’t feel much like a tourist, sitting here discussing the town’s demon problem.
“My parents were never much for parenting and certainly don’t give a shit about the town or they’d still be here,” Jack continues.
If he has any emotional reaction to that—if he has some feelings around his parents apparently leaving town or being able to leave town and therefore leaving him behind—he keeps it under a careful mask.
But I can’t help but feel sorry for him. Maybe I never had a mother and maybe my father wasn’t ever what I needed, but he
tried. He meant well. He loved me, no matter what a mess he thought, or feared, I was.
“That’s kind of how it goes with the founding families, though,” Jack continues. “A lot of the descendants get out. Not many
of us are left.”
“Like our father,” I say. I don’t know why I feel a pang of guilt about this. Logan and I aren’t the ones who knew this place
and left it. We’re not the reason we never knew our grandmother or Cleo or any of these Midas things. Our dad did that.
And if he knew about the Feed and all the demons, I’m not sure we can blame him for that.
Jack is nodding. “From our experiences and others we’ve found in the historical record, our theory is that if Midas lets you
leave, and you do it, your memory of it changes. You remember the town, but you have an aversion to coming back. You remember
your family here, but you think you’re estranged. You never have a reason to come back.” He indicates Logan and me. “We thought
maybe you were the exception. But if your father didn’t tell you anything, I’m guessing it’s because he doesn’t remember that
he should.”
That immediately puts my father in a new light. If it’s true that leaving this town means you don’t remember what you left, or you remember it only in a way that makes certain you won’t come back or keep in contact with anyone . . . Well, it explains a lot about him, doesn’t it?
And the fact we didn’t know our grandmother. The pictures suggest that our father kept her updated on us, but given he never
updated us about her, I have to assume his memory tells him there’s a reason he kept us no contact.
So what do Logan and I tell him when we try to explain why we’re staying here longer?
Too many questions, and I don’t have the time to figure out the answers right here, right now.
“I don’t understand why we can’t just move everyone out of Midas and call it a day,” Logan says.
“Like we keep telling you,” Jack returns, giving him an impatient look. “Not everyone would leave no matter what we told them.
Others can’t leave.”
“You saw the crash on the way here,” Nora adds quietly. “Whether it’s demons, people controlled by them, something else—it
doesn’t matter. Some people are stuck.”
“What kind of people does Midas want to keep if it lets so many of its founding family members leave?” I ask.
“The ones who don’t see anything, won’t ask questions, and weren’t raised on family legends of demons on the flood wall,”
Cleo says with a dark sort of laugh. “Guess why.”
“The town likes it when we leave,” Jacks says, those green eyes on me again, making me feel much too hot. “And it likes us
to stay gone. I have to think that the only reason it let you two back in is because you’re the harbinger. The harbinger has
to show up for the Feed to happen. Those are the rules.”
Logan doesn’t like this explanation. Probably not enough facts for him. But he pivots, because he’s always ready to create a plan of attack for any problem ahead. Even if it’s demons. “Okay, so we’ve got some parents and a couple of grandparents on our team. Surely that’s not it.”
Nora gives us a desperate little smile like she wants to make everything all right, but can’t. Because she offers no one else.
Logan is getting that flinty look that makes opposing counsel cower before him and makes me want to poke him. “So, to clarify. You’re telling me that there are demons in flood walls and mines and maybe even a clock
tower. That it’s not safe at night. That demons who made a deal to leave the town alone have increasingly been fucking with
people in between your Feeds. That creepy-ass crashes like the one we saw tonight happen all the time because some people are trapped. And we have . . .” He holds up his hands and counts off people. “Five able-bodied people who are aware these things are
happening, two elderly people who do, too, and one guy who is going along with his daughter because he doesn’t see any of
it himself and would rather play with engines. That’s what we’re working with against the rise of a horde of demons who plan to feed on the town?”
There’s another uncomfortable silence.