Chapter Fifteen
“The curtains all have to be closed,” Nora is saying, moving around Amelia’s house with an ease that tells me she’s been here
a lot. That gives me a pang, but I don’t want to indulge it. “Even that tiny window in the bathroom needs to be covered.”
I’m following her around, taking notes. Logan is standing in the corner of the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest. He is
not looking at Nora. He is glaring at the floor in the kitchen.
I get the sense he knows every inch of space she takes up all the same.
She’s still going down her list. “All doors locked, obviously. Porch lights on. And Amelia had quite a few protections that
should have helped.” Nora studies the mantel with a bit of a frown. “The stones are missing.”
I’m frowning, too. “Stones?”
“Just little pebbles she’d collected or inherited. All the founding families have little . . . knickknacks, I guess you’d
call them.” From the look on her face, I get the impression that’s not what she would call them.
That she’s calling them that for my benefit.
“Sort of like an ancestral form of protection. Amelia had a collection of stones that were vaguely in the shape of hearts. Passed down mostly, and some she found herself.”
I don’t remember seeing anything of the sort, and I would because . . .
I look at Logan, because all our life, our father did this. Found heart-shaped rocks and picked them up. Kept them littered
about our home when we were growing up. He used to say they were signs from our mother. Love rocks.
Logan sighs heavily and pushes off the wall in the kitchen. He crosses into the living room and jerks open a drawer in the
side table next to the couch.
Inside is a little pile of rocks. Just little brown and gray pebbles. I suppose they’re all vaguely heart-shaped, but some
require imagination to get there.
Nora looks at Logan. Balefully.
He glares back at her. “It looked like junk and I needed somewhere to put my laptop.”
I frown over this, because I very much doubt he didn’t connect them to our father. Our mother. There’s no way Logan forgot Dad did that, too.
“At least I didn’t throw them outside like I thought about doing,” he tells both of us, defensively.
Nora’s look turns to deep disapproval. She’s not even trying to hide it. She scoops up the pebbles and holds them in her palm.
Then she moves around to the doorways and windows, placing rocks along sills and ledges. I hear her do the same thing in the
other room.
She’s putting them at every possible point of entry, I realize. Or exit.
I feel something cold creep down my spine.
“That should help,” she says when she’s done.
Logan makes a derisive noise. “Little rocks should help?”
She very purposefully doesn’t look at Logan—which is kind of a Logan move, so I appreciate her giving it right back to him. “Yes. And whatever Harrison gave you. Keep it under your pillow.”
“How did you guys figure all this out?” I ask her. “I just experimented with prescription drugs.” Both medically and recreationally,
but I feel like maybe that’s not a small-town thing. It’s more fentanyl than party benzos around here, I’m betting.
When Nora flushes with what looks like actual enthusiasm, I figure that no matter what the party drugs are around here, that’s
not her thing.
“Amelia and Harrison taught me.” She sounds proud.
I feel that pang again that she got to spend time with a grandmother I never got to meet. Not jealousy. More like . . . frustrated
nostalgia, because I’ll never have the memories she does.
“How did they know?” I ask, because I want to know. And also because my twin, who is pretending we’ve never had heart-shaped
rocks in our lives, is a glowering darkness beside me and I want to prolong his non-golden-boy agony.
Nora is holding strong with the not looking at him. “I suppose it was passed down. Founding families are generally the first
people to take in the foundlings. Amelia raised your mother, though that story has always been . . .” She shrugs. “I don’t
know. Just not spoken about too much? I always assumed that’s because she died and it was sad.”
“And no one’s thought to ask why random kids keep showing up without parents? How about DNA tests? Police involvement? Child
services?” Logan’s questions are not delivered with anything I would call genuine curiosity.
Perish the thought. The attorney at law is in, and he’s amping up the accusation.
I raise my brows at him, but Nora doesn’t even spare him a glance.
“Thank you, Counselor,” she murmurs. “Obviously, we’re too backward to think of such things. In these here parts we prefer
to toss babies off the nearest porch and whoever catches them gets to keep them. Like a bridal bouquet. That’s actually my
personal origin story.”
Logan is like a stone statue beside me, his narrow glare on Nora. “I apologize if you feel attacked. What I’m wondering is
if there are records we could examine to see if there’s more to the foundling story than local folklore.”
Nora laughs, though there’s an edge to it. “We prefer the oral tradition in Midas. And maybe a few banjos?”
I find that I deeply enjoy the way she’s treating him. It’s what he deserves for the way he acts around her, so different
from how he acts around literally everyone else in the entire world. I wish I could let them snipe at each other forever,
but sadly, I also think there are more important things at hand.
Like the dreams that might come for me in a few hours.
And not making it all about me, the fact that foundlings have these wild dreams, too. Or portents. Or warnings or memories
or whatever they are. I wonder if that means my mother was like me—something I suspect I’ll hold on to now.
Despite how entertained I am by Nora’s retorts, I, too, want to know if there are any records we could look at. I also wonder
if that means that the foundlings might be more connected to the demons than anyone’s mentioned yet. Maybe more connected
than the founding families that struck deals with them.
But I’m kind of afraid to pose that question out loud.
I need to work through the implication that I might be part demon myself.
Because that’s what I’m thinking here. And I need to decide if I think my foundling mother and my new foundling friend are maybe some kind of demon—so that means I am, too, and maybe so is Logan—before I say something like that out loud.
Jack’s warning that we should have no secrets echoes in my head. And Nora dreams like I do and she has to be the furthest
thing from a demon there is. Having lived as long as I have in New York City, I feel certain I’ve met a few. She also seemed
certain that a harbinger isn’t good or bad, just a human-shaped warning sign of the Feed to come.
Besides, I’m also a Darling. All the locals seem to think that matters. That it makes me good.
I so desperately want to be good here.
“Is Cleo’s grandmother okay?” I ask, because I want to know, but also because I need Logan and Nora to stop poking at each
other now.
Nora sighs and looks pained. “I’m not sure. Something isn’t right there, but Cleo is independent. Very independent. Even when she works with us, she has a hard time letting her guard down. She says she’s like Amelia, but I’ve
always thought it’s wrapped up in her mom leaving the way she did.”
All these motherless children, I think. “How did she leave?”
I’m not sure Nora is going to answer, but she does. Eventually. “When Cleo was very little her mother would try to leave town.
And she would get in crashes, like the one we saw. She got more and more . . . volatile and unpredictable. Eventually, Cleo’s
dad had to have her committed.” Her mouth twists. “Midas let her go then.”
I am horrified and dumbfounded. I feel for a woman I’ve never met. And my heart aches for Cleo. It sounds awful. To only be
able to escape when they’ve finally driven you completely crazy, and to have to abandon your own child, too.
Logan snorts, interrupting all my feelings. “Maybe she doesn’t like letting her guard down because her best friend is talking
about her business to a complete stranger.”
“A complete stranger.” Nora gives a bitter kind of laugh I don’t understand at all, then focuses on me. “None of what I showed you tonight will
stop the dreams, Lexi, but it should help keep you in the house. Did Jack tell you that you need to write the dreams down?”
Oh, right. I remember that moment in the hangar when it felt like Jack and I were the only people in the whole wide world.
My palms twitch again. “He did,” I say. Not huskily at all.
Nora nods. “Good. Anything you remember from any dream, even if it doesn’t seem to connect. Harrison really believes that
the more information we collect, the more answers we might find to survive this.”
“Survive it or stop it?” I think about what Harrison said in the antique store that night I sleepwalked—about surviving being
winning. More to the point, I think about the way Jack turned away like he didn’t agree.
Nora gives me a reassuring smile that reminds me of the old man. “Obviously, it would be amazing if we could stop it. I know
Jack won’t rest until he does—or dies trying.” I don’t like that idea at all. The way she shakes her head, I don’t think she
does, either. She blows out a breath that is a lot less reassuring. “I don’t really want anyone to die.”
“Sounds like people die either way,” points out Captain Obvious. And being Logan, he digs in. “From the demons feeding or
from trying to stop the demons feeding. The honorable thing to do would be to fight.”
“And you’re an expert on honor?” Nora asks him—sharply, I think.
She pins him with a look and for the first time, he meets it.
There is something charged there that I do not understand. I open my mouth to say something, to ask why they’re both so weird with each other—
But Nora abruptly turns to me. “I better get home. Thank you for coming out to the airport tonight. You should be good to
go for sleep now. Or contained sleep anyway.”
She goes to the door—all of three steps—and reaches out for the doorknob, but I stop her. I move without meaning to and literally
stop her with my hand.
“You shouldn’t go out there alone,” I say.
It’s dark. There are demons. There are terrible things out beneath the Midas sky, and the thought of her out in all that alone
makes my skin crawl. Remembering the eviscerated raccoon on what is essentially her back porch puts me even less at ease.
But she pats my hand over hers on the knob. “It’s fine. I promise. I have my protections, and there’s a path of light.”
“Nora.”
She smiles at me and grips my hand, moving it off hers. “Trust me, Lexi. I’m a native. I know what I’m doing. And I’ve got
your cell. I’ll text you when I’m inside with the door locked. Three minutes tops. Okay?”
I don’t like it, but she knows more than I do. This is her world. So I give a nod. I let my hand fall. She steps out into
the night and I have to close and lock the door behind her before I start imagining slurping sounds.
But it’s not my imagination, is it?
“You’re not going out there,” Logan tells me shortly. “If she says she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.”
I think there’s something tense and weird about the way he says that. Just like there’s something off about the way he goes
and sits on the couch, hands clasped together like he’s holding himself back from chasing after her.
“Logan . . .”
My phone chimes. I read the text. Home and locked up tight. Get some sleep!
I blow out a slow breath to settle my nerves, then send a response text. You too!
When I look back at Logan, he’s staring straight ahead, hands still clasped.
“We can still go,” he says to me. It almost makes me laugh since it was not all that long ago that I was making that case
to him. “Back to New York. Back to sanity. We don’t have to listen to them or believe them or go along with this. Hell, if
we get out, we probably won’t even remember it.”
He’s not wrong. But the if is the problem. I’m not sure Midas will let me go, like Harrison said. Of course, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t try. Though Nora’s story about Cleo’s mother makes me more concerned about what Midas might do to me.
Still, I don’t have to believe in demons and deals or decide whether or not to fight them. I have a choice.
I realize that it’s important that I have that choice. I take a moment to appreciate that.
But I shake my head. “I make sense here.”
He looks up at me and I see real concern there. “What the fuck are you talking about, Lex?” There’s no heat there, just that
concern, and that makes my chest hurt. “You’re in danger here.”
“Maybe.” I’d like to deny it, but that’s not really possible, is it? “But even if Midas lets me out, and even if I could forget
like Dad must have to some extent, it won’t change what happens.”
I can’t know what’s going to happen and still walk away from it. Even if there’s amnesia on the other side, how can I be the
kind of person who does that?
I can’t. I won’t.
Logan lets out a slow sigh and I know he feels the same—and wishes he didn’t. He glances at the mantel with all the pictures,
and his voice sounds almost raw when he speaks. “There are still things they’re not telling us. We’re still outsiders.”
“We’ve been here all of seventy-two hours so, yeah. Probably a shitload of things they haven’t gotten around to telling us. So what?” I shrug. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
“That’s not usually your MO. You like being an outsider.”
I blink, a little surprised he doesn’t understand. “No, I’ve felt like I have to be the outsider because I’m a freak,” I say starkly. “I don’t like it. Who likes it? If I was that cool with it, you wouldn’t be my best and only friend in the world, would you?”
He looks a little hurt by that, but it’s true. If he wasn’t the only one who didn’t make me feel like a walking psychotic
break, even at nearly thirty, wouldn’t I have found some meaningful relationships, not just social acquaintances? If he wasn’t
literally the only person outside Midas I didn’t have to pretend for, wouldn’t I have made real friends who got me, too?
I never have.
But I can be somebody here. I can be myself. These people like me, mostly, or at least see some value in me. I think I can even be important.
“I think we can stop this,” I say, without lapsing into the cringe of it all. “I think that if our grandmother had to die
to get us here, and I’m this harbinger, and everything they’re saying is right—I might be the key to stopping something evil. How can I turn my back on that?”
His gaze is grave and he holds mine for a long moment. “You don’t need to fight demons to be important, Lexi.”
And I want to believe him.
But I don’t.