Chapter 31
May
Lucas Frost reviewed the reports of people crossing the river and entering Wyrd at other parts of the island.
The Arcana had created Destiny Park as a neutral place where humans could visit, ask for assistance, or simply brush against the strange and still get home.
These reports indicated that four humans had landed on other parts of the island over the past few days and made the mistake of going beyond the shore.
They were spotted by Arcana, who reported the sightings to him—and then the humans disappeared, either by entering one of the neighborhoods or by walking through a moon gate.
Some of those humans might return to the shore if they had wandered into a benign neighborhood; some might reappear in some other uncanny place in the world.
And some might be nothing more than a memory.
So far he hadn’t received a visit from Charles Forrester or his team about the missing people, but sooner or later, he would.
The humans were getting too complacent, too careless—and they wanted to blame the Arcana for that carelessness instead of owning that their choices set them on a path that might swallow their intended fate—and end their lives.
He looked up when Faulkner flew over to his desk, strutting toward the mug that Lucas used to hold pens and pencils—a mug that said Wyrd Is Where It’s At. It was a gift from Justine and her sisters. Ashley Laxton said it was a big seller in the hotel’s gift shop.
He watched Faulkner select various pens and pencils, dropping the discards on the desk until the crow found a new, unsharpened pencil with a pristine eraser and flew away with the prize.
Listening to the twitters and caws coming from the next room, he gave Mia Skov and Ashley Laxton a long look as the two women entered his office.
“I’ll look,” Mia said, moving silently to the doorway of the next room. After peering around the corner, she returned to stand near Lucas’s desk. “I guess Faulkner using the eraser to hold down one key makes it easier for Rahele to hold down another key and save their current work.”
“Which is?” Lucas asked.
“ ‘Ode to a Worm,’ ” Ashley replied.
“Keys?” Lucas stared at the women.
Ashley shrugged. “We were getting tired of being called away from our own work to record the new verse of whatever Rahele and Faulkner were working on, so I set up a laptop we weren’t using in the office and opened the word-processing program for them.”
“It was that or buy a lot more sets of lettered squares to give them enough letters for their longer creations,” Mia said.
“They’ve been pecking out poems for a few days now and having a good time.” Ashley’s smile faded before it took shape. “Are you concerned that someone will realize they aren’t birds in the truest sense? I could take the laptop away.”
“No,” Lucas said quietly. “It’s almost time for Faulkner to leave. Let them play for the days that are left.” He handed the reports to Ashley, who read them and handed them to Mia.
“If these humans had landed at Destiny Bay, they might have had a chance, since the Arcana who work around the bay would have warned them to turn back,” Ashley said. “But coming here unprepared?” She shook her head. “I’ll watch the news for a few days and make notes of anyone reported missing.”
Nodding, Lucas took back the reports, put them in a file folder, and tucked the folder into a drawer in his desk, where it would be handy when the police crossed the river to make inquiries.
27
Acid stared out the train window at land that didn’t look anything like home.
Where the fuck was he?
He shifted in his seat and looked at the passengers on the other side of the aisle, grateful that no one had claimed the seat next to him—yet.
Most of them were skeletons with skin, mummies without the wrappings—until nightfall.
They didn’t flesh out when it got dark, but they did come alive.
It had freaked him out the first few nights, watching all these corpses stir and stretch and get up and walk around, talking to one another.
A few of them—the fresher ones—acknowledged his presence.
A couple of them tried to make small talk, asking where he got on the train.
When he told them to fuck off, they stopped trying to talk to him.
As the days passed, he wished he hadn’t been such a prick, because there was nothing to do but stare out the window.
Acid felt the train slow and realized it was pulling into a station. Or stopping, anyway.
When the train stopped, one of the almost-corpses made its way to the back of the car, shaking a few hands and saying goodbye to some of the other people. Then it stopped, seemed to steady itself, and left the train.
Acid waited, but the guy didn’t come back—and the train pulled out of the station.
Could it be that easy? Just walk to the back of the passenger car and get off when the train stopped?
According to his watch, it was two in the morning. He looked out the window. Looked and looked, but he didn’t see any lights from a station or a town or, hell, even a pit stop of any kind. And yet the train had stopped, and someone had left.
The conductor came by for the first time in days. At least, it seemed that way.
“Last stop before dawn,” the conductor said.
Then he said a word that might have been the name of the town or the station or something else entirely. It wasn’t a name Acid recognized, but…
He’d been on an island when he’d gotten on the train. They had to be going round and round because there weren’t any bridges connecting the island to the other side of the river. So round and round and never that far from home, no matter what words the conductor used.
That meant that all he had to do when the train reached another station was walk to the back of the car and leave with any other passengers who were getting off at that stop.
28
Colin washed his face, gave the rest of his body a quick sponge bath, then brushed his teeth using the water he’d set aside for drinking and good dental health.
Brush and floss daily—or at least while the floss Mom had sent lasted—because there were no dentists in Llamalidia who knew anything about human teeth, and someone with a toothache might not be able to focus their intentions well enough to reach a place that had the right kind of dentist.
Today he and the cria of the appropriate age were having their first lesson in weaving.
What the Llamalidians made from their own fleece provided them with the income to purchase supplies that weren’t easy to find in their neighborhood—if they could be found at all.
He still didn’t know if this place provided “isolated evolution” like he’d seen on nature shows, where a species evolved differently because it couldn’t be reached, or if the land called Llamalidia was part of a bigger country that was somehow connected to the Isle of Wyrd.
It had to be some kind of secret. Otherwise, the existence of the Llamalidians would be all over the news.
Regardless of his current geographical position, he thought Mom would get a kick out of him learning to weave well enough to make a set of place mats for the kitchen table.
29
There were some batshit, crazy-ass people on the bus. Devl wasn’t sure if they had started out batshit and crazy assed when they boarded, but they were now.
Nobody had disrespected him when he’d been part of Dare’s Doggs.
Now? How many times had he been told he was the youngest person on the bus?
How many ways had it been implied that he must be truly stupid or truly evil to have ended up riding on the ghost bus at his age?
What really fried his ass was it didn’t matter if he was riding with one other person or a dozen, everyone thought he was one thing or the other.
Except, maybe, the guy he’d met the first day on the bus.
That guy didn’t seem to give a damn that Devl had been a member of a gang that had been feared at Penwych High School, and he didn’t mind being on his own with no one to talk to.
He always had a thick book—a thriller or some other shit—or a couple of newspapers he’d picked up from who knew where that still had untouched crossword puzzles.
What kind of badass read thrillers and did crossword puzzles? You would think the guy would pull out a big knife once in a while to prove he was a badass.
Unless the guy did that at times when he was riding with whoever else was on this bus.
The conductor, whom Devl hadn’t seen since the bastard had spun those wheels and told him how long he’d be stuck in this hell ride, stopped at his seat.
“We don’t usually grant a night off until a person has been riding the bus for a few years, but we’ve never had someone as young as you…
” He stopped and considered. “Well, there had been a few, but youngsters grew up faster in those days and were considered adults before they reached your age. Regardless, it has been decided that you will be given time off the bus when we reach our next stop.”
“How much time?”
“That will depend on you. Think carefully about where you want to be when you step off the bus, so you’ll be ready.”
Devl sat back and smiled. Oh, he knew exactly where he wanted to be, especially if he didn’t have much time.
30
Rachel knew something was wrong the moment Lucas Frost stepped into the room where she and Faulkner had been using a laptop to write some poems. Was there a rule that birds who weren’t really birds couldn’t use a computer?
No one had said anything. In fact, Ashley Laxton had supplied them with the laptop, and she would have said if there was a rule that prohibited its use.
“Faulkner,” Lucas said quietly.
Faulkner ignored the man and kept pecking out letters. But the crow suddenly had trouble spelling, and autocorrect was filling in with interesting choices.
“It’s time, Faulkner,” Lucas said. “Tomorrow you’ll make the transition and move on to a new life.”