“Excuse me. Sam?”

He turned around to find Francis. Not the best time to be interrupted, not when he was trying to discuss his attractiveness with Astrid.

“What’s up, Francis?”

Francis shrugged. He looked confused and awkward. He stuck out his hand. Sam hesitated; then, feeling slightly ridiculous, he shook Francis’s hand.

“I felt like I had to say thanks,” Francis said.

“Oh. Oh, um…cool.”

“And don’t take it like it’s your fault, okay?” Francis said. “And don’t be mad at me. I tried…”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s my birthday,” Francis explained. “The big One-Five.”

Sam felt a bead of sweat roll down his back. “You’re ready, right? I mean, you’ve read the write-up on what you have to do?”

“I’ve read it,” Francis said. But his voice betrayed him.

Sam grabbed his arm. “No, Francis. No.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Francis said.

“No,” Astrid said firmly. “You don’t want to do this.”

Francis shrugged. Then he grinned shyly. “My mom, she needs me. She and my dad just broke up. And, anyway, I miss her.”

“What do you mean they just broke up?”

“They’ve been thinking about it a long time. But last week my dad just took off. And she’s alone, right, so-”

“Francis, what are you talking about?” Astrid demanded irritably. “We’ve been in the FAYZ for seven months. You don’t know what’s going on with your parents.”

“The Prophetess told me.”

“The what?” Astrid snapped. “Francis, have you been drinking?”

Sam felt frozen, unable to react. He knew instantly what this was about.

“The Prophetess told me,” Francis said. “She saw…she knows and she told me…” He was getting more and more agitated. “Look, I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“Then stop acting like an idiot,” Sam said, finding his voice at last.

“My mom needs me,” Francis said. “More than you do. I have to go to her.”

“What makes you think the poof takes you to your mother?”

“It’s a door,” Francis said. His eyes clouded over as he spoke. He wasn’t looking at Sam anymore. He was inside his own head, his voice singsong, as if reciting something he’d heard. “A door, a pathway, an escape to bliss. Not a birthday: a rebirthday.”

“Francis, I don’t know who is telling you this, but it’s not true,” Astrid said. “No one knows what happens if you step out.”

“She knows,” Francis said. “She explained it to me.”

“Francis, I’m telling you not to do this,” Sam said urgently. “Look, I know about Orsay. I know, all right? And maybe she thinks this is true, but you can’t risk it.”

He felt Astrid’s penetrating gaze. He refused to acknowledge the unspoken question.

“Dude, you are the man,” Francis said with a soft smile. “But even you can’t control this.”

Francis turned and walked quickly away. He stopped after a dozen feet. Mary Terrafino was running toward him. She waved her stick-thin arms and yelled, “Francis! No!”

Francis raised his hand and checked his watch. His smile was serene.

Mary reached him, grabbed him by the shirt, and yelled, “Don’t you leave those children. Don’t you dare leave those children! They’ve lost too much. They love you.”

Francis slipped off his watch and held it out to her. “It’s all I have to give you.”

“Francis, no.”

But she was holding air. Yelling at air.

The watch lay in the grass.

Francis was gone.

SEVEN

56 HOURS, 30 MINUTES

“WHAT ELSE HAVEN’T you been telling us, Sam?”

Astrid had immediately called a meeting of the town council. She hadn’t even yelled at him privately. She’d just nailed him with a poisonous look and said, “I’m calling a meeting.”

Now they sat in the former mayor’s conference room. It was gloomy, the only light coming through a window that was itself in shade. The table was heavy wood, the chairs deep and luxurious. The walls were decorated-if that was the right word-with large, framed photos of past mayors of Perdido Beach.

Sam always felt like a fool in this room. He sat in a too-big chair at one end of the table. Astrid was at the other. Her hands were on the table, slender fingers flat on the surface.

Dekka sat scowling, irritated, though Sam wasn’t sure at whom she was directing her dark mood. A piece of something blue was stuck in one of her tight cornrows-not that anyone was foolish enough to point it out or laugh.

Dekka was a freak, the only one besides Sam in this room. She had the power to temporarily cancel gravity in small areas. Sam counted her as an ally. Dekka was not about talking without end and getting nothing done.

Albert was the best-dressed person in the room, wearing an amazingly clean and seemingly un-salty polo shirt and relatively unwrinkled slacks. He looked like a very young businessman who had stopped by on his way to a round of golf.

Albert was a normal, though he seemed nevertheless to have an almost supernatural ability to organize, to make things happen, to do business. Looking at the group through hooded eyes, Sam knew Albert was probably the most powerful person in the room. Albert, more than any other person, had kept Perdido Beach from starving.

Edilio slumped, holding his head with both hands and not making eye contact with anyone. He had a submachine gun propped against his chair, a sight that had become all too normal.

Edilio was officially town marshal. Probably the mildest, most modest and least-assuming person in the council, he was in charge of enforcing whatever rules the council created. If they ever got around to actually creating any.

Howard was the wild card in the group. Sam still wasn’t sure how he had managed to talk his way onto the council. No one doubted that Howard was smart. But no one thought he had an honest or ethical bone in his body. Howard was chief toady to Orc, the glowering, drunken-boy-turned-monster who had fought on the right side a couple of times when it had really counted.

The youngest member was a sweet-faced boy named John Terrafino. He was a normal, too-Mary’s little brother. He seldom had much to say and mostly listened. Everyone assumed he voted however Mary told him to. Mary would have been there, but she was simultaneously indispensable and fragile.

Seven council members. Astrid as chairperson. Five normals, two freaks.

“A few different things happened last night,” Sam said as calmly as he could. He didn’t want a fight. He especially didn’t want a fight with Astrid. He loved Astrid. He was desperate for Astrid. She was the sum total of all the good he had in his life, he reminded himself.

And now she was furious.

“We know about Jill,” Astrid said.

“Zil’s punks. Who wouldn’t still be doing stuff like that if we’d shut them down,” Dekka muttered.

“We’ve voted on that,” Astrid said.

“Yeah, I know. Four to three in favor of letting the sick little creep and his sick little friends terrorize the whole town,” Dekka snapped.

“Four to three in favor of having some kind of system of laws and not just fighting fire with fire,” Astrid said.

“We can’t just go around arresting people without some kind of system,” Albert said.

“Yeah, Sammy,” Howard said with a smirk. “You can’t just go all laser-hands whenever you decide you don’t like someone.”

Dekka shifted in her seat, hunching her strong shoulders forward. “No, so instead we let little girls be kicked out of their own homes and terrorized.”

“Look, once and for all, we can’t have a system where Sam is judge, jury, and executioner,” Astrid said. She softened it a bit by adding, “Although if there’s one person I would trust, it’s him. Sam’s a hero. But we need everyone in the FAYZ to know what’s okay and what’s not. We need rules, not just one person deciding who is out of line and who isn’t.”

“He was a really good worker,” John whispered. “Francis. He was a really good worker. The prees are totally going to miss him. They loved him.”