Jack held her gaze. “I know.”

“You know? How?”

“You’re not the first to see that. Over the past year I’ve heard exactly the same thing from a couple of other sources.”

The late Charlie Kenton for one. And during her coma, Gia had experienced something similar to Diana’s dream.

“Then that means the Adversary is going to win,” Diana said. “And if that’s true, then all this is for nothing.”

“Not necessarily.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m never going to be fifteen.”

Jack grabbed her hand. “I have it on good authority that what you’re seeing is how it will be if we do nothing. But we aren’t going to do nothing. We’re going to stop him and the Otherness.”

He didn’t know why, but he needed to give her hope.

“How?”

“The Sentinel—once he’s alerted to the danger, he’ll act. He’ll come charging in and make the Adversary wish he’d never been born. He’s kicked Otherness butt before and he’ll do it again. That’s why the Adversary is being so sneaky. He knows if the Sentinel gets wind of his schemes, he’s cooked.”

Jack marveled at how easily he mixed lies and truth. And Diana seemed to be buying it.

“But why doesn’t he do something now? I have an awful feeling about this Fhinntmanchca, whatever it is.”

“I’ll look into it,” Jack said.

If he couldn’t find it in the Compendium, maybe Veilleur would know—if Jack could find him. Damn, he wished he knew where he lived.

The three of them lapsed into silence and Jack glanced at the PBR clock over the bar. Noon was approaching.

Diana took a slow, shuddering breath and pointed to the black orbs of her eyes. “I don’t want this.”

“Diana,” Davis said softly. “You were born to it.”

“Then I wish my parents had never met. I don’t want to know what’s coming. I don’t want to look like this. And I don’t want another Alarm.”

Jack had witnessed her father in the throes of one and it hadn’t looked pleasant.

“Painful?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” She replaced her sunglasses. Her voice edged toward another sob. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“That makes two of us.”

She leaned toward Jack. “You’re the Heir. You’re supposed to be itching to take on the Adversary.”

Jack held back a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve met him, and believe me, that’s the last thing I want to do.”

“But you’re supposed to be noble, a hero.”

Teenagers . . .

“I don’t know who’s doing all this supposing, but it doesn’t change who I am. I’m just a guy from Jersey who’s learned a few tricks. This is the only way I know how to be.”

“But how . . . how will you defend us if your heart’s not in it?”

“Defend you?” Jack looked at her, then Davis, then back to her. “I don’t know you well enough to put my life on the line for either of you.”

“She was talking about the rest of humanity,” Davis said.

“Hey, I know the rest of humanity even less. But I do know a couple of people in this town I will die for if I have to. So if you wind up benefiting from my defense of them, then lucky you. But you won’t have to thank me, because I’ll have done it for them.”

Diana shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You’re better than that. You’re the Heir.” She said the last word as if repeating it would somehow morph him into her preconceived image.

“So I’m told. Be nice if someone had checked with me first.”

“If you’re the backup,” Davis said with a sour expression, “then let’s wish the current Sentinel continued long life and good health.”

Jack raised his coffee cup. “I’ll drink to that.”

4

“What is that?”Hank said.

Drexler had led them to a closet in a small room off the main basement space, and pulled up a trapdoor in the floor. He’d explained that all the Order’s lodges were built with subcellars and escape routes. “Just in case.”

Down a wrought-iron spiral staircase to a dark, dank space that echoed like a cave. Then Drexler hit a switch somewhere and the place lit up.

Yeah, kind of cavernous, with a domed ceiling strung with hanging lights. Then Hank saw it. How could he miss it?

A big, oblong thing, like a huge, blunt-ended football that needed some air, lay on its side at the far end of the space. He guesstimated its size at maybe ten feet long and four feet high. Light from the overhead incandescent bulbs reflected dully from its surface.

“Yeah,” said Darryl at his side. “What is it, man? Looks like a giant booger.”

Hank had to smile. Darryl had pretty much nailed it—like a transparent football filled with snot.

“How quintessentially you,” Drexler said.

Darryl shrugged. “How’d you get it in here without any of us noticing?”

“You never noticed because we moved it in long before a single Kicker set foot in the building.”

Hank didn’t see any door big enough to fit it through. “What you do—bring it in in pieces?”

“No, that would have been quite impossible. The task required a bit of demolition and subsequent reconstruction, but we succeeded.”

Hank had noticed signs of repair on the rear wall of the Lodge, and now could see signs of the same in the roof of the chamber.

“You must have wanted it in here really bad.”

“Oh, we did, Mister Thompson. We did.”

“Back to my original question: What is the damn thing?”

“We call it the ‘Orsa.’ ”

“Orca?” Darryl said. “You mean like a whale? Don’t look like no whale I ever seen.”

“No,” Drexler said with a definite edge to his voice. “Orsa. It’s Latin. It means ‘first.’ ”

Hank stared at it. “What’s it supposed to do?”

“Change the world, Mister Thompson. And I believe you know the change I’m talking about.”

Hank nodded slowly. He did. His daddy had talked about that change. He’d called it the Plan and it involved beings, the Others, locked out from the world, waiting for ages to return, and a way to help them back in.

But the Plan was all about a bloodline, Hank’s bloodline, leading to a very special baby, a baby now living in a teenager’s belly, a pure-blooded child who would unlock the gates that prevented the Others from returning to the Earth and reclaiming it.

When they returned they’d reward those who’d unlocked the gates. Or so he’d been told.

“Yeah, I know. But the way to make it happen didn’t involve anything like this.”

“There is more than one route to that end, Mister Thompson, and all are being pursued. Opus Omega is stalled, at least in this country, due to some unfortunate scandals involving the Dormentalists.”

Darryl snickered. “ ‘Unfortunate,’ all right.”

Drexler looked like he’d just sucked a rotten egg. “Must he be here?”

“Cool it, Darryl.”

Hank stepped closer for a better look. He could see pretty much all the way through it—like looking through churned-up water, only nothing was moving inside. It sat about chest high and he realized it wasn’t entirely empty. Through the ground-glass transparency he saw a thick, four-foot-long streak of chunky, brownish powder—looked like dirt—floating near the right end.

Darryl came up and bent at the waist for a closer look at the deposit, so close his nose almost brushed the Orsa. He put his hand out to lean against it but snatched it away and leaped back as soon as he made contact.

“Jesus!”

Wondering what was the matter, Hank touched it himself. It felt soft, rubbery, almost like—

A tremor rippled over its surface and he too snatched his hand back.

“You feel that, Hank?” Darryl said in a hushed tone. “The freakin thing’s alive!”