The downpour, the lightning, all of the weirdness—over. For a moment—deep quiet. Nothing but a soft hiss of rising steam and a light, ominous crackle like crushed cellophane. The van had wrecked in a residential neighborhood. Old houses, square and neat, ascended a low hill below a water tower. The houses had blackened—not burned, but converted to a dark, glassy substance, like obsidian. The water tower sprayed liquid from all its seams. Knee-high shining black spikes filled the roadway. As Jack stood by the curb, more spikes shot up, shoving aside his feet, kicking the van around and piercing two of its tires.

The air sparkled with an absence of color, absence of sense. It smelled burned, as did Jack—burnt by a cold, timeless fire.

Inside the van, Glaucous was gasping for air between harsh, guttural yells. The yells became an awful, continuous screech.

Then—nothing.

Everything that Jack looked at hurt his eyes, his brain. The muscles in his neck twisted, fighting over which direction they would or would not turn. He flung up his arm.

Against his better judgment, he looked again.

The not-colors had been filled in like gaps in a coloring book, but the burnt smell remained. The water tower gurgled and spewed its last few thousand gallons. The spikes melted into the asphalt. Rainwater cascaded from overflowing gutters.

The houses had returned to a kind of normality.

Shaking out a bruised shoulder and favoring a wrenched ankle, he lurched toward the van. He knelt by the shattered windshield. Wet and unable to fly, the last of Penelope’s wasps crawled along the crazed edge of glass, twitching and buzzing. Each cast flickering duplicates that peeled away, then returned to merge again.

He looked at his hands—the same stuttering shadows. Something huge had just happened. Time was vibrating like a plucked string.

Jack peered into the van. The driver’s seat was empty.

Both seats were empty.

Nobody left to save.

CHAPTER 51

Ellen drove Miriam’s old Toyota. Agazutta rode shotgun. Farrah sat in the back with Ginny, who watched a necklace of amber beads swinging from the car’s rearview mirror. They turned up one wet street and down another, searching for someone—someone young and male, Ginny gathered from spare snippets of their talk.

Even now, water slopped along the gutters and spilled from over-passes and off-ramps, slowing their progress.

Things had once again crossed the line from puzzling to inexpressibly weird. She was surrounded by spooky, middle-aged women. They were all so curious, but however much they seemed to care, however much they seemed to have a plan, they were just as reluctant as Bidewell to answer big questions. Too many wait and seemoments. She felt tied to their destinies in a way that made her suffer like a caged animal.

The storm had been hunting. That’s what the women had argued about before taking the West Seattle Bridge. Storms didn’t do that, of course.

Agazutta looked over her shoulder. “What do you feel?” she asked Ginny. Ginny shook her head. There was nothing ahead but a frightening solidity—a flat, looming blankness.

“You tell me. I’m just riding along.”

Ellen said, “The storm might not be the only unusual event today. You might be able to help us save someone else, someone as important as you. So please, Virginia—tell us what you feel.”

“We’re like a log that’s fallen out of the fireplace,” Ginny said, then dropped as low in the seat as she could, miserable and scared.

Farrah rubbed her nose. “It doessmell burned.”

“Are you reallywitches?” Ginny blurted.

Agazutta snorted. “That’s a joke, dear. If we had any realpowers, do you think we’d have allowed this to happen?”

Ellen said, “If anyone has magical powers, it’s probably you, or Bidewell. Not that we’ve seen much evidence of it lately.”

“Those books,” Farrah said.

“Fabricated,” Agazutta said.

“They’re old,” Farrah countered.

Ellen made a sound between a tosh and a splutter. “We have to trust him. We don’t have a choice. And we have to trust Ginny.”

“She’s sullen,” Farrah said.

“So were you, in the beginning,” Agazutta said.

“Hell, I’m stillsullen,” Farrah said.

“Are you a lesbian?” Ginny blurted.

A brief but chilly silence followed. “There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding,” Farrah said.

“Someone explain to the girl.”

“Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter,” Ellen Crowe said. “Except for me—”

“Except for her,” Agazutta emphasized with some resentment.

“…this group is sworn to celibacy,” Ellen finished.

“Which explains why we drink so much and read steamy novels,” Farrah said.

“Why aren’t youcelibate?” Ginny asked Ellen, craning her head forward.

“It has nothing to do with magic, but a lot to do with fishing,” Agazutta said. “You’re not the bait, my dear. Ellenis the bait.”

“No one believes me when I say it’s all—” Ellen began, but Agazutta interrupted.

“Is that him?” she asked.

Ellen peered through the windshield at a skinny young man walking with slumped shoulders and drenched hair over uneven sidewalk. The Toyota slowed. Despite herself, Ginny sat up. The young man was unaware of their presence—or working hard to ignore them.

“Such a bedraggled puppy,” Agazutta said.

From behind he looked like the one Ginny had seen riding a bike through the Busker Jam. As soon as she could see his face, she cried out, “Stop!”

Ellen braked the car with a short squeal. This caught his attention and he looked sharp left, then broke into a run.

“You scared him,” Agazutta said.

“Well, excuseme—”

“He’s getting away!” Farrah cried. “We’ll lose him. He’ll jump!”

They all seemed to know what that meant. Agazutta was glancing up and around as if expecting a 747 to fall from the sky, or a tree to march out in front of them.

“He can’t,” Ginny said.

“Can’t what?” Ellen asked.

“He can’t escape,” Ginny said, recognizing something in the young man’s posture, in his sad response to their presence. “He’s run out of places to go.”

The car caught up and Ginny rolled down her window. “Wait!” she called. The young man glanced left again. A raised block of sidewalk caught his toe. With a startled yawp, he fell on his hands and knees. Ginny banged on the door with her fists. “Let me out! Let me help him!”

Ellen stopped the car.

“Child safety lock,” Farrah reminded her, and she hmmedand pushed the release button. The door swung wide and Ginny spilled out. She straightened, held her head high, and approached the young man slowly, as if he were a wounded leopard. He rose to a squat and glared at her. Something about his outline wavered for just a moment—he fogged and shivered.

“Please don’t,” she said. “Please stay.”

His outline firmed, and he faced her with fingers and arms flexed. “Why?”

“We’ve met before,” Ginny said.

Jack glared at her.

“The storm was chasing you, wasn’t it?” Ginny asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

“We can’t escape,” she said. “There’s a warm place and friends—I think they’re friends—not far. Come with us.”

“Your car is full,” Jack observed. “Unless you want me to ride in the trunk.”

Farrah opened her door and thumped her hand on the roof. “Squeeze in. You’re skinny.”

“Get out of the wet, Jack,” Ellen said. She waved with a reassuring smile. Jack stood and peered through the windshield. He pushed aside his wet hair. “Now you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

“I met most of them today,” Ginny said.

“Who are yousupposed to be?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Ginny said. “Not anymore.”

CHAPTER 52

The Green Warehouse

Jack stood behind the warehouse gate, staring at the gray ghost of First Avenue South and shivering in the ashen chill that oozed through the chain-link fence. Ellen had parked the car and the women had gone up the ramp into the warehouse, leaving him to stand by the fence. He told them he needed a moment to adjust.