It was a clear, clear night. She was holding Regina as she stood amid a crowd, gazing up at the sky where stars glittered. Some of those stars began to move like fireflies, and she heard the crowd murmur in wonder as those stars grew brighter, traveling across the heavens in geometric formation.
They weren’t stars.
In horror, she realized what those lights really meant, and she pushed her way through the crowd, desperately searching for a place to hide. A place where the alien lights could not find her. They are coming for us.
She lurched awake, her heart slamming so hard she thought it might leap out of her chest. She lay sweating as the terror of the nightmare slowly faded. This was what happened when you had dinner with a paranoid cop, she thought. You dreamed about alien invasions. Not friendly ETs, but monsters with spaceships and death rays. And why wouldn’t aliens come to earth as conquerors? They would probably be as bloodthirsty as we are.
She sat up on the side of the bed, her throat parched, the sweat cooling her skin. The motel’s bedside clock glowed two fourteen AM. In only four hours, they had to check out and catch their flight back to Boston. She rose in darkness and felt her way toward the bathroom to get a drink of water. As she passed the window, a pinpoint beam of light flickered through the curtain and vanished.
She moved to the window and nudged aside the drape to peer out at the unlit parking lot. The motel was completely booked, every parking stall filled. She searched the darkness, wondering where that flashlight beam had come from, and was about to let the curtain fall shut again when a dome light suddenly went on inside one of the vehicles.
That’s our rental car.
She hadn’t packed a weapon for this trip; neither had Frost. They were unarmed, without backup, against what? She snatched up her cell phone and hit speed dial. A few rings later, Frost answered, voice still groggy with sleep.
“Someone’s screwing around with our car,” she whispered as she pulled on her blue jeans. “I’m going out there.”
“What? Wait!”
She zipped up her fly. “Thirty seconds and I’m out the door.”
“Hold on, hold on! I’m coming.”
She grabbed her flashlight and keycard and stepped barefoot into the hallway, just as Frost emerged from his room next door. No wonder he’d managed such a quick exit; he was still wearing his pajamas. Red-and-white-striped PJs that hadn’t been in fashion since Clark Gable.
He saw her staring at him, and said: “What?”
“Those make my eyes hurt. You’re like walking neon,” she muttered as they headed for the side exit at the end of the hall.
“What’s the plan?”
“We find out who’s in our car.”
“Maybe we should call nine one one.”
“By the time they respond, he’ll be long gone.”
They slipped out the exit into the night and darted behind a parked car. Peering around the rear bumper, she stared down the row, toward the stall where their rental vehicle was parked. The dome light was no longer shining.
“You sure about what you saw?” he whispered.
She didn’t like the doubt she heard in his voice. At this hour of night, with the gritty pavement biting into her bare feet, the last thing she needed was to have her eyesight questioned by Mr. Neon PJs.
She crept toward their rental car, not knowing or caring if Frost was behind her, because now she was starting to doubt herself. Starting to wonder if the light she’d seen was just a remnant from her nightmare. Aliens in her dreams, and now aliens in the parking lot.
The car was one stall away.
She paused, her sweating palm pressed against the rear bumper of a pickup truck. All she had to do was take another two steps and she’d be touching their own bumper. Crouching in the darkness, she listened for movement, for any sound at all, but she heard only the hiss of distant traffic.
She rocked forward and stared between the two vehicles. Saw empty space. That doubtful note she’d heard in Frost’s voice echoed in her head, even louder now. It sent her scrambling around the rear of their rental car, to peer down the passenger side.
No one there, either.
She rose to her feet and felt the night breeze against her face as she scanned the parking lot. If anyone was watching them, he would see her now, fully exposed. And now here came Frost, an even more blatant target in his red-and-white pajamas.
“No one,” he said. Not a question, just stating the obvious.
Too irritated to respond, she turned on her penlight and circled the car. Saw no scratches in the finish, nothing on the pavement around it except a trampled cigarette butt that looked like it had been lying there for weeks. “My room is right there,” she said, pointing to her window. “I saw a light through the curtains. A flashlight. While I was watching, the dome light went on. Someone got into our car.”
“Did you actually see anyone?”
“No. He must’ve been crouching too low.”
“Well, if he got into our car, then it should be …” Frost paused. “Unlocked.”
“What?”
“It’s not locked.” He gave the driver’s handle a tug and the dome light came on inside. They both stared into the lit car, neither one of them moving.
“I locked it tonight,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Why do you keep questioning me? I know I locked the frigging door. You ever seen me not lock my car?”
“No,” he admitted. “You always do.” He looked down at the handle he’d just touched. “Shit. Fingerprints.”
“I’m more concerned about why someone was in our car. And what they were looking for.”
“What if they weren’t looking for anything?” he said.
She stared through the window into the front seat and thought about Neil and Olivia Yablonski climbing aboard their Cessna Skyhawk. She thought about RDX and Semtex and a New Hampshire farmhouse that exploded into flames.
“Let’s take a look under the car,” she said quietly.
She didn’t have to explain a thing; he had already backed away from the driver’s door and was following her to the rear bumper. She got down on her knees and felt grit biting into her palms as she leaned in to study the undercarriage. Her flashlight beam skimmed across the muffler and tailpipe and floor pans. Nothing caught her eye or looked out of place.
She stood, her neck sore from the awkward position. Massaging her sore muscles, she circled to the front of the vehicle and once again dropped to her hands and knees to search the undercarriage.
No bomb.
“Shall I pop the trunk?” said Frost.
“Yeah.” And hope that doesn’t blow us sky-high.
He hesitated, clearly sharing her anxiety, then reached under the dashboard and pulled the release lever.
Jane lifted the trunk and shone her flashlight into the empty space. No bomb. She peeled back the floor carpet and peered into the well with the spare tire. No bomb.
Maybe I did dream it all, she thought. Maybe I forgot to lock the car. And we’re standing out here at three AM, with Frost in those god-awful PJs, losing half a night’s sleep for nothing.
She closed the trunk and gave a huff of frustration. “We need to look inside the car.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it,” muttered Frost. “Might as well make a whole night of it.” He crawled onto the front seat, his pajama-clad rear end poking out the open door. Who would have guessed he’d go for the candy-cane convict look? As he rifled through the glove compartment, she knelt down and shone her flashlight up into the left rear wheel well. Of course, she saw nothing. She moved to the front of the car, repeated her examination of the left and right wheels, and circled back to the right rear wheel. Dropping to her knees, she aimed the flashlight into the space above the tire.
What she saw instantly made her freeze.
Frost called out: “I found something!”
“So did I.” She crouched, staring into the wheel well as a chill clawed its way up
her back. “You’d better come look at this,” she said quietly.
He climbed out of the car and dropped down beside her. The device was no larger than a cell phone, and affixed to the underside of the wheel well.
“What the hell is it?” she said.
“It looks like a GPS tracker.”
“What did you find inside?”
He took her by the arm and pulled her a few feet away. Whispered: “It’s under the passenger seat. They didn’t even bother to tape it in place. I’m guessing whoever put it there had to take off in a hurry.” He paused. “That’s why he left the car door unlocked.”
“It can’t be because he spotted us. He was gone before we even got out here.”
“You called me on your cell phone,” said Frost. “That had to be the tip-off.”
She stared at him. “You think our phones are being monitored?”
“Think about it. There’s a bug under the seat and a GPS tracker in our wheel well. Why wouldn’t they tap our phones?”
They heard the sound of an engine and turned just in time to see a car suddenly swerve out of the parking lot. They stood barefoot beside their bugged and tracked rental car, wide awake now, and too shaken to return to bed.
“Parris wasn’t paranoid,” said Frost.
She thought about burned farmhouses. About massacred families. “They know who we are,” she said. And where we live.
THE EVENSONG DINING hall was strangely hushed this morning, students and teachers talking in murmurs over the muted clink of chinaware. Dr. Welliver’s now vacant seat was flanked by Dr. Pasquantonio and Ms. Duplessis, who both scrupulously avoided glancing at the empty chair that their late colleague had occupied only days earlier. Is that what happens when you die? Claire wondered. Does everyone suddenly pretend you never existed?
“Is it okay if we sit here, Claire?”
She looked up to see Teddy and Will standing above her with their breakfast trays. This was new and different; now two people wanted to join her. “Whatever,” she said.
They sat at her table. On Will’s tray was a hearty portion of eggs and sausage. Teddy had only a sad little mound of potatoes and a single slice of dry toast. They couldn’t be more unlike, even down to their meal choices.
“Is there anything you’re not allergic to?” she asked Teddy, pointing to his breakfast.
“I’m not hungry today.”
“You’re never hungry.”
He pushed his glasses higher on his pale nose and pointed to the sausage on her plate. “That contains toxins, you know. Processed meat cooked at high temperatures has carcinogens from heterocyclic amines.”
“Yum. No wonder it tastes so good.” She popped the last chunk of sausage in her mouth, just to be contrary. When you’d been shot in the head, it gave you a different perspective on dangers as minor as carcinogens.
Will leaned in close and said softly: “There’s going to be a special meeting, right after breakfast.”
“What meeting?”
“The Jackals. They want you to come, too.”
She focused on Will’s pimply moon face, and a word suddenly sprang into her head: endomorph. She’d learned it from their health textbook, a term that was far kinder than what Briana called Will behind his back. Fatboy. Spotted pig. Claire and Will had that much in common; so did Teddy. They were the three misfits, the kids who were too weird or fat or nearsighted to ever be invited to the cool kids’ table. So they would make this table their own: the table for outcasts.
“Will you come?” asked Will.
“Why do they want me at their stupid meeting?”
“Because we need to put our heads together and talk about what happened to Dr. Welliver.”
“I’ve already told everyone what happened,” said Claire. “I told the police. I told Dr Isles. I told—”
“He means what really happened,” said Teddy.
She frowned at him. Teddy, the ectomorph, another word she’d learned from that health book. Ecto as in ectoplasm, pale and wispy as a ghost. “Are you saying I didn’t tell the truth?”
“That’s not at all what he meant,” said Will.
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“We’re just wondering—the Jackals are wondering—”
“Are you talking behind my back? You and the club?”
“We’re trying to understand how it happened.”
“Dr. Welliver jumped off the roof and she went splat on the ground. That’s not so hard to understand.”
“But why did she do it?” said Will.
“Half the time, I can’t even tell you why I do the things I do,” she said, and rose to her feet.
Will reached across the table and grabbed her hand, to stop her from leaving. “Does it make any sense to you, why she’d jump off the roof?”
She stared down at his hand, touching hers. “No,” she admitted.
“That’s why you should come,” he said urgently. “But you can’t talk about it. Julian says it’s only for the Jackals.”
She glanced across the dining hall at the table where glossy-haired Briana sat gossiping with the other cool kids. “Is she going to be there? Is this some kind of practical joke?”
“Claire, it’s me asking you,” said Will. “You know you can trust me.”
She looked at Will, and this time she didn’t focus on his pimples or his pale moon face, but his eyes. Those gentle brown eyes with long lashes. She’d never known Will to do or say anything unkind. He was goofy, sometimes annoying, but never hurtful. Unlike me. She thought of the times she’d pointedly ignored him or rolled her eyes at something he said, or laughed, along with everyone else, about the monster cannonballs he splashed up jumping into the lake. Somewhere, a farmer is missing his hog, the other girls had said, and Claire had not challenged that cruel comment. It shamed her now as she looked into Will’s eyes.
“Where are we meeting?” she asked.
“Bruno will show us the way.”
The path that took them up the hillside behind the school was steep and rocky, a direction that Claire had not yet explored on her midnight rambles. The route was so poorly marked that without Bruno Chinn to lead them, she might have gotten lost among the trees. Like Claire, Bruno was thirteen and yet another misfit, but a relentlessly cheerful one who seemed fated to always be the shortest kid in the group. He scampered like a mountain goat up a boulder and cast an impatient glance at his three lagging classmates.
“Does anyone want to race me to the top?” he offered.
Will halted, his face flushed bright pink, his T-shirt plastered to his doughy torso. “I’m dying here, Bruno. Can’t we rest?”
Bruno waved them forward, a grinning little Napoleon leading his charge up the hill. “Don’t be such a lazybones. You need to get in shape like me!”
“Do you want to kill Bruno?” muttered Claire. “Or should I?”
Will wiped the sweat from his face. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be okay,” he gasped. He certainly didn’t look okay as he plodded ahead, panting and wheezing, his enormous shoes slipping and sliding on moss.
“Where are we going?” Claire called out.
Bruno halted and turned to his three classmates. “Before we go any farther, you all have to promise.”
“Promise what?” said Teddy.
“That you won’t reveal this location. It’s our place, and the last thing we want is that grumpy old Mr. Roman telling us it’s off limits.”
Claire snorted. “You think he doesn’t already know?”
“Just promise. Raise your right hands.”
With a sigh, Claire raised her hand. So did Will and Teddy. “We promise,” they said simultaneously.
“All right, then.” Bruno turned and pushed aside a clump of bushes. “Welcome to the Jackals’ Den.”
Claire was the first to step into the clearing. Seeing stone steps, slippery with moss, she realized this was no natural opening in the trees, but something man-made. Something very old. She mounte
d the steps to a circular terrace built of weathered granite, and entered a ring of thirteen giant boulders, where her classmates Lester Grimmett and Arthur Toombs now sat. Nearby, in the shadow of trees, was a stone cottage, its roof green with moss, the shutters closed, its secrets locked away.
Teddy moved to the center of the ring and slowly turned to survey the thirteen boulders. “What is this place?” he asked in wonder.
“I tried to look it up in the school library,” said Arthur. “I think Mr. Magnus built this when he built the castle, but I can’t find a reference to it anywhere.”
“How did you find this place?”
“We didn’t. Jack Jackman did, years ago. He claimed it for the Jackals, and it’s been ours ever since. The stone house there, it was all falling down when Jackman first saw it. He and the first Jackals fixed it up, put on the roof and shutters. When it gets cold, we meet in there.”
“Who’d put a house way up here in the middle of the woods?”
“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Like these thirteen boulders. Why thirteen?” Arthur’s voice dropped. “Maybe Mr. Magnus had a cult or something.”
Claire looked down at where clumps of grass had pushed through the cracks between the stones. In time saplings and eventually trees would do their part to camouflage this foundation, to lift and separate and shatter the granite. Already the years had wrought their damage. But on this summer morning, with the haze hanging in the distance, it seemed to her that this place was timeless, that it had always been this way.
“I think this is way older than the castle,” she said. “I think it’s been here a really long time.”
She walked to the edge of the terrace. Through a gap in the trees, she looked down into the valley. There was the Evensong School with its many chimneys and turrets, and beyond it the dark waters of the lake. From here, she thought, I can see the whole world. Two canoes being paddled across the lake, sketching wakes on the water. Students on horseback, moving dots on the pin scratch of a trail. Standing here, with the wind in her face, she felt all-seeing and omnipotent. Queen of the universe.
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