He shrugged. “Glamour lasts as long as it’s being cast. But I don’t know of any fae that can cast glamour on another person. Which means that either you’re casting it on yourself, she’s casting it on herself or this isn’t glamour. Or there’s a species out there with abilities I’ve never heard of.” Another shrug. “None of those possibilities are likely. But the last two are the least unlikely.”
It took me a moment to puzzle through his answer. “You know, it’s okay to just say ‘I don’t know’ when the sentiment is appropriate.” I pressed the button on the side of the phone to put the screen in sleep mode. “What if Sheriff Pennington was right? What if I am a surrogate? I replaced a kidnapped baby, just like they did.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.” Gallagher stood and pushed his chair out. “You were born four years after the reaping. A full decade after the surrogates were born. And not all changelings are surrogates. Certain species of fae have been exchanging their young with other people’s for generations without ever committing mass slaughter.”
“And if I may state the obvious,” Mirela added. “You’ve never made people kill their own children.”
“But I have made people kill themselves. And if Rommily’s right, I’ll do it again.” The very memory of her dream gave me chills.
“Delilah, that’s not you.” The cabin shuddered beneath Gallagher’s steps as he crossed the room and settled next to me on the window seat. “That’s the furiae. And what she’s doing—mystifying though it may be—is nothing like the reaping.”
“What if that’s because the reaping has evolved?” I took his hand, a physical appeal for him to take my suspicion seriously. “What if a second wave is already here, and it looks different than the first wave, because the surrogates got smarter. What if I’m a part of that second wave?”
Gallagher frowned at me. “Delilah, I feel like I’m missing something...”
“There’s been another series of mass murders, all of them since our escape from the Spectacle.” Lenore set her knife down, carrots forgotten. “The victims aren’t all kids this time, and the killers aren’t all parents. But they’re all authority figures. People the rest of the world should be able to trust.”
“And the events seem to be getting closer and closer to this general area. It’s like they’re closing in on us. See for yourself.” I plucked the top edition from a stack of newspapers on the floor next to the front window and shoved it at Gallagher. “You can feel the difference in town. People are terrified and on edge. They don’t know who to trust. They’re starting to blame the killings on a second wave of surrogates, and I’m starting to think they’re right.”
Gallagher set the paper aside and looked directly into my eyes. “This is just more of the same thing humanity has been doing for centuries. Blaming their problems on someone else because they don’t want to face the darker side of their own nature. They were right once. Thirty years ago. And now they’re going to see surrogates every time they turn around.”
“What if they’re not wrong? What if the surrogates are using me?”
“They’re not—”
“What if something about the fact that I’m carrying the furiae—or this baby—makes them able to do more with me? Like I’m more...susceptible to violence now. Or what if I’m one of them? What if we only think we’re here because of Rommily’s vision, but really we were drawn here because of me? For the same reason the other surrogates are evidently headed this way?”
“Other—?” Gallagher took me by both arms, and the rare uninvited touch conveyed the weight of whatever he was about to say. “You. Are not. A surrogate. As far as I know, there are no more surrogates. We don’t even know that the original little monsters are still alive. For all we know, the government had them executed.”
“They wouldn’t have,” I insisted. “Not all of them, anyway. The government would want to understand who and what they were. What they were after. What they’re capable of. To prevent a second wave. Or at least be ready for it. What if this is what they were getting ready for? What if I’m what they were getting ready for?”
“You’re just tired,” Gallagher said, and he couldn’t have said it if he didn’t truly believe it. “You’re exhausted and full of hormones, and we’ve all just suffered a very difficult loss.” He glanced out the window at Eryx’s fresh grave.
“That’s not—” I exhaled and started over. “Okay, all of that is true. But that doesn’t mean that what I’m saying isn’t also true. Facts don’t change just because I’m tired.”
“But you don’t have facts, Delilah—you have theories. Until we have some actual facts, there’s no sense in getting upset about this. Or jumping to conclusions.”
“You’re right.” I shrugged out of his grip and headed for the darkened bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Gallagher’s footsteps followed me.
“To get some facts.” I sat on the side of the bed, opposite of where Rommily was still asleep, and grabbed my shoes from the nightstand, where I’d started keeping them now that it was too hard for me to pick things up from the floor. “I need an internet connection.” And a little time to myself. A need none of my cabin-mates—other than Gallagher—ever seemed to feel.
“You can’t go into town, Delilah.” Mirela leaned against the bedroom doorway holding up the front page of one of the papers Lenore had brought back, folded in half to show the headline. “None of us can go into town for a while. There were cameras in the laboratory. They know who broke us out, and they probably suspect we’re still in the area.”
“Shit.” I took the paper from her on my way to the table, where I spread it out to look at the pictures. There were only a couple of shots in the article, and they—like the rest of the paper—were in black and white. But the top image showed all of our faces clearly. It had been taken from the hallway, and based on the angle, the camera must have been directly over the security guard’s head.
Eryx was most prominent in the shot, but my face was clearly visible over Gallagher’s shoulder, because of the high angle.
However, my belly was not.
“Were there other pictures in the other papers? Or online?” I turned to Lenore. “Can you tell in any of the images that I’m pregnant?”
She frowned, clearly thinking. Then she tapped the image on the front page. “This is the one they’re using most often. There are better pictures of Miri and Lala, taken before the breakout. And there are some close-ups of Eryx and Gallagher. The authorities seem most concerned about them.”
“Okay. Well, they’ll definitely be looking for the rest of you in town,” I said, giving Miri a nod. “But they won’t be looking for me, because everyone thinks I’ve been arrested in Oklahoma. And they won’t be looking at me—not with suspicion, anyway—because they still haven’t figured out that I’m pregnant.” I went back to the couch, where I sat and began the struggle to put on my own shoes. “But there’s a timer ticking down on that unforeseen advantage. As soon as they figure out that Elizabeth Essig isn’t me, they’ll be looking for the real Delilah Marlow again. I need to be back here before that happens.”
“You can’t go into town by yourself,” Gallagher insisted.
I saw no point in arguing. “I’ll take Lenore.”
“She can’t protect you.”
Lenore started to argue. Then her mouth snapped shut and she only shrugged. “He’s right.”
“What exactly do you need from town?” Gallagher asked.
“Information. I need to know who Elizabeth Essig is and why she looks like me. If we’re somehow connected, I want to know how.” I also hoped to find out what had happened to the original surrogates since they were taken into custody en masse nearly thirty years ago, and to gain some more insight on the recent mass killings.
“Even if it were safe for Gallagher to be seen, I don’t think we should go back to
the internet café,” Lenore said. “Or even back to that town. We’ve spent too much time there already.”
“Agreed. We’ll get on the highway and drive the opposite direction.” I stood in my slip-on shoes. “And we probably shouldn’t go inside anywhere. We just need to park close to some place that has free Wi-Fi. But we can’t take the van, in case that campus cop mentioned it in his call for backup.”
“Wouldn’t we look suspicious parking next to a coffee shop but not going in?” Gallagher asked.
“That would definitely look suspicious, especially with people already on edge.” I pulled a ponytail holder from my pocket and began smoothing my hair toward the back of my head with both hands. “So where could we park for a while without attracting suspicion?”
For a moment, no one spoke, but I got the distinct impression that I was the only one actually thinking about the problem. Most of my friends hadn’t spent enough time in the human world to truly absorb the dilemma or suggest a solution.
Then Lenore broke into a huge smile. “Sonic.”
“What?” As good as a chili cheese dog and a cherry limeade sounded, I wasn’t following the logic.
“You can buy a huge drink for, like, a dollar and sit at Sonic for an hour.”
“True,” I said. “But there’s no Wi-Fi at Sonic.”
“Yes, but in Pine Bridge, the Sonic is right next door to a strip mall that includes a Starbucks. Remember? We got your third-trimester slip-on shoes in that same strip mall. We might be able to order milk shakes and still pick up the Wi-Fi signal.”
“Lenore, that’s brilliant.” And I would have done nearly anything for a milk shake in that moment.
“Thanks!” Lenore snagged her purse from the end table next to the couch.
“I’m coming,” Gallagher said.
I frowned. “You can’t—”
“I’ll sit in the back. The windows are darkly tinted, and from inside the car, my size won’t be obvious. All anyone will see is a shadowy silhouette of a head, and I can use glamour to blur that a little.”
“But what if—?”
“I’m coming.” Gallagher punctuated his insistence by grabbing his boots from the floor near the front door. “Let’s go, before the Oklahoma police realize just how incompetent they are.”
July 1991
Summer in Oklahoma was miserably hot, and not as dry as Rebecca had expected. Sitting for ten minutes in the park under the shade of a public pavilion had already left her damp with sweat.
The warm weight of the baby in her arms wasn’t helping. The poor thing was like a little coal, even dressed only in one of the short-sleeved one-piece things Grandma Janice had found at a garage sale.
Rebecca’s grandmother had been shocked and confused by the sudden appearance of an infant in her house, but knowing that her youngest granddaughter had been replaced with a cryptid at birth made the impossible suddenly feel perfectly plausible. And the possibility—however far-fetched it might seem—that the infant from the bathtub might be the currency needed to buy back her long-lost granddaughter was too much of a miracle to discount entirely.
It was also too strange a thought to keep straight in her head for very long.
It’s like a game of musical chairs, played with three babies, Rebecca had explained to her grandmother several times over the past month as she’d warmed bottles and changed diapers. Charity’s human daughter. My human sister. And the cryptid surrogate we mistakenly called Erica for six years.
The woman in the mirror had taken Rebecca Essig’s newborn sister and exchanged her for a cryptid surrogate in March of 1980. Years later in human time, yet only weeks later in the fae world, that same woman had exchanged baby Essig—still an infant because of her time in the faerie world—for Charity Marlow’s infant daughter in Oklahoma. Whom she had then given to Rebecca Essig.
Across the park, Charity Marlow sat on a bench in another inadequate puddle of shade, pushing a stroller back and forth while she spoke to a friend who was watching her toddler pull handfuls of grass from the ground.
Rebecca itched to move closer. To hear what the women were saying. She wondered if Charity knew that the baby she was rocking wasn’t her own, or if she, like Rebecca’s mother, had been ignorant of the switch.
If that were the case, how was she ever going to convince the woman to give away a baby she believed to be her own?
Rebecca had thought of little else in the past month. This moment had terrified her, lurking behind every decision she’d made and every idea she’d had as she’d narrowed her search for Charity Marlow to the town of Franklin, Oklahoma.
Her only hope, as she stood and began to approach the women on the bench from behind, was that the baby in her arms and the baby in Charity’s stroller would be identical. After all, Rebecca’s sister and the surrogate left in her place had looked enough alike to fool their mother. Presumably the same was true of the third child snared in this strange, tangled web of fate.
Slowly, Rebecca walked closer to the park bench, praying that the child in her arms would keep sleeping. She was a temperamental baby who only seemed satisfied when her eyes were closed.
“...such a happy girl!” the woman next to Charity Marlow said, leaning down to smile into the stroller. Rebecca stood taller, trying to see beneath the stroller’s umbrella for a glimpse of her stolen sister, but the angle was all wrong.
“Yes, she’s definitely been a blessing,” Charity said, and even from two feet behind her, Rebecca noticed the sudden stiffness in Charity’s bearing. The odd note in her voice.
She knows. Charity knew the baby in the stroller wasn’t hers. In all likelihood, she’d been in the same kind of turmoil as Rebecca, waiting for the return of her own daughter.
I shouldn’t have waited, Rebecca thought. I should have just found her and explained everything, and saved us both the past month of torture.
Either way, the time had come.
Rebecca cleared her throat before she could chicken out. Both women turned, startled to find her behind them. “Hi. Um...is anyone sitting there?” She glanced at the end of the bench.
“Help yourself.” Charity scooted closer to the middle and tugged her stroller along with her.
“How old is your baby?” The other woman leaned around Charity to get a look at the child asleep in Rebecca’s arms.
“About three months.” By Grandma Janice’s best guess. Though the truth was much more complicated. Rebecca waited for Charity to look. To appear shocked or surprised by the similarity of the baby in her arms to the one in the stroller. And finally, she turned.
“Oh, she’s so tiny!” Charity smiled down at the sleeping infant, and Rebecca frowned. “I remember when Delilah was that little. Feels like yesterday, but they change so fast.”
“Yeah.” Rebecca’s nervous grip on the baby tightened, and she started to fuss. “May I see your... Delilah?”
“Of course.” Charity folded back the stroller canopy.
Rebecca gasped. “She’s so big!” In fact, the child in the stroller could no longer rightfully be called an infant. She was a toddler, wearing shoes that showed evidence of actual use.
She was a toddler who looked just like Erica had, in the old Essig family photos. Same dark waves. Same blue eyes. Same chubby cheeks.
“I know. Yours will be, too, before you can blink,” Charity said with another smile at the baby Rebecca held. Whom she clearly did not recognize as her own lost daughter.
“How old is Delilah?” Rebecca could hear shock echoing in her own voice, and though her thoughts were racing, neither of the other women seemed to notice anything wrong.
“Fourteen months, today,” Charity told her. “And she doesn’t seem to believe me when I tell her she’s not quite ready for the playground yet.”
Fourteen months. Rebecca stifled a groan.
The infants had presuma
bly been the same age when they were exchanged, which meant that between the time that her sister was given to Charity Marlow and Charity’s baby was given to Rebecca, a full year had passed in the human world. Yet only weeks...wherever the woman in the mirror existed.
How the hell was Rebecca supposed to convince this woman that despite being born more than a year ago, her true child was only around twelve weeks old?
“May I...?” Rebecca cleared her throat again. “May I hold her?”
“Delilah?” Charity looked surprised. She glanced pointedly at the infant in Rebecca’s arms. “You seem to have your hands full at the moment.”
“Please. I...want to see what I have to look forward to.” She brushed a dark lock of hair from the baby’s forehead. “She’s my first, and I’ve never held a toddler.” Which was an outright lie. She’d held Erica nearly every day of her life, including the period of time when she’d looked exactly like the toddler sitting in that stroller.
“I...” Charity frowned. “I guess so. For a minute.”
“Here.” The other woman stood. “I’ll hold your baby for you.”
Rebecca gratefully handed the infant to the other woman, then waited while Charity unbuckled Delilah from her stroller. For a moment, she held her daughter tightly, as if somehow she sensed she might not get her back.
And that was exactly what Rebecca intended when Charity finally set the toddler in her lap. She’d planned to take off running with her long-lost sister—the only sibling she had left—and drive away, leaving the infant with its rightful mother.
Because she knew just from watching them together that Charity would never willingly make the exchange. She would never believe the truth, because she loved Delilah like her own.
Rebecca’s eyes watered as she held her sister in her lap, examining all ten of her little fingers and the dimples in her chubby knees. The toddler looked up at her with a nearly toothless smile, and those tears spilled over.
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