by Andrew Pyper
Nothing to do now but find a seat. I pass through to the next car and find it only a quarter full. Stop to look over the rows, the backs of heads, trying to judge which position is least likely to attract a talkative passenger to join me farther down the line.
Choke on the air in my throat.
Halfway up the car, sitting alone by the window, staring out at the dark of the passing tunnel wall. A Riesling-colored braid just visible in the gap between the seats.
It takes what feels like a long time to make my way to sit next to her. For a longer time, neither of us move. The familiar orangey smell of her skin, now mixed with diminishing traces of wet hay, of animals kept in an unclean pen.
Her stillness suggestive of sleep. But in the window’s reflection Tess’s eyes are open. Taking both of us in. Chalky phantoms in the glass. The breath of her voice drawing a fog over us both.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“If I turn to look, will you still be here?”
“I’m here if you are.”
The train speeds through the earth, under an island of millions. Soon we will rise on the other side of the river.
She turns and I see it’s her.
It’s her, and I believe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Sarah Knight, Marysue Rucci, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Kate Gales, Jessica Abell, Kate Mills, Jemima Forrester, Kevin Hanson, Alison Clarke, Amy Cormier, Felicia Quon, Max Arambulo, Dominick Montalto, Jonathan Evans, Jackie Seow, Molly Lindley, Esther Paradelo, Chris Herschdorfer, Jackie Levine, Anne McDermid, Monica Pacheco, Martha Magor, Chris Bucci, Stephanie Cabot, Peter Robinson, Sally Riley, Liv Stones, Howard Sanders, Jason Richman, and to my ring of angels, Heidi, Maude, and Ford.
© HEIDI PYPER
ANDREW PYPER is the author of five acclaimed novels, including Lost Girls, which was an international bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book, and The Killing Circle (a New York Times Crime Novel of the Year). A number of his books are in active development to become feature films, including The Demonologist, which is being produced by Robert Zemeckis’s company, ImageMovers, and Universal Pictures. He lives in Toronto.
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COPYRIGHT © 2013 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY ANDREW PYPER
The Guardians
The Killing Circle
The Wildfire Season
The Trade Mission
Lost Girls
Kiss Me [Stories]
DID YOU LOVE THE DEMONOLOGIST?
DISCOVER MORE NOVELS FROM ANDREW PYPER . . .
Praise for The Guardians
“Initially employing a quiet, confiding tone, Pyper reveals his skill with pacing as the story takes on the speed of a midnight dash through a graveyard. . . . This is a page-turner that will make your heart pound. You’ve been warned.”
—The Globe & Mail
“Everything you could ask for in a thriller. It’s psychologically unnerving, moves like a bullet, and is fraught with so much tension you might crack a tooth reading it. Outstanding in every way.”
—Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
“Ambitious . . . With a well-executed dual narrative, both past and present, strong characterizations, and some truly arresting images, The Guardians is a compelling and genuinely creepy read.”
—The Guardian (U.K.)
“A perfect haunted-house story, a crisp, eerie, October night of a book that had me in its clutches from page one.”
—Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat
“A master of psychological suspense. Andrew Pyper knows just how to lure you in to all the deep dark places of the human heart and then . . . twist.”
—Lisa Gardner
“A splendidly eerie haunted house story, and a superb evocation of small town life. The Guardians gripped me from its opening line and never let go.”
—John Connolly, author of Every Dead Thing and The Lovers
Praise for The Killing Circle
“If Andrew Pyper scripted our collective nightmares, we’d all be dreaming and screaming like the narrator of his gorgeously written and thoroughly unnerving suspense thriller, The Killing Circle. . . . Taken as either a classy ghost story or the chronicle of one man’s mental breakdown, this is a terrific yarn. But in examining the universal need to define one’s self through narrative, it also explores the darker side of storytelling.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Extraordinary . . . Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread, this is easily Pyper’s most ambitious—and absorbing—work to date.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Pyper is a true prose-master . . . caustic and sharp-witted observations. An uncozy, fright-filled thriller.”
—The Globe and Mail (editor’s recommendation)
“The villain leaps off the page . . . Pyper does an impressive job building suspense, offering enough narrative twists and turns to keep the reader nicely off balance. Basing the experience of the novel in Rush’s first-person perspective, he is able to capture not only the depths of the haunting and gradually mounting terror, but also the more routine aspects of the character’s life. . . . A strong and compelling read.”
—The Vancouver Sun
“A deliciously vicious thriller.”
—Toronto Life
Praise for Lost Girls
“Exquisite . . . Pyper’s writing moves fluidly from caustic wit to moments of striking insight and beauty. . . . Lost Girls itself inhabits, more than anything, Atwood country (with added passion)—a smart, wry, controlled tone narrating a northwood Gothic. A satisfying, old-style morality tale set in a ripping good—and complex—story brimming over with 90’s style pockmarked souls and bruised psyches.”
—The Globe and Mail (editor’s choice)
“What sets Lost Girls apart is its brilliant evocation of place and mood. . . . For readers who relish metaphor with their narrative meat, Lost Girls is a rich meal.”
—Maclean’s
“Exceptional . . . Reads as though it were the secret love child of Alice Munro and Stephen King.”
—The Montreal Gazette
“Everything about this dark, disquieting story confounds expectations. . . . It’s hard to know exactly what kind of tale Pyper has told, but there’s no doubt that he has told it brilliantly.”
—The New York Times
“Pyper’s spell-binding debut succeeds on so many levels—as a mystery, a legal thriller, a literary character study—that it’s obvious why it was a #1 bestseller last year in Canada. . . . Compulsively appealing.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Most memorable . . . is the character of narrator Crane, who undergoes one of the most complete yet credible moral metamorphoses in recent fiction. A debut to remember and a real treat for crime fiction fans.”
—Booklist (starred review; selected as Best First Mystery for 2000)
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