Scout was about to tell her mom she’d check the box in the garage when the fan started with a low whir and the lights flickered, coming back on. Scout realized she still had a dull pain in her molar and went into the downstairs half-bath and turned the light on. She looked in the mirror, opening her mouth wide. There was the faintest golden glow in the tooth, which slowly faded out.
The skin on the back of her neck tingled. Scout ran back upstairs, ignoring her mother. The iPad was on, music was coming out of the speakers, and the lights were bright.
The toothbrush was rattling in the sink, vibrating the water, which was also glowing golden. Scout hit the sink stopper and the water drained out, taking the golden glow with it.
With a trembling hand, Scout picked the brush up and hit the off button.
It shut down.
Scout waited, not sure what to expect but having a feeling it wasn’t going to be good.
Tentatively, she tried the toothbrush. It rattled to life, no golden glow, and shut off when she hit the button.
So far, so nothing.
Which was good. Perhaps.
Scout went to the window and sat on the window seat. She squinched her eyes shut and thought hard: Was the toothbrush new or had it been recovered from her destroyed bathroom in North Carolina, where her curler had been possessed?
She realized there was no way of knowing without asking Cleaner, who’d supervised the reconstruction of the room after the Nightstalkers had taken out the Firefly that had possessed the curler.
Or had they?
She’d been on the porch with Nada. But Moms, she’d been in there and she’d said they done it, and although Scout had only known Moms for a couple of days, Scout knew Moms wasn’t a woman who imagined things or guessed.
If Moms said they got it, they got it.
So what didn’t they get?
And where was it now?
She looked toward the bathroom and mentally traced the flow: gold in toothbrush, into water, down the drain. Drain went to septic tank to drainage field, which was in the backyard.
Her mother called for her and Scout reluctantly went downstairs to get her meager breakfast. It looked like her mother had cut the slices of bread into even thinner slices, which required the skill of a surgeon, but her mother was quite good at paring food down. There was, of course, no maple syrup to drench the French toast in. Scout took the plate and went to the nook table, where her mother was always trying to get the family to eat meals together.
This took Mother by surprise, since Scout always wolfed her food down at the bar or trudged upstairs to her room to eat alone.
“Are you all right, dear?” Her mother had taken to calling her dear, not Scout. A compromise.
“I’m fine,” Scout said. The nook gave a nice view of the yard and the river.
Her mother shouldered the heavy bag of workout gear and whatever else she hauled around to make it through her day. “Enjoy your ride, dear.”
“You, too, Mother.”
Her mother stood in the doorway to the garage, staring at Scout as if she’d grown two heads. “You know, Greer—” she began, and Scout perked up.
“Yes?”
“Nothing, dear.” Her mother shrugged and the door shut behind her.
And then Scout was alone. She took the plate to the sink and washed it.
Then she went to the back door. She wanted to just gear up and go ride Comanche. But then she thought, What would Nada do?
He’d wait and watch. Something strange had happened and it was easy to ignore an anomaly.
Easy was bad.
So Scout waited and watched and then she saw it, thirty minutes after the water had gone down her sink, a golden shimmer in the grass in the backyard. Scout was tempted to walk out there, but that was tempting fate.
So she waited a bit longer and then she saw a translucent snake of golden water surface in the river, and then disappear underneath the muddy surface.
“This isn’t good,” Scout muttered. She went back into the house to her room.
Scout grabbed the Leatherman multitool out of her backpack and went to the air intake grill on the wall. She carefully unscrewed it, making sure not to mark the perfect white paint. A lockbox was set inside. She dialed up the combination and opened it. Inside there were the usual items a normal seventeen-year-old girl would hide, but even more items an abnormal seventeen-year old girl would hide.
Such as some spent shell casings of various sizes she’d scavenged from the fence line of Senator’s Club where the Nightstalkers had destroyed the backhoe — Cleaner’s team was good but not perfect. An empty eggs and ham MRE packet, a tribute to Nada’s willingness to take one for the team. And a postcard from the Little A’Le’Inn, located in Rachel, Nevada, along Highway 375, aka Extraterrestrial Highway. She’d received it just a week after the events in Senator’s Club, her name and address printed on a label.
And the only thing where one would send endearments or “wish you were here” was a phone number. And the words Text in case of emergency. Then someone — she assumed Nada — had scrawled, But it will take a while.
Scout took the card to the window seat and placed it in her lap as she sat down. Something was different. She closed her eyes and focused, and then realized it was the lack of something that had caught her attention. She opened her eyes and saw that the guys on the barge across the river were staring at their pile driver, one scratching his head.
The driver was silent, frozen in mid-movement.
With trembling fingers, she typed in the number on her iPhone, knowing she was initiating something that could have tremendous repercussions.
Then she typed in a message: Nada. Scout. In TN. We have a golden problem.
Scout pressed send and the message shot to the top of her page.
She waited, then realized the odds were low there would be an immediate reply based on Nada’s addendum. She put the phone in her pocket.
Looking up at the sound of a thud, she saw that the pile driver was working again, doing its job.
Then she stared at the river, the water flowing by so slowly, held up by Loudoun Dam downstream, so much so that they called this a lake. And she felt it again, that feeling of trouble having arrived and more trouble coming.
Looking out the window again, she could see a boat was stalled out, about a quarter mile downstream, the driver fussing over the engine.
Yeah. There was a problem.
CHAPTER 3
“Welcome to Area 51,” the old man in desert camouflage fatigues said to Ivar. The small plane that had dropped him off just moments ago raced down the runway and was airborne within seconds, as if the pilots were anxious to get out of here. Its running lights twinkled in the dark sky; the only hint of dawn was a slight red tinge on the eastern horizon.
Ivar looked around. “This isn’t Area 51.”
Nothing but desert in all directions. The runway was a pitted concrete strip, half covered with drifting sand, with just a tattered windsock hanging limply on a rusting pole.
“Sure it is,” the old man said with as much spirit at the windsock. “I’m Colonel Orlando. You’re”—he paused and looked at a clipboard—“Ivar. For now,” he added.
“Area 51 has the longest airstrip in the word,” Ivar pointed out.
“Well, third longest,” Orlando said, “and that’s the main strip. Which is a long ways thataways.” He pointed vaguely to the southwest. “This is an auxiliary strip. We’re having some, uh, well, security issues, so we thought it safer to bring you here.”
“What kind of security issues?” Ivar was tall, thin, but no longer stooped as if afraid of the world. Seeing the Rift open at the University of North Carolina, the Russians die, and a year of Special Operations training had changed him. Into what, even he wasn’t sure yet.