A thirty-foot portal sprouted on the face of the glass.
The police cars slowed to a halt as the Seeker disappeared into the splashing depths. All witnesses in the air and on the ground stared dead-faced at the large white breach of reason, this strange new hole on the chin of Manhattan.
As quickly as it opened, the portal shrank and vanished from existence.
The madness was gone, along with the Silvers.
—
Howard Hairston wheezed his way up the last flight of steps, then joined the rooftop gathering of beleaguered peace officers. Those who didn’t dawdle in blindness kept their dazed expressions on the neighboring skyscraper, where the laws of man and nature had been so brazenly violated.
Howard found Melissa crouched at the steel-gray base of a MerryBolt rent-a-charger. Her face was half-concealed behind a curtain of messy dreads.
“Hey, boss.”
She shined a feeble smile in his direction. “Hello, Howard.”
“I hear you got caught in the light show.”
“David was nice enough to give me my own. I see nothing but spots.”
“Yeah. I’ve been there. Man, I really hate that kid.”
“You got better. So will I.”
Howard sat down beside her and studied the blinking handphone in her grip. “You got a text.”
“Yes. I heard. Would you be so kind as to read it to me?”
He took the phone and scanned it in dim confusion. “It’s from someone named Nameless.”
“I know who it’s from. What does it say?”
“‘Well, hon, you did everything you could. But the foot’s come down. It’s Integrity’s show now. God help them all.’”
Melissa rubbed her ailing eyes. She wished she’d packed some cigarettes in her armor.
“I heard two beeps, Howard. Is there—”
“Yeah. There’s another one.” He scrolled down her screen. “He’s asking if you’re free for dinner tonight. Says you two still have something to talk about.”
His freckled brow rose in horror. “God. That old man isn’t loving on you, is he?”
Melissa smiled softly, confident that the meal would end with nothing more than a job offer. Cedric Cain had his own plans for the six temporic fugitives, one that apparently ran counter to Integrity’s. Whatever his purpose, the crafty old shade wanted them alive. That alone made him a man worth hearing out.
“Want me to respond for you?” Howard asked.
Melissa took a long moment to ponder. After all that had happened, all she had seen, she couldn’t imagine going back to chasing toopers and clouders and other temporal two-bits. She didn’t seem to have much of a future with the Deps anyway.
“Yes,” she replied, with a heavy breath. “Tell him I’m available.”
THIRTY-SIX
They emerged three and a half miles to the northeast, through the bare gray wall of an underground parking lot. The Seeker shot from the portal at sixty-four miles an hour and kissed the ground on folded tires. It scraped a sparking path across eighty-nine spaces before grinding to a halt near the elevators.
Peter puffed a winded breath, then surveyed the empty lot behind him. On any other Tuesday, their hundred-yard slide would have left a trail of dented cars, and probably a few dead mall-shoppers.
He checked the six wincing faces of his passengers. “Everyone okay?”
The Silvers were anything but. The portal jump was a new and wholly awful experience for them, like being rope-dragged through a waterfall of boiling-hot milk. One by one, they examined themselves for scald burns, finding nothing but pink and tender flesh. They looked like they’d been scrubbed from head to toe with pumice stones.
Peter clicked his tongue with empathy. “Sorry. The jaunts are always hell on first-timers. You’ll be raw for a day or so.” He shined a warm gaze on Mia. “You hang in there, darlin’.”
He knew the poor girl had it worst of all. The moment he’d summoned the entry portal in Manhattan, Mia felt an agonizing push in her thoughts, as if someone opened an umbrella inside her head. Now she stared at her trembling hands, half-convinced that everything that happened since Quinwood was just a crazy dream.
“What just . . . what . . . ?”
“We got away,” said Peter. “That’s the long and short of it.”
Theo studied their dark surroundings. “Where are we?”
“Hoboken, New Jersey. Watercourse Mall. First place I could think of with a big enough landing strip.” He glanced through the windshield at the Seeker’s smoking hood. “This thing’s done for. We’ll have to paw it from here.”
“How far?” Hannah asked. “Amanda has a broken ankle and I can barely move my legs.”
“No worries, hon. Home is just a few steps past that elevator.” He unbuckled his seat belt and snatched the cane at Theo’s feet. “I haven’t been walking too well myself these days.”