The Shadow Men

Whistles the Wind

As they ran, what had happened impressed itself upon Trix with every step. The dislocation she felt should have been aggravated by the earthquake-an event beyond her experience, shoving her farther away from safety and the life she knew so well-but in fact the disaster seemed to have jarred her toward sense and understanding. Maybe it was the sight of her city in ruins, though it was not quite the city she knew. But more likely it was the excruciating sight of human suffering. These people, whichever version of Boston they might have come from, were just like her.

East Broadway was in ruins. The road had been flipped like a giant sheet, coming to rest with bulges and bumps that gaped open to the night sky. Street lamps leaned drunkenly over the undulating road or back against cracked and shattered buildings. The power was out, and the only light came from the half-moon peering between intermittent clouds, car headlamps, and the occasional fires that had sprung up in the ruins. To the north the sky glowed yellow, and Trix could hear the barely audible roar of a massive fire, perhaps as far away as the airport. Already, sparking embers were drifting up from the glow, like fireflies evading the cataclysm. A breeze whispered along the street, like the city gasping in pain.

“How many do you think are dead?” she asked Jim.

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

“I wish we could stop and help-”

“We can’t,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry, Trix, but you know we can’t. The only thing keeping me from breaking down here is the thought of finding Holly and Jenny. We know what’s going on-about the different Bostons-but they don’t. Imagine how terrified they must be. Christ, Trix, I’ve got to find them. I’m going to lose my mind!”

“But which Bostons collided?” she asked, gazing around.

“My guess is the Irish and Brahmin. Veronica said those were the weaker, because they were splintered from the original.”

“And you believe her?”

Jim shrugged.

“Well, then,” Trix said. “If the Irish Boston and the Brahmin Boston just… merged, then there’s another Oracle in the city now.”

Jim whipped the envelope from his pocket. “Her address is on Harrison Avenue. Sally Bennet. Maybe she’ll know. Maybe she’ll be able to find them!”

Jim’s eyes were filled with the desperate knowledge that this was no longer only about them. And Trix understood how heavy that knowledge weighed on him, because she felt it, too. Jenny and Holly’s disappearance had led indirectly to this. And what about those things in the bar, those wraiths? Those things followed us there, she thought, shivering as she remembered the faceless things standing motionless as the earthquake struck. Watching.

In the distance came the grumbling, earthshaking impact of a building’s collapse, and Trix couldn’t help thinking, I’m listening to people die. She remembered watching the Twin Towers struck by hijacked aircraft, and each time the impact was shown on the news that day-again and again, the blossoming explosions as regular as the country’s panicked heartbeat-she’d thought, I’m seeing hundreds of people die, in that single moment. It had been unbearable, and hypnotic.

“Those things,” Jim said. He pushed her gently into a shop doorway, feet crunching over shattered glass. Mannequins wearing expensive clothing had toppled into the street, and behind them the ceiling had come down, broken water pipes spraying the shop’s interior. “They followed us to O’Brien, then killed him while we were asleep. They needed us to come through-it’s like they were waiting for us-and we both felt spooked on our way to O’Brien’s. It was them, watching.”

“Yeah.” Trix nodded.

“So, what if they follow us to Sally Bennet, too? If they kill her, maybe this will happen again.”

Trix closed her eyes. Frowned. Opened them again. “Jim, Veronica gave you their addresses. She knew where they lived.”

“But something in that envelope, or on that note… I heard O’Brien’s reaction when he opened it.” He took the folded sheet from his pocket.

“Just a black dot,” Trix said.

“Maybe not to an Oracle.”

“Something to let them attack him,” Trix said.

“Maybe,” Jim said. “She talked about McGee’s magicks. Maybe this is some of her own.”

“But all this destruction,” Trix said. “Could she possibly want this?”

Jim shivered. “I think we have to at least consider it.

The timing is too fucking convenient otherwise, don’t you think?”

He turned pale, and Trix held his arms and pulled him close. Over his shoulder she saw a family walking along the opposite sidewalk, mother and father on either side of a little girl. They all held hands, and were dressed in smart, dust-covered clothes. The only signs that they had acknowledged the earthquake were the father’s coughing and the little girl looking around with eyes wide open. Trix wondered what they’d been doing out so late, or whether they’d dressed and gone for a walk after the quake had struck.

“We have to warn the Oracle,” he said. He stepped out into the street and looked around for more of the wraiths, scanning street level, then up at the broken windows and the buildings that should not be there. “I can’t see them!” he said to Trix. “Maybe they’ve gone already.”

Trix looked for herself. There was no sign of the wraith-things, but the air was filled with smoke and dust, making a blur of anything more than a hundred steps away.

“Come on,” she said. “We might not have much time.” So they ran. With a destination in mind, and an aim, she tried in vain to distract herself from some of the sights surrounding them. Because the terrible was merged with the impossible, and that did nothing to detract from the awful reality.

Some of the buildings’ facades had tipped outward into the road, exposing the floors and rooms within. Many had collapsed altogether, and the broken roofs of three-story buildings now sat a story above the roadway. Most windows were shattered, and the street was carpeted with glinting glass, smashed tiles, dust, and other debris such as drifting papers, broken bricks, and personal possessions that looked so out of place. I shouldn’t be seeing shoes, Trix thought. I shouldn’t be seeing someone’s bloody nightgown, or a kid’s toy gun, or a music system’s speaker.

Beyond the earthquake destruction was the more unlikely damage. Trix could see the difference between the two, and she was sure that Jim did as well, but to other people on the street it must present a bewildering mystery among the chaos. A car showroom had seemingly appeared, straddling one corner of an old market hall and the narrow parking lot beside it, its walls buckled, forecourt cracked, as if dropped from a height. The cars were familiar models, all of them thrown around as though stirred by some angry god. Inside the showroom, where the finest models were kept, two cars were ablaze. The flames spewed across the ceiling and fingered their way up the showroom’s front facade, plastic sign bubbling. The only words still visible on the sign were BOSTON’S BEST. Around one edge of the incongruous showroom the older, more attractive market had collapsed, and an avalanche of goods was slewed across the street.

Elsewhere on the street, other buildings had collided in the impact of two worlds coming together. A couple were aflame, some had collapsed, but here and there were structures that remained surprisingly undamaged.

To the south, beyond the ragged outline of collapsed rooftops, Trix could make out the ghostly presence of taller buildings that had not been there before. There was the tripod-like building that had burst from the giant cathedral, but closer to them were other structures. She had the sense that these, too, were new, and that before the cataclysm she would have been able to see open sky where they now stood, and that the buildings’ presence here was as invasive as her own. They shimmered through the smoke and reflected firelight from their broken glass and steel facades, giving them the impression of having their own apocalyptic glow. Like giant faces, she thought, and the image sent a cold chill through her.

She’d once spent days walking a certain street in Boston and feeling disconcerted for no reason that she could identify. She’d been convinced that something had changed, but the more she walked that street, the more certain she’d become that something within her had altered, not something without. When she’d finally searched the Internet for images and found photos of the same view, she’d realized that an old clock tower in the distance had been taken down. It was the fresh spread of sky that had disturbed her, a space where there should have been no space, and realization had banished the feeling immediately.

Now it was not something missing that made her so unsettled, but something added. They walked through blocks of houses and residential buildings, many of which had been ruined by the clash between the upscale neighborhood of Irish Boston and the forgotten Southie of Brahmin Boston. Others in the street stared in horror and awe at these invading structures. The sense of panic was palpable, its incidental music the screams and cries of those injured or bereaved.

For long blocks they walked, attempting to reach Harrison Avenue, with no chance of any taxi picking them up now. When they reached the intersection at West Fourth Street and Dorchester Avenue, they saw the aftermath of a horrible accident. At least seven cars were involved, and people swarmed over the carnage pulling survivors from the wrecks. Several people sat along the curbside nursing injuries, and in the distance sirens screamed.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jim said, and for a moment Trix panicked. He saw Jenny in one of the cars, she’s one of those bodies hanging from that station wagon’s windows, and if she’s there, then where is Holly?

But he had not seen his dead wife. When he grabbed her hand and nodded across the road, what they witnessed was altogether more surreal.

Two women stood staring at each other. One must have just emerged from one of the less damaged cars, her right foot still in the footwell, right hand curled around the door frame. She had long blond hair tied in a ponytail and wore a tight-fitting dress and knee-length boots. The other woman stood a dozen paces away, close to the overturned truck that the first woman had crumped into. She, too, had long blond hair, though she wore jeans and a light jacket. Her boots were of slightly darker leather. Her hair was slightly longer.

The women must have been identical twins. Looking from one to the other caused a strange tingling sensation at the nape of Trix’s neck. They were equally attractive, but something seemed to draw the beauty from their faces. Something like terror. “They don’t know each other,” Trix whispered, and Jim’s hold on her arm strengthened.

The women stared, utterly motionless while the rescue went on around them. No one else seemed to have noticed this frozen tableau. The woman by the car went to speak; the other woman lifted her arm to point.

“Come on,” Jim said.

“Wait, we need to see-”

“Come on.” And his voice was so heavy that she could not help but look at him. His eyes were haunted, and she suddenly knew how, and why. Somewhere in the ruins of this city were his wife and child. And somewhere else… Jenny’s other, her echo, her alter ego.

They moved off, bypassing the accident and the injured people, and Trix kept glancing back at the blond women. Before a drift of smoke hazed them from view, she saw that still neither of them moved. They simply stared.

There were three bodies laid on the pavement outside a collapsed seafood restaurant on Dorchester Avenue. They were lined up as if sleeping side by side, but as they closed on the corpses, Jim saw blood. Before today the only dead body he had ever seen was his mother in the funeral home.

As he approached the bodies, Trix grabbed his shoulder. “Jim?”

“There’s something about…,” he started, trailing off as they drew closer. One body was covered in a thin net curtain, blurring its features and molding to its skin with blood. For a moment he’d feared it was one of them. “Maybe the ghost guys are already ahead of us,” he said.

“There’s nothing we can do about that,” Trix said. “Here.” She moved past the bodies and through the restaurant’s collapsed facade. Rooting around in the rubble, she pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to Jim.

“That’s looting,” he said.

“Yeah.” She blinked at him a couple of times, then pulled a five-dollar note from her back pocket. She used a small chunk of broken brick to weight it down on the sidewalk before the slumped restaurant. For some reason, that brought tears to Jim’s eyes.

“We’ve got to run,” he said. “We can’t let anything distract us. Anything like that.” He gestured over his shoulder back the way they’d come. Those women are the same person, he thought, and he could only think of what would become of Jenny if she met herself. The results could be devastating. What would that do to a person?

Tonight in this city, it must be happening all over.

“How far to Sally Bennet’s?” she asked.

“Not far. Across the bridge over the train tracks, under the highway overpass, then a couple of blocks. Not sure how far up Harrison she lives…”

“Let’s go, then.” And they went.

The sights Jim saw that day he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. There were the stunned people wandering the streets, so many of them that he wondered whether there had been some sort of gas leak that had numbed them all to what had happened. Some of them were crying silently, and others seemed to be attempting to go about their nighttime business, skirting fallen walls or bodies in the street as if they were minor inconveniences. The sight of ruined buildings went from overwhelming to almost unnoticed, and even the structures that were so obviously out of place soon failed to move him. Maybe it was because he was out of place here himself. But the suffering people-the wounded, the bereaved, the confused, and the many bodies he saw in the shadows of ruins or laid out in the street-never failed to touch him. Humanity tonight was suffering more than an earthquake, and he had no idea how they would deal with what was to come. The two blond women could not stare at each other forever.

The sounds of the damaged city pressed in as they ran. Shouting and screaming, the roar of fires, the grumble of falling buildings, the smashing of glass shattering from window openings still under tension, car engines, the throbbing of helicopters passing overhead, sirens, alarms, and somewhere the slow tolling of church bells, mourning the past and solemnly welcoming the future with every chime. And the smells told the same story, the warm aroma of cooked food mixed with the stench of ruptured sewers, the acid tang of fires overlying the sharp sting of dust.

Everything soon became a blur, and he concentrated only on moving. Trix was always by his side, and they swapped frequent glances and strained smiles. He found comfort in his friend, and knew that she felt the same way. She was stronger than he was. He feared losing her.

It was Trix who saw the first wraith, when they were already on Harrison Avenue and headed north. First she was beside Jim, then she’d disappeared, and when he skidded to a halt and looked back, she was staring across the street. A row of five shops had slumped down in the middle, roofs exploded outward by the intrusion of a modern brick church. “It was there,” she said when he joined her. “In the arch of the church doorway. Then it was gone.”

“You just saw a shadow,” Jim said.

“No!” Trix said, frowning at him. “I know what I saw, Jim. They’re following us.”

“We have no idea how fast they can move,” he said, vocalizing what he had only just been thinking. They might have reached Sally already, stepping away from and back into this ruined Boston as he’d seen them do outside O’Brien’s. She might already be dead, and the first they’d know about it was when a great, more cataclysmic quake struck.

“That’s why we have to move as quickly as we can.”

They went on, pausing between two parking lots on Herald Street and finding a brief moment of normality until Jim looked to the north. The ruined cathedral was so tall it was visible from this distance, the air between it and them apparently clear of smoke. Fires burned elsewhere across the city, but the cars in the parking lots appeared miraculously untouched. A flock of pigeons hopped from roof to roof, woken from their slumber by helicopters, and sirens, and the sounds of the wounded city.

Jim saw a wraith rushing across the street a hundred feet from them. He saw it again past the next block, keeping pace with them a block away. Waiting for me to deliver the note, he thought. And however simple it might seem, disposing of the note seemed far too easy. There’s more to it than that.

At the corner of Oak Street a building had collapsed. There were scores of people there digging with their bare hands, and Jim felt a tug of guilt as he and Trix sought a way around the destruction.

“Another one,” she said. “Keeping pace with us.”

“I saw it,” Jim confirmed. They paused, waiting for a convoy of police cars and ambulances to pass by. One of the cops, eyes haunted, a smear of dirt across his face, looked out at Jim. “Hid away in a doorway when we turned around. So why not just flit away like they did back at O’Brien’s?”

“They don’t mind us seeing them.”

“Yeah.” And if they could just step into and out of this world, why not just reappear at Sally Bennet’s?

It was a few minutes later when Jim realized where they were. Just a few streets north of here-in his Boston, at least-was Jenny’s parents’ restaurant. They’d been running the seafood-and-steak place for thirteen years, building a steady reputation for quality food and a comfortable, casual atmosphere. Jim and Jenny had eaten there frequently, and not only because the food was usually free. It was good. “Trix, we’re close to the restaurant.”

“You’re thinking we should both go there?”

“No, we can’t let Sally down. But I have an idea. You won’t like it.”

Trix closed her eyes, and he realized how grubby she was. Her pink hair had lost much of its color to the dust. Her clothing was faded, her skin pale, and it was as if the earthquake was doing its best to erase her from the world. That was a concept he did not like. She sighed. “We’re going to split up,” she said.

“It won’t be for long.”

“We should go straight to Sally,” Trix said, but he could already hear the defeat in her voice.

“It’s a distraction. A good idea. Their restaurant is half a mile from here, if that. Sally Bennet’s address is a handful of blocks away. We go into a building somewhere, hide you away, I leave and race toward the restaurant, the wraith-things follow… and you go and warn the Oracle.”

“Is your secret name Jason Bourne?”

He smiled again, and this time he meant it. Even in adversity Trix could quip. He wondered where she found the energy, and then thought perhaps such an attitude gave it to her. “I’ll meet you there in an hour,” he said.

“Unless you find them?” And in Trix’s eyes he saw fear. She was afraid that she would lose him, run off into this altered, shattered Boston and never see him again.

“Trix, I promise. If I find them, I’ll pile them into a car and drive there for you. This is all…” He looked around at the damaged city, smelled fire and death on the air, and somewhere in the distance a man was shouting an unidentifiable word again and again. Perhaps it was a name, or maybe an exhalation of pure rage. “It’s beyond us,” he said. “It’s catastrophic. But Jenny and Holly are still my whole world.”

“I know,” she said, but he could still see her disappointment.

“Hey, you’re strong.”

“Yeah. I don’t feel like it.” She smiled and ruffled her hair, displacing a cloud of dust and brightening the color a few shades.

“When we get back, keep the pink hair.”

“I’m thinking of going for matching collar and cuffs, actually.”

“ Too much information.” He took her arm and they walked along the street, passing through a group of people heading in the opposite direction.

“You seen home?” one of the men asked them. “You seen home? ’Cause it’s gone far as I’m concerned.”

“Sorry,” Trix said.

“Yeah, well…” The man looked Trix up and down, then walked on with the group.

“In here,” Jim said. As he dragged open the warped, glassless shop door, he glanced over his shoulder, examining the street behind them, trying not to make it so obvious that he was searching for the wraiths. He saw none, but that meant little. He could feel their eyes on him. He’d heard that some people had a sixth sense that told them when they were being watched, but this was the first time he’d experienced it himself. It turned his skin cold.

As he closed the door, Trix was already rooting around the shop. It sold candles and holders, their smell heavy and sickening on the air even though the window had been smashed. “Here,” she said, offering something to him.

He grabbed it, a three-foot-long metal candle stand with a spiked cup on top. Designed to hold a large candle, it would make a formidable weapon.

“Better than a lamp,” she said, and in the darkness he heard her nervous giggle.

“Okay,” he said, suddenly uncertain. The restaurant called him, but so did the sense of solidifying guilt that their actions had caused all this. It was unreasonable and untrue, and yet he could not shake the idea.

“I’ll see you at Sally’s,” Trix said. “You go now, or if they’re watching they’ll figure something’s up.”

“Can they figure?” Jim asked. His fear of the wraiths, their alienness, had barely had time to figure over the past hour. But here and now, their actions and unknown nature suddenly hit home. Can we really fight them? he wondered, and his plan suddenly felt weak and pointless. And Veronica, that dear old lady… can we really fight her?

“What the fuck have we got ourselves mixed up in, eh?” Trix asked.

“Yeah.” She came to him and they hugged, then she shoved him at the door.

“I’ll hide,” she said, “but not for long. Then I’m out the back door and gone.”

“Run fast.”

“You, too.”

Jim nodded in the darkness, and in the distance came another rumble as a weakened building collapsed. He dragged the front door open, smelled fires and dust and fear on the breeze, and then left his friend behind.

Trix counted out a minute, using the counting to try to calm herself. Then she ran like hell. She found the rear door by touch, tugged it open, and emerged onto a wide alleyway behind the row of shops. There was little damage here-only the smashed glass that must be common throughout the city-and the area seemed quiet. Weird. The whole city had been shaken awake, and here-

“Hey!” someone shouted, and that was enough for Trix. Jim was going west, and she sprinted north toward Chinatown as fast as she could. Should’ve taken the envelope and sheet from him! Should’ve arranged somewhere else to meet in case it’s too dangerous there! But there were so many shoulds, because this was a Boston of possibilities.

There were two fire engines and a couple of ambulances blocking the street around the next corner, where a four-story building had collapsed. The structures on either side of it seemed stable and virtually undamaged-their architecture slightly off-center, as if built blind-and she saw the confusion in some of the firefighters’ stances and gestures. They don’t recognize those buildings. But they were professionals, and by the time she squeezed by, they were already in action. She glanced back at the next corner and saw them approaching the fallen building, ready to do their best even in the face of mystery.

She ran through the streets of Boston’s Chinatown. Some areas seemed almost untouched but for the familiar scree of shattered glass splashed across the sidewalks and roads. Others were in ruins. The city had fallen strangely silent, many routes now blocked to vehicles. The quiet was broken on occasion by sirens and shouts, and from some far distance a long, rumbling explosion, but they were islands of noise in a strange, unsettling calm. It was as if Boston was in shock, and unable to speak its usual ebullient language.

Many times over that final block she wanted to stop and help. There were people in need: bleeding in the street, pawing at rubble, wandering in a dangerous daze. But she sensed eyes on her back every step of the way, and she was scared. She was terrified. Lost in a city that should be familiar and yet that was more alien due to its occasional familiarity, she craved the company of someone who understood. She hoped that Jim would find Jenny and Holly, though she doubted it; and she hoped that she would see him again soon, as they had both vowed. But right now, finding the woman named Sally Bennet was her one true aim.

She did not once look back, because she feared what she would see. As she ran, she tried to analyze the wraiths’ capabilities, but laughed at the ridiculousness of what she was doing. Yesterday she was a normal woman in a normal city, with unremarkable concerns and a few personal demons. Now…

What was she now? She was no longer sure.

They killed him when we were there. If they are from Veronica, they couldn’t just kill him on their own. They needed us. They needed the letter. She couldn’t work it out, and her aching muscles and straining lungs distracted her from her thoughts.

At last she reached Beach Street, in the heart of Chinatown, and looked back for the first time. She saw two wraith-things following, though they made some pretense at hiding. They had no faces, yet she knew they were looking her way. The plan had failed-perhaps it had never had a hope of success-and in a display of naked fear, she turned and gave them both the finger. “Fuck you!” she shouted. Her voice echoed emptily along the street.

The road was lined with shops, several of them boarded up, and piles of refuse. There were signs in Chinese and colorful lanterns hanging from lampposts, but they looked as though they had seen better days. Where there ought to have been tailor shops and restaurants, there were mostly dingy apartments and shuttered storefronts. Walls had been sprayed with gang signs, and people were wandering the street in small, threatening groups. Though Chinatown in general seemed more badly damaged than other streets she’d passed down-which meant that it differed dramatically from one Boston to the next-this particular block seemed to have escaped substantial damage.

Trix slowed to a fast walk, glancing back one more time and wondering if everyone could see the wraiths. Why not? Why should only I be able to see them? She had no clue, and not knowing was always more frightening than the truth.

“What the fuck’s up with your hair?” a voice said. The kid was taller than her, maybe fourteen years old, pimply skin darkened by a line of tattoo ants crawling around his neck and up one cheek. There were several other youths standing behind him, feigning attitude but exuding fear. Some were Asian.

Here we go, she thought, saying, “Got a problem with pink, Ant Man?”

He scoffed, bristling when a couple of his compatriots chuckled. “Got a mouth on you, bitch!”

“Bitch?” It was Trix’s turn to bristle. “Your mother know you talk to women like that?” She took a step forward, the boy’s fear apparent, and for a couple of seconds she enjoyed it. “People are dead in Boston tonight, kid. You want to give me shit when a thousand people are buried under rubble?”

He stood taller, glancing left and right- Can he see them, can he ?-then looked down at his feet.

“Your families all okay?” Trix asked.

“Yeah,” Ant Man said. “We just dunno what to do.”

“Looks like you got off easy,” she said, “but you could help me. I’m looking for Sally Bennet.”

“You an’ everyone else,” the boy said. He turned and pointed along the street.

Trix had assumed they were just another milling group. But half a dozen buildings ahead, a line of people snaked down the steps from a front door and twenty feet along the street. There must have been thirty people there.

“They’re all seeing Sally?”

“Yeah. Few from round here, some people I’ve never seen before.”

“You give them shit, too?” The boy looked ashamed, and Trix smiled to put him at ease. “Take it easy, kid,” she said.

“Name’s Marcus.”

“It’s a good name.” She passed them by and hurried along the street, and as she approached the queue she made out the people standing there in more detail. Black, white, Hispanic, men, women, and several children, they stood in silence, shuffling forward slowly as a huge woman exited the building and hurried down the steps.

The number of people here surprised her. Had they all gone through some ritual to find Sally, as she and Jim had done at the traffic island and then the restaurant back in their Boston? She doubted that, given the short time since the quake. And she wondered what that said about Veronica-that she had a greater distance between her and the people and city she was there to protect.

So many missing people, Trix thought. She stopped in the middle of the road, and several people glanced at her. One pointed farther along the sidewalk. “There’s a line, ” the man said.

“Yeah.” Trix looked back the way she had come. Ant Man and his hangers-on were walking briskly along the street, and none of them seemed to notice the pale figure crouched atop a two-story house at the far corner. Another hid in shadows across the street. Just waiting , she thought. Watching. At least Jim took one of them with him. She pressed her hand to her jeans pocket, pretending to touch the letter she did not have, and then stormed up the steps and into the run-down building.

A few voices of protest followed her in, and she heard shock at her lack of respect. But she’d apologize later. If they knew why she was here, they’d say nothing. If they were aware of what had happened, and that their Oracle’s life was in danger, they’d have piled in behind her and protected her all the way. Inside the building she smelled cooking vegetables and heard loud, pulsing music, and the line of people led behind the staircase and into a low doorway beneath. She’s in the basement as if she’s hiding away. Hands clasped at Trix as she pushed by, and a few more voices rose in anger, but she forced herself down the darkened staircase. She stumbled, missed a step, and was helped on her way by a shove in the back. She twisted as she fell and saw the angry man glaring down at her. “Wait your turn!” he whispered as she slid down the wooden stairs on her back.

She grunted as she hit the cellar floor, pulling herself to her feet and quickly sensing the different atmosphere down here. She looked sidelong at the walls, expecting to see a thin place, but this was something else.

This was humanity in need, in the presence of a power that might give aid.

“Impatient for bad news?” a voice said. Trix turned slowly and looked to the far end of the basement room.

The girl sitting on a ratty wicker chair couldn’t have been much more than eleven years old. She was black, wearing jeans and a grubby Miley Cyrus T-shirt, and holding the hand of a woman kneeling by her side. Trix had never seen a child so haunted and devoid of hope.

“Sally?” she asked. The girl nodded. “Sally, I have something terrible to tell you. I think Veronica wants you dead.”

The girl sighed. “I thought as much. C’mere, lady. You better tell me everything.”

“First…” Trix started shaking. “There are men without faces.”

Sally’s eyes opened wide. And then, in the building above, people began to scream.

Where four streets met at odd angles, and the traffic island was home to a statue that Jim did not recognize, Jenny’s parents’ restaurant sat at one prominent corner. Back in Boston it was called Junction 58, and he was thrilled-and a little chilled-to see that it had the same name here. Its ornate glass frontage had shattered to the street, spilling the outdoor tables and chairs that were stacked overnight beneath the awning, but he was still looking at a sight familiar and well loved, and he felt something right itself in his mind. It’s not all madness, he thought, and then his brief fantasy was blown away.

Jenny’s mother stepped out from the restaurant. They lived in the three-story apartment upstairs, and their first reaction after the earthquake must have been to come down to the street, checking the damage on the way. She was waving a menu before her face as if hot, and she was almost the woman Jim had known for so long. Almost, but not quite. Slighter than he remembered, hair longer and darker, face a little more weathered-looking, this was Jenny’s mother as she might be five or ten years down the road.

I wonder if Jenny is married, he thought, because he was Unique, and long dead here. A burst of jealousy-of anger -swelled through him, and he started across the street. Jenny’s other mother saw him and frowned slightly, then looked away.

“Excuse me,” Jim said, and then he froze in the middle of the street. What could he possibly say?

“You okay, hon?” the woman asked, and Jim’s blood ran cold. She calls me hon, he thought, and he searched for any signs of recognition. But there were none. “Hey, mister, anything wrong?”

“Wrong?” Jim asked.

“Aside from the whole world shaking itself apart,” she said, looking past him at the glowing horizon and smoke clouds starting to obscure the moonlight.

“I was just wondering…,” he started again. But there was no easy way for him to ask about Jenny, and suddenly he hoped that she had not come this way at all. He remembered the two blond women staring at each other back at the traffic pileup- one blond woman, really, facets of her existent in two different worlds-and he tried to imagine the terror Jenny and Holly might have felt arriving here and seeing someone who was not quite their mother, not quite their grandmother.

“Wondering what?” she asked, on her guard at last.

“Nothing,” Jim said, shaking his head and backing away. I should have gone with Trix… the Oracle, Sally, she’ll be able to help, she’ll know what to-

And then someone else emerged from the restaurant’s smashed facade.

“Jenny,” Jim said. “Jenny!”

And the woman frowned and took one step back, because she did not know him.