It took a few seconds to get the message open, and Bill’s reply was shorter than I’d hoped for. I made up for that by reading it six times in a row.

Hello, friend.

Thank you for getting in touch. You did the right thing. Have you told anyone else what you witnessed? I must advise against it. Having been where you are, I hope you’ll trust me on this. Take the video down too. If they haven’t already seen it, you’ll be OK. But if they have or do, you’ll need to take extra precautions.

I know what is happening to you, because it all happened to me too: the scars, the energy, the strange images in your head and impulses to do things that are utterly unfamiliar to you—commands, as it were, from the presence you are hosting. There’s so much more I should tell you, but this is not the venue. The important thing is, I can help you before it’s too late.

I believe you are in Ohio (that is what the networks I am involved in are saying after some sleuthing related to your video; try not to be alarmed, but that IS how simple it would be for the wrong party to find you, and is thus why you MUST COVER YOUR TRACKS).

I am in Nevada. Have checked flights and can arrive in any of the major cities near you by 1 PM. Please let me know what time you can meet. Again, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL you tell no one about what you’ve experienced. NOT EVEN—PERHAPS ESPECIALLY—those you are closest to. All that you share with them will put them in greater danger with those who might wish to find you.

You must DESTROY any evidence you were involved in what that video depicts. If police find so much as a hair of yours near that location, you could be in grave danger.

My intention is not to scare you—you’ve experienced a beautiful thing, an encounter you will treasure for the rest of your life—but people in our situation have a habit of vanishing without a trace.

I am offering you help at great personal risk, so PLEASE be cautious with what I’ve told you. Again, share with NO ONE—not even family—what we’ve talked about, and waste no time in erasing your tracks.

Stay safe.

Bill

My mouth had gone dry. My throat felt tight. There was no definite proof. This man could still be a conspiracy theorist, someone who wore tinfoil hats and believed the senators were all reptilian shape-shifters.

The scars, the energy, the strange images in your head and impulses to do things that are utterly unfamiliar to you—commands, as it were, from the presence you are hosting.

He knew exactly what had been happening to me.

Minus the impulses. I hadn’t had any of those.

Yet.

I braced myself against the desk, waiting for the dizziness to pass. The white was tugging at my mind, trying to pull me back, but I sank my fingernails into the gloves, rooting myself in the present.

I flinched at the sudden vibration against the counter and swiped up my phone, expecting to find another e-mail. Instead there was a barrage of incoming texts.

It took me a second to parse out where they were coming from.

I had an individual message with each of the five other Ordinary regulars, along with various group texts. One with just Remy and Sofía. One with just Remy and Levi. One with Nick and Arthur.

That made communicating (while wearing rubber gloves) tricky enough, and then there was the fact that everyone—Nick and Levi especially—was constantly renaming the group messages, making them especially hard to track. The new messages mostly seemed to be coming into a conversation named “Big Old Scientist Brians” that hadn’t existed at the start of my shift.

I would’ve bet money if I went far enough back there’d be an autocorrect typo where someone had been trying to type the word “brain” and wound up with “Brian” instead.

I checked the members of Big Old Scientist Brians. All six of us. The last three messages came from Arthur.

    Did you see the Cheryl Kelly report?

Things winding down at Jenkins.

It’s time to find the wreckage. Tonight. 8:30 PM, our house.

As I was reading, Sofía’s reply came in: About the wreckage. I have an idea, but we’ll need compasses.

Levi’s buzzed in next. Handsome R’s still grounded, but I’ll be there. (You guys should sleep over after.)

And then came Nick’s one-word answer to all of it: No.

I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to go back either.

Levi sent him a bunch of crying faces mixed in with kissy faces.

No, Nick said again.

Fine, Arthur said. Fran?

My stomach churned.

I’m in, I typed. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do about Black Mailbox Bill’s e-mail just yet—I hadn’t given him my name or even used my real e-mail account to contact him, and I sure as hell wasn’t inviting him to Splendor—but until I figured out whether I could trust him enough to ask more specific questions, I needed to focus on finding that necklace and anything else I might’ve left behind. Before it was too late.

ELEVEN

“MAGNETISM,” SOFíA SAID.

“Magnetism,” Levi repeated eagerly. He was dressed in all yellow and looked like a giant banana.

“Compasses are powered by magnetism,” Sofía said. She, Levi, Arthur, and I were standing astride our bikes in a square, front tires pointed in. I’d intentionally put my back to the barbed wire fence at the back of our field.