Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Elias sighs. “If we’re going … we may need them to come.” Cade spins, shooting him a look of shock. Elias shrugs. “Don’t worry about their age. Where we’d be going, I can get them in. And if there is something waking up inside your daughter, she might get more immediate help if she’s there with us. Not to mention when that ‘help’ is becoming more needed by the hour with him,” he adds with a nod at Jeremy, who still sits on the couch with his lips hanging open, silent as a vacuum.
Cade glances at her daughter, then back at Jeremy on the couch. Doubts cloud her eyes as she crosses her arms, worried.
Until finally she says: “At least it’s Sunday. No school.”
Layna quirks an eyebrow. “You think Jeremy would still go to school with that in his pants?”
Jeremy makes a face that needs no sound to understand. He rises in indignation—only for the pillow to drop, displaying his unfortunate situation for a second. He quickly turns away.
Elias swipes his mug off the counter. “For this, I’m gonna need coffee first, then we head out. Should be there by noon.”
“It’s already half past,” points out Cade.
“Then three-ish,” he revises, “and that’s yet another reason I need my coffee. Anyone else want a cup?” After he is returned three blank stares from his guests, he sighs, sets down his empty mug, grunts, “Fuck the coffee. Let’s just get this over with.”
A few minutes later, they step out of the house.
Only to find the entire unfinished sun deck—and the whole front yard, and the driveway, and the street—covered in birds. Preening. Peering around curiously with their tiny, beady eyes. Some hopping here and there, fidgeting, wings flicking, a sea of feathers and twitchy little heads.
Elias’s eyes grow double. “The fuck …?”
Layna just stands there with her arms crossed, as if merely annoyed by the sight rather than scared. “So?” she says when her mother gapes at her. “They followed us. Big deal.”
Cade and Elias exchange a look.
20.
Madame Rose.
—∙—
Elias is on the road with Cade in the passenger seat. Layna and Jeremy are in the back, Layna worriedly trying to soothe her boyfriend. Elias had prepared a bag of ice from the freezer, which Jeremy is pressing futilely against his crotch, though it seems to do nothing about his situation, perhaps only dulling the presumed ache. The more time passes, the more Layna is appearing to believe this isn’t just a tiny medical mishap any old doctor can rectify, and she keeps glancing over her shoulder at the back window, as if expecting the horde of birds to be flying along with them in pursuit. Cade keeps nervously talking about anything that comes to mind while switching between stations on the radio every few minutes, never satisfied with the music that plays. Elias can hardly pay attention to any of it, too wound up himself with the place they are headed—and the uncertainty of where Kyle is spending his daylight hours. Is he even safe? Did Lazarus lie and devour him the second he arrived? Did he not even find this “mouth armed with teeth” and turned to dust in the morning sunlight of the desert? The nightmares persist, and with Kyle’s phone dead, turned off, or completely out of range, nothing right now can hope to ease Elias’s mind.
By the second hour of travel, everyone has gone as quiet as Jeremy. Even the radio is playing soft rock at such a low volume that the guitars and singing sound like distant animal wailing. The ice has melted, and it’s just a useless bag of water Jeremy holds as he lies back in the seat, bored. Layna’s head rests on his shoulder, forehead creased with worry.
When they’re in the homestretch, Jeremy is now squirming all over the place as a worried Layna rubs his back and keeps whimpering apologies at him. “Can we go faster?” she calls out. “I think he has to pee. Can guys even pee with an erection? I’m not a guy, I don’t know.” To which Elias says, “Going as fast as I can. Last thing we need is a cop pulling us over.” Cade keeps cradling her head in her hands, massaging away her stresses, whispering unintelligibly to herself.
“Jer, look,” says Layna a while later when they’re finally on the strip, driving slower through the Sunday afternoon traffic. “Didn’t you want to go to the M&M store? Jer, it has M&M everything. They even have M&M shoelaces. And there’s that big wall of tubes of every color of M&M you can imagine …”
“Baby, I don’t think the first or last thing on his mind has anything to do with M&Ms,” says Cade from the front seat.
Layna frowns. “Don’t you think I know that? I’m trying to distract him.”