My body goes still as deep water. The guy hasn’t seen me—he makes some signal, some Call of Duty stuff, and I see another shadow moving beside him, both of them heading toward the house. I whirl. More of them, tiny red lights glowing on their night-vision goggles like—
like the eyes of wolves, shining in the forest of the Dreaming—
and they are getting closer and closer to the cabin, moving lithe and dangerous through the trees like a wolf pack, closing in.
Armed police, I think.
For a second, I just stand there, not knowing what to do. I mean, these guys have SERIOUS guns, and they can see in the dark. I’m a teenage girl wearing a CAM Walker that seriously impedes my movement, I’m not going to be outrunning anyone anytime soon. I feel my hands shaking, my empty hand and my other hand that’s holding the kn—
Knife.
The police are after Mom, I know that, but I also know it isn’t going to look good if they find me with this big blade in my hand. Mom couldn’t see it, but I don’t know what that means yet. For all I know I’m going totally crazy and it doesn’t exist at all. Or she pretended not to see it, for some reason I still don’t understand, and it IS real.
Whatever: I throw the knife into the undergrowth; instantly, I can no longer see where it landed.
How the hell did they find us?
I could try to run away, or hobble away, anyway—I won’t be doing any running. But … Mom’s here somewhere, probably back in the cabin in bed. The police—I don’t know how they found us—are going to find her and arrest her, and do I want her to be alone for that? She killed someone, but it was self-defense and—
Without even really thinking about it, I’m moving back toward the cabin, following the SWAT team, or whatever they are. At the edge of the clearing, I stop. One of the men, the leader, I guess, holds up three fingers, then makes like a turning motion with his hand—three men peel off and head around the back of the cabin. Then he points to his eyes, and arrows his finger at the windows.
Two guys creep forward, crouching, and look inside. They shake their heads.
Leader makes another gesture, and now the two by the window stand on either side of the door. Another man steps forward—he’s got like a personal battering ram in his hands. He approaches the door.
I lean my weight on my CAM Walker, brace myself, and take a step for—
A hand closes over my mouth, jerking me back. The other hand kind of snakes behind both my arms and does something complicated, and I can’t move. I’m propelled forward to the driveway, my feet not even touching the earth.
I’m brought to the leader, and he nods when he sees me. He holds up a finger to his lips, which seems pretty redundant, when I’ve still got a gloved hand holding my mouth shut. I struggle a bit, at first, but it seems kind of pointless and I stop. The ground is bitter with sharp shards of gravel.
Now I wish I hadn’t thrown away the knife.
MOM, I call in my head. MOM.
And if this was the Dreaming, she would hear me. If this was the Dreaming, she would know.
But it’s not the Dreaming.
The battering ram hits the door and it shakes on its hinges, warping, like someone just put a spell on it and it’s changing into something else. Then again. And then, on the third time, the door just disappears into the house, just like that, like, as quick as reading:
door
[no door]
I mean, it’s not, like, hanging on its hinges, it’s just not there. And everywhere around me there’s rapid-fire movement as the SWAT team ready their weapons.
The men pour in, and that’s the right word for it, like liquid.
I wait—I have zero point zero choice about it. I almost want to close my eyes but I don’t.
Forty-seven seconds later the men come out again. The first one moves his hands in a way that obviously means, she’s not in there.
Mom?
The SWAT guys huddle, all apart from the one holding me. Then the leader comes up to me.
Where is she? he asks.
The guy behind me takes his hand away so I can speak but he’s still holding my arms. I shake my head.
I shake my head again too, and I must look as scared as I feel because he sighs and points to the woods. Do a sweep, he says. Gomez, McCarthy, Rhodes. Get the chopper on it too. Tell them to use the thermal.
Then the leader says something into the radio attached to his shoulder and a car is suddenly there, a big black Cadillac, and it glides to a stop near us.
One of the team opens the door and the one behind me presses his hand on my head to help me down into the car. And that’s it—I’m in custody, and Mom is gone.