While Charles scooped up his files and returned them to his briefcase, Sally and Toby went over to stare at the building they would be entering in the all-too-near future.
“We’ll be fine,” Toby assured her. “The Group wouldn’t have assigned us this job if they didn’t think we could do it.” He held out his hand. “Here.”
For a moment, Sally thought he was offering his hand to hold, but then she saw something small lying on his palm. It was the paper clip he’d taken from one of Charles’s files, the one he’d been manipulating with his telekinesis. Toby had transformed it into a curved triangular shape.
Sally took it out of his hand and looked at it. “What’s it supposed to be?” she asked. “A tooth?”
“It’s a shark fin,” Toby said. He took her hand gently in his own and started moving it back and forth through the air while humming the Jaws theme.
Sally laughed in spite of herself. “Thanks, Toby. I’ll cherish it forever.”
“You should. That’s a valuable psychic artifact. It’ll end up in the Mereville Group’s private collection one of these days.”
Charles came over. He pointed at Sally. “You’re the bait.” He pointed at Toby. “You’re the fishing rod. You’ll be stationed in the doorway. Your job is to reel Sally in at the first sign of trouble.”
“Where will you be?” Toby asked.
“I’ll be in there, too, also as bait, but I’ve got a feeling Sally is going to present a much more tantalizing meal.”
Charles handed Sally a flashlight and took one for himself. Toby didn’t get one. He needed to keep his hands free.
They walked around the far side of the warehouse to the door Frank Budden had used to get inside.
Charles went in first, turning his flashlight on, followed by Sally, while Toby remained in the doorway, as ordered. It was the first order he’d been given that he was actually happy to carry out.
There was no electricity in the building—the power had been off since 1961—and it was dark inside. But not as dark as it could’ve been. Even without their flashlights, there were banks of windows on the east and west sides of the building—several of them smashed, as Voorman had told them—letting in a dim, milky light.
Sally shined her flashlight around, but there wasn’t much to see. The building appeared to be completely empty. Her beam passed over a stain on the concrete floor, and she brought the light back to look at it more closely. It looked like an oil stain, only it was still wet. She peered closer, realized it was blood from where part of Frank Budden’s dismembered body had lain, and snapped the beam up toward the rafters.
Her breathing quickened and she tried to slow it down by focusing her attention on the view overhead. There were a few holes in the corrugated steel roof, but for the most part it was holding up pretty well for its age. Breathe in, breathe out. She brought the flashlight back down and walked around the stain on the floor, pretending it wasn’t there.
On the far side of the warehouse, Charles was looking up at one of the three massive doors that opened onto the lake. The doors were closed, but the water lapped rhythmically within the channels extending into the building. Some fog had drifted in with the water and gave the channels the appearance of three rectangular, bubbling cauldrons.
“Careful you don’t fall in,” Sally called over to him.
Charles waved at her with his flashlight.
Sally resumed wandering the floor, panning her flashlight around—being sure to move it quickly away whenever it landed on a questionable stain—and in general avoiding the thing she knew she was supposed to be doing.
At one point she stopped and pointed the light at her left hand. Faint white lines ran across three of the fingers. On her right hand there was a crescent-shaped mark in the webbing between the thumb and index finger. Souvenirs from her one and only visit to the house on Ashley Avenue, courtesy of an entity composed of a broken mirror. A looking-glass creature like something out of Wonderland. Which, she supposed, made her Alice. Only most days she wasn’t sure which world she was living in.
She was scared, but she knew there was no shame in that. Charles said only show-offs and shitheads laugh in the face of death. There was nothing wrong with fearing death, he said. It was natural. Death was the great unknown. In much the same way, the supernatural was largely unknown. It was okay to fear it, too, Charles said, as long as you didn’t let it paralyze you. The Mereville Group had learned a great deal about the supernatural, and they were learning more every day. They did it by confronting their fears, by walking boldly into the darkness with their eyes wide open.
So that’s what Sally did. She turned off her flashlight and closed her eyes.
Then opened the ones inside her mind.