Epilogue
The baby sounded a bit like a tree frog, peeping in her bundle of striped blankets. She looked a little like a tree frog, too, but Ben and Jenny didn’t seem to be able to tell. To them, she seemed to be the most beautiful creature in the world.
That, Eleanor thought, was exactly the way that it ought to be.
She sat at the kitchen table, doing her history homework while Jenny rocked little Naomi and Ben bustled about making dinner. Stir-fry, for the third time this week; the man lacked variety, but she couldn’t deny it was tasty.
Naomi. She’d been born on Saturday morning. Halloween. In thirteen years, she’d be thirteen. Eleanor watched her scrunched-up face twitch and fuss, and she couldn’t help the worry that crawled across her skin.
But it would be different for Naomi. No palindrome for her. She might be marked by her birthday, but she hadn’t been picked out to be forgotten. Not noticed. Eleanor was going to look out for her. She was going to stop Mr. January and his strange sisters long before Naomi’s thirteenth birthday ever came around.
And she was going to watch the other two children, too. The ones who had been born the same day, in the same hospital. Hannah and Robert—Bob for short, of course. Maybe their parents knew. Maybe, like Otto’s, they had chosen the names on the suggestion of a family member. Someone who belonged to the town’s social club.
The January Society was still out there, too. Not the thirteen from the meadow—wherever they were, Eleanor didn’t think they could cause any trouble just yet. But they couldn’t have been the only ones in on the secret. They would need successors. People chosen to take their places in the agreement, if anything happened. And every one of them would know that Eleanor and the others had ruined what they had sacrificed so much for.
Everything wasn’t okay. But it would be.
The doorbell rang. Pip and Otto would be arriving for dinner, and then to explore the house. They needed to find every one of Bartimaeus’s tricks if they were going to be ready for what came next.
Eleanor stood to get the door, and paused. Through the kitchen window, the orchard was a dark and snarled thing, branches pinning shadows through like nails. But between two gnarled trunks, she could just make out the shape of a man. He was looking away from her, into the orchard.
He raised a hand and waved.
