that now. Either they defeat the Dark One for us or we all die.
I hope that this English is plain enough for you, sir.
Sincerely,
[redacted]
TOP SECRET
10
SLOANE WAS AT THE ENTRANCE to the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago at 9:30 a.m.—time for her friend Rebecca to let her in, though the museum didn’t open to the public for another hour.
She saw Rebecca through the glass doors, tying off the end of her braid. Rebecca yawned, unlocked the door, and waved Sloane in.
“You’re too prompt,” Rebecca said. “Why aren’t you hung over like everyone else our age?”
“First of all,” Sloane said, “ ‘our age’ is not a thing because you are twenty-two. And second of all, it’s Tuesday.”
“So?” Rebecca said. “Monday-night booze tastes just as good as Saturday-night booze.”
Sloane’s presence in the art museum at odd hours had become commonplace. The staff knew her, and no one had ever objected to someone letting her in early. It was, possibly, the only perk of being a Chosen One that she actually enjoyed.
This was part of her weekday rhythm. She didn’t have a job. The government had paid them for their years of service, and Sloane had handed the money over to an investment bank. The interest would keep her going for a while, provided she spent carefully.
The others had found more financial stability, but at a cost. Matt had sold the rights to his autobiography and partnered with an experienced writer, and that money was plenty to coast on—not that he did. He was always traveling, speaking at conferences and universities, appearing at charity balls and philanthropic galas, meeting with politicians and community organizers. Esther, too, had turned her fame into money, cultivating her Insta! following as she would a garden. Ines had illustrated her own graphic novel about her story, rendering the Dark One’s death in swirls of color. Albie, meanwhile, was in some commercials abroad, using his face to make back the money he had lost by going to rehab.
One day, Sloane would have to find a job for which her identity wouldn’t be an issue—one that required no qualifications or experience—or she would have to sell off pieces of herself one by one, the way everyone else had. She didn’t blame them for it—not much, anyway—but part of her felt like she would sooner live in her mother’s garage than sacrifice what little privacy she had carved out of her own fame.
The Modern Wing was bright and open, a wide corridor of white with galleries on either side. She climbed the stairs to the third floor, which was where she always began the visitation, in the architecture and design gallery. The space was empty, of course—it usually was, regardless of how packed the rest of the museum was. She wandered past the chairs made of twisted wire and the vase that looked like spilled milk to the sketches of proposed Chicago buildings. Then she sat on a nearby bench and stared at the drawing from the Burnham Plan, the proposed city design for Chicago that had never come to fruition.
Her brother, Cameron, had been studying architecture when he answered the call to fight the Dark One. He had died in one of the Drains, in Minneapolis. They had fought over his decision to put school on hold, even though she had been young at the time, only twelve. You’re not a soldier, she had told him. You’re a skinny nerd and you’ll get yourself killed. A rare moment of prescience, maybe.
She had taken all of Cameron’s things from her mother’s house and pored over the sketches in his journals so many times she had them all memorized. Everything from a child’s drawing of a doghouse to a detailed, carefully measured floor plan of his dream home. He had wanted to make places that felt interesting and warm. Places that didn’t feel like home, she had joked with him once. At least, not like their home.
He had liked it here. So now Sloane came here, not to the Drain site where he had lost his life, not to their central Illinois haunts, but here, to visit him.
She rarely stayed long. A half hour, maybe, and then she would drift through the other exhibits. The new one downstairs was a series of photographs of big-rig trucks. After wandering through them for a few minutes, she said goodbye to Rebecca, who already looked bored out of her mind, and left. She turned right, walked to the lakefront path, and did a few