you, but just take away that They are gods, but not like the gods we write about with love in the Bible and the Bhagavad Gītā and the Silmarillion. I only say ‘god’ because I don’t know another word for that much power.”
“And these gods, They’re... here now? Awake, back? Or just one of Them is back?”
“No. They still can’t come here; the doors are still locked to them. But magic always seeps through, and lesser things, like… like flies coming through a window screen. This thing, it’s a servant, an ambassador. A former apprentice. But now that it’s come, evil things will happen. They generate magic like poison, powdered cyanide, like a fungus shedding its spores, invisible, everywhere, a crawling ugliness and wrongness that... that... that dusts down and catches and grows and creeps. Anything that is Theirs can scoop it up, use it. And now that it’s here, more may be able to come.”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
We stared at each other for a minute, tense. Eventually her breath slowed, and she reached for her coffee with steady hands.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “I have work tomorrow, I can’t stay. What are we gonna do?”
“Stay over. Don’t take the bus in the morning. I’ll get Rutger to give you a ride.”
“What if it follows me to work when we leave?”
“I’m hoping it’ll stay here and watch me instead. Maybe I can... I don’t know. Distract it by running the reactor. I think that’s what it’s interested in. What drew it here.”
“You’re hoping that... oh God. Is Thou Shalt Greatly Ru This Day in on this? Does he know about the... Ancient Ones?”
“No, and stop making fun of his name.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Yeah. That’s who I was calling.”
“Can they help? Can they... can they do... God, it sounds stupid to even say it. I’m sorry, I’m freaking out but I’m working on it. I need a minute. This isn’t The X-Files, you know.”
“I think I’d look cute with red hair.”
“Who says you’re the scientist in this scenario? You’re clearly Mulder. Look what you’re asking me to believe.”
“Don’t, then,” she said, draining her cup; her face was gray and glistening, all the blood hiding. “If it makes you feel better about all this.”
“It does not. Can They get in the house?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s set up to be hard for humans to get into, not... other things.”
“Great news. Not.”
We dug up an oversized t-shirt for me to sleep in, and I made Johnny promise to stay in the hallway while I showered, repeatedly dropping and chasing one of her mother’s spa soaps around the huge glass box. My hands were shaking so badly I cut my thumb opening the toothbrush package, a bloodless gash on the sharp plastic edge.
I kept telling myself it wasn’t fear, not really, it was something else—exhaustion, dehydration, like yesterday. And that was easy enough, because what had I had to fear so far? In my whole life? Just the little things that were scary but survivable: getting grounded, being bullied at school, one of the kids going missing in the mall. This felt more like something from outside of me, like secondhand smoke, greasily invisible, sinking into my pores, blown from someone unseen. Not something I could scope out and assess, feel the shape and edges of, decide for myself whether I should be scared of it. The dark thing. Harbinger of the Them. Only her word for it, and this placeless, nameless adrenaline.
We took the Indigo Line, a seldom-used route that never meets the main staircase, descending until I convinced myself that the air was growing warmer from the earth’s core, and our thighs were stinging and trembling. Finally we reached a long hallway with a couple of doors on each side, and Johnny let us into one with a thumbprint scanner. It was much cooler than the hallway—and, of course, down here, windowless.
“What is this place?” I said, looking at the two couches kitty-corner to each other, the piles of magazines and blankets, the single phone and lamp.
“Reading room,” she said. I lay on one couch and looked at the ceiling—matte metal, dark gray, studded regularly with screws or rivets, trying to figure out if it spelled anything. A beetle bumbled past on the ceiling, iridescent green and blue.
She said, “I don’t even know if we’re safer down here, but if we’re being watched, maybe we’re harder to see now.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna sleep great now. Wait, we? Are you staying—?”
“Yeah.”
“After all that coffee?”
“Honestly, it