asked that they give them to her when we go trick-or-treating later. Good thing it’s Thanksgiving or no one would be home in the middle of the day, and it would be impossible to pull this off. Mrs. Gunderson on the corner is putting out her plastic jack-o’-lantern just for Hannah.”
“You ran around the neighborhood distributing candy, so your daughter can go trick-or-treating?” Mara asked.
“Yeah, is that stupid?”
“No, it’s very sweet.”
“You’re not embarrassed?”
“I think my threshold for embarrassment is a lot higher than it used to be.” Mara stepped off the porch and looked over her shoulder to make sure no one in the house was watching or listening. “You done with the bike? I need to run over to Abby’s house and talk to her father. He must be going crazy that she hasn’t been home for two days.”
He nodded and handed her the helmet. “What are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at the clear sky and told herself the water in her eyes was from the cool air. “Maybe I’ll just stop by and make sure he’s okay, offer some support or something. I mean, what am I supposed to say? I allowed a darkling wraith to turn your daughter into a metaphysical monster bent on ending existence as we know it? That she disappeared into a big bubble?”
“You’re just making yourself crazy,” Sam said. “If you can’t tell him the truth, why tell him anything at all? There’s nothing you can say that will make him feel better about his daughter’s disappearance. What’s the point in going over there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he called looking for her?”
“No.” Mara paused. Furrowing her eyebrows, she said, “No, he hasn’t, and that’s kind of odd. I’d be the first person he would call, if she went missing.”
“Could he be out of town?”
“Maybe.” She strapped on the helmet, took the handlebars and steered the bicycle toward the driveway. “I’m going to run over there. If Mom asks, tell her that I just went for a ride around the block.”
“All right, but I wouldn’t be gone very long, if I were you. Mom seems to be running out of patience with your disappearing acts.”
“She won’t think much of it, as long as she doesn’t see me pulling out of the driveway in my car. Anyway she’s got her hands full in the kitchen.” She mounted the bike and was about to push off but stopped. “Oh, one other thing …”
“Yeah?”
“Sit down with that daughter of yours and find out why I sent her back here.”
Sam shrugged. “I’ve tried to ask her a few questions. All she wants to do is rub my face and talk about trick-or-treating and dragons. Maybe she’ll be more cooperative after she’s gotten that out of her system.”
* * *
Abby lived a couple miles away with her father in a ranch house northwest of the Lantern home. Her mother had died when she was a toddler, and it had always just been the two of them, which made Mara feel that much worse, as she pedaled through the neighborhood. Of course there was no way to explain what happened on the roof of Mason Fix-It two nights ago; Mara wasn’t even sure herself.
Having been possessed by the darkling wraith for a few minutes, Mara understood that it desired to consume her—or more precisely to become her. It wanted to slip on her soul like that serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs wanted to slip on the skins of his victims. She had allowed that to happen to her friend. She allowed it to pull apart all that was Abby, yank her from every realm, take all the many things that she could become and harness it to that vaporous black skeleton, turning her into an incomprehensible horror. How could anyone explain that to a father?
A horn yanked her back from her reverie. A driver to her left waved a fist through his windshield as Mara glided across the four-way-stop intersection without pausing. Mara raised an arm to wave and shrug at the same time. She mouthed I’m sorry as she cleared the intersection.
The pavement on the far side of the intersection sloped upward, and Mara stood on her pedals to build up some momentum. Two blocks later, she took a left onto a tree-shrouded block. During spring and summer, thick foliage kept the neighborhood in cool shadows, but now bare branches reached into the clear blue sky, allowing the bright sun to