the iris appeared to be broken, as if the pupil were spilling into it. His eye shifted minutely, and the misshapen pupil glinted, iridescent as a fish scale.
“What . . .” she said.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But it makes those machines go haywire.”
He straightened and stepped out of the taxi line for the next available car, leaving Sloane standing there, strangely breathless.
Sibyl’s house was a duplex with a chain-link fence and a set of kitschy wind chimes hanging next to the front door. A blue Toyota sat in her driveway, its bumper rusted. Mox walked up the porch steps, opened the screen door—which had several holes in it—and knocked.
When Sloane thought of a prophet, she imagined a man in robes warning of coming doom or maybe a fortuneteller in some smoky back room shuffling tarot cards. Sibyl was neither. She was small, middle-aged, wearing a green cardigan with a little star pinned near the collar. She had flung the door open in a panic—or a rage, it was hard to tell—and stuck her finger right in Mox’s face.
“What have you brought with you?” she demanded. She looked over his shoulder at Sloane, standing at the bottom of her steps.
“I’ll explain,” Mox said, “but not out here, obviously.”
“If you think I’m inviting that into my house,” she said, jerking her head toward Sloane, “you’ve got another thing coming.” She stuck her feet into a pair of slippers next to the door and stepped outside. “We’ll go into the garage.”
“Sib,” Mox said.
“Don’t call me that!” She looked around, wild-eyed, like a neighbor was going to pop out of a bush. “Good Lord, boy, have you forgotten where you are?”
She charged down the steps, giving Sloane a wide berth, and led them across her neat lawn to the garage. It smelled like mildew and gasoline, and it was packed with old furniture, sagging boxes, and rugs rolled up tight. For all that it looked like an assembly of junk, there was a kind of order to it, Sloane noticed. Sibyl wandered through the maze of possessions, turning on lamps, clearing chairs, plucking cobwebs from her hair.
“Sit!” she said, gesturing to the chairs. “You’re both huge; it’s intimidating to a little old lady like me.”
“You’re not an old lady,” Mox said with unmistakable fondness. But he took one of the seats.
Sloane stayed where she was. “I’d rather not,” she said. “It’s pretty obvious you don’t want me here.”
“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Mox said.
“Don’t I?” Sibyl raised an eyebrow. “The magic coming off the two of you is going to choke me to death, even dampened. So what is she? Is she like you?”
“Dunno,” Mox said. “Depends what you think I am, exactly.”
“Chosen, obviously. You both stink of it,” Sibyl replied, and Sloane felt like someone had dropped a stone directly into the center of her.
“Chosen?” Sloane looked at Mox. “You’re—”
Splotches of red appeared on his cheeks and crept down to his throat.
“Now, now,” Sibyl said. “Even the dark things of this world are Chosen. It’s not a badge of honor. If anything, it’s like a blinking arrow that says ‘Kill me!’ ” She opened the refrigerator in the corner, took out a bottle of water, and fumbled with the cap, hands trembling. “In this case, though—Mox here is our fated savior, wrapped up in enough siphons to encase a city block in ice, and surrounded by dead bodies. Doesn’t bode well for Genetrix.”
Mox. Chosen. Sloane felt like a computer that had been fried by a power surge.
“Your faith in me always lifts my spirits,” Mox said, with a bite to his words. “Sloane was Chosen, too, Sibyl. But in an alternate universe.”
Sibyl looked Sloane over, then raised an eyebrow. “Interesting,” she said. “Sit down, girl.”
This time, Sloane did, finding a lawn chair near Mox and perching on the edge of it. She was wedged between a lawn statue of a cherub, worn by rain, and a cardboard box with Charlie’s Room scribbled on it in permanent marker.
“On your other world, you fought a battle,” Sibyl said, sinking down onto a fat tree stump. She set her water bottle down and sat slumped, her arms around her knees. She looked so small that way, the bones of her spine sticking out even through her cardigan. “It clings to you still.”
Sibyl was looking down at Sloane’s scarred right hand. Sloane resisted the urge to cover it up.
“That was not your battle,” Sibyl said. “Not really.”
Sloane’s instinct was to argue. It had been her battle;