Nick twisted around to look behind them. “Shadow?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Julia. “I’m not sure. I keep seeing glimpses of it when we pass streetlights.”

“I didn’t think I saw any following us from the cemetery.”

Julia shook her head. “I didn’t either, but the light’s so spotty…”

“Yeah. Well, pick up speed once we’re out of the city, and we should lose anything that’s on us.”

“I know,” said Julia. Still, she kept looking to the mirrors anxiously. They drove south, away from the city, into a long patch of road that was only sporadically lit. Julia drove as fast as the old van allowed, and with every street light they passed, Nick and Gaby turned to watch the pool of light disappearing behind them. They didn’t see anything they could be sure of. After a while, they turned onto a smaller two-lane road, and from there onto a gravelly road, barely more than a trail.

“Sorry about the bumps here,” Julia said. “Her shocks aren’t the sprightliest.”

“Hey,” returned Nick. “Let’s see how yours are, when you’re eighty.”

Julia grinned. “Nick does all the maintenance if he can. We saved up a lot of money before we left, but we’re running low. We agreed when we found you we’d stop for a while and pick up jobs.”

“How long have you been traveling?” asked Gaby.

“Three months. Hold on.” Julia twisted the wheel, steering them into what looked to Gaby like a tiny gap in a thick tangle of trees. The van bounced and rattled, twigs scraping its sides, until they came out into a clearing, where a small, white, tumbledown church stood.

“And here we are!” said Julia. “All the conveniences of home, if home has a leaking roof and a booming rodent population.” They got out of the van. ‘Leaking’ was a generous word: half the roof was falling in on one side. “It’s not very safe from an ordinary point of view, but it’s very safe to us.”

Gaby nodded, looking at the haphazard rows of small grey stones that surrounded the church on three sides.

“In a pinch,” Julia added, “we can sleep in the van, but we find it’s better for harmony if we have at least a pew’s width between us.” They got out, and Gaby followed Nick and Julia around to the back of the van. “We fixed it up ourselves,” said Julia as she opened the doors. “It was our most winning argument when we were trying to convince Will to bring us along.”

All around the top was a row of shelves, built with a three-inch ridge to keep things from sliding off. The shelf on the left held assorted food items, the one on the right held cardboard boxes labeled with Will’s, Nick’s, and Julia’s names. There were two benches, each one about three feet wide, on the sides of the van, with an assortment of bags underneath each. At the back was a propane stove and three large metal basins stacked together. Julia hopped up into the van and began handing things out to them.

“We pack up every time we leave here, just in case we have to skip town, or someone comes by the church.” She pulled the stove to the edge of the van and hopped out again. The three of them lugged their burdens—four sleeping bags and three duffles—into the church, and dumped them in the middle of the aisle.

“So,” said Julia. “Are you hungry? Are you sleepy? Do you want a bath?”

Gaby had been about to ask for Will’s note, barely able to contain her impatience, but she was taken aback by the last question. “You can do baths?”

“Of course!” said Julia. “You don’t think I’d lug myself around with two teenage boys who couldn’t wash? We’ve got a tub for dishes, one for clothes, and one for people. We boil water on the stove, though I want to get one of those sun bags now that it’s spring. It doesn’t stay hot for very long, but it’s long enough to get clean.”

Gaby was impressed. She hadn’t given much thought to washing, or to any of the details of domestic life, if she went on the run again. “I’d love a bath. But first I’d like to read the note Will left me.”

“Okay,” said Julia, unzipping one of the duffle bags and pulling out a folded paper from the top. “Here it is. I’ll start the water heating.”

It was written in their language, but in Roman letters—their invented script was tedious for long messages. Gaby read:

Dear,
This is in case we don’t make contact today. I met a man in dreams earlier this week, when we first came to Atlanta. He recognized me right away as another luienth, and we spoke for a while. He was a little reluctant and wouldn’t tell me why, but in the end I got him to give me his name and address, with the promise that I wouldn’t write it down or tell it to anybody. I meant to wait for you of course, but last night I saw him packing in a hurry. I’m afraid he’s running away from me, and he probably knows I saw him, so I don’t want to lose an hour. If I don’t see you at the school I’ll send Nick and Julia after you, while I go to find him. I don’t see why I wouldn’t be back at base tonight, but if something goes wrong, you’ll be able to find him. The number is one two seven nine three.
Yours,
Will

Gaby read it three times: once, to get the sense of it; twice, to hear his voice in every word; three times, to make sure she understood it thoroughly. It was like him, direct and to the point, with no words wasted on formalities or long explanations. It was all she needed.

It was intriguing that he had at last met another luienth. She hoped desperately that he’d been able to encounter the man in the flesh, and gotten him to talk. Was he there still? They would certainly have a lot to talk about, and Will might have chosen to take refuge there overnight, rather than travel all the way back out here. She’d have to ask Nick and Julia what their plan for meeting back up had been.

The last sentence was easy to interpret: it was almost certainly the house number of the man he’d gone to visit. He couldn’t give her any other information, of course, because proper names didn’t translate into their language. But he’d promised she could find the man, so he must have hidden or encoded the rest of it somehow. Tomorrow she would look for it, if Will wasn’t back. Now, though, the thought of food and a hot bath were bringing home to her what a long, exhausting day she’d had. She folded the letter carefully and put it in her backpack, then went to find Julia.

Julia was outside at the back of the van, standing at the propane stove and stirring something that smelled delicious. “There you are!” she said. “All your questions answered?”

“Sort of,” said Gaby.

Julia grinned. “My brother, eh? Sometimes I’d like to throttle him.”

“What was your plan for tonight? Do you still expect him back?”

“I guess so,” said Julia. “He told us to find you and hang out at the cemetery until nightfall. If he couldn’t meet us then, he said he’d make his own way back, or find somewhere to crash. He’s got a phone, but we’re under strict instructions not to call it.” She added, as an afterthought, “You don’t think he’s in trouble, do you?”

“Noo,” said Gaby. “I don’t see any reason to think that.”

“Well, good.  Your bath is ready, I’ve set up the tub in the bathroom. There’s water in there already, just add this until it’s hot enough.” She handed Gaby a heavy kettle off the stove. “Dinner should be ready when you’re done.”

Fifteen minutes later, after rejoicing in the feel of hot water on her skin, Gaby sat with Nick and Julia on the floor of the church, wearing her thickest and softest sweater, with her hair wrapped in a towel, eating baked beans and bread. At this moment, she would have sworn it was the best bath and the best meal she’d ever had.

“So you’ve been doing this for three months?” Gaby asked Julia.

“Yep,” said Julia. “It’s all right. Kind of fun, actually. One thing we swore, we’d stay away from motels.” Gaby nodded. They had all had enough of motels to last three lifetimes. Decent ones at first, but they’d gotten progressively rattier as the chase had gone on, as their money had run out.

“Remember when there was that huge party of kids next door?” said Gaby. “And Nick and Hannah crashed and stole their food?”

“Three bags of chips,” Nick said. “And Mom was going to make us give them back until she saw the cars they drove up in.”

“And then they kept us up all night, and Mom said go ahead and steal a car if we could wire it.”

“I totally could’ve,” said Nick.

“And that wouldn’t have been suspicious at all, a ragged family of eight driving around in a BMW and staying in ratty motels. Which had a tendency to burn down after we’d left.”

Nick snorted. “Yeah, that would have pretty much finished us with the cops.”

“How did you guys settle that?” Gaby asked. Running from place to place for no apparent reason, leaving a trail of burning buildings behind them, had presented a decidedly suspicious appearance to the authorities, and after a few weeks they’d been running from police as well as hounds.

They both looked acutely uncomfortable. Julia fiddled with her bread, and said, “They think Paul did it, somehow. Unbalanced teenager, kind of thing. Or—or you.” She added hastily, “We didn’t tell them it was you, or anything. We stuck as close to the truth as we could, and let them draw their own conclusions.”

Gaby shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m not that surprised. They had to think something.”

“Yeah…” said Julia. “Um. I guess I should tell you, the others think that too. Meg, and Claire, and Simon. Even Hannah says that’s what happened. Back when she would still talk about it at all. Even though she knows better… And of course none of them want to think it was Paul.” There was a long, heavy silence. Gaby wasn’t exactly surprised by this, either. It was too much to expect that the older Colven children, who had been grown up and elsewhere when the hunt began, should believe some fantastical story about invisible hounds. Gaby didn’t like that they had probably spent the last three years hating her for what she’d done to their family, but it was understandable.

“You have to understand,” Julia blurted. “Hannah was… she was really upset by what happened. She wasn’t okay, none of us were. She didn’t know what to think or who to trust, the world didn’t make sense any more. When the police started to hint that you or Paul had been behind it, it was a relief. She didn’t have to be spooked by every shadow she saw. And so… she kind of clung to that, even though she should have known better.  She kept telling herself it was true until she believed it.”

Julia was pleading, and Gaby looked at her sharply. Gaby and Hannah had only ever dimly acknowledged each other’s existence; Hannah had been nearly a teenager when Gaby and Will met, and very absorbed in her own world. Nor was it likely they’d meet again any time soon. There was no reason for Julia to plead for Gaby’s understanding of Hannah.

“You believed it too,” Gaby said quietly. Julia looked miserably guilty.

“For a little while. It was just—it was so much easier. I don’t know. I know it was crazy. I saw everything you did. It was just nice to imagine it was all over. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Gaby gave a tiny shrug. “It’s okay. It’s not like you were doing me any harm.” She wanted to ask what had changed Julia’s mind, and she wanted to ask Nick if he’d thought the same thing, but her chest felt heavy and tight and she was suddenly afraid she might shout or cry. It really was okay, she told herself. It was perfectly understandable, for all the reasons she and Julia had just gone over. And it wasn’t as if they still believed she’d gone insane and destroyed half their family. But the crushing weight in her chest didn’t respond to these considerations.

“Well, I’m really tired,” she said. “I’ve had a long day.”

“Yeah,” said Julia, getting up hastily. “So have we.” They unfurled their sleeping bags in strained silence, lay down on the pews, and went to sleep.