Page 113 of The Midnight Knock

The girl was wrapped in blankets, seated on a stack of cushions in a thin puddle of water. A blocky black shape—Sarah’s satellite phone, if Ethan had to guess—was at her side, along with a few empty bags of chips and a candy bar. The girl had clearly come prepared to ride out the night.

But she wasn’t alone.

Another girl, much younger than Penelope, was crouched behind her. The younger girl was strange, somehow both here and not: her skin and hair were vaporous and pale, her whole body cast with a soft silver pallor. After everything that had happened, Ethan wasn’t particularly surprised to realize he was looking at a spirit. A shade. What was Penelope’s sister’s name? Herdeadsister?

Adeline.

“NO!” the younger girl screamed, loud enough to be heard over the mountain. “We’ve been safe! We’ve been safe here every night. Now he’ll know where to find us. HE’LL KNOW!”

Ethan felt an icy tingle along the back of his neck. It climbed into his scalp.

Jack Allen’s voice whispered in his ear.

“Thank you, Mister Cross. I’ve wondered for ages where these girls have been hiding.”

Glancing after the voice, he saw a familiar face looming near his ear. Blank eyes. Sharp cheeks. A tight, tight smile. It was Jack Allen, thin and silver and vaporous as the shade of the girl in the water tank.

The man smiled wider. His eyes were inches from Ethan’s own.

“What?” the man said. “Did you think I could ever reallydie?”

The little girl in the water tank was still screaming at Ethan. “WHY ARE YOU RUINING IT?WHY ARE YOU RUINING IT?”

Ethan held Jack Allen’s gaze. “Why are you doing this? Why do you want to kill us?”

Jack Allen started to laugh. His mouth this close, Ethan could smell the staleness on him: time, rot, a man who’d lingered too long in the dark.

Jack Allen said, “Don’t be afraid, Mister Cross. It’s for a good cause. I will build a grand world atop these corpses. I will create a future unbound by consequence and fear.”

A deafeningBOOMcame from the mountain, followed by a shock wave that knocked Ethan and Kyla to their knees.

Jack Allen whispered in his ear, “See you tomorrow, Mister Cross.”

The scrap of silver material Ethan had taken from the house dropped from his hand. It shivered across the quaking dirt, dancing right at the edge of the water tank’s hole.

It started to fall.

Ethan snatched it from the air.

Kyla still had hold of her own silver fragment. “What are we supposed to do?”

Ethan glanced over his shoulder: Jack Allen had dissipated, and judging by the way the ground was shaking, they had more immediate problems. Ethan thought back to Tabitha’s story in the cafe. He thought of the note The Chief had written to Sarah Powers. Before he could talk himself out of it, Ethan opened his mouth and dropped the shard of silver metal on his tongue.

Sure enough, it melted like water. Warm, tingling water.

Ethan swallowed.

Kyla watched him, nodded, said, “Bottoms up.”

She dropped the silver shard into her mouth. Her eyes opened wide—surprise, no doubt, as it dissolved—and she swallowed.

“Do you feel any different?” she shouted.

“I don’t know.”

No time for more questions. A new sound came, a great crash of breaking stone. It was the last sound the planet would ever know.

Ethan took Kyla’s hand. In the final silence—in this new, absolute hush—a great silver explosion tore free from the crown of the mountain, followed by a shock wave that flattened them to the earth. There was a blast of silver light, hot and pure, and it blinded them a moment before the heat vaporized everything in its wake. The last thing Ethan thought was: