Page 137 of The Midnight Knock

At the city’s heart, the column of silver light let out a wail of pain that shook the earth. The wall behind Sarah groaned as a fissure—so like the arc in room 5’s mirror—spread down its grooved surface. Sarah seemed not to notice. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

Kyla wasn’t sure what to make of Sarah Powers. What kind of person willingly signed up to die night after night, just to keep a group of strangers trapped in a motel from hell? Sure, the fate of the world had been on the line, but still—that kind of sacrifice took a special degree of self-loathing. Now, with her purpose failed, Sarah looked ready to just lie down and die.

Kyla didn’t have time for that.

“Come with me,” Kyla said. “We can’t stay here—the whole city is going to collapse if this keeps up.”

“Then let it.” Sarah never took her eyes off the egg. “I’ve ruined my life. I’ve ruined everything.”

“Join the fucking club.” Kyla stuffed her dead boyfriend’s pistol down the back of her jeans and grabbed Sarah by the arm. “Up. Now. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

FERNANDA

Fernanda stood in a room with bare wooden floors, bare wooden walls. A single window looked out onto absolute darkness.

She knew, in some way, that she was in the old house at the foot of the mountain, but the Brake Inn Motel was gone. Outside this house was the void at the edge of reality. Outside the house was pure, utter nothing.

But here, inside the house, was a strange silver mirror.

In the mirror, Fernanda saw all that had been, maybe even all that could be. She saw herself on the bus that had brought her to Frank. She saw herself snapping photographs of Frank’s office: furtive, one eye over her shoulder, still not enough. She saw herself in the safe house at Fort Stockton earlier today (or whenevertodaywas, anymore) when Kyla’s boyfriend, Lance, had come inside and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. I work for the cartel.”

Fernanda had not believed him. Why should she?

When Kyla herself appeared a moment later, Fernanda had done the only thing that seemed smart. She’d said, “Help me.”

Judging by the panic in Lance’s eyes after Kyla shot him—the shock, the betrayal—Fernanda realized he’d been telling the truth.

But already, the image in the mirror had faded, replaced by a vision of Fernanda leaving her brother behind in Monterey with the promise to be home before he could ever miss her. Had Miguel understood her? Did he even care? Who knew.

She heard what Stanley—or the man inside Stanley—had said last night before he killed her.

Frank’s operation is well aware of your brother. There are men watching his house now. Miguel will be dead the minute you cross the border.

Fernanda stared and stared, searching the mirror, only to feel a gnawing realization take hold of her bones, a savage clarity.

And then a sound reached her from downstairs. Someone was weeping.

She turned from the mirror with both reluctance and relief. Sheknew, in her heart, that she was needed elsewhere. That she was here for a reason. That, just like in all her grandmother’s stories, she served a purpose, right along with everyone else.

On her way down the house’s stairs, she found postcards with blurry photographs littering every step.Postcards.Who had once told her about postcards?

The ground floor of the old house was as barren as the top. No furniture. No sign of habitation. The only difference was a terrible stench of blood that lingered in the air. Blood, and that urgent weeping.

Fernanda followed the sound of tears across the living room, past a padlocked door, and rounded a corner into what must have once been a dining room, though the thought of eating in this room nauseated her now. She’d found the source of the stench.

Bodies were stacked in piles around the room, strewn across the floor, slumped against the walls. Blood coated them, their eyes wide with horror. Their faces were horribly flat, like they’d been crushed in a massive press. Blood oozed from their pores. Gray matter had dried in the shells of their ears.

Worst of all, every corpse in this room belonged to the same person.

Penelope.

Penelope Holiday, again and again and again. The girl had died a hundred times and been left here to rot.

Sitting in the midst of the carnage, plopped right down in a pool of blood, was a young girl who couldn’t have been more than eight. One look at her, and Fernanda could see the child was Penelope’s sister—though, of course, on some level this made no sense.

Fernanda had picked up plenty by living at Frank’s house. She knew that Penelope’s mother and sister had been shot in their beds long ago. She even suspected that Frank (or someone in his operation) had hired the gunman, a specialist at these things, apparently. Penelope’s mother, after all, had been planning to go to the FBI.

Dead or not, the little girl was here now, and she was wailing just like Miguel used to wail.