White Shadows

Chapter 13 - White Shadows

***ALEX***

Gabe and I are the first to follow Annie upstairs. We find her sitting on the couch in the living room, staring into space.

"Hey, guys." In a chair across from Annie sits Penny Crowe. We haven't seen her since the Aqua Killer days. She's looking much better now, though, with her slashed throat long since fixed. She still wears her infinity scarf, probably to hide the inevitable surgery scars, but at least she's able to talk properly again. "What's going on? Looks like bad news."

Annie looks up and laughs awkwardly. "Oh, um...no, not really bad news. But if it's not true, I'll be really disappointed." She sighs, hiding her head in her hands. "'Disappointed.' Try 'depressed.'"

"Don't be," I say. I'm tempted to take her hand and comfort her, but I only hesitate when I hear someone climbing up the stairs behind me - someone whom I sense to be Juliet. I turn around and learn I'm not wrong. Returning my gaze to Annie, I say, "I saw a picture of your mom. The woman that kid downstairs was talking about? That was her."

"Are you sure?" Annie asks, sniffling.

As Juliet sits on Gabe's other side, I take Annie's hand at last, just for a second. Long enough to respond, "Positive."

"You better be right," she says. "If I tell my brothers and it turns out we're wrong, they'll probably never recover."

"I imagine they wouldn't." Thompson appears at the top of the stairs and takes a seat in the dining room. "And I also imagine that's why your father didn't want you to hear about this." He's soon followed by everyone else, who finds space wherever they can. The furniture runs out of room pretty quickly, so Freddie ends up on the floor. I don't want to say "redheaded stepchild," but it seems like an appropriate choice of words.

"He said that?" Annie looks very dismayed.

"That's the first thing he said when he opened the door and saw me," Thompson says. "He said, and I quote, 'Please tell me you didn't bring Annie in.'"

None of us can help but laugh at this. "Nice impression of my dad," Annie says.

"I try," Thompson says, wringing his hands for a moment. I guess even in the Second 'Verse, that's a common tic among the elderly. In the old days, when the church (especially in Heaven) was still firmly stuck in the fire-and-brimstone phase, a lot of people took the "idle hands are the devil's workshop" thing a little too literally, and were scared into keeping their hands in motion at all times to avoid being sent to Purgatory. I once read a James Patterson book where one character had the same issue despite being a young guy, not even twenty years old. Patterson, however, wrote it more like a symptom of some autism-spectrum disorder. Stimming, I think they call it.

As the laughter fades, Annie says, "Kinda wish I had a Black Mirror right about now."

"What's that?" Fionna asks as she comes up the stairs herself. "Besides an Arcade Fire song."

I turn to her and smile, remembering that awesome opening track to the Neon Bible album. It's a great song for dancing like nobody's watching, especially when they yell the title line in French: "Un, deux, trois - dis 'Miroir Noir!'"

"Kinda like the Holy Grail of the Second 'Verse," Annie says. "It doesn't exist, but if it did..." She stares into space. "We could all find a use for it, probably. If the stories are true."

"What stories?" I ask.

Annie rolls her eyes. "I'm sorry. Forget I mentioned it."

"Oh, come on," Gabe says. "You mentioned something strange and potentially useful. Why not elaborate?" He scratches his nose. "Especially if it could help us in our war on Preston."