Elle looks at me. I notice the
eyebrows pressed together and the way she absently pulls on her cardigan
sleeves. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Don’t you
think that’s going to be the first place they look for us?’
‘Who?’
She raises
her eyebrows as though it should be obvious. ‘Windermere and her people. How do
we know they’re not already coming?’
‘It’s sixty
years in the future,’ I say. ‘How do we know they’re even still around.’
Even as I
say it I know I’m silly to even think the words. The dead have no life expectancy.
‘Well where
can we go? Somewhere with a lot of space.’
We think
for a second. Sandra waits with anticipation. She expects us to come out with
the perfect place to support a hundred people all at once.
My mind draws a blank. The
commotion is raising all around us. There are more police now, and fire
engines. The woman we saved from the car is still speaking to someone, though
she seems to have calmed somewhat. Where can we go? An abandoned apartment
block? That’d be nice – Ghost Towers we could call it. Or Spooky Heights. I
wish I could ask Benjamin. I start and think he might be in Central Park even
now. Has he continued the same routine? Has he been waiting for me for our game
of chess for the past sixty years?
Just as I’m drawing a blank, Yates
perks up.
‘Where’s the last place
Windermere will come looking for us?’
‘Pet home? Refuge centre?
Anywhere with nice people,’ Elle grumbles.
‘Thacker,’ he replies. ‘We go to
Thacker’s house.’
Yates greets my stare with a
sense of enthusiasm I’m not accustomed to finding in him. Thacker’s house was
big, but it also contained Thacker, the woman who sent us to the Doldrums in
the first place. What if we get there and she responds by sending us back?
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