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.“A message,” Jim said.“A … something else.I don’t know.I think maybe he knew the moment he opened it.”“She used us,” Trix said.“Somehow.”“Yeah.” Jim looked around at the crying, bleeding, broken people and the ruin of two Bostons.If they were right, it meant that not only had Veronica betrayed and used them, not only had she arranged for the murder of Peter O’Brien—and the third Oracle as well, if they hadn’t figured it out—but it meant that the old bitch had wanted this to happen.She had planned for this destruction.He folded the envelope and almost blank page and stuffed them into his pocket.Then he took Trix’s hand.“Come on.”“Why? We’ve got nowhere to go.”Coughing on the dust of ruined buildings and the smoke from a hundred fires, with cries and sirens still ringing out, he pulled her close.“Jenny and Holly are still out there somewhere.”Trix bit her lip, nodded, and wiped tears from her eyes.Whistles the WindAS THEY ran, what had happened impressed itself upon Trix with every step.The dislocation she felt should have been aggravated by the earthquake—an event beyond her experience, shoving her farther away from safety and the life she knew so well—but in fact the disaster seemed to have jarred her toward sense and understanding.Maybe it was the sight of her city in ruins, though it was not quite the city she knew.But more likely it was the excruciating sight of human suffering.These people, whichever version of Boston they might have come from, were just like her.East Broadway was in ruins.The road had been flipped like a giant sheet, coming to rest with bulges and bumps that gaped open to the night sky.Street lamps leaned drunkenly over the undulating road or back against cracked and shattered buildings.The power was out, and the only light came from the half-moon peering between intermittent clouds, car headlamps, and the occasional fires that had sprung up in the ruins.To the north the sky glowed yellow, and Trix could hear the barely audible roar of a massive fire, perhaps as far away as the airport.Already, sparking embers were drifting up from the glow, like fireflies evading the cataclysm.A breeze whispered along the street, like the city gasping in pain.“How many do you think are dead?” she asked Jim.“Hundreds.Maybe thousands.”“I wish we could stop and help—”“We can’t,” he interrupted.“I’m sorry, Trix, but you know we can’t.The only thing keeping me from breaking down here is the thought of finding Holly and Jenny.We know what’s going on—about the different Bostons—but they don’t.Imagine how terrified they must be.Christ, Trix, I’ve got to find them.I’m going to lose my mind!”“But which Bostons collided?” she asked, gazing around.“My guess is the Irish and Brahmin.Veronica said those were the weaker, because they were splintered from the original.”“And you believe her?”Jim shrugged.“Well, then,” Trix said.“If the Irish Boston and the Brahmin Boston just … merged, then there’s another Oracle in the city now.”Jim whipped the envelope from his pocket.“Her address is on Harrison Avenue.Sally Bennet.Maybe she’ll know.Maybe she’ll be able to find them!”Jim’s eyes were filled with the desperate knowledge that this was no longer only about them.And Trix understood how heavy that knowledge weighed on him, because she felt it, too.Jenny and Holly’s disappearance had led indirectly to this.And what about those things in the bar, those wraiths? Those things followed us there, she thought, shivering as she remembered the faceless things standing motionless as the earthquake struck.Watching.In the distance came the grumbling, earthshaking impact of a building’s collapse, and Trix couldn’t help thinking, I’m listening to people die.She remembered watching the Twin Towers struck by hijacked aircraft, and each time the impact was shown on the news that day—again and again, the blossoming explosions as regular as the country’s panicked heartbeat—she’d thought, I’m seeing hundreds of people die, in that single moment.It had been unbearable, and hypnotic.“Those things,” Jim said.He pushed her gently into a shop doorway, feet crunching over shattered glass.Mannequins wearing expensive clothing had toppled into the street, and behind them the ceiling had come down, broken water pipes spraying the shop’s interior.“They followed us to O’Brien, then killed him while we were asleep.They needed us to come through—it’s like they were waiting for us—and we both felt spooked on our way to O’Brien’s.It was them, watching.”“Yeah.” Trix nodded.“So, what if they follow us to Sally Bennet, too? If they kill her, maybe this will happen again.”Trix closed her eyes.Frowned.Opened them again.“Jim, Veronica gave you their addresses.She knew where they lived
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