looking not at her face but lower down. She looked, too, and saw that both her hands were speckled with patches of dried blood. There was a little on her coat, too.
“It’s okay,” she said, though actually she now realized that her hands hurt quite a lot. “I’m fine. I broke a phone, that’s all.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I needed somewhere to sleep. You left the door unlocked. Don’t worry. I haven’t stolen anything.”
“That’s…look…”
The man evidently didn’t know what to do. He was wearing a suit and a tie and had the glaze in his eyes that Madison’s dad did when he was really busy and was having trouble seeing past the front of his own head. But he obviously also believed he had to do something nice.
“It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “I’m fine. Honestly.”
“I need to…I’ll take you to the nearest police station. Come on.”
“That really won’t be necessary,” Madison said, slipping out of the car and smiling up at him.
“I think it kind of is. Necessary. I can’t just…”
She shook her head. “What time is it, friend?”
“What? It’s nearly midday. But…”
“Perfect,” she said. “Thanks for everything. I shall recommend your facilities very highly.”
She reached her right hand up toward him. Disconcerted into an automatic response, the man shook it limply. Madison shook his hard and then walked away. As she started down the stairs, she turned and glanced back. He was still standing there, looking down at his hand. She knew he wouldn’t be coming after her. She’d never understood how easy it was to deal with grown-ups, after you realized most of them were basically frightened of you. Sure, moms and dads were okay with their own children, but they always watched other children out of the corner of their eyes, as if all other kids were wild and ungoverned. And children could be, Madison knew. Little girls had a power and light all their own. It was something most grown-ups couldn’t see—but something that, once glimpsed, you wanted to share. You wanted to spend time with them, to get to know them thoroughly, get to know them very well. This was what the man in the yellow car in Portland had been about, she now realized, though he’d been an amateur. He didn’t know you could find the spark and keep it, too. If she had her time again, she would have talked to the man properly, told him what she knew.
She emerged from the parking lot and walked down toward the square with the totem pole and the drinking fountain. A lot of things were clearer to her now, even parts of the notebook that had originally been inexplicable:
The seven ages of man?
Of course not. As with everything, there are nine.
By 9—we must be rooted, living securely above or below. 18—we may start pulling strings. By 27—there should be sufficient control to be consistent in aim. At 36—adulthood, true Dominance begins. 45—without integration, the crisis point. 54—the age of Power. 63—Wisdom. At 72—the search starts again. 81—time to leave: we do not die as others do, and so the parting of this place must be under our control. Add the numbers which make up these nine ages—3 + 6 or 7 + 2—all in turn resolve to a digital root of 9. So it has been enshrined, hidden in plain sight. A triangle = 180° (1 + 8 + 0 = 9); the square and circle are 360° (3 + 6 + 0 = 9)—all regular geometrical shapes have a digital root of 9. Even 666—do I need to tell you by now to add those three numbers, and then add them again?
This is not an accident. Our mathematics was created to honor the power of 9. To the power of the Nines. But the Nines themselves have become weak in the meantime, spiritualized, have even come to believe in their own cramped version of the lies. To believe that our power must be constrained, that we must enter life as a newborn —must hide in plain sight, just another tree in the forest.
But the forests have all been cut down.
I will not fall with them. Did Aristotle not say “The weak are anxious for justice and equality: the strong pay no heed to either”? What happens to those who do not believe as the Nines do? Those who dare contradict them? Ah—over those souls, the truly free, then they would make themselves gods, sitting in judgment upon us.
St. Thomas Aquinas said: You must know a soul by its acts.
You are free to know me by mine.
And Lichtenberg said: We imagine we are free in our actions, just as in dreaming we deem a place familiar which we then see doubtless for the first time.
I am what you dream
I watch your back, always.
I am what guides your hand.
As she entered the square, she caught sight of her reflection in a plate-glass window and was surprised at how short she was. She looked at herself for a long time, remembering the day when she and Mom bought the coat in Nordstrom’s, at the head of Courthouse Square in Portland. Remembered the two of them seeing it for the first time and knowing they were circling it together, that it was really expensive but they both wanted it in their lives. Madison had said nothing, knowing that this was a decision her mother had to come to under her own steam, that an extravagant spur-of-the-moment gift would appeal to her sense of hip motherhood, where acceding to a demand—however muted or subtle—would not: Madison not understanding how she knew this, but knowing it all the same.
They left the store and walked around others, looking but not really looking, and Maddy had known that if she just kept quiet and was sweet, they would find themselves back in Nordstrom.
They had.
And she realized now how she’d known how to get what she wanted that day, and on other days. She realized that something within her had always known how to dominate, how to quietly get people to do what she wanted. Someone had been at her back then, too.
He had always been inside.
It was nice in the square, but it did not feel as it had at night. Though there were more people around, it somehow felt less crowded. Maybe that was because the people here now were not the same. They were not like the homeless men, but rather were tourists, passing through. People who took pictures of things instead of seeing them, who thought they owned a place because they stood in it, instead of understanding it worked the other way around.
One of them was different, though. When she’d been there about half an hour, sipping her way through an Americano from the Starbucks on the corner, Madison saw an SUV pull up on the other side of the street. A man got out. He walked straight through the traffic and into the square. He didn’t seem to be there for any reason, but sat on a bench for a while. He was quite tall and had broad shoulders and for a moment Madison had an urge to run over to him and tell him her name and ask him to help. She could see that he was different from the man whose car she’d slept in, that if this man knew that there was something he should do, then he would not stop until it was done.
But instead she found herself slipping off the bench and walking quickly out of the square—not looking back until she was sure the man wouldn’t be able to see her. Madison might want the man’s assistance, but the man in the cloud did not. She dimly recalled the attempted phone call in the night—largely through the aftereffects on her hands—but not what it might have been about. Instead she realized that she now wanted to make another call, to the man she’d previously been avoiding. She felt stronger now. She could deal with him.
When she located a phone—this time in the lobby of a hotel a few streets away, a fancy one with an awning with red and gold stripes—she got out the notebook and removed from it the white card with the number on the back.
He answered immediately.
“It’s me,” she said. “I need some information.”
“Where are you?”
“Did you hear what I said, Shepherd?”
“Look,” the man said. His voice was patient and annoying. “I want to help. But I need to know where you are. You’re nine years old. You’re…not safe.”
“Are you done talking?”
“No,” he said. “Madison, nothing’s going to happen until you tell me a place to come and meet you. Do that
