“Don’t ever say my sister’s name again,” I said through clenched teeth, and threw the file across the room.
“I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I realize this is a difficult situation for you. And Blanche does too, you know? She does not lack self-awareness. She understands that dedicating an entire town to chronicling and critiquing her greatness is a self-indulgence, but she has done and will do so much for the universe, that we believe this is the least we can do to honor her. And make no mistake she knows how dangerous you are to her plans, her legacy. She decided not to kill you, not just because your rekulak’s reaction would be unpredictable, but because you are her grandson and she values family. But if you do not cooperate with us, there are ways we can punish you.” That last part she said wearing a mask of sympathy over her face.
“You people murdered my family,” I said, keeping all emotion out of my voice, “and turned my bond into a zombie. What more could you possibly do?”
Meadow exaggerated a sigh and looked up at the ceiling. “If this town isn’t celebrating the grand opening of your bakery in three days, we will peel the skin from your forearm like it was a banana. An extremely painful procedure. But you will heal quickly, I’m told. And we will continue to skin you alive until the bakery is open, per Blanche’s instructions, of course.”
I knew the Friends were capable of anything, but the threat of physical torture took me by surprise. I expected more cackle-based methods from them. But I wasn’t afraid, mostly because they were giving me exactly what I wanted. A bakery would have flour. I could suffer one more indignity for that, for the opportunity to defeat this smug and twisted cult.
“By the way, before you get too excited, this is a gluten-free town,” Meadow said, as if reading my mind. “So your bakery must be gluten-free as well. As I said, we know you are dangerous, and we aren’t stupid. In preparation for your arrival, we expelled all the gluten from this town, as well as the typewriters and keyboards. You will not be entering Blanche’s whorl again. You will not be summoning your rekulak, as I have been assured the meditation method takes years to master. You will be baking delicious, gluten-free treats that honor the greatness of Blanche Duluth.”
Chapter 22
AGLUTEN-FREE TOWN. I was truly in a living hell. There was no way to make a passable totem with cornflour. I had no choice now. I had to find Bruce and Pam and escape. They would lead me to Naomi, to the sourdough totem.
I hoped whatever was inside the ficus room would help, because I had no clue how to get the others past the Wall of Blanche. I had no intention of creating a gluten-free menu in honor of the person who murdered my sister and niece. And I didn’t want to find out what being skinned alive felt like.
I marched to the library, where a dozen or so people were still lined up at the check-out desk, and I pretended to peruse the books on the shelf nearest the room by the ficus plant until I was satisfied no one was watching, then I delicately opened the door and slipped inside. A dying fluorescent bulb on the ceiling provided enough light for me to see I was in a storage closet—shelves full of office and cleaning supplies—and Hugo Sinclair was standing at the back of the closet in a black robe. His large nose cast a shadow over his mouth.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I want you to be of help for once,” Hugo said in his alarmingly deep voice. “As the shaka of the Sinclair line you have been pathetic, but now you have an opportunity at a smidgeon of redemption.”
“I’ve been pathetic?” I tried to keep my voice down. “You betrayed me and your own sister.”
“I saved my sister.” His eyes were flat, as if he were tolerating an ignorant child. “She was about to be poisoned. If I hadn’t protected her, she would be insane now. As for you . . . I don’t know you. Your existence threatens the nature of reality. It’s not personal. The world is just a safer place with you dead. I’d try to kill you again, but the damage is already done. It would be pointless.”
“It may not be personal to you, but I take it very personally.”
He swatted the air. “Kaliah didn’t send you here to argue with me about things you don’t understand. We are running out of time. In three, maybe four days, there is going to be a flood like we haven’t seen in fifty years. That will be our opportunity to strike, when this whole town is inundated.”
“How do you know that? Are you a weatherman?”
“I listen to the radio. It has been snowing in the mountains for weeks, the rivers are already overflowing, and in a few days, a tropical storm will land on our shores. That means warm rain. That means the snow is going to melt. That means a flood is coming—a big one. That means we have three days to figure out how to stop the Friends. Thanks to you, our efforts will be too late for some. We can only hope to limit the damage. Best-case scenario: thousands of people die. Worst case scenario: reality, as we know it, ends.”
He was right. I hadn’t realized it before, but he was right. The best-case scenario, stopping Blanche, meant the death of thousands of people. They would die the same way my sister had. I’d been so focused on revenge, on fixing my mistake, I’d failed to realize what that would mean. Blanche was infecting the whole county and beyond with her cackle right now.
