The lights were on inside. May and Em sat at a table with two large men—the soccer dads, the Zaditorians. I’d hoped they wouldn’t be here, but there was no turning back now. The book hadn’t mentioned anything about the potions working on them. I pictured their hideous body parts sprouting out of those other-worldly bubbles. I remembered their tape-worm arms and how fast they’d moved. If they transformed, they would destroy my sister’s bakery. We could run from them. I’d done it before. But we’d have to get lucky.
A woman I’d never seen before, with a He-Man haircut and coat-hanger shoulders, sat at the table beside my family’s. She wore a Christmas sweater. Em was playing a game on my sister’s phone. Warren Rochester stood on the opposite side of the room on a portable, green putting mat. He held a putter over his shoulder. A cell phone holster was attached to his belt. Several golf balls were arranged around the hole at the end of the mat.
Everyone looked at me when I entered. My sister made a sympathetic face, like my dog had just died. But what did she have to be sorry about? I was the one that was sorry. I made the face back at her.
“I told you he would come,” Em announced. “You should have left when you had the chance.”
I was charmed and surprised by her bravado and confidence in me. I had to smile, despite the circumstances.
“Good evening,” Warren said, smiling from ear to ear. “I’m glad you could make it. My people tell me you’re alone, so that’s good.”
I wondered if he was bluffing, if there really were more of them I hadn’t seen who had monitored my approach. Had they seen me spray the poison?
“I’m alone,” I said. “I’m here. You can let them go now.”
Warren prepared to take another putt. “When the storm comes, the ducks have to share the duck pond with the sea gulls.”
“What does that mean?”
“I said I wouldn’t torture them if you came. I didn’t say anything about letting them go. I apologize if you misunderstood. But hey, at least now they won’t be tortured, right?” He pointed to the strange woman, who held a cell phone up to her ear and muttered something. “This is my bond, Caroline Granger. You haven’t met yet. She’s wonderful. Quiet, though, and wary, kind of like a rescue dog you take home for the first time.”
Caroline rolled her eyes and Warren laughed.
“What do you want?” I said.
“Well, let’s see,” Warren said. “I want to play Augusta before I die. I want to become locally renowned for my mosaic artwork. I want a bigger boat. I want I want I want. But mostly I want to keep wanting what I want. You know what I mean?”
At the back of the kitchen, the door to the upstairs apartment opened, and Sheryl Glanton, the quilt lady, came out. She wore a flour print A-line dress, and her hair was bleach blond now instead of brown. A large beach bag hung from her shoulder. She walked toward me, stepping along an imaginary tightrope, with her chest out and her chin up. She set her bag on the table where everyone was sitting, obstructing my view of Em. Then she looked at me for the first time.
“Look,” I said. “I know I forgot to tell you where your quilts are, but you didn’t hold your end of the bargain either by telling everyone they could find me at Kmart. So you can’t really blame me there. If you hurry, though, you might still be able to get your quilts back. I mean, there’s a chance, as long as you let my family go.”
“I am not Sheryl,” she said. “I’m merely using her body. It’s her punishment for not being completely open and honest with me.”
“Who are you then?”
“Such an intimate question. Maybe I should let you interview me.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Caroline said, her arms crossed over her chest, not even bothering to look up from the table she was scowling at. “I have a question for Charlie. Your niece isn’t showing any symptoms of Ghost Heart. Where are you getting the otalith cackle?”
The person in Sheryl’s body said, “Caroline,” in a way that was a rebuke. “I think young Charlie Allison will be the one asking the questions for now. He is my official biographer, after all. He needs to start sometime.”
Caroline shook her head but said no more. Warren had stopped putting to watch the interaction with a smile on his face. He seemed to live in a state of perpetual amusement.
The person in Sheryl’s body placed a hand on her chest and said, “I present to you my name, Blanche Duluth, knowing that faces are nothing more than tools.”
Chapter 5
ILOOKED AT MY sister and said, “It’s going to be okay.”
She looked aggressively confused but acknowledged my reassurance with a nod.
To Blanche/Sheryl, I said, “I don’t understand. You want me to be your official biographer? Is that what all this is about? Is that why you’ve been doing all of this?”
“I want many things from you, Charlie?” Blanche/Sheryl said in a way that made me shiver inside. She pointed a palm at a table by a window. “Sit.”
I sat at the table, and Blanche/Sheryl sat across from me. She lazily batted at the air by her ear as if there was a fly, and the two Zaditorians came over and stood a few feet away like our own personal waiters.
“What have you done with Sheryl?” I said.
“She’s here
