Page 34 of Lion's Share
Lying on the damp grass was a piece of paper. Because it had rained earlier, the writing on the paper was already beginning to smear.
I recognized my mother’s handwriting, though.
Immediately, I bent down and scooped up the note. I made out the word “careful,” followed by a smudge I couldn’t really read. Then what I thought was “shadow,” with another illegible smudge after it.
Well, that was helpful.
Had the unicorn not realized how wet with rainwater the grass was?
Maybe not, or maybe he didn’t understand that most ink wouldn’t stand up to that kind of moisture. And God only knows what writing materials were even available on the other side of the portal. For all I knew, my mother could have been working with some kind of vegetable ink, which wasn’t exactly like a Sharpie when it came to durability.
All I knew was that she had been trying to communicate with me…even if I had no idea what she was trying to say.
Chapter Eleven
Too many thoughts had crowded Ben’s mind that day, which was why he purposely made himself think of nothing at all as he walked home that night. The clouds and fog had parted just enough after the rain that had fallen around dinnertime to show a few stars, but the moon…waning down to its dark phase…was nowhere to be seen. That was fine, however; although Silver Hollow definitely wasn’t the brightest-lit town in the world, there was just enough ambient light from the street lamps over on Main Street and the fixtures on people’s front and back porches that he made his way to the cottage without any incident.
As soon as he was inside, though, he knew there was no chance he’d be able to go to sleep right away.
What in the world was he supposed to make of that strange psychic flash Sidney had experienced at the pet store today? Was it a one-off sort of thing, or was it an early manifestation of more powers to come?
He didn’t know. As he’d already told her, while he might have brushed up against various aspects of the paranormal while researching cryptids and their habitats, it wasn’t as if he’d made a formal study of psychic phenomena.
One thing he did know, however, was that quite a few accounts existed of people suddenly developing one form of psychic powers or another after suffering a traumatic event. He supposed that the disappearance of Sidney’s mother and grandmother could be classified as traumatic, even though she’d lately gotten confirmation that they were in fact alive. They might have chosen to remain on the other side of the portal, for reasons he hoped would eventually come clear, but at least it still seemed obvious enough that they hadn’t perished in the otherworld.
However, they’d disappeared into the portal months ago, and it didn’t seem as if Sidney had experienced any psychic flashes until today.
Which made him believe her sudden onset of psychic abilities must have something to do with the electromagnetic surges that had plagued the town over the past couple of weeks.
The brain worked by using electrical impulses, after all, so Ben didn’t think it too strange that something about the charged atmosphere around Silver Hollow might have woken up a hidden gift inside Sidney’s mind, something she hadn’t even known existed.
Of course, the follow-up to that theory was if the unstable electromagnetic field around town had affected her, surely it must have affected other people as well. He knew he hadn’t experienced any psychic flashes, but that didn’t mean someone else might not have.
Except….
Sidney had never been able to explain why the unicorn had first appeared to that long-ago ancestor of hers. Was it possible the women of her line had something special in their brain chemistry or physical makeup, something that allowed them to have a rapport with mythical beasts that ordinary people wouldn’t? If that turned out to be the case, then he supposed he could see why she might be the only one to have latent psychic powers that had been awakened by the current instability in the area.
While it made sense to him, he had a feeling she wouldn’t be very happy to hear this particular theory. He could tell she’d worked hard through all this to continue believing she was a regular person whose family just happened to have a connection to legendary creatures.
If he challenged that belief, what would happen?
Frowning slightly, he went into the kitchen to get some water, then headed over to his laptop. No way in the world was he ready to go to bed, not when it was only a little past nine o’clock. Besides, he figured it couldn’t hurt to find out what he could about Special Agent Rebecca Morse…and possibly learn a little about what had brought her to Silver Hollow.
Since it was now well into Saturday night and Marjorie Tran would be leaving sometime tomorrow morning, his fears about her path crossing with Agent Morse’s had diminished somewhat, but they wouldn’t disappear entirely until he knew the grad student was well on her way back to Davis.
Because Rebecca Morse wasn’t working undercover, her general bio wasn’t that difficult to find. She was from Pennsylvania and had graduated from UPenn with a degree in international relations, and had been recruited by the FBI and trained at Quantico immediately afterward. It looked as if she’d worked in both the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices before being assigned to something called DAPI.
What the hell was that? Ben thought he was pretty familiar with the alphabet soup employed by the government, thanks to his research on the fringes of things, but he knew he’d never encountered that one before.
Luckily, Google came to his aid. DAPI stood for “Dimensional Anomaly Protection Initiative,” and although he couldn’t find any in-depth information on the organization, it seemed they investigated whenever strange phenomena involving electromagnetic fields were involved.
Well, that explained why they’d shown up here. Ben had no real idea how far the waves from the portal traveled, but he doubted they stopped at the borders of Silver Hollow. No, they’d probably kept moving outward and had been picked up by whoever was monitoring such things, whether that was a government institution or a university research lab. Even if a university had detected those waves first, they would have sent their findings on to the relevant government agency.
And that was probably why Agent Morse and her partner had come to town. So far, it didn’t seem as if she’d found anything of particular use, or she wouldn’t have been interviewing random residents to get their feedback on the phenomena.
Unfortunately, Ben had a feeling they would start putting two and two together soon enough.
Part of him wanted to think that might be a good thing. If DAPI’s entire purpose was tracking and researching these sorts of anomalies, then maybe they’d have some kind of solution, would be able to propose ways to get everything stabilized.
