Chương 26: “Cecile Comes to the House”

She took the bus. She arrived on a Thursday evening unannounced with a tin of biscuits and the unexplained energy of someone much younger. Lauren made tea. June sat between them at the kitchen table and ate biscuits and was very pleased with this development. Vorrath was on the windowsill upstairs, but he could feel Cecile in the house, not the way he felt threats, not the way he felt the Seekers, something else. He extended his awareness down through the floors, through the house, to the kitchen table.

He was not eavesdropping. He was performing a security assessment. He listened to every word. They talked about June's school. About Lauren's shifts. About the sister in Bristol who didn't call enough and the neighbor who played music too late. Normal things. Surface things. And then June went to get a glass of water and the kitchen was briefly just Cecile and Lauren and Cecile said, quietly: If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"The house feels different than it used to." Lauren wrapped both hands around her mug.

"Does it."

"Settled," said Cecile.

"Like something's keeping an eye." Lauren didn't answer for a moment.

"June found a rock in the closet," she said finally.

"I know," said Cecile.

"I've met the rock." Another pause.

"Is that normal, Mom? Where you're from."

"Finding things in closets?"

"Finding things that—" Lauren stopped. Started again.

"Things that stay." Cecile picked up her mug.

"My grandmother had a word for it. I don't remember the word. I remember what she said it meant." She looked at her tea.

"Means it chose." The kitchen was very quiet. June came back with her water. The conversation moved on. Vorrath withdrew his awareness from the kitchen and sat on the windowsill and did not think about the word chose and what it meant that Cecile's grandmother had a word for it and what it meant that he was apparently something that had a word, in some language he didn't know, in the memory of a woman he had never met. He thought about it for the rest of the night.