“Holy shit,” Tom says. “Get this. A couple in northern Illinois claimed to have trapped a creature in their toolshed. They brought me to the shed and asked that I put my ear to the door. I heard movement inside. Then I heard crying. I feigned being impressed and eventually thanked the couple and said goodbye. But later that night I returned and released their twelve-year-old son from the shed.”

“God,” Olympia says. “That’s terrible!”

“Terrible. And get this: A man in Pittsburgh claimed to have buried three creatures in his backyard. He showed me where the ground was soft. When I asked if I might dig them up, he threatened me at gunpoint, telling me that if I told anyone what he’d done to his family he’d shoot me. This is not an easy job I’ve taken on.”

“Jeez,” Olympia says. “And no evidence of an actual catch.”

Tom sees the name of a town, Indian River, and a person, Athena Hantz, but he can’t let Olympia’s last statement just slip by.

“No. But that doesn’t mean anything. Someone’s got one out there, Olympia. You have to remember: there are so many people in the world. We just live in one little camp in one little part of Michigan. Know what I mean?” When he pauses, Olympia sees distance in his eyes, as if he’s on the road to other places. “Someone’s done it. And I wanna know who.”

“Tom. Come on. Don’t be a fool.”

But Olympia understands. A list like this is all and everything Tom has ever wanted. Places where people think like he does. Places far from an abandoned camp harboring a mother with as many rules as she has blindfolds.

“Do you have a book of maps?” he asks her.

“In the library. Of course. Why? You thinking of heading somewhere more progressive?”

Tom laughs, but she hears frustration there.

She takes the pages back.

“Lists,” she says, happy to move on for now. Tom, she knows, will be reading these pages for months to come. Maybe even years. “So many lists. Streets. Incidences. Temperatures. Names.”

“Names?”

“I would think you would be more interested in the achievements than the actual people involved.”

Tom elbows her gently.

“Let me see the names.”

She shows him. Tom squints. Olympia knows this face well. Tom is connecting dots.

“Survivors,” he says.

“How do you know that?”

“Look.”

He points to a legend at the bottom of the first page of names. Symbols beside words like seen and spotted, rumored and…

“Alive…” Olympia says. “Oh, wow.”

They both sit a little more erect on the bed.

“Check if we’re in there,” Tom says. “Go to Michigan.”

Olympia shakes her head.

“We won’t be. We would’ve been if Mom had let him in.”

“Ah. Right.”