Frowning, he closed the car door and walked around to the driver’s side, getting in. Looking through the windshield, he saw that she was standing in the same place she’d been in when they arrived. She was no longer on her phone, but she was once again talking to the fake family on the couch. He saw her begin to pace agitatedly, and she raised her right arm as though to emphasize a point.

Feeling cold, Brad turned the car around and headed back down the driveway to the street.

2

Another branch of The First People’s Bank appeared overnight.

It showed up on the west side of the highway near the nursery. No one had known it was coming, and its construction had not been approved, but it was there in the morning, a dark brooding structure that, while only a single story, looked as though it were crouched and waiting to rise to its full height. There were no cars parked in the newly paved lot in front of it, but the bank was clearly staffed. Through the glass doors, in the dimness of the interior, individuals could be seen moving about, performing their duties, and of the few people who slowed down on the highway and tried to peek curiously to see what was what, none stopped by and none went in.

3

His gut had been right. Aaron had been absent from school all week, and had not responded to any texts, voicemails or emails. Nick had not been brave enough to go by his friend’s house, but he told his mom and dad about it this time, and they had contacted the sheriff. He wasn’t sure what had happened after that, but there’d been nothing on the morning announcements and no one from the sheriff’s office had called his parents back, so he assumed Aaron and his family were still alive.

Somewhere.

The truth was, there’d been absences in most of his classes this week, and while there might have been some kind of bug going around, Nick didn’t think so. Ever since Victor’s capture in the gym, the school had had a weird vibe, and he was sure he wasn’t the only one to have noticed it. The entire town, in fact, seemed to be under some kind of spell. No one talked about it, no one acknowledged it, but everyone was aware, and when he’d gone with his parents to the grocery store, several of the shelves and refrigerated cases were either empty or nearly so, as though shipments had not arrived or people in town had stocked up in preparation for some disaster. Throughout Montgomery, a lot of homes appeared to be for sale, and the streets, while never really filled with traffic, seemed nearly deserted.

Now he was here, eating lunch alone, looking out at a quad that was curiously underpopulated.