XV.

When Eugene woke in the morning, Todd and Nancy were gone. Eugene, Johnny, and Angelique sat around the kitchen table drinking bitter coffee and trying not to look at the empty spaces where their hosts should be. It was Eugene who finally broke the silence, speaking out over his strangling dread.

“I’m driving into town. I need to see it for myself.”

“You won’t find them there," Angelique said. "You won’t find anything. You know that, don’t you?”

He didn’t want to go, but his dreams hovered around the edges of his vision, making reality impossible to parse. He needed to see Chanlarivyè again with his waking eyes, even if it would be for the last time. He needed to see the grave where Mary Beth’s bones lay. She was there, under the earth, and had been for seventeen years. There was nothing left of her in the bayou, there couldn’t be, but his dreams prodded at him like a toothache.

“I know.”

“I’ll come with you,” Johnny said.

Angelique grimaced but she nodded shortly, like there was no question of her accompanying them. Where Johnny went, she would follow, like Eugene wasn't the only one with a string tied to his ribs.

No one mentioned the risk of returning to the scene of the crime. They walked to the driveway like a funeral procession. It was the first time Eugene had seen the unfiltered sun in days, and it wavered in the sky like a great pale coin tossed up by some sleight of hand, trembling there for just a second before it would start its inevitable descent. He cast his gaze to the ground where the gravel crunched under his shoes.

The drive was quiet. The engine rumbled but no one spoke, and through the windows there was no sign of life. No birds winged above their heads; no insects flung themselves to shatter against the glass. Eugene sat in the backseat and focused on the car jolting under him as they hit unfamiliar potholes, the thrumming vibration in their seats as they drove back to the place where he’d been born. They followed the line of the river, up out of the dusty and neglected farmland until the dirt road turned to cracked pavement, baked hot in the sun, and watery mirages shimmered just out of reach. Johnny kept both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Angelique sat with her head against the window, her expression closed off and hard.

Eugene considered staying in the car once they arrived. He could see Chanlarivyè through the windows, after all; he didn't need to walk the streets himself. He imagined Benoit’s apartment, hollowed out like the man had vanished between one second and the next. Was that how his own apartment seemed, after Johnny and Angelique spirited him away? Had anyone even gone to look?

They rolled into town like a ghost. There were no pedestrians, and no one watching them through curtained windows. Johnny slowed the car to a crawl as they drove through the heart of the town, wheels straddling the center line. There wasn’t even a breeze to stir the trees.