“Hope?” William’s forehead wrinkled. “I have to physically touch them to stop their abilities. The others like us are all over the world. How I can begin to stop them all?”

“I’ve spent a lifetime of defeat after defeat. Heartbreak after heartbreak. When you get to my age, you celebrate the signs of possibility. And speaking of signs, that one reads we’re in Uptown. She said it’s where she lived.”

“I vaguely remember these streets,” William said as a strand of beads in a magnolia flashed momentarily in the headlights. “My parents used to take us here all the time for the kid-safe parades in Mardi Gras. It was one of the few times I could blend into a crowd without being identified. Quincy actually made a joke about drinking too many hurricanes and not remembering the times he’d been here.”

“Bizarre to wish that someone who is practically a stranger was still here,” Steven said.

William smiled sadly. “I didn’t even know who he was before all this.”

“We used him. I’ll admit it now. We didn’t know what it would take to get you where you needed to go. With Quincy, though, your options were endless. We’d hoped the realization that both your great-grandparents started on this path would help you see past his … eccentric ways, and his insulting job offer. I’ve seen his YouTube videos and read his interviews. He believes in stuff that even I find farfetched. I wonder, now, what he’ll do with what he knows. If he goes to the FBI, tells them where we’re headed…”

“I doubt that. He saw enough to know to stay away from any government agent.”

“That’s true. He’s probably holed up in some posh hotel or maybe a boardroom, being grilled by his board of directors on how to handle this PR crisis. Eventually, though, they’ll have to alert his shareholders that he is alive, in order to reverse the plunging stock. His company took a big hit when he disappeared. And once that’s out, the FBI will come to him. We don’t have much time.”

“But even if we do convince Jane to come with us, which sounds almost impossible given her reaction to what we told her … I believe the others are on the East and West coasts. And that’s just in the United States. They’re all over the world. I can’t get to them all.”

“I learned this in those terrible days when the Suits raided my home and I was on the run for the first time: You take one day at a time. One hour at a time if you must. And I know it probably isn’t much of a comfort, but as long as I’m breathing, I’m with you.”