“I’m guessing your name isn’t Sarah,” I said once I had the receiver at my ear.
“It’s not,” she said. Her voice came through the phone a second after her lips moved up in the window. She paused for a long time but she stayed on her phone. We just stood there looking at each other. She had this weird sad almost smile.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me?” I asked when I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“She asked you to join us and you said no, didn’t she?”
I didn’t have to ask who or what she was talking about.
“I decided to keep my options open,” I said.
“You were smart.”
She sounded bitter. I waited for her to say something else. Someone in one of the farmers’ market tents was selling Manhattan rooftop honey and I got distracted wondering about city bees versus country bees and worrying over whether or not Manhattan bees have enough flowers.
“I wanted to belong to something, you know?” not-Sarah said but she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Something important. I wanted to do something that had purpose to it, something…something special. Upper management dismantled the whole organization. We all got dismissed. No one knows what happened. I don’t know what to do now.”
I said, “Sounds like that sucks for you,” which was kinda mean even though it did actually sound like it kinda sucked. She took it pretty well.
“I know this has been hard for you,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be on edge all the time. I wanted to let you know that no one’s watching you anymore.”
“You were.”
She shrugged.
“What happened to the place you were supposed to be protecting?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Maybe it’s gone. I don’t even know if it exists.”
“Why don’t you look for it?” I asked her.
“Because I signed an agreement that stated if I did they could terminate me, literally. I was assured that clause was intact when they paid me off and gave me a new identity. They’d kill me if they knew I was talking to you now.”
“Seriously?” I asked, because really now.
“All of it is serious,” she said. “They talked about eliminating you but decided it was too risky in case it resulted in more people looking into the Rawlins case.”
“Where’s Zachary?” I asked and then I kind of wished I hadn’t in case she was going to confirm that he was dead because no matter what I think I’ve gotten accustomed to that tiny piece of hope that sits in the middle of the not knowing.
“I don’t know,” she said, quickly, more panicky. She looked over her shoulder. “I…I don’t know. I do know it’s all over now. I thought you should know.”
I think she wanted me to say thank you. I didn’t.
I said, “Who’s the Owl King?”
And she hung up on me.
She turned from the window and walked away into the bookstore.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to find her. Really easy to disappear in a five-floor bookstore in the middle of Manhattan.
I texted the number again but it said Delivery Failure.
I don’t know how to start looking for a place that maybe doesn’t even exist.
THE SON OF THE FORTUNE-TELLER stands in the doorway of a life-size dollhouse filled with larger-than-life-size honeycomb and occupied by bees the size of cats. Bees crawl down the stairs and across the windows and the ceiling, over armchairs and sofas and chandeliers.
All around Zachary the bees are buzzing, elated by his arrival.