I froze. Griffiths was Iggy’s last name—we thought. I remembered that much from the legible papers we found at the Institute in New York—before they disappeared. But the Institute file had also said that Iggy’s father was dead. So these people couldn’t be his parents—could they? Riveted, I edged my way forward a few inches so I could watch the TV through the partially open door. I heard Anne in her bathroom, brushing her teeth.
“You’d think that after fourteen years, it would get easier,” said the woman sadly. “But it doesn’t. It’s the same pain, all the time.”
My breath caught in my throat. Fourteen years? Griffiths? The reporter’s image cleared and was replaced by a couple. The man had his arm around his wife’s shoulders. They both looked sad.
One other thing.
The woman looked just like Iggy.
67
Fang looked intently at me, peering through the strands of hair that always covered his eyes.
“They were standing in front of their house. I saw enough to recognize it if I saw it again,” I told him in a fast whisper. It was late, and everyone else was asleep. I’d waited till now to tell Fang what I’d seen. “Their name was Griffiths. Their kid disappeared fourteen years ago. And the woman was the spitting image of Iggy.”
Fang shook his head slowly, thinking. “I can’t believe you would just happen to see that.”
“I know. But how could it possibly be a setup? We weren’t even allowed to watch TV today. I just—I think we have to check it out.”
Fang shook his head again. “How many houses are there in the DC area?”
“This house had a big, dark church behind it, like on the next block. It was old-fashioned, and the spire was really tall. How many of those are there?”
Fang sighed. “About a million.”
“Fang! This is a huge break! Of course we should go check it out!”
He looked at me. “But we’re grounded,” he said with a straight face.
I stared at him for a second, and then we both burst out laughing.
68
“What’s wrong?” Fang had been acting a little off all night. Now we were flying high over the lights of DC, and he kept wiping his forehead and rolling his shoulders.
“I’m way hot,” he muttered. “But I don’t feel sick. Just—way hot.”
“Like I did?” I raised my eyebrows. “Huh. Give it a week; you’ll be flying like the Concorde. I think. Or, you know, you’re dying.” I shot him a grin, which he didn’t return. “What? You feel really bad?”
“No. But I just thought of something. I have your blood in me.”
I looked at him, his wide, dark wings moving smoothly, powerfully through the night air.
“So? It was just blood.”
He shook his head. “Not our blood. The red cells have DNA, remember? I got transfused with your DNA.”
I thought. “Uh, so?”
He shrugged. “So maybe that’s why this is happening. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”
“Hmm,” I said. “And we don’t know if that’s bad or good or nothing.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” he said.
Turns out there are practically hundreds of freaking tall church steeples in the DC area. Though finding the right one tonight seemed amusingly unlikely, we cruised around, looking for a steeple in a residential neighborhood. We dropped down more than a dozen times, but once I had scanned all the close-by houses, we took to the air again.
After three hours of this, we were hungry and tired. We didn’t even have to speak—just looked at each other, shrugged, and turned in unison to head back to Anne’s place.