The Bone Clocks

Between here and her hotel, let’s just secure her some head space to let her consider what she’s just learned.New leaves and old trees drip, gutters slosh, drains gargle. With luck, the park will work itsmagic on her. If not, we may have to use ours. A doorman peers up at the rain from under an awning. We reach Madison, where Holly waits in the drizzle while I stand in the doorway of a boutique, watching that dog walker, those Hasidic Jews, the Arab-looking businessman over there. A couple of cabs slow down, hoping to lure a fare, but Holly is gazing into the small green rectangle of Central Park at the far end of the block. Her mind must be in turmoil. To write a memoir in which psychic events irrupt occasionally is one thing, but for psychic events to dreamseed you, serve you Irish tea, and spin you a whole cosmology, that’s another. Maybe Фshima’s right; maybe I should suasion her back to 119A. A metalife of 1,400 years is no guarantee that you always know the right thing to do.

DON’T WALK turns to WALK and I miss my chance. Crossing Madison, I taste paranoia, and glance at people in the waiting vehicles, half expecting to see Pfenninger or Constantin staring back with hunters’ eyes. The last block to the park is busier with foot traffic so I’m even jumpier. Is that iShaded jogger with the baby stroller really a jogger? Didn’t that curtain twitch as Holly passed by? Why would a young surveyor with his tripod watch a gaunt woman in her fifties so closely? He eyes me up as well, so maybe he’s just not fussy. Фshima keeps pace on the pavement opposite, blending into the morning bustle far better than me. We pass Saint James’s Church, whose red-brick steeple once towered above this rural neighborhood of Manhattan. Yu Leon Marinus attended a wedding here in 1968. The bride and groom will be in their eighties now, if they’re still alive.

On Fifth Avenue traffic is lumbering and foul-tempered. Holly stands behind a cluster of Chinese tourists. They’re agreeing in loud Cantonese how New York is smaller, tattier, and crappier than they’d expected. Across the road, Фshima is leaning casually against the corner of the Frick Collection, his face hooded. A bus passes with a digital ad for the newly released movie of Crispin Hershey’s Echo Must Die, but Holly is staring blankly at the park. I calm down. My instinct says we’re safe from the enemy until we reach her hotel on Broadway. If she hasn’t turned around by then, I’ll have to ignore my scruples and perform an Act of Suasion on Holly for her own safety. The Anchorites won’t try anything rash. The fallout from public assassinations is too messy. Reality on Fifth Avenue this drizzly morning is exactly as it appears.

A CHUNKY NYPD 4Ч4 pulls up onto the pavement, and a young black female officer swings out onto the sidewalk, holding her ID. “Ma’am? Are you Holly Sykes?”

Holly is yanked back to the here and now: “Yes, I—yes, is—”

“And you arethe mother of Aoife Brubeck?”

I look for Фshima, who’s already crossing the street. A large male officer has joined his colleague. “Holly Sykes?”

“Yes.” Holly’s hand goes to her mouth. “Is Aoife okay?”

“Ms. Sykes,” says the female officer in rapid-fire speech, “our precinct had a call earlier from the British consular office asking for us to put out an all-unit alert for you—we missed you by minutes at your hotel earlier. I’m afraid your daughter was involved in an auto collision in Athens last night. She’s undergone surgery, she’s stable for now, but you’re being asked to fly home on the next plane. Ms. Sykes? You hearing me?”

“Athens?” Holly supports herself on the hood of the patrol car. “But Aoife’s on an island … What … How badly—”

“Ma’am, we reallydon’t have any details, but we’ll drive you to the Empire Hotel so you can pack. Then we’ll take you to the airport.”

I step forward to do I don’t know what, but Фshima pulls me back: I’m sensing intense psychovoltage in the car; if it’s a high Anchorite and we engage in full combat on Fifth Avenue, every hippocampus within a fifty-meter radius’ll get shredded, including Holly’s. Feds, Homeland Security, who knows who’ll be scouring footage ofus, looking suspicious as all hell, tracking Holly from 119A?

Фshima’s right, but:We can’t just let them take her.