Chapter 5: The Missing Page

Perry didn't scream.

He turned on the light, and the gold faded to his normal blue-gray in about two seconds.

He turned the light off.

Gold again.

He went out to the living room and shook Garret's foot.

Garret was awake before Perry touched him.

"My eyes," Perry said.

Garret sat up and looked at him in the dark for a long time.

"That's the pup," he said quietly. "It's in your blood now."

"Is it going to stop?"

"I don't know." Garret rubbed his face. "Nobody alive has seen this."

By Wednesday Perry could hear everything.

He could hear the heartbeat of the dry cleaner next door through two brick walls.

He could hear Brianne in the office downstairs, humming the theme from a cooking show while she did the books.

He could hear his nephew's heart when the boy ran across the studio floor, quick as a bird's.

On Thursday, during the four o'clock class, Perry grabbed the barre to show the kids a stretch.

The barre cracked in his hand.

Oak, an inch and a half thick, bolted to the wall by his mother in 1991.

It split along the grain with a sound like a gunshot.

Eleven seven-year-olds stared at him.

"Mr. Perry broke it!"

"Mr. Perry's strong!"

"Mr. Perry, do it again!"

"Nobody touch the barre," Perry said. "Mr. Perry's going to get a very boring screwdriver."

That night he carried the trash out the back.

The back stairs ran down from his apartment to the alley, steep and iron, painted green a hundred years ago.

He stopped on the third step.

Somebody had been on these stairs.

Not Brianne. Not the dry cleaner. Not the mailman.

The smell was thick and sweet and expensive, the cologne you could taste across a boardroom.

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