Chapter 6

# Chapter 6: The Plan

"She's too calm. Normal people don't buy bunkers a week before the sky breaks, Camille. She knows something."

Julian was pacing his mother's study, phone in one hand, a glass of whiskey in the other. It was Saturday night. He had not shaved since Thursday.

Camille sat on the leather couch with Oliver asleep against her side. She stroked the boy's hair without looking at it. "You keep saying that. What does she know?"

"I don't know. That's the problem." He stopped and drank. "My people tracked a purchase order to a company called Harrow Holdings. Cold storage, east side. Generators, steel plating, medical supplies. Enough to feed a small town."

"So she's hoarding."

"For *what*, though?" He turned on her. "The news says nothing. The markets are normal. But she's been right about everything this week. The forgery, Alder Street, the board. She even knew about Oliver."

"Maybe she hired a detective."

"A detective doesn't make you buy a fortress."

Camille was quiet for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes, and the soft, tearful look from the boardroom was gone. What replaced it was flat and practical.

"Then we stop asking what she knows," she said. "We ask how to get what she has."

Julian frowned. "Meaning?"

"Meaning your mother has a friend at St. Anne's, a doctor. Dr. Ruiz. He signs papers for people who need a little rest." She shrugged. "A woman has a sudden breakdown. She starts buying hundreds of tons of food. She claims the world is ending. Her husband and family are concerned. A guardian is appointed, and a guardian controls the money."

Julian stared at her.

"The trust unfreezes," Camille went on. "The warehouse becomes yours. Whatever she's hiding, whatever she's planning, it all comes to us." She smiled faintly. "And she gets to rest."

He set down the glass slowly. "You've thought about this."

"I've thought about little else since Thursday."

For a moment Julian looked almost frightened of her. Then he laughed, low and ugly, and pulled out his phone.

"Call Ruiz," he said. "I want it done by morning."

---

The lights came back on at the warehouse at 6:42 p.m.

I know the time because I was staring at the clock on the wall when it happened, my back pressed against a crate and a broken glass still glittering at my feet. The strips flickered, buzzed, and steadied. The generators coughed back to life. Somewhere far off I heard Hank's boots on the loading dock.

There was nothing behind me. There never had been.

"Power surge," Hank said, breathless, jogging in with a lantern. "Breaker tripped for the whole block. Ma'am, you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm fine."

I looked at my palm. Smooth. Pale. No mark, no cut.

But on the concrete floor where my blood had dripped, there was a small dark stain in the shape of a crescent. It was already fading, drawn down into the stone like water into sand.

*You're awake, Maiden.*

I hadn't imagined it. I had never heard that word in my last life. Whatever I had been given when I died, it had come with a name, and something out there knew it before I did.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat in the half-finished warehouse with a blanket around my shoulders and the cream notepad in my lap, and for the first time I wrote a new heading under the old ones.

*WHAT I DON'T KNOW.*

The list was long.

---

Dawn came gray and cold. At 6:15 a.m., I was on the roof of Harrow Holdings' loading office, drinking terrible coffee, when the dread hit again.

Not the sharp cold from the night before. This was a quieter thing, like a hand tapping once on my shoulder. The mark on my palm flickered under the skin, faint and red.

I looked down at the road.

A white van was turning in through the gate. It had no logo, only a small blue cross on the side. It rolled slowly across the yard and stopped in front of the main door. Two men in white coats climbed out of the back, followed by a heavy man in a gray suit holding a clipboard.

Then the front passenger door opened.

Julian stepped out into the morning light. He had shaved. He had put on a dark jacket and a sympathetic face, the one he used at funerals. He looked up at the building and spoke, gently, to the man with the clipboard.

I couldn't hear the words. I didn't need to.

*Take her. Gently.*

The men in white coats started toward the door. Hank, bless him, planted himself in front of them with both arms crossed. I saw Julian say something soothing and hold out a stack of papers.

I put down the coffee.

I could run. I knew the back stairs, the service tunnel under the loading dock, the alley behind the laundry on Maple. I could be gone in two minutes.

But I was tired of running from that man. I had done enough of it in the dark.

I leaned over the roof's edge and called down, loud enough for the entire yard to hear.

"Julian."

Every head turned. Julian's eyes lifted and found me, and his face did something complicated. Relief, then calculation, then a mask of tender concern.

"Serena," he called back, his voice cracking with fake worry. "Sweetheart, come down. We're here to help you."

"You're early," I said.

His smile faltered. "What?"

I smiled back, and I saw him flinch.

"The end of the world isn't until Tuesday."