The twins were hog-tied to the swing set. One metal chain from each swing bound the wrists of each twin. Their arms stretched above their heads, linked by the knotted chain that had been looped over the long horizontal top bar of the swing set. The other two chains had been used to bind the twins’ ankles. Those chains were then secured in knots on the sides of the swing set’s A-frame bars. William and Claire hung at a slant.
The worst part was that the swings’ splintery wooden seats had been wedged into the twins’ mouths. Duct tape held the seats in as gags. Tears streamed down the children’s faces. Their eyes bulged in pain and fear. Their bodies shook with whimpers the gags prevented Eureka from hearing.
How long had they been tied up like that? Had the Seedbearers broken into the twins’ bedroom in the night, while Ander was guarding Eureka? She felt sick with rage, consumed by guilt. She had to do something.
“I’m going out there,” Dad said.
“Stay here if you want your kids returned alive.” Ander’s command was quiet but authoritative. It stopped Dad at the top step of the porch. “This has to be handled exactly right—or we’re going to be very sorry.”
“What kind of sick jerks would do that to a couple of kids?” Cat whispered.
“They call themselves Seedbearers,” Ander said, “and they raised me. I know their sickness well.”
“I’ll kill them,” Eureka muttered.
Ander relaxed his grip on Rhoda, let her fall into her husband’s arms. He turned to Eureka, his expression overwhelmingly sad. “Promise me that will be a very last resort.”
Eureka squinted at Ander. She wanted to kill the Seedbearers, but she was unarmed, outnumbered, and had never punched anything more animate than a wall. But Ander looked so concerned that she was serious, she felt the need to reassure him it wasn’t a fully cooked plan. “Okay”—she felt ridiculous—“I promise.”
Dad and Rhoda took each other’s arms. Cat’s gaze was welded to the swing set. Eureka forced herself to look where she did not want to look. The twins’ bodies were still and taut. Their terrified eyes were their only moving parts.
“This isn’t fair,” she told Ander. “It’s me the Seedbearers want. I’m the one who should go out there.”
“You will need to face them”—Ander took her hand—“but you must not be a martyr. If something should happen to the twins, to anyone else you care about, you have to understand that it is more important you survive.”
“I can’t think about that,” she said.
Ander stared at her. “You have to.”
“I think this pep talk has gone on long enough,” the Seedbearer in the gray suit called from the lawn. He motioned for Ander to wrap it up.
“And I think you four have been here long enough,” Eureka called back at the Seedbearers. “What will it take for you to leave?” She strode forward, approaching the stairs, trying to look calm even as her heart thundered in her chest. She had no idea what she was doing.
She realized there was something else disconcerting about the scene beyond the porch: the rain had stopped.
No. Eureka heard the downpour against trees nearby. She smelled the salty electricity of the storm right under her nose. She felt the humidity like a pelt over her skin. She saw the brown current at the edge of the lawn—the bayou, flooded and rough and nearly overflowing its banks the way it did during a hurricane.
The bad weather hadn’t blown over, but somehow the twins, and the Seedbearers, and the lawn they stood on, weren’t getting wet. The wind was still, the temperature cooler than it should have been.
Eureka hovered at the edge of the covered porch. Her eyes rose skyward and she squinted into the atmosphere. The storm roiled overhead. Lightning surged. She saw the torrent of raindrops falling. But something happened to the rain along its path from the turbulent black clouds to Eureka’s backyard.
It disappeared.
There was a foreign dimness to the yard that made Eureka claustrophobic, as if the sky were caving in.