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"Have you seen him, too?"

"No, but I’ve heard about hiine and turned toward ers?"

Harbingers, she explained over an early lunch at Flo’s, are signs of things to come

"Not everyone sees them," she said "I don’t But your father has seen the blind man twice, and it sounds as if you’ve inherited him"

"The blindabout seeing thebefore my father was made a vampire I’d seen the man in Sarasota; the next day, the hurricane hit and our condoht fire Of course, he couldn’t be blind He drove a van

"But who is he?" The ht of the blind ian shadows" She took a bite of her grouper sandwich

I’d read only a s and Freud My father had treated their essays as fiction, by and large "Do you mean they’re not real?"

"They’re very real to those who see theht shadoere visions of our own unconscious selves, which we repress"

"But I saw the man in the van" I kneas more than a shadow "So did Autumn and Mysty"

My mother believed me "Yes, you saw a man in a van But was he really blind? You sahat you most fear: someone full of malice, someone with an absence of vision He’s your shadow ers always mean bad news?" Flo’s was unusually noisy that day, and I had to raise my voice to be heard

"For your father, yes But not for everyone Dashay’s harbinger is a black bird, a grackle, that swoops at her It happens when change is coer didn’t an, the bartender, came over to our table--a rare occurrence, since he liked to stay behind the bar "Heard you were visiting the sheriff thisin Citrus County that I never liked: everyone knew everyone else’s business Someone had spotted Mãe’s truck and lost no ti the word

Mãe said, "Yes, and e there?"

He grinned and pointed at the TV set over the bar The Ta a photo of Mysty, then shots of two distraught-looking people; the caption read PARENTS OF MISSING GIRL

"Only one circus in town this week" Logan looked at me "So you knew this Mysty?"

"I knew her," I said "But not well"

"She and her friend looked like trouble waiting to happen Still, it’s shaain "Remember the last one?"

She nodded, her eyes on me "There was another one?" I asked

"Over the years there have been a few," Logan said "The worst one was the last one, two years ago They found the little girl buried in her neighbor’s yard--"

"You have customers" Mãe tilted her head toward the bar She didn’t want me to hear the details She didn’t want me to be further upset

But in the days to coined While I was growing up in Saratoga Springs, sheltered fro about philosophy andall over America--all over the world, really Every year, tens of thousands of people vanish--o to pretty girls and children--about three hundred children are abducted every year and never return More than a ers run away from their fahly seven percent--seventy thousand teenagers--are never heard of again

It was hard for s happened at all, let alone with such frequency I felt as if the world I lived in was only a façade--that beneath its skin, a darker world raged and ralimpsed that world before, but I’d never kno vast and ht be

Afterward, whenever we drove in Mãe’s truck, I noticed teenagers wearingno attention to either world--to the posters of Mysty, or to strangers whothem I wondered ould disappear next

When we returned home, Mãe and Dashay burned the trays of the beehives I didn’t help I didn’t want to see theered for days

For dinner that night I made a salad, but none of us ate much Mãe excused herself and went off to have a bath Dashay and I played Crazy Eights, but we both were thinking of other things and played poorly The gaate buzzed, Dashay said, "It’s that girl again" And a second later, Autuh the interco for ht black jeans, and a tank top with one word printed on it: NOT

"I need to talk to you," she said

"Why didn’t you call ate and beckoned her inside

"Cell phones can be traced Or bugged" She wheeled her bicycle up the driveway

We sat in thedark, Autulasses The air stayed hot and humid It didn’t bother me, but Autumn wiped her forehead with her hand from time to time "I hate Florida," she said

"Weren’t you born here?"

"Yes," she said, "and I’ the minutes until I leave So, what did you do to Mysty?"

I hadn’t expected that question When I tried to hear what she was thinking, all I heard was a static-like buzz Who are you? I thought