Upstairs...it’s perfect.

A few birds startle in the peak of the cathedral roof. They dart out the open window. Sunlight streams inside and over the hardwood floors and white walls. It’s a single open room, a studio. There are no easels or paints or pottery wheel, but there could be and should be. It’s exactly what I’d described I wanted.

In the center of the attic room, there’s a stuffed bunny. It’s a ragged bunny with one eye. Its ear is matted from a toddler dragging it everywhere. I recognize it instantly. Mr. Rabbit, my favorite stuffie from preschool. I’d lost it years ago.

I let go of Peter’s hand as if it’s burned me. “Tell me how you knew,” I say. “You had no time to find this house between when Claire brought me to you and now. You didn’t know I’d come to you or that I’d need a place to stay. I only just now told you about the studio. And I never mentioned Mr. Rabbit.”

He’s wearing an enigmatic smile again, and I want to slap it off his face.

“You set me up,” I say. “This was all...a trap. Somehow. I don’t know how. You sent Claire to find me, to bring me to you. You led me here... Why?”

“I didn’t.” His voice is serious. He’s dropped the playful veneer that he wears with Claire. I shiver. “But I like that you’re suspicious. It will serve you well here.”

“Then explain.” I want to believe it’s a coincidence, that he’s my savior, that I’ll be safe here, that I can trust him and Claire, that it will be okay, that I will find whatever I lost and find my way home. But this...

“I can’t.” His dark eyes bore into mine—beautiful, dangerous.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.” He walks to the wide-open window, the one the birds swooped out of. “Besides, you don’t really want to know how the magician does his tricks. It will ruin the show.” He grins, and then he leaps out the window.

I race to the window and lean out.

The desert is empty, and the Finder is gone.

Chapter Seven

I circle the stuffed rabbit. The fur around his neck is worn so thin that it’s a net stretched over cotton. His head is flopped to the side. His tail is a matted gray tuft. He looks like the toy I remember.

Which is impossible, of course.

I lost Mr. Rabbit at the start of college, either in packing or unpacking. In a fit of maturity, I proclaimed it a sign that I was moving on, outgrowing my childhood talismans. Of course, I cried after Mom drove away, and I wished I hadn’t lost him.

And now he’s found.

Mr. Rabbit watches me with his one cracked eye. As a teen, I tossed him against the ceiling one too many times, and his left eye shattered into smooth shards that catch the light from the window so that he looks as if he’s winking. Only a few threads hold the eye on. He lost the right eye in the washing machine. Maybe his lost eye is here somewhere, too.

I want to laugh. I clamp my teeth together so that I won’t. If I laugh, I’ll cry. And I don’t want to cry. I squat in front of the rabbit. My heart thumps fast inside my ribs, as if my old toy is a grenade. “Are you what I lost?”

He doesn’t speak, which disappoints me. Says something about the kind of day I’m having that I expect this dirty lump of cotton to spew out answers, or at least a few prophetic riddles in rhyme. But he’s silent. Everything is as silent as dust. I don’t hear wind or birds through the open window. I continue to talk into the silence. “Even if you were, I’d need the Missing Man to send me home, right?” Sitting, I wrap my arms around my knees and squeeze. I feel as if I’m five years old again, pouring out my fears to my scruffy, germ-ridden, favorite toy. “So I’m supposed to believe it’s all true. Every crazy thing that every crazy person said to me today. The motel clerk selling suitcases. The waitress in the diner with the broken phone. The man looking for his lucky penny... Did he really sail here? And Peter? Who is he? What is he? Can I trust him?”

He still doesn’t answer.

He’s in a patch of sunlight that’s pouring in the open window. It’s low angled so his shadow streaks behind him across the wood floor. Low angled light means the sun will set soon, and then it will be dark. I think of the broken windows downstairs and wonder if it’s safe to sleep here. Not that I have much choice.

“You know this is completely fucked,” I tell the rabbit.

Claire pipes up. “That’s not a nice word.”

I jump to my feet. I hadn’t heard her come up the stairs, but here she is, staring at me with wide, round eyes as innocent as a doll. She’s not holding her bears. Or her knife.

“Just talking to Mr. Rabbit,” I say. “He’s heard that kind of language before. He knows not to repeat it in public.”

Claire nods as if this makes perfect sense.

Leaving the rabbit, I cross to the window. The sun is fat and low, and the reddish shadows make the clumps of brush and cacti look burnt. I shut the window. Lock it. Don’t feel safer. “Do you think we’re safe here?”

“Are you asking me or Mr. Rabbit?” Claire asks politely.

“Mr. Rabbit has a limited understanding of the concept of safety. Unless someone comes at him with scissors, he’s unfazed. Plus, he’s a rabbit of few words.”

Claire stands next to me, looking out the window at the endless sienna desert and the sunset-rose-wine-stained sky. She slips her small hand into mine. The bones in her hand feel so fragile, but she has calluses on her palm. I wonder exactly how much she’s practiced with that knife. “Most people don’t leave town,” she tells me, “especially not at night when you can’t see where the dark stops and the void begins. So we should be okay so long as we don’t turn on the lights. You can see lights from a distance.” She doesn’t sound like a kid. She sounds more like a soldier, assessing the situation.

I find that oddly comforting.

I nod as if it’s perfectly normal to spend the night somewhere you fear to turn on the lights. No night-light for me. “Just in case, I want to board up the broken windows downstairs, the one in the front door and any others with holes large enough to crawl through.”

“Okay.” Releasing my hand, Claire pivots and traipses downstairs without any further questions or conversation. Following her, I leave the stuffed rabbit in the patch of dying sun.

Claire is out the front door without pause. She scrambles onto the junk pile as if she’s part-cat, scaling the side with ease. But I hesitate on the porch. A heap like that could hide rattlesnakes. Or poisonous spiders. Or rabid wildebeests that like to rend the flesh of the recently lost. Certainly there are sharp rusted objects. But none of that stops Claire from scurrying over a broken tricycle, a dozen twisted coat hangers, an old microwave, and mildew-coated cardboard boxes that could hold anything from books to bandicoots.

As Claire climbs to the top of the heap, she disturbs a desk drawer with her foot, and paper clips tumble out in a metallic waterfall. They spill onto the ground, which is already littered with buttons and pennies and nails. It sounds like rain.

At the top, Claire lifts up a stop sign. It’s nearly as tall as she is, and she wobbles as she holds it. “How’s this?”

I want to yell at her to duck down. Anyone could see her, perched on top of the pile. But I don’t. I could startle her, and she could fall. Or someone unfriendly could hear my yell. Besides, she wasn’t the one who’d attracted the pissed-off mob. It’s me they want. Then again, they saw her rescue me... Keeping as low as possible, I creep up the side of the pile and take the sign. She scrambles off the heap past me and holds the front door open as I carry the sign inside. I prop the sign against the living room couch and study the window. I think it’s been broken for a while. Dust and debris have blown in, and the floor feels like a beach after a storm. “We’ll need to nail it over the window.” I hadn’t thought about the mechanics of boarding up the windows. It’s not something I have experience with doing. I need tools...