Emrys nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Just a disagreement. But we’ll work through it.”
The expression on his father’s face clouded for a moment, but then he gave Emrys a supportive smile. “I know you will,” he said gently. “You’re both good kids. And I … I understand it’s hard moving to a new place, Em. Just want you to know that your mom and I see that. But we’re also so proud of the effort you’ve made here. We see that, too. And we’re lucky to have such cool neighbors, huh? Hazel and Serena and their families …”
“Yeah,” Emrys agreed. Then, “But you’re pretty cool, too, Dad.”
Renner Houtman beamed at his son. “Back at you, buddy. Now, you’ve got a disagreement to solve and I’ve got a chicken to roast. Meet back in an hour to turn in our quests and rake in the XP?”
“Definitely,” said Emrys.
Edna Milton
From the New Rotterdam Wiki Project
Edna Milton holds the dubious honor of being the only adult suspected of falling victim to the Wandering Hour.
By all accounts, Edna led a largely unremarkable life until her sixties. She was born and raised in New Rotterdam’s Shambles Row district in 1903, married a factory worker in 1921, and took a job as a postal clerk in 1930. On March 24, 1940, her husband died by snakebite following Easter services at the First Penitent Church of New Rotterdam, infamous at the time for encouraging its congregation to prove their faith by handling venomous snakes. Strangely, the coroner’s report showed no bite wounds.
In 1962, following her retirement, Edna completed a foster parent application with the New Rotterdam Department of Child Welfare. Over the next two years, thirteen different children were placed in her home on a temporary basis.
Five of them disappeared without a trace.
Runaways are all too common in the foster care system, and in the 1960s, it was alarmingly easy for a preteen or teenager to evade authorities, hitchhike out of the state, and drop off the grid entirely. So, for a time, Edna escaped any blame for the missing children, and she stayed on the department’s active roster of foster homes.
Upon the fifth disappearance, however, someone in the department must have finally grown suspicious. Edna’s foster license was revoked. The reason given was the presence of a pet that was deemed “potentially dangerous to children.” The pet was a large python—an unusual choice of pet, particularly at the time, but it’s unclear whether the department saw the animal as a genuine danger or simply used the excuse to sever ties with Edna. Either way, several of the children who had been left in her care went on record about the snake, claiming that Edna threatened to set it loose if they misbehaved. She also told at least two children that “snakes eat their own children” and that the practice “kept them young.” (While some snakes do eat their young, pythons are not believed to be among them.)
Following the termination of Edna’s license, police informed her that she should not leave town, as a larger investigation was pending. But when officers returned to her apartment the next day, she was gone, as was the python. Edna Milton was never heard from again.
Eventually, the woman was declared legally dead, and in the absence of any next of kin, her belongings were cataloged and earmarked for an estate sale. Among those belongings was a gilded hourglass with red sand, leading some to believe that Edna had fallen prey to the unexplained phenomenon known as the Wandering Hour.
11
Serena was waiting outside his apartment, and Emrys wished it were Hazel instead. It was a harsh thought, maybe, but he was anxious to act on what he’d learned. The hourglass was almost certainly nearby. Maybe on this very block! And every moment it was out there was an hour Edna might be hunting some innocent kid.
He fired off a quick text as he walked out of his bedroom: Someone disappeared yesterday. Laundromat on the corner. Keep an eye out.
He immediately realized that was a strange way to phrase it, since looking at the hourglass was a tremendously bad idea.
You know what I mean. Be careful. Trust your spooky sense.
Emrys resisted the urge to stare at the screen waiting for a reply, but only because Serena was waiting. He opened the door to see her standing there with her arms crossed. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Emrys replied. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she answered. “My brother just got back from lacrosse, and he’s stinking up the whole apartment. I thought … if you still needed help with your, you know, ‘homework’ …”
“I just finished, actually.” Emrys tried to sound casual, but he could hear the brittleness in his own voice. Serena’s hurtful words were still too fresh.
“Oh, okay,” she said. “What did you learn?”
Emrys perked up at that. “Do you really want to know?”
“Probably not,” Serena said, sighing. “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my ‘stuff to process’ pile right now. But I was hoping we could talk.” At the operatic sounds of Emrys’s dad preparing dinner, she added, “Somewhere private.”
“Sure,” said Emrys. “You want to hang out in my room?”
“I had somewhere else in mind,” she said, already turning to go. “Leave the book.”
Emrys naturally assumed that Serena would lead him downstairs. Instead, she went up. On the landing midway between Emrys’s floor and the next, she put her hands on the bottom edge of a grimy window. She had to strain to open it, but with a bit of exertion, she managed. The early evening tousled Emrys’s hair with icy fingers, and he suppressed a shudder.
“After you,” said Serena, and after a momentary hesitation, Emrys clambered onto the metal fire escape. He was in the space between buildings. Looking down at the alleyway below, all concrete and piled trash, gave him a rush of vertigo. If he fell, it wouldn’t be a pleasant landing.
Serena clambered out beside him, and she went up again, gripping the thin, rickety railing of the fire escape and ascending one careful step at a time. Emrys followed.
The fire escape went all the way to the roof, which was strangely uneven and softer than Emrys would have suspected. It was almost springy beneath his feet, and while the rooftop was enclosed on three sides with a raised ridge, its fourth side was open. Emrys couldn’t help imagining rolling right off the edge. He eyed it warily.
Serena walked fearlessly across the bright white surface of the roof, homing in on the solitary pop of color: a vibrant green plant in a terra-cotta pot. She pulled a few small tomatoes from the greenery, handing one to Emrys.
“The only plant I’ve managed to keep alive inside is a cactus,” Serena said. “I’m having better luck up here. Try it.”
Emrys popped the tomato into his mouth and bit down. Flavor burst across his tongue—a far cry from the wan, watery taste of the tomatoes from the supermarket.
“Good, right?” said Serena. “There’s a whole bunch of people in the neighborhood who use their rooftops for gardening. You can see a few of them from here. They aren’t growing, like, potion ingredients or man-eating fly traps. They’re growing cucumbers and strawberries and basil. Look there.”
Serena pointed, and Emrys peered into the distance. New Rotterdam spread out before them, lit by the fading glow of the setting sun. He saw dozens of townhouses and apartment buildings just like theirs; he saw the early evening traffic, backed up at the major intersections around the Shallows, and the holes in the skylines where the city’s scattered parks, gardens, and cemeteries crouched between buildings. Beyond it all, he could see a shadowy strip of ocean, its outline framed by distant lighthouses that shone like the first stars in the growing dark of the eastern sky.
