Chapter 46

“You’re not here,” he said in a low voice.

Henri dipped her head to one side. “Of course I’m here, Dad.”

He began walking away from it. This was not his daughter, he told himself. He saw Henri almost as often as the wolves. She was everywhere, and he constantly had to remind himself that what the hallucination conveyed was not what his own daughter said.

As a precaution, he began sprinting. Real Henri would never be able to catch up. And yet, the hallucination did. When he stopped, it was right there next to him.

He tried not to look at it. Instead, he made his way home and quickly shut the door in the hallucination’s face. Cillian found the real Henri sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at her tablet. She smiled. Without looking up, “Hi, Dad.”

“You’re home early from school,” he noted, looking at his watch. She shouldn’t be back for a whole hour.

“Laura Thompson has a stomach bug. She puked all over the floor! My teacher dismissed us after that.”