Page 113 of White Noise

I look at the nearest billboard.

Nothing.

Then the storefront screens. A man passes me with his phone inches from my shoulder.

Still nothing.

The vibration moves through me again.

Not around me.

Through me.

“No.”

My breathing changes as recognition settles in.

The current.

Every time Silas touched me.

Every time he stood back and watched my body react. Every experiment where he changed the frequency and waited to see what happened.

The way he kept touching my pulse.

I thought he was learning how to control me.

He was learning how to find me. But the realization makes me turn in a slow circle, searching every screen anyway because I desperately want one of them to be responsible.

None of them are.

Then Silas speaks directly behind me.

“Found you.”

I freeze.

When I turn, he is simply there.

No distorted screen behind him.

No static spilling from a television or glass bending around his body.

Silas stands in the middle of Times Square as solid as every person walking around him, his white hair catching the changing light from the billboards and the scar across his eye cutting through a face that looks entirely too fucking real.

My eyes move past him toward the screens covering the buildings.

Then back to him.

“How?”

Silas starts toward me.

I step back automatically. “I left everything. There is nothing here for you to use.”

That finally makes him smile.

His gaze drops to the hand I still have pressed against my chest.