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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Dust To Dust
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THE DAY IT HAPPENED—the day many referred to as the end of the world as they knew it—Jules had already been called home from school. The strange, doughnut-shaped spaceship cutting through the city was a sensible reason to end the day early, even if it disappeared after a few hours. So, Jules had filed obediently out of his classroom, constantly straining to peer out the window as if he could get a glimpse of the new set of aliens that had attacked. After all, he'd only been three years old when Loki had sent the Chitauri to New York, and thus didn't remember anything about what had happened—not even when the nuke had been pointed straight at his head. But now he was nine, and he'd battled enough extraterrestrials in video games to prepare him for today. If he got his hands on one, he would wring its neck, no matter how big it was.
Unfortunately, he didn't see any aliens. So he met up with Eva at the front of the school, waiting for Mom to pick them up. Dad was going for Cecelia and Alex—work had been cancelled, too. They were all going straight home, where they'd barricade the windows, turn on a movie—if Jules was really lucky, they would watch Night at the Museum, which had surpassed Cars to become his new favourite—and drink hot chocolate, praying that things didn't escalate to the danger of 2012.
But they were only in the car for five minutes before Dad phoned in. And the car had Bluetooth, meaning that Jules could hear every frantic word on his end.
"Ellen?"
Mom turned her blinker on. Jules almost rolled his eyes. Only she would signal her turns during an alien invasion. "What's wrong, Michael?"
"I've got Alex here right now, but he says that Cecelia's gone missing. She disappeared on the school bus driving her class back from the MoMA field trip."
Mom sucked in a breath, her hands clenching so tightly on the steering wheel that her knuckles turned white. Eva, who'd had her eyes glued on her phone, desperately checking for updates on the situation, looked up to exchange a worried look with her brother.
"What?" Mom asked.
"No one knows where she is. Christine says that she was sitting beside her, but after the spaceship arrived, she just vanished. Her and that boy from her class, too. Peter... Parker?"
"Oh, God." Mom had to pull to the side of the road to catch her breath. "Oh, God. Where is my baby?"
"I don't know. She isn't picking up any of my calls. Alex is making himself sick. After what happened a year and a half ago..."
Mom tensed. Even now, eighteen months later, Jules could tell she still didn't like being reminded of Uncle Rick. He was still in prison—he'd gotten a fifty-year sentence after everything he'd done to Cecelia, likely thanks to the efforts of Tony Stark, who'd somehow gotten involved in the case. Mom had refused to let any of them visit him, claiming that the further away he was, the better. This had been somewhat of a disappointment to Jules, who'd only wanted to go in order to clear up the fact that this Uncle—the evil man who'd participated in weapons trafficking and abused and tried to murder Cecelia—was the same Uncle who Jules had used to adore. The same one he used to yearn to spend even half as much time with as he did Cecelia.
