It wasn't as though Mark hadn't offered to help any way he could. He had, and Holly had told him what to do, quite explicitly, and it hadn't done much to calm his increasing worries about what he had gotten himself into. Quite the opposite.
"If 'Madeline' gets in touch with you," Holly had said, "call me immediately. I'll give you a new mobile number; you use that number. Any time of day, no matter what you're doing at the moment, if she tries to contact you, call that number. Got it?"
"Sure."
"If you see her anywhere on the street, same thing. You call immediately. There's just one situation in which calling isn't the first thing you do: if she's right in front of you." Holly grabbed Mark's arm firmly. "If that happens, you get a hold of her - you make sure she cannot run. Then you call."
Mark nodded, though slightly unsettled by her instructions. "Got it. But what if she tries to break loose? What if she fights back? If she-"
"You take her down," Holly said. "Punch her. Wrestle her to the ground. Do whatever you must, but don't let her get away."
"I don't think that's a very good idea," Mark pointed out. "If we meet somewhere in public and I start punching her or try to restrain her, people will turn on me."
Holly's grip on his arm tightened. "Then make up a story," she said. "Tell people she stole your watch or something. If they want to call the police, let them. Just make sure that if police comes, they're taking her away with you. I'll make sure she is turned over to us. And you get in touch with Alice so she can get you out."
Mark swallowed. "This is really serious, isn't it?"
"Absolutely fucking serious," Holly nodded. "We must find her quickly, or everything could be over."
And that was the last thing Mark heard from her for the next four weeks.
***
In the meantime, strangely, life went on as it had before. There were still plenty of dates on Mark's schedule, and none of them were canceled, though he had the feeling that a few of the women he met in those four weeks knew what was going on. They rarely showed it openly, of course, but there were some moments where they looked at him in a certain way, somewhere between pensive and uneasy, and Mark was quite certain it was because of the thing with 'Madeline'.
Then came his date with Alice, and to his surprise, she helped him understand the worries the women had, at least to some extent. After a very nice evening with oysters and French wine, they ended up in her four-poster bed, and after two rounds of rather loud sex - one with him on top, one with her - Alice had invited him to stay the night. The firm he worked at wasn't far from her law office, so that would work out nicely in the morning.
As they lay together in bed quietly, each with a glass of very dark, very heavy red wine Alice had opened for them, she suddenly started to speak after almost ten minutes of silence. "You know," she said, "I kinda pity the poor girl."
"Hm?" Mark looked over to her.
"The one who... decided to leave us," she continued. "Can't be easy for her, out there on her own."
Mark turned over to her and rearranged his pillow so that he could comfortably look at Alice. "I thought she was giving all of you - and me - all sorts of trouble."
Alice nodded, still looking at the ceiling. "She is. She shouldn't have contacted you, let alone allow you to give her a daughter. And the worst of all is that she is actively hiding from us now. If she's found by someone before we find her, that could reveal the existence of people like us to the world. And we can't have that."
"Well, she looks like a perfectly normal young woman," Mark said. "And I'm sure she won't stay in one place long enough for people to realize her pregnancy is going on in record time."
"See, that exactly is the problem," Alice sighed and turned over to him. "Being pregnant and on the run at the same time isn't the easiest thing to do. And even if you take that into account - our biology means that we have certain, um, needs we have to take care of when we're pregnant. I don't know how much I can tell you about that..."
Mark had a rather good collection of the extraordinary number of fridges Stephanie had kept around her bed. "I know you all do need to eat enormous amounts of food," he mentioned.
Alice's face relaxed. "Ah, so you're in the picture - great! Now, if we don't get the food we need, that's not much of a problem for the first two weeks of a pregnancy. We get ravenously hungry, but our bodies pretty much wait for us to find the nourishment we need. At least to some extent. However, after two weeks, it becomes a problem."
"Like what?"
"Like, our daughters start growing anyway." Her expression darkened. "And they take what they need from their mothers' bodies. Like parasites."
Mark swallowed. "You're saying they... feed on their mothers?"
Closing her eyes for a moment, Alice nodded. "They're pretty much devouring them from the inside through the umbilical cords. And that doesn't end well for either one of them. The mother gets too weak to survive giving birth. And the daughter comes into this world with no one to take care of her."
"Damn." Mark shuddered. "I didn't think of that. If Madeline doesn't have access to a ton of food, she might end up dead!"
"And it pretty much doesn't matter if she's found by someone else before or after she has died," Alice added. "A young mother, obviously dead from starvation, is bound to raise questions, and maybe an examination. And even a run-of-the-mill autopsy may be enough to find out that she isn't exactly a normal young woman."
With a worried look, Mark thought about that for a moment. "So what can we do?" he asked.
"Find her," Alice said, "before it's too late."
***
Of course, there wasn't much Mark could do in that respect except keep his eyes open. But despite him trying his best, he didn't see or hear anything from the woman he knew as Madeline again.
Four weeks went by. And then, when he came back from work on a dark Thursday evening in November, Holly was standing in front of his apartment wearing a warm white jacket and dark blue jeans. Not the police uniform Mark had been accustomed to seeing her in.
"Walk with me," were her only words.
As Mark followed her down the street, strolling by her side, Holly said nothing for a minute or two, until they were a good bit away from his apartment. Then she finally turned her head towards him. "I have both bad news and good news," she said. "Which do you want to hear first?"
"You mentioned the bad news first," Mark replied. "Start there."
"You wanted to speak with someone who was allowed to talk about us," Holly explained. "The bad news is that the person I had in mind for that wasn't available on a short notice. In fact, I can't even tell you when she will be available. Sorry."
Mark sighed. "I hope the good news will be better, then."
The expression on Holly's face wasn't exactly a happy one. "More or less," she said. "The good news is that we have found another way that would make it possible to clue you in. Stephanie, in particular, said we absolutely ought to offer it to you. But personally, I think you're not going to like it."
"I suppose that depends," Mark chuckled. "What is this other way?"
"Well, I can't tell you right here-"
"Of course you can't!"
Seeing the frustration on Mark's face, Holly hurried to explain herself. "But we can tell you everything back at the safehouse," she said. "And if you're willing to do what's necessary, we can answer all of your questions right after that."
Mark stopped in his tracks and looked at her. "And you mean ALL questions this time?" he reassured himself. "No more secrets? Nothing like 'well, of course, we cannot talk about THAT particular thing'?"
"Nothing will be secret to you then," Holly nodded. "Full disclosure. I promise."
"Well, count me in then," Mark smiled. "I guess I will be coming to your mansion this weekend."
Holly raised her right hand. "One more thing, though," she interrupted him. "The solution we have in mind will require more than a day, or even two days. You should be ready to stay at the safehouse for about five days."
That sounded more than a little fishy to Mark. "Five days?!"
"Six, at the most." Holly looked at him. "Ah, I can already see you're not going to like the idea. Just as I thought."
"What in the world could require me staying for five or six days if it's just information you're sharing?"
Crossing her arms, Holly sighed. "It's not just sharing information, Mark. It's more than that. It wouldn't take that long if it was easy. Well - in a way, it is easy. But it has consequences. And the last thing we want is for you to be in any way unhappy with these consequences."
Now it was Mark's turn to sigh. "Can't you women speak three straight sentences without some innuendo towards things that could happen but that you just cannot tell me about right now? How am I supposed to trust you?"
"You don't trust us?" Holly asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I do trust you, but-" Taking a deep breath, Mark looked straight at her. "You're not making it easy with all of this super-confidential, eyes-only, conspiracy-stuff talk. Give me one straight answer, at the very least."
Holly nodded. "Shoot. I'll try to answer as straight as I can."
"If I come to the mansion, and I don't like what you have in mind, then what happens?"
"In that case," Holly said, "you're free to leave again. Nothing changes. We still have the agreement with you, the rules still apply, you stay friends with us." She returned his prodding, questioning gaze with a surprisingly tender, vulnerable look of her own. "None of us wants the thing we have with you to end, Mark. We like you. We really, really like you."
Mark just couldn't be angry with someone who looked at him that way. "Alright," he smiled, "I'll come. It's got to be the week after Thanksgiving, though. That's the earliest I can be away from work."
Smiling back, Holly nodded. "Thank you. I'll tell everybody. We look forward to seeing you. Bye."
