“Remember, death is a choice.
And I know you’ve all heard the latest rumor,
that One-Timers don’t really exist.
They say that everybody’s a First-Timer
and that when death comes, we all choose life.
I’m here to say that’s just not true!”

—Reverend Josiah Byrd,
leader of the first pro-death rally

CHAPTER ONE

October 11

Chaz:

Jazz swirled through the room, competed with my heartbeat and pressed against my skin, sensuous as a lover’s kiss, steamy as the bayou in mid-August. It stole my soul. It always did. For a few sweet moments I forgot about the world; I leaned forward and imagined another ending, one where I sat next to the bass player, nodding half asleep in a midnight mass of smoke and whiskey, saxophone reed thrust between my lips like the ultimate pacifier.

Bodies swayed and sagged, forever twined together with the music; it was a romantic symphony, it was worship for the weary.

And, in my mind, I was the worship leader.

I soared with the music to a land that didn’t exist. Beyond time and space. Beyond the never-ending cycle of life and death, and hit-me-again, more life please.

Outside I could hear the ancient city of New Orleans whispering like a ghost down back alleys and twisted cobblestone streets, a rough, sultry memory of what she had once been, before the soul of the city had been stolen by urban regeneration; before the Cities of the Dead had been transformed into high-priced condos.

Is it too late for us, too late for redemption? That was my thought. But that wasn’t what I said. Sometimes I get so caught up in the rhythms around me that I don’t notice my own contribution to the white noise.

“Sterilization is the new death.” That was what I really said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I nodded at a passing dark-skinned waitress, the one with the heart-shaped birthmark on her right cheek. Talking out loud was just one of the many unpredictable side effects of black-market whiskey. A moment later I had another crystal tumbler, two fingers full. I knew I should quit. At least for the night.

“What now, Chaz? You game?”

I blinked as I downed my second glass, felt the liquor sizzle down my throat all the way to my gut. Shadows moved through the club like disembodied spirits with lives of their own.

“Hey, yeah. We could, you know, go somewhere else. Dancing.” A woman leaned into my line of vision, blue eyes, silver-blonde hair. Angelique. This was her first time. It had to be.

I chuckled. “I mean the first time at the second time.”

“Huh?”

“Did I say that out loud? Well, it doesn’t matter.” I set down my glass, focused on her face. Smiled. “Yeah, dancing. Sure. That’s what Babysitters are for, right?”

Angelique grinned, ear to diamond-studded ear. “Hey, yeah.” She sucked down the last of her margarita.

I mentally focused on her speech patterns, a harmonic convergence created in the Northeast, let’s see, early twenty-first century—Norspeak, that’s it. What I really couldn’t figure out was, why do twenty-one-year-olds always drink margaritas? And why do they all want to be twenty-one? It didn’t matter. A week out of the joint and this Newbie would be on her own; she’d be done downloading all her past lives and I’d be done playing chaperone.

I had six more days and nights with Little Miss Margarita.

As far as I was concerned, that was seven days too long.

She stood up slowly, adjusted her dress. It was made out of one of those new synthetic fabrics that molded to her skin, whispering and rustling every time she moved. Very sensuous. Every goon in the bar was watching her, me included.

She was beautiful. More beautiful than I wanted to admit.

Maybe I was staring at her when I should have been watching the gutter punks who had sauntered in a few minutes earlier, all stitched up with black laces across their cheekbones. Just as we were about to leave, two of those underfed urchins broke into a fight. I saw the flash of knives and should have noticed that everything was too neat and clean, no blood, no torn flesh. Just the soft thud of knuckles against flesh and a few gruff moans.

But I didn’t want to get involved in somebody else’s mess, so I just hooked my right hand in Angelique’s elbow and led the way toward the door.

“Time to leave,” I said.

Right about then the shouts got louder and the bartender leaped over the bar, a baseball bat in one hand. While everyone else was focused on the brawling street thugs, a 220-pound genetic monster pushed his way through the crowd until he slid between the Newbie and me. He’d been staring at us from across the room, ever since we first walked through the door.

“Hey, sugah,” he breathed, his words slamming together in Gutterspeak, that blue-collar dialect born in NOLA’s Ninth Ward. “I’ll takes ya dancin’, baby. All night long.”

He was high on stims. I could smell it, like the inside of a rusty tin can. But all I could see was the back of his metal-studded head and the muscles that rippled from his neck all the way down his oversized arms. Even his beefy fingers curved as if ready to strike.

“Back off, scumbag,” I warned.

I mentally noted two gen dealers at five o’clock and a tattooed Nine-Timer cult gathering at two o’clock. Meanwhile, back in the corner, the gutter punks still rolled and tumbled, curses ringing out. Memories of the Newbie that went missing last week sparked through my mind, images of her mangled body on the freak show that posed as the ten-o’clock news.

At this point, I always wonder why I became a Babysitter. I mean, I had options.

The Neanderthal ran a meaty finger along Angelique’s arm and pushed his bulldog face closer to hers. She stared up at him, mesmerized. Blasted Newbies. No mind of their own. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if noticing me for the first time. Sneered. White spittle caked his lips. “Get lost, puppy. This party’s for two.” A low growl rumbled in his throat and I stared into icy, soulless eyes.

“That’s enough,” I said as I grabbed his sweat-stained shirt and pulled.

Behind me I heard the inevitable scuffing of chairs as people backed up. A few of the regulars recognized me, so they knew what was going to happen.

My left hand slid into my pocket. I wrapped my fingers around my current weapon of choice, a soft chunk of liquid light. Molded it into a wad about the size of my thumb.

He was facing me now, muscles pumped, cord-like veins standing at attention.

I swallowed. It felt like I was in the Old West, challenging a gunslinger.

“This is your last chance,” I warned him. I knew the stims had him going, had taken him to a land beyond logic. There was only one conclusion here. If that primate had half a brain, he would have known—

“The young lady, she stays with me, punk.” His words slurred and his eyes narrowed. Angelique peered at me from behind his barrel-sized chest, like a teenager who’d been caught staying out after curfew.

“Move away from him, Angelique,” I told her. She hesitantly obeyed, shoulders hunched. I gave her a nod and a soft smile. Good girl. Stay.

“You gots puppy written all over ya,” he taunted. “Ya First-Timer!”

I’ve been called worse things. Doesn’t mean that I like it. Or that it’s true.

Then he lunged at me. There was a split second when I realized I may have misjudged him. I don’t think he weighed 220; it was probably more like 250. I pulled my hand from my pocket and with a flick the liquid light ignited. A flash blasted from the palm of my left hand, shot toward him; electric current pulsed like jagged lightning, wrapping his arms and legs and chest in a sizzling blue-white anaconda. The force of it knocked him across the room, hissed while his limbs quivered. His eyes blinked in rapid succession, like he was trying to send us a message through Morse code.

Probably 250, not 220, I reminded myself as I waited for him to wake up. He got a lower charge than I expected. He convulsed on the floor.

All around me the room jolted to life.

“Somebody call the mugs! He gots liquid light—”

“He’s gonna kill us—alls of us—”

I held up my hand, showed them the tattoo on the inside of my left palm.

A deadly quiet breezed through the club. Even the jazz stopped. I hate this part, the part where I kill the music. On the ground, the brute shuddered awake, lip twitching. He shook his head, struggled to fix one eye on me.

“I’m gonna gets the mugs on you, First-Timer,” he choked out one word at a time.

I laughed. “No, you’re not.”

The Neanderthal forced his body to sit up, fought the storm that raged in his muscles. He pointed a quivering finger toward me. “Nobody pours liquid light on me and lives ta talk about it.” He pushed one leg into position, then the second, grabbed a chair and used it to hoist himself to a shaky stand.

I turned my palm toward him. Showed him the tattoo. Watched his eyes widen, saw his gaze sweep the room as if one of the people there could help him. As if they would even consider it. “You see that woman over there?” I asked, nodding toward Angelique. He slid a nervous glance in her direction, not moving his head. “That’s my baby, buddy. Nobody touches her—you got that? It’s within my legal rights to send you all the way back to your own miserable beginning. You want to start all over as a single-celled zygote?”

He shook his head, his jaw slack. His lip was still quivering.

I reached into my right pocket, pulled out a tag, walked toward him.

He started to move backward, ran into a table, knocked it over.

I stopped. “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

He froze, every muscle trembling now, but not from the liquid light.

I sighed. Reached over, clicked the tag on the back of his hand. A microscopic chip shot out, embedded itself in his skin. He flinched, but not from the pain. “That’s my marker,” I whispered. “You’re my baby now.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t means nothin’. I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Well, then you just better pray that when you’re my baby, nobody does nothin’ to you, neither. Cause when your time comes, I’m gonna be your Babysitter. And sugah,” I leaned dangerously close to his face, let my hot breath sink into his pores, switched my speech patterns to make sure he understood. “We’s gonna haves lots of fun together. I promises.”

CHAPTER TWO

Neville:

I stumbled out the door, my feet numb, my vision blurred. I slumped onto broken cobblestone, strains of jazz seeping into the alley around me as I landed facedown. Behind me, a high-pitched twitter mingled with the bright notes of a clarinet. One of my own boys was laughing at me.

“Boss, you shoulda seen yourself, you was tumblin’ backward like a First-Timer with a mouthful of jive-sweet! Man, I wishes I had a VR of that pretty scene—”

I struggled to my feet, then grabbed the black-haired gutter punk by the throat and shook him until the change in his pocket jingled. The boy didn’t fight back. He didn’t dare. He sputtered and coughed, his lips turned blue.

Finally I dropped him to the ground, watched him gasp and flail.

“Was it pretty, like that?” I asked.

The boy cringed. Two other slender young men slid deeper into the shadows, their faces covered with fresh bruises from their recent mock battle inside the club.

I laughed until my voice echoed. “Good job, boys,” I said. Then I tossed each of them a token that spun through the evening gloom, engraved words catching the dim lamplight: FREE ADMISSION TO THE UNDERGROUND CIRCUS. Dangerous grins spread across their faces as they each pocketed their new favor.

“Was it her?” one of them asked.

I shrugged. Seven ladies downloaded in New Orleans today. I’d already discounted the two that had tumbled through the black market, a process that left their brains scorched and empty. Could be this one, but I didn’t want to say yeah or nay, not yet. Still had three more to track down.

I sucked in a long, dark breath. My boys waited for a sign that it was time to move on.

I nodded. Slow, so they’d pay attention.

“We goes that way.” I pointed toward the other end of the alley.

They all stared like they didn’t believe me.

“But, boss,” the punk on the ground finally coughed out a few words, his voice raspy, his neck still red from my grip. “That guy’s a ’sitter. He’s loaded with light. Nobody says he gonna be carryin’ light or—”

“Or you woulda been too chicken to belly up for the job? Look, you gots a sister, right?”

The kid nodded, then looked away.

“And you wants yur sister to keep that pretty face. Or maybe ya don’t cares no more.”

“I cares.” The boy shoved himself into a sitting position, then scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah.” I punched him in the arm. “We follows the ’sitter.”

The four of us headed down the alley. I rubbed my hand where that puppy had jammed a marker. I had to get this thing out, couldn’t be on somebody’s trackin’ screen. The dark city stretched out before us like a maze, black-shadowed streets, yellow edges of light—all wrapped up with knife-sharp corners. Only one safe path led across the Big Easy once the sun went down. We lived in the belly of the alley, gutter water ran through our veins, and the sewer stench was our perfume.

I is the shadow, the fire that burns, the smoke that blinds.

I thrust another spike in my arm and then held my breath.

F’true, I’ll gets the marker out. Soon as my spike halo fades.

CHAPTER THREE

Chaz:

It was late, but an unrelenting crowd of bohemians, gutter punks and tourists still jostled their way through the Quarter, all of them carrying black-market imitations of Jamaican rum punch and Dixie Crimson Voodoo Ale. Musicians gathered on street corners, playing jazz improvisations to passersby, waiting for the steady waterfall of tips that jingled into open trumpet cases. Antiques shops and art galleries lured tourists toward brightly lit windows, and a pair of prostitutes strolled arm in arm, gossiping in French. The Newbie and I had walked from one blues club to another, watched the moon snake its way across the sky. My feet hurt and my head throbbed from my last glass of whiskey. A sure sign it was finally time to end the evening.

But now Miss Margarita was in the mood for adventure. As if her run-in with that genetic monster never even happened.

“I want to see the Cities of the Dead,” she said.

“The Cities of the Dead are gone,” I answered in my best monotone. Nobody needed cemeteries anymore. The empty carcasses left over after resurrection were just piled into incinerators and toasted.

She shook her head. Waist-long platinum waves shimmered.

Why did they always look like Hollywood movie stars, when they should be sucking up worms and dirt? I sighed.

“I’m not stupid, you know. I used to be an attorney. I just, hey, yeah, didn’t want to be one this time.”

I wished I had another drink. Even a migraine would be better than this.

“I know they kept one graveyard—yeah, they did. For tourists. Saw it on the news, babe. You know, before.”

“Before you went in the joint.”

She nodded. She didn’t want to talk about the joint. None of them ever did. I felt bad immediately. I should have let her bring it up first. Tears formed in the corners of black-mascara-rimmed eyes. Maybe she was remembering a husband and a kid that she left behind. Maybe there was a best friend, rotting away in a nursing facility somewhere, waiting for a phone call that would never come. Maybe there was a lifetime of memories crowding to the surface, all struggling to be part of the 50 percent that got to survive.

“Fine,” I said, although it really wasn’t. I shot a pulse beam into the night sky and signaled a taxi. “We’ll go see the last City of the Dead.”

Her eyes darkened when the cab pulled down from a nearby rooftop, gliding through the misty evening fog to stop beside us. I thought she would be happy. Thought she would smile at least—I mean, I did exactly what she wanted. But she just climbed inside the taxi and turned away from me, then stared out the window, hands rolled in tight little balls on her lap.

The cemetery appeared a few moments later, a gothic land of stone and skeleton, hard edges softened by moonlight and transformed into something mythic. We stepped from the taxi, both of us hesitating. The wrought-iron gates screeched when I pulled them open. I wanted to laugh, but for some reason I couldn’t. This was a place where bones marked the transition from life to whatever lay on the other side.

No matter what the Stringers say, this was still a sacred place.

I watched as Angelique moved silently through moon-beams, shadowy fog clinging to her feet. It followed her like a living, breathing creature as she walked from one tomb to the next, poised beside her as she read rusted bronze placards. Names of the dead dripped from her lips. Christophe. Marguerite. Francois. She shook her head, moved on. I realized that she was crying. Something was wrong; some of her circuits weren’t firing right. Tears slipped down pubescent-perfect cheeks. Movie-star lips quivered.

Suddenly I couldn’t focus my eyes anymore. I staggered and grabbed on to a towering stone angel, almost lost my balance. Whiskey jitters were finally catching up with me.

“You shouldn’t drink that black-market crap,” she said. Her speech patterns were changing. I detected a faint Scottish brogue, a late twentieth-century accent. I had to watch out. She could collapse if the memories came back too rapidly. “I worked on all the synthetic alcohol patents. Whiskey’s probably the worst.”

I nodded. We finally had something in common. Standing in the middle of a cemetery beneath a silvery moon, we both agreed that contraband liquor was bad news. A whispering breeze passed between us, stirred the mists into curving rococo eddies. Just then I turned away and leaned against my angel friend again. Vertigo forced me to wobbly knees.

“Drink tequila next time,” she said.

I held up my hand to silence her. Even a Babysitter deserves a moment of peace. Especially when he’s curled over with jitters. The world seemed to be all mist and shadow, everything in soft focus, like I was looking through a camera fitted with the wrong lens. I wiped my face on my shirt-sleeve, then caught my breath and stood up.

“Angelique?” Dead leaves rustled and tumbled through a narrow courtyard.

She was gone.

“Hey, yeah! Angelique. Where are you?” Stone met stone, shadows changed from gray to purple to black.

Babysitting 101: Never turn your back on a Newbie. Especially on Day One.

There were no sounds except my own footsteps as I stumbled through uncharted darkness; my own heartbeat, as it chugged along like a train on rickety tracks. I began to jog between temple-tombs, moved through what looked like a black-and-white vampire-movie set. I imagined Dracula, arms open wide, imagined Angelique welcomed into a land of the undead. A hundred dangers lurked in the shadows: thieves, murderers, kidnappers, hiding in the neat and narrow spaces between the tombs, waiting for tourists, hoping someone would pass by, someone unarmed and innocent.

Someone like my Newbie. Memories rose to the surface, stories of half-baked Newbies, caught and sold into slavery. They were so easy to program during the first week. I was running faster now. Thought I saw someone, watching me from a dark corridor between the tombs.

“Angelique—where are you?”

That was when I rounded a corner and found her, kneeling in front of the burial tomb of a legendary voodoo queen. She stared at the stone slab as if it belonged to her; she was running her fingers through a fresh pile of Mardi Gras beads left by pilgrims seeking favors from the dead, a puzzled expression on her face. She must have heard me, but for the longest time she didn’t move. She just continued to stare down at the tokens, mumbling to herself. Finally she turned and looked at me.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

“Who?” I glanced behind us.

“He’s running away, he’s free now.” She tried to stand up, a ghostly smile on her lips, a long-dead memory. But then she blinked, her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed, disappearing beneath the mist.

I picked her up, checked her pulse, sheltered her in my arms for a moment while my head cleared. “She’s fine,” I said to myself, as if I needed some sort of reassurance. I struggled to forget about all the things that could go wrong, about the hidden clauses in the Fresh Start contract that protected me from scenarios just like this. I was tired of being the one that always came out on top of every bad situation. “You’re going to be okay. Hang in there, kid,” I mumbled as I carried Angelique toward the street. “We’ll get you straightened out. Some jumps are just rougher than others.”

But deep down inside I knew that wasn’t true. There was something wrong here: too much information was trying to get through. Almost as if whoever did her jump didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Fortunately the cab was waiting exactly where I left it. I signaled the driver.

Then I used two Master Keys, preprogrammed commands hardwired into every Newbie at start-up, and I whispered into Angelique’s ear. “Wake up. Focus.”

She instantly opened her eyes, stood up and climbed into the cab, one hand holding mine for support.

We drove away.

I was too tired to care about another Newbie whose life just got mangled and torn in Fresh Start machinery. Too tired to realize that there might be more going on here than just a rugged jump.

It was the first mistake I would make on this case. But that didn’t really matter. Because I was about to make plenty more.

CHAPTER FOUR

October 12 • 1:16 A.M.

Chaz:

Angelique leaned against my shoulder, babbling softly, staring into space. The city melted around us as one narrow fog-drenched street bled into another. We swung through that section of the Quarter where the streets changed names; St. Charles Avenue veered off into downtown and turned into Royal Street, leaving the nineteenth-century millionaire’s row behind.

I tapped the Plexiglas that separated us from the taxi driver. A row of colorful tarot cards clung to the barrier with a handwritten sign: FREE READINGS WITH A TOUR OF THE CITY.

“The Carrington. Bourbon Street.”

He nodded. At least, I think it was a he. Long dreadlocks, black lipstick, massive biceps. I saw him studying me in the rearview.

“Newbie?” the he/she asked a few moments later, heavy-lidded eyes confronting mine in the mirror.

I nodded.

“You the Babysitter?”

Another nod. Followed by a yawn.

“Mind if I see some ID?”

I flashed my palm.

The driver shrugged. “Ever since that incident over in Barcelona last year, I always check.”

“Yeah.” I yawned again. “What can I say? The laws are different in Spain. You should be glad you live here.” Just then the Carrington Hotel loomed into view, a tall brick-and-mortar Baroque masterpiece. For seven days and nights I have no life. I eat, drink and sleep with my assigned Newbie. I don’t mean sleep in the biblical sense—nobody touches my baby like that, not even me.

Sometimes we stay in a hotel; sometimes we go to my place. On rare occasions, we go to the Newbie’s home, but there are usually too many memory pegs there, even after it’s been sterilized. My main requirement is that wherever we stay, I need my own room and a VR room. Once in a while a customer balks and says that’s too expensive. I usually raise an eyebrow and tell them to take their business elsewhere. Right about then I laugh. Not hysterically. It’s more like a well-planned “ha.”

There is nowhere else. We’re the only ice-cream store in town.

Angelique and I made it through the hotel lobby without incident. I take that back. There was a brief moment when she became disoriented, right about when I was getting the room key.

She looked up at me through half-closed eyes. “William?” she asked, confused. A tormented pause. “Jim?” She shook her head. I made eye contact with the concierge, then silently showed him my ID.

“Who are you?” Angelique asked.

“Chaz. Chaz Domingue. Your Babysitter.” I briefly debated which of the five Master Keys to use. “Recognize.”

She squinted her eyes, looked me up and down. “My Babysitter?”

“Focus,” I said, pulling another key phrase from my limited bag of tricks. “This is Day One.”

“Day One.” She looked at the ground, shoulders sagging as the weight of the world came rushing back. “Then William is really gone.” Her voice faded below a whisper. “And that means I must be dead.”

“No, Angelique,” I guided her toward the elevator, away from the concierge, who looked concerned. Few people see or remember the anguish of a Newbie’s first week. If they did, they might not be so eager to jump.

“You’re alive,” I told her as the elevator took us almost instantly to the thirty-third floor.

But she just shook her head and kept mumbling the same dark phrase over and over.

“That means I must be dead.”

Sometimes this job is enough to break your heart, if you’ve still got one.

1:58 A.M.

Fresh Start keeps its word when we say we give our clients a new beginning. I may be part of the family, but I don’t have access to any “secret files.” I honestly didn’t know who the hell she was or who she used to be, any more than she did. And I didn’t care.

Like I always say, I don’t make the rules.

So, I tucked Angelique into bed, made sure she was safe and sound and asleep; then I locked all the doors and windows. It’s habit, of course—no one has wandered into a Babysitter’s suite, even by accident, in more than twenty years. Still, it makes me feel better, so I do it. Lots of things make me feel better. Like black-market whiskey. Like jazz clubs. Like a midnight session alone in a VR room.

The moon had all but forgotten about us. It disappeared behind the rugged skyline, and headed off to seduce other countries with silver shadows. I was long past tired. But I needed absolution.

I shut the door to the room, slipped into a VR suit, then snuggled down in the sensory chair and closed my eyes while it morphed to fit my body. With a thought command I switched on the Grid. Narrow bands of red, blue and green light shot across the room, sought and defined its dimensions, creating a chart of horizontal lines. The light quickly formed a graph of horizontal and vertical bands.

The Grid was up.

I went to my home page, a glittering seascape where waves crashed against a mountainous shore. Sandpipers waddled across the narrow beach, following the tides like tiny Charlie Chaplin impressionists. I took a deep breath, sucked in the smell of saltwater, felt the charge of negative ions.

I always have a hard time leaving my home page.

It was well past midnight in my tiny corner of the universe, sometime between rest for the weary and insomnia for the troubled. And yet—elsewhere on earth’s canvas—dawn painted gray skies; sherbet colors layered the horizon; and the earth waited to run a rough tongue over the flavors of tomorrow. I spun a VR globe with my right hand, looking for places where the sun still cast long shadows, where the inhabitants had reached that point in the day where they could pause and catch their breath.

I have ten preselected locations around the world, ten different time zones, places I can visit whenever I have a chance.

Not everybody has a regular nine-to-five. I’ve learned over the years to find my solace where and when I can. Tonight it waited for me in a tiny stucco building in George, South Africa. I always start on the outside, on the dusty street. I know I stand out from most of the regulars, me in my glittering VR suit, them in their brightly colored caftans and turbans. But there will be others like me, visitors from around the globe. One man comes from China; his almond eyes watch me as we stand beside each other. I’ve never actually talked to him, but he nods and smiles, glances down at my right hand.

I’m carrying my sax.

The building glows from within, the glimmer of a thousand candles. I’ve come to fill up all my empty spaces, to patch the holes in my heart, to revive my ever-dull, ever-disobedient soul.

I sit in a back pew, my eyes closed, letting the song wash over me, cleansing me. Already I can hear her voice. Beulah. An old black woman, frail and tall, her nubby hair cropped close to her head, her neck long: her wide lips lift praise in a velvet-rich tone, her lungs an instrument as pure and clear as mountain sky. Then I lift the saxophone to my lips, joining the song. Somehow we always manage to stop at exactly the same moment. There is a hush, an expectant selah-pause as angels themselves draw nearer, eager to know more about this thing called salvation.

Sometimes I wish I fully understood it, how my part is going to add up to anything of significance in the end. Most of the time I think I’m fooling myself, trying to convince myself that I really matter at all.

But for now I just have to take it like every other One-Timer does.

Like credit in the bank. Invisible, but there when you need it.

Like faith.

CHAPTER FIVE

Chaz:

Night brings peace for some, for those who can sleep. Personally I think it’s all a ruse. Go ahead, close your eyes. Tomorrow will be better than today. Go ahead. I dare you. Well, I’m not taking any bets. When I stand and look out at the night sky, I have a hard time believing that the sun is really going to rise again.

The landscape of George faded away, faster than I wanted. I was alone. Remembering that freak in the jazz club. He left a bad taste in my mouth. Almost like I’d swallowed a glass of his jive-sweet take-me-to-the-sky high, and now his snake-in-the-skin was going to rub off on me.

I’ve never liked gen-spike addicts, the way their skin ripples and shivers, like it’s crawling with a hundred snakes. There’s something primeval about them, as if evolution somehow reversed, imploded in upon itself; maybe Darwin stood up in the middle of the night and pushed a cosmic button and then suddenly all his clever theories began to unwind. Not that I ever believed in them in the first place, but somehow the gen freaks have his name tattooed on their souls.

And I hate to say it because it sounds so déjà vu, but I felt like I had seen this guy somewhere before.

A bad feeling slipped up my tailbone, lodged itself in the center of my chest and then twisted.

Had we been followed tonight? I thought I’d seen that guy earlier in the evening, outside the museum. He had turned around, watched Angelique when we got in the taxi and headed for the jazz club. And then in the cemetery, a flash of eyes watched me, between the crypts.

Was my imagination working overtime just because my Newbie collapsed and went off-line? Or—this one was even worse—was somebody after the Newbie?

Her identity was a secret: even she didn’t know for sure who she had been in her previous life yet. That was all part of the deal. Fresh Start. Nobody knew who you were or what you’d done. Even the mugs couldn’t come after you for a past crime, as long as you hadn’t committed a capital. It was a little bit like redemption. I know that sounds corny, but it was true. Sign on the dotted line and then when the time comes, everything gets washed away. Your family can’t find you, your creditors can’t find you, even your best friend won’t know where you went. A brand-new beginning. And if you planned everything right, there should be a nice little sum of money waiting, investments accrued over lifetimes.

Still, people have cracked the system before.

We pretend to be this omnipotent organization, but we’ve got our weak points.

“Run a track on marker number”—I paused and checked my log—“sixteen-point-four-three-eight-eight. Check to see where it’s been tonight.”

I tried my best to settle back and relax while the Grid ran a search on the gen freak I’d tagged a few hours ago. I knew he wouldn’t keep the marker long. Within a few days he’d find somebody in a back alley with barely enough techno-skills to take it out. I just hoped that they would accidentally yank out some muscle and nerve at the same time. Our markers have tentacles that lace for at least five inches on either side of the insertion point. Not many black-market geeks have the talent to remove one. Or the guts.

The search paused and skittered, jammed to a stop sooner than I expected.

“Parameters?” a silver voice asked.

“Where and when. Give it to me on a satellite map, include street names. Make it ‘up close and personal.’”

It flashed across the VR screen. Shorter than it should have been, both in distance and time. Either the jerk went home and fell asleep, or he had already found someone to remove the marker.

“Closer. Zoom in on the street names.”

The map sizzled, then jumped, razor-sharp exact. I immediately recognized the beginning of the glowing yellow trail. I smiled. The brute must have taken a while to catch his breath. He didn’t leave the alley behind the club for about half an hour, long after the Newbie and I left. Nice. I wish I could have put him down for longer. It’s illegal, but with some of these Mongoloid jerks, I feel like the limits need to be stretched.

Nobody tells me yes or no. Nobody but me. And that little voice, almost too quiet to hear sometimes.

I stood up and walked closer to the screen. Read the street names out loud as I followed the trail with my finger. Something strange about the way he traveled. Stop and go. Almost made me think he wasn’t alone, like he was with somebody else.

“You got any real satellite shots of this?”

A duplicate map, sans the yellow tracking line, shot up on the far wall. I walked over, examined it. I was right, there were four goons down there.

I went back to the first map, continued the trail. Stopped. That bad feeling was back. His trail led to the City of the Dead. The same time the Newbie and I were there.

He had followed us.

And as far as I could tell, there was only one way he could have found us.

That was as much evidence as I needed, but for some reason I continued to follow his trail. He didn’t track us after the cemetery, didn’t come here. I paused. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was a one-in-a-million fluke, like winning a lottery ticket. Maybe he hadn’t followed us.

I took his trail to the end.

It had to be wrong.

“Is this data corrupted? Any chance somebody tampered with the marker?”

A long, reflective whirring pause. “No. The data is correct.”

That Neanderthal’s trail ended at Fresh Start, at our main headquarters.

This was beginning to look like an inside job.

CHAPTER SIX

Neville:

The Mississippi churned with froth and mud, and here, on the Toulouse Street Wharf, the wind blew chill. A steam whistle sounded in the near distance as the Natchez slugged closer and the river echoed with the captain’s voice, calling through a vintage megaphone. Ambiance. It was all about mystique and how to charm tourists out of another fistful of cash.

I turned up my collar, shivering in the damp cold as I glared at the three-deck steamboat edging its way toward the dock. Somewhere, hidden in a private room, a steam calliope sang a thirty-two-note forbidden song.

Luring me and my boys.

The laughter of children, innocence bought and sold.

“Has you been inside before, boss?” one of my gutter punks asked.

I nodded, then flashed a dark grin. My spike halo was fading, and with it, the world was coming back into focus. The crowd began to shuffle up the ramp toward the boat, river water sloshing onto the first deck. Hidden in my pockets, my fists curled in anger at what I had seen less than an hour ago, a laboratory filled with empty cages—just like my boss expected.

We had been betrayed. The dog and the research were missing.

But for now, I followed the crowd, one step at a time, ignoring the stench of sweat and the press of flesh, forgetting about the near impossible task set before me by the latest turn of events. I vowed to push it out of my mind for the next two hours.

Instead I listened for the strains of calliope music.

And waited for the decadent pleasures that could only be found in the Underground Circus.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chaz:

Angelique slept on her right side, curled in a tangled fetal position, legs tight to her chest, head buried in a pillow. One fist pressed against her mouth. Her eyelids twitched. She must have been dreaming.

I slipped into her room as quietly as I could. I’m always a bit clumsy when I’m tired, but right now exhaustion had been replaced by a jagged adrenaline rush. Fear isn’t one of my favorite highs.

I took her left hand in mine as gently as I could. Ran a scanner over it. Nothing.

I wanted to feel good, I wanted to say, hey, one out of two. Chances are high that I was mistaken. But I’ve never been an optimist.

I reached for her other hand, twisted beneath the pillow. Tried to pull it forward. She moaned, tossed her head, stretched both arms and then repositioned herself. I waited. We each took a deep breath and sighed at the same time, one of those odd in-sync moments that catch you by surprise. I blinked and reminded myself that this was another human being lying here, with as many rights as I have. One of them being violated by Yours Truly right now.

She settled back into a deep sleep, her right hand draped over her thigh.

I ran the scanner again. A pulse of red light flashed.

She had a marker.

I gave myself a couple of minutes to think, paced back and forth in front of her bedroom window. Stared down at the almost empty street, then up at the starless sky. If I was waiting for a flash of brilliance, it didn’t come. The only thing I got was a nagging list of questions, one that cried for attention louder than the others.

I was her Babysitter, so how and when did she get somebody else’s marker? Messing with a Newbie is a capital, and none of the morons who run the kidnapping rings have access to this kind of hardware.

I decided to take a break, went out into the kitchen. Made myself some café au lait with chickory, then found a couple of cookies. I sauntered back into the VR room, rested in the chair and waited for my home page to boot up again, munched on something that tasted like chocolate chips but was probably a soy-based, lactose-free imitation.

Waves washed back and forth. Each one clean, fresh, new. White foam curling. Gulls complaining overhead. The sandpipers were gone. Now a baby seal and its mother glistened in the afternoon sun, sliding over the sand, chasing each other, barking like dogs with sore throats.

I wished my father was still alive. He understood this business like nobody else, had a way of explaining how it never compromised his faith, how he was more like a watcher on the wall, making sure Stringers kept their rights, while at the same time the One-Timers kept theirs. He believed that one day our family might be the only ones left with enough political power to stand up for the One-Timers.

Of course, the other One-Timers never saw it that way.

Dad wouldn’t think twice about all this, I know. He’d confront my brother, Russell, in a heartbeat, ask him what the hell was going on. Why did this Stringer have a marker? Why had that goon been following me? And who did he know over at Fresh Start?

But underneath all of it, I still had a feeling, one of those stupid gut-intuition things. I couldn’t believe Russ was involved in this. I mean, he’d made a few bad business decisions in the past several years, but he’d never actually crossed the line, never broken the law.

I was the one who always got stuck with the dirty work.

The café au lait was gone and I wiped cookie crumbs from my face as I stood in the doorway to Angelique’s bedroom. I was going to have to use a couple of Keys I usually avoid. And do something that could get me thrown in jail.

“Sleep, Angelique,” I said. “Deep sleep.”

She sighed, rolled over on her back. She lay perfectly still, almost not breathing. It was creepy.

I took her right hand.

“No Pain.” My words were clear, loud, firm.

She smiled.

I ran a tracker over the back of her hand, made a mental note of where the marker was. Swabbed her skin with disinfectant. Held my breath while I made a small laser incision, then carefully removed a tiny metal and plastic chip with tweezers. Fortunately, it didn’t have long tentacles like Fresh Start markers, but there was more blood than I expected. I wrapped her hand in one of the hotel towels, pressed it tight enough to stop the bleeding.

She just continued to smile.

Once the bleeding stopped, I put a flesh patch on top of the incision. Then I cursed softly. The color wasn’t quite right. Well, I hadn’t planned on doing minor surgery tonight. It made perfect sense to me that the skin patch wasn’t the right shade. I just hoped that Angelique didn’t freak out and decide to press charges in the morning.

I slipped the marker into a plastic bag and stuffed it in my jacket pocket.

I honestly had no idea what to do next. I was too hyped up on caffeine, sugar and adrenaline to sleep. So I decided to do what came naturally.

I went out on the balcony and played my sax.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Chaz:

I was eleven years old the first time I saw a Newbie, the first time I saw life and death trade places. I guess my life had been pretty sheltered up to that point.

A state-appointed teacher came to our cell, wearing one of those government suits with the high collar, his breath a mixture of coffee and mint. My brother Russell and I, we sat in the back and pretended to pay attention while the guy peddled the Ideal Plan, we even made faces at each other behind his back. We only had seven kids in our cell, but we could tell that we made him nervous. Seven kids in one room was enough to unnerve almost anyone. I’d heard of cells with as many as sixteen kids, but personally, I don’t know if I really believe it.

We each had two bodyguards inside the room, armed and able to kill with their bare hands in less than three seconds if necessary. And outside the room there were at least fifteen more. A crackle of handset communications buzzed continuously between the teacher’s sentences, a hoarse whisper of monotone voices.

“—Sadie took her medicine, yes, I will get her there in time—”

“—piano lessons at three. Of course—”

“—Jeffrey is listening to the teacher, Mrs. Damotta—”

The Ideal Plan had been enforced for the past fifteen years, so I had to study it just like everybody else, whether I wanted to or not. The teacher did his best to explain everything, all the way from Life Number One to Life Number Nine, covering everything from sterilization to college to the legal procedures involved in fighting a death cert case; then he gave us each a contract. My best friend, Pete Laskin, signed his that same day. I heard that his mother cried for a week when she found out, but it didn’t matter. They kept us separated from our parents for a full month, so we could think about it without their influence. Sadie Thompson, a twelve-year-old dream come true who barely knew my name, laughed and signed hers almost immediately, dotting the “i” in her name with a heart. Russell, who was thirteen and of an age to make his own decision, immediately folded his contract into quarters and handed it back. Unsigned. No thank you, Mr. Government Man. Can I go home now, please?

At eleven years old, I was the youngest in our cell. Everyone else had to make up his mind within our month of isolation. But I had a full year to make my decision.

So that was when Dad started taking me to work, on the pretext that it was time for me to learn about the family business. I’ll never forget that first day. Mid-October. Dry leaves whisked across the streets, crackled beneath my feet and turned to dust. The sky burned blue and bright overhead. A cool breeze poured between the buildings like fresh water, a welcome respite after the unending summer. People had been dying all over New Orleans from an abnormally long heat spell. Mostly old people, but a few babies had passed too.

Fresh Start had been busy, everyone working double shifts. Two extra crews had been flown in from Los Angeles. I’m sure that’s why it happened. Somebody was too tired and the out-of-state crews didn’t know our procedures.

I have to believe it was a mistake. The other possibility, that my father let it happen on purpose to teach me a lesson—well, I just can’t go for that. Russell, in one of his dark moments, said that Dad did it to show us that life is, and should be, unpredictable, that we never should have pretended to be God.

Mom refuses to talk about it. I have to admit I admire her for not taking sides. I know she had an opinion about all of it, she always did. But for whatever reason, she let Russell and me make our own decisions, about Fresh Start, about the Ideal Plan, about what happened to the Newbie on that October day.

The inside of the plant was everything I’d hoped it would be. All stainless steel and molded plastic in the industrial sections; all luxurious leather and ceramic tile in the public areas. Not that anyone would want to, but you could eat your lunch on the floor anywhere in that 200,000-square-foot facility back then. It was that clean. And the smell was a bizarre mixture of dentist-office-scary and new-car-exciting.

For years, whenever anyone found out that I was Chaz Domingue, of the Fresh Start Domingues, a hush would sweep through the room almost as if something just sucked out all the oxygen. A long quiet would follow. And then when people started to talk again they would be ever so polite, opening doors for me, asking me if I would like some candy, asking my opinion about the weather. I liked the attention at first, but by the time I was a teenager I realized it was based on a combination of fear and envy. So I quit telling people my last name. Sometimes I pretended to be someone else entirely. When I got older I even pretended to be a Stringer, just because I wanted to fit in.

But on that October afternoon, when the sunlight was slicing through the warehouse at a steep angle, when the sounds of the city seemed muted because so many people had died, on that day I decided that I never wanted to jump. No matter how much I wanted to be like other people. No matter how much I wanted to live.

That day, one of the Newbies got stuck in between lives. In some nether world, where dark, swirling creatures spin traps like spiders. She got caught. Her old body, withered and white with decay, lay discarded on the other side of the frost-etched glass. Her new-cloned body, as beautiful as Eve herself, lay expectant on a metal gurney, modestly covered in white linen. Neither body breathed, neither had life. All the equipment was suspiciously silent, no beeps to register heartbeat or brainwave patterns. Too much time had passed. The technicians began to get nervous, but Dad just raised one hand to quiet them.

“Give her a minute,” he said, a tone of assurance in his voice.

But several more minutes passed and the clone continued to stare, sightless, at the ceiling.

And then, like it was straight out of a nightmare, she started to talk. The machines refused to admit there was life in either body, yet some alien consciousness caused the clone’s mouth to move and a hollow voice to speak.

The things she said have haunted my dreams, might just follow me all the way past Judgment Day into the great beyond. Might bring torment with me, like shackles, into God’s kingdom, whether he likes it or not.

“I can’t…I can’t break free,” she said, still staring up at the concourse of pipes and ducts that traversed the warehouse ceiling. “I’m tangled in something. It feels like a web.” Tears streaked her face. Slow, glycerin-like streams. “They’ve been chasing me and I’m so tired of running, of trying to hide. Oh, please get me out of here! I don’t know where I am. There’s no light, just a dark glowing horizon, like fire in the distance. And these creatures—” She moaned, a heartbreaking cry, long and low and inhuman. I found myself wondering if we were really listening to a woman or if some spirit from beyond had commanded an audience. “They’re like spiders, but much bigger. I saw one of them eat a man. It ripped his head right off.” Her eyes closed.

Meanwhile, my father ran around the room, fiddling with dials, gesturing to the other workers to try and save her.

“It’s so dark. So cold,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “And I’m so alone.”

Most of them stood frozen, like me. Listening.

Then she turned toward one of them, looked right at him. Allen was his name. She reached one arm out, then shrieked. And she was gone.

To this day I still imagine her trapped in a twilight world, waiting for someone to rescue her. But I know now that no one ever will. God wouldn’t have left her there if she were one of His. Even if we had messed with His plan, with His order laid down from the beginning, He still wouldn’t have abandoned one of His chosen.

That’s the only way I can rationalize all of it.

CHAPTER NINE

Chaz:

Pete Laskin leaned over his laptop, thick bangs tousled on his forehead, his pale skin blue from the monitor’s glow. He cleared his throat, typed in a few more keys, long fingers looking almost ghostly as they flew in a blur. He glanced over at me, dark circles beneath haunted eyes.

“Where’d ya gets this?” he asked.

We both focused on the marker, still inside the plastic bag.

I shrugged.

He shook his head, then leaned back. “No, man. You gots ta tell me. I gots—I mean, this here—we’s in way too deep here.”

I peered over his narrow shoulders, tried to figure out what all the numbers on his screen meant.

“Look, Chaz. I promises I won’t tells nobody, but you gots to be honest with me.”

“I took it off one of the Stringers,” I said finally.

“It was your Newbie, wasn’t it?”

I just stared at him. The less he knew, the safer he was.

“This here’s a government job, boss.”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Since when does the government put markers in Stringers?”

“Is she in there?” he asked, gesturing toward Angelique’s room. The door was closed.

Outside, New Orleans fought against the inevitable. Fringes of black clung to the horizon, stale fluorescent light sputtered from spindly streetlights, and a steamy haze hung over the broken skyline. Somewhere in the invisible distance daylight crouched, like a golden panther ready to leap across the heavens.

Angelique would be waking up soon.

I nodded. I didn’t say anything but I couldn’t help wondering how he knew my Newbie was a woman.

Pete’s mouth slid into a short-lived, sardonic grin. “Okay, so you don’t wants to talk about your current assignment, but it seems likes somebody is pretty interested in her. Or him. Or whoever they was before they jumped.”

“We were followed last night.” I took a sip of coffee, glanced at Pete from the corner of my eye. We’d been best friends since we were nine, but I still wasn’t sure how much I should tell him.

I could almost see the gears shifting in his blue eyes, thoughts processing through the motherboard in his brain. “Has you been tailed before?”

I shook my head.

Just then I realized that Pete wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring at something behind me. I turned and saw Angelique standing in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. Her long hair hung in a Rapunzel tangle, a glittering mass of gold and silver. Somehow she was even more beautiful without makeup. She yawned.

“Do I smell coffee?” she asked.

“In the kitchen.” I pointed toward a short hallway.

She ambled away on long sinuous legs. Poetry in slow motion.

Pete raised his eyebrows. “Man, I don’t ever wants to hear you complaining abouts your job again,” he whispered.

“It’s not what you think.”

“Trust me,” he said as he stood up. “You gots no idea what I’m thinking. And you should probably puts that thing away.” He gestured toward the marker. “My opinion is ya gots ta tell Russell. Forget about all the crap you two gots going on in your personal life for a few minutes and deals with this.”

He paused at the door, ready to leave, laptop folded up like a sheet of paper and tucked into his shirt pocket. “I don’t wanna scares you, boss, but that thing is trouble. The government’s been wanting to gets their paws on your company for ages.” He lowered his voice, forcing me to lean closer to hear him. “And it looks like they finally gots a way to do it.”

CHAPTER TEN

Angelique:

Chaz said that I should start writing things down, that it will help me remember my past lives. He says that everybody keeps a journal now—even One-Timers. A secret collection of memories that no one else ever reads. It’s supposed to help me remember what I don’t want to forget. But I’m afraid of the past and the future. And I’m worried about what I might find out about myself.

There was blood on my sheets when I woke up. My hand hurts but I don’t know why, and a heavy pain has settled in my chest, like my lungs are made of rock. We went to a jazz club last night, I think. I ran into a bald man there—his face, his voice—he seemed familiar. But then a fight broke out and in the midst of it, a picture flashed in my head: a stone crypt.

The City of the Dead.

Chaz took me there, but it didn’t help. The picture got louder and heavier, like the pain in my chest. I ran away from him through the misty fog, feet pounding against cement while the mist hung heavy and wet, almost like rain. I thought I heard a howling death, felt white fangs ripping my skin and I knew that I never wanted to fall in love again. Ever. That was when I saw it. The place that had called me. But I was too weak. Too afraid.

I felt the same way now.

I sat down with a stylus and a VR tablet, with trembling hands I began to write down random thoughts and words. Then it started to come back to me. Images. Sounds. Voices. The black holes in my memory dissolved into shocking memories; they thundered awake, sudden, immediate, demanding. My emotions were ripped and shredded.

A familiar face floated before me, a moment of joy and hope.

Then I remembered. It wasn’t clear at first, but after a minute I could see.

My first life…

We lived on a farm in Scotland, William and I, on a parcel of hilly land near the River Esk. During the day we tended our herd of Hampshire sheep, watched as the wind ruffled the long grass, commented on how each blade enticed the sheep to linger, to fill their bellies. In the evenings after dinner we would sit before the fire, I playing my clarsach harp, he singing the old Celtic songs.

We were a strange pair, I know. Both of us willing to give up the modern city life to herd sheep, but you have to remember that the government gave incentives back then, trying so hard to get folks back to the farms. We were the lucky ones, that’s for sure. Got our little piece of property for almost nothing.

He was ten years older than I was, and quite dashing, with his rugged, country-squire looks. Not at all the sort of man I’d hoped to meet when I went off to university in Glasgow. Not the sort of man I’d planned to marry, but there it is. You don’t often end up doing what you have in mind in the first place.

I was going to change the world with my new ideas. I’d wanted to sail across the ocean and marry an American, leave this dull land of brilliant blue skies and emerald hills behind. Wash my hands of it, once and for all. Catherine MacKinnon, I said to myself more than once, you need to break with your clan and make a difference in the world.

Of course, I didn’t know then the things I know today, but I still don’t think I would have lived my life any different. It was time for one of us to stop the madness, to take a bold step into the future.

William never saw it the same way I did. And I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for it.

He was the true love of my life. The love of every life I’ve ever had, and I don’t like the counting of lives anymore. It makes me weary. But this was my first one, so it was different. It was special. It was the time I made my first decision to jump.

We were Catholics, both of us, but I never really took it to heart the way William did. He rose up in the morning and went to bed in the evening with his prayers. Granted, everything around us was changing. The Pope had made some radical changes recently, and the one before him was maybe even more liberal, if that was possible. So what we had wasn’t the same as what our parents before us had.

It all started when the Pope took the ban off resurrection. “It’s not the unpardonable sin,” I think that was how he phrased it in the beginning. It took a few years, but then pretty soon almost everyone I knew got the implant. Even my mom. Two of my sisters, Kelly and Coleen, decided against it, which didn’t surprise me since they made all their bad decisions together.

But my husband, William, he wouldn’t even talk about it. If we were ever divided about anything, this was it.

“One life was all God gave us,” he told me one day when we were herding the sheep into a different pasture. “It’s all I want.”

“But we could be together for almost five hundred years,” I argued. I had calculated it all out, from Life One to Life Nine, carefully reading between the lines of the contract. I knew each of the resurrected lives began in a body about twenty-one years old and that you would live to be about seventy-two. So with no accidents or major illnesses, a person could live to be around four hundred eighty-eight years old.

It wasn’t forever, but it was damn close.

I’ll never forget the look he gave me right then. The sunlight came down through the trees, touched him on the face, set his hair on fire and made his eyes glow. It was like the Almighty had taken residence inside him for a few moments.

“We can be together for all of eternity,” he said. “It doesn’t take a blasted Fresh Start implant to give us what God already promised.”

“But—but that’s not the same,” I said. “This is guaranteed—”

Another stony glance. He looked like Moses just after he stepped down from the mountain, when he had the Shekinah glory of God shining all around him. I wished the sun would set.

“Guaranteed? You don’t think Jesus rising from the dead was a guarantee?” he asked. “Not a promise from God: ‘Look here, this is what I can do for you’?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Since when don’t you know?”

“Since always. I never knew for sure.”

“Catherine, my love, you’re swimming in treacherous waters.” He paused for a long moment. “Are you having doubts about your faith, or are you telling me that you never really believed?”

I took a deep breath, afraid of what I was going to say next.

“What I’ve been trying to tell you—” I stopped to lick my lips nervously. “What I’m telling you is that I got the implant. Yesterday. I just signed up for resurrection.”

“Did you now.”

A silence hung between us then, like the distance between two continents.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chaz:

Sun splattered the near empty streets. Only a few drowsy commuters passed us, all yawning and sipping coffee from paper cups. Apparently everyone in the Big Easy had a rough time last night, me included. Angelique and I stopped at a French bakery and picked up a couple of beignets drenched in powdered sugar. Her mood lightened and she laughed while she licked her fingers. Most of the city was still asleep when we got back in the car and drove over to the head office.

So I wasn’t expecting the voice memo that came blasting through my Verse.

“Stand by for the latest Nine-Timer Report—”

Felt like I’d been standing by my entire life. Right now I was waiting for India to self-destruct. I was glad Angelique didn’t have her smartphone implant yet. Explaining the end of the world wasn’t on my to-do list today.

“Explosions rocked the suburbs of Jaipur, India, a few hours ago,” the newscaster said.

Jaipur. We’ve got a Fresh Start plant there—it was probably the target of a local pro-death demonstration.

“Our sources are limited,” she continued in a bright, cheery voice. “But apparently the explosions triggered a Nine-Timer scenario that spread for about ten blocks—”

I’d bet right now Russell and his board were scrambling to cover all this up.

“Almost all clones within that radius froze up and went off-line—”

Went off-line. The PC term for “died.”

“—but as far as we can tell, this was a pocket of Six-Timers. Obviously, the mechanical breakdowns we’ve been hearing rumors about are no longer restricted to the Ninth Generation clones—”

There was a dramatic pause.

“Remember to stay tuned for our next Nine-Timer Report at noon,” she said. “And may your afterlife be even better than your life today.”

I pulled into the Fresh Start parking lot just as the broadcast concluded. Angelique’s mood changed again when she stared at the building. Almost every Newbie has some sort of reaction when they see one of our plants, based on some hidden memory of when they first got their chip, so I didn’t really pay too much attention.

I was still thinking about the report.

When I was younger, the end of the world always seemed a bit poetic. In between gigs, my jazz buddies and I would sit around and talk about it for hours, sipping coffee or whiskey, cigarettes burning, taking bets on the future.

But the bottom line was that the end was coming, whether we believed in it or not. Folks have been talking about this afterlife time bomb for the past fifty years.

I should know.

After all, it was my family that lit the fuse in the first place.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chaz:

Sometimes my arguments with Russ were universal, no different from those that brothers have had throughout history. You got a bigger slice of pie, all the girls like you better, you always think you’re right. But lately our words carried a sharper edge, a growing hostility that was pushing us apart.

And despite the increasing tension, I still saw myself in his shadow, following in his oversized footprints.

I hated those moments. Like now. When I knew that I needed to confront him, but I also knew that somehow he was going to make me feel like I had messed up; I was the one tracking mud through the house; I was the one leaving dirty fingerprints behind that would let the rest of the world know, once and for all, that the Domingues were to blame for everything.

Majestic cedars stood outside the window, a patient audience dressed in shades of mossy green and burnt sienna. Their rich fragrance drifted through an open door, a woodsy incense that made me think of childhood. Then the VR projection flickered. Probably a power surge somewhere in the city. For an instant, the large vaulted room filled with wooden desks and spiraling dust motes temporarily faded away to reveal the plant warehouse.

Meanwhile, the debate continued, like it always had. I’d heard this dispute before. I knew there was no conclusion. No happy ending.

“What are we going to do if the media gets hold of this? Nobody expected the problems we had with the Ninth Generation clones to show up in the Sixth Generation. Almost any amount of stress will cause them to freeze up—”

“—you’re worried about the media? Have you thought about what the UN might do? Did you see what happened to that hot pocket of Six-Timers in Jaipur this morning? We weren’t able to cover it up because one of our nearby plants was bombed. All of our resources were focused there. Just like last year in Tehran and Bangalore. These pro-death organizations are out for blood—”

“—I keep telling you, the pro-death committee is not behind this. Somebody else is pulling all the strings—”

“—the experts said this wouldn’t happen for another century. The problem that was supposed to surface first was infertility. We never anticipated that the host DNA would break down this quickly—”

It was a corporate board meeting with all the Fresh Start top-level executives. All wearing their pretty-boy monkey suits and their we’re-so-very-important scowls.

Just then, Russell filled my vision, larger than life as always. Big brothers always seem too big to put into words, especially when a sizable portion of their life has been spent playing the role of father. I stood in the shadows, arms crossed.

“Look, it’s not like we were blindsided here,” he said. “We tried to make changes, to give people incentives to stop jumping so often, especially in India. But the Hindu population has taken a personal interest in resurrection. Something about their search for Nirvana, some quest for a higher rung on the caste-system ladder—”

“Why does this always come back to religion? Why do you One-Timers always have to make this an argument about God?”

Russ held his own for several minutes, arguing with Aditya Khan, the guy with the unfortunate job of overseeing our business in the Middle East and Asia, where the lion-tiger-and-elephant share of our problems was currently taking place. Then Russ glanced over his shoulder and realized that I had walked into his VR conference call.

“Well, look who decided to get his little hands dirty and pay us a visit.” He paused, then turned back to the board members. “We’ll continue this later.” Aditya started to protest, but Russ ignored him. He hit the DISCONNECT button on his wristband and slipped out of his VR suit. Instantly the conference room vista, replete with rustic nineteenth-century woodland ambiance, sizzled and faded. We were back in the plant warehouse now: concrete floors, a buzz of activity in distant office cubicles, the clatter of hospital-grade carts rolling down hallways, and a vague sterile odor hanging over everything.

And somewhere behind us, Angelique was running through a battery of hand-eye coordination tests in a soundproof booth.

A fine layer of dust seemed to hang in the air. Like guilt.

“You really must be some sort of idiot,” Russ said, his dark-eyed gaze sifting through the dust. He seemed out of place, dressed in an evening suit, one of the latest designer-from-China things, the top buttons hanging open. There was a cut on his forehead and a few drops of blood stained his white collar. “What kind of game were you playing in that bar last night?”

As much as I had tried to be prepared, he still caught me off guard.

“Do you realize we could have a major lawsuit on our hands,” he continued, “if that brute you tangled with decides to press charges?”

“Trust me, there’s no way that Neanderthal’s gonna slam us with a lawsuit—”

“You didn’t identify yourself, bruh.” He sighed, then glanced over my shoulder at Angelique. “One of the mugs in the French Quarter sent me a VR report, minutes after you sauntered out of that club.”

I paused. Mentally re-enacted the events in the club last night. “I told that goon who I was,” I countered, but all of sudden I wasn’t sure.

“You showed him your tattoo, all right. After you blasted him with light. Look, I’m not in the mood to fight,” he said wearily. “I got yanked out of a dinner with the mayor last night by another board meeting, came in here and had to fight my way through a pro-death rally—”

“Is this one of your infamous ‘my job is tougher than yours’ speeches?” I glanced back at Angelique and noticed that she had stopped her tests. She was staring at Russ, a guarded expression on her face.

“—then I got in here,” he continued, “and found out that an e-bomb had crashed our computer system. We almost lost a Newbie in transit.”

“Okay, okay, you win. Your job really is tougher than mine.” I pulled the plastic bag with the marker out of my pocket and slammed it on the table in between us. “Just tell me one thing, what the hell is this?”

Russ looked at the bag, then back up at me. “It’s a marker. Apparently taken out of a Stringer, since there’s blood on it.” He shrugged.

“It’s not one of ours.”

I saw something flash in his eyes, something I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Anger, maybe. Or fear. His face seemed to shift in the descending dust, like he was changing into someone I didn’t know anymore.

Like the old Russell was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Angelique:

The tests looked easy at first. And they were. Then I glanced through the window and saw another man across the warehouse floor. He was talking to Chaz. I pretended not to notice him, but the back of my neck started to prickle. A strange feeling settled in my stomach, like I had a blender inside me and somebody turned it on real slow. Just fast enough to make me sick, but not fast enough to kill me.

All of a sudden I couldn’t figure out the answers, my hands wouldn’t do what I told them and my words wouldn’t come out right. I hovered there, alone inside the booth, somewhere between nausea and death, wondering what was wrong with me.

They were arguing.

The other man looked a little bit like Chaz. Taller, darker, maybe a little more handsome. Maybe not. I tilted my head and stared at him, caught him looking back at me.

My hands started to sweat and I couldn’t grip the controls properly.

I was done. I didn’t care about the tests anymore. I just wanted to get out of there.

Wanted to get out now.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chaz:

The marker lay on the table between us, a small chunk of glittering hardware that suddenly seemed more important than the trillion-dollar resurrection monopoly that surrounded us. For some reason I flashed on a Babysitter mantra that one of my teachers had drilled into me years ago.

Trust nobody during Week One.

I watched Angelique from the corner of my eye, saw her fumble at the controls, her hands slipping and her eyes blinking. I could already tell that she was going to fail this test—the easiest of the bunch. Last night she had almost wandered off with a meathead stranger who probably would have sold her before the sun came up. This was beginning to look almost as bad as a black-market jump. I wondered if she might have been involved in one of those suicide cults in her previous life—those bottom-feeder freaks who loved dancing on the knife edge between death and resurrection.

Meanwhile, my brother frowned and pulled the marker closer. He put on a pair of glasses. “What do you mean this marker isn’t one of ours?” he said. “We’ve got a patent, nobody else is allowed to—”

“It was made by the government.”

I continued to watch his face, saw his brow furrow, saw something resolute in the angle of his jaw.

“Where did you get this?” Russ demanded. “Chaz, you’re not involved in something illegal, are you?”

“Are you crazy? I got it off my Newbie. I thought these clones were supposed to be wiped clean before your boys turned them over to me.”

He studied me for a long, silent moment. “They are.”

“Well, this one’s on Day Two and she had government hardware jammed neat and pretty in her hand. On top of that, that jughead from the bar followed us last night, like he was after something.” I paused, leaning closer. “And believe it or not, his trail ended right here. At Fresh Start. So why is the government suddenly interested in what we’re doing?”

Russ crossed his arms, let a slow grin slide over his cheeks, brought his I-should-have-been-a-politician dimples out of hiding. “Do you seriously think this is the first time that the government, or any of the myriad resurrection cults, have tried to get a piece of what we have?”

“Not like this,” I said. I decided to toss in a wild card, see if it would shake him up. “Is there some sort of secret project going on here? Something I should know about?”

He shook his head, then laughed. For a brief, surreal moment all my fears bobbed to the surface like dead bodies after a shipwreck. I wondered if he had sold us all out, if everything Mom and Dad had worked for was going to vanish in an instant, if the Feds were going to walk in.

If life and death as we knew it was going to change. Forever.

But that was ridiculous. I mean, Russ cared as much about Fresh Start as Dad ever did. At least, that was what I’d always thought.

“Where y’at, Russ?” I said finally. Then I repeated my question. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I tried to read between the lines, tried to figure out if his deep, dark secret was life threatening.

“No.” His eyes met mine. “I mean, we’re knee-deep in a senate investigation about that Nine-Timer claim that society is going to collapse in on itself in a few years. And we’re getting pressure from the Right to Death committee—they want a census to track the success rate of jumpers. And there are a number of hot pockets in the Middle East, places where almost anything could trigger a Nine-Timer scenario if we can’t get it contained in time. But it’s really all just life-after-life business as usual.” He paused, suddenly reflective. “What did your Newbie say about the chip?”

“Angelique. Her name’s Angelique Baptiste, and I decided to ask you about it first.”

“Good idea.” He pursed his lips, then stared down at the marker again. “Why don’t you leave this with me? I’ll look into it.”

I forced a grin, not quite ready to turn this over to him. I picked up the bag, stuffed it back in my pocket.

Then Russell took a sharp breath, as if he just remembered something. “Sorry, with everything going on the past couple of days, I almost forgot.” He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it on the table—an envelope with almost illegible printing.

To Uncle Chaz

“What’s this?” I asked as I picked it up.

“An invitation to Isabelle’s birthday party. She wanted to have it early this year, didn’t want to share it with all the monsters on Halloween.”

I hesitated. I loved my niece like she was my own kid, but after last night I wasn’t sure if my Newbie was ready for social gatherings.

“Go ahead and bring the Newbie—I mean, Angelique,” Russ said with a flippant wave of his hand. “She may as well learn that families aren’t as wonderful as everybody thinks. Maybe it’ll even make her glad she doesn’t have one.”

“Maybe she does have one.”

“Yeah, and maybe I have an island off the coast of India. Look, just be there tonight at six and let’s not fight, okay?”

I could tell that there was more he wanted to say, saw a flash of emotion, heard his voice catch in his throat. I pretty much had it figured out, but I gave him some space. Let him say it.

“Mom’s gonna be there,” he said finally, “and I think she’s bringing Dad with her.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Chaz:

I hadn’t seen Mom for about a week. I guess I’m about as guilty as the next guy when it comes to staying in touch. Especially when I’m on a job, although that’s really no excuse.

The last time I saw her was on Tuesday. Or maybe it was Monday.

It was about 6 P.M. I usually go right after dinner. Watching one of the attendants feed her is a little more than I can handle. As liberated and open-minded as I try to be, I have to confess that sickness and death still bother me, probably more than they should, considering I’m a One-Timer.

She was in bed, resting. I came in and sat beside her and waited. I knew she would open her eyes soon. As quiet as I was, I knew the smell would give me away. VR suits always give off an odor; some people say they smell like maple syrup, others say it’s more like vanilla cake. Since I’m usually the one inside the suit I don’t really have an opinion. Virtual reality caught on big-time a few years before my father passed away, and I’m sure that’s why he did what he did. He got caught up in the craze and wanted to give Mom an anniversary present she wouldn’t forget.

Well, none of us ever forgot that one.

Like I said, Mom was in bed, silver hair smoothed on the pillow, her skin pink and paper-soft with age. Her hands lay at her side, elegant long fingers wearing rings of wrinkles at each joint. She had lost some weight. The monitor over her headboard registered 101 LBS. in glowing red numbers. Her pulse, temperature, blood pressure, electrolytes and cholesterol were all readily visible, along with a few other numbers that I never could figure out. I glanced at the cheat sheet I had brought with me, compared the current numbers with what they had been last time.

She was fading away. Pretty soon she would just vanish. All her numbers would read zero and her spirit would sail away.

When I finally got the courage to lift my gaze from my mother’s frail body, I saw him. Damn holo has uncanny timing. Right when I looked across the room to the corner, where I knew it was—this supernatural, super-spooky, three-dimensional rendition of my father when he was thirty-eight years old—it looked up and stared right back at me. And smiled.

A tear formed and slid down my cheek.

I hate that holo.

He looked just like he did right before he died. Dad never grew old. Never got gray hair or wrinkles. So this creature that occasionally flickers and skips with a hiss and a crackle actually looks a lot like me.

It’s disconcerting to outlive your own father. To realize that every year after this one will be one more than he had.

Mom woke up right about then, when I was analyzing the miserable lack of accomplishment in my life, when I was silently cursing a technology that could keep a virtual ghost of my father alive forever but couldn’t find a cure for what was slowly killing my mother.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

She reached out and touched my VR arm with her hand, a caress as soft as velvet. That’s as close as we’re going to get, until her last few minutes and the doctors allow us to actually go inside her quarantined room. It’s not so much that they’re afraid we might catch what she has. It’s more that what we have might kill her. A cold. A flu. Some random bacteria, happy to live innocuously on our skin, but much more excited to leap into her compromised immune system and develop into pneumonia or tuberculosis or tularemia. All deadly.

“Hi, Mom. How do you feel?”

Her eyes glittered, a pale blue sky filled with diamonds, like stars in the morning.

“Better now, honey. Always better when you are here.”

She smiled.

My mother is dying and we are surrounded by a world filled with people who refuse to die. We are the ones who give them more life.

And yet, this is the only one she wants.

I return her smile. And I refuse to cry.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Angelique:

We drove through the mid-evening gloom, daylight clinging possessively to the hem of darkness, sparks of light glimmering around us as the City That Care Forgot remembered it was time to get up and play. Silence hung in the car, heavier than the impending darkness. Tension peered in, my own reflection staring back from the window, watching the reflection of Chaz, watching the rocky brittle silence, a new barrier I couldn’t seem to cross.

Chaz was distracted about something. He’d been acting strange ever since we went to Fresh Start. Ever since he’d had an argument with his brother.

“I remembered something,” I said, hoping to break through the suffocating quiet. My insides felt like a taffy pull: sticky, sugar-sweet pastel-colored emotions that didn’t seem to connect, fears and hopes that stretched off into an invisible distance. “This morning I remembered my first life.”

“That’s good,” Chaz answered, his face turned away from me.

We were riding in one of the company cars, heading over to his niece’s birthday party. I wanted to go see a group of children—it was like being invited to the president’s house for dinner—but I didn’t want to see Chaz and his brother fight again.

“What’s that?” Chaz asked as he pointed to the back of my right hand. “Did you cut yourself?”

I instinctively wrapped my left hand around my right one. I remembered the blood on my sheets last night, the sting on my hand in the bar.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking at me now, his eyes dark, unreadable.

“I think I fell down in the City of the Dead. I must have cut my hand. I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. It was an accident, it had to be, I didn’t mean to talk to that strange man in the bar, I didn’t mean to run away from Chaz in the cemetery, I didn’t mean to fall, I didn’t mean to hurt the dog—

I flashed on a black dog, lying lifeless on the ground. Dead. Then it got back up again. Alive. A series of images looped through my head. Over and over. The dog was on its side, then it was on its back, then it was on its stomach. But it didn’t matter how many times we killed it, the dog wouldn’t stay dead.

I tried to roll down the window, I wanted to escape, I wanted to run away from all of this—

Just then Chaz tossed something in my lap. A plastic bag with a small metal-and-plastic chip inside. “Here,” he said. “This is yours.”

I stared down at it, a numb feeling in my hands. “What is this?”

“A government marker. It was in your hand.”

Somehow I figured out how to make the window roll down, a button on the armrest, almost hidden in the dark. The glass slid down instantly and cool air rushed in. A row of brightly colored shotgun cottages flew past. In one fluid movement I grabbed the bag, smashed the contents against the door, then threw the bag out the window. Chaz didn’t have time to react, although I don’t know what he could have done anyway.

He stared at me, a slight frown on his face. I had surprised him.

“Why are they tracking you, Angelique?”

I shrugged and looked away from him, ready to jump out if I had to. Somehow I had an entire escape route planned out in a millisecond, where I would go, how I would get there, what I would do when I got there. I could see a map of nearby city streets in my head, a vein of routes that would lead me to safety. A new strength flowed through my muscles, an ability to do whatever I needed to in order to survive. “I don’t know,” I answered as the car began to slow down. We must have been close to our destination, Russell’s house.

I still didn’t know what was going on, or anything about my most recent life.

But I had figured out how and when I got the marker. That man in the bar.

He’d run his fingers down my arm.

Then my hand stung.

He’d put that marker in me. Whoever he was, he was looking for me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Angelique:

I’ve been here before. A whisper memory rushed over me, made me feel weak, helpless. I shivered as we drove through wrought-iron gates covered with wisteria and wild bergamot, past lonely columns set like sentinels along the winding carriage road. Abandoned slave quarters stood to the left, a fleur-de-lis carved in the sagging door. Many considered the stylized iris to symbolize either the Virgin Mary or the holy trinity. But it didn’t mean that here.

There was little, if anything, holy here.

Russell lived in one of those antebellum mansions built in the mid-1800s. Tucked away in a secret corner of the city, filled with all the magical beauty of the bayou. Here the Mississippi River branched into one of the countless slow-moving streams lined with crape myrtle and camellia, oleander and oak; Spanish moss dripped from the trees like syrup; yawning alligators slithered through the freshwater marshes. Legends say that the estate belonged to one of the first New Orleans’ voodoo queens, a woman with an exotic blend of Haitian, French and African slave blood; that her mother was one of the filles du roi, mail-order brides sent by King Louis XIV for his settlers. She left a touch of gris-gris throughout the property that couldn’t be erased. Carved in the trees were recipes for her renowned fetish bags—spells that would revive love, bring wealth, heal the sick.

Perhaps she left a curse behind as well.

My legs shook as Chaz led the way up wooden stairs. Plantation shutters stood open at the windows and incandescent light filtered through.

I wasn’t going to survive the night. Something in me was going to die, some innocence, some part of me that I had been clinging to like a raft in a turbulent sea. It was going to wash away and drown, and at the same time something else would be born.

Inside the house, children laughed and danced, and their sounds echoed through the centuries.

I had a child once.

Joshua.

Chaz and I crossed the threshold and my past lives began to unwind, a spool of flesh-and-blood memories tangling around my feet and arms, a thread of images that turned serpentine, that coiled, ready to strike and bite. Each pierce of venomous fangs brought a visceral rush, an encyclopedic volume of smells and sounds.

I found myself pinned to the wall from the weight of it, unable to move or speak. Trapped in my own delight and horror, I was unable to stop its progression.

Around me, everyone began to dance to the slow-fast-slow rhythm of zydeco music.

Inside me, another dance began. The dance of life and death.

The dance of penance and pain.

The dance of remembering.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chaz:

She stood in front of a full-length VR mirror, adjusted the projection as she tried on one outfit after another. A rapid procession of glittering, shimmering pink and white concoctions melted into one another as she pushed the remote control faster and faster. Her entire wardrobe zipped by in a blur of silk and satin and sequins. When it finally came to a halt, she was wearing a Mardi Gras hat with gold beads and lavender feathers, a black body stocking and a pink tutu.

She stamped one foot, pouted, then said the line that every woman learns at birth.

“I don’t have anything to wear.”

My five-year-old, almost-six-year-old, niece glanced up at me.

“What you have on is perfect,” I said, pretending to be serious.

Isabelle giggled then climbed up on her bed and started jumping like she was on a trampoline. “I know,” she said breathlessly between bounces. “It’s my favorite. I think I should wear this.”

“I agree completely,” I answered. I had been sent upstairs by Isabelle’s parents, a delegate with the untoward duty of persuading Her Royal Highness into coming downstairs to her own party. I fell into that strange and temporary category of grown-up uncle/best-friend confidante. Isabelle wasn’t old enough to know that one day soon she would only share her secrets with other little girls, women in training who would walk hand in hand through the forests of adolescence together. Right now I was the one she told everything to.

I wasn’t looking forward to the future.

Angelique sat nervously in the corner, a silent observer. She hadn’t said much since we got back from Fresh Start. Her tests, the ones she took while I argued with Russ, hadn’t turned out very well. Just like I thought last night, there seemed to be something missing, like a connection between her lives wasn’t firing properly, some sort of brain synapses thing. I couldn’t quite figure it out. And I definitely didn’t want to think about it now. I needed to get Isabelle downstairs before VR Grandma and Holo Grandpa arrived.

The house was already surrounded with a security team that rivaled the White House. All the children in Isabelle’s cell had been invited, as well as the children of every Fresh Start employee in the country. Apparently Russell had debated whether to make the invitation to all our employees worldwide, but decided it wasn’t right to put that kind of pressure on people who worked for him. They would have felt obligated to come, no matter the expense or danger involved in traveling with a child.

Funny. I didn’t get my invitation until this morning. I had the feeling that the rest of the country had known about it for a month. Something was bothering Russ, something he obviously didn’t want to talk about.

“Is it safe? Are you sure it’s safe?” Angelique asked quietly when my niece ran into the bathroom to comb her hair.

“What?”

“This party. All the children. I think I saw at least seventeen children downstairs.” She ran a finger along the hem of her skirt, her gaze lowered. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I was around that many kids all at once. I just—it doesn’t seem safe.”

I had my doubts too. But this had been a family tradition for the past one hundred years. There was no way Russ would disappoint Mom, not now, not when she probably wouldn’t live to see Isabelle’s next birthday.

My niece danced back into the room just then, her hat on backward, her hair in messy pigtails. She smelled like apple blossoms, and when she smiled, she revealed two rows of tiny perfect teeth. Her skin was a dusky cappuccino-colored Creole blend, like mine. In fact, she looked like she could have been my daughter. But of course that was impossible.

Russ got Dad’s death certificate, not me. And when the time was right, he had a TRS, the federally approved operation that temporarily reverses sterilization. And then, about a year later, voilà. Isabelle Eloise St. Marie Domingue. The most beautiful baby in the world. Ever. The fact that there were only 65 babies born that year didn’t matter. Or the fact that 250 babies were born every minute back at the turn of the twenty-first century.

To most people, Isabelle was exquisite.

But to me, she was perfect.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Chaz:

The spicy fragrance of crawfish gumbo and dirty rice steamed through the house. It was the sweet perfume of New Orleans, and jazz was its pulse. I paused at the foot of the stairs, not quite ready to join the party. People swirled past me, some familiar, some I’d never met. Everyone wore colorful costumes, gold masks, shiny beads and ostrich feathers: it was always Fat Tuesday here. If there was ever a city drunk with life, this was it.

And I was tired of trying to find fault with it.

Every corridor vibrated with the laughter and wild, untamed kinetic energy of children. Running. Jumping. Singing. A flash of light sizzled as Isabelle chased two of her friends through the living room, each child wearing a bright, slender BP collar. Beacon protectors were the latest child safeguard device, and Russ and I had fought hard to make them mandatory on children under the age of thirteen, just like seat belts and VR age controls were in the past. If a child’s heart rate increased drastically, like it would during an abduction, the device would automatically emit a blast of light outward in a complete circle, a blast that would temporarily blind anyone within twenty feet—with the exception of anyone wearing a BP—and thereby give the child an opportunity to escape.

“They were a good idea,” a familiar voice said next to me.

Cake. Definitely vanilla cake.

I looked to my left and saw a woman who looked quite a bit like Mom. A slight haze blurred her facial features and she was outlined in pale yellow light. Is that what I look like? It felt strange to be on the other side of a VR suit.

“The BPs,” she continued. “I saw the statistics last week. So far they have prevented six kidnappings and helped locate two missing children. Did you know that flash of light can be seen from our satellites?”

I grinned. “No, I didn’t.” She meant the Fresh Start satellites, of course. The ones we use to track and transport dead bodies, the first stage in our regeneration process.

“I think there might be something wrong with your Newbie, honey.”

Mom never wasted time.

“I talked to her for a few minutes when you were all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Isabelle.” She paused and glanced over at the corner. She nodded and smiled at holo Dad right when he looked up at her. The two of them had this synchronicity that seemed to defy time and space and death. It really made it seem like that holo thing was alive. Sometimes I wonder what gave him the idea to have that blasted thing made just two weeks before he was killed.

Maybe he knew somehow. Maybe he wanted to leave a part of himself behind. Like we send prayers forward into heaven, maybe he wanted to leave one behind.

I felt a slight chill. Noticed that the front door was open. I could see out into the night, where a mass of faceless bodyguards hulked around the house perimeter. They were dark spots blotting out the light.

“Have you started her tests?”

I nodded, kept my attention focused outside. Did I see movement, somewhere between the black-on-black muscle men? The complexion of the party seemed to change. It was probably my imagination, but everyone suddenly looked a bit sinister. I never have liked Mardi Gras masks; tonight they went beyond irritating, all the way to ominous.

“Well, you’ll probably attribute this to women’s intuition.” She glanced around the room, focused on Angelique, standing alone in between two groups of laughing people. “I have a feeling something went wrong during her jump. You need to make sure she pulls through okay.”

“I always watch over my Newbies—”

“No, trust me, this one is different.”

I wondered if she knew more than she was willing to admit. Mom had an almost supernatural gift for reading between the lines, for knowing things that couldn’t be known. Like that time Dad lost his wedding ring down in the bayou and she knew exactly where it was.

Mom laughed and then changed the subject. “Now where’s that crawfish gumbo? I heard that you can taste food in these VR suits, I want to give it a try—”

Just then the front yard erupted in a chaos of shouting and all the perimeter lights flashed on. I instinctively shut my eyes just in time. Four children in the living room went into a panic and their BPs sent out a shock wave of light. Now people were shouting all around us.

“I can’t see!”

“What the hell happened? Jimmy, are you okay?”

“Where is he? Where is my son? Is this a kidnapping?”

“Somebody call the mugs—”

“We don’t need the mugs,” I yelled back. “Kids, come to me. Right now.”

A line of children began to form obediently in front of me. They had been trained how to respond in an emergency like this and I needed to take control immediately. Before another one shot off a blast of light.

“Six, seven, eight—Isabelle, get over here—twelve, thirteen.” I lifted my head. “Where’s Deacon?”

“Here,” a feeble voice answered as a little boy crawled out from beneath a nearby table.

“Okay, I have eighteen. That’s right, isn’t it?” I shouted to Russ. He nodded, an expression like relief in his gaze. For a brief moment I realized how much he trusted me, something he’d mentioned once or twice but I always managed to ignore. “Okay, all the kids and all the guards, up to Isabelle’s room. Russ, you lead the way.” My niece’s bedroom was the most secure location in the building. “Russ, call me when you’re all inside.”

I waited a minute. Then the Verse implant in my ear buzzed.

“We’re locked in,” Russ said.

“Just a second.” I saw Angelique, crouched on the floor. “Pete, take her upstairs with the kids. Two more coming up,” I told my brother.

Then I grabbed a handful of liquid light from my pocket, enough to render an entire crowd helpless, if necessary.

And I headed outside.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Chaz:

I used to think I was special. Not walk-on-water special, but almost. Sometimes I relive my childhood in an instant, remember the way the entire universe seemed to revolve around me. Then I remember the moment that I realized I wasn’t a magnificent literati, that I didn’t actually encapsulate the sun, moon and stars. I learned that there were a thousand others like me scattered across the world, a thousand brighter than the sun and more precious than the moon.

Other children.

Not just the handful that I knew about in New Orleans. One thousand twenty-nine, to be exact, between the ages of one and twenty. Morbidly fascinated with this group of marauders, I learned everything I could about them, then put it all into organized categories. The government took all my statistics when I was done with my project—thank you very much for your hard work, young man—and to this day, that information is hidden away in a file somewhere.

Eighty-two percent of the children belonged to families of One-Timers. One life, one child, one spin on the genetic roulette wheel. This group routinely passes their death certificates down to immediate family members.

Eleven percent came from Stringers, those who were at the end of their line. Usually these were Eight-or Nine-Timers, but a Stringer occasionally quit jumping at life Three or Four. Again, these death certs almost always pass to a spouse or family member.

Three percent were wards of the state. This was usually the result of a Stringer who left no will. In that case, death cert ownership was contested—maybe somebody in the dead Stringer’s sous-terrain société claimed they had an agreement, or maybe a distant relative suddenly crawled out from hiding behind the Right to Privacy Act. Whatever caused it, the death cert became property of the state until proven otherwise. These certificates often ended up getting tied up in decade-long court battles and, in the end, were almost always doled out to high-ranking government employees.

That left four percent unaccounted for.

At first I thought I had made a huge error, that my numbers were wrong and it caused me to check and recheck my calculations.

Of course, I was only ten at the time, so I’d never heard of the Underground Circus.

I didn’t know about the dark edges of society: how people longed for children but couldn’t have them, or that the Worldwide Population and Family Planning Law enforced sterilization whenever someone entered puberty. I would learn more about this later, when one of my close friends went missing right before her thirteenth birthday, and consequently, right before she would have been sterilized.

There was much conjecture among my small group of friends as to whether Sadie Thompson had been taken to become someone’s daughter or whether she would be used as an illegal breeder of children herself.

I never saw Sadie again.

But the day she went missing was the same day that Russell and Pete and I made a blood pact with one another. We all vowed that nobody would ever get close enough to touch one of our kids.

Because if they did, there would be a resurrection hell-on-earth to pay.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chaz:

Some moments freeze forever in your mind, turn into icicle daggers that cover the landscape. I will always remember the cold breeze that swept across the verandah that night, the way it wrapped itself around me and made me hunger for warmth as if heat was a long-forgotten memory, as if it was something that had been stolen from me, something that I would never feel again.

I stood on the porch, one hand in my pocket, shaping and reshaping the liquid light between my fingers; I faced the unknown, my back to the party, my thoughts still on that upstairs room filled with frightened children.

An unnatural chill bled into my soul and I pretended that it didn’t matter, focused instead on the dark shapes that moved between wavering, steamy lights. I tried to sense where the danger was, tried to feel the pulse of evil that dared to beat within my family gates.

In my mind, it became a night of voodoo magic, dark and thick as incense. I could almost hear the gris-gris chants and the rattle of dry bones. Someone had invited a demon presence into our midst, and I knew that it hadn’t been me.

Most of the guards had left their assigned posts to form a black shadow cluster on the right side of the front yard. Having no form or shape or substance, it parted as I approached. I unintentionally walked through a patch of night-blooming jasmine, crushing the plants beneath my boots, staining the air with the heavy perfume of death.

I saw a smaller shape emerge from the testosterone-charged troupe. Feminine and cat-like, it moved toward me, head down. It was a woman. Almost. A Newbie, still sparkling with the radiance that comes from resurrection.

“Chaz?” she spoke before anyone else, her velvet voice like a siren calling men to crash on the rocks. “Chaz, I’m so glad I found you.”

One of the guards grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

I tried to focus on what was happening, but at the same time I knew something was wrong.

“She claims to know you, boss,” another guard said. He laughed. “Says you two were kids together.”

She leaned toward me, lifted her head, pointed a delicate chin in my direction. Dark eyes caught and held my attention. “Chaz,” she whispered, her words so soft they forced me to come closer. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Sadie.”

“Sadie?” I shook my head. “No, that’s not possible.”

“Isn’t it?” she asked. A tear formed, then cascaded down her cheek, reflecting moonlight like a jewel. “You remember when I went missing, don’t you? The cell, our cell, we were right in the middle of studying for our Algebra finals. You and I worked together that night. You explained it all to me. But then I left your house and I never saw you or my family again.”

My heart thudded, a flame of guilt burned in my gut. I was the last person who had seen her. I’d always blamed myself for her disappearance. I’d had a crush on her and wanted to spend time alone with her, but maybe if we hadn’t studied so long—

She lifted a hand to my face. “But it wasn’t your fault. I know. I’ve played that night over and over in my mind for years. One of my bodyguards betrayed me, he sold me to a—to a slave trader.” She paused, and looked out into the black night sky. It seemed as if she was watching a play and reciting the actions of the performers, like the pain of everything had gone so deep inside that she was numb. “At thirteen years old I became both daughter and wife. My first child was born when I was fourteen.” Her voice became a flat monotone, a ribbon of silk with no ripples. “They let me keep my daughter for two months before she was sold. After that I lost count of the number of husbands and children that I had, of how many different homes I lived in, sometimes in chains, sometimes with as much freedom as I have now. Then finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I bribed someone to help me and I jumped.”

At that point the guard released his grip on her and she slid into my arms. She pressed her head against my chest. She didn’t look like Sadie or sound like her, but nobody looked the same after resurrection.

And yet, as much as I believed her, something still lodged itself in the center of my spine, a premonition borne without reason. Like a shadowy gray incantation recited in a wooded glen, doubt whispered something in my heart, over and over, nudging me. But I couldn’t understand the words. Couldn’t hear them.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” I said, breathing in the fragrance of her dark hair.

She lifted her face, looked up at me, eyes filled with starlight. The essence of innocence reborn.

“How many memories did you keep?” I asked.

“As many as I could.”

I touched her chin. “Do you remember that time we snuck away from our math tutor?”

She nodded, a half smile on her lips.

I bent down, cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. It was long and sensuous, nothing like the kiss of a teenager, nothing like any kiss in recent history. I pulled away with great reluctance.

“I remember,” she said only loud enough for me to hear. “You were just a boy, but I will never forget that kiss.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away.

Already the alarms were ringing in my head.

“I was a year younger than Sadie,” I told her. “We were friends, but never more than that. Who are you and why are you here?”

Then I could finally see through it, the deception that hung over all of us. There were too many guards in front of the house. Who was guarding the back?

“Jacques! Andre!” I shouted. “Around to the back, hurry!”

“It’s too late,” she said. A mocking grin broke through the kiss that still lingered on her lips.

Just then we all heard a sizzling crackle and I smelled the characteristic odor of liquid light. It was the smell of ash and fire and brimstone. A blast cracked through the upstairs windows and splattered out onto the lawn, a shower of glass and fire that fell all around us.

“Get inside!” I yelled to the rest of the guards. “Upstairs, to Isabelle’s room!”

The woman who had pretended to be Sadie grabbed my arm, a grip almost supernaturally strong. She pulled me back toward her.

“Where is the dog?” she demanded, her voice hard as a knife.

I suddenly realized that she held a weapon in her other hand, something I had never seen before. I wrenched my arm free, but she struck me with a lightning kick to the groin. I knew then that she was dangerously different, some sort of genetically enhanced creature that could move faster than I could even think.

“What dog?” I asked as I struggled to catch my breath.

“Ellen and the dog,” she answered. Then she danced backward, just out of reach when one of the remaining guards lunged toward her. “Where are they? What did you do with the research?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She punched a button on the cylinder she held, but I never could have anticipated what happened next.

Her eyelids fluttered and her body began to crumple to the ground. I grabbed her around the waist and tried to force her to stay, although I knew it was impossible. She was getting ready to jump, to download into another body, probably to an unknown safe house, one of the few that existed apart from Fresh Start.

She sagged in my arms, only a moment or two of life left.

“Consider this a warning,” she breathed. “Next time we won’t be so—gentle.”

Then she died.

I dropped her body on the ground and ran toward the house, hoping that I wasn’t already too late.

People huddled in self-protective swarms downstairs, some crying, a few screaming. But none of them made a move toward the stairs or the room on the second floor that held their children. The room that had just exploded.

I pushed my way through the ineffectual human mass that stood in my way, cursing them as I passed.

I dashed up the stairs, taking three at a time, only a heartbeat behind the guards I had ordered inside a moment ago. Smoke trickled down the stairs, a smell of ash, of singed hair.

It was the smell of death.

The door to Isabelle’s room was shattered, but I didn’t know if the guards had broken it on their way in or if someone else had done it, some savage intruder.

I jumped over cracked boards—the shards of wood that had once been the door to my niece’s bedroom—and then stopped, overwhelmed by what I saw.

Bodies lay strewn around the room, children immortally frozen in positions of fear. Arms and legs pummeling air, they had all been running for their lives when the burning light caught up with them. Like a macabre game invented in the pit of hell.

Tag, you’re dead.

The smell of charred flesh hung in the room, oily and thick, and remnants of the liquid light still licked the corners of the room, sizzling and crackling and hissing. It sounded like the laughter of demons, a horde from hell that had just stolen everything we loved.

I saw Russ and Pete rise from the ashes. They struggled to stand, then fell, wobbled on weak legs, collapsed and tried to get up again.

Then I realized that whoever had done this had intended to kill the children. The blast was set high enough for them, but low enough to let the adults survive.

“Consider this a warning.”

I scanned the room again, mentally sorting through the jigsaw puzzle of bodies that lay on the floor. I began to move through the room, hurrying from one lifeless form to another. I reached the window, picked my way through the shards of glass, forced myself to count the bodies again. It was almost impossible to recognize the children by their faces, but their clothes—

There was no sign of a black body stocking and pink tutu.

“Isabelle,” I said softly.

Russ glanced up at me, a question in his eyes. He couldn’t talk yet, his vocal cords were still immobilized.

I skimmed the room one last time.

Two children were missing. Two children and Angelique.

Then I lifted my head and saw the closed bathroom door, liquid light snarling and hissing around the edges. The door glowed like there was a fire trapped inside. It buckled and surged, as if breathing. Fighting against intense pressure.

Like it was about to explode off its hinges.

PART II

“Up until now, experts claimed
that only 50 percent of your memories would
survive from one life to the next. However, recent
studies have proven that journaling,
the daily writing of thoughts and feelings,
will keep your most important memories alive,
even if the journals themselves are lost.”

—Roger W. Inglewood, Ph.D.,
author of Journaling: A Method to Maintain Self Identity

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Angelique:

Nothing was the same after I walked through Russell’s front door. Past and present fused, became liquid metal flowing through my veins; it turned me into an alien beast that stepped through time, from one life to the next. I couldn’t stop the mad succession of images.

And through it all, I had to navigate in the present. I had to walk and talk and pretend like I didn’t want to curl into a ball, my hands covering my head.

I pushed my way past dead husbands and forgotten friends, invisible hands that reached out from the grave. A haze of hallucinations hovered around me; they whispered and pawed at me, their slippery fingers tugging at the hem of my dress, latching onto the soles of my shoes. Suddenly I remembered my names from previous lives.

Catherine MacKinnon, Rebecca James…

Then I knew what was wrong.

There should have been one more name. One more life.

As far as I could remember, in my first life I had been Catherine MacKinnon, and I had taken the resurrection chip when I was about sixty years old. Then that memory faded away, replaced by another: my second life as Rebecca James. In that life, I had been a lawyer and married a man named Jim. Then he got cancer and, even though I cared for him right up to the end, when he jumped, he deserted me. No matter how many lifetimes I have, I will never forget what he did. After that I wanted to change the way life plays out.

It was just a few months before my second death that I met him.

The bald man with the studs in his head, the man who put the marker in my hand.

He talked to me about the Nine-Timers, told me how they were working to solve the problems caused by resurrection. They were looking for faithful people to enlist. He recruited me, there and then, got me to agree to give up one of my lives for the cause, told me I’d get training, I’d get everything I needed. After I died, I was supposed to wake up in a fresh clone, custom-designed for the job I had to do. They were going to hook me up to their network, an underground mesh of agents working to change the world—

My lungs flattened as the last series of memories came back, too sudden, too strong. It felt like I was watching everything through a lung tunnel, images distorted, smells too strong. But it was me, I knew it had to be.

My name had been Ellen Witherspoon and I was reliving my death…

I worked late in the lab that night. Outside, thunder shocked the bayou and the world trembled beneath silver rain. The storm shook the windows, made me catch my breath. Everything was ending, sooner than I expected.

I turned in a quick circle, tried to think. I still didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, but it was finally time to make amends. If that was even possible.

I heard whimpering in the corner. Omega. He was still alive. I walked over to his cage and stuck my hand between the bars. He licked my fingers. After everything we’d done to him, that dog still loved me.

I was beginning to think he was more human than I had ever been.

I opened the cage door and slipped a collar and leash on him. The collar almost disappeared beneath the German shepherd’s thick black coat. I knelt beside the dog for a moment and nuzzled my face in his neck.

Chocolate eyes stared at me, a rough tongue licked my cheek. Then his lip curled and a low growl sounded in his throat.

We had to hurry. Somebody might be outside.

Together we headed out the side door of the lab, ready to run toward the bayou. Suddenly I realized that I had made a mistake. I bent down and unhooked his collar. Like everything else around here, it probably had a tracking device.

Then I ran, as fast as I could, the dog loping faithfully at my side.

Into the woods. Into the black, wet night. Into oblivion.

About an hour later, I returned, jogging through the dark as rain pelted my face, puddles growing deeper with every step. I paused at the edge of the parking lot, stared at the baptism of cement and stone that waited: the laboratory, a man-made technological fortress. Behind me an army of oak and cypress seemed to taunt, green demons that swayed in the wind.

I barely made it back in time for my shift. I had changed my clothes and washed all traces of mud from my shoes and hands. The storm still screamed overhead; its intensity seemed to drown out everything we’d been doing, making us seem insignificant. I felt like I had been playing a part from the movie Frankenstein, but I couldn’t remember if I was the monster or the doctor.

I had switched sides so many times that I didn’t know whose side I was on anymore.

Supposedly, there had been another undercover agent working in the plant, but I never found out who it was. And now, after what I had just done, he or she wouldn’t back me up if I got pushed into a corner.

I had broken every rule, everything I ever believed in.

I wondered if Omega would make it, if he could push past his sense of duty and let survival take over. Duty would bring him back to the lab, to an unending series of horrific deaths. Survival would take him—well, there would still be an unending series of deaths. I couldn’t undo that part of the equation. But he would be free. Alone, but free.

That was what I needed.

I entered through the front door. Only a few people here knew what projects I had been working on. I smiled at the anonymous faces I passed in the corridors. Along the way, I donned a white lab coat, joined the nameless crew that worked side-by-side in this factory of man-made horrors.

Just then the door to my lab swung open and a dark-haired man grabbed me by the arm.

“You’re late,” he said as he pulled me inside and closed the door. Then, when we were alone, he kissed me. It was an impatient and selfish kiss. I think that was the only kind he knew. He slid his hands inside my coat. “I told you to get here early. My wife is out of town. We can spend the night in that bed and breakfast in the French Quarter that you like.”

“Yes,” I answered. I didn’t want to go, but it would look too suspicious if I ended the relationship now. I needed to give Omega time to get away. And I had to make plans for my own escape. It wouldn’t be easy, the people I worked for wouldn’t appreciate one of their top-level executives just disappearing. But if I planned it right—

“You must think I’m a fool,” he said, his touch suddenly turning rough. That was the first time that I noticed the fire in his eyes.

I pushed him away and feigned anger. “Well, yes, I do. I’ve thought that for a long time. Any married man who gets involved with one of his employees—”

He slapped me, slammed me across the room where I crashed into one of the empty cages. I could have fought back, but I needed to give Omega more time, if that was still possible.

It wasn’t. That split second cost me a lot.

He jumped on me before I could get up.

“You’re a government plant, a spy. You came here to steal my research—”

“I came to help you, to make sure you got it right. Finally.”

He hit me again. Already one of my eyes was swelling shut, but I couldn’t let the pain distract me. I slammed the palm of my hand upward, toward his nose. A fraction of an inch to the left and I would have killed him, would have sent a shard of bone up into his brain. But I missed. Jammed him in the cheek instead. Sent him sprawling backward like a crab on his hands and knees.

I climbed to my feet and started to run into the plant. He wouldn’t dare hit me in front of his employees. But just then my foot slipped in something wet.

Urine. That gen-spike junkie had peed on the floor.

He grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me down. My right arm slammed against the cement floor and a shock wave of pain rocked through my body.

“You let the dog go, didn’t you?” he said as he pinned me down. “You think that’s going to stop me or my research? I still have all of our notes, all the files. I can just replicate the results—”

I didn’t have to answer him. The grin on my face said it all.

“You witch! What did you do with the files?”

His hands were around my throat then and I think some sort of madness took over. He didn’t care that his research was missing or that the dog was gone. I knew that later he would look back on this moment and wish that he had done things differently, that he had interrogated me, tortured me, done whatever was necessary to get the information back.

But instead, he just continued to press against my windpipe while I flailed helplessly.

Until everything turned black and I stopped breathing.

The memory faded and left me disoriented, confused. I closed my eyes and tried to remember more. For some reason, it had all been in shadows, the bayou, the laboratory—even my lover’s face. The only thing that really stood out was the dog.

Omega. I could smell his fur, felt the scratch of his tongue on my cheek.

I wondered where he was and if he was still safe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Angelique:

We went downstairs again, the three of us, Chaz, Isabelle and I. That was when I realized that there was something sinister in the air tonight, more than the apparitions that had visited me. As bewildering as the transparent illusions were, I knew that I deserved their torment. But there was something else.

It was like the sound of hooves clicking on pavement, like an approaching danger.

Chaz sensed it too. I could see it on his face when he stared out the door toward the black, shapeless night. I turned and looked through one of the windows, but I couldn’t see anything. Still I could feel it.

Fingernails scraping over brick, flesh ripping, teeth grinding.

It was like that slender breath of calm when the eye of a hurricane passes overhead, that moment when you realize your entire world is about to be destroyed.

I’ve heard that demons can disguise themselves as angels of light. I don’t know if it’s true, don’t know if demons even exist, but if they do, then one stood in our midst that night. It came in a shower of blinding light and it cast a spirit of confusion on all of us. Isn’t that what William used to say?

Something happened outside. There were shouts—I thought I heard a woman’s voice, but that was probably my imagination. A split second later, the outside of the house was bathed in light, bright and hot.

Then when I turned back around, I realized that the children were terrified. They wore thin, translucent collars, something that I had never seen before. One of the kids screamed. And then I didn’t even have time to blink. A blinding surge of light blasted across the room—it started like a halo around one of the little girls, a pale amber that flashed and turned blue white. Then a radiant circle exploded outward, knocking people over.

I seem to remember that the light didn’t affect any of the children, as if they had some sort of immunity to it.

But then my nanosecond of observation was over.

The blaze of brilliance hit me square in the chest, knocked me backward, cleaned my lungs of air, scorched my skin like an instant sunburn. And it blinded me. I’ve always thought blindness would be black and suffocating, but this was dazzling, almost sinfully addictive. I lay propped against the wall, numb and slightly aware of the fact that my skin burned. And I didn’t care about anything else.

All coherent thought seemed to dissolve.

I took a deep breath, glad that I could still breathe. I blinked. Everything was white and luminous. I felt like I was glowing, like the burning sensation came from a fire deep inside of me.

Then somebody grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet. I heard a man’s voice and I tried to understand his words. We were going up the staircase and I was stumbling, my hand on the wall for support.

“You gots to blink your eyes. Quick,” he said, whoever he was.

I did. My vision began to come back.

“Blinks ’em again. Hurry!”

I could almost see him now. It was that guy who came over to the hotel this morning. Pete. He had been talking to Chaz when I woke up.

“I think I know you,” I said, my words tangling on my tongue.

“Yeah, ya do.” He pulled me down the hallway, leaned me against the wall. “You gots to shake off the blast, Angelique. Come on, I needs ya awake, Ellen, come on!”

“What?”

“Look, I’m sorry—I done the best I could, but you was dead a long time when I gots there. Ya’ll gots to come out of it, now—”

“Do you know what happened to me? How did I—”

“Not now,” he said, guiding me toward a door. “You gots to trust your instincts. You been trained for situations like this. You knows what to do.” He pulled the door open and I saw a bedroom filled with children. And Russ. A knife blade of terror pierced my chest when I saw him. “Whatever happens,” Pete whispered in my ear as I crossed the threshold, “makes sure Isabelle is safe. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Suddenly my instincts kicked in. Just like he said they would.

For a moment I could see fear as it hung suspended in the air. Then it descended, like droplets of sweat, until it covered everything and everyone. It glittered on the skin of the children, it sparkled in their fawn-dark eyes, it moved like a frost around their blue-white lips. It followed in their footsteps, leaned against them, pressed against their backs, burrowing like a parasite through their innocence, looking for a way inside their souls.

And across the room I saw it mirrored in Russell’s hollow eyes.

He couldn’t save them. He wouldn’t even be able to save himself.

I lifted my head, then took a deep breath. The air held a winnowing blast. Chaff would be separated from the grain tonight. Men would remain men and the others, whatever they were, would be exposed.

Pete was watching me. I could feel it.

In an instant I saw everything in the room, the position of the furniture, the windows, the doors, the slow movement of the children, the static posture of the guards. I felt both alive and electric, every muscle ready to do exactly what was necessary. I could kill—if I had to.

A tremor ran across the floor, brushed against my feet. I glanced at Pete. He felt it too.

It was time to pretend, to play another role.

“Isabelle,” I said, a soft smile on my lips. “Your pigtails have come undone. Let’s go into the bathroom and I’ll fix your hair.”

Russell glanced backward, toward the window.

Something was moving toward us; something heavy and dangerous.

Isabelle looked up at me, wanting to believe that she was safe, seeing the promise in my eyes. Together, we headed toward the open door, the bathroom. Another little girl quietly followed us, slipped inside before I could close the door. She tried to hide her fear, but I could hear it, like a bird trapped in her chest, wings fluttering.

I didn’t know what was coming, but I could guess. I locked the door. I lifted the children off the floor and held them by the waist, one in each arm, then set them on the counter.

“Take those off,” I whispered, pointing to the slender plastic rings they wore around their necks. “Hurry!” I couldn’t risk another explosion of blinding light.

They did as they were told.

And then the nightmare we had been dreading shocked into the room. First, a blast of broken glass, an almost musical destruction, and then a flash of fire that we could see in the narrow space between the door and floor. After that: screams, too many screams.

Liquid light. I had never seen it before last night when Chaz threw it in the bar, and yet, somehow, I knew everything about it.

I grabbed some towels and a rug, crammed them in the space beneath the door.

But I was a second too late.

I managed to plug the holes, but my hands were pressed against the towel when the light hit. It sizzled through the fabric and shocked up my arm, all the way through my body. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t let go.

And I became a conduit, pulling the liquid light into the room.

PART III

With our Silver Package you get free
downloads and all the latest software,
including Verse and VR banking.
Whether you’re on the top of the Himalayan
Mountains or at the bottom of the Mariana
Trench, our satellites
will locate
your body in a matter of minutes

—Fresh Start brochure, page 16

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Neville:

The bayou shivered at my back and the house fell still, all cries and laughter inside quelled. Lights flooded the front lawn, but here in the back, shadows reigned. Just like I’d planned.

I climbed up the side of the house, then yanked open a pair of weathered plantation shutters. With a grin, I peered in the window—I was the last monster these kids would see. I waited until one of them looked me right in the eyes before I smashed the glass and tossed in a fistful of liquid light. Then I slid down the rope and dropped to the ground. If both the Domingue boys had been in the room, I probably would have lingered longer than I should have. I knew my boss wasn’t going to approve of my methods on this one, but that Domingue krewe needed to be taught a lesson. Apparently they had all forgotten about what had happened thirteen years ago, that night when the three of them, father and both sons, wandered out of that Fresh Start plant late at night.

Well, I never forgets.

I was still running through tall grass toward the shelter of the bayou when a blast of light sizzled and cracked out all the upstairs windows. A heartbeat later, a battalion of trees surrounded me and I heard the soft call of my boys, waiting for me in a boat. I was jogging then, knee-deep, through Louisiana mud, all of my muscles feeding off a sweet-as-sugar gen-spike high. With a leap, I tumbled into the boat and we were speeding away, carving a path toward the Mississippi.

We flies through river mud and swamp water, and I is remembering—

Those Domingues all thought it had been just another pro-death rally outside their plant that night. They had probably hoped that the barrage of catcalls would fade away and the protestors would go home to their perfect little One-Timer families in their perfect little One-Timer houses.

They was wrong.

That was when rocks had started to fly through the night sky. Invisible and lethal. Followed by a rough growling thunder as the rally changed, turned savage, almost bestial.

“Death is a choice,” one man had cried, leading others to join him in a chant.

“Your clones don’t have souls!”

“Repent, Domingue! One life, one death!”

Stones hit flesh, then cement, then bone. Tears mixed with blood.

My krewe had laughed between the blows.

In the midst of it all, a rock hit Old Man Domingue square in the temple and, without a sound, he slumped to the ground. He never got back up again.

Dead by my command. Just likes I wanted.

And now, the wind was rushing over us, cold and wet. I shivered as one of my gutter punks wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. Those Domingues had no idea what it was like on my side of the gutter, or how many back-alley knife fights it had taken to earn my first black-market jump. I’d shuffled along from one miserable and maimed clone to another, until finally I proved I could lead my own ragtag battalion of misfits.

Soon we were all going to get our reward. That fountain of eternal life was going to pour out, free and strong for me and my boys.

Or I was going to make those Domingues wish they’d never invented resurrection.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Russell:

I was standing right beside my father the night he was murdered, his blood wet on my hands as he slid to the ground. By the time the mugs got there, the lynch mob had melted away: turned into faceless, nameless voices that scattered in the misty New Orleans midnight. On the surface it looked like just another violent pro-death rally, spurred by radical activists. That was the way the mugs saw it. They said that people like to commit their evil acts in the dark—it works like an eraser, covers your tracks, destroys the evidence. When the world hides in black velvet, good people forget what separates them from the monsters.

Problem is we’re all really monsters. And it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night. Evil flows through the streets of this city like a tidal wave, steady and constant.

But I didn’t know that back then. I was only seventeen.

I was too young to see the irony behind a family of One-Timers holding the key to resurrection. Didn’t realize that one of my ancestors passed down a legacy that none of us wanted—a trillion-dollar empire that went against everything we believed in.

Chaz was convinced that the leader of the rally was one of the elders down at First United Baptist. But the guy had an alibi. Supposedly, he and half the church attended a baptism that night, over at Lake Pontchartrain. Somehow it never seemed strange to the mugs that the water in the bay was about fifty-five degrees that October, or that there were toxic warnings posted all up and down the polluted beachfront.

I guess if you have enough people to stand up for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or innocent.

The bottom line is my father’s murderers were never caught.

That was the year my father had started training me to take over the business when he was gone. Neither one of us had expected it to happen so soon, although he had gotten plenty of death threats over the years. Sometimes he would laugh and mention one at the dinner table. “You won’t believe the latest ‘Your Life Is History’ letter I got today,” he would say casually, right in between “Would you pass the rice?” and, “Did you boys remember to wash the isolation chamber?” But I could always tell by the look on Mom’s face that it wasn’t a joke, that there really were people out there who hated us enough to kill us. People who pretended to be our friends when they saw us on the street, who smiled and waved during Mardi Gras.

And then, a month before Dad was killed, I saw one of our accusers for myself, up close and all-too-personal. A man wandered into the warehouse one night, after everyone else was gone, when shadows covered the streets and the seductive music from the French Quarter beckoned. I thought he was lost at first, this strange-looking man, his fleshy bald head covered with metal studs, his heavy lidded eyes cloudy and unfocused. He wore a long dark coat, so I couldn’t see him very well, although I sensed a growing tension within him, like expanding muscles were rippling beneath transparent skin. I wondered if he was a suicide cult member, one of those miscreants who gets high on rapid death and resurrection.

Then I overheard him talking to Dad. I guess I shouldn’t say overheard. He wanted me to hear him, looked right at me with those lizard-green eyes, then licked his lips, slow and deliberate.

That’s what I see at night when I can’t sleep. His eyes on me, his slow tongue. A combination of evil and ecstasy flickering on his face like a pornographic movie.

At first he spoke too fast for me to understand, but when he saw me in the doorway he slowed down, enunciated every syllable like he was the teacher and I was the student.

“We gots a problem, Domingue,” he said, using Dad’s surname, like he had a right to talk to him with disrespect. “Resurrection, it ain’t working. Nine times ain’t enough.” His voice sounded like tires rolling over gravel.

“Nine times is all there is,” Dad answered, smooth and calm, as if a soft answer could turn away this demon’s wrath.

“No, there’s always a way to gets more. No matter what ya wants.” Lizard Man shook his head. He leaned forward into the light. Shadows played war games on the crevices in his face. “Tell me, One-Timer, what does ya wants?”

Dad stood silent. Finally he answered, “I’ve got everything I want.”

“Maybe ya does,” the other man said. “But can ya keeps it?”

“Are you threatening me?”

The stranger shrugged.

Dad didn’t say anything. But I had a feeling that he knew what the scumbag was going to say next.

“Nine times, it just ain’t enough for the rest of us—” He paused to smile, to run his tongue over his lips one last time. “But maybe for you, one time ain’t gonna be enough.”

He slid back into the shadows then, a quiet liquid movement, like a poisonous snake slithering off through grassy rocks. He became as invisible as the black night, but the stench of his presence remained. Thick, oily, rancid, the smell of unwashed hair and decaying flesh.

It was the smell of death, and from that day it never left me.

He became my nemesis, this dark creature of the night. I learned later that his name was Neville Saturno and he was addicted to genetic engineering. It was his Achilles heel, the bit in his donkey mouth that some other unknown monster used to move him across the chessboard of my life.

It was too dark, so I couldn’t see him the night my father was killed. But I could smell him. That sugar-sweet smell of rotting flesh filled my senses and blinded me with fear. I know Chaz thought I was brave because I cursed our attackers and cried for help.

But I was only trying to save myself. I didn’t care about Dad or Chaz. I was trying to run away when my father collapsed, when one of his arms got tangled around my feet.

I couldn’t break free.

I panicked in the suffocating black night. I screamed and kicked and cursed until my voice faded to a whisper, until I was the only person left in my collapsing universe.

And sometimes I feel like I’m still trying to break free.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Russell:

That lizard monster, that human-esque creature that stalks my nightmares, came back years later, just like I knew he would. It was the last week in May, about four years ago, and I was just leaving our West Coast headquarters—the very first Fresh Start laboratory—when I decided to go for a walk. I needed to clear my head. Lately every meeting with our top-level executives spawned something dark. Things had gotten increasingly complicated in the past several years, ever since that Stringer rejected his new body and accidentally downloaded into someone else’s clone. Problem was, it was already occupied. Two Newbies in one body. And we didn’t figure it out for five months. By that time both Newbies had gone insane. The media crucified us when they got hold of the story, and all the major governments were demanding to see our records, to make sure that it didn’t happen again.

Nobody cared about the poor clowns that got fried in the process. They just wanted to make sure that it never happened to them.

So, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and I should have kept one of the company guards with me. Hindsight is all about wishing that you could change the past. I don’t care about that. I wish I could change the future, that I could rewrite the bloodstain splatter on the wall that I know is coming.

Neville found me in Costa Mesa, on the corner of Harbor and Adams. It was even more horrific to see him on a sun-drenched street than in the darkened caverns of my memory. His muscles were carved from a fresh trip to a gen lab, his breath as sour as the pit of hell, and his smile was exactly the same as the night he threatened my father.

“I gots something for ya, puppy.” The lizard monster stood in my path, beefy reptilian arms crossed. I could see liquid movement beneath his skin as sinew and bone refolded, regenerated. A snappy tension hung in the air, seemed to surround him like a crackling halo, a vortex that could pull me in if I got too close. He tossed me a translucent plastic chip about the size of my fingernail. Some sort of computer file. “It’s a project ya needs to finish for me.”

“What makes you think I would help you?”

“I hears yur mama, she ain’t feeling too good.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“Ya thinks it’s an accident, yur mama beings so sick?”

I paused, trying to figure out the connection between the chip in my hand and the mysterious illness that had recently incapacitated my mother. I didn’t notice his hand sweeping toward me. Don’t think I could have moved fast enough anyway.

He grabbed me and yanked me into a nearby alley, into blue-black shadows, where he shoved me down on the ground and held me with a knee to my chest. I gasped, tried to fight back, to break free, but it was over before I knew it.

“I hads a feelin’ ya would needs some convincin’,” Neville breathed in my ear.

Then he jammed a two-inch gen-spike in my left forearm. I shuddered and gasped again, sharp pain shredding down my arm, then throughout my body. A second later I got the adrenaline kick and I shrugged Lizard Boy off me like he was a piece of paper. He flew across the alley and landed with a dull thud, his back against a distant brick wall, legs splayed out beneath him, and a wicked grin on his primitive face.

The genetic cocktail rushed through me, bringing waves of delirious ecstasy. Like some sort of superhero, I could feel the muscles in my arms and chest expand like bands of steel. I could have wrapped that monster’s legs around his head, and I moved toward him, ready to crush his skull with my fist.

But he simply held his hand in front of me, palm up.

He had my mother in his hand: a tiny VR projection, a three-dimensional, real-time recording. She was talking to a doctor dressed in something like a space suit.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t know what’s wrong with you, Mrs. Domingue. We’ve never encountered these symptoms before,” the miniature faceless doctor said. “We’re going to have to quarantine you, for your own safety—”

Mom sat on an examining table, silent.

“Of course, that is, until we can figure out how to treat your illness.”

“I can’t go home.” It was a statement, a resignation.

The doctor shook his head.

My mother lowered her face into her hands and began to weep. It was quiet and heartbreaking, a devastating scene that she never would have wanted me to see.

“You’re a demon,” I said. I wanted to kill this creature sprawled on the ground in front of me.

“Yeah, and yur gonna helps me. Or yur mama, she dies.”

Nemesis is too small a word for what this beast was or what our relationship would become.

I staggered backward then, as the second wave of the genetic cocktail hit me. It was better than euphoric. It was heavenly. Suddenly I didn’t care about our corporate image or my dying mother. I was caught in the middle of an inconceivable high, muscles growing, endorphins roaring, and I was already wondering how I could get my next fix.

Then I understood.

This reptilian beast had me exactly where he wanted.

The little plastic disk explained it all. The secret government experiments. The doctors and scientists with the yard-long credentials who would be oh-so-happy to work with me. The current state of the research process.

They were close, but not close enough. They needed access to my grandfather’s research, the original resurrection formula—before it was altered for clone bodies. They needed my laboratory and my equipment.

They needed me.

I sat in front of my computer, deciding which of their experts would be best to work with, scrolling through curricula vitae that read like scientific encyclopedias. At the same time I clutched a handful of gen-spikes—my precious thirty pieces of silver, for which I was ready to betray my family, to destroy everything they had worked so hard to preserve.

I took hours to select the members of my team. When I got down to the final person, I debated for a long time, torn between four different applicants. I toggled back and forth from one list of credentials to another. At last I opened their photos. That was when I made my choice.

She had long glossy black hair, green eyes, olive skin—she was gorgeous. Her credentials weren’t quite as impressive as the other three, but if I was going to sell my soul to the devil, then I may as well enjoy the trip to hell.

Ellen Witherspoon. That was her name.

And I was right. It was an incredibly wonderful journey to hell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Russell:

Sunlight poured through the lab windows, casting stark black-and-white patterns on the far wall. Cages. Bars. The long soundproof room was lined with crates, like tiny jail cells. In the beginning the animals barked whenever we entered the room, eager for attention. Now they whimpered, withdrew into shadowy corners and tried to look invisible. Ellen and I worked a late shift, after the rest of the crew had gone home. I could tell the stress of the project was beginning to get to her.

Of course, she didn’t have a shoebox full of gen-spikes to help her forget what we were doing. So I guess I could understand the circles under her eyes. The hollow way her cheekbones stood out, like she didn’t eat, or maybe couldn’t.

She knelt beside one of the open cages, running her fingers through the fur of a golden retriever. It was dead.

“Can you tell me again why we agreed to experiment on dogs?” she asked.

I shrugged. “It was in the research done by Smith and Clarksburg—”

She stood up. “You don’t mean Clarkson? Immanuel Clarkson?”

“I guess.”

“That Nazi? I can’t believe we’re using his notes—”

“He wasn’t a Nazi, he was just—well, I guess he was just about as bad.”

Ellen shook her head. “Tell me about the research.” She paced the long room, glancing in on the dogs that she passed.

“The government started it, years ago—”

“The U.S. government?”

“Yeah, about fifteen years ago somebody discovered that dogs could recognize their owners, even after resurrection.”

“I thought that was an old wives’ tale.”

“Apparently some old wives’ tales are true. So the government started running experiments, behind our backs of course. Nobody at Fresh Start knew what they were doing. After resurrection, one of their operatives would go to a neutral location, someplace they had never been in their previous life. Somebody else would bring their dog, the dog that had belonged to them before, see, and kind of ‘accidentally’ let the dog off the leash. About seventy-five percent of the time, the dog would run to its previous owner. Even though the dog and the resurrected person had never met. I guess certain dogs tested higher. German shepherds, Doberman pinschers, poodles, golden retrievers. So those were the breeds that Clarksburg—I mean Clarkson—decided to work with.”

Ellen was kneeling beside a cage at the end of the room, petting one of the dogs through the bars. I think it was the black German shepherd. Omega. I kept telling her not to name them, that it made it harder to do the experiments if you got too close to the animals, but it was almost impossible to say no to her.

She had a way of getting whatever she wanted.

I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling awkward. Sometimes she made me wish that I had never met my wife, that maybe Ellen and I could have had a chance at something more permanent—although I never knew for sure if she felt the same way.

“We need to record the data,” I reminded her.

She nodded, and lifted the tag that hung on the shepherd’s cage. “Omega,” she said while I wrote down the information. “Life Fifteen: last death sequence on August third. Formula T3-a.” She moved to the next cage, where a Doberman cowered, unable to look her in the eyes. “Theta. Life Seven: last death sequence—” Ellen paused. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy with emotion. “—yesterday. That would be August fourth. Formula T3-b.” She walked to the next cage, to the open door where the dead golden retriever lay. “Epsilon. Life Ten: last death sequence this morning. August fifth at one A.M. Formula T6-a.”

“Still no signs of life?”

“No.”

“What’s the longest period so far between death and resurrection?” I asked as I flipped through the log.

She stared off into space. “That would be Tau. The time between her last death and resurrection was three hours. After that she only lived for about twenty minutes, and then she was gone for good.”

“Three hours.” I was trying to be objective, to avoid thinking about the golden retriever, the smiling dog that my little girl would have loved. “So Epsilon has been dead for almost nine hours…Do you think there’s any chance—”

“No.” Ellen shook her head. “But I’d still like to give her a little more time. Just in case.”

I nodded. Like I said, I would do almost anything for Ellen.

It was an ever-twisting road, this quest for immortality. It was a journey with no clear beginning or end. I felt like a pawn, a dead marionette hanging on tangled strings, and I could feel my conscience bleeding out with every injection I squeezed into a patch of coarse dog fur, with every gen-spike I slammed into my own muscle-weary flesh. I had to hide the stench of my addiction. The heavy fragrance of flesh decaying from within, the atrophy of muscles stretched past their natural limit followed me everywhere I went. I started wearing loose clothing so no one would notice the bodybuilder physique that came and went on a regular basis. I took four showers a day. I began to avoid intimacy with my wife, so she wouldn’t see the obvious evidence of genetic restructuring, and at the same time I opened my bed willingly to Ellen.

I think a part of me wanted to get caught. I wanted an end to the horror.

I just never expected the ending to come the way it did.

Like a crash of lightning. Immediate and irreversible. Like the death of my father.

With blood on my hands. Again.

She dropped by in the middle of the night once. I thought I was alone. This section of the lab was off-limits to the general staff. Not even Chaz was allowed back here.

They were all dying. Our experiments were failing. We lost three dogs in the middle of the night. One more that morning. Only one was left—the German shepherd, and he was pretending to be asleep. But I knew he was watching me.

He was always watching me. I was always the one who killed him.

I’d reached a limit, I guess, some line that I drew in the sand and dared myself to cross. I didn’t know what to do. We were one step away from losing everything, from failing.

And if I failed, they would kill my mother.

I got ready to euthanize the last dog, prepared the injection, set it on the counter and then stared at it. After a long quiet moment, I picked up the syringe, rolled it between my fingers. It would be so simple to just slide the needle into my own skin, let the drug flow through my veins until my heart stopped. The pain would disappear, all of this would just fade away. I pulled up my sleeve, stretched out my arm. At that moment, images of my mother, sick and dying, flooded my mind. Without realizing it, I began to weep. The syringe slipped from my fingers, I crumpled to the floor and buried my head in my hands.

I think Ellen must have been standing in the door, watching.

She picked up the syringe, tossed it in the wastebasket, and then knelt beside me.

She started to cry and I thought that she understood. It seemed like we were one person that night, one mind, one soul. But I was wrong.

She had no idea what was truly in my heart. No one did. Not even me.

I couldn’t sleep. For two days I lived in a twilight world of caffeine and tequila, my thoughts rising and falling through the depths of a murky, wave-tossed sea. I had moments when I thought we would somehow make it. That our last dog would survive and we would finally conquer immortality. We would succeed where the gods had failed.

And then I would sink—stony weights fastened about my wrists and ankles—plummeting through blue-and-green despair. The dog would die. It would stay dead. My mother would die.

But I knew it wouldn’t end there. My mother was only today’s pawn. Tomorrow they would burrow their talons into someone I loved even more. They hadn’t whispered their plans yet, but I could feel them, could see them written in a black scrawl across stormy clouds.

Isabelle. My daughter. My reason for living.

She would wear the stain of my failure like a butcher’s apron.

As much as I feared for her life, I knew that there were things they could do to her that would be much worse than death. At times, the vile imagination of man far exceeds any demon dream, any scene in hell with scorching flames.

Images of the Underground Circus danced like the lake of fire in my mind.

I downed another glass of tequila—the real stuff, not the synthetic crap. And then another. When I caught my breath, I slammed a gen-spike into my arm, sucked in the swirling moonlight, black and gold, cloud and shadow, filled my lungs with the sour and the sweet. Closed my eyes. Said a prayer, something I rarely did anymore.

Then I went to the lab. To check on my last hope. Omega. I wanted to bury my head in his fur, to believe in the loyalty that flashed in his dark eyes.

I wanted to believe in something again. Anything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Russell:

I thought I saw black shadows running toward the bayou, running through the shifting rain. There were only a few lights on inside the plant, an early shift that started at 5 A.M. Puddles glittered and shivered in the half-light of early dawn, while rivulets of dark water forged a brave course, daring to band together to form tiny streams that thickened, broad cold veins that pushed toward freedom. I darted through the grumbling storm, reached the side doors and punched in my code.

A second later I breezed across the threshold, wet, a chill spreading over my shoulders.

My vision blurred, focused, blurred again. I stumbled through shadows toward the lab, legs and arms stiff from my genetic cocktail. I got lost once, turned down an empty, darkened corridor and tripped over a rolling cart that someone had left out.

A lifeless clone stared up at me. Eyes open, mouth parted.

It lay on the cart, draped in a white linen sheet, waiting—for life, for someone to claim it and make it real, to fill it with emotion and thought and purpose.

As if any of us really has purpose.

I shrugged it off, shook my head, felt the cold seeping through my clothes. I shouldn’t be here, I thought, as I stumbled away. I should have stayed at home and let the dark night pass. I should have curled at the foot of my daughter’s bed, glad that she was still safe.

But here I was, blundering my way through an echoing darkness, ignoring the occasional employee that darted across my path.

I was at the door to the lab now. Maybe I should just go home. Wait until my head clears. Let my flesh take one more step toward complete decomposition. Then I saw something. Light flooding out from beneath the door.

I forced the door open.

Companionship was something that I craved, an antidote to the space that flowed between me and everyone else. They were only lab animals, subjected to the worst treatment imaginable. But they were living creatures and I craved life.

I pushed my way across the room: my legs wooden now, all elasticity gone. The euphoric high would dissipate in a moment, my vision would clear. But the cages were empty. I snarled as I passed each one, growling uncontrollably, searching for some beast to meet me in this place of the animal that I inhabited. But there was no one.

I was the only beast here.

I knew then what I had seen outside. Ellen had been here, she had taken Omega and together they had run toward the bayou.

I felt a growl, deep inside my chest, reverberating, resonating. It ebbed and flowed, like river water through a tide of delta mud. I sucked in each breath, my lips hot, and my hands clenched at my sides. The muscles in my chest stretched and expanded in one last band of steel and I could feel the buttons on my shirt strain. I closed my eyes. Red flames roared somewhere in the back of my mind.

I heard footsteps coming closer, gentle and soft. It was her.

She had just murdered my mother and here she was coming, ready to kill my daughter too. The door opened and I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her inside, closed the door so no one could see us together. She was wet, fragrant from the lightning and the thunder. I know now that it was probably rain on her face and hands.

But to me she was drenched in blood.

My vision blurred.

Focused.

Ellen was on the floor, my hands around her neck. And then she was lying limp. Crooked. Her legs and arms twisted and unnatural. Something was wrong.

The dog was gone. The research, all the files were missing.

And now she was dead.

I sat in a chair, stared out the window. Saw the sun crest the distant trees, push its way through clouds. It wouldn’t win. Darkness and rain would prevail. It was the season of storms. I drummed my hand on the counter. Fingertips making patterns of blood on the ceramic tile.

Sorrow filtered through, remorse for what I’d done—emotions I hadn’t felt in years. Ellen was the only person I had been able to confide in, the only one who really understood. And now she was gone. I looked back at the floor. She was so still, so quiet. Suddenly something snapped inside of me.

What if she resurrects? What if she remembers that I murdered her?

I had to get her into an isolation chamber and make sure she didn’t download. Then I realized that I was going to need help.

I rinsed my hands in the sink, then tapped the Verse jack in my left ear. Commanded it to contact a familiar number. Heard a sleepy voice, a voice I’d known since childhood.

“I need you—I need you to help me with something.” My voice cracked, something I hadn’t expected. “How soon can you be at the lab?”

“Boss? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t, not now. Just hurry, Pete. Meet me in the isolation chamber up on the third floor, the one that’s right above my lab.”

“Russ, is you—”

“Just hurry.”

I couldn’t talk anymore. I had to dispose of Ellen’s body. I knelt beside her, this altar of flesh and bone that I had knelt before countless times when passion surged through me. But tonight the wrong passion had conquered.

And now my altar was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Omega:

The dog ran through the rain, paws striking pavement, then dirt, and then finally river water. He was swimming. Across a steady slow-moving current, then up a shallow bank. Away. He was running away.

The woman was running beside him at first, talking to him, her hand on his head. At one point she knelt beside him, buried her face in his thick black coat. He thought he heard something in her voice, a choking sound.

He paused, laid his head in her lap.

She ran her fingers through the thick mane of golden-tipped fur around his neck. She understood. She always did. That was why she was sad. Why she was crying.

He glanced backward. Lifted his head and sniffed. She seemed to sense the danger too, began to run again, leading him deeper into the bayou.

“Come on,” she said. “Run, hurry! You can’t stop. You can never stop, do you hear me?”

He looked up at her.

“They’ll come after you. You have to hide.”

They continued to run, but her pace was slowing.

“Keep going! Never come back, never. Do you hear me? Never!”

Then she wasn’t running with him anymore. He was alone in the thick, dark morning, swimming through brackish water, paws scraping against stone and bark and earth. Running. Faster. In between trees and black sky. Above him the dull heavens growled and sharp white fangs shot down; they splintered the ground with hot light.

But Omega kept running.

He wouldn’t stop. And he wouldn’t go back.

The rain stopped. Daylight teased the bayou with narrow beams of light. Steam rose in puffs from the river, a haze that hung between shifting shadows. Day and night merged, neither one strong enough to own this place. Omega crouched beneath a low bush. Hiding. Listening.

He burrowed his nose in the moss, closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, a sigh.

The woman was gone now. The woman who smelled like sunshine. He would never see her again.

He heard the Others in the distance, had heard them for a long time. Sniffing. Hunting. Howling. They had come to him before, when he lived in the cage, when life was divided into those who are trapped and those who are free. They sniffed around the edges of his world at night when no one else was there. He could hear their claws scratching on the other side of the wall, he could smell them. He knew when their females were in heat and when they had just killed a rabbit; he knew the deep growl of their leader.

Sometimes they howled just outside the door. Like they were waiting for him. Calling him.

And they were here now. The wild dogs. He sniffed the black air. Two females. Four males. The Others knew he was here, somewhere. He could tell they were looking for him.

And they were hungry.

Five dogs made a circle around him. The leader lowered her head, pulled her lips back to show massive canines, then let out a long, snarling growl.

She tried to get him to back up. Run away. Roll over and submit.

Omega refused.

She took a step closer, eyes reflecting the dark afternoon light. She had a wild look, long bushy tail, silver fur. Wolf blood. Her muzzle opened wide, then snapped shut. Another long growl, another step nearer. The rest of the pack followed her lead, each one taking another step closer, the circle grew smaller.

Omega lowered his head. He wouldn’t run.

She charged forward, in that instant when he bared his teeth. She latched onto his throat, dug her teeth in. The entire pack erupted in a low wolf-lion growl, a rumbling roar. They all attacked at the same time. Fur ripped. Bones crunched.

Omega squealed, a high-pitched whine, a death cry.

The female leader lifted her head and snapped at the air.

The Others backed away. It was her kill. It was her right.

Omega cried, took a last breath, blood flowing. He trembled.

Then he was still.

Dead.

The female stood guard over her kill, turned and snapped at the submissive female behind her. The other female backed up, lowered her head. Whimpered. The rest of the pack pulled away. Moved over by the edge of the river. Watching.

The female lowered her muzzle, pushed it against Omega’s chest. Cold. Lifeless. She sniffed. Then she opened her jaws, ready to rip flesh, ready to eat.

Darkness flowed over him like a river, all light disappeared. Black ice. Cold. Silent and numb. His blood—the dark, cold river was his blood. He couldn’t see.

Omega fell backward into the arms of Death, those familiar arms that tried to hold him down.

For one brief second he could smell sunshine. And he remembered an eternal moment when he was loved. Once. A forever long time ago.

Then the earth cracked beneath him. The sky changed color. The air turned to smoke.

And he shocked back to life. Again.

His bones mended, his wounds closed. Lifeblood flowed through his veins.

He opened his eyes, saw the female lunge for his soft belly, for his entrails.

He grabbed her by the throat, a vise-like grip, his teeth pressing against the vein that held her life. In that instant, she was his. To kill or not kill.

He jumped to his feet, twisted his body, pinned her to the ground.

She bellowed, whimpered, a loud, high, whining yelp.

The Others could have helped her. But they didn’t. This was the battle for leadership.

To kill or not kill.

She looked away, the whites of her eyes showing. She couldn’t look him in the eye, didn’t dare. She rolled on her back. Submissive. Tucked her tail between her legs. The Others crouched low, afraid.

Omega growled. Held her down. Held her life in his mouth. He could taste her death. Sweet and warm.

She whined again. Twisted her head to lick one of his healing wounds. Then she laid her head back on the ground. Waiting.

He opened his jaws, slowly. A low, rumbling snarl. He lifted his head. Looked at the Others. None of them would look him in the eye. The female was the only one who dared to move.

She licked his wound again.

His decision came easier than he expected.

Not kill.

PART IV

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CHAPTER THIRTY

October 12

Chaz:

Flames sizzled and flickered, the bathroom door buckled and groaned. A bitter stillness hung in Isabelle’s bedroom as I focused on the door; heat radiated in waves, embers burning, following the wood grain, popping in concentric patterns. Any second now, the fire could spread into the walls and the whole room could burst into flame. I still wasn’t sure, but it was possible that the peron I loved more than any other was trapped inside.

Isabelle.

The perfect, innocent child that I always wished had been mine.

I froze in front of the bathroom door, surrounded by a graveyard of children, their singed bodies an Escher puzzle of death. Guilt settled in my throat, like I had swallowed a mouthful of ash. My fault. All my fault.

And beneath it all, I heard a voice hissing, a dark taunting undercurrent, a voice I instantly recognized.

You can’t save your niece. You’re already too late.

“Isabelle!” I cried, ignoring my inner demon. I leaned toward the door, tried to figure out what to do. “Isabelle, are you in there?”

My mind filled with doubt. Then a voice echoed mine; pitifully weak, it strained through the whipping crackle and the snarling fire. I almost didn’t hear it.

“Uncle Chaz! Help, the fire—”

The door buckled toward me and smoke burned my eyes.

Just then an automatic fire extinguisher snapped on, a filmy foam that covered everything in the room. It slid over my skin, stung when it hit my eyes. I blinked it away. Liquid light isn’t like regular fire. It can’t be quenched like this. It feeds off the electrical impulses that flow through humans and animals, and right now it was feasting on something. A body had to be on the other side of the door, a body that, hopefully, was still alive.

“The beacon protectors,” a voice whispered behind me. I turned and saw Pete leaning against the wall, his legs trembling. He pointed to the dead children on the floor. “They catches the liquid light.”

I cursed under my breath. How had we missed this? No one at Fresh Start had tested the BPs with liquid light; we never anticipated that anyone would use it on kids. I reached down and snapped a collar off the nearest child, switched it on, then tossed it to a far corner. Almost instantly a thin line of snarling fire darted away from the bathroom door, zapped into the collar and stayed there.

Pete and Russ were both beside me then, struggling to stand, peeling the collars off the dead children, turning them on and hastily flinging them away. Each time, a portion of the liquid light shot out hungrily, a bleeding trail of fire and light that latched onto a collar, then zapped inside, instantly imprisoned.

The pressure on the door was lessening. It sagged on weary hinges now, flames reduced to fading embers.

“Move away from the door!” I yelled to whoever was on the other side.

“Uncle Chaz, wait—”

I heard a scuffling, thought I heard another little girl crying, “No, I can’t, I’m afraid.”

Then Isabelle spoke again, her brave voice quivering, “Okay, we moved.”

“Cover your face,” I said, then I grabbed a chair, swung it against the door. It cracked down the middle, shivered and splintered, a shower of sparks and firefly light. My shoulders and hands burned from the heat.

Let them be okay, please let them be okay, I pleaded, afraid to see who was on the other side, grateful that at least Isabelle sounded safe.

Another swing. Broken chair against broken door. Hinges snapped. Beside me Russ began to pull the wood away with his bare hands; he yanked half the door back and tossed it behind us, a smoldering birthday-party memento.

“Isabelle, baby,” he said, his voice a hoarse whispering growl. Tears coursed his face, ran between the veil of dusky ash and silky foam.

My brother spent so much of his life hiding his emotions that I was shocked by the raw panic I saw in his shaking hands. This wasn’t the after-effects of liquid light. It was the combination of love and fear, that deep well of courage we draw from when we have to win the battle. It was the first time I realized how much he loved his daughter.

We could see inside the small room then, all three of us. Half the door had been ripped off, the other half was crumbling and charred.

Isabelle stood against a far wall. Wide-eyed and scared, but alive.

She held hands with another little girl, a delicate red-haired child with almost elfish features. Both of them were safe, unharmed.

Then I saw the body on the floor, lying facedown, arms outstretched and blackened. Angelique. Somehow she had saved the girls, had put herself in between them and the liquid light. Her body must have absorbed the electric fire; the current must have run up one of her arms and then back down the other, a continuous circuit.

Isabelle must have pulled her away from the door just a moment ago. I could see the palms of my niece’s hands now, blackened by the lingering fire.

I let Russ shoulder his way through the door first, let him scoop his daughter into his trembling arms. Pete staggered into the room next and carried out the little redhead. After they had both made their way out, I went inside, knelt down beside the Newbie that I had vowed to protect, pressed my fingers against the jugular vein in her neck, praying for a heartbeat, some lingering sign of life.

A faint pulse. Or maybe it was just my own heartbeat that I felt.

“Angelique.”

I gently turned her body over, winced when her muscles hung limp. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

“Angelique.” I cupped her face in my hand. “Wake up. Focus.”

The mugs were in the house now, charging up the stairs, heavy voices barking orders. In a few minutes a VR station would be set up and the rest of the world would watch as the investigation began. We would be judged before any evidence was even gathered.

Angelique. Don’t jump. Stay.

Her eyes fluttered, then her mouth opened and she sucked in a deep breath, coughed black ash from her lungs. She shuddered and I turned her on her side. She coughed again.

Angelique. Live, please.

She braced one hand on the floor, lifted her head and looked through the door into the bedroom. I followed her gaze and saw the labyrinth of dead children, arms and legs twisted. Black death everywhere.

Tears welled in her eyes.

With an expression of horror, she glanced down at her hands, scorched from the liquid light. It looked like she was wearing black evening gloves that went up to her elbows. “What happened?” She turned back and stared at the makeshift cemetery that used to be Isabelle’s bedroom. “Who would do this?”

Obviously she didn’t remember risking her life to save my niece, didn’t know that she had just crossed over into the exalted territory of hero.

“Angelique,” I said, trying to calm her. “Recognize. I’m your Babysitter—”

“Babysitter?” She cocked her head, facing me now. “But, but…I’m not a Newbie—”

“Focus.” She didn’t even remember who she was. “Recognize—”

“I’m not a Newbie—I’m a lawyer. I’ve got a case this afternoon. I’ve got to get out of here—”

But I didn’t have time to break through the roadblocks her brain was putting up, the natural defense mechanism Fresh Start installed to prevent her circuits from getting fried in a situation like this. A mug suddenly materialized in the doorway behind us, a hulking silhouette against the bright lights that now swept through the bedroom.

“Just hold on there, both of ya. Stay right where ya are.” His face was invisible, masked in black shadow, but I recognized him immediately. Lieutenant Skellar.

“You know the drill, Domingue,” he said. “Come on, hands out and don’t try nothin’ stupid. As far as I’m concerned, your Babysitter status is gone.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Chaz:

Everything went black for a long, awful moment. Like the universe had been dipped in tar. I was coming out of it, swimming to the top, arms burning, like the bodies, like the smudged blue-black horizon of tiny bodies. I caught a breath when my head came above the resin-dark surface, thought I felt the heat of a coal-burning furnace.

“Hey! You can’t do that”—Angelique seemed upset—“this is his crime scene—”

“Really?” Some nameless mug came over and held her down. Poured liquidmetal cuffs around her wrists. Paused a heartbeat while the nano-alloy hardened.

“This is against the law,” she protested. “You morons have no jurisdiction here—”

She was right, of course. Apparently everything she had learned in a previous life as a lawyer was bubbling up to the surface of the pitch, smoke-filled bubbles that burst when they crested the tar skin.

I was on fire.

A second mug pulled a laser from the holster on his hip, then flashed a red-hot beam on my palm, burned off the top layer of skin, erasing my tattoo. I yelled and jammed my knee in Mug Number Two’s gut.

“Stop it!” My voice wasn’t loud enough. No one heard me.

Through the doorway I could see Russ and Pete on their knees, hands behind their backs while Skellar read them their rights. Meanwhile, a group of distraught parents stood in the hallway, some crying, some trying to push their way through the crime scene barriers. A VR camera scanned the scene, beams of white light scorching the room, white arrows that pierced swirling ash. Any minute now we would go live with the rest of world. Film at 11. Look, everybody, the Domingues are going down.

“Your badge is on the line,” Angelique said to the mug who held me down. She was standing now, hands braced against the counter, a glazed expression on her face.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” Skellar growled when he walked back in the doorway. “Drop that laser, Broussard! We haven’t even processed him yet. And Domingue, tell your Newbie to settle down.”

The other mugs took a half step backward. Meanwhile, Angelique threatened to charge the police department with her bill—a thousand dollars an hour—when this was all over. She promised to make sure the lieutenant’s supervisor got a detailed account of his incompetence.

Skellar glanced at me, raised an eyebrow. I was as confused as he was, but I tried to hide it.

“In the case of a murder that takes place in a private residence”—she stared at the floor, frowned as if trying to figure out what to do next—“a Babysitter has seniority over a police lieutenant.”

Skellar narrowed his eyes, seemed to remember some piece of information, probably buried away in a back file cabinet inside his dusty brain. “Okay, that’s enough with the client-lawyer routine.” An unexpected grin revealed teeth stained by years of jive-sweet. We all have our addictions, some legal, some not. “I’d fancy up, if I was you, Domingue. It’s time to walk the gauntlet.”

“You aren’t seriously going to make him walk through all those—” Angelique tried to stop him, but he and his crew of brainless musclemen were already dragging me out the door.

“In the case of a capital,” he said, leaning toward her as he paraphrased as best he could, “where the crime involves a minor, where the crime takes place in the home of a ’sitter—or a home that belongs to anyone in the ’sitter’s ugly family—then the ’sitter may as well pack his bags and move into an eight-by-ten cell, custom decorated just for him.”

His jack-o’-lantern grin was fixed in place.

“Get the Newbie too,” the lieutenant said then, almost as if he’d been planning it all along.

I didn’t see it of course. Not until all the excitement had worn off and nobody really cared anymore. But I heard that our exit from the crime scene got the highest viewer rating in almost twenty years, that it ranked higher than that Super Bowl incident where a Chicago Bears quarterback blew himself up to protest the war. Russell, Pete, Angelique and I were all dragged out, hands cuffed behind our backs like villains.

The gauntlet.

A special scenario reserved for top-notch terrorists and serial killers, those who had already lost all their civil rights and were one short step away from conviction.

Virtual-reality recording beams sizzled through the darkness like serpentine strobe lights; they caught and captured our every nuance, memorized our movements in 3-D. We got in-your-face-and-then-some exposure as we were hauled past the parents of the dead children.

This same group of people, who had cowered downstairs only moments before, now demonstrated a callous bravado. They spat, cursed and clawed as we passed. One woman yanked a handful of Angelique’s hair. One man swung the broken chair I had used to open the bathroom door. Pete stumbled beneath the blow.

“Murderers!” another man bellowed.

“That’s enough!” Skellar said as he pushed the man out of the way.

The screams deafened and assaulted. The blows weakened us with every step.

Still there was something else, something much more sinister, which ran beneath the surface. Something that the video technicians quickly edited out.

It stood at the edges of the wild crowd. Passive and cold and calculating.

While some of the parents reacted with violent, out-of-control anger, a larger majority of them stood back, silent, almost numb. A familiar expression on their faces. One I immediately recognized.

Apathy.

These children hadn’t been kidnapped: they were dead. There would be a legal death certificate in the mail in a few days.

These children could be replaced.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Angelique:

In typical mug fashion, I got slammed together with all the suspects in the case. Didn’t matter that I was probably innocent. The fact that my arms had been burned from the liquid light should have branded me as a victim here. And although I still couldn’t remember exactly what happened, I had a vague memory of pulling two of those kids into the bathroom and blocking the door. Just chalk it up to another good deed that went awry.

New body. Same old story.

Skellar shoved us single file down a narrow passage, hands cuffed behind our backs. For a few harrowing moments I was blinded by the VR strobe lights; in that instant the surrounding catcalls grew louder, more oppressive; the gauntlet corridor narrowed, transformed into a Mephistophelian birth canal that didn’t want us to survive.

Meanwhile, the parents of the dead children loomed over us, arms waving, faces red with fury, shrill voices barking and howling and shrieking as we stumbled forward, step by step. Suddenly somebody grabbed me by the hair. I screamed and fell backward, staggered to catch my balance.

I collapsed on top of someone else, my body pressed against his, my face against his chest. I felt it immediately—a horrible familiarity: his smell, the touch of his skin, his voice when he spoke to me, softly, beneath the cacophonous layers of the crowd. When I struggled to lift my head, my lips accidentally brushed against his cheek and his eyes met mine.

Russell.

In that moment I remembered everything. How he loved me. How he killed me. How his hands knew every inch of my body. How those same hands had closed around my throat in a death grip, pressed against my windpipe, crushed my bones—

“Russ.” His name came out like a hiss. I blinked, tried to pull away, couldn’t breathe.

An electric shock flowed between us, an instant, silent, deadly communication.

He whispered. So soft no one else heard it. Maybe he didn’t even realize he said it out loud.

“Ellen?”

He recognized me. He knows who I am. That murdering monster saw through my disguise before I even had the sense to hide.

I pulled away, forced my legs to stop trembling, turned my gaze away.

“Move along there, sister!” one of the mugs shouted as he pressed his palm against my back.

I ducked my head instinctively as someone swung a chair over our heads and slammed it down on Pete with a blood-soaked thud. He fell to his knees, cried out. Chaz tried to shelter him, managed to push him to the end of the corridor, then he turned back.

I could see Chaz looking at me through dark, twisted shadows. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him. I nodded. Pretended I understood.

“I’m coming,” I said as I tried to push my way through.

But all I could hear was Russ calling me Ellen and I knew. It was time for me to get out of here. Time for me to run.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

October 13 • 5:35 A.M.

Chaz:

Shadows melted; clouds shattered; stars fell from the sky. The world became a barren landscape, painted in muted shades of gray and brown, a scorched horizon of broken glass and barbed wire. An invisible minefield surrounded by a poisonous moat. My throat felt like I’d been drinking fire, while my left hand melted and evaporated in the lava-bright heat.

Gone. Everything recognizable was gone.

I was empty. Tired. My blood had been drained out by some vampire and now there were ten more lining up, waiting for a drink. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been able to sleep longer than five hours. I wanted to close my eyes and lose my identity. Plunge headfirst into a Rip Van Winkle coma.

More than anything, I wanted to sleep without that nightmare.

“What nightmare?”

I lifted my head, stared unblinking into Skellar’s Mongoloid face. I grinned. He was so ugly he was an insult to Mongoloids worldwide.

“You think I’m a Mongoloid, do ya? You want to spend the rest of the week inside? I got a sweet little cell with your name written all over the urine-stained walls.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Sensed a shadow there. Angelique. She nodded.

I rubbed my face. They must have given me something to make me talk. I was probably babbling like a teenage girl with her first smartphone implant.

Skellar chuckled. “What do ya know about teenage girls?”

“That’s enough, he’s clean and you know it,” Angelique said. “The Fresh Start lawyers already gave you the surveillance tapes from the Domingue security team. Chaz was outside when some nutcase climbed up the side of the house and doused Isabelle’s bedroom with liquid light—”

“And you both know that all his fancy lawyers got no jurisdiction here, not when it comes to a capital involving a minor.” Skellar leaned against the wall, slid a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. A cloud of sulfur and smoke circled his face, made him look even more demonic than before. He picked a sliver of jive-sweet off his lip before he spoke again. “So, what about you, sweetcakes? Why did you take those kids in the bathroom right before the blast? You were in on it, weren’t ya?”

“Look,” she snapped. “If I had known that somebody was going to blow up that room, I would have gotten all those kids out. I wouldn’t have grabbed just two. How heartless do you think I am?”

He shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Sugar, I’ve got whatever it takes to play this game with you.” She braced her hands—now neatly bandaged with synthetic flesh—on a long, low table and leaned toward him. “We can go on like this all day and all night long. We can do it in here,” she waved at the interrogation room, “or in the courtroom. Your choice. Just remember. The meter is running and your dollar pays for it all.”

He shook his head. “Not if you lose.”

“I’ve never lost a case.”

I rubbed my temples. I felt like I had just swallowed a rat and it was trying to claw its way back up my throat. I could feel it, one paw at a time. I closed my eyes. I was going to lose it, at any moment—

“Here, use this.” Angelique shoved a wastebasket in front of me.

There’s no pretty way to say it. I puked. Rat and all. I knew it was there, somewhere. An invisible ball of fur and claws and teeth.

“Would you shut up already? There’s no stinkin’ rat.” Skellar crushed his cigarette out with his heel. “You’re going down, Domingue. You and your whole family. And you better believe your brother, Russell, is spilling his guts in the next room.” He laughed at his unintentional joke. “Well, probably not like you just did. But we got some inside info that claims he might be behind this.”

Angelique avoided his gaze as her lips curved in a slow, dangerous smile. She nodded.

“What do you know about all this?” Skellar asked, his eyes hooded in shadow.

She ignored him. Stared across the room as if she could see things we couldn’t.

He came closer, predatory head lowering, voice soft as a silken noose. “Why did he do it? Was he testing resurrection on those kids?”

She ran her fingers through her hair. A deafening silence followed.

“She just downloaded two days ago,” I said. “Her memories haven’t stabilized yet.”

“Leave her alone, Domingue. And don’t pull any of your Babysitter mumbo jumbo,” Skellar said. “If she has information about this investigation—”

“All I know is, it’s not right to kill someone,” she said then, as if she needed to justify something, “even if they resurrect, it’s still murder—”

“Is your Newbie nuts, or did your brother kill somebody?” Skellar was in my face now.

I paused. Russell could never kill anybody, he didn’t have what it took—something I’d had to do more often than I wanted to admit. Anytime there was a really dirty job, I got stuck with it. That was why I was the Babysitter and he was the one sitting pretty in the CEO chair all day long—

“Look, I don’t need to hear your friggin’ family history, Domingue. I’m tryin’ to figure out if we got another homicide here. You two know something about this and you’re gonna tell me, if I have to keep ya here for—”

Angelique turned toward him, all the curves in her face melting into sharp angles, her spine turned to steel and her eyes diamond bright. “This interrogation is over, Skellar,” she said. “End of your miserable mug story. Go ahead and investigate Russell until the hybrid cows come home, for all I care. Maybe he’s guilty and maybe he’s not. But you’ve got nothing to implicate either one of us in the murder of those kids. So, hey, yeah, you’re going to let us out. Now. Or I promise you, you won’t be able to buy your jive-sweet next month because my expenses will be coming out of your paycheck.”

Skellar stopped.

Apparently Angelique had finally found his hot button.

He made a weak effort at maintaining control, pulled another cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, watched us through billowing smoke. Then he made a slight, almost insignificant gesture with his left hand. A second later the door to the interrogation room breezed open.

We were free to go.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Chaz:

Sometimes the big, tough-guy image shatters. Like a fragile, handblown glass Christmas ornament, it slips through your fingers and tumbles to the floor; and suddenly everything is in slow motion. There’s a second when you still see the world the way it should have been, the way it was just a moment ago. Then you see the destruction. Fragments of glass spray in every direction and you realize that it’s never going to be the same again. Ever. It doesn’t matter if it’s your fault or not, doesn’t matter if everyone in the whole world knows what happened or if you’re the only one.

At that point you just can’t pretend anymore.

For me it happened at about four o’clock in the morning, after a grueling night with Skellar, where we played party games with one of his latest interrogation drugs. That was when I learned that Russell and his wife, Marguerite, were still in custody. And I just about ripped the arms off a mug who said my niece would have to stay in some “safe house” until the authorities straightened everything out.

Lucky for him, he changed his mind.

I took Isabelle home with Angelique and me. I gave my niece my room, and tucked her into my bed. I planned on sleeping out in the living room, but when I headed out the door, Isabelle started to cry.

“Don’t leave me, Uncle Chaz, please—”

A tiny glass reindeer started to spin, tumbling down.

“I won’t go, sweetheart.” I went back inside, knelt beside her.

It hit the ground; fragments of light and shards of glass shot up.

She curled into my arms, pressed her head against my chest; her sobbing grew stronger and I suddenly realized how hard all of this had been on her. Up to this point all I had been able to think about was the fact that she was alive, that she was safe, I hadn’t realized that to her, she wasn’t safe. And maybe she never would be again.

A roomful of blackened, burned children. Dead on the ground. All of them her friends. Dead because they came to her party.

“Is he going to come back, Uncle Chaz? Is that bad man going to burn me too?”

“No, baby. No one is ever going to hurt you. I promise.”

But I could feel the world spinning even as I said the words, felt the pain in my chest tighten, felt my eyes sting as tears came. For the first time, I could actually imagine a world without Isabelle, a place where some evil monster could climb up a wall in the middle of the night. I didn’t know if I was really going to be able to protect her from the people who had done this.

And the ache made me feel like I was being turned inside out.

I stood at the edge of the patio door, staring down at the street.

“Is she going to be all right?”

I turned, saw Angelique curled on the sofa, wrapped in shadows.

“Yeah,” I answered, trying not to think about the synthetic skin that now bandaged my niece’s hands. This was one of those times when everything had to be interpreted in black and white. No gray. “Maybe not today or tomorrow. But yeah.”

“Good. I mean, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, she’s a good kid.”

I ran my hand along the door frame, finally settled on the handle, pulled the door open and let the cool, misty air inside. I didn’t look at her. Didn’t want to see her face, a chiaroscuro version of someone that I thought I knew yesterday.

“You saved her life,” I said when the air shifted around me. The silence between us turned heavy. “You might not remember it, but I won’t forget. Ever.”

Outside the music of another day was already beginning. Cars shuddered down crowded streets and a helicopter flew in the distance, silver-and-black choppy noise that brooded over smoggy midnight blue.

“My memory’s coming back,” she admitted, her voice soft, almost as if she regretted the things that were swimming to the surface.

I turned to face her. This was one of the things I hated most about working with Newbies—they could be your best friend one minute and they could forget they even knew you the next. But it didn’t matter. I had no right letting my emotions get tangled up in this mess.

At this point I just had to trust her and she had to trust me.

Because I had a feeling that if we didn’t, neither one of us was going to make it.

“Did I say anything about a dog?” I asked. “When Skellar was interrogating me?”

She frowned. Searched her damaged memory banks. Shook her head. “No, you were talking some nonsense about an invisible rat.” A smile flickered. “By the way, if you pulled that rat thing to irritate Skellar, it worked. But no, you never mentioned a dog. Why?”

I avoided her question. “Why did you act like Russ might have killed somebody?”

“It was a red herring,” she said, flipping back to her lawyer persona, that safe zone where she knew all the answers, her matter-of-fact voice solid and sure, cutting like a knife through the fractured morning darkness. “I just wanted to give Skellar reasonable doubt. So he would let you go.”

She sounded like she was telling the truth, but there was something in her posture that said otherwise. Her lip quivered slightly and she kept her gaze on her lap.

“You’re lying,” I said, challenging her to defend herself.

“Am I?”

I sat in a chair across from her, waited for her to look up at me, so I could see her eyes. I’d know if she was telling the truth or not if I could only see her eyes. But she didn’t look up. Instead she stood, headed toward her bedroom. Left me alone in the living room. Enveloped in a muggy, uncomfortable silence.

I knew I should get some sleep. That drug of Skellar’s was still coursing my veins and part of me wanted to rip the skin off my face. It felt like my skull had suddenly grown too big, like my flesh had stretched beyond its capacity. I wished I could pound Skellar’s face through the wall.

Instead I lay on the sofa, my legs hanging off the end. Before I had a chance to analyze how uncomfortable I was, I fell asleep. For some reason my familiar nightmare gave me the night off. Probably for good behavior—after all, I hadn’t flattened Skellar’s nose, like I wanted.

Instead I dreamed I was in the bayou, wearing waist-high boots, wading through murky swamp water. I was looking for something lost, something important.

At the same time, I was wondering how many alligator eyes were watching me from the darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Angelique:

In my mind I’m walking through a foreign city, following a lifeline that drifts through thick, choking clouds, each step leading me closer to some new understanding. Sometimes I unconsciously go too fast, and everything begins to spin out of control. Too much information tries to process at the same time.

Then, in the midst of it all, I suddenly realize that the missing pieces have been erased by me. On purpose. Apparently it’s all part of the picking and choosing of our afterlife memories.

But I got rid of the wrong things.

One image flashes before me, beautiful and fleeting and incomplete.

My son, Joshua.

It’s immediately followed by an emptiness that I can’t quite grasp. Pain settles in my bones like a long-forgotten war wound, something that causes me to limp when the weather gets cold. But I can no longer distinguish it from the myriad shards of shrapnel still buried somewhere, waiting to be discovered like a carefully planned minefield.

Maybe I did something wrong, made him angry. Maybe we disagreed about something important, and he stormed away to a far corner of the universe. I’ll never know because I tried to wipe it away.

Isabelle reminds me of him. I didn’t realize it until now. I can’t quite figure out if it’s her eyes or her smile, maybe it’s everything put together. But right now I can see his face superimposed on top of hers. His life taped to hers like a paper-doll cutout.

I lie on the bed and wish I could sleep. The morning will come too quickly. The world will tip on its side, daylight will pour in the window and all my past sins will be revealed, like evidence beneath a microscope.

My body forces me to rest. But it is the uneasy rest of a convict, waiting for the verdict. Waiting for the moment when the executioner is going to walk through the door and demand payment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Chaz:

I have a theory that we all carry a secret pain. Like a tattoo that you got back when you were a teenager, you hide it away beneath layers of baggy clothes and you only show it to someone you really trust, someone you know won’t laugh because they probably have one too.

I don’t tell very many people about my tattoo.

It started out like a beautiful drawing, a black intertwined gothic outline of two young people in love, with similar beliefs and goals. We were working on it together, filling in the hollow spaces with color. I wasn’t going to hide this one away. I was going to wear it on my forearm, with my sleeve rolled up so everyone could see.

I wanted the whole world to know how much I loved Jeannie. We were going to get married, do the whole family routine; as soon as we got married we were going to use Dad’s death cert and have a kid.

“What do you want?”

Jeannie and I stood on a hill, overlooking the Loire Valley, a sinuous river somewhere down below, winding its way through the castle-dotted landscape. This was the storybook phase of my life, when every thought still had a happy ending and I still believed that I was the master of my own fate. I was twenty-three and had just finished studying music at Juilliard. Next month I was going to start basic training to become a Babysitter. My first courses would involve advanced weapons training, hostage rescue and counterterrorism, but I was trying not to think about it.

Because that was next month.

She turned to face me, her curly dark hair blowing in the wind. The afternoon sky held the fragrance of lavender, the colors of a Monet painting.

“What do you want?” she asked again.

I’ve heard that question countless times throughout my life, and it’s always sounded like an accusation. I mean, what could I possibly want that I didn’t already have?

“Besides you?” I asked. She didn’t smile. It’s always been hard for me to understand women. They seem to come wrapped in mystery, like layers of fine gauze. You think you can see through it, that you finally understand, but then you discover that you’ve only peeled away another layer and there are about a thousand more left.

I realized later that there was a subtext here. That she was really asking something else. She crossed her arms and tilted her head. I was taking too long to figure out the secret meaning of life.

“I want what everybody else wants,” I said finally, deciding to tell the truth.

She shook her head. “No. Everybody else wants what you have.”

“I mean, I want the right to choose.”

“Choose what?”

This was where the subtext got as loud as a roaring lion, just seconds before it snaps off your head. But I still didn’t realize it.

“Life,” I said. “Death. What I do for a living. I never signed up for any of this, Jeannie. It just got dumped in my lap.”

“Nobody’s forcing you to stay at Fresh Start. Your family can’t make you…they can’t keep you from—”

Suddenly I could hear the words within the words. One more layer of invisible gauze peeled off like a snakeskin and blew away on the wind.

“They can’t force me to be a One-Timer, is that what you’re saying?” I asked. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to, but for the first time I realized that her eyes were the color of gunmetal, a cool liquid gray. “You’re right. No one can make me choose death over life, although I’ve been preached to enough over the years.” I didn’t want to look at her anymore, didn’t want to see eyes the color of my future. “I thought we both decided that one life was enough.”

“That was what you decided.”

“Look, I just want to live the best life I can,” I confessed, my back to her, my words soaring like birds over this valley of forgotten French kings. “And then when it’s all over, I want to die and leave all this behind. I want to see my father again. I want to step through that door into heaven and I don’t ever want to come back.”

She was quiet. For a moment I thought she was gone, that she had headed back down the grassy knoll toward our rented car. But when I turned around, she was still there, and the wind had turned cold.

She gave me a half smile. “I just wanted to make sure,” she said. “I mean, if we’re getting married, it’s important, isn’t it? That we understand what we each believe.”

Her words felt like a balm as I took her in my arms. I had revealed my secret heart, something I don’t do very often, and I felt a moment of complete peace. Maybe we disagreed about this small thing called resurrection, but we could still make it work. Somehow.

Together we headed back down, through mossy meadows.

It was probably the last chance I would have at a normal life and I didn’t even realize that it was already gone. There was no way either of us could know that the rest of her life would be measured in hours. A slippery mountain road lurked up ahead with her name on it, written in blood.

Within twenty-four hours her body would shudder to a stop and she would jump.

She already had her next life preplanned.

And it didn’t include me.

There was a time when I thought that she’d look me up, at least to say hi or “Guess what, I never really loved you.” But no. She just disappeared in the vast ethos of Stringers.

Like everything else in my One-Timer life.

Gone, but not forgotten.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Russell:

Somebody was pounding on my head with a jackhammer. Another second and I was going to grab the idiot sitting across from me and drag him around the room in a choke-hold. Crack his lazy skull against the cement wall. Watch his blood pool on the floor. And laugh. I was going to laugh.

“Hey, this guy hasn’t stopped laughing since we gave him that injection.”

Funny. This was all just too funny. My house was full of dead children, so instead of trying to catch whoever did it, the mugs decided to drag me in for questioning. As if I had any idea who did it. Or why. Like I would want to hurt my own little girl.

“I don’t like the look on his face. You think we should give him another dose?”

Did they really think I was crazy enough to hurt any little kid? I started to laugh until tears ran down my face.

“That drug isn’t supposed to have this effect. You guys said he would answer our questions. But it ain’t workin’. Hey, I’m talking to you! Can anybody hear me out there?”

I was done waiting for this human fungus to let me go, I was going to yank his ugly head off his double-ugly body, use it for a soccer ball, bounce it against the walls until somebody told me where Isabelle was and whether she was okay…

“Get this monster off me! I think he’s taking spikes—somebody get in here, now, this guy’s as strong as a moose!”

Soccer ball bounce, dead man talk, get me outta here, get me outta here, or you’re gonna die, you ugly mug, I’m gonna peel your arms off one at a time, then I’m gonna snap your legs like breadsticks, and then I’ll twist off your head. Bounce it around until all your teeth are gone. I’m gonna laugh and you’re gonna be dead if you don’t let me see my daughter, let me know she’s okay…

“Hey! Domingue. Look!”

I lifted my head, loosened my grip on that lousy toad-eating mug, let him fall limp to the floor.

She was standing in the doorway. Tired, long hair still in tousled pig tails. Still wearing that tutu and black body stocking. My laughter melted into tears.

Isabelle. She was okay.

I fell to my knees. Somebody tackled me, pulled my arms behind my back, poured liquidmetal cuffs on my wrists. I rolled on my side so I could see her for one more second.

“Daddy.” A tiny smile curved on her perfect face. She held her arms out to me. But they wouldn’t let her come any closer.

The bloodsuckers wouldn’t let her come in.

The door closed and Isabelle was gone. A dream that never existed. The one good thing in my life. Gone.

Now there were five mugs in the room, all dressed in black. Two had some kind of hoods over their faces. As if it mattered whether I knew who they were or not.

“Ya gonna talk to us now, Domingue? Ya gonna tell us about that break-in that ya orchestrated?” one of them asked.

I grinned. That drug of theirs was like candy compared to what I was used to. They could ask all the questions they wanted. I was innocent and I knew it, and that was all they were gonna get out of me.

I closed my eyes and rode the wave. Like an expert surfer that knew how to navigate this opiate ocean, I could handle the swells and the curls, avoid the hidden shoals.

Because I had to survive.

For Isabelle.

I didn’t know if it was day or night. It felt like I’d been in this room for a week. I think I fell asleep curled in a corner and then when I woke up, every inch, every muscle ached. I wondered how much of that rotten interrogation drug they had given me and whether they would give me another go-round when they realized that I was awake.

But I was glad for the absence of my interrogators. Figured that they had all gone to sleep. I pressed my skin against the cold cement wall. The rough chill scratched my face, made me realize I was still alive.

I had to remember what I saw. I locked it deep within my brain where no drug could ever steal it. Isabelle. Safe. I hated to admit it, especially in this dark snake pit where the mugs had found a way to make my every thought known, but the fact of the matter was that I didn’t care about the other kids. The ones that were dead. I only cared about one.

Mine.

It was my secret just how shallow my heart was. My secret cross to bear.

I could hear a symphony playing inside my soul. A bittersweet serenade. The battle between light and dark would be over soon. A crashing, thundering crescendo of violins and drums and wind instruments. Beautiful and sad. I could almost see my heart curling at the edges, burning, folding up into something hard. Like coal, it almost glistened.

Black and brittle and broken.

And dead.

The door flew open with a crash. I jerked awake. Didn’t even know I had fallen asleep. Realized someone had removed my liquidmetal cuffs. I licked my lips and wondered how long it had been since I’d had anything to drink.

“You got a visitor, Domingue.” A mug stood just outside the doorway. I couldn’t see more than a dim outline of features, closely cropped hair, broad shoulders. “Fancy up, pal. It’s your lawyer.”

A tall, slender man gingerly walked into the room, his features slightly feminine, long hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. He was some sort of hybrid. I’d seen that model before, in the illegal chop shops that competed with Fresh Start on the black market. He had fair coloring, blonde hair and blue eyes combined with Asian bone structure. It was one of the latest prototypes that wed the exotic with the mundane.

He grimaced as he sat across from me.

This guy wasn’t my lawyer, I’d never seen him before.

The door closed.

“They can’t hear us,” he said, his words precise as he looked me up and down. “This conversation is completely private.”

I leaned forward. I could break this pretty boy in half if I had to. I thought about telling him that, but decided to wait and see what his game was.

He folded his hands neatly in front of him on the table. I could see that he had something tucked inside his right palm. Some sort of device. Maybe he was one of those new messenger models I’d heard about, disposable clones built for one-way missions followed by a quick download.

“You’re a Newbie,” I said, recognizing the unmistakable glitter. “A month old, maybe.” It was my turn to look him up and down. “East Coast chop shop. My guess is you came from Harry Kim.”

“Yes, of course. East Coast. You now have four minutes.” His eyes turned cold, his speech pattern skipped a beat, slipped into something almost foreign. He said a couple of words I couldn’t understand, then he returned to English. “If we waste time, you will regret it.”

I shrugged.

“Where is Ellen?”

I felt the hair on the back of my skull stand up. I glanced around the room, tried to figure out if there were any cameras or recording devices that I couldn’t see.

“I need to know the research progress,” he continued. “You haven’t turned in any reports for several days and my sources have informed me that the last dog, Omega, is missing.”

“Okay, you wanna know what happened? She split, that’s what happened,” I said, trying to sound angry and betrayed, trying to keep my thoughts in check. “That mediocre research assistant your boss pawned off on me just disappeared. She ran off when the last dog died, that’s how much she cares about your little project. And this research is all a pile of crap, I haven’t had anything to report because it all failed—”

“That’s a lie. This model,” he made a sweeping gesture that referred to himself, “is equipped with many modern conveniences that Fresh Start does not offer. You are lying about—” He paused and looked up to the right. “The dog, he is not dead; the research, it did not fail. And Ellen.” He took a deep breath. “You are at least telling a partial truth. She ran away.”

He glanced at his watch. “You have one minute. I have to tell you, this is your second warning.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We gave you a clear warning just before the break-in. We told your brother that we needed the dog. And the research. But now the stakes have gotten higher. For you.”

“You monsters almost killed my daughter last night! How much higher can the stakes get than that?”

He smiled: a thin decadent crescent that revealed dimples. “Do you really think that death is the worst thing that can happen to a young girl? Just how naive are you, Domingue?” He flashed long eyelashes at me, lowered his gaze flirtatiously. “I, myself, grew up in the Underground Circus, back in my first life. It would be delicious to teach your daughter a few of my own special tricks—”

I flew at him then, lunged across the table and grabbed him around the throat. We crashed to the floor and tumbled. But he didn’t fight back. Instead, I saw a faint light flash in his hand—the device he had hidden in his palm.

His limbs fell limp, his features waxen. His eyes met mine.

“Second warning,” he whispered.

Then he died.

I stood up and screamed, then I started to kick the weasel. Bones cracked in his chest and blood seeped onto the floor.

“Get in here and pick up your rubbish!” I shouted as I continued to beat his worthless carcass. “Hurry up and get your garbage before I make a mess!”

The door opened quietly and two mugs dressed in black, wearing hoods again, came in and carried out the dead Newbie.

Then another man walked in, someone I’d never seen before. There was a weariness in his features, but his eyes were dangerously bright.

“You’re free to go, Domingue. Apparently your brother threatened the jumps for every mug in the station if we didn’t let you go,” he said. “So go ahead. Get outta here. But if I was you, I’d use the back door. There’s a mob waiting for you out front.”

The sun splintered through the darkness. Black sky changed to indigo.

I hovered in the doorway, an intruder in my own home. Black boot marks stained the floor; like a dotted line they led upstairs, where the investigation continued. Strange voices murmured. Someone was talking with a French accent, someone else was slipping through the bayou mud in Gutterspeak.

“I don’t sees how they gots liquid light. It’s illegal for anyone ’cept the lawmakers and the ’sitters—”

“That was the idea. This stinks like a setup.”

“So ya still thinks they’re innocent, those Domingues?”

“I didn’t say that. But we need to forget whose house this is or we’re gonna miss the important clues.”

“I’ll tells ya the important clues. Them dead kids. Them sixteen babies that was burned alive. That’s what ya needs to remember.”

I couldn’t face the mugs that had taken residence in my daughter’s room. Instead I turned down a hallway, followed a path of polished wood and painted wainscoting. I could hear a faint hum in the distance, felt a slight electric buzz in the air. Saw a pale blue glow beneath the door as I came around the corner. Heard the whisper of voices.

The hallway smelled like a bakery: shelves lined with cookies and cakes, walls smeared with vanilla frosting.

I hate that smell. Virtual reality. The candy shop that never closes.

I heard crying, so I opened the door. My wife, Marguerite, stood in the middle of the VR room, wearing a VR suit, surrounded by about a dozen faceless, shapeless creatures that looked just like her. All sobbing and sniveling. It was her sous-terrain société: her flesh-and-blood surrogate family, grafted and stitched together from serendipitous encounters. They usually met in Grid chatter bars and, after several months of friendship and a brief civil ceremony, they chose assigned familial roles. Brother, sister, mother, cousin. Like children playing with blocks, they built their own fragile ancestry.

Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That’s about all the sous-terrain société was good for. This group of Stringers didn’t even notice when a real live human walked in the door.

“Hey, I thought you were going to wait for me at the station,” I said, then watched as startled VR heads turned.

Marguerite swiveled to face me. Even with her suit on, I could see the tears glistening on her cheeks. Her voice wavered when she spoke, “I was—I did, but the mugs made me leave.”

For a moment I realized how vulnerable she was, how our lives were never going to be the same after last night. I thought about the first time we met, that red dress she wore, the sound of her laugh. Then I did something I hadn’t done in months.

I put my arms around her, held her for a long, quiet moment.

“Why don’t you turn that thing off and go take a nap,” I whispered. “You’ll feel better—”

“But the funeral is this afternoon. I need to invite my family—”

“Marguerite, you’re a Stringer—” She didn’t have any family. They were all dust in the wind and had been for years.

“You’ve never understood what it’s like to be les enfants sans sourire,” she said as she pulled away from me. All the VR heads around her nodded, murmured in agreement. “To be one of the children of no joy—”

For a second I thought I saw sixteen children, dead on the floor. Their ghosts seemed to surround us, filled the room. “Where’s Isabelle?”

“Chaz wouldn’t let me take her. He said I’ll need at least seven guards before he’ll let her leave his hotel suite.”

I paused, frustrated. Felt tension building in my chest. I needed another gen-spike, but my stash was upstairs. And so were the mugs. “Okay, why don’t you round up ten or twelve guards. We’ll pick her up after the funeral.”

“I don’t—I don’t know who to—”

“Just call Pete. He’ll take care of it!” I snapped. I wanted the tension and the pain to stop, wanted her to shut up, to quit being weak. “And I told you to turn this off! I have a conference call with Aditya Khan in a couple of minutes.” I hit the DISCONNECT button and the glittering crowd around Marguerite faded away.

“I wasn’t finished!” She pulled off her face mask and threw it on the floor. “You don’t care about anybody but yourself. For the past two years all you’ve done is humiliate me!” She paused, narrowed her eyes. “Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, staying late at the office every night—”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close. She winced in pain.

“What do you know?” I asked, my voice low.

“That you’ve been having an affair with that dark-haired research assistant of yours, that Ellen.” Her eyes blazed, a smoldering combination of fear and anger. “And apparently she’s had more than enough of you and your gen-spike Jekyll-and-Hyde routine, because she split. I don’t know what happened between the two of you and I don’t care, but the mugs are pretty hot to find her—”

I gripped both of her arms now. She cried out and her knees buckled.

“They’re here now,” she gasped. “Upstairs.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Just what I said. She’s gone. You two were having an affair. And I don’t care. About either one of you.”

I released her and she collapsed on the ground.

“Bastard.” She rubbed her arms, then glared up at me. “As soon as Isabelle gets back, I’m taking her and leaving—”

“I don’t think so.”

She stood up and stumbled backward, away from me. “I’m her mother.”

“And that death certificate we used came from my father. Legally she’s my daughter and you’re nothing more than a surrogate.”

Marguerite watched me like a caged tiger, all bristle and claws and dagger-sharp teeth, and all of it useless. “You won’t be able to stop me.”

I walked over and held the door shut so she couldn’t leave. Crossed my arms. Flexed my muscles. Felt a left-over surge of gen-spike rush through my veins. When I spoke, my voice sounded like something out of a nightmare.

“Do you want to disappear like Ellen?” I asked.

She cocked her head, then her eyes slowly opened wider. She moved her mouth, but no sound came out.

I opened the door.

It took a long time, but she finally got the courage to walk past me.

Out of the room and away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Russell:

I hate watching the news. Hate watching the world shrivel up and die. Especially hate it when the End of the World interrupts my VR transmission. I was trying to patch a transmission through to Aditya, but I was having problems. Probably because of the thick cloud cover left behind by that volcanic eruption in the Andaman Islands last month.

Then a special news bulletin jammed its way through.

A 3-D holographic map of the world rolled out across the screen. A horrific patchwork quilt of the inevitable, colors that marked the boundaries between tomorrow and yesterday.

A man’s voice played over the scene, silver words framing enameled images.

“We interrupt your VR transmission for an update on the Nine-Timer Report,” he said in a bright artificial tone. “Last night a tour bus crashed in the city of New Delhi, already a known hot pocket chiefly inhabitated by Five-Timers. After the accident occurred, a large crowd of tourists and bystanders died almost immediately, their circuits on overload from the shock—”

Photos flashed larger-than-life on the screen. Like the aftermath of a medieval civil war. A portion of the once colorful city of New Delhi had disintegrated into brown and gray rubble; the once noble land that had competed with Japan as a leader in technology was crumpling like a handmade paper kite. Cars were stalled in city streets and dead bodies were strewn everywhere. In the distance, a river of dark water was thick with bloating bodies. The Ganges, once a holy river, had become a river of the dead.

“—this caused a panic, which then spread throughout several city blocks, within which both Six-and Five-Timers froze up as well.”

The newscaster stared into the camera. This was big news. Pay attention, world. Somebody Important is telling you Something Really Important. Maybe you’d better go check your records and figure out what life you’re on. Right now.

“They stopped breathing,” he said after a long dramatic pause. “Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they just fell over. Dead. This is a new turn of events, something we’ve never seen before in the Fifth Generation clones—”

They hadn’t seen it before, but I had. I’d even seen it take place in Third-Timers, when the stress factor was high enough. It was just one of the many elements that played into this bizarre end-times scenario.

“Riots and looting began soon afterward and, as you can see from our satellite photos, the panic is spreading,” the newscaster continued. “Right now, power is out throughout most of the state of Delhi—”

I switched off the Grid, rubbed my temples, glad that there were no children in the photos. No starving babies, no abandoned toddlers, no homeless adolescents. Although that truly was our greatest problem here—all the clones after the Sixth Generation were infertile. The DNA broke down sooner than we had anticipated and, on top of that, with each successive generation there were fewer and fewer One-Timers. Before long, there wouldn’t be enough sources of pure DNA left to go around. The Nine-Timer scenario that everyone had been fearing, a sort of New Dark Ages, could happen anytime. We used to think it would happen in another two hundred years, but we underestimated the popularity of resurrection, underestimated the possibility that large population segments might jump from one life to the next at a rapid rate.

We never guessed that stress alone could short-circuit a cluster of Three-or Four-or Five-Timer clones, or that once it started it could sweep like a blanket of darkness, knocking out several city blocks at a time. Eventually, even whole provinces could topple over like a row of dominoes, cascading into one another, turning off the lights for each other, shutting down farms and factories, cutting off communication and transportation. The Nine-Timer lifespan for resurrection was winding down, slamming to a rapid glue-in-the-machinery halt. We didn’t even have a system in place to dispose of all the dead bodies. And there would be nobody left to take their place when the last set of clones died.

From its onset, people had advocated that resurrection would improve our world, that we would now have the opportunity to achieve long-range goals.

But those of us who stood behind the steering wheel knew the truth.

Resurrection had almost single-handedly undermined every major religion. We all just pretended to believe in an afterlife anymore. All our tomorrows were man-made, granted and blessed by man. We’d finally found a way to take the Big Guy out of the picture.

Today it was the state of Delhi.

Tomorrow it would be the Middle East.

Immortality. Resurrection. Death.

In the end, only a handful of One-Timers would survive. And I planned on being one of them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Chaz:

There are moments that echo with beauty, like notes in a piano solo. They stir the soul, and then, like pebbles dropped in a pool, they ripple ever outward. The memory of one perfect moment can make you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture it, to reinvent it, to prove it really happened.

I slept. I don’t know how long. At times it felt like my head would explode from Skellar’s psychotropic cocktail, but somehow I managed to sleep through the pain, aware of it in some helpless nightmarish way, unable to stop it or wake up.

And then autumn sunlight poured into the living room, beams of honey, thick and sticky sweet with humidity. I woke slowly, with a sense of heat centered in my chest. And an unusual feeling of peace.

My eyes flicked open, blinded for a moment by the cascading light. Then I saw her—my niece—curled up beside me on the narrow sofa, her head resting on my chest. Her mouth was open and she was snoring softly. A slow, steady purring sound, almost like a kitten. My right arm ached, but I knew if I moved, it would wake her.

It would destroy this perfect moment.

I kissed her forehead, damp and feather soft. She sighed.

I lifted my gaze and saw Angelique sitting in the chair across from us, her legs tucked beneath her, both hands holding a cup of coffee. Her hair hung over her shoulder in glimmering waves and she was wearing a black dress and boots. She smiled quietly.

There was something about the three of us together in that morning of golden light that felt right. Complete.

This doesn’t belong to me, I reminded myself. Isabelle’s not my daughter, Angelique will be gone in a few days. All of this is borrowed. Imagined.

Still. If all of eternity could reside in one moment, this was the moment I would choose. This was the single note that I would want to resonate in my heart.

I wished that it could have lasted one more minute.

But even as I acknowledged its perfection, it began to dissolve.

CHAPTER FORTY

Angelique:

Day faded into night and then back into day. I don’t know how long any of us slept. At some point, Isabelle came out of her room and curled up on the sofa next to Chaz. I knew my time here was limited, this false sense of safety would expire. I just didn’t know when. Russ was a ticking bomb now. At any point in time he would turn me over to Neville, or worse: to Neville’s Nine-Timer boss, some high-level government official, and their interrogation would start. I wouldn’t be able to hold out. I didn’t have their advantage. I couldn’t download into another clone when things got rough.

I got a few things together, and then realized how tired I really was. I paused for a few minutes to drink another cup of coffee, trying to clear the last bit of Newbie confusion from my head. That was when Chaz woke up.

There was a split second when I wondered if I should tell him everything. But my split second didn’t last long enough.

Because that was when the war started inside me. A torrent of voices trying to drown me out. All of a sudden I couldn’t think and my skull felt like it would crack down the middle, like I had been struck by lightning.

I moaned, or at least I think I did.

I could feel the struggle between my past personalities, all of my previous hopes and dreams, drowning in the deluge, washing out to sea.

You can’t tell him what happened, he’ll turn you in—

You have to run, now, before Russ comes—

You can’t run, you won’t survive without Chaz, you have to tell him—

He said my name then, my new name, and I felt an overwhelming peace, something I couldn’t explain or define. The horrid internal battle began to subside. It was temporary, I knew. I still had to leave, even if it meant ripping my soul in half. Even if it meant part of me would be destroyed in the process.

But for now, this one moment was heavenly.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Chaz:

Some days have no right to be beautiful. The sky shouldn’t be blue, the birds shouldn’t sing. There shouldn’t be white puffy clouds sailing like catamarans across a vellum sea. The air shouldn’t be fragrant with daphne, honeysuckle and gardenia; there shouldn’t be a sense of magnificence in each stolen breath.

Today was that day.

I got out of the car, two bodyguards piled out behind me. Three others led the way. We pushed through angry cattle-like crowds, all poised and ready to stampede. Fortunately Fresh Start had sent a citywide Verse-warning a few hours ago, just in case anybody decided to pull another gauntlet. If there was a disturbance today, all transgressors would lose their ticket into the next life.

Just then, a herd of reporters tried to shoulder their way through the mob, media bands around their foreheads recording everything they saw and heard, as if that somehow justified their presence here.

“How does it feel to be responsible for the worst tragedy in the past decade?”

“Can you explain why your niece survived, when sixteen other children were brutally murdered?”

“How do you sleep at night, Mr. Domingue?”

I pushed my way past the reporters, wondered why the sun was shining, why ragged clumps of wildflowers dared to grow between weathered crosses and skewed headstones, why life still smells sweet in the midst of decay.

Catcalls circled in my wake and some blockhead threw a handful of rocks. One of the guards surged forward, grabbed the culprit, wrestled him to the ground, started to perform an on-the-spot, down-and-dirty extraction of the man’s Fresh Start chip.

“Let him go,” I mumbled.

The sky hung, a brilliant blue, above the crumbling brick wall that skirted the cemetery perimeter, all of it guarded by a quiet sentinel, a gothic stone church.

Black clouds should have been assaulting the ground, tornadoes ripping through the firmament, dirt and dust searing our skin. The heavens should have been shouting a vehement protest. Bolts of lightning should have shot down like shards of celestial glass, striking every one of us through the chest and putting an end to this charade we called life.

Instead, every nation, tribe and tongue was converging on a tiny ninteenth-century cemetery just outside Metairie, Louisiana. Modern technology was colliding with ancient ritual. Off to the side, a crew of VR event coordinators frantically pressed buttons on a massive audio/visual board, alternately waving their hands and directing the proceedings like orchestra conductors.

And then a familiar face appeared in front of me—my mother. I hadn’t seen her since her transmission shorted out last night. When the liquid light rolled into our lives.

“Hi, sweetheart. You doin’ okay?” she asked.

I nodded. The crowd shambled around us, fists clenched, eyes swollen.

“I tried to get in to see you.” She coughed, then paused for a moment. She looked tired. “But my VR suit’s been on the blink.”

“Are you okay?”

She grinned. We both knew she wasn’t okay, and that she was never going to admit it. “How’s Isabelle?”

“She’s fine, Mom. I left her back at the hotel with Pete.”

“Yeah. She’s too young for this,” she said. Then she coughed again. “All those kids were too young for this.”

“Time for you to get into position,” one of the ant-like VR coordinators interrupted. He pushed a remote-control button on his sleeve and she started to dissolve.

She disappeared, and at the same instant the ancient landscape around me began to magically transform as VR wizards practiced their dark technological sorcery. Row upon row of shimmering virtual patrons began to pop up in pre-paid positions—Mom was probably crammed in there somewhere, but I couldn’t tell which one was her. Meanwhile, the brick wall that surrounded the cemetery morphed, blurred and then refocused, until it finally resembled the staggered seating in the Roman Colosseum. Within a few minutes the guests were stacked in six rows, one on top of another.

Spectators were coming from all around the world to see the funeral of the century.

Just then a crowd of bodyguards drifted past. And at their center, Russ and Marguerite.

I had a feeling none of them saw me, or if they did, they were ignoring me. Either way, it helped me decide which way to go. My guards joined theirs and we followed a few steps behind, close enough for me to listen in on their conversation.

“This is awful,” my sister-in-law, Marguerite, whimpered as she held a handkerchief to her eyes. I wondered if she was crying or trying to hide from the press. Despite the heat, she wore a long-sleeved black dress. “I just hate this morbid fascination with death.”

“Death is part of life,” Russ mumbled as he shepherded her forward, threading their way through the throng of nearly five hundred people; a variegated hodgepodge of reporters, bodyguards, mugs and VR technicians mixed in with immediate family members and friends of the deceased children.

“Not anymore. Funerals are just outdated, superficial ceremonies—”

He grabbed her by the arm and she almost crumpled from the pain.

“Show some respect,” he hissed as he pulled her closer. “They were children and they died in our house.”

“Take your hand off my arm.” Her voice was fading as they moved away. “I’m sick of this marriage and I’m really sick of you—”

Just then Lieutenant Skellar muscled his way through our private army until he stood between Russ and me. I gave Skellar a toothy grin, raised my left hand and waved, sporting newly grafted skin and a fresh tattoo on my palm. He pretended like I was invisible. Just the reaction I was hoping for.

Instead he focused on Marguerite, like a shark considering a between-meal snack.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asked. I had a feeling this guy planned on becoming our new best friend.

Russ swiveled around, noticed me for the first time. His eyes narrowed when they focused on Skellar. “This is the wrong time and the wrong place, Lieutenant.”

“Just wanted to give the ‘Mrs.’ my card.” The mug slipped a thin piece of plastic into Marguerite’s hand. “That’s got my contact info on it, Mrs. Domingue. Call me if you remember anything else about the other night.”

She palmed the card silently.

“Where’s your Newbie?” Skellar turned a laser-beam glare on me, then scanned the surrounding crowd. “Thought you two couldn’t be parted without destroyin’ the universe.”

“We opted for a trial separation.”

“Sounds like something your brother and his wife might want to consider.”

“Shut up, Skellar,” Russ growled. “You’re out of your element here.”

“I’m never out of my element,” Skellar replied. But I noticed a tremor in his hands, just before he stuffed them back in his pockets.

“I heard that the latest shipment of jive-sweet was cut with strychnine,” I said. “Saw a VR report that said some of your good old boys are in the hospital, hooked up to artificial respirators. Maybe that’s why you’re cranky today.” I started humming a popular jive-sweet tune.

“You’re goin’ down, Domingue. You and your whole family.”

“In your dreams, Skellar.”

He sauntered away, stage left, through a sea of anonymous faces, most of them watching Russ and me.

“Where’s Isabelle?” Russ asked.

Good to see you too. How’d your interrogation turn out? Anything you want to tell me, like what the hell is going on? “She’s back at my place. With Angelique.”

“You left my daughter with a Newbie? Are you crazy—”

“Guess you forgot. That Newbie saved your daughter’s life.” I could see his freak level had just about reached its limit, so I gave him a break. “Don’t worry, Pete’s there. And a team of guards. Hey, did you see Mom? She’s here somewhere.”

He glanced up at the surrounding VR stadium seating, then back at me. “I need to talk to you after this is over.”

“I think we both have some stuff to discuss.” I was thinking about that Newbie who downloaded on his front lawn. Her cryptic message about some dog and a girl named Ellen.

A thought burned behind guarded eyes. He lowered his voice. “I tried to get hold of Aditya Khan this morning, but couldn’t get through. India’s gone brown.”

The Nine-Timer scenario. My pulse ratcheted up a notch. “What about Saudi Arabia?”

“Not yet. But they’ve got a number of Five-and Six-Timer hot pockets.”

“This ain’t good. Especially right now—”

Just then the crowd parted like the Red Sea. A stream of pallbearers marched past, carrying tiny caskets. A river of sixteen miniature coffins, close enough to touch. All sound vanished. No one spoke or moved. Then somewhere in the distance, one bird started to sing, a surreal off-key melody, discordant and unsettling. My fingers turned numb and I realized that I had been holding my breath. There was something unholy and unnatural about all of this, like watching the world being turned upside down.

I wished God or one of his angels would step forward and ask if we wanted any do-overs. How about you, Chaz? Would you like to relive the past three days? Absolutely, I’d answer. But this time, I’d stop those bloodsucking monsters, I’d eat that liquid light before I’d let it get inside Isabelle’s room…

A ball of light rolls across the floor like a toy, then ignites and blasts, a heat so intense that it fries the kids from the inside out. Boils their blood, melts their brains, sizzles their skin.

One coffin was barely the length of my arm.

For a long moment the sky blotted out and turned dark. All I could see were cinder-black bodies, sixteen scars on the bedroom floor.

Sixteen children. Gone forever. Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the world, the epileptic convulsions of the Nine-Timer scenario were beginning.

The end of everything was about to begin.

PART V

“An anonymous Fresh Start scientist
claims to have documented proof
that the DNA breaks down in Eighth and
Ninth Generation clones, a defect that causes sterility.
If true, this adds a new twist to the apocalyptic
Nine-Timer scenario. Not only would there
be an astronomical and unprecedented
worldwide death rate when
large groups of Nine-Timers die
within a short time period—but there
would also be no children to take their place.”

—Robert Quinlan, reporter for the Washington Post

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Russell:

The funeral service began in all its horrible glory, black-cloaked man of God spouting empty words of comfort, a low-toned unintelligible drone. I wondered where he got his information. He safely skirted mention of any holy books, from the Bible to the Koran to the Bhagavad-Gita.

Then they lowered the much-too-small-to-be-real caskets into the ground. It started when the dirt was tossed in, earthen clumps that thudded, dark and dismal. A moan, heart-wrenching and pitiful, began to circle overhead like a flock of carrion birds. One of the mothers collapsed to her knees, her face buried in her hands. Then beside her, another woman began to cry, chest heaving, sobbing without pause. In a few moments it spread like a California brush fire, started in the valley where the parents stood and then swept up the mountainside, where the VR audience hovered above us. It felt like the whole world burned with sorrow.

We were being consumed by death. It was something we had ignored too long, and now, like a fire-breathing dragon, it raised its ugly head in our midst; it dared us to pretend we were anything more than mortal.

The fire burned and we couldn’t put it out.

We were leaving. Numb. Broken.

I felt like someone had dragged me through a minefield of broken glass. Raw and bleeding, with a hundred invisible slivers that continued to cut.

Someone grabbed my sleeve. I ignored it at first, but they wouldn’t let go.

“Please.” A woman’s voice.

I looked behind me and saw Mrs. Norris. I couldn’t remember her first name. All I could see was a little girl’s face superimposed on top of hers. Madeline Norris, eight years old. Dead.

“Please, can’t you make an exception? Just this one time—” Her voice came out a ragged whisper as she pulled me closer. “Bring her back, bring my Madeline back. She was eight. That’s old enough, isn’t it? Resurrection would work on her, wouldn’t it? Have you ever tried—”

I folded my hand over hers. Wished I could change my answer.

“No, Mrs. Norris. I can’t. It doesn’t work on children.”

“But can’t you try? Just this time, try it, please.”

“I’m sorry. I wish…I wish there was something, but…” My voice trailed off, my words stumbled over one another, helpless and ineffectual.

“I just don’t understand.” She stopped walking, stood still as the crowd rushed over her, a flood of black coats and lowered eyes. She just faded away as the mourners struggled to get out of the cemetery as quickly as they could.

I wanted to comfort her. In my mind I could hear Dad explain it and up until today I think I had always believed him.

“Resurrection doesn’t work on anyone younger than twelve,” he told me one cold winter afternoon.

I had argued with him, tried to figure out what we were doing wrong.

“It isn’t what we’re doing,” he said. “It’s us. It’s the way we’re made.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Children, they belong to God.” He shrugged. “We just can’t take what belongs to Him.”

At that time it seemed to make sense.

But today, as the crowd rolled over Mrs. Norris like a tidal wave, I wanted to ask God why He didn’t take better care of the things that belonged to Him.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Chaz:

There weren’t many times when Russ asked for my opinion, when he even thought that I might have some idea worth listening to. I’m not sure when our “great divide” took place, when we drifted off into our separate universes and became more like rivals than friends. It was probably around the time our father died, although I think it had been brewing below the surface for a few years. You can’t always put your finger right on the spot that hurts.

But there was one time, when I was about thirteen and he must have been fifteen, when Russ needed my help. I was someplace else in the plant when the accident happened, so I only heard stories that trickled down, whispers spoken when no one thought I was listening.

Dad was training Russ to perform the jumps, showing him how our satellites would transport the dead bodies, how we’d get the pre-ordered clones out of storage, then sort through the memories so the Stringers could keep the ones they wanted. But no matter how much we planned ahead, we always struggled with a nebulous potpourri of “what-ifs.” Things that could go monstrously wrong: what if the memories got mixed up; what if we used the wrong clone; what if the Stringer got lost somewhere in transit?

On this day, there was an unexpected Edgar Allan Poeesque what-if.

What if the Stringer wasn’t all the way dead when we started the jump?

Somebody along the way, some doctor or lab technician, made a wrong diagnosis, and this Stringer was still alive. Just barely. So when Russ started the download, it caused a horrible ripping inside the jumper. He flopped like a fish on the gurney, sparked back to a half-alive state, although most of the important stuff was already gone. He screamed and tried to break free. We didn’t use restraints on the dead bodies, never needed them, so when he lunged forward he yanked off the connector wires and broke off the implant—a long, tube-like needle that we insert deep into the brain—that is, if the Stringer still has a brain.

Dad and some of his techno-wizards dashed into the room and tried to calm him, to hook him back up. Apparently everybody knew that this guy wasn’t going to live, no way, no matter how valiantly he tried to fight death. I don’t know all the medical details here, but he’d done some serious damage to his current body that couldn’t be repaired. The bottom line is, Death was coming down the hallway and looking for this guy’s room.

Meanwhile, Russ waited at the controls, like he’d been told. From where he stood, he could see this guy’s clone, hooked up and already partially downloaded; he watched the clone move, saw it lift an arm at the same time as the Stringer. Saw it turn its head in the same direction.

But then the Stringer suddenly collapsed. Dead. Really dead this time.

At that same moment, the clone jumped off its gurney in the other room. It went through all the same movements that the Stringer had done just a few minutes earlier, until finally it fell to the floor, silent.

All the guy’s memories got fried in the process. And the soul—the Stringer’s fragile, almost indefinable essence—escaped.

There was nothing left but an empty carcass and a damaged clone.

Dad tried to tell Russ that it wasn’t his fault, but my brother didn’t believe it. He went through an inner turmoil, quiet and self-destructive.

Over the following months, I saw darkness and fear rise to the surface in my brother’s eyes at strange times, when he thought no one would notice. Until one night when I walked into his bedroom and found him alone at his desk, pretending to work on his journal.

One sleeve was rolled up and I saw a series of cuts on his arm. Self-inflicted and precise. As soon as he heard me behind him, he hid his arm.

He looked sick, like he had the flu.

“Whaddya want?” he asked, forcing a teen bravado that failed. He tried to mask the scared look in his eyes, but he was a second too late. I’d already seen it.

I don’t remember why I went into his room. I probably had a question about my homework, but it vanished the moment I saw his arm.

I sat on his bed. Hoped he would say something. He didn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, wishing I could make the pain go away.

He laughed, a sardonic, twisted noise that sounded more like a sob. “Of course it wasn’t. We’re life-givers, not takers. I was just doin’ my job.”

But I knew it wasn’t that simple. I knew that there was something else going on, deep inside. I waited, quiet, hoping that he would tell me what it was. I never really expected him to open up the way he did. A hush fell over the room, thick as swamp water and just as dangerous. I imagined reptilian beasts hidden below the surface, waiting to bite, to pull one of us under. There came a point when I realized that I didn’t want him to talk. I didn’t want to know what was driving him mad anymore. I just wanted to leave and forget about it.

That was when he looked at me with hollow eyes. That was when he started to talk.

“I just…I just don’t know how I can keep doing this crap,” he confessed. “I feel like my soul got sucked out when that Stringer died.” He stared at the floor, as if he could see invisible monsters swimming in black water. “I know it’s not my fault, but I feel like I killed him. Like I pulled the switch too soon, or I hooked up the clone wrong. Or maybe I shoulda seen somethin’ on his chart, some red flag, some misdiagnosis…”

Just then I saw a shadow move on the wall, like a long alligator snout raised above bayou water, ready to strike. I think that we both saw it, that we both knew something had always been there, just below the surface, stalking us. Hungry. Insatiable.

“I feel like I swallowed a rock,” he said, “like my heart is missing and I got this damned rock in its place.”

Russ had never opened up like this to me before. I didn’t know what to say.

His eyes searched the room, as if the answer would be written on the walls and he would find a window of escape. “What should I do, Chaz? I don’t know how to get rid of this rock, or this darkness that surrounds me. I don’t know how to live when somebody else died because of me.”

I didn’t know the answer. And I didn’t have the power to save him. I only had a vague memory of hope, something I’d heard over and over but never really put into practice.

“This thing, this guilt”—I paused, uncertain how to express what was in my heart, especially when I knew that a black monster was swimming through the room—“it isn’t between you and that dead guy. Not really.” I thought I heard the swish of a reptilian tail. “It’s between you and God. He’s the one that you need to talk to.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” There were tears on his face now, glimmering in the darkened room. His own personal river of pain. “I feel like He hung up the phone on me. Like He isn’t taking my calls anymore.”

“Then let’s call Him together,” I ventured. I expected him to laugh and tell me to leave, to go back to my pretty little childhood while he drifted off into dark, unfamiliar streets. I expected the black water to swell, to come to life, to swallow him whole right in front of me.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Instead Russ lowered his head and wept. Then he got off his chair and knelt on the floor. I suddenly forgot about the monsters and knelt beside him.

For the first and only time in our lives, my brother and I prayed together.

My life changed after that. From that point on I knew God in a different way. It isn’t something I can easily put into words and I don’t even try very often. For the first time I realized that heaven was real and I wanted to go there. And I wanted to make sure I never saw that swimming black monster again.

I don’t know what happened inside Russ. Because we never talked about it. A few days later he went back to work in the plant. But he never performed a jump again. Not even after he took over Fresh Start.

After we prayed together, the darkness that had surrounded him disappeared.

Until that day I stood in the cemetery and watched all those kids put to rest in the dirt.

And this time I had a feeling that it was after me.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Chaz:

The crowd began to move—somnambulistic—zombies walking through a desolate wilderness. I had reached my own ground zero. My lowest, darkest point. After this, it gets better, I decided. Somehow.

Russ and I hugged briefly, then parted ways. We were going to meet back over at the hotel suite on Bourbon Street; he was going to pick up Isabelle—him and a small army. I was going to try to forget about this, finish up my week with Angelique. We had an emergency board meeting scheduled for the next morning. A crew was trying to put together a makeshift VR connection with our plants in India, and we needed to do some damage control before the media could—

Someone brushed up against me, blocked my way. The crowd snaked past. Bodies without souls or purpose. I lifted my head to see who wanted a piece of me.

Skellar.

I was too tired to be surprised.

“Just what kind of game is your brother playin’?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

The crowd had thinned. Only a few stragglers remained and none of them were listening to us.

“Maybe you’re just as bad as all the other ’sitters and maybe you’re not, I don’t really care,” he said. Maybe that was his way of apologizing for letting one of his mugs fry my hand. It still didn’t make up for his snake-pit interrogation tactics. “But your brother is in trouble with some nasty Uptown boys—”

“Look, we’re not afraid of you or your mug buddies.”

“I’m not talkin’ ’bout mugs. These guys make us look like Girl Scouts.”

I grinned. It was about time Skellar realized his team wasn’t so tough.

“You ever seen this woman?” He spun a hologram in his palm. I watched as a dark-haired beauty in a lab coat checked her makeup, then glanced over her shoulder to talk to someone I couldn’t see. I thought she looked familiar at first, something about the way she held her head, maybe a glimmer in the eyes. But I’d never seen her before. At least that was what I thought until I heard her voice when the audio kicked in.

Still, I couldn’t quite place her.

I shook my head. “I don’t know her,” I said.

“Well, this girl, Ellen Witherspoon, she went missing ’bout three days ago. She was workin’ on some pretty important stuff. These people are lookin’ for her. Gotta lotta money too. They’ll pay almost anything to find her. And your brother was the last one to see her.”

“You think Russ is involved in this?”

“Maybe. Don’t really matter what I think. It’s what they think that matters.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“The way I see it, she mighta jumped. And she’s got some mighty important information that this Uptown crowd needs.” He paused. Looked around. “Word has it there’s a new game in town.”

“New game?”

“What you guys got down at Fresh Start is nothin’ compared to what’s comin’. You’ll be outta business in less than a year when this stuff hits the streets.”

He just walked away then. Didn’t ask me any more questions. Didn’t ask to look at our Stringer records to see who had jumped in the past two weeks. But it didn’t really matter.

Because I suddenly knew the answer.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Chaz:

I think I always liked breaking the law. Even back before I got my magic Get-out-of-Jail-Free card, the tattoo that lets me break more laws than the mugs can invent. Sure, I wanted to be a musician, to spend my days and nights immersed in the jazz clubs that ring the city, to breathe in the smoke and the stench of liquor, to watch the world around me rot, even as it regenerates. I wanted to laugh and tell stories and philosophize about life with other burned-out, jive-sweet musicians on the street corners while the sun slid over the horizon. I wanted to watch the color bleed from society, drop by bloody drop, until there was nothing left.

Nothing left but the painful need for redemption.

But instead, the family wanted me to donate my musical ear, wanted me to sort through the myriad languages and dialects, from ancient to new, so I could converse with Newbies, until they adjusted to the newspeak of the day.

I wanted to run away, to live on dimes and nickels and drink in the pure music of jazz night and day. Instead I settled for a warm bed and a billion dollars and a saxophone that saw the light of day about once a month.

For all my tough talk, I sold out. I’m no rebel.

But that Get-out-of-Jail-Free card still comes in handy from time to time.

Like when I was twenty-three and my fiancé, Jeannie, died in that car wreck and jumped to some obscure, unknown life. I went after her. I broke every code in the Right to Privacy Act. I hunted down her files, hacked through the firewall into her personal records, found her new identity and her new life. If Skellar or one his buddies ever finds out what I did, they’ll either cage me or kill me.

But I don’t care. I’d do it again, if I had to.

In hindsight I guess you could say I stalked her. I found out where she lived, worked, shopped; who she hung out with; what she did in her free time. And then I found a way to meet her. It’s not like I could just walk up to her and say, “Hi, remember me? That guy you were going to marry?” I had to be both discreet and romantic, I had to play it out like it was the first time.

It was great in the beginning. It had all the electricity of a first kiss, all the magic of falling in love at first sight. Almost.

But despite the faint promise of a renewed relationship, there was something missing. She had a strange, vacant look in her eyes. I kept thinking I would see some spark that said she remembered me. I mean, she loved me before, right? She had to remember. That’s the way it works.

See, there are two memories we can’t erase. Death is one. As ugly as it is, all the terror and pain and finality of dying becomes part of you and it refuses to let go.

Love is the other. You can pretend like it didn’t exist, you can try to reprogram it or cover it up by attaching other memories, but the down-and-dirty resurrection bottom line is: if you’ve ever loved someone, that love will follow you. Like a stray dog you accidentally fed on a street corner, it will hunt you down. It will sleep with you, wake up with you, walk down a dark alley with you.

But Jeannie didn’t remember. She had wiped me from her memory banks on purpose, and there was only one reason why she didn’t remember me now.

She had never really loved me.

So I walked away.

It wasn’t pretty and I don’t regret it, even though I broke the law in the process. Believe it or not, there really are limits as to how far I’ll go, what laws I’ll break and which ones I won’t. The list is pretty long for a Babysitter. Almost anything is permissible.

But something was hanging over me right now, a venomous cloud of suspicion and doubt, forcing me to reevaluate everything.

Murder.

Had my brother really gone that far? Had Russell stepped into that treacherous territory where the rules didn’t matter anymore?

I didn’t know for sure if what Skellar had said was true or not, but I didn’t want my world to change. I didn’t want my own brother to become the enemy. Because if it came down to it, I didn’t know who would I choose. Russ or Angelique? Someone I had known all my life or someone I had known for only a few days?

The boundaries in my little kingdom were shifting, that well-worn safe map that guided me was gone, and I couldn’t see where I was supposed to put the next step.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Omega:

Rain soaked the pavement. City sounds echoed through the forest of brick and stone. The smells were stronger now; the fragrance of food came with the wind, thick and sweet.

Omega climbed onto the hood of a car, lifted his nose, took several short sniffs. He could almost see the scent in the air, like gold dust. It seemed to float in front of him, then trailed off down the narrow street, around a corner and into a nearby alley. He turned toward the Others, let out a short bark—his command to follow. The pack watched him eagerly, backs bristled, tails curled, ears forward.

In a collective heartbeat, they were padding through a network of alleys, heads down, hunting. Dusk shadowed the city in morning half-light: a colorless world, a land that belonged to them.

He could almost taste it now, somewhere up ahead. A tiny stone city within a city; the wild dogs were weaving between stone sepulchers and mausoleums. The smell of death hung in the air, but it was old, musty. Another smell, strong and sweet, called.

Trinkets lay scattered in front of the whitewashed crypts. Shiny necklaces and flowers, candles and fetish bags. And baskets filled with sweet cakes.

Omega and the dominant female, his mate, ripped open the first basket together and then wolfed down the pastries drenched in icing. The other dogs began to tear open other baskets, and the cakes rolled out. Two of the males got into a fight, teeth shining in the murky light. Omega snapped a warning bark and growled. The brawling males stopped, hackles still up.

Then a noise sounded behind them, and two humans came out of the shadows.

The stench of fear surrounded them, metallic and sharp. The humans were looking at Omega’s mate, a wild danger in their eyes.

Omega growled and tried to step between them and his female. But he was too late.

A crashing sound shot through the air and his female screamed, a high whine.

She fell to the ground. Blood. Her blood. Her life flowing out on dirty cement.

Omega leaped through the air, caught the first man by the throat and wrestled him to the ground. Sweet, dark blood. Bones cracking. The man yelled, fought, then finally fell still after a long shudder.

Another cracking boom shot out. A shock of pain struck Omega in his chest, then another caught him in the stomach. He tried to jump, to attack the second man, but the third shot got him right in the jaw.

Omega fell limp on the ground. Darkness was coming and with it, his old friend, Death. The dog looked at his mate, saw her feet twitching. She was going into shock. She was going to die. And then a wave of black washed over him, carried him away to the land of no tomorrows.

The second man panicked. Four more wild dogs growled, took a step closer. He dropped the gun when he ran away, dropped the knapsack filled with stolen cameras and wallets.

One of the video cameras fell out and switched on.

Red light focused. Lens open.

The recording started.

The Others chased the human until he vanished in the shadows. Then they returned, faithfully, to Omega and the female. They sniffed both bodies. One dead, the other dying. One of the males crouched down beside the dying female, pushed her with his nose, tried to make her get up.

But the dominant female wouldn’t move.

Thunder sounded. A hundred miles away, somewhere on the other side of the Valley of Death. Lightning sparked across a black sky, then shot into his veins. Omega felt oxygen flooding into his lungs. Pain. The first breath always hurt. He didn’t want to open his eyes.

He didn’t want to see his mate. Dead.

Then he smelled it. Sunshine. Somewhere nearby.

He forced his eyes open.

There she was, his female. Still. Not moving. Not breathing.

He crawled to his feet, pain shooting through his muscles, fire in his veins. The Others cowered. They always did when he came back to life. He padded, soft and slow, over to her.

She was the only one who hadn’t been afraid of what he was.

He lowered his head. Nuzzled her face. Licked her nose, her mouth. She was growing cold. He fought the pain that centered in his chest. Nudged her again. Saw a trickle of blood seep out from her side. He knelt beside her, laid his head on her chest, then licked her wound. Remembered a time when she had been brave enough to lick his wounds.

He licked her wound again.

Then he lifted his head to the heavens. And howled.

The video camera clicked and whirred, a mechanical beast that captured everything without emotion, without reaction. It watched, impassive, as the big, black German shepherd got up, resurrected from death. It hummed as he crouched beside the dead silver wolf, licked her wounds, then cried out in anguish.

It recorded everything—

The dead wolf jolted back to life, her body trembling and shaking. The convulsions grew stronger, then finally faded.

Then the wolf got to her feet, nuzzled her head against the shepherd, her mate.

A few moments later, the pack of wild dogs padded off, shadows against shadow, black shapes against pale gray.

And the camera lay on the ground, with a flash and a whir, staring into the gloom of another dawn.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Omega:

Twilight bled into morning. Sunlight whispered through the city canyons. The dog crouched, hidden behind the statue of an angel, a stone memento of forgotten faith. False light splashed through the forest of tombs. Humans. Voices called out to one another, seeking solace in their aloneness, in their confusion. They centered around the dead man, still sprawled on the ground, bloody and torn, his life spent in violence.

Omega hid from the humans. He was alone. His mate and his pack were safe, waiting back in a shadowed alley. He lifted his nose and sniffed the indigo sky. A few stars still colored the heavens, blinking, winking, fading. The coming day was only a promise, slow and hesitant to reveal itself.

And yet, he could smell it. Here. Somewhere. Sunshine.

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. Fragrant. Beautiful.

The smell of love.

He opened his eyes, analyzed the breath-of-heaven perfume. She had been here, somewhere. The woman. The one human who loved him. The woman who had fed him, who had knelt beside him and stroked his fur through the cage bars. The woman who had tears in her eyes every time he shocked back to life. The woman who had set him free and told him to run and never come back.

She had been here. He needed to see her again. The desire flowed through him like hunger. He needed to find her. In some secret way she belonged to him. She was his. She was part of his pack.

But the other humans were here now. Cutting and slicing the dark morning with their beams of light and their frightened voices.

Just then a moment of silence descended. The humans all grew strangely quiet when one of them picked some whirring metallic toy off the ground. They all gathered together in an anxious huddle, murmuring, playing with the toy, then glancing over their shoulders.

Omega grew weary of the humans and their smell of fear. It hung like acid in the air, sharp and demanding. But he didn’t want to respond. The only thing he wanted was to find the woman.

And she wasn’t here right now.

So he rose from his hiding place and padded off.

Back into the velvet blue.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Chaz:

New Orleans used to be known for its jazz funerals, ceremonies where both sorrow and joy were packed into the soulful music of a brass band. A march would lead to the cemetery, with family and friends trailing behind. Hymns wailed from clarinets and saxophones and trumpets. But somewhere along the way we got lost. We no longer celebrated or honored the dead. Apparently, while we were busy dancing the resurrection shuffle, we forgot to pay our respects to those who got left behind.

The funeral broke up, black-shrouded parents stumbling away in a huddle. I climbed back in my car, gave my guards the rest of the day off, and in a few minutes the city was flying past in a blur of buildings.

It didn’t hit me until I was almost back to the hotel. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it sooner. If Russ got back to the hotel before me, there was a good chance he would try to cover his tracks. The only real proof anybody had about Ellen’s death and disappearance was hidden deep inside Angelique.

He was going to try and neutralize her.

It’s a process we don’t perform very often, but every high-level exec at Fresh Start has the authority to take down a rogue Stringer. Ever since that bizarre series of events a couple years ago where a damaged Stringer got hold of a laser rifle and murdered a restaurant full of people. Then it had spread like a virus through all the Newbies who had used the same regeneration pod.

It took six other Babysitters and me almost a month to track down all the infected jumpers. We were able to save about four of them, and we managed to download them into their next life. But the jumpers that had committed capital crimes had to be neutralized.

I couldn’t sleep for a week afterward.

I had to stop Russ before he did something stupid. That was when I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to worry about whose side to be on.

Angelique was the one I really cared about.

I switched on my Verse and tried to call Pete. The ring echoed in my ear, tin and distant, a lonesome, desperate sound.

But he didn’t answer.

I thought about calling Russ, but I hesitated, unsure.

Just then I rounded a corner and I could see the hotel. Russ’s car was already out front. I don’t know why, but I glanced up toward my suite, the one I shared with Angelique. I saw something flutter in the wind out of the corner of my eye, something black, ominous.

It was a body. Plummeting to the ground.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Angelique:

A blanket covered me. A blanket of dark sky and bright stars. My skin prickled, every inch of it like needles carving stories on my flesh. My eyes were closed, but I could see Isabelle sitting in the corner, humming while she colored pictures of fairy tales. Snow White, I think. Or Sleeping Beauty.

Coloring pictures of me. Sleeping.

Chaz had put me to sleep, then left Isabelle and me here. With Pete.

Darkness descended, rolled over me in waves. Something dangerous was coming, I could feel it. I had to break free, had to wake up. I pushed my way through layers of gray and blue, layers of cotton and flesh. Voices swirled around me, sharp, staccato. Somebody was upset.

Wake up.

I shook off the dream, felt a cold chill wash over me and a surge of nausea. I leaned over, still fighting nightmarish tentacles, opened my eyes. I was alone in the bedroom. Isabelle stood in the doorway, looking out. Sucking her thumb.

Voices in the other room.

“Did you see that?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Shuddup! Listen.” The last voice was Pete.

Isabelle glanced at me and smiled. I held my finger to my lips as I crept toward the door. I heard the electronic echo of a VR screen. Pete and some of the guards were watching something, some news broadcast. I peeked around the corner. No one was looking in my direction. They all stared at the screen.

“We’re going to play that video again,” a woman newscaster said. “This time we’ll explain what we think happened.”

A gritty video began to play, electronically enhanced to compensate for the failing light.

“This is the City of the Dead,” she said. “A man was found dead here this morning, apparently mauled to death by a pack of wild dogs. And this video camera captured what happened afterward. If you notice, right now, both of the dogs appear to be dead.”

A massive black German shepherd sprawled on the ground, his body ripped and torn. It was Omega, it had to be. I fought the emotion that rushed over me, fought against what I saw. He couldn’t be dead. Just then the camera wizards went in for a close-up. His face was shattered, his muzzle gone. I covered my mouth with my fist, fought against a sob.

“Watch this. Here.”

But I couldn’t watch. Instead I pulled Isabelle into my arms, turned her face away so she wouldn’t see it either.

“Look. Do you see that?” the newscaster’s voice continued, brazen, boasting. “His face is just…just rebuilding itself. And if you notice the gaping hole in his chest—”

I opened my eyes.

“Criminy! What the hell is goin’ on with that dog?” one of the guards said.

Pete held up his hand to silence him.

The dog’s face had almost completely reconstructed itself. And the wounds in his chest had disappeared. It looked like he was breathing. Low and shallow.

“Now look at his eyes,” the newscaster said.

Omega opened his eyes. Moaned. Took a deep breath. He struggled to his feet, shaky at first.

The dog jogged over to the silver wolf, sat beside her, nudged her with his nose. She didn’t move. He licked her face, licked her wounds, nudged her again. He lay beside her, his head on her chest, licked her wounds another time. After a few moments, he howled, a long heart-wrenching cry to the heavens.

And then the dead wolf came back to life.

“But that can’t, it can’t happen, boss—”

“That’s not resurrection, that’s not what we do, not the way that other dog—”

“I tolds y’all, shuddup!” Pete yelled.

Omega and his mate circled the area once before slipping away with their pack, before they became invisible in the morning shadows. One more time he trotted past the video camera, brushed his nose against the lens, testing it, probably attracted to the light.

But a shiver ran over my skin. It seemed as if the dog knew that I was on the other side of the lens, as if he was looking right at me. As if he wanted me to know…

Suddenly I remembered. I couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds as the last memory came back, the final missing piece.

I knew what I had done with the last dose of serum.

I glanced down at Isabelle as she leaned against my leg, her soft hair falling in curls over her shoulders, her soft life spilling all over the room like blood. I remembered the attack, how she had almost died from the liquid light. The monsters who broke into her bedroom would come back. They wouldn’t stop until they got what they wanted.

I knelt beside her, pulled her away from the door so the others couldn’t hear me.

“Isabelle, I have to go somewhere,” I whispered. “Will you help me?”

She nodded, but her dark eyes said no. Some part of her didn’t want me to leave.

“I’ll come back,” I said as I gave her a hug. “I promise.”

Then I told her what to do, how to distract Pete and the guards so I could sneak out. All the while, hoping that I would be able to keep my promise and come back.

I was running again, just like the night I was killed. Down the hallway, away from the suite I shared with Chaz, my Babysitter. My protector.

I kept reminding myself why I was leaving. Every step got harder. I could feel my thoughts begin to scatter, voices on the nether wind. All of my lives seem to blend into a winding blacktop road that stretched out forever over unfamiliar hills.

The elevator snapped open up ahead.

I froze, suddenly afraid. I was too scared to get inside. Instead I slipped into a nearby shadowed doorway, clenched my knuckled fists to my chest, every muscle shaking. I forced myself to be still, to be calm. I was leaving my Babysitter. And it took all my strength to fight the need to go back. It was programmed so deep that I started to feel sick. I curled over.

I needed to get back to the City of the Dead. It’s there. I had to go back.

Then I heard voices as a second elevator opened; people were coming toward me.

One of them was Russ.

I turned my face away from the hallway, tried to imagine that I was invisible. One of my hands slid over the door handle and instinctively pushed. The door opened. A stairway stretched before me.

I quickly slipped inside and started running down, running away. Russ couldn’t find me, he just couldn’t. Because if he did, he would kill me.

Again.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Neville:

Silent as an empty midnight mass, the silver-and-black chopper thumped to a velvet halt, descended like light from heaven, landed on the roof of the Carrington Hotel. A ragtag team of misfits climbed out, the one thing that united them a gen-spike stench, an odor of skin that had been stretched and pumped so many times that it began to decay from within.

“Follows me, boys,” I said, leading the way toward the stairwell. “And makes sure yur darts is loaded. Like I says, ya might not needs them.” I grinned over my shoulder at Seth, a lanky nineteen-year-old who still couldn’t grow a beard. “But ya might wants to use them anyway.”

Seth returned the smile, exposing crooked teeth, yellow from years of jive-sweet. His skinny arms were pockmarked from street-grade gen-spikes, something that had changed after he hooked up with my gutter brothers. Now he only got the best stuff. Jive-sweet was yesterday’s candy. Today it was all about that euphoric high of genetic alteration.

A beam of sunlight glanced off the chopper, cascaded into a rainbow that turned everyone around me into faceless silhouettes. I felt an apprehensive shiver, crammed a handful of jive-sweet in my mouth. Something about the way the light sparked around us reminded me of that night in the bar, that ’sitter and his liquid light, the feeling I was being watched by something that transcended my understanding.

“Boss?” Seth hovered, uncertain, in the doorway, a shock of black hair falling across his forehead.

I lifted my chin and laughed. Pushed my way back to the front of the line, inside the door and down the stairs.

My laughter ricocheted and bounced throughout the narrow corridor. Like the fire of a machine gun. I pulled out a blowgun and slid it between my lips. Long and narrow, about the length of two cigarettes, it felt good as it rolled into place, a hollow slot between my first and second bicuspids.

I sucked in a deep breath through the tube, trembling slightly at the traces of bliss, the latest designer drug, that flowed into my lungs. Just enough to wipe away any lingering fear.

We all had our blowguns in place now; we all grinned as we jogged down the stairs.

I is light and freedom, I brings power to the people. Them that gots no hope.

I brings them what they needs.

Immortality.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Russell:

The world flowed past my window, like a river of color. The images smeared and blended. My eyes couldn’t focus on anything. Not even Marguerite, although she sat beside me in the company car. But I hadn’t been able to see her for years. She’d been a wisp of smoke, her emotions transparent and inconsequential. More of an irritant than an inspiration.

Ellen. Memories of Ellen clouded my vision.

I thought we had a chance together. Then she betrayed me. I glanced down at my lap, realized my hands were knotted in fists.

I had been a fool. But those days were over. I was tired of trying to fix the problems with the rest of the world. I only wanted to salvage what I could. The jet was ready. A villa hidden in the Andes waited. As soon as I was finished at the hotel, I was leaving. Taking Isabelle and Marguerite and flying off into the blue horizon.

After I got rid of Angelique. At this point I didn’t care whether she was neutralized or given to Neville. I just wanted her and her Ellen-past gone.

The flow of color outside my window stopped. The world came back into focus. Sharp and immediate.

“We’re here.” Marguerite’s voice. Already I was looking forward to the jet ride that would get us away from New Orleans.

One of the guards opened the car door and I stepped out. Took a shallow gulp of city air. Stared up at the towering hotel. Then I headed toward the lobby, unconsciously wiping my hands on my shirt.

As if that bloodstain splatter I had been dreading was already here.

“Where y’at, boss?” Pete stood in the door, a shallow husk of who he had been two weeks ago. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Like something horrible haunted his dreams.

“Where y’at?” Marguerite answered him with a grin. She gave him a hug, then strolled inside Chaz’s hotel suite. “Isabelle? Where are you, sugar?” she called out. “It’s Mama.”

Our daughter came dancing out of a bedroom, ran and jumped into my wife’s arms. Her hair was neatly combed and she wore an oversized T-shirt that came down to her knees. But she was fine.

My heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t realized until now just how terrified I’d been that something might happen to her.

“Mama, Daddy.” She nuzzled her face in my wife’s shoulder, then reached an arm out to me. We embraced as a trio for a long minute. For a crazy moment it felt like this was going to work out after all, the three of us together, us against the world.

“Boss?” Pete stood over by the VR screen. “I needs to show you somethin’.”

I nodded. Kissed Isabelle on the cheek. “We’ll be going home in a couple minutes, baby,” I told her. Then I met Pete by the monitor.

“The news gots a video that’s been runnin’ all morning,” he said as he hit a REWIND button.

“Where’s the Newbie?” I asked, keeping my voice low. I didn’t have much time. Chaz could be here in a few minutes. I needed to erase my past mistakes before he got back.

“Sleepin’ in there.” He pointed a thumb back toward the room where Isabelle had been. “Trust me, you gots to see this first.” He hit the PLAY button.

The video began to run. For an instant I forgot about everything else. The dog we had experimented on was alive. But there was something going on that didn’t make sense. “It’s Omega,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But that other dog, how did it come back to life?”

“See hows he licked her wounds?” Pete asked.

“But that shouldn’t make any difference.”

“There weren’t never any tests like this, boss.”

“Still—”

Just then Isabelle tugged at my shirt. “Daddy.” She held her arms outstretched.

I picked her up and cradled her close. “Where was this taken?”

“They says it was the City of the Dead.”

I thought I heard something, Marguerite talking to someone, probably a Verse call from one of her sous-terrain société. I shrugged it aside, tried to stay focused on the dog and the Newbie, tried to figure out what my next move should be on this complicated chessboard. But that was probably my biggest mistake. I had been focusing all of my attention on pawns and rooks.

In retrospect, I should have been guarding my queen.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Angelique:

My legs trembled as I ran down the stairs, as the map rolled out in my head again, the same map I’d seen that night in the car when Chaz handed me the marker. I could see the whole city of New Orleans laid out, street names, addresses. And a series of hot pockets—warehouses, buildings, houses, all marked in red.

It was all preprogrammed information. Embedded.

Dizzy, I paused to lean against the wall, tried to figure out what the location tags meant. Maybe they were places I had been in a previous life. The City of the Dead was there too, the brightest of the bunch.

Somebody put this map in my head for a reason. But who and why?

Nausea forced me to buckle over again, to catch my breath.

Pete. It had to be him. He must have been the other undercover agent in Fresh Start. Must have been the one who resurrected me, who told Neville where I was, who made the marker in my hand.

A thunder of footsteps charging down the stairs roused me to attention. A few floors above me, sinister laughter. Gutterspeak. And one voice I recognized instantly. Like a jagged arrow, it ripped through my memories.

Neville.

He must have been waiting for my memories to resurface—

But none of that mattered anymore.

Because right now Neville and his bad boys were tromping down the stairs in my direction. And this wasn’t some serendipitous coincidence. I was a big part of the puzzle here.

They were after me.

I forced myself to a standing position and started running down the stairs. As fast as I could.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Neville:

All around me the world thundered with laughter and energy. It felt like I had a thousand volts shooting through my veins, like me and my boys were all juiced up and ready for battle. Shadows sparked off the polished walls as we descended, luminous in our dark, pretty-pretty cocoons, ready to burst forth, ready to break through the paper-thin walls and earn eternal butterfly wings.

Two more flights and we would be there. Floor 33. The suite that ’sitter shared with his Newbie.

Legs pumping, feet stomping. Dusky, sweet laughter ringing. Soon the stench of decay would be wiped away.

“Heres it is, boss.” Seth held the door open, a raw eagerness in his First-Timer eyes. The boy was a puppy, but he was well trained.

I rewarded him with a grin and a cuff to the head, which the boy easily dodged. Then Seth stopped, cocked his head to one side, lifted a finger to his lips.

I raised my hand for everyone to be silent.

We could all hear it now. Somebody was running down the stairs, a floor or two below us.

I nodded and pointed to Seth. “Go checks it out,” I said. “Then meets us back up on the roof.”

The boy took off, a hound after a fox, loping down the stairs, two at a time.

Then I slammed through the open door, led my boys over carpeted floors.

“Quiet now,” I reminded them. “And loads yur darts. We’s almost there.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Chaz:

I slammed on my brakes and my car screamed in resistance; it jerked, skidded sideways, and then shuddered to a stop. Right in the middle of the intersection. I threw the door open and ran across the street. A crowd had already gathered on the sidewalk and I couldn’t see what was going on. I tried to get past them, but almost immediately a popping and glittering band of virtual-reality crime-scene tape appeared, pushing all of us back.

“Babysitter! Let me through!” I yelled as I shoved my way through the stunned crowd.

It felt like we were covered in mud, like some gritty glue held all of us in place and we could only move in slow motion, one spare inch at a time. In my mind I screamed for everyone to get out of my way, but I don’t think those words ever made it out. One part of me was moving faster than I ever had, while another part was stuck somewhere in the past, still back inside the car, overwhelmed with astonishment and terror.

I was a frozen blur, moving and stationary in the same instant. Wishing that what I had seen wasn’t true. Dreading what I would discover as soon as I pushed through this eternal moment of now that refused to bend.

Two mugs flashed into position in front of me, wearing a couple of those new experimental VR skinsuits, the ones with the more realistic faces—although all these faces looked the same.

“Hold it right there, Domingue.” A hand sizzled in front of me, hit me square in the chest and held me in place. This was new for VR. Normally I would have been able to push my way through. Until now. I recognized the voice.

Skellar.

“Stay right where you are,” he said, his voice fading in and out before it finally stabilized. Apparently the voice modulators on this skinjob weren’t up to speed yet. “We have to scan for evidence before we can let you in.”

I tried to see past him. Something fluttered on the ground, like the wing of a bird. Dark, torn fabric. Part of a dress.

A woman. The person lying dead on the ground, about ten feet in front of me, was a woman.

Please don’t let it be Angelique, I prayed.

I looked up. Thought I saw someone standing on my balcony.

A team of VR mugs surrounded the body now. Behind me, somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded. The real goons would be here in a minute. For all I knew, one of them could be Skellar in the flesh. He could be wearing a VR suit in the back of a van, projecting himself here.

I was done waiting. I pushed my way back through the crowd. Whoever was on the ground was already dead.

And whoever was responsible was probably up in my suite.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Russell:

I watched that blasted dog video, over and over. Until it turned into a vintage Twilight Zone episode. Until both dogs trotted off into the dark night. Like a pair of invincible hounds of hell.

I think Marguerite may have said something, but whatever it was, it didn’t register. It wasn’t until I heard Pete cry out that I realized something was going on.

“Hey, don’t opens that door—”

I glanced at Pete, saw a startled expression on his face. Then his knees buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the floor. The look of astonishment froze on his face.

“What the—” I swung around, instinctively shielding Isabelle.

The front door hung open, and a gang of gutter thugs had slithered into the room. They moved with strange, jerky movements, sometimes holding still, sometimes magically appearing halfway across the room. A veil of color slid between us, a glittery orange, and then an awful panic rolled over me, the realization that all this was beyond my control.

“Marguerite—” It was all I could say, every syllable exaggerated and stiff.

My skin prickled and I caught a whiff of something honey-sweet.

She was beside me then, taking Isabelle in her arms. “I’m sorry, Russ,” she said.

Then I saw a yellow-feathered dart sticking out of my arm, felt my muscles melt like butter. I sagged to the floor, not as quick as Pete. Maybe they gave him something stronger.

“Puts him in a chair and ties his arms.” An apocalyptic voice. Malevolent. Foreboding. Familiar.

An army of hands lashed me to a chair. Trails of light followed robotic creatures as they darted across my line of vision. Had we been invaded by humans or machines? I forced my thoughts to stay focused on Isabelle. Turned my head to follow her, saw her cradled in Marguerite’s arms.

“Daddy, I wanna see Daddy!” she screamed, squirming to get down.

“Go aheads. Lets her down. Lets her say good-bye.” That voice again. This time connected to a face. Murky green eyes, bald head covered with metal studs. Neville. My personal path of destruction. I wasn’t surprised to see him. I had been dreading his arrival.

A glowing Isabelle scampered across the room, light flowing from the tips of her fingers and hair. “Daddy,” her voice echoed as she burrowed her face in my chest.

“We needs to talk.”

I glanced up, saw Neville guiding Marguerite to the balcony. The two of them were alone out there. He was telling her something and she was arguing with him, a look of bewilderment on her face—

No.

I couldn’t say anything. My vocal cords wouldn’t respond to the command I was screaming. Terror flooded my heart, a tidal wave that rolled over me, over Isabelle. Fear and anger filled the room, a crest that surged, that swallowed all hope.

No, Marguerite, don’t go out there with him, don’t trust him. I didn’t mean it, I would never hurt you, I couldn’t—

But they weren’t arguing anymore. He glanced at me, lips creasing into a wicked grin. Then he turned back to Marguerite, lifted her in his arms.

And dropped her over the edge of the balcony.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Angelique:

One of Neville’s gutter boys was after me, I could smell him. Still a floor above, but he was gaining. I could hear him jumping down the stairs, two and three at a time. I caught a glimpse of him when I glanced back. Tall and lanky, young, dressed in black, his face laced up with black stitches across the cheekbones. They all had to take the mark somewhere on their face. Usually across the forehead, something they could cover up with their signature black bangs. But this kid put his gutter mark up front for the world to see.

He had a point to make.

And I was probably part of it.

I wondered if Neville had taken the time to tell him that I should be kept alive. That I had information they needed. I saw a white stick hanging loose in the kid’s mouth. Darts. This punk was loaded.

But what was he carrying? Sleep or death?

I ran, downward. Matching my pace with his. Jumping down steps, swinging around the corners. I knew how to escape, how to fight. My body was new and fresh and it responded to my training memories better than I had anticipated. Still, he was armed and I could tell that he was gaining on me.

I was going to have to do something unexpected.

Level 21.

I yanked the door open, raced over the carpeted hallway, felt him behind me, like he was my echo, like he was wearing my thoughts. I zigged back and forth, knowing that this would slow me down, but I couldn’t take a chance on getting hit with a dart. I slammed my hand on the elevator button as I passed. Just then something shot past me, an invisible hiss. He’d taken a shot at me and missed. Exactly what I was hoping for. I collapsed in a tumble, fell into a clumsy half-rolled position on the ground, one arm slumped over my head, my face turned back toward him, one eye open just wide enough to see the startled look on his face as he slowed down. He approached cautiously.

Good. Keep coming.

I could tell he was looking for the dart.

Closer, almost here.

His right foot landed six inches from my face. Perfect.

I waited until he leaned forward, until he stretched his hand toward my still and crumpled body. I struck, in that moment when he was slightly off balance. I spun, tucked and rolled, swung one leg up, knocked him to the ground. Jumped to my feet, then kicked him in the chest. Heard the wind swoosh out of his lungs, saw his eyes flash closed in reflexive pain. Saw him curl like a spider on its back, legs folded inward.

Then I ran. Toward the open and waiting elevator. Toward the lobby and freedom.

I heard him groan behind me as I ran, thought I heard him struggle to his feet. He was stronger than I’d expected. Something flashed in my brain as I almost made it through the doors. A familiar odor hung in the air.

The decay of gen-spike flesh.

I swung inside the elevator door, punched the DOWN button, crashed my back against the wall, chest heaving, mouth open. The doors started to close when I heard a horrid sound.

A high-pitched whispering whistle, air being pushed back as something shot forward, something flying so fast it was almost invisible.

It struck me in the thigh, the tuft of feathers shivering on impact.

I glanced up, saw his grinning face appear in the narrow space between the closing doors. Already I could feel it. Numb. Heavy. Like I was being plunged in icy-cold water.

My legs sagged beneath me, refused to bear my weight. The elevator plummeted downward and I collapsed, helpless, on the floor. One last comprehensible thought before a gossamer gray veil clouded everything.

Sleep or death?

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Chaz:

The hotel lobby was a scramble of bodies; arms and legs and startled faces. It was as if everyone knew something horrible was coming and they didn’t want it to get too close. They turned away as I ran past, as if that could protect them. As if I were the hurtling bullet, the fast-advancing plague.

As if I wore the mask of death.

Just like the crowd outside, I had to push my way through a slow-moving herd, human flesh the boundary between me and my goal.

The elevators. Across shining marble floors, between Grecian pillars. A pair of twin doors stood closed, yet expectant, like the lid on a wicked jack-in-the-box, ever ready to spring open and reveal some predatory monster within.

I ran. Skidded to a halt in front of the doors, punched the UP button with my palm. Glanced impatiently at the stairway door to the left.

Should I wait or should I run up the stairs?

There are times when your brain moves faster than your body, when you see your life five times quicker than it really happens, when you see the beginning and the end, almost simultaneously. Then it loops around again, this time with a different, and usually much worse, ending.

The loop kept playing through my head, and each time the stairs seemed more logical. I could scale those steps in a few seconds, I could be halfway there before the elevator doors opened, I was wasting time. And yet, some part of me knew this was a false conclusion. There was no way I could run up thirty-three flights and beat the elevator.

I had to wait.

And waiting was killing me.

I prayed it wasn’t killing anyone else at the same time.

In that never-ending moment, as I stood waiting, my mind tumbled over all the safe words I had heard throughout my life: words like love and hope and faith. Every single one seemed to cause a sharp, jagged disconnect, to force me to continue to search for the perfect word, the one that would stop the tumble, the one that would stop the inward implosion that was going to drive me to madness if I had to wait another second.

Adrenaline slugged through my body; I leaned forward, willing time to push through the envelope, to reach the next second.

Waiting for the elevator doors to fly open.

Hoping that one word would finally win the lottery and stop the tumble.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Neville:

Marguerite flew over the edge of the balcony, a blackbird with dark wings that fluttered in the breeze. She was free now. Free to die and live again. Free to build another fake family from the broken bits and left-over pieces of the sous-terrain société. And this time I wouldn’t be part of her genealogy. I was tired of pretending that I cared, tired of listening to her incessant whine.

As if the blue-blooded elite deserved to complain about anything.

She seemed to be looking up at me as she fell, her mouth a small circle, a silent yet expressive O.

I laughed, quietly, chest shaking from a recent gen-spike, thoughts focusing then unraveling slightly, like they always did whenever I reached that mountaintop high.

She was at the bottom now, so far away that she looked like a tiny doll. A crowd formed quickly around her, insects flocking to an open wound.

“Speeds it up, my puppies,” I called to my team as I walked back inside from the balcony. “The mugs will gets here in about two minutes.” Bodies lay strewn throughout the suite, eyes open, not moving. Strapped to a chair, Russell tried to hold his head up, to keep his eyes focused while his daughter clung to him.

“Who gots the Newbie?” I asked.

Black-clad street warriors glanced at one another, then shrugged. “She ain’t here,” one ventured. “We hasn’t seen—”

I struck the man down, glared at the others. “Where she at? Who gots her?”

“F’true, boss, we couldn’t finds no Newbie here.”

I latched onto Russell, yanked his head forward. “I only asks one more time.”

“I haven’t seen her,” Russ answered, his words slurred.

“Yeah.” I grinned, then let my hand slide down to Isabelle’s shoulder. “Ya hasn’t seen her.” I lifted the little girl into my arms. “And maybe ya won’t sees this little one again, neither.”

“No, don’t touch her!”

“Ya knows what I wants. The research and the dog. The key to immortality. I gots to has it.”

“I told you, it’s gone—”

I nodded toward the door. My dark troupe began to slip out, shadows melting. “And I tolds ya. ’Bout the things that would happen if ya didn’t keeps yur end of the bargain.”

Sirens whined in the distance. It was time to leave.

“Ya gots twenty-four hours, Domingue. Then the little princess here,” I cradled Isabelle, kissed her forehead, “she gets painted to ride the flyin’ horses.”

I swung the child under my left arm, carried her around the waist, ignored her screams. I jogged out the door and down the hallway, toward the rooftop where the helicopter waited.

I sang as I ran. It was a dangerous song, usually heard in back alleys flooded with moonlight.

A song from the Underground Circus.

Wind from the roof whipped through the stairwell as soon as the door swung open. The chopper stood ready and waiting, blades slicing blue sky, energy pulsing. The team of gutter punks charged forward, heads down, a black running stitch across gravel tapestry.

A man stood at the edge of the open helicopter door, one hand pressed to his left ear, blind eyes searching. His right arm hung withered and useless. He was one of the many who could only afford black-market jumps; his clone body was slowly atrophying, pulling him back into the grave he had tried to escape.

I handed the child to one of the shadows inside the chopper.

“I hears somethin’, boss,” the blind man said. “That dog, I hears somethin’ ’bout that dog on the news—”

“Gets inside,” I ordered. “Where’s Seth?”

Sightless eyes stared toward the empty stairway as he shook his head. “He runs with you, he ain’t come back yet.”

“Y’all gets inside!” I grabbed the other man, pushed him toward the open door as he climbed in. “Seth knows how to gets Backatown on his own. We gots to leave.”

The door swung shut and the chopper lifted, like a yo-yo on the ascent.

I looked down at the shrinking rooftop, chuckling as I pointed.

Below us we all saw the shimmering materialization of a small team of VR mugs; they punched through, blazed in and out, then shorted out. Vanished.

The chopper filled with laughter as it swung over the city and away.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Russell:

The world faded and changed; all the color bled into one corner, all apricot sparkles. Sweet, like the orange huck-a-bucks that Isabelle ate in the summer. Frozen Kool-Aid in plastic cups. She gobbled them up until her mouth turned firework orange. Then she would stick out her tongue and we would both laugh.

But now words slammed through the orange fabric, silver and gray, words like bullets, sharp as knives, coarse razor-edged words that sliced through a velvet coral womb.

“Mr. Domingue! Can you hear us?”

When I first walked through the door, Marguerite was alive—she was laughing, joking with Pete. Then somebody messed with the dials in the universe, changed everything a sickening shade of mango orange. My wife sailed over the edge of the balcony and time stopped. Not long enough for me to say goodbye. Only long enough for me to wish that I could have saved her.

“What happened, Domingue?”

They flickered around me, all firefly light and electric current. Not real people. No one was real anymore. No one ’cept Isabelle.

“Isabelle?” My voice sounded like someone had stuffed cotton down my throat. I tried to lift my head, to see where she was. “Where y’at, baby girl?” My eyelids were stuck together, like somebody had poured glue over the lashes. I blinked.

“Where is your daughter, Domingue?”

My eyes met his, I saw a familiar glare. Even through the VR suit I knew who he was. Skellar. What was that monster doing here?

“Is anybody else alive in here?” he asked, looking back at one of his wavering shadow-bright detectives.

“We hasn’t found nobody yet, Lieutenant.”

“What do you mean?” I blinked again. “Pete, tell ’em you’re okay.” I couldn’t hear Pete’s answer, but I was too tired anyway. I took a long, deep breath, almost a sigh. My head sagged back and my eyes closed.

“Hey! He’s goin’ to sleep, somebody get that medic up here.”

“He gots a dart—”

“I know he has a dart, you moron, that’s why he needs a medic! Anybody here know what the yellow feather means?”

I could have told them. The yellow feather turns everything orange, it slows the world down, it paints everything with a melancholy brilliance, and it takes your breath away—

At that point somebody untied me and I fell off the chair, my mouth open. I slammed shoulder first, facedown, gasped like a fish dangling on a hook. My legs shook and my arms trembled. If I could have screamed, I would have.

But by now, the cotton was all the way down inside my lungs.

Oxygen was a distant memory. And in its place, a black ocean rolled in.

PART VI

“No reproduction without a valid death
certificate, that’s what the
Worldwide Population and
Family Planning Law mandates.
As a result, there’s a hunger that can’t
be quenched, no matter how
many VR children you invent or
how many puppies you buy,
a hunger that can only be satisfied
by spending time with a real, live child…”

—Underground Circus propaganda, sent via black-market
Verse to select customers

CHAPTER SIXTY

Chaz:

I have to confess there are things about this world, this time period, that are wonderful. Things that I would never want to live without. Virtual reality is one of them. The ability to go almost anywhere in the world, anywhere that the current VR signal reaches, anyplace you have the physical coordinates for. I could be in Singapore one minute and Paris the next. All of it is in real time, of course. That detail usually confuses first timers. You can go to Australia, just don’t expect it to be the same time as it was back in San Francisco.

But even VR travel has it drawbacks. Just like deep-sea diving.

The frequent, shifting patterns of light can sometimes cause travelers to have hallucinations. So, like any other good thing, there are warnings, age limits, contraindications regarding certain drugs.

I’m not sure how people lived before we had virtual reality or accelerated learning techniques or Verse implants.

Before resurrection.

What was it like when everyone lived with the fear of death peering over their shoulder? How did they get the courage to cross the ocean in primitive boats, to burrow tunnels beneath the earth in search of precious metal?

Sometimes I wonder what it was like before families were ripped to shreds, when holidays were spent with cousins, aunts and uncles—before the creation of the sous-terrain société. We’ve filled our empty spaces with fool’s gold, taken false solace in the tumbling jesters and the flying horses and the carnival that never stops.

Our world ended the day the Underground Circus came to town.

Sometimes I think we pulled a window shade down to cover our dark night, to keep our safe light inside. Let the vampires wander the streets and only invite them in when we need company, when we’ve grown tired of looking in the mirror and seeing no reflection.

I wish I could undo the black-market flesh trade, that I could burn the hands off every pretend mother and father willing to pay for a few hours of family-time-and-then-some.

The Circus had three levels of hell. As if one wasn’t enough.

It all began with a cast of kidnapped children, displayed in the black-market video bars and ordered like after-dinner desserts. The first level was trained, like pets, to perform at secret events for the wealthy. Sometimes these youngsters pretended to be members of the family, in a mock-celebration or holiday, kindling long-forgotten memories of a life when families gathered together, when a house echoed with the voices of brothers and sisters and cousins.

The second level was taught to dance and sing, a tiny cabaret on a candy-colored stage. Like nimble acrobats, they leaped across floors covered in expensive Persian carpets, tumbled between priceless antiques. Swift and lithe, their innocence erased with rouge and eyeliner, they acted out plays, entertained with rehearsed poetry.

But it was the third level that ripped out my heart, one swift wolf bite of flesh and blood and muscle, one devouring hunger that both maimed and killed. In the third level, prepubescent children were dressed in harlequin diamonds of black and white; they rode a carousel of flying horses. Here, the performance was dark and unrehearsed, the children were required to play adult roles…

Here, in a wassail feast of licentiousness, we destroyed the holy innocence of those we should have died to protect.

In my mind I can see the black market like a midnight bazaar in Marrakesh. Dark streets lined with open stalls, moon hidden behind the clouds. The air fills with the chatter of trained monkeys and the fragrance of exotic spice. Snake charmers linger in the shadows while someone offers to paint your body with henna tattoos. Colored lanterns flash within the stalls that you pass, revealing secret merchandise behind the counter. Illegal drugs, forged death certificates, clone bodies made to order. Anything you want, here and now, while you wait.

For a pound of flesh, the Underground Circus will come to town.

The horrors of the world, shimmering in veiled incandescence.

For a price, it can all be yours.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Chaz:

I waited forever, waited for the elevator doors to open. Outside, the sirens reached a fire-bright crescendo, an explosion of noise and light that demanded attention. The lobby filled with a cheap hothouse collection of real/not-real mugs, some dressed in VR skinsuits, some wearing actual flesh and blood.

Despite all the frenetic activity that pulsed around me, I stayed focused on the light above the door, the light that told me where the elevator was.

Third floor and descending.

Muscles tensed in my chest and arms.

Second floor. A pause.

I glanced again at the stairwell. Sweat on my brow, my neck.

First floor. A ringing sound. Gears grinding to a halt.

I heard the swoosh of the doors before they actually opened, I leaned forward, ready to push the inhabitants aside, to punch the elevator button and shoot up to the—

The doors were open now. A body lay crumpled in the corner. Long white-blonde hair, slender figure in a black dress and boots.

A dart in her leg, the feathered plume tagging her like a prize.

Angelique.

My heart thundered out the rest of the world, pushed aside the sirens and the cacophony of voices. I rushed to her side, gently took her wrist, caught my breath when I felt a pulse.

She blinked her eyes, wearily, glanced up at me. Tried to smile. Whispered my name. Sounded more beautiful than I wanted to admit.

She was in my arms then. I was carrying her into the lobby; a medic with a big red cross on his white coat was running toward me; her head was on my shoulder and she whispered my name again.

I placed her, ever so gently, on a stretcher, my lips brushing her cheek as I did.

A kiss, I think. Unintentional perhaps.

But then again, maybe not.

Rules are meant to be broken sometimes, I think, when life and death collide on the street corner, when everything we value gets mangled in the wreckage.

At that point I decided that all the Babysitter rules didn’t matter anymore.

The medic nodded at me. Angelique was wearing an oxygen mask and had an IV running in her arm. “She’s gonna be okay,” he said, “but I gotta get upstairs. Gutter punks shot darts up there too.”

“Upstairs?”

Already his team was charging across the lobby toward the open elevator. I grabbed a nearby mug, shoved him beside Angelique. “You watch over her,” I ordered, then showed him my tattoo. It was a command given by a superior. He nodded. “Make sure nobody touches her,” I said.

Then I caught up with the paramedics, slid in behind them just before the elevator door slammed shut.

The moment I stepped off the elevator I saw the door to my suite hanging open. VR mugs shimmered in the hallway, then abruptly zapped away as they were each replaced by their real live incarnations. A couple of bodies lay on the carpet, like bits of hurricane debris ignored because the storm still raged. Wind swirling, howling, beast-like and voracious.

I could feel a chill on my skin as I drew nearer, a low-pressure zone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I rounded the corner, saw an instant replay of the scene in Isabelle’s bedroom. I wanted to shove my fist through the fabric of the universe.

“God, no—”

Somebody was coming after the Domingue clan with a fierce determination, and now a hurricane vortex threatened to suck me in. I fought against it. Felt my muscles lock, turn to steel.

Fresh Start guards that I had personally trained lay scattered across the floor, some breathing, some not, all tagged with a variety of darts. Like this had been an experiment. Let’s check out that new batch of blowguns, any darts will do, they all take down a man in less than two seconds. No matter if they get back up again.

“Took you long enough to get up here.”

Skellar. The real thing this time, hands on his hips, he was surveying the room, stopped to focus on me.

A medic leaned over Pete, put an oxygen mask on his face. The guy gave a thumbs-up to someone across the room, then moved on to another prone body. Pete’s eyes batted open, then closed again.

My brother lay on the floor a few feet away, a team of three white-coats surrounding him, all working furiously. It didn’t look good.

“That was your sister-in-law on the ground outside,” Skellar said.

“What the hell happened?” I looked at him like he was guilty. He shot the same look back at me. “Where’s my niece?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “We haven’t found her yet.”

The dark cloud lowered, pressed heavy, squeezed all the oxygen from the room.

Without realizing it I grabbed something and threw it across the room. It broke with a loud crash. Startled heads looked up, then went back to work. This was not my reality, I was not going to accept this.

“Isabelle!” I called as I jogged toward my bedroom. “You can come out now. It’s Uncle Chaz.” I searched through the closet, looked under the bed, remembered games she used to play: hide-and-seek, tag. Little girls like to hide, please let her be hiding somewhere, let her be safe.

Let her be here.

I paused in the doorway, scanned the living room full of people, some working, some dying. None of them mattered. None of them had the answer I wanted. I kept seeing Isabelle’s face as I sprinted to the VR room, then the bathroom, then Angelique’s bedroom. I stopped again in the kitchen, glanced over the counter toward the living room, back where I had started.

Skellar was watching me. I could feel it, vicious heat on my skin. He moved closer, inside my danger zone.

“She ain’t here, Domingue. I’m sorry,” he said, something like pity in his eyes. The last expression I wanted to see on his face. “We’re gonna have to work together from here on out.”

I didn’t want to listen to him, I’d rather he be my sacrificial lamb, I’d rather toss him over the balcony like somebody had just done to Marguerite.

“This here’s the work of gutter punks, nobody else in New Orleans uses darts,” he continued, as if he didn’t notice that I was about to explode. “But it doesn’t make sense. Gutter punks deal in illegal drugs and they use darts in gang wars, not in a ’sitter’s hotel suite. And I can’t remember the last time they kidnapped a little girl. Doesn’t fit their code.” He paused. Maybe trying to see if I was paying attention, if he was getting through. “Somebody led them to your doorstep. Question is why.”

I could smell it then, for the first time I recognized something that I should have noticed the moment I walked through the door. The sugary-sweet odor of flesh hovering on the brink of decay. One of the medics had ripped Russ’s shirt open and an automated external defibrillator was slamming two hundred joules into his heart, trying to shock him back to the land of the living. I could even see the bands of muscle across his chest, rippling, expanding. I don’t know how he had hidden it from me or how I had been so blind.

My brother was a spike addict.

For an instant I was fifteen again, helpless in the dark night, surrounded by a chanting mob, rocks flying.

My father dead on the ground.

And somebody had been standing just inches away, high on spikes. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. Heard his laugh, echoing hollow and cold.

The nightmare that wouldn’t go away was alive and well. Somebody was playing games with my family, knew all of our weak spots. Even mine.

“Domingue, hey,” Skellar called from the other side of the room. “Take a look. They was watchin’ this.”

I snapped back to attention. He turned on a VR news video of a dog. I watched a news clip, saw a black German shepherd rise from the dead, then somehow resurrect a second wild dog, a silver wolf hybrid. I watched the video, but in my mind I heard echoes of a previous conversation. Last night, that Newbie in Russ’s front yard. “Where’s the dog?” she asked, but I had been clueless. Never heard of a dog. Never heard about any of this, whatever it was.

“That must be the dog they’re looking for,” I murmured.

“Who’s lookin’ for it?”

I stared at him, didn’t realize that I had spoken out loud. “The Newbie that self-destructed over at Russ’s,” I said. “She was asking about a dog. Right before she zapped herself to another clone.”

He scratched the stubble on his chin, glanced around to see if anybody nearby was listening. They weren’t. “Same thing happened down at the station last night,” he said. Like he stood in a midnight confessional. “Somebody downloaded, usin’ a handheld gizmo. He got in to see your brother, right before he was released. We found the body in the interrogation room, but all the video had been wiped clean.”

“Somebody on your team is playin’ both sides.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Skellar lifted his gaze toward the balcony, where several of his men were sampling for DNA residue, then he glanced back at me. “Look, whoever took your niece is gonna try to contact you. Or your brother, if he pulls through—”

The medics took the defibrillator pads off Russ, slipped an IV in his arm and strapped an oxygen mask over his face. He was breathing. He was alive. For now anyway.

“—and you’re gonna let me know when they do. Got it?”

I nodded, wondering if I was willing to partner up with him. Didn’t seem to matter what I wanted. All of a sudden, my options got pretty limited.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Russell:

The orange light faded. In its place, dark water rolled over the horizon, poured into my lungs, black and brackish, pulling me down in a fierce undertow. A subsurface river crashed me against the rocks, thrashed me along the spiny ocean bottom until my chest ached. I fell limp and weary, wondered if in some other world I was still alive, still struggling to breathe.

Pain shot through my chest, white-hot fire and smoke. I arched my back; like a fish I flew out of the water, gasped a mouthful of air, then submerged again. Another shock wave jolted through my torso, my eyes flew open and I had a vision of the world the way it was before.

Isabelle laughing, hair in silken ringlets.

Marguerite dancing, red dress and silver earrings.

Dark water and a funeral barge, fire burning at the edges, me floating down the River Styx. I was breathing now, I think, but I was alone between worlds, heading for Hades.

Water lapping the sides of the boat, so close to immortality, if I could dip my hand over the side I would live forever—

Immortality. The dream that never belonged to me.

Voices. A multitude of whispering voices called me from rocky shores. Chaz. My mother. My father. They had questions for me and I tried to call back, but my throat was raw from that black, burning water. Still, my mouth moved and words came out, the dead speaking to the living, a séance that linked me one last time with the world of light.

All the while, the River Styx patiently lapped at the edge of my boat. Waiting for me to die.

If only I could dip my hand in the water.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Chaz:

The hospital lights were turned down low and everyone spoke in hushed tones, as if that would make everything easier, like it could somehow soften the blow to the gut that was on its way.

He was dying. My brother was dying and I had to talk to him. Even if he didn’t answer me. I asked Mom to give us a few minutes alone. She floated into the hallway, took holo Dad on some sort of glowing leash. I closed my eyes when he drifted past. Still can’t bear to get too close to that thing.

We were alone now. Russ and I. He was breathing, ragged and rough. The doctor said he’d had some sort of allergic reaction to the dart. It wasn’t a strong poison, but for some reason, maybe because of his weakened state from the spikes…there was no definitive answer for what was happening to him, but he probably wouldn’t make it through the night.

He would never see his daughter again. Even if we could find Isabelle, right now, he wouldn’t see her.

“Russ, it’s Chaz.”

His body lay still, arms tucked close to his sides. His eyes blinked open as he struggled against the darkness that surrounded him. “Isabelle,” he whispered. Then a long minute later, “My baby girl—”

I held his hand. He was looking at me now, one of those brief coherent moments before the curtain comes crashing down and the lights go out. I could barely hear his words, so I moved closer, caught him in mid-sentence.

“—that monster took her,” he murmured, “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stop him—”

“Who was it, Russ? Tell me who took Isabelle—”

“—didn’t you smell him that night?” He struggled to grab my shirt and pull me closer. “Didn’t you smell him when everybody was chantin’ and throwin’ rocks? I can smell him, all the time—”

Rocks. Chanting. A stench wrapped around my intestines, soaked through my lungs. I could taste it in the back of my throat, heavy and sweet, like swallowing a mouthful of rotting honeysuckle. The night Dad was murdered. The nightmares. Somebody laughing in the darkness.

“Russ, are you saying that the guy who took Isabelle was there when Dad died?”

“—he’s gonna put her on the flyin’ horses—”

“Who? Tell me his name—”

He stared at me, as if he saw some dark terror in the distance, something approaching faster than he expected. He took one last jealous breath, then exhaled, long and slow. He fell still, all the answers I needed still locked inside.

There was a moment when all the lights in the room seemed to dim, when the darkness came on leather wings. It sat beside me, nameless and faceless, a beast all claws and teeth. I recognized the presence. Remembered a time when we met before.

Right now, more than anything I needed closure. And accountability.

“I’ll get her back, Russ,” I said, my words catching in my throat. I had to pause, had to ignore the gen-spike stench and the black slithering shadows. “No matter what it takes, I promise, I’ll get Isabelle back.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

October 14 • 4:59 A.M.

Chaz:

Midnight poured down into my gut, cold and stark. The monster that took Isabelle hadn’t contacted us yet. I had a team of people searching the Grid for any clues. I hated to admit it, but my niece would probably turn up in the Underground Circus. I had to have people in place, watching for her.

All of them would be watching for a five-year-old, almost six-year-old, girl who would be sold in a few hours to the highest bidder.

Right now Angelique and Pete were sleeping off the venom that some punk had shot into their veins. In the morning, they’d help put together the disjointed pieces of this puzzle. Somehow they’d each played a part in this and it was time for them to confess.

Whether they wanted to or not.

But I didn’t know if I would survive that long. Isabelle was out there somewhere, scared and alone. Waiting for someone to rescue her.

I stood on a wrought-iron balcony, overlooking the French Quarter. The day had been sliced neatly in half, divided down the middle into dark and light and I was poised on the edge of both, wondering what would happen next. I felt like I had been in this position all of my life. Waiting for a bolt of lightning to shoot down from heaven. Hoping that someone would expose the evil that had taken up residence all around me.

It was finally time for me to make a decision—to fight, to die if I had to, risk everything to stop this madness. I didn’t even know what the kidnappers wanted or who they were.

But I knew what I wanted. I could feel it boiling in my blood like a virus.

Revenge.

I wanted to see some monster’s head on a pike, hear the beast drowning in the moat just outside the castle walls, and then bring the princess home, safe.

When had I turned into a warrior with barbed-wire flesh? I never asked to play this part. This was my Gethsemane, my rocky garden crucible. And I could tell a sacrifice was coming.

It was an hour before dawn.

Below me the streets flowed heavy with fog, a river of hazy gauze, a mist that stalked the city every night on panther paws. A cotton-like silence filled the sky. It ate sounds and spit them back out, half-born. Streetlights curved overhead; they winked and then went off. Suddenly the whole world narrowed down to the single street, covered with cobblestones and lined with double gallery houses, stunningly beautiful in their decay.

A phantom light danced through the mists. A precursor to the sun.

The City That Care Forgot began to reveal itself when a man on the street started to play a trumpet, the soft, haunting melody stirring ghosts from the mists. Shrouds and skeleton-like creatures emerged from the vaporous mists; they danced and swayed. People dressed for Carnival, high on life, high on black-market alcohol, high on whatever illegal drug they could afford. Like sinuous snakes they followed the music, hips swinging, arms lifted high in mock worship.

I watched as they shifted through white shadows, until finally they disappeared through a doorway.

And then I was alone.

Is this what purgatory used to be like, back before God emptied it of the dead, before there were no more souls left? No one prayed for the dead anymore. The Pope forbade it twenty years ago.

Pray for the living, that was what he said we should do.

But nobody listened. Instead we all forgot how to pray.

I fell to my knees then as the damp, dark fog swirled around me; I lifted my hands to the heavens that I could no longer see.

In the dark night of the soul, faith feels as dry and brittle as autumn leaves.

Spare Isabelle, I prayed. Please. If there must be a sacrifice here, then let it be mine.

This time, let it be mine.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Neville:

My boss stood bathed in his own circle of light in the center of the room. As always, he wore one of those vintage virtual reality suits, the kind that masks your face and garbles your voice. A couple of gutter punks lay on the floor, feet twitching like they were having puppy dreams. The room was littered with empty bottles that once had held a homemade concoction of bliss and jive-sweet and black-market rum. Strips of century-old wallpaper sagged in the corners of the room, revealing water-stained battle wounds from a war this shotgun cottage fought and lost, long ago.

I waited for the argument I knew was coming. I didn’t have to wait long.

“This isn’t going to work,” my boss said.

I grinned. “Trusts me,” I said. “This here will works just fine. All pretty-pretty, likes I told ya.”

“No, it won’t, you idiot. Russell Domingue is dead! I told you not to kill anybody—”

“I didn’t kills nobody, that Domingue was pumped up with spikes—”

“Then how are you going to get the serum now?”

“I works magic, I always does. I gots voodoo in my blood—”

“You’re high.” The VR image fluttered and sizzled, transmission fuzzy.

“Still, I knows what to do.”

“What? Tell me, how are you going to fix this mess?”

I picked up a tray filled with jars of cosmetics: powder, rouge, lipstick. I balanced it in one hand and gestured with the other. “I’s gonna paints the little girl. Just like I plans all along. Gets her ready for the flyin’ horses.”

“But her father’s dead and he’s the one who knew where the—”

“The uncle’s the one we wants now. Him and his Newbie. They’ll gets us the stuff.”

“How can you be so sure you can manipulate the uncle as easily as the father?”

I set down the tray, then flicked on a VR screen on the far wall. “Remember them surveillance tapes from the night we breaks into their house? Just watch and you’ll sees.”

Like a vintage film noir, a gritty sequence of images flashed across the screen. It was a copy of a copy and all the color had been washed out. Black-and-white digital photography had been shot in the little girl’s bedroom, the sound muffled. According to the digital clock readout in the lower right corner, it started when three people walked into the bedroom at 5:56 P.M. Isabelle, Chaz, and the Newbie. The Newbie sat in a corner, silent, looking almost like a mannequin. Chaz played with his niece, talked to her, helped her decide what to wear.

I glanced at my boss. He wasn’t convinced. Yet.

The video jumped ahead to 7:08 P.M. A blinding flash washed out the screen and erased everything. The liquid light. The tape had been tampered with, a scene removed—the scene that showed me breaking through the window, tossing in a ball that rolled across the floor, then ignited. The light faded.

The room was now filled with blackened bodies, all children.

My boss looked away for a moment.

I’s not afraids to look. I’s never afraids of what comes next. I stands with open eyes and I waits, always I waits for what needs to happen…

“Watch it!” I commanded.

He turned back, VR head facing the screen.

Chaz was in the room now, frantic. Looking for something, weaving his way through the puzzle of dead children. Then he turned toward the bathroom door. “Isabelle!” he cried, his voice echoing on the recording, “Isabelle, are you in there?”

“Uncle Chaz—” The little girl’s voice was almost lost beneath the roar of the crackling fire.

“Watch his face,” I said.

The video skipped again. To the part where the broken door was peeled away. Russell and Chaz glanced at each other for a brief moment.

Here the video had been enhanced to show a close-up.

Something blazed in Chaz’s eyes, settled on his brow, almost as if he thought about pushing his brother aside, going in and rescuing the little girl himself. Then Russell shouldered his way through the door and picked the child up, carried her out to safety.

I paused the video.

And there, frozen on the screen, was a close-up of Chaz’s face. He could no longer hold it in, tears spilled down his cheeks, revealing the secret he had tried for years to conceal.

“Do ya sees it?” I asked.

My boss nodded.

“Then tells me, what does ya see?”

“The uncle, Chaz, he…” He paused for a moment, stared into the black-and-white face as if he recognized the emotion, as if he could relate to the hidden longing. “He wishes that the little girl was his.”

“Exactly.”

I is the silver wind that rushes through the night trees, the invisible river that changes the course of life and death. I is the bright star that burns forever.

I is the one that brings immortality to the gutter.

Where it belongs.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Angelique:

The dart shot poison through my system. My flesh burned. A virus rushed through my veins, my blood turned into blistering, smoldering magma. I felt like I would melt, my skin was wax and it was peeling off my bones in layers. I fell on the floor of the elevator and I was on fire.

I lost consciousness.

I woke up for a brief moment. Chaz was holding me. I felt safe then. For one instant, I felt safe.

Then I slipped away again. And the nightmares began.

It felt like I was going mad, my life became one long lucid dream and I couldn’t break free. Sometimes I was aware of what was going on around me, sometimes I was sure that I was dreaming, but at other times reality seemed to take on a new meaning.

I was in a hospital and Chaz was with me. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense his thoughts, pushing through the membrane of my mind.

I was falling in love with him.

But I couldn’t.

I was standing in the hills of Scotland, beside William, his dark hair laced with silver, the lines on his face deeper than when we first married. He laughed, a thick, rich, boisterous sound, and he took me in his arms. We danced in the long grass while our herd of sheep watched. He kissed me and I leaned against him, hungry for his touch.

“It’s been so long, Will,” I said.

“Long, my love?” He laughed again. “Have you already forgotten this morning?”

I couldn’t remember anything but this moment on this hill, this now. I wanted to stay with him forever, then I remembered. The dark cloud. My rebellion.

I had taken the Fresh Start chip.

He pulled away from me then, his touch cold, as if he had just remembered it too.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “You’ve damned yourself now.”

“That’s not true,” I argued. “The Pope said—”

“And now, Miss High And Mighty herself believes everything the Pope says.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“It isn’t too late,” he whispered, now from a distant mountaintop. He was growing smaller and smaller, traveling farther away by the second.

“Too late for what?”

“To pay a penance for your sin.”

Don’t go, don’t leave me alone, I don’t want to be damned. But he faded away and I was alone in the dark, in this horrid unending hallucination.

And I knew there would be a reckoning soon.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Chaz:

The hospital came alive with a clatter and a rumble, like a trolley car rolling down broken tracks. Gurneys and medicine carts wheeled through once empty corridors, the stench of antiseptic ratcheted up a notch. White shoes and white coats and a herd of would-be saviors jostled for placement in a morning rush hour.

Skellar and I each held a cup of strong coffee as we huddled together in Angelique’s room. Our voices collided with each other, sometimes hushed when we remembered the danger involved, sometimes close to shouting when we tried to focus on what needed to be done.

“We caught one of them gutter punks last night, hidin’ in the stairwell,” Skellar said. Steam rose from the coffee as he leaned nearer and took a sip.

“Did you find out who took Isabelle?” I asked.

“Eventually.” A crooked grin slid over rugged territory, creased one side of his face. “After I gave that punk one of those ‘spill-your-guts’ cocktails that you liked so much.”

Angelique blinked and rubbed her forehead. She was waking up.

“And?” I prodded him.

“And suddenly he remembered a lot more. Like who took your niece.” He pulled a photo from his pocket. “You know this guy?”

I stared at the picture. Icy fingers slid down into my gut.

It was that joker from the bar, the one who’d tried to take Angelique.

Skellar seemed to enjoy my reaction. “After talkin’ to that gutter rat, I ran a background check on this goon and found out he was in Marguerite’s sous-terrain société,” he said. “This guy was one of her surrogate brothers. He has been for over five years. Maybe that’s why he got called in for this job. Or maybe this is a setup that’s been planned for a long time.”

“You’re sayin’ this maggot had been crawling around my family for five years? Why?”

“That’s Neville Saturno,” Angelique said, her voice raspy and low.

I reached one hand out, touched her cheek. It still felt hot. “You okay?”

“I think so.” She gave me slow smile, one that made my heart skip a beat. Made me feel alive again.

“You’re pretty lucky you got to a medic so quick last night,” Skellar said. “Your friend Pete got the same dart as you and he ain’t doin’ so great.”

“What happened?” She pulled herself into a sitting position, sluggishly ran her fingers through her hair.

“Gutter punks broke into our hotel suite.” I frowned. “They shot darts—”

“But Isabelle’s okay, right?”

I glanced down at the tile beneath my feet, tried to imagine where my niece was right now, felt the surge of pain return like a cannonball through my chest.

She was holding my hand. “Chaz, she’s okay, isn’t she?”

“We don’t know.” Skellar spoke the words that I couldn’t bring myself to say. He tossed the photo in her lap. “What’s your connection with this guy?”

“I—I’ve known him a long time,” she said, a dark expression in her eyes. “Since my last life.” She looked hesitant to say more in front of Skellar.

“He’s the one that has Isabelle,” Skellar said.

Angelique stared into space for a moment, a terrified look on her face. “Has he contacted you or Russ yet? Did he tell you—did he say what he wants?”

“Russ is dead.” My voice cracked when I said it, the words made it more final, more real. “And nobody’s contacted us yet. What do you know about all this, Angelique?”

She glanced at Skellar like he was contagious. “Are you sure we can trust this guy? Odds are he’s on the same payroll as Neville and all the other mugs—”

“Hey, sister, I ain’t on nobody’s payroll. Would my teeth look like this if I could afford somethin’ better than jive-sweet?” Skellar grinned wide, showed us yellow teeth stained brown on the edges. “And believe it or not, there’s some things I refuse to do. Kidnappin’ little girls is one of them.”

“I don’t like mugs any more than you do,” I admitted. “But we haven’t got a choice here. Those gutter punks knocked out everybody I trust. There isn’t anyone else.”

“Okay, okay.” She pulled her knees to her chest and her eyes turned the color of a stormy sky. “I don’t care who ends up with the key to immortality, not anymore, not as long as we can get Isabelle back…”

She kept talking but I didn’t hear what she was saying. I glanced at Skellar and I could tell he was having the same reaction I was. I felt like somebody had just rammed a steel pipe against my back.

“Are you tellin’ me somebody figured out how to make resurrection work more than nine times?” I asked. My mouth felt dry. What sick jerk would want to hang around here that long? “But the DNA breaks down after six times. On the ninth cycle, everything is—”

She met my gaze. “We weren’t using clones. This isn’t like technological resurrection. This is something else. One injection. That’s it.” She paused, a pained expression on her face, as if she just remembered something. When she spoke again her voice lowered, became almost inaudible. “One dose, and then every time you die, your body just repairs itself. You just get back up.”

“Like the dog,” Skellar said. He was leaning forward.

“Yeah.” A tear was running down her cheek. “Just like the friggin’ dog.”

I crossed my arms and settled back in my chair. Skeptical.

“You do the research?” Skellar asked.

“Me and Russ.” She was watching me. “And Pete.”

“You’re sayin’ Pete knew about this and he didn’t tell me?” I pushed myself out of my chair, stood over her. “I can see Russ pulling something like this, he always wanted to be a hero, wanted everybody to bow down and make him king, but Pete? I don’t believe it.”

“Pete did my jump. After Russ…after…” Her hands clenched the blanket, then released.

“You’re that Ellen they been lookin’ for.” Skellar connected the Domingue dots. “Russell killed you, didn’t he?”

I blinked. All of a sudden it felt like I was playing solo, but the notes were coming out all wrong.

Angelique looked away, didn’t answer his question. “Pete helped us with the research, you know he’s a computer whiz. But Neville must have got his hooks in him somehow, got him to turn in reports on what we were doing. I always knew there was somebody else working both sides.” She paused. “But there came a point when I just—I couldn’t do it anymore, so I destroyed all our files and let the dog go.”

“You destroyed the research?” Skellar looked at Angelique like she was nuts.

She ignored him, continued to talk to me like he wasn’t there. “Chaz, the mugs can’t help us. They’re in on it. The U.S. government is in on it too. This is bigger than Fresh Start, than any of us.”

“Thanks for that vote of reassurance, sister. I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ with you too.” Skellar glanced down into an empty paper cup, crumpled it, and then tossed it into a nearby waste can.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said, a puzzled expression on her face. “Russ never told you. About your father’s death, about your mom.”

I watched the light in her eyes change. “He never told me what?”

“This guy, he killed your father. And he infected your mother.”

I put the world on pause, began to pace the room, forced my lungs to keep working. The same guy who murdered my father had just kidnapped Isabelle. He killed Russ and Marguerite, tried to kill Angelique and Pete. And he gave my mother the life of a leper.

“Chaz?”

I could hear the music of my life turning sour, felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

“Chaz.” Angelique stood before me, the blanket wrapped around her. “It’s going to be all right. I know how to get your niece back.”

I saw her mouth move, heard the words, but somehow the chord progression was still all wrong, every note off-key.

“I’ve got what Neville wants.” Eyes the color of summer rain, refreshing and pure, met mine, forced me to pay attention.

“But you said you destroyed the research.”

“Not the serum,” she said. “That’s where I was going when you found me in the elevator. I hid enough for one, maybe two doses. We can trade it for Isabelle.”

Suddenly I knew I was the only one who could hear it, the only one who had it all figured out. I laughed. It was a song of madness, a song of dark depression and despair, a song that had been playing throughout my life. But it didn’t matter anymore. We were going to win.

I sat in the chair and laughed until I started to cry.

I knew Angelique and Skellar thought that I was losing my mind, but I didn’t care.

We were going to get Isabelle back. All I had to do was give eternal life to the monster that had haunted my dreams since I was a kid.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Chaz:

He wasn’t going to make it. I had to go rescue my niece from a Nazi wannabe, I would have to hold eternal life in my hand for a nanosecond and then turn it over to some gutter punk sociopath. But right now my best friend was dying and I had to say good-bye. Even if he had betrayed me.

Pete would always be my best friend.

Long pauses divided each breath. It sounded like he had barbed wire tangled in his lungs and they were filling with blood, like his insides were being sliced up by a miniature army wielding tiny razor blades.

He coughed. Blood speckled his lips. One eye danced open.

I think he saw me, but I wasn’t sure.

“Pete, it’s Chaz.”

A whisper, hoarse and raw. “Where y’at, bruh.” A thin smile. His skin was too pale, the circles under his eyes even darker than usual. He looked at me, death clouding his gaze. “Hey, I wants…to keep it…all,” he said, each word wet and heavy like a shovelful of dirt on a grave. “Don’t erases nothin’.”

“I won’t.”

“And we never talks ’bout it, but yur gonna…”

I finished his sentence. “Be your ’sitter.” I forced a laugh. “You think I’d let anybody else mess with you? I’ll be right there, from Day One.”

He closed his eyes, still smiling. Pain twisted his grin, turned it into a grimace.

I should have let him go in peace, but I couldn’t.

“Pete, why didn’t you tell me? Did Neville threaten somebody in your family?”

His eyes opened halfway. “Yeah.” A look of torment flashed. “You.” He coughed. He was using his last bit of energy for this. “He was gonna…gives ya what he gave yur mom…he was gonna takes yur life away, bruh, and ya only gots the one, I couldn’t—”

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that Pete had gone soft for his own kind, that he finally realized that the view from the gutter overshadowed anything else. But I know I didn’t expect this. That Pete had been standing in the gap for me, without my even knowing it.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” I said.

“Yeah.” His last grin. In this lifetime.

And then he jumped. My best friend died and within an hour he would be downloaded into a clone somewhere back at the factory. Already somebody was starting the process. I made a quick call, told them to let Pete keep everything, all his memories. Meanwhile, a Fresh Start attendant bustled into the room; he ran a few tests, then whisked the body away.

I stood up and straightened my shirt, glanced at the clock on the wall. Stopped in the bathroom to comb my hair. I had to look presentable.

We were going live in twenty minutes. On the ten-o’clock news.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Chaz:

They dressed her in harlequin diamonds of black and white, painted her face and curled her hair. She drank something—some kiddie cocktail laced with drugs—and then she posed on a carousel horse amidst colored lights and calliope music. With a laugh and a giggle, her eyes half closed, she sang a song to a hidden camera.

And the bidding began.

I got the call one minute before Angelique and I went on the news.

“Yur little darlin, she gonna brings in a good price. She somethin’ special, oh yeah. Wish ya could sees her right now, the way she flirts with those bidders when they asks their questions.”

I put one hand over my ear, turned away from the makeup girl that was trying to take the shine off my nose. “You better end your auction,” I said. “Right now, Neville, or all deals are off.”

“What deals? You and me, we gots no deals.”

“Turn on the news, you monster, and if anybody touches my niece, I’ll send you to hell myself.” A light flashed and I switched off my Verse, then turned back toward the camera. The newscaster watched me with a puzzled expression, but as soon as the cameras came on, she was all liquid silver and sparkling teeth.

“Mr. Domingue,” she began. I think her name was Judy. Or Jane. Or Janet.

“Chaz, call me Chaz.” I flashed a smile of my own.

“Yes, Chaz, I understand you have some information about that miraculous dog we saw earlier today.” She gave a subtle cue and the City of the Dead video ran while we talked. I watched Omega on the monitor, saw him die and then get back up. “Is this some sort of experimental prototype? Some new form of resurrection?”

I laughed. “Not exactly. Ms. Baptiste, why don’t you explain, in layman’s terms, what we see here?”

Angelique nodded. “Of course. My team and I were working on a breakthrough medical discovery—similar to the technological resurrection we’re all familiar with—but actually—”

Judy-Jane interrupted. “You were trying to find an answer to the Nine-Timer dilemma, weren’t you?”

“Well, it’s like Chaz said, not exactly. We weren’t working with clones, so as you can see the dog didn’t need anyone to download him into a new body when he died. So it’s not exactly resurrection—”

It was my turn to deliver the punch line. “It’s immortality.”

The newscaster stared at both of us. Dead air.

I grinned at the camera, knew that Neville was watching.

“Immortality…” Judy-Jane finally found her voice again. “So that dog? He’s—he’s immortal?”

Angelique and I nodded.

“There’s just one problem,” Angelique said apologetically. “We had an accident in the lab and all of our research was destroyed. And of course, we never did get a chance to try it out on a human, so we don’t know for sure if it would have worked on people.”

“But…but…if you created this once, surely you can do it again.”

“I wish it were that simple.” I was really enjoying the tormented look on the newscaster’s face. Wished I could see Neville’s. “You see, we based everything on the research done by my grandfather. If we hadn’t had his research to begin with, we never would have gotten as far as we did. Unfortunately, his work was destroyed as well.”

“But whoever worked on this project should be able to remember some of it.”

“That would be my brother.” I stared into the camera, a level gaze. “But he just died, a few hours ago.”

Our interviewer glanced down at her notes, tried to figure out what to say next.

“There is one bright spot in all of this,” Angelique offered.

“What’s that?” Judy-Jane asked without lifting her head.

“We have one dose of the serum left.”

She was looking at us now, open-mouthed. “Just one?”

Again we both nodded.

“Do you mind if I ask, what—what do you plan to do with it?”

“We’re going to put it up for auction,” I said. “And sell it to the highest bidder.”

The offers started coming in before we even left the studio. We had a site set up on the Grid for a silent auction, any bid was allowed, and we made it clear that we would consider barter as an option. After all, we weren’t looking for money. I put a block on my Verse to shut out interruptions, and I saved the number from my most recent caller. Neville.

His gravel-edged voice had carved runes in my brain, like an ancient alphabet, spelling words I didn’t dare speak out loud.

Memories of sleepless nights. My father, dead on the ground.

The fear within me turning to something cold and hard over the years.

A part of me was dead because of that man. He didn’t know it yet, but I was the hunter now and he was the prey. Like a jackal, he ran over open fields, my niece in his iron jaws. But soon he would tire, his grip would loosen.

And that was when I would strike.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Chaz:

A VR video was waiting for us when we got back to Fresh Start, my headquarters for the auction. A beacon pulsed, red and orange, at the top of the list of bids. I glanced at Angelique and Skellar. This one was a live feed. I told Skellar to get out of sight. I waited until he walked around the corner, then I flicked the system on.

“Messages.”

The Grid sizzled and crackled, then with a jolt the live feed shot through.

Somebody was standing in front of Angelique and me, wearing an antique VR suit, face concealed. Clever. When the voice came through, it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female.

“Domingue.” He paused. I was convinced it was a man, even though I had no evidence to prove it. “I have what you want.”

“Really? You have two billion dollars?”

He laughed. “You don’t want money.” His transmission sputtered, like it was corrupting the system, like it might crash at any moment.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Money sounds pretty damn sweet right now. Lots of it. But since you’re the genius here, what do I want?”

For a second he held still, like a mountain lake on a midsummer eve.

“Revenge.”

This guy was smart. I nodded, glanced at Angelique, then shrugged. “Yeah, revenge sounds good too. Just exactly what kind of revenge are we talkin’ about here?”

“Revenge for your father’s death.”

“You tellin’ me you were responsible?”

“Not exactly,” the VR creature said. His voice went up in pitch, the transmission faded out, then snapped back in place. “But I can give you the guy that set it up.”

“We already know who that was,” Angelique said. “Neville Saturno.”

“But you don’t have any evidence. And you probably don’t know what he did to your mother.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I knew that would get your attention.” I couldn’t tell if our VR visitor was laughing or if the transmission was crackling. “He gave her that virus she has now. Made her live in quarantine, took her away from the rest of the family. I guess you could say he’s not a very nice man.”

“Or I could say that he does everything you tell him to.”

He shrugged. “Did you know that he was also the one that broke into your brother’s house the other night?” He shook his masked head as if mourning what had happened. “That beast killed all those kids with liquid light. I warned him, told him to use a lower dose, but he’s like a wild horse. Impossible to tame. You know there’s only one thing that can stop him.” There was a long pause. “He needs to be exterminated.”

We agreed on that point.

“Are you making me an offer for the immortality serum, or are you just wasting my time?” I asked. I wondered what Skellar was doing right now. He’d had plenty of time to run a trace on this transmission. As far as I knew, his men might already have this VR monster’s house surrounded. But I kept up the facade. Besides, I still needed more information. “Because I have two hundred other bids clogging up my system and I need to—”

“You want to see your niece, alive and unharmed?”

“If you hurt Isabelle, you can forget about eternal life. You might not even live to see tomorrow.”

His transmission crackled and hissed again, this time I was sure he was laughing. Nice to know I amused him. I imagined Skellar giving me five minutes alone with this cockroach, thought about how much damage I could do in that amount of time.

Just then an image appeared beside him, the auction video of Isabelle, the one that was still running. I hadn’t seen it yet, we’d been too busy setting up our own auction. But as soon as I saw it, I wanted to erase it from my mind. I wanted to reach into the nether world of virtual reality and yank her out. She was tired, the rouge on her cheeks and lips had smeared, but she still sat on that painted pony. Superimposed on the bottom of the video was a list of questions that the bidders had asked, along with her answers; above her head, like a thorny crown, was the current high bid.

“Neville’s running that auction,” the human beast wearing the ancient VR suit said. “And he has your niece.”

I didn’t realize I was trembling until Angelique took my hand. Blood-hot rage coursed through my veins, forced its way into my chest. I felt like a pressure cooker ready to explode, ready to burst into metallic shrapnel. But I had to hold it in, I had to complete this deal.

All the way or not at all.

“Send me your evidence on Neville,” I said, a slight tremor in my voice. “Immediately.” I couldn’t let him know our plans, I had to ask for more. “And give me his coordinates, give me info on the layout of his hideout. Once you send that, we’ll make arrangements for you to get the serum.”

“Risky. But fair.” He turned and spoke to some invisible companion behind him. He was facing me again. “Okay, you should have it now.”

I scrolled through my in-box. Found a message titled “For Your Eyes Only: Neville Saturno.” Opened it and read. It was worth the trade. Too bad this guy wasn’t going to get what he asked for.

“Did you get it?” a voice said in my ear. Skellar.

“Yes, this is exactly what I wanted,” I said.

“Good,” Skellar continued in a voice only I could hear. “’Cause my boys got this guy’s place surrounded. They’re gonna cut off all his communications in a second. Can’t have him tippin’ off old Neville. Keep him on the line for another minute or two.”

“This is good,” I said. “You’re sure Neville has my niece and that he hasn’t hurt her?”

The VR creature nodded. Silent.

“Just remember, if you’re lying, immortality won’t protect you from me. I can still make you wish you were never born—”

Just then his transmission sputtered. He looked over his shoulder as if startled. He didn’t have time to say anything, his VR just zapped out. Gone.

A moment later Skellar walked back around the corner.

“We got him.” He was chuckling. “He’s not happy, I can tell you that much. Good catch, Domingue. This guy just happens to be a U.S. senator. Raffaele Greco from New York—looks like the government is involved in this somehow. He’s gonna be fun to interrogate. I had to tell my boys to wait for me. Don’t want to miss this one.”

“I’d like to be in on that.”

“It can be arranged,” he answered. Then his face turned serious again, must have just gotten some update from his bust. “Yeah, I figured as much,” he said to one of his boys. Then he glanced up at me. “Your niece ain’t there. At least he was tellin’ ya the truth about that, so there’s a good chance Neville really does have her.”

Angelique was rubbing her forehead. She leaned against the wall.

“You okay?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re up for what we have to do?”

“You won’t find the serum without me.” Her eyes were closed and beads of perspiration glistened on her face. The poison was still working its way out of her system.

“I told you we could use a placebo—”

“Do you really want to take a chance with Isabelle’s life?” She unbuttoned her collar and pulled her hair back. Her skin was flushed, like she still had a low-grade fever.

I walked over to her and cupped her face in mine. She felt like she was on fire. “No,” I answered. “But I don’t want to take a chance with yours either.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, licking her lips. “You do what you have to and I’ll go to the lab and give myself a shot of antibiotics.”

“You’ll be ready in about half an hour?”

She nodded.

I glanced at Skellar. He grinned. I still couldn’t believe that I trusted him. I think he probably felt the same way.

“I’ll already be there, waiting,” he said. “You won’t see me, but I’ll be able to see you. And keep your Verse on, that way I’ll be able to hear everything.”

Pete’s clone lay on the gurney, quiet, waiting for life. Within a few minutes his download would be complete. His new body didn’t look much like the old one, but I wasn’t surprised. Everybody wanted to upgrade. One-Timers stick out in a crowd, with all their pores and pimples and childhood scars. The room filled with a soft glow as the transfer of his memories completed. He was breathing now, slow and rhythmic, peaceful. I almost hated to bring him back here.

“Wake up. It’s Day One,” I said. I could see Angelique outside the Plexiglas wall. She and Skellar were arguing about something, and it looked like he was winning.

Pete’s eyes flicked open. Brown eyes, dark hair, skin the color of weathered oak. He looked he could have been my brother. He smiled. It felt strange to have someone recognize me immediately.

“How you feel?” I asked.

“Sleepy. Excited.” His voice was different, a shade deeper than before. “Like ten things is goin’ on inside my head at once. Did ya finds Isabelle?”

“Not yet.”

He tried to sit up, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not ready yet, bruh. I need you to stay here and rest.”

He yawned.

“You might not like it,” I told him, “but right now you’re goin’ back to sleep.”

“Yur not supposed to uses those Master Keys on me,” he said, yawning again. Then he lay back down and closed his eyes. In less than a minute he fell back to sleep.

I sighed, wished he was able to come with me. I glanced back through the window. Angelique and Skellar were both gone. It was obvious that they didn’t want to work together, that we were all stretched past our limits. Our chances for success were pretty low, although I refused to admit it, even to myself.

I glanced at my watch. We had to get in position, fast.

Isabelle’s auction ended in an hour.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Angelique:

Sometimes you die all at once. It’s over before you even see it coming. And then sometimes you die a little bit at a time, a tiny sliver every day. It’s like watching a door close, knowing that outside everybody else is still at the party, the lights are sparkling, the fountain of life is flowing. But inside, it’s growing a little darker by the second.

That was how I felt right now. Ever since I got shot with that dart.

Heat flowed through me, my chest tightened. I left Chaz and headed toward the lab, walking on stiff, unresponsive legs. Stopped to lean against a wall, felt my eyes close. I thought I was alone, but I wasn’t.

“You’re not up to this.”

My favorite man in blue. Skellar.

“Maybe none of us are up to it,” I answered, my voice weaker than I expected. “But that doesn’t matter, does it?”

“You’re a liability. You’re not even fully cooked. What day are ya on?”

I frowned. “Is that was this is about? The fact that I’m a Newbie?” I realized that we were right outside the resurrection chamber, I could see Chaz and Pete through the Plexiglas. I turned my back to the window. “Or maybe you’re just trying to find out where I put the key to eternal life. So you can slink over there and take it for yourself.”

Skellar grinned, a nightmarish sight as we stood alone in shadowy halls. “You don’t trust me, do ya?”

The fever felt like it was rising, my throat was dry. “For some reason, Chaz trusts you,” I said finally, “and he’s the quarterback on our little team, so—”

He pushed his face closer to mine, lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. “You wouldn’t be doin’ all this to get back at Russ, now, would ya? Cause there’s a little girl out there that needs some help. If I find out that ya’ll are just playin’ some double-cross trick, you won’t get no next life. I got my own connections, sister, I’ll make sure ya jump into an infected clone.”

I felt a chill wash over me. I wished I could credit Skellar and his feeble threat, but I knew it was the fever, moving on to the next level. I closed my eyes again.

“You better go get your meds,” he said, almost as a concession when I didn’t reply. “But just remember, I’m gonna be watchin’ ya. If I see you do anything suspicious, I’ll take ya down myself. You won’t need to worry ’bout your old pal Neville.”

“Glad you’re on my team, Lieutenant,” I said.

And I walked away.

I stood in the doorway, squinting when the fluorescent lights flashed on, bathing the room in a garish brilliance. The desks were in the same place, the computer monitors dark. The left side of the room was still lined with empty cages.

I forced my body to move, to obey my commands. It wanted to stay out in the hall, it wanted to run away. A scream lodged in my throat, deep inside, like it was caught and couldn’t get out. I passed the spot where I fell, four days ago.

Where Russ pinned me to the ground and strangled me.

A dark shadow seemed to move through the room, following me. At times I felt a chill, like it touched me, draped a black hand on my shoulder. Memories of my own death haunted me. I could almost hear the screams—my own—the lungful of air that I should have bellowed when he attacked me. But I didn’t cry out. At least I don’t remember if I did.

I flung a drawer open and grabbed a syringe, rifled through a bank of refrigerated cabinets until I found some antibiotics. I hastily filled the syringe and gave myself a shot. Then I grabbed an extra syringe, stuffed it in my pocket.

Might as well be prepared to introduce Neville to eternity.

I paused beside the cages; one door hung open. Omega’s cage.

I knelt beside it, imagined that I could see his chestnut-brown eyes peering at me through the bars. He always watched me with hope in his eyes. Maybe he had known that I wanted to help him. And that I loved him.

Maybe he felt the same way.

I stood, my legs wobbly, my head spinning. I wondered if Omega and his pack were still roaming around the City of the Dead.

Dear God, I hope not. Please, let him be back in the bayou, or in some dark alley. Don’t let him get anywhere near Neville and his Backatown demons. Not today. Not ever.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Omega:

A sea of broken-down cars glistened in the noonday sun; overhead, a competition of hazy blue and gold, underneath, a metallic accordion of rusted fenders, broken taillights and shattered windshields. Patches of dry grass bristled between flat tires; hoods and trunks hung open like lizards yawning in a sun-dappled swamp.

Omega and his pack lounged in the shade of three ancient Cadillacs, the cars piled on top of one another like the tiers of a chrome wedding cake. The dogs lay panting, mouths open, ears back. People didn’t wander through the junkyard very often. They didn’t seem interested in the old cars. Occasionally a rabbit or a squirrel had the misfortune to come scurrying past. But they never made it back it out again.

A gentle breeze sifted through the canyon of automobile carcasses. Omega lifted his nose, sniffed.

Something was coming. He’d felt it all day, like a tremor in the earth’s skin. He could feel it in his paws, could almost taste it, sharp, on the back of his tongue.

A taste like blood.

It made him hungry and cautious.

He trotted over to a puddle and drank, water falling from his muzzle when he finally lifted his head. The air blew cold and brisk. He glanced at the Others. Two of the males and one female were sleeping. His mate met his gaze. She watched him almost all the time now, ever since she’d died and he brought her back.

Since he stole her from Death.

She rested her head on her front paws, but her eyes continued to follow his movements. He lifted his snout and took another deep breath. The river of air was changing, currents shifting, he could almost see a dark pattern taking shape overhead. Swirling, sinuous. Dangerous. His muscles tensed and his hackles rose. He raised his head to the sky and howled, long, mournful.

The Others were awake now, standing up, watching him. They all began to howl.

It was coming, whatever it was, and it would be here soon.

Omega padded off, following the currents. The Others tried to follow him, but he turned and barked, teeth bared. They all backed up, sat down at the edge of the junkyard. Only his mate refused. She stayed far enough away that he couldn’t see her.

He continued to follow the river of air, knew where it would lead him.

And as long as his mate stayed far enough behind him, where no one else would see her, then she would be safe. The taste of blood was strong in his mouth now.

And on top of it, he could smell her. The woman who had given him eternal life.

She was coming back to the City of the Dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

Chaz:

Light fell like sparks from heaven; it grazed sun-bleached tombs, cast staccato shadows through rusted gates. It fell in radiant beams between the vaults built to look like tiny houses replete with iron fences. It exposed narrow paths that stretched through this village of the dead, twists and turns hidden from view, where murderers and muggers often lurked. But the faithful and the curious still came. Even in the daylight, votive candles burned a quiet testimonial. They glimmered between cloth bags filled with dried herbs, chicken bones and hoodoo money.

The fragrance of death hung in the air, a scent old and fragile, like papery flesh.

“Over here.”

Angelique walked ahead of me through the maze of stone monuments. Her long silvery-blonde hair caught in the breeze, seemed to float around her like she was a mermaid swimming through a coral reef. An ache centered in my chest when I watched her pause at a turn in the path. Despite all the confidence I had allowed myself up to this point, I knew now that this still might not work. Neville might refuse to make the trade. Maybe he never really cared about immortality. Maybe he was just doing what his boss told him to do, and now that we had his boss in custody, the parameters of this game were going to change.

Angelique glanced back at me, her face flushed, her cheeks a deep pink. The fever never really left. She should be back in the hospital.

I scanned the surrounding rooftops and wondered where Skellar was hiding. Was he watching us? Had he seen her stumble and almost fall a minute ago?

She was kneeling now, before a tomb littered with tokens.

“Here, this one,” she said, pulling on a necklace that hung around the neck of a stone angel.

I looked at it, nodded. It didn’t look special. A simple glass vial strung on a leather cord. It didn’t look like something that would turn the world upside down.

“This is where we were the other night,” I said, noting the landmarks. “Where you collapsed.”

“Yes. I was looking for something, but couldn’t remember what. I guess I was on autopilot.” She tried to smile as she looked up at me. I could see the pain in her eyes. “Here, you take it.” She started to untangle the cord from the other necklaces woven around the statue’s neck.

“No.” I changed my mind. We were going to do this differently than we planned. “Leave it there. For now.” I helped her to her feet, then we headed back toward the cemetery entrance, shadows drifting as we passed ancient tombs that belonged to pirates, politicians and voodoo queens.

Somehow it seemed fitting that the secret to eternal life would be hidden here.

In the last City of the Dead.

Throughout the centuries, death couldn’t be hidden in this city that pulsed with exotic blood. Because of the high water table, grave plots filled with water before we could bury our dead and coffins often floated away. Our early settlers had tried lining the caskets with stones or drilling them with holes, but it didn’t matter.

In this delta land, the earth didn’t want our dead.

And neither did we.

The wind picked up and turned cold, like it suddenly carried slivers of ice. Clouds were forming overhead and a shower of darkness descended as I called Neville. It was as if the heavens were rebelling against what I was about to do.

But they couldn’t stop me.

I was supposed to go to his house, we were going to surround him with a perimeter of glittering VR mugs, like shining sentinels. But I realized that I couldn’t trust this to a team of mugs. Angelique was right. Too many of them were on some hidden payroll. I wasn’t even convinced that they were going to be able to keep that senator in jail long enough for us to pull this off.

High noon.

Isabelle’s auction would end in twenty minutes.

“What does ya wants, Domingue?” Neville answered the call immediately, an unexpected slur in his words. He’d probably just jammed another gen-spike in his arm. “I hasn’t heards nothin’ bout ya makin’ no deals. Do ya thinks ya can just toss some jive-sweet words at me and I’s gonna hands over yur little princess?”

“Your boss turned you in, Neville,” I said.

He laughed. “What the hell is ya talkin’ bout?”

“Your senator friend Greco, he gave us enough evidence to fry you and stop you from jumping. He even told me where you’re at right now. End of the line, bruh.”

“I doesn’t really works for him,” he answered. I could almost hear the gears shifting inside his head, as if he were looking for a way to still come out on top.

“The deal is between you and me now.”

“It always was.”

“Then put me down as the winning bidder in Isabelle’s auction,” I said. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“I wants the serum.”

I grinned. Good answer. “Bring Isabelle and meet me at the City of the Dead. Be here in fifteen minutes or the deal is off. And don’t bring your gutter-punk friends, unless you want me to kill every last one of them.”

Neville laughed, a brutal and broken rattle, a scar of sound that reminded me of everything he had stolen from me. “Ya thinks yur tough, Domingue, but it’s likes I said before, yur just a puppy.”

Yeah, I’m the puppy that’s going to end your life, I’m going to see you twisted on the ground just like my father.

I hung up the Verse.

Soon, and very soon. All wicked things were going to come to an end.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Chaz:

I’m supposed to be a big-picture guy, supposed to see all the angles from front to back, inside and out. Details, they’re supposed to come later. I’m supposed to keep both eyes focused on how Fresh Start relates to everybody else, watch as the angst of the world pours into a silver bowl, drips over the edges. Fire, brimstone, ash. Watch it all catch fire, people turn to pillars of salt. Dead. Unmoving.

Nine-Timers, frozen in their footsteps, right in the middle of their last life.

Watch, complacent while the Hindus use resurrection in their unending search for Nirvana, for better placement in the caste-system directory. Watch as the Muslims seek a greater piece of Paradise, more virgins, a greater reward; turn my head when terrorism goes up and One-Timer razzle-dazzle redemption goes down.

Turn the other cheek whenever somebody asks the million-dollar question.

Why don’t born-agains want to be born again?

Like a stone dropped in a pond of water, concentric circles were going to widen and grow, until we were faced with a tidal wave of cause and effect that would erode the economic and spiritual shoreline of our country, of the entire world, if we didn’t do something soon.

But it was really too late to save the world.

That’s what my big-picture vision told me right now. At best, I might be able to salvage a tiny piece.

A little dark-haired girl. Five, almost six years old.

One child, if I could save one—this one—then that was all that mattered.

The rest of it could burn. In fact, it was probably already on fire.

I could taste revenge in the back of my throat as I waited for Neville. Like water in the desert, it both satisfied and made me thirst for more.

“What’re you doin’, Domingue?”

Part of me was wondering that myself.

Skellar’s voice sizzled through my brain, he was waiting for my answer.

“I already have guys lined up, ready to surround Neville’s hideout. Why’d ya go and change the plan?”

Because I don’t trust your boys. Because I think somebody on your side isn’t really on your side.

“Can you hear me, or do I need to come down there and—”

“Stay right where you are, Skellar,” I answered. Angelique was leaning against a tomb, arms wrapped around herself from the chill that had come on us suddenly. Overhead the clouds moved and darkened, swirled tempestuously. The wind swept leaves from nearby trees, cast them at us like funeral prayer cards, like there was a message somebody was trying to tell us.

But I refused to listen to anything but the thundering rage in my heart.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Angelique:

The sun disappeared and a chill wind blew, and an eerie sense of desperation fell over everything. I was shivering in the midst of a skeleton silence. No longer guardians left to protect those sleeping, the myriad stone angels stood frozen in place, as if they too had been condemned and cast down. The heavens hung heavy, like stone, pressing against my chest. Each breath came as a struggle, like somebody had shoved tiny knives inside my lungs.

I coughed, almost expecting to see drops of blood when I wiped my mouth.

I leaned against a stone temple, wondered vaguely who was inside and if they had ever craved immortality, if they now tossed and turned in some dark torment and wanted to be set free. Even if it meant walking the earth. Forever.

I wanted to sleep. I wished I could lie down on one of those stone slabs and forget about all of this. Only one thing kept me alert. Isabelle.

Beautiful face, sparkling eyes.

Eyes like my Joshua. Gone now. I finally remembered what had happened. He had decided to become a One-Timer. He left me and this spinning ball of green and blue. I wondered where he was, what was on the other side of all of this. Were his feet on streets of gold? Did he know my William? Were they friends?

Would I ever see either of them again?

I closed my eyes. Neville would be here soon. A wave of fever rolled over me, then another chill. Leaves cascaded through the cemetery, crackling and rustling, like dry scratchy paws. It almost sounded like claws, digging—

My eyes flashed open and I saw him, a short distance away. Padding between the tombs, still hidden in the shadows.

Omega.

I almost cried out when I saw him, but I held it in, glanced back. Chaz was facing the street, waiting for Neville. He didn’t see the dog. I pushed myself away from the tomb, into the shadows, crouched and held my arms outstretched.

Omega bounded toward me then, almost knocked me over, covered my face with dog kisses, sniffed my hair, finally laid his head in my lap. I wrapped my arms around his thick neck, kissed the top of his head. In another life he would have been my dog, we would have walked through green fields together, he would have helped me herd the sheep. He would have slept on the floor at night, before the fire. In the morning he would have greeted me with a wide grin and a wagging tail.

Instead we met each other for a few fleeting moments in a cemetery of stone, him standing on one side of eternity and me on the other.

“Omega,” I whispered his name as I delicately ran my fingers over his face, remembering the news video. There were no scars, nothing that testified to his recent death and resurrection. He looked up into my eyes. Almost as if he wanted to say something, like he had been hoping to find me here.

Then he pulled back. Suddenly cautious, he lifted his nose and sniffed the air. A low growl sounded in his throat as he stared over my shoulder.

I looked behind me and saw Neville walking through the cemetery gates. I could smell his stench even from this distance. The sweet decay of gen-spike flesh.

“Stay,” I said softly, in a voice only Omega could hear.

Then I turned and headed toward the demon that had set all this in motion.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Omega:

The woman turned away. Overhead the sky howled, mournful and heartbroken, as if the heavens already knew what was going to happen. Omega crouched behind one of the stone tombs, watching her. She was sick. He could feel it in her touch. She needed to come with him, away from this place. He had tried to tell her, to get her to come with him, back to his pack. She would have been safe there.

But it was too late now.

It was coming, that thing he had been waiting for, walking through the cemetery gates. Sometimes it looked like a man, and sometimes it didn’t. It stood upright, but it moved, wrapped in shadow, darkness trailing behind it, a swirling gossamer pattern that spun out in corkscrew curls. The darkness flowed and fluttered like a cape in the wind.

Omega felt a growl, deep inside. He wanted to lunge, to strike this man-beast, to attack him.

The man walked with the stench of death and he needed to be destroyed.

Omega stamped the ground with his front paw. He tried to get the woman to look at him, to turn and come.

But she kept her eyes fixed on the approaching demon, and on the vehicle that rumbled at the curb.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Chaz:

Clouds covered the sky, turned all the bright, hard edges into something shadowy, something obscure. I felt lost. In one moment my reason and my command of the approaching situation dissolved. Like sand castles worn away by one swift wave. Angelique retreated into a narrow crevice between the tombs, she knelt, her back to me.

Despair raged in my heart, stronger than any emotion I had ever known.

Isabelle’s face appeared before me, transposed on the darkening sky, like a transparent piece of film: full of color and expression, yet distant. She might not come back to me, for all my plans. She might always appear this way, a memory, beautiful and fragile.

Oh, God, this ache was more than I could bear.

Then I heard the rumbling growl of a car, wide tires ripping gravel, saw steel and aluminum sparking in the dull light. It stopped in front of the gates, some hybrid monster that bridged the gap between a Hummer and an oversized SUV. A door breezed open and he stepped out.

The man I never wanted to see again. Not alive anyway.

Dressed in gutter-punk black, his muscles rippled through his clothes, like his body had a life of its own. His bald head was covered with metal studs, his lizard eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. A lazy grin snaked up his left cheek, carved a dimple.

The door closed behind him and I wondered, was Isabelle inside? Was she safe?

The wrought-iron gate creaked as he pushed it open.

“Takes off yur jacket and shirt, Domingue. Throws ’em on the ground.” He stopped about ten feet away from me. “And empties yur pockets. Slow and easy, now. Don’t be tossin’ no liquid light, neither.”

I kept my eyes on him as I pulled off my jacket. I was unbuttoning my shirt when I saw a movement, faster than anything I could have reacted to. One of his hands lifted something.

“Chaz!” Angelique cried out, but we both knew it was too late.

The sting of a dart. A tufted yellow feather blowing in the wind. I yanked it out of my arm, saw an orange haze descend before the dart landed on the ground by my feet.

“Ya’ll won’t be no causing me no problems now, wills ya?”

Neville laughed as my knees buckled beneath me, as I crumpled into a crouching position. Orange light colored everything, clouds rolled into my chest. It felt like I was trying to breathe with a pillow over my head.

“Is she in the car?” I asked. I pushed myself back up to a standing position, felt my legs wobble, kept my eyes focused on his.

He nodded.

“Get her out, let me see her or no deal.”

“It ain’t gonna works like that. Yur Newbie, she’s gonna go inside and brings yur little princess out. All safe and pretty-pretty, just like I promises.”

I shot a glance at Angelique, her skin moist, her eyes dull. She was too weak; if anything happened—

“Okay,” she said, moving toward the vehicle on unsteady feet. “But if anything happens to me or the little girl, you might not like the consequences.”

“Angelique, don’t go—” I tried to stop her, but I don’t know if my words even left my mouth. The door to the Hummer opened, then she stepped into a dark, fathomless chasm and disappeared.

And at the same moment, Neville kicked me in the gut.

I rolled forward, gasping for air, and discovered that a one-sided fight had just begun.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Chaz:

Orange tombs swayed and tossed, an angry sea, a melancholy parade. The wind blew, cold, the sky hung low, and the ground sparkled with flecks of red. My blood, I think. One of my teeth was missing, but I wasn’t sure, underneath the pain.

One punch followed another, a rapid downbeat rhythm of knuckle against flesh—Neville’s fists, my flesh, the tempo fueled by his gen-spike madness. At some point I thought that he would go on like this all day, until his halo high dissipated and I was a pile of brain-dead hamburger, ready for full VR life support.

But then, for some reason he stopped. Maybe because he realized that if he continued, he’d never get what he wanted. If I was dead or unconscious, his deal wouldn’t go through. There’d be nobody at the counter to take his order.

One serving of immortality, ready and waiting. Yes, sir.

I pushed myself back into a sitting position. I needed some semblance of life, had to make him see that I wasn’t broken. Not really. Damaged, yes. Defeated, no.

I thought I saw something move in the shadows between the crypts. Something black, watching me. I blinked. It was a dog, I think, but it pulled back into the darkness and disappeared. Just as well.

One mongrel was enough to fight right now.

The door to the Hummer breezed open. Both Isabelle and Angelique stepped out.

They looked okay, they both looked fine. Angelique seemed a bit weaker, she stumbled as she moved forward and Neville watched her with a sly, crooked grin.

But Isabelle broke away and ran. Still wearing the black-and-white diamonds, her face smeared with rouge, she ran toward me, her arms out, tears on her cheeks.

“Uncle Chaz! Uncle Chaz!” She flew into my arms like a baby bird and I held her close, felt her tremble and heard her weep. She was safe, my little girl was safe. Now that Russ and her mom were gone she was mine to protect, love and shelter.

And I wasn’t going to make any of the same mistakes my brother had.

“She’s leaving now,” I said, my voice coming out like a growl. “Did you hear me?”

Skellar’s voice echoed in my ear. “On my way. Immediately.”

The lieutenant’s car screamed down from a nearby rooftop, hovered a few feet over the tombs to my left. The passenger door opened and a stairway slid down to the ground.

Neville didn’t react. He just watched. Almost as if he had expected this.

“I keeps my part of the bargain,” he said.

“Go up the stairs,” I told Isabelle. She didn’t want to leave, she cried and argued for a moment, then realized that she had to go, that I wasn’t going to change my mind. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”

She paused halfway up the stairs and looked back at me. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

Skellar reached out and took her by the arm, helped her inside the car. Then they took off, zipped out of sight. Almost like neither one of them had really been here. It was just us now, Neville, Angelique and me. And that dog, somewhere in the shadows. He was watching Angelique.

It had to be Omega. That dog she had experimented on. The one she and Russ had killed over and over again.

I just prayed that he wasn’t here looking for revenge.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

Chaz:

Sometimes life can be measured in small miracles. A string of diamond-bright supernatural interventions. Right now he stood over me, the monster that wanted to end the world, one person at a time. He had invaded my family gates and then waited years for this moment. Right now, he was winning. I was still on the ground, unable to stand, his poison in my veins. My life was his, and as far as I was concerned, that was just fine.

Because Isabelle was safe. Skellar came through. I never knew for sure if he would hold up his end of our agreement, if he would come down from the sky at just the right moment and carry her away. But he did.

That was my miracle. My reason for living and dying.

I guess I forgot that there might be more to the story.

“Gives it to me,” Neville said. His lips were pale and cracked, the stench of decay overwhelming. That was when the scales of Providence tipped. No more interventions for me and mine. With lightning reflexes, Neville grabbed Angelique by the hair and pulled her toward him. She winced in pain.

I tried to stand up, swung a feeble arm in his direction.

“Let her go!” I cried.

He ignored me, grinned down at Angelique. “We forgots to mention something, didn’t we? Tells yur boyfriend here yur little secret. Tells him what happened inside the car.”

I instinctively ran my gaze over her body, tried to figure out what could have happened in twenty minutes.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice weak.

“She doesn’t sounds so brave, does she?” He paused to laugh, raw and guttural. “Ya knows why? ’Cause we takes out her Fresh Start chip. She’s a One-Timer now. Just likes you.”

She lifted her chin. “I was done jumping.”

Just then a blade flashed in the dying light, silver and sharp. It caught the sun on its tip, held it captive for a blinding moment then slid into position. Against Angelique’s throat. Neville watched me as he pressed the handle of the knife. A trickle of blood flowed down, began to stain her dress. The look in her eyes made me want to cry out—she looked like a fawn, knowing it’s about to be slaughtered. She was struggling to fight the fear but it rose to the surface, clouded her eyes.

“Ya tries anything and she’s done,” he said, then whispered loudly in her ear. “Whadya thinks ’bout that, sugah? Ya ready to steps into the Great Beyond?”

“The serum’s over here,” I said, forcing myself to my feet, ignoring the pain that made me want to double over. I staggered a few steps and gestured weakly for him to follow.

He pulled Angelique with him, one hand wrapped in her hair, the other pressing the knife. I kept glancing back as I moved forward. One misstep, one stumble and he could accidentally slice through her skin, the blade would find her jugular and take her away forever.

Just then the wind picked up, howled through the surrounding trees, caught dead leaves and forced them to dance around us, like lifeless marionettes spinning in a macabre pirouette.

Behind us Omega lifted his nose, sniffed the air, watched Angelique as she shuffled away from him. He took a cautious step, following us.

Not now, dog, if you jump now, she’s dead. I shot him a warning glance.

Neville paused, then looked behind him as if he sensed something.

Omega melted into the shadows. Only I could see him now.

Neville’s grip tightened on Angelique and a soft cry of pain shot from her lips. I had to get his attention away from the hidden dog, needed to make him face me and lift his pressure from the knife.

“Here!” I called. “It’s just past this crypt.”

He was facing me again, stumbling in my direction, pushing Angelique forward step by step. Her eyes met mine and she forced a smile.

“Come on,” I said as I rounded a corner.

Then I knelt before one of the crumbling tombs, ran my fingers through the tokens that lay draped around the neck of a stone angel. Mixed in amidst weathered rosaries and strings of Mardi Gras beads I found it, the simple leather cord with a glass vial on the end. I held it delicately between my thumb and forefinger as I untangled it and pulled it free.

“What’s this?” He came around the corner just as I was clasping it in my fist. “This ain’t no time for prayin’, Domingue. Off yur knees.”

I clamped my fingers tight. “Let her go.”

“What ya gots in yur hand?” He leaned forward, curious.

I opened my palm to reveal the vial. The serum caught a ray of sunlight and seemed to glow with a phosphorescent light, like a jewel from another world. I was just outside his reach. He’d have to take another step forward and release Angelique if he wanted the vial.

“Immortality,” I said. “Eternity. There’s one injection left.”

Neville chuckled. It looked like he was going to do what I wanted. His pressure on the knife lessened slightly. He took a step forward and leaned toward me, reaching out with his other hand. Only a few more inches and she’d be free. I stretched my hand toward his, ready for this exchange to be over.

Just then a wild growl sounded from the shadows.

Neville turned his head slightly, frowning. “What the hell is—”

Before either of us could react, Omega bounded out from a crevice between the tombs. He had been stalking Neville, had worked his way closer through the maze of tombs and now he was flying through the air, teeth bared, claws like talons, a rumbling snarl deep in his throat.

“No!” Angelique cried out, her voice strangely muffled.

In an instant, the dog struck Neville in the back, the force of Omega’s weight pushing Angelique away. But in that same moment, Neville instinctively dug his knife deeper.

A widening pool of blood spread beneath her.

She slumped to the ground, uttered a long moan and then fell quiet.

Neville still clasped the knife and now he lunged toward me, propelled by the momentum of the dog. His left hand grabbed mine and we both clenched the vial, pressed inside our palms.

With his right hand he drove the blade into my gut. Six inches of steel honed in on that sweet spot between my ribs.

Meanwhile, dagger-like teeth latched onto Neville’s throat. The dog buried his muzzle in flesh and bone; he snapped and tore and thrashed until bones crunched and blood sprayed out.

Then all three of us tumbled backward in an endless arc of pain until finally my spine slammed against the cement, an agony of torn muscle and broken vertebrae. A second later, our fists hammered the ground in unison. I felt the bones in my wrist shatter and then a hundred tiny knives sliced into my palm.

Somewhere beyond horror and pain I realized what was happening.

But I was helpless to stop it.

Neville’s body thumped on top of me and he cried out with his last breath. He struggled to break free from the dog’s relentless attack, but his strength waned as his blood continued to flow. The force of his fall drove the blade even deeper into my chest until it found the ultimate prize.

My heart.

But that was when the real nightmare began, when he finally stopped flailing, for his left hand was still clasped with mine.

We were dying, both of us.

Our hands were locked together. And inside our palms, the shards of broken glass cut like a thousand needles, ripping through flesh and cartilage, intersecting blood vessels and capillaries.

And now the serum was flowing into both of our bodies.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

In Between

Chaz:

Once, centuries ago, we thought the world ended at the horizon, thought the world was flat. Oceans spilled over the tabletop edge and mountain ranges crumbled to dust. The sky burned black; the sun faded away. At the edge of our understanding, the universe ended. All reason converged to a flat plane, became something we could never traverse.

This imaginary vista tormented adventurers, kept them sleepless in cradled beds as they bobbed across surging oceans, as they were propelled into the unknown.

And then once we had crossed the Great Unknown Beyond, we lost all memories of that flat vista, we decided it was imaginary, something made of dreams and visions.

But now I know it was made of nightmares. And it was real.

Because that was where I stood right now.

The battle for life faded away as Neville’s knife plunged deeper, found my heart, stopped me from going forward into Year Number 39. For a moment I flashed back and forth. One second, I was lying on the cement, pain in my back, my chest, my right hand. Then I was standing on a foreign horizon, unable to comprehend, my mind too small to grasp where I was. Another broken breath and I was back in the City of Dead, fighting a dying man to possess the key to immortal life.

I became transparent, invisible, two places at once.

Part of me felt like I was being ripped in half; the other part felt more complete than I had ever been.

Then the flashing stopped. I found myself standing on a flat plane that seemed to stretch forever, shrouded in all directions by a foggy mist. And the battle wasn’t over.

“Lets me go!” Neville growled. “Gives it to me.”

My right hand clasped his left, almost like we were glued together.

Then he cried out in pain and I realized that this place wasn’t what I thought it was. There was a division down the middle. I stood on one side, he on the other. Suddenly the mist cleared, as if a great solar wind surged it away, and I saw flames moving around him. No. People. Or what had once been people. Now engulfed in sulfuric fire, they writhed in torment, an unending holocaust.

Hell. He was standing a foot inside hell.

“Lets me out of here!” he cried. He stumbled, yanked me toward him. I felt the searing breath of hell sweep across my face, the stench of eternal damnation filled my nostrils. I fought and wrenched away, leaned back into a peace that surpassed anything I had ever experienced. Golden light bathed my skin, washed away the horror. I couldn’t see them, but I could sense them behind me.

A heavenly host. More than I could count. I heard the sweet thunder of angel wings, inhaled the incense of ancient prayers.

And he was there, somewhere behind me. I was never allowed to look square into the face of heaven, but I knew that he was there, waiting for me.

My father.

Meanwhile, Neville and I stood, fighting for freedom, each of us looking into the eternity that could have been ours, if we had made different choices along the way.

Curses rolled from his lips as he struggled to break free from my grip, venomous words that fell to his feet like spiders, then scurried away. Overhead the sky hung black and red, scorched and barren of moon or stars; mountains loomed in the nether distance, too great to cross. They stood like a massive prison fence. And on the edge of the mountains I saw it, an orange-red lake of fire, more like an ocean really, with waves and whirlpools. It roared in the distance, like a hungry lion, waiting to be fed.

Waiting to surge, endlessly, dining on the souls that wandered across the hopeless horizon.

I wanted to let Neville go, to turn and enter the land that beckoned behind me, but I couldn’t. We were bonded together, born like Siamese twins into this land of eternity.

Then lightning flashed across the sky. It tore the world in two, and a voice sounded like thunder, speaking words I couldn’t understand. I trembled when it spoke and fell to my knees. When I looked up, I saw that Neville was on his knees too, that every creature near and far had fallen prostrate when the voice spoke.

The hellish vista faded.

We were back in the City of the Dead. Alive, clothed in flesh and blood. On our knees, facing each other, our hands still clasped together. His knife lay on the ground, and behind us Omega crouched over Angelique, as if protecting her.

Neville blinked, wordless, then he pulled his hand from mine. He swept up the knife instinctively, brandished it in my direction, then, as if realizing what could happen if we fought again, he held it low as he staggered to his feet.

I didn’t react. My mind was still scorched with images of hell, a part of me felt as if I had been dead for a thousand years. I struggled to breathe, felt the muscles in my heart still mending, sensed fresh blood flowing through my veins, life returning.

I heard him running away then, footsteps that echoed through dusty temple-lined corridors, and I didn’t care. I knew where he would end up eventually. I lifted my hand, glanced at the scars in my palm, scars that weren’t healed, that would never heal, slashes from the fragments of glass. One shard had pushed all the way through the bones and flesh, left a hole in my right hand.

I stood on shaky legs, stole one complete mouthful of oxygen, sent it plunging on knife-sharp wings through my lungs. Turned toward what really mattered, more than anything, more than the demon that had been set free from hell, more than the thunderous applause of angel wings.

Angelique. My bright piece of heaven on earth.

She lay in a widening pool of blood, Omega, her snarling guardian, at her side. He growled and snapped as I approached, then seemed to sense the sorrow in my heart. He turned back toward her, licked her wound, slid a rough tongue over her neck and then lifted his head to hollow skies and howled.

But it had no effect. She didn’t move, she didn’t breathe.

Whatever power this dog had to bring his own mate back to life didn’t work here.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Chaz:

There was a point, at the beginning of all this, when the earth rolled out beneath turquoise skies, when heaven touched our horizon. Some say that back then, the first man and the first woman gave up eternal life, sacrificed it on some unknown altar. Maybe it was so they could stay together. She went alone, along a path of death and enlightenment, deceived perhaps. But then he followed, willingly. To be with her.

In that moment, when I held Angelique in my arms, I understood all of it.

Sometimes love propels you to do something you would never do otherwise. Like stand on the edge of eternity and fight a demon, to free a little girl from a life of hell. Like hold the woman you love and beg God not to take her.

Please not this. Not eternal life alone.

Please don’t let me stand with heaven forever at my back, staring into torment.

I don’t know how prayer works, don’t think any of us will ever really know how spoken words can change the world we live in, how or why God would choose to stop the universe and listen. Like I said, I don’t know how it works. I only know it does. I only know that someone stands on the other side of an invisible curtain and nods his head.

I held Angelique in my arms and wept. I knelt beside her and remembered seeing the sky of heaven rip in two because I didn’t belong there. But I didn’t belong here either. Already I could feel the earth fading away, as if time no longer mattered; as if I stood still long enough I would see the city crumble to dust around me, I would watch another generation rise up. And they would be just as hungry for immortality as the one before them.

Don’t take her, please.

Words tumbled from my lips, tokens of the emotions that raged inside. I found myself saying all the things I wished I had spoken—before all this happened. But every word hung hollow in the air, seemed to fall flat on the cement and crash against worn tombstones.

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

Omega continued to watch over her, a restlessness in his eyes. He howled again and paced around both of us, then finally he lay down beside me, his dark fur pressed against my leg, his head in her lap.

Overhead, the lowering sun sparked through a bank of trees. It dragged a host of shifting shadows through the cemetery. They stood in the empty spaces between the tombs and then lingered there, as if watching me. Tall and slender, the dark wavering shapes always stayed just out of my line of sight, moving whenever I turned my head.

My throat was sore and her body was cold.

I knew that the empire my family built would collapse soon, tumble over like a house of straw. The Number Nines would rule the world for one brief moment and then it would all burst into flame. Soon there would be no need for Babysitters. I would wander through eternity alone, like some sort of unclean spirit, chasing down back alleys in search of Neville. I would catch him eventually. There might even come a point when the two of us would be the only two people left, our journey across a charred landscape forever destined to cross paths—at the intersection of heaven and hell.

My tears continued to fall and I shuddered, pulled Angelique’s body closer.

Throughout it all, the dog stayed at her side, faithful. Perhaps he was unable to understand Death since it had no power over him. A chill wind whisked around us, ruffling the dog’s fur, whispering Angelique’s hair. And at the same time, the shadows moved nearer, no longer hiding—they surrounded me now and the City of the Dead seemed to pulse with a strange, rugged energy, something primitive, almost supernatural. I could feel the presence of that eerie horizon, the border between heaven and hell. Maybe it never left me. Maybe part of me was still there and I had pulled these spectral shadows back with me. I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

Light danced across Angelique’s hand, almost made it look like her fingers moved, like some part of her was still alive.

I leaned forward and cradled her face in my hands. Every touch left a stain of her blood behind, a smear on her cheek, fingerprints on her forehead. My hands were red with it now.

I wished I could see the sparkle in her eyes once more.

I pressed my lips to hers, my heart crying.

One kiss. To say good-bye. It was our first kiss, really.

Imagination and hope can be cruel partners. In that moment, they worked together to create a lifetime of what could have been: Angelique and I together, laughing, finding some existence apart from my family’s empire. I even thought that I felt warmth, that some part of her responded to my touch and I couldn’t bear to let her go.

Then the dog howled again, long and plaintive and mournful, the sort of cry that breaks your heart because it’s so wild and raw and alone. I wanted to howl along with him, wanted to rip this bad dream apart with claws and fangs. But it was time to let Angelique go. My arms were still wrapped around her and I knew Skellar would be sending a medical team soon. They would be too late, but still, they would take her from me, get her body ready for the grave.

Please don’t take her away from me, I begged one last time.

Then the shadows moved even closer until they engulfed both of us, and that was when I realized that they weren’t made of darkness. They were like holes in the fabric of the universe, each one of them filled with pinpricks of light, each one whispering and calling her name.

Calling Angelique to return.

That was when I felt it, when her chest was pressed against mine. It was so faint, so fragile. Almost like a distant echo, deep inside her.

A heartbeat. But only one.

I pulled away. As I stared at her, the ragged slash across her neck began to disappear, the wound closing. And then a moment later, a pulse centered at the base of her throat. Warmth began to return to her limbs and a pale color returned to her skin. Her cheeks and lips darkened to a soft rose and then, finally, her mouth opened a fraction of an inch and I heard her take a shallow breath.

“Angelique—” I whispered.

Omega lifted his head, his ears up, his tail wagging.

Another breath. I could tell it was painful, I could almost feel the sharp bite of knives deep inside, I wished I could take away the pain. Then the shadows moved away from us, dissolving in the autumn sun.

In that instant, her eyes fluttered open and she stared into the sky for a moment, as if saying good-bye to something. Then she looked at me and I saw it.

The sparkle in her eyes that said she loved me, that she wanted to be here with me. That maybe immortality wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

And I knew then that I wouldn’t have to spend eternity alone.

EPILOGUE

Chaz:

“Promise me, Uncle Chaz. Promise me that when I’m gone you’ll burn it. All of it. Promise me that you’ll get rid of me, and that the Nine-Timers will never be able to bring me back.”

Her voice echoed across the years and I kept my vow.

We raised Isabelle as our daughter, Angelique and I, in that hidden South American villa Russ had stashed away. My niece lived a long, beautiful life, got married and had children of her own. After the Nine-Timer scenario began, there were no more rules about how many children you could have, so Isabelle had five. Two boys, three girls. I loved all of them like they were my own.

But the Nine-Timers didn’t stop, just because their plan to live forever had failed.

Their DNA had broken down. So they went on a scavenger hunt for more. Hunting through the graves and medical storehouses, they began resurrecting One-Timers, people who had died hundreds of years ago, people who had died yesterday. They treated them like lab rats, using them to create fresh clones, desperate for a way to make resurrection work beyond Number Nine.

And they succeeded.

So now Angelique and I travel around the world, performing Freedom Ceremonies, secretly teaching others our methods.

When Isabelle passed away, we gathered every trace of her DNA, every sample of blood and tissue, every scrap of hair, and we burned it. In a way, her Freedom Ceremony resembled a pagan funeral, her body on a pyre, all the DNA samples in earthen jars beside her. Her oldest son lighting the fire with a torch. The flames scorching the heavens.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The world is fading, just like I knew it would, color bleeding away as each person I love dies. I will blink my eyes and Isabelle’s children will pass away, I will turn around and then her grandchildren will be gone.

But the amazing thing is, with each generation, this family of mine grows.

We live in the mountains, hidden from the world. Omega and his mate, Alpha, are with us. He brings her back every time she falls, with a kiss. The wolf prefers to roam through the jungles, but Omega always comes back to be with Angelique.

From time to time, Neville pulls me back to the edge of eternity. Every time he dies. We are linked, ’til Judgment Day. Our hands clasped as we stand on the edge of heaven and hell, we fight, we struggle to be set free from each other, from this horrid destiny.

I have tried to turn my head around, to see that which is behind me. Streets of gold, chariots of fire, angels with skin like brass. My father, my mother, and now, Isabelle.

I saw Russ once, on the other side. His face had melted into something almost unrecognizable, but I’m certain it was him. He still carries the stench of gen-spike addiction. He looked at me, anguish in his gaze, and I wished I could do something. I wish I could’ve done something back when it really mattered.

“Isabelle’s safe,” I told him. It was all I could think to say.

“I know,” he answered. “I can see her behind you.” He tried to smile, but I guess joy isn’t possible on his side of the Great Divide. He turned and walked away. I never saw him again.

Civilizations turn to dust around me, buildings seem to crumble the same day they are built. Time no longer has meaning, and yet, it continues to reign over the lives of those around me. It won’t stand still but it has become transparent, almost like a mist without beginning or end.

Angelique is my wife, my Eve, my mate for eternity.

She died, a few days ago. Once she struggled with cancer, once she died from pneumonia. This time it was a heart attack. I found her several hours later.

Her body was cold, her face pale. I held her to my chest, whispered that I love her, that I will always love her. Kissed her lips. Felt the warmth return, slowly. Listened for that first gasp, that precious shallow breath, watched her wince from the pain. Felt the pain like it was my own.

Then she opened her eyes and stared up at the sky, like always, catching slivers of turquoise and sapphire. Another breath, more steady this time.

“How many times is it now?” she asked, still looking up. I always wonder what she sees, but we don’t talk about it.

“I lost count,” I answered. “Seventeen? Twenty?”

She smiled, soft, the grin that makes my heart skip a beat. Then she looked at me and I saw the love that I need to keep going one more day. And something else. A gift that I’ve come to need almost as much.

For a few sweet moments I can see what I have never been allowed to see.

In her eyes, I see the reflection of heaven.

And it reminds me that one day I might see it for myself.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The list of people who have influenced/helped/cheered/cajoled me while writing this book is nearly as long as the book itself. People who helped transform the book into something much better than it was: my amazing agent, Kimberley Cameron; my awesome editors, Diana Gill and Ellen Leach; the brilliant cover designer, Amy Halperin, and illustrator, Gordon Crabb; Will Hinton and the rest of the HarperCollins staff—all of you deserve Warrior status. A heartfelt curtsy to both of my critique groups for performing red-pencil surgery on my behalf several times a month, whether I wanted it or not. Hugs and a round of applause for my husband, Tom, my son, Jesse, and our friend, Brad, for helping me understand the heart and soul of jazz. Kudos to the musicians who provided inspiration while I wrote every page: Coldplay, Jars of Clay, and Moby. And finally, to the person reading this book right now: Thank you. Really. I’ve wanted to write a story for you for a very long time now…

About the Author

MERRIE DESTEFANO left a 9-to-5 desk job as a magazine editor to become a full-time novelist and freelance editor. With twenty years’ experience in publishing, her background includes editor of Victorian Homes magazine and founding editor of Cottages & Bungalows magazine. She lives in Southern California with her husband, their two German shepherds, and a Siamese cat. For more information, visit www.merriedestefano.com.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits

Cover art by Gordon Crabb

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

AFTERLIFE. Copyright © 2010 by Merrie Destefano. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First Eos paperback printing: October 2010

ePub Edition © August 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-201383-5

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Afterlife – Read Now and Download Mobi

Comments

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Stoker-winner Clegg (_The Hour Before Dark_) has an uncanny ability to frighten readers by chronicling everyday characters’ perilous descents into their own private hells. Julie Hutchinson mentally unravels after the brutal and mysterious murder of her husband, Jeff, in this stand-alone tale full of subtle suspense, inventive twists and credible characters. Julie has erotic nightmares and hideous hallucinations while slowly trying to piece together the decades-old puzzle involving her husband’s past work with Project Daylight, a now-defunct privately funded school that conducted experiments on young children with ESP. Eventually, with the assistance of her mother, daughter and stepson, as well as Jeff’s ex-wife and Michael Diamond, a popular TV psychic, Julie unearths bizarre secrets about her family that lead her to an underground society of scientific misfits. The book’s final sentence is guaranteed to unnerve readers and leave them wanting more. A concise writer, Clegg manages to weave into his plot such grand ideas as reincarnation and psychic phenomena in a mere 272 pages. Many other writers would have taken twice as long to tell a tale half as captivating.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation. — Bentley Little

Clegg…can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby. — Dean Koontz

Author

Douglas Clegg

Rights

Language

Published

2004-12-06

ISBN

9780451411679

Read Now

AFTERLIFE

by Douglas Clegg

Author of Isis and The Priest of Blood

Cover image by 2008©Caniglia from www.Caniglia-Art.com, used here with permission. This cover design was created for the Cemetery Dance limited edition hardcover, used here with permission.

AFTERLIFE is published by Alkemara Press, 2009 with permission from the author.

Be sure and visit www.DouglasClegg.com for more information about Douglas Clegg and his books of horror, suspense, and dark fantasy.

Look for Isis, a Tale of the Supernatural by Douglas Clegg in bookstores beginning October 2009.

Contents

Cover
Dedication
Books by Douglas Clegg
Afterlife
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Biography
Free Excerpt from The Words by Douglas Clegg

Books by Douglas Clegg

Goat Dance

Breeder

Neverland

Dark of the Eye

The Children's Hour

Bad Karma (pen name - Andrew Harper)

The Halloween Man

The Nightmare Chronicles

Purity

You Come When I Call You

Mischief

Naomi

The Infinite

The Hour Before Dark

Red Angel (pen name - Andrew Harper)

Nightmare House

Night Cage (pen name - Andrew Harper)

Afterlife

The Abandoned

The Machinery of Night

The Priest of Blood (Available on Kindle)

Mordred, Bastard Son

The Attraction

The Necromancer

The Lady of Serpents (Available on Kindle)

Wild Things: Four Tales

The Queen of Wolves (Available on Kindle)

The Words

Mr. Darkness

The Innocents at the Museum of

Antiquities

Isis

For Dean Koontz—mentor, friend, colleague, who continues to write and inspire.

AFTERLIFE

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so at the moment after death.”

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

“There are monsters in the world. They’re called human beings.”

—Michael Diamond, from The Life Beyond

Prologue

In the testing room, the boy stared at the others from behind the glass. He raised his fists and began hitting the thick pane. His cries for help were unheard by the others. The flames shot up in the booth around him, moving rapidly up the boy’s back as he pounded harder, his mouth open impossibly wide. He shut his eyes as if trying to block it all out or to send his mind to another, safer place.

The others watched, safe on the opposite side of the triple-thick fireproof glass, and waited as the fire burned away the boy’s shirt. They each held hands, and one of the girls said, “Look at how scared he is.”

“We need to get out,” a teenager said. “Now.”

And then the fire shattered the glass, moving beyond the booth, beyond the testing room, as if the air itself burned out of control.

In the 1970s, rumor went that a small, privately funded school in Manhattan existed where young children with special talents were being observed and tested for what were then labeled “PSI” abilities. Little is known about the school, other than what remained enshrouded in the urban legends of the city. The conspiracy theory was that the government or several governments funded the school and used it to learn more about the human mind, about child development with extra-sensory ability, and perhaps how to use those abilities in some covert way. Another story was that it was simply formed by a group who believed that these so-called “special children” should have a safe place to develop their talents. Still another suggestion had been that this was one of the city’s many small private schools that didn’t contain a trace of the psychic or the occult, but that some of the former students themselves spread that rumor as a joke to discredit the school.

One of the rumors had to do with a little boy who had precipitated the closing of the secret school when he somehow was responsible for the death of another child.

Other than hints in Rolling Stone, in the Village Voice, in New York Underground News—and even now, in an occasional mention of the school on the Internet—nothing substantiated this tale, which some thought had grown out of the drug culture and the increasing interest in the paranormal during the ’60s and ’70s.

The school was supposed to have existed somewhere near the Chelsea District of New York City, although its exact location was anyone’s guess.

The school was called Daylight.

Part One

NOW

Chapter One

She opened her eyes to darkness. Her breathing: slow, warm, but too shallow. Something was wrong. Blindfolded? Not sure. She pressed her eyes closed and then open again. Nothing but a claustrophobic night. Her breath came back at her—an enclosed space. A dizziness, and pins-and-needles feelings in her toes and fingers. Paralyzed?

Buried. Buried alive.

Throat dry. A thudding—her heartbeat? No light at all. Not even cracks through the box. Coffin? A large trunk? She was squeezed in, and her limbs felt numb.

Dear God. Dear God.

Slow, deep breath. Hammering in her head. Wetness along her neck.

You won’t get anywhere if you panic.

This crawlspace. This…casket.

Blurred images came to her: the white room, the feeling of being laid gently down on some bed, twine wrapped around his hands as he reached for her…

Your hands. Move. Reach.

Her hands were bound in front of her. Thick twine connected her wrists, and as she tugged as hard as she could—barely able to move—she remembered how he’d spoken gently to her. She had been drugged, after all. He had incapacitated her in some way she didn’t understand.

Blocked. No matter how hard she tried to roam with her mind, something blocked her.

Her lips, parched. She opened them, but only a ragged whisper of a sigh came out. Help me. Please, she wanted to say. No, there must be a way out. Must be. This may be a test. It may be another test. It may not be what it seems. It’s just a test. Surely. Please dear God.

Please, she tried to say. Someone.

Then, she heard the voice, barely a whisper. He must be pressing his face near the sealed lid of the box. “Don’t be afraid, Gina. Don’t be afraid. Just let it happen.”

His words had the opposite effect on her. She felt as if she had begun hyperventilating. She fought back tears.

And then she felt the heaviness of her breathing—it hurt her lungs. She tried to take in too much air, and there wasn’t enough.

Please, somebody, help me.

A sound above her. Just above her face.

On the other side of the box.

And then, she gasped, because the air was running out too fast.

Miles from the city, in the wilds of northern New Jersey, out along the lakes beneath the great and small houses rising up among dense woods, spring has only just awakened. The ice only just melted weeks before, the new grass exploding with bright green, with the lavender and yellow of crocus and wildflowers.

Someone’s hunting.

A man stood on an empty plateau in a brief, but undisturbed wilderness, overlooking a placid silver lake.

It was a day of winds, a good sign as far as he was concerned. He carried his burden through the tall grass that twisted as the breeze whiffled through it. His boots went into the mud deep, and he pressed slowly through the swampy land until he’d reached the slight rise of the bank.

He set the man down, relieved to be free of the heaviness.

The man looked up at him, drowsily.

He felt the push of wind at his back; he knelt down beside the man, reached into his breast pocket for the blade, and set about his grim task.

The man beneath him. Eyes open. Watching. He matched his victim, breath for breath.

The killer caught his breath as he brought the small blade down with the precision of a surgeon.

He closed his eyes and went inside the mind of his victim, just as surely as his knife went into the man’s sternum:

The sweetness of the air. Electrical impulses sparking. The smell of ozone—a whiff of ecstasy, and then, gone, thrown into the other.

Penetrating.

He broke through the barrier.

The blade went into his chest. He looked down at it; his vision went to pinpricks of darkness, and his victim could barely see the face of the one who had stabbed him.

He experienced what his victim felt.

Burning pain. Along his neck and the back of his head. But not in his chest area. Instead, that was a dull throbbing ache. Then, another went in—stabbing close to his heart—and he lost his vision entirely. Weakness flooded him. The pain was located in his head—a screaming. But he had already begun to disconnect from it, as if a cord had been snapped from its power source, and he had pulled back into the source itself. But still, he had a lingering connection to his body. He felt, but the feelings did not concern him.

A numbness was followed by the dead stop of the heart. Yet he had the curious sensation of still being aware.

Not precisely lucid, but aware.

He felt as if his breath contained his essence, and it coughed into a darkness—he moved, propelled, through some dark void. All the while, he was aware of the others, there, around his body, as if his memory still held them, and the place, the last moments of his life—held them in perfect balance with this new feeling.

It wasn’t a sense of being a physical body, but of being a solid form, undefined by material barriers but kept in place, an entity.

He moved through the darkness, half expecting to open his eyes. Any anger or resentment he’d felt had run its course just as his blood had trickled from his body. He was on a new voyage now, and knew that the thread was slender, holding him between his last breaths and the doorway through Death.

Then, he felt a shift—as if something weren’t working right. He kept waiting to be brought back into life, but instead, he felt a general weakness, as if his mind were growing tired.

A steep descent. Falling. Smells came up, almonds and peaches, wonderful odors that he hadn’t experienced in years—since childhood—of jasmine and fresh, running river water, orange blossom and even a sharp vinegar bite of a stink. His senses felt as if they were releasing memories, of tastes and scents, all exploding as he fell.

Fear came, as well.

Fear that leaked into madness, and he tried to cling to his memory, and tried to shout himself back to consciousness.

The killer kept the knife in his victim’s chest, and his eyes closed, experiencing everything with his victim, feeling the descent into death, trying to stay with his victim so that there was no fear of what was to come.

Chapter Two

In the early afternoon, off the path along one of the trails of the Jenny Jump Mountain of northern New Jersey, deep in the woods bursting with new green growth beyond the slight hills above a placid brown lake, a woman and her young daughter hunted for fossils alongside a creek. The outcroppings of rock between patches of forest had fascinated the little girl as they’d wandered, and her mother pointed out what she’d remembered from her college years about the area. “Some of these rocks are 1.6 billion years old.”

“That’s old,” her daughter said, making her mother chuckle at how mature Livy could sound, even at six and a half.

“That’s why you can sometimes find fossils.”

“Like you used to with Gramma. When you were little.”

“Yep. Right along here.”

“I love days like this,” Livy said.

Julie chuckled. “Why’s that?”

Livy hesitated, then sighed a little. “Well, just you and me, Mommy. After school. And you don’t have to go to work today. And Matty doesn’t come home ’til later. I just…I just sorta like it.”

“Me, too, sweetie.”

The view beyond them, over the ridge, was of the Kittatinny Mountains, and Great Meadows. The sky was damp with the recently passed rain, and the fresh, pungent smell of the wild permeated the countryside.

They’d found a possum skull, two arrowheads, and what they thought might be a small cracked trilobite print on a rock fragment. “This was once part of a glacier,” she told her daughter. “That’s why we have all these lakes.”

“Like Ghost Lake. And Forest Lake. And…Lake Pesomething.”

“Lake Pequest.”

“Where’d it go?” her daughter asked.

“What?”

“Where’d the glacier go?”

“Well, the earth changes. The earth shifts, the earth warms, the glaciers melt, and then it recedes. Over millions of years a lot of stuff can happen.”

“That’s scary,” Livy said. “What if the ocean comes back?”

“Well, if it ever did, we’d have beachfront property. See this?” Julie Hutchinson held the bit of trilobite fossil up for her daughter’s inspection. “Once, these lived all over the place here. Swimming underwater.” Julie tried to remember if that was precisely correct—she had come up to these woods with her grandmother, who knew a lot more about the trilobites than she ever would. She and her grandmother had never gotten along all that well, except for their mutual love of nature and exploration.

Livy took the fossil into her cupped hands, and looked at it. Then, up to her mother. “Is it a dinosaur?”

Julie considered how she’d respond. She was screwed when it came to the precise classification of a trilobite. “Sort of.”

“Wow.”

After a minute of turning the fossil over in her hands, Livy passed it back to her mother, who dropped it into the small green knapsack they’d brought that had contained their bottles of water, and now also held the smooth pebbles, bits of shell, and arrowheads they’d collected during the late afternoon. Then Livy went back down to the creek, crouching to look around the rocks and fallen logs for more fossils.

Julie Hutchinson felt a gentle tingling in her hand, and for some reason, it made her think of Hut, the way he grabbed her hand sometimes.

The way he did when she thought he was in love with her. Back in the courtship days. Back before the storm clouds had come into their marriage.

An animal scent nearby—dead raccoon? Possum? She hoped it wasn’t too close. Immediately, she glanced over at her daughter, who was teetering back and forth on a log at the edge of the creek, her small feet curving around the wood as if trying to clutch it. Livy had an enthusiastic smile on her face, and she leaped from the log into the sandy edge of the creek, causing a splattering that nearly reached Julie.

“Liv,” she scolded. The hem of her daughter’s dress was already soaked. “Olivia Hutchinson, get out of the water.”

Her daughter looked down at the water around her ankles. “I’m only a little in it, Mommy. It’s freezing. I like it.”

Julie let this one go. She glanced across to the other bank. That warm odor of a rotting wild creature wasn’t unusual in the woodlands and the several creeks just beyond their town. Sometimes she saw deer pausing between thickets, and recently, she and Livy got to see a beaver swimming down toward its dam.

“We should get back to the car. We need to pick up Matty next,” Julie said.

Julie crouched down to pick up some small, nearly round pebbles her daughter had dropped. She glanced over at Livy, who stared across at the view beyond the ridge, to the slope that led down to the lake.

Her daughter’s face had a curious slant to it—Livy squinted, and her nose wrinkled slightly, her head gently turning a bit, not quite looking up at the trees, but nearly.

“Mommy?” Livy asked, detecting something was wrong. “Daddy says it’s all right.”

Julie pushed herself up from the muddy grass. “He always says that.”

“He said it just now.”

“On your brain radio,” Julie said, grinning. It was a joke between Livy and her father that they could communicate on something Hut had made up called a “brain radio.”

The wind came up again; it got a bit chilly; Julie was about to lift Livy up out from the muddy water, afraid she might get a bit of a cold from being out when the weather was about to make such a sharp change.

“Daddy’s in the city. He won’t be home ’til suppertime.”

“Silly you,” Livy said, teasing. “He’s here. He just said it.” She glanced around through the ferns and trees, as if her father were playing hide-and-go-seek with her. “Daddy?” She turned her head side to side, and then scrunched her eyebrows up, confused.

After Julie wiped her daughter’s soles off with her own shirttails, and slipped her small feet into what Livy called her “sockets,” the small white and pink socks, then into her shoes, they walked back down the path that led to where she’d parked the car at the shoulder of the road below. The wind picked up and died down frequently. Her daughter clutched her hand as if she were afraid of being blown off the path. They watched some Canadian geese that had gathered on a large patch of grass near a creek, and Livy told a joke that her father had told her, “Do you know how I know those are Canadian geese?”

“No.”

“They say ‘Quack, eh,’” Livy said, and giggled as if it were the funniest joke in the world.

“You need a new joke,” Julie said, smiling.

Then, the cell phone began vibrating in the pocket of her overstretched wool sweater.

“Is it your job?”

“Maybe,” Julie said, trying to ignore the slight downward turn to her daughter’s voice whenever Julie’s work at the hospital came up. In some respects, Livy seemed like an old soul, and could see right through her mother. “Liv, aren’t we having fun?”

“I guess. I just miss you when you’re gone.”

“But you see Daddy.”

Her daughter didn’t answer. The awful and stupid guilt that Julie had worked so hard to overcome— about going back to work in the hospital again after having stayed home with Livy for her first four years— warmed her face.

“But you want to work in a hospital, too, you told me,” Julie said. “When you grow up? And you like all the stories I get to tell you from the ER. Aw, honey, I get five days with you each week. Two days away isn’t so bad.”

“I know,” Livy said, sighing. “It’s okay Mommy. I know they need you.”

When Julie looked at the number on her cell phone, she saw that it was not the hospital at all.

Julie dropped Livy off with Laura Reynen, the young mother who ran daycare out of her house and babysat far too often for Livy. Laura was in her mid-twenties, with two young children, and had arranged her life such that she could stay at home and run the business from a small cottage-like house, complete with wisteria creeping up the trellis at the side of the house, and an enormous fenced-in backyard, full of swing-sets and sandboxes and a double slide. Laura could take one of the kids on a moment’s notice, and Livy adored being at her home with the great playground in the backyard. Laura was the mother that Julie knew she never would be—happy with the clutter, happy with kids all over the place, happy in a way that Julie barely understood, since Julie felt like a screw-up of a mom.

At the front door, Laura, with a baby in her arms, said, “So I can expect you back when?” She always had the aura of joy around her, as if young children were somehow meant to be attached to her arms and legs and running in and out the backdoor all the time.

“Two hours, tops,” Julie said. Then, looking down at Livy, “We’ll eat junk food tonight, okay?”

“Mommy, you look sad,” Livy said.

Julie leaned down, and gave her daughter the tightest hug she could, kissing her on the forehead. “You go play, all right?”

“Only if you promise to read to me tonight.”

“Promise,” Julie said. She hoped she wouldn’t have to break that promise.

The Rellingford Learning Academy was a small private school for children with certain behavioral issues. The Academy sat on three well-manicured acres at the end of a circle of buildings. Although there was a blacktop and a baseball diamond in the back, there was little else to suggest a school other than the name at the front driveway. The school had on-staff medical personnel as well as a psychologist and a psychiatrist on-call who also conducted therapy sessions among the student body of sixty-four students from grades 6 through 12. Although the school was expensive and at times administratively pig-headed, Julie had convinced Hut that it was the best place for Matt, despite the added expense, at a time when Matt had been getting increasingly violent and uncontrollable at the public school—and at home.

Julie tried to put that episode out of her mind: that moment when Matt had pulled a kitchen knife on his father. Matt’s face full of rage, his eyes wild as if he wasn’t even seeing who stood in front of him, spit flying from his lips as some of the worst language that Julie could imagine came out of that boy’s mouth.

It wasn’t Matt. It was something else. A mental disorder that hasn’t yet been diagnosed. When he’s older, they’ll find something. They’ll get the right meds to fix Matt’s problem. I know they will.

At the front desk, near the secretary’s office, Julie flipped through one of the magazines (Psychology Today, perhaps, but she wasn’t really noticing), and finally the headmaster came in.

She glanced up from the magazine. “He’s all right?”

“He’s resting. He’s fine now. I’d like you to speak with Dr. Maitland, first.”

“Maybe I should drive him over to Dr. Swanson.”

“We already put a call in. Our nurse, Miss Jackson, thinks that’s not necessary at this time. He’s fine, really.”

Julie refrained from commenting, “Cut the condescending attitude. I’m a nurse, too. I’ll decide what’s fine for Matt.”

Instead, she said, “I’d like to see him now.”

The school psychologist was named Renny Maitland, and he looked like a ski bum to Julie, and far too young. He was on hand every day for the students. A psychiatrist was in once per week for special consultations, but Maitland handled the day-to-day issues.

“It’s not as big a concern as we’re making it,” Maitland said. “It’s just not the first time it’s happened, and we wanted you and Mr. Hutchinson to be aware of it. It may be the added pressure right now of the exams. We’ve been going through standardized tests these past few weeks. Nothing the students have to prepare for—but they’re timed, and there’s some pressure, so there’s some…well, some students act out a bit when doing them.”

“What exactly are we talking about here?” “He’s been carving things. Into his skin.”

“He got hold of a knife?”

Maitland shrugged. “Just a pen. A good old ballpoint pen.”

“He’s done this before?”

“Well, just with drawings. Sometimes on his hands. He seems to have an issue about his hands.”

“You need to call either me or my husband when Matt does this. We can’t be kept in the dark.”

“Mrs. Hutchinson, I did call your husband the last time it happened,” Maitland said.

She felt a brief flush of embarrassment in her face.

“He said he’d talk it over with Matt. When a child draws with a pen on his hands, we simply have him wash the ink off. It’s not abnormal for kids to draw on themselves. But today, well…He cut.”

“Is he all right?”

“I think so. This isn’t the first time a child has done this. It doesn’t always indicate anything more than a preoccupation on the child’s part. But, based on Matthew’s history…”

Julie nodded. “Of course. I can’t…I just can’t think of anything that might be bothering him. I thought with the camera, he was doing better.”

“Most definitely. That was a stroke of brilliance. He videotapes everything. He’s communicating much better because of it.”

Julie smiled, slightly, but still felt worried. “Where is he?”

It was a long walk from the front offices down to the nurse’s office. Julie glanced at the green walls as she went down the corridor: pictures that the kids had painted, essays pinned to bulletin boards. The smell of sawdust and paint—she glanced down a hallway as she passed by—two men working on ladders to paint the walls. She passed a girl of thirteen or so in the hall, and smiled at her. The girl stopped. Her arms crossed over her chest in anger, a pout on her lips. The girl watched her as she passed by.

She tapped at the open door of the nurse’s office. The room was white and large, with an empty cot pushed into a corner, the blinds drawn on the windows, and an examination table.

“Yes?” the nurse turned from an open folder on her desk, and smiled. “Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“I’m here for Matt.”

“He’s resting,” the nurse said, nodding toward a closed door. “Sometimes a good nap does the trick.”

Without realizing it, Julie let out a brief sigh. “How’s he doing?”

“It was rough. It started on the blacktop—one of the kids had found the hornet’s nest and they were kicking it around.”

“Wait, he got bitten?” Julie lingered in the doorway, glancing at the door beyond the office.

“Along his arm. It swelled up, no more than normal, but it just made him furious. He got completely out of control. He started kicking when anyone tried to keep him from drawing the pictures on his arms.”

“Why wasn’t I called right then?”

“Mrs. Hutchinson,” the nurse said, a slight but undeniable condescension in her voice. “Our job here is not to pick up the phone every time a student gets a bee sting, unless we’re aware of any allergies. Within twenty minutes of the bite, he was drawing all over where the swelling was.”

“I was told they were carvings.”

She nodded. “When he calmed a bit, he told me that they were pictures in his head he was trying not to forget. That’s why he put them on his skin.” The nurse suddenly had a look of puzzlement on her face. “It was odd. I don’t mean because of how he hurt himself doing it. Or even his acting out. It was odd because he said something about his hand. How his hand couldn’t work without all the fingers. Or something like that. But his hands are fine.” As if dismissing something from her mind, the nurse added, “Has he been getting enough sleep?”

“Matt?” Julie said, stepping into the darkness of the small room. It was little more than a walk-in closet— just enough room for a cot and a bit of crawlspace around that.

At first, Matt didn’t stir. Then, after a minute or so, his eyes opened. “Julie?”

She noticed that his Sony camcorder was pressed against his back, almost as if it were a comforting stuffed toy. “Right here, Matty.”

“I had a bad dream.”

“Oh. Well, it was just a dream. Everything’s fine.”

“No,” Matt said, turning over to face the wall. “No. It was real.”

“Do you want me to call Dr. Swanson?”

Matt glared at her. “Eleanor? No. I don’t like her.”

“How about…well, Mr. Maitland?”

He lip-farted at this.

“Did you mean to cut yourself?”

He didn’t respond. She bit her lower lip. Shouldn’t have asked that. He doesn’t need to be grilled right now. She wanted to go lift him up and hug him, but she resisted what Hut would’ve called her “smother mother instinct.”

“Matt?” she asked. “We can go home now. It’s all right.”

Still facing the wall, he said, “She’s in a box. I heard her.” Then, his voice seemed to change. It sounded… girlish. Like he was imitating someone. “Dear God. Dear God. Somebody help me. That’s what she said. She said it until she couldn’t breathe anymore.”

When they got out to the Camry, it had begun raining again. Julie drew Matt closer so that he could keep under her raincoat a bit. His body felt too warm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, shivering as she unlocked the door to let him into the front seat. He was a funny kid in too many ways—violent at times, in a rage, sweet at other times, and somewhere in between he reminded her of a little kid who was smart beyond his years, yet had learning disabilities that she couldn’t figure out. Maybe it was his mother. Maybe it was whatever had driven her to alcohol and then drugs and then…the accident. Maybe whatever brain chemistry was there had gotten a little into Matt.

Julie leaned forward and hugged him, kissing him on the top of the head. “Nothing to be sorry about, honey. Want to go grab a bite at McDonald’s?”

“What about Livy?”

“She’s at Laura’s. We’ll bring her something back. Okay?”

He brightened, slightly. “Okay.”

After making sure his camera case was secure between his feet on the floor of the car, Matt poked around the bun of his Quarter Pounder. He lifted it up, and picked out the pickle. He dropped it back in the bag.

They were at the McDonald’s off the main road through town. She’d parked in front. Her cup of coffee was on the dashboard. She’d leaned the driver’s seat back, and took a bite of a Chicken McNugget.

“I know it’s crazy,” Matt said, chewing.

“What?” she asked, trying to hide her interest. He swallowed the bit of burger. And then reached

for his soda, took a sip, slurping. “It was like I was in a movie.”

“We can talk about something else if you want.” She glanced through the windshield. Cars went too fast on the road. Across the street at the strip mall, a little red car was nearly backing up into an SUV that wanted to quickly take a parking space.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I just was somewhere else. In my head.”

She tried not to glance at his arms, to give him that privacy. The nurse from school had done a messy bandaging and gauzing of his elbow and forearm. She saw what looked like the drawing of a spider, a little too deep in his skin—a faint image, the ink of his ballpoint pen washed away, a lightly raised line of skin.

“Does it hurt?”

He gave a brief peripheral glance to his arm, and shook his head. “Not much.”

“You were stung by a hornet.”

“Bitten,” he corrected her. “And I think it was a yellow jacket.”

“Oh. I didn’t know there was a difference.” She smiled. “I’m not too smart about insects.”

“Maybe not,” he said, closing his eyes briefly as if a headache had suddenly come on. When he opened them, seconds later, he got a wicked grin on his face. “It hurt like hell when it bit me.”

She reached forward for her coffee, and lifted the plastic lid up. She mixed in two small cups of creamer, and then a packet of sugar, but couldn’t find the plastic stirrer. She took a sip. Better than she had expected.

“What about what you saw? In your mind? Did it frighten you?”

He nodded. She offered him a McNugget, and he glanced at it, then at her, then reached his thumb and forefinger into the little box and plucked it out.

“Not anymore,” he said.

She touched the edge of his arm. Next to the raised skin.

He looked away, jerking his arm. Glanced out the side window. Sparrows and starlings were over by the round tables outside, and an old man tossed French fries to them.

“Is there anyone else you want to talk to? It’s all right.”

“No.”

“I just want to help.”

“I’m not mad at you,” he said, gently.

“I know.”

“I just got scared.”

“I know you did. But it’s over.”

“No it’s not,” Matt said. “It’s just starting.”

She tried to crack a grin, hoping that somewhere behind his eyes he was teasing her a little. “What is?”

“Julie,” he said, seeming wise beyond his years with a voice that was utterly serious. “It’s a test. She told me. In my dream. Her name is Gina. They gave it to her. That’s all it is. But you only get three days to pass.”

Chapter Three

After picking Livy up over at Laura Reynen’s, Julie drove them both home, listening to Livy describe her afternoon with the babysitter and her family. Now and then Julie glanced over at Matt, but he’d already gotten his camcorder out and was taping the blur of woods and strip malls and suburban houses.

As she turned the corner onto their street, which would take them first up and then down a hill to the house, Livy began singing a funny song about “After you gone, and left me cryin’. After you gone there’s no denyin’.”

Matt howled with laughter and told his little sister she was certifiable. “You made that stupid song up.”

“That’s an old song,” Julie said. “Gramma might even be too old for it. Was Laura playing it on the piano?”

Livy shook her head. “I heard it in my brain radio,” she said. Then, she continued singing, “You feel blue, you feel sad, you miss the bestest pal you ever had.”

“It’s called After You’re Gone,” Julie said. “I bet your father taught it to you.”

By eleven that night, he still hadn’t called, and she didn’t want to call him because sometimes he went into a tirade when she did it. And she didn’t need that—not tonight.

Sometimes he had to stay in the city late. It wasn’t that unusual, but she expected at least a call or a message.

Julie tried paging him, but got no response. She thought she heard him come in, and went down to the front door, opened it. Just a car turning around in the driveway. It seemed misty outside—not quite rain. She stood on the front porch, feeling the chill and enjoying it a bit.

She heard some noises from downstairs, and went to the finished basement.

Matt, watching television.

“Matt? It’s a school night. Let’s hit the sack.”

He ignored her.

“What are you watching?”

“Some guy,” Matt finally said.

On the TV, it was Jerry Springer. A man with a ponytail who looked a little too old for a ponytail shouted at another man, who was fat, had his shirt off, and was covered with tattoos of naked women. A middle-aged woman with short blond-red hair wiped tears from her eyes. The audience screamed.

“Let’s turn it off, okay?”

“I can’t sleep,” Matt said.

She watched the back of his head. “All right. But get to bed soon. Okay?”

No response.

“Matt?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Don’t forget. You promised you’d walk Livy to the bus stop tomorrow.”

“I do it every Thursday, don’t I?” Then, he turned around to look at her. In his hand, his camcorder. “Smile for the camera, Julie.”

“Aw, you’re catching me at my best,” she laughed. “Are you videoing the Springer show?”

“Nope. Just documenting my life,” he said.

“To bed,” she said. “Another half-hour, okay?”

“Watch the birdie,” he said, following her movements with the camera as she left the room and went back upstairs.

She lugged her laptop to bed, and plugged it in and then went online. She checked her email. One email from Hut, sent early in the day. She tried to open it but it was marked as “unavailable.” It bugged her that her email service did that sometimes—or Hut might’ve even done it if he had unsent the email. She wondered what it said. Maybe he had sent a note about what time he’d get home, and then had to change it. Or maybe one of the assistants had sent it. She could’ve called the clinic, but decided against it. No need to be paranoid. No more Clinging Julie, as Hut had sharply called her when she’d shown up a little too much, too often, unannounced at the clinic. She’d heard enough stories about his first wife and how she’d never given him any space for his work.

That won’t be me. I wouldn’t want him hanging around the ER, either.

She saw her sister’s name come up on her computer screen—a instant message.

“Want to Scrabble?” her sister asked.

“Sure. What a day.”

“Let’s phone,” her sister’s words appeared in a instant message box on her computer screen.

Julie picked up the phone and pressed speed dial on her sister’s number. The click on the other end. “Mel. Melly. Melanie. How’d you know I’d be up?”

“Telepathy,” Mel said, her voice upbeat, as usual. “Naw, just a guess. Julie, I’ve got to tell you. There’s a new hot guy at work. I know I’m too old to chase teenagers, but he’s in his twenties, and I just want to do him.”

“Mel.”

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot. You’re married. You’re not allowed to look at the menu anymore.”

“He isn’t home yet. It pisses me off. And drives me nuts.”

“You marry a doc, you marry a God. And God does what God wants.”

“Enough.”

“I’m sorry. You married him, not me. You could’ve had my life. The revolving door of men.”

The Scrabble board appeared on the computer monitor’s screen. Mel had already begun putting letters on it. The word “round” came up.

“What if he’s had an accident?” Then, Julie added, “I can’t believe you got all five letters for ‘round.’ You must be cheating.”

“Luck of the draw,” Mel said.

Julie figured out her word for the online Scrabble board: she just added a “g” to “round” to make it “ground.” A genuine coup in Scrabble, as far as she was concerned.

“He hasn’t had an accident,” Mel said. “It’s not like this is the first time. Shall I remind you of the other nights he’s been late?”

A slight pause on the line. Something left unsaid. Better left that way, Julie thought. Don’t think about the phone number you found in his jacket. Don’t think about it.

“He’s fine,” Mel said. “You work long hours, too. You know the life. Maybe it’s completely innocent.” Mel had that edge to her voice, and Julie hated hearing it. It meant that her sister was just saying what she thought Julie wanted to hear.

“You think everybody cheats on everybody,” Julie said.

“Maybe Hut’s different.” Mel said it with her liar voice that was a little too cutesy.

On the online Scrabble board, Mel added the word “under” to “ground.”

“You are too lucky to get those five letters. It almost feels like cheating,” Julie said.

“The luck of the draw.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you. Cheater.” Julie chuckled, glancing through the letters she had to see how she could score triple points.

“Look, Julie, if you and Hut are still having problems…”

“You know,” Julie said. “When we met, I thought I’d be working beside him. The way mom and dad did.”

“And that would lead to a fast divorce. Just like mom and dad.” Mel quickly changed the subject. “Hey, is Matty over his fever?”

Suddenly, on the monitor’s screen, Mel had just put the word “nod,” adding an “od” to the first “n” of “underground.” This really screwed with Julie’s plans to use the same squares.

“Over one obstacle and on to another. He’s not doing great. A bad episode today.”

“You sound like a wicked stepmother.”

“I am. I am. I love that kid. I just feel at a loss sometimes. I don’t understand so much about him. What he goes through. He was drawing things on his arms…in class…with his pen.”

Julie put in the letter “s” under the “u” of “underground.”

“Kids do that, I guess,” Mel said, although her voice had shifted slightly as if she were hiding her alarm.

Then Julie closed down her browser so that the Scrabble board disappeared.

“Hey, did you just destroy our game?” Mel asked.

“Let’s not play anymore. Too many things going on. Look, here’s the thing, Mel. He carved it into his skin. I mean gouged. These weird little drawings.”

“Jesus. Is he okay?”

“They cleaned him up, and he seems okay. I guess.”

“What’d the psych say?”

“Not much. The usual.”

“More meds?”

“I hate that stuff. But yes.”

“What were they of?”

“What do you mean?”

“The drawings? On his arms?”

“I’m not sure. He wouldn’t tell me. Looked like a sun maybe with sunbeams coming out of it, and then one of them looked like a bunch of circles. He talked about someone named Jeannie or Gina and something about his hand and how it was bad. I guess it was just one of his moments.”

“Aw. Poor kid. He’s been through a lot. You got to give him credit. And you, too. Hang in there, wicked stepmommy. How’s my darling niece?”

“Fine. Wonderful. She sat up with Matt and read him a bedtime story. He loved it. He was like a different kid than the one who cut into himself today. I wish the psychiatrist could…well, wishing won’t get me anywhere.”

“Aw, you’re quite a mommy. You give those kids extra butterfly kisses from Aunt Melanie.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Livy told me to tell you that she expects to see more of you in the next few days.”

“She threatening me?” Mel laughed. “You know, she’s a lot like her gramma. Did I tell you about mom’s new hobby?” Mel always knew how to pull Julie off her worries and into funny anecdotes about their mother’s life. Mel regaled her with a long involved tale with a funny punch line about her mother wanting to open a used bookshop that only sold self-help books. “She said it’s because everyone needs to help themselves. She thinks it’s what changed her life. All those books on codependency and her diet books and that Dr. Phil book. And now she’s getting into ESP. I think she’ll end up being a witch.” They both laughed.

When they finally got off the phone, it was nearly midnight, and Mel signed off with her usual, “When you were born, you know what I told mom? I told her that you were going to be my favorite sister in the whole world. And you still are, thirty-four years later.”

“And it’s still easy, because I’m your only sister,” Julie chuckled. “Say goodnight, Gracie.”

“Good night, Gracie.”

After she’d hung up the phone, Julie drew out the previous Sunday’s New York Times magazine section and opened the page to the crossword puzzle. Puzzles helped her relax a bit, and although she had trouble with this one (nearly forgetting the name of the state bird of Hawaii—“Nene”—a crossword puzzle staple), it seemed to turn off some awful buzzing in the back of her head. She took a half-dose of Ambien to help get her to the sleeping point.

When sleep came, not long after, she thought she heard the phone ring, but it seemed to be in the wonderful dream she was having, so she didn’t try to answer it.

A feeling of intense physical excitement overcame her body, and he touched her hand, lightly, and held her wrist as if to restrain her. Then, she felt a tender shiver go through her, a distinct sexual charge. Hut was there, rubbing her, licking her nipples, but she couldn’t move at all—somehow she was tied to the mattress. She felt wave after wave of delicious sensation and his hand moved down her stomach, and crept between her legs.

She gasped. Something about his face had changed. It seemed to fade in and out of focus.

She woke to sweat-soaked sheets, in the dark of her bedroom.

Livy had crawled into bed beside her, in the night. Julie felt embarrassed to have had such an erotic dream with her daughter sleeping beside her.

She watched Livy’s face, as she slept, and waited for the sun to come up.

The next morning, Julie checked the machine for messages, but there were none. Hut had not come home at all. She called his cell phone, but got the recording. She called the clinic; got his voice mail.

I hate you Hut Hutchinson. I hate you for doing this to me. For making me suspicious. For making me call hospitals in case you had accidents and then finding out you had just worked too late and hadn’t thought it important enough to call me. Or your kids. I hate you for being this cold to me.

Julie you are nuts. He loves you. He is working on important things. He loves the kids. He probably just pulled an all-nighter working on some emergency or other and is still asleep in that little cot in the filing cabinet room at the clinic.

Matt had been up by six. He had his Sony camcorder out and was making a movie of birds in the backyard at the birdfeeder. When he saw Julie at the kitchen window, he turned the camcorder on her and waved. She waved back, opening the window to tell him that she had some oatmeal and toast with raspberry jam for him for breakfast. He lowered the camcorder from his face, and scowled a bit. “Oatmeal? What about Pop Tarts?”

“I’ll pick some up tomorrow at Shop Rite,” she said. “In fact, if you want anything else special, let me know.”

“Maybe some Dr. Pepper?”

There was an everydayness about the two of them talking through the open window that made her smile and forget the bad day that Matt had, and nearly forget the little scratches and scars on his arms.

She had to rouse Livy from what must’ve been a fantastic dream, because even as she hustled her into the shower, Livy kept talking about the wondrous things she saw the previous night, including flying horses.

“And in my dream, Daddy kept asking me if I could get up, and I said, of course I can daddy, I just want to keep sleeping. But you know what? I did get up. I thought I heard him say something.”

“Daddy had to work all night,” Julie said, kissing her on the forehead, smelling Livy’s hair—the Johnson’s Baby Shampoo of it, the little tiny last bit of babyness in her six year old daughter.

“You never work all night,” Livy said. “Daddy works all the time, but you don’t.”

“I know. I have a perfect job.”

“Like on ER.”

“Just like that,” Julie grinned. “Plus, I get to be Mommy.”

“Poor Daddy,” Livy said. “He never gets to be Daddy anymore.”

“Poor Daddy is right,” Julie said, and tried not to think of the slip of paper with a phone number on it that smelled of perfume that she’d found in Hut’s overcoat, a number she had never called, a woman whose name she didn’t know, a woman who might not even exist except in a jealous, insecure wife’s imagination.

She did her telephone punch-in when she got to Rellingford Hospital, and then proceeded down the long rose-colored hallway to the ER. She passed some medics and other nurses, said the obligatory morning hellos and listened to the lukewarm jokes, but her mind was elsewhere and she was craving coffee. The staff in the ER was small, like everything else in Rellingford. There was simply the doc—Dr. Davison—and a unit clerk, and a few nurses on the day shift. Night shift was even more bare bones. Not a lot happened out in Rellingford on a continuing basis for the ER, and some days, nothing happened beyond a twisted ankle or a kid who need a few stitches and a hug. There were always lab techs around, the respiratory therapists, but it was bare bones in the ER most days, with an on-call staff in case anything major came down.

She picked up the report from Nancy Maier, the outgoing staff nurse, and then grabbed a cup of coffee from the vending machine room, and thank God it was Starbucks or she would’ve been in a bad mood over the usual mud-in-a-cup, and then she went off to triage to get the long shift going.

By the late afternoon, two new patients had come in, one of them from a car wreck out on the main highway, which made her think about Hut, and hope that he was okay. Surely, he’d page her or call, and, she had to remember, if something happened to him, she’d have been contacted.

The patient who arrived had been lucky—a broken leg, perhaps, and a dislocated shoulder. With her coworkers and the doc on his way, Julie got to work in triage.

Just before five, her shift supervisor called her over to an empty office, and said, “Julie. Something’s happened.”

The supervisor had that tone of voice that meant something horrible. Something tragic. She’d heard the tone when the news came about any major public tragedy—from the World Trade Center horror of a few years’ previous to the sudden death of one of the visiting physicians. Immediately, Julie thought of the children. Of Matt and his troubles. Of Matt and the time she’d seen him with a knife, and even though he hadn’t done anything to himself with it, she had known—he had communicated with his eyes—that he was thinking about his real mother, about where she was, the institution outside Philadelphia, about all the things that Matt had whirling in his mind at all times…

“Not Matty,” Julie said, tears already forming in her eyes. Images of Matt, memories of him, his violent outbursts, his tantrums, his moods.

“No,” her supervisor said, softly.

Chapter Four

The morgue wasn’t located in the hospital, but at the sheriff’s station one township over. It was an area of what New Jerseyans called the Lake District that was less wooded and natural than paved over and set up right off the major highway. The sheriff’s station looked like an industrial park, and the morgue was toward the back. Julie had insisted that she could drive, that it was a mistake, that none of this made sense, and she was fine, until she saw the staircase down to the morgue.

It looked like she had to walk down into limbo. It grew cold with each step, and she had to steady herself on the railing. She felt as if, at any moment, she might trip on the stairs.

A policewoman accompanied her, and Julie could tell that the woman watched her to make sure she wouldn’t collapse or stumble.

She sat down on the seventh step, and covered her face with her hands.

“We can sit here for as long as you want,” the cop said.

Julie wasn’t sure how much time had passed. “I’ve seen dead people before,” she said, steeling herself, wiping her eyes. “It’s all right. It is. I’m a nurse.” She wasn’t sure if she said any of this aloud or not, as she got up and went down to the chilly floor below, where the lights were a flickering blue and the smells were talcum, alcohol, and something that reminded her too much of the Emergency Room.

And then, the room itself: shiny and silver and garish in the overhead lighting, which was flat and made the coroner and the sheriff look as if they, too, were dead, as they stood there over the body. In the far corner of the room, three large blue plastic barrels that seemed out of place. It wasn’t as big a room as she had expected, and she felt crowded by the others there, and self-conscious because she was sure they were just watching her as if she might do something irrational.

She hadn’t looked at the face of the dead man until then.

“Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“It’s not him,” she said. “Thank God. Oh my God. It’s not him.”

The sheriff was a man named Cottrell, who she knew only from the time he’d brought Matt in when Matt had stolen a car at twelve, and the sheriff told her that the car was undamaged, the owners were willing to drop charges, and Matt had been bawling like a baby. Rellingford was that kind of town. Cottrell had told her, then, that he understood Matt’s situation from “Dr. Hutchinson,” and so he hoped it would just be an isolated incident. Dr. Hutchinson was known in Rellingford. They knew of his first wife, and her “troubles.” They knew of Matt and his “situation.”

She thought back then that she probably would never see the sheriff again. How many times in life do you have to see the local authorities?

She took the facial tissue he offered, and wiped her eyes. Her vision came back into focus. She felt a boundless happiness for that moment, and a distant sorrow for this murder victim. She looked at the face. She didn’t recognize him at all. She could see why the mistake had been made. Hut had floppy auburn hair, too, and he had that kind of squarish jaw that reminded her of the Midwest and cornfields for some reason. But that was really it. This corpse in front of her was pale, and the lips and nose were all wrong. “It’s a mistake,” she said. “It’s not him.”

“This is Homicide Detective McGuane, from Manhattan,” the sheriff said too formally.

Julie didn’t glance up at any of them. People make mistakes all the time. Errors in judgment. This is why they need someone to identify bodies. Human error is the norm in life. Of course that’s true. Of course.

“Mrs. Hutchinson, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. Perhaps not right now. Not today. But soon. The sooner the better,” the stranger said.

She couldn’t look up at his face.

She kept watching the dead man. She was aware of the wounds and knew that whoever had killed the man on the table had a knowledge of where to strike—there were knife entry wounds at the arm, the lungs, the neck, and the heart. Lacerations on the shoulders and hands, where there might’ve been a struggle. She had worked in the city, and had seen murder victims before, years ago, when she had been a newly minted RN, and had often worked the graveyard shift in the ER. She’d seen the victims of gang killings then, of domestic homicide, of any number of ways that a human being could be killed.

She had been able, quickly, to separate herself from the dead, even in her mid-twenties, by viewing them as having gone on—as being empty shells. It was as she’d been taught in church, and although she only believed sporadically, it helped to think of death that way, particularly a violent death: their suffering is over. They’re in heaven now. They’re in some afterlife that was somehow better than the raw deal they’d gotten in this world.

“It can’t be him.”

“He’s your husband,” McGuane said. “We have his personal effects. Wallet, keys, and so on. Mrs. Hutchinson. This is Dr. Jeffrey ‘Hut’ Hutchinson. I know this is a tremendous shock.”

She had thought of him so much as Hut that she had nearly forgotten his real first name: Jeff. It’s not him. Why do they keep insisting it’s Hut? It’s not Hut.

She looked at the wounds, at the arms, the belly, and it wasn’t until she saw the small circular tattoo on the dead man’s left shoulder that it hit her too hard. She felt nausea in her stomach, and a distant, shrill ringing in her ears.

Someone wrapped his arms around her, holding her up. Had she been falling? She tugged away from the arms and stumbled toward the wall, pressing her forehead into the coolness of the wall itself, as if she could press herself through it.

And then, she knew that she was going to fall. She was going to fall, and it seemed in slow motion that she would hit the edge of a small metal cabinet on her way down, and then her head would hit the floor.

She awoke in a darkened room, the only light coming from beneath a door. The smell of fresh coffee somewhere, beyond the darkness. Gradually, as her eyes focused, she saw more: it was simply an office, probably at the sheriff’s station. She felt achy and nauseated, but gradually, perhaps a half-hour after opening her eyes, she pushed herself up from the cot. Her head ached, and she reached to touch the back of her skull. Someone had already taped some gauze just under her hairline at the nape of her neck. She remembered the fall, and winced with pain when she moved her jaw a little. She heard voices beyond the small room. She stepped out into a too-bright light, and went to sit in a large chair in a corner of the sheriff’s office. He had glanced up from his desk, and laid the phone back in its cradle.

“Mrs. Hutchinson? How are…how are you doing?”

“I’m a little thirsty, if I could…”

“Certainly,” the sheriff said, who then went out into the bustling main office to get a cup of water for her. Before the door shut behind him, she saw the man named McGuane again. He was gaunt and had lightly graying dark hair that seemed too long for a detective. He looked to be about fifty, and something in his demeanor and his wrinkled jacket made her think of a scarecrow. He stared at her, as the door closed behind the sheriff.

“We had you checked out,” the sheriff said. “Your head. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t think it’s a problem,” she said, but the headache was pretty strong.

Then, she was alone again in the office, blinds drawn around the windows.

After the sheriff returned with a large plastic cup of water, McGuane followed.

She watched as he went and took a chair opposite her, pulling it in closer.

She couldn’t look at him again. Not for a while.

“I wish I could be gentler about this,” McGuane said.

Mel came to take her home, and hugged her when she saw her. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the padded yellow envelope in Julie’s hands.

“Personal effects they said. Wallet, keys, watch,”

Julie said, feeling dead on the inside.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Mel gasped when Julie

turned away from her.

Julie felt the bandaging on her neck. “Oh. That. It’s

nothing. Really.”

In the car, Mel said, “I don’t even know what to say, sweetie. I just don’t. We’ll go home. Somehow, we’ll sort this out.”

You hated him, Julie wanted to say. You told me on my wedding day that he was a poor bet for a husband. You told me he had too much baggage. Don’t sit here and pretend everything will ever be all right again.

Julie said, “Hut bought a gun two years ago. He said he didn’t like the way there was too much crime, even in the suburbs. He bought it and I hated it and I tried to throw it away twice. He had it locked up at the top of the linen closet. I made him take the bullets out of it and put those elsewhere. I wish I hadn’t insisted on it. I wish he had his gun with him. I wish he had it. He might still be alive.”

She felt her sister’s touch on her scalp, combing through her hair, just as her older sister had done when they’d been kids, when Julie had come home from a bad day in kindergarten or first grade, a day of fears and a day of friendships lost. Mel would comb her fingers through Julie’s then-blond hair and whisper, “I’m going to brush all the bad things from your head, Jules. Don’t worry.”

At home, she lay down on top of her bedspread and stared up at the ceiling until her eyes lost their focus and she had to shut them.

In her dream, she saw the face again.

His face. Not dead, but alive.

Not on a shiny metal table, pasty-white skin, covered

with blotches of brown-red and bright blue bruises.

But as he had been the last moment she had seen him. Alive.

It was morning, and she had just made coffee.

She turned to him, feeling the sorrow that came with the knowledge of the loss.

His warm brown eyes brightened when he finished telling a truly bad joke to her, and she chastised him for spilling coffee on the edge of his sleeve. He had given her that look that meant he was tired of the small, petty comments. In the dream, she tried to erase even making a comment about the coffee stain. She looked at him and said, “Try to be home early at least one night this week.”

“You know how demanding things are right now.” His voice—had she even remembered it correctly in her dream? “It’s not as if I’m making people get sick so I can work late and never be home with my wife and kids. You think I’m that kind of man?”

Even in the dream, the thought of another woman whom he might or might not be seeing came up for her, a cloud that was both distant and close.

“Well, you don’t even know your son at this point,” she said—and something inside her said, don’t keep doing this to him, he’s going to want to leave you if you do, don’t become the bitch of the world—and yet, she kept saying, “I got up in the middle of the night and he was cycling again.” Cycling was their word for Matt’s phases that seemed nearly manic when he would stay up all night, playing games of solitaire for too many hours, or doodling ridiculous images in his art notebook, or playing computer chess by himself.

“Don’t worry about him. All you do is worry sometimes. I’d like to be home once and not have to be surrounded by this…this drama,” Hut said.

And then, the dream evaporated, and when she awoke, in her bed, she thought for just a minute that nothing bad had happened to him, that he would be home later that night, that all of it had just been a dream.

But the yellow padded envelope lay next to her pillow.

She opened the yellow envelope and poured the watch and the keys out on her bedspread. The watch was from her, on their first anniversary. It had cost too much money—just under four hundred dollars at Saks, but she felt he needed a really good watch for his work. She wondered if she were still paying on her Visa for it. He had loved the watch, and told her that it was the best gift he’d ever received next to Livy, who had arrived a scant six months after they married. His gargantuan key set—for the house, the clinic, his car, and even keys he’d told her he’d had since he was a kid. She’d joked with him sometimes, asking him if those were keys in his pocket or if he was just happy to see her. His wallet had the normal things she knew would be in there: his credit cards, his social security card, the pictures of the kids, the pictures of her, seventy dollars cash, and a few wadded up receipts.

All I have left of you, Hut. This is it.

She switched on the little color TV above the dresser, clicking the remote to surf channels, and was afraid for a moment that the news would come on detailing the murder. But no matter what channel she went to, no one mentioned Hut’s murder. We’re not the news. We’re not what people want to hear about.

A gentle tapping at her bedroom door. The door slid open slightly. Mel. Her sister’s face was ashen, but brightened a bit as if she had just remembered some piece of good news. “You’re awake.” Her voice was smooth and soft.

Julie nodded, stretching. No headache. It would be back, but not just yet. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, but was not ready to stand up.

“Can I get you some tea? Maybe some decaf chai?”

“I’m fine. Really,” Julie said. She glanced over at the wide mirror that she and Hut had picked out at Pottery Barn two years before. Her face was all in brambles, to her. Not her face at all, just as the dead man on the table had not had Hut’s face. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

She managed a shower, and while the steamy water cascaded over her, she didn’t close her eyes. Didn’t want to see inside her own head. Behind the opaque shower curtain, she could see the shadow coming into the bathroom.

Hut. It would be Hut. He would grin as he pulled back the curtain. Naked and happy as a puppy. In their first days. His grin infectious, his way of touching her so new and so right. Alive. Alive and fresh and younger than he should’ve been in his mid-thirties then. Not in a house with a mortgage too high for an in-debt doctor to the poor and an ER nurse. But in her little apartment in the city, her crappy little place where they’d made a nest, briefly, before her pregnancy, where they’d made love too many times and for too many hours to count. How was she to know that making love was something more than pleasure? More than making a baby? It had been a bonding between them, a clasping of hands that reminded her not of sex, but of absolute love, and how he had been everything to her. Everything.

The shower beating down on her face washed the tears from her.

When she emerged from the shower, and dressed, she wasn’t sure why she even cared if she was clean. She wanted to go to Livy, and to Matt, she wanted her children. She wanted them in her arms and she wanted them now.

The detective showed up at six-thirty that evening.

Chapter Five

They sat in the living room. Although all the lamps were turned up, even the overly bright halogen one near the fireplace, Julie felt as if it were shadowy.

She had unbuttered whole-wheat toast and some tea with a little honey. It was all she had eaten that day, and all she had wanted to eat.

“I don’t really understand,” she said, after the first few questions.

“It’s a pattern,” McGuane said. He drank a Diet Coke and refused the cookies offered by Mel, who sat near the upright piano but said nothing. Julie noticed his wedding band, and a ring that looked like a college signet ring. She didn’t want to look back up at his face.

“Why haven’t you gotten him yet?” she asked.

McGuane took a sip from his soda, and then glanced over at Mel. Then, out the window. He nodded as if talking to himself. “I wish I had an answer for you. Can you think of anything that would connect your husband to this?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine…” Julie looked down at her teacup. Keep your fingers from trembling. Just keep the teacup still.

“We’re hoping you might have records here. Not much to go over at the clinic.”

She glanced up at his face. “He didn’t bring his work home. That was important to him.”

After the detective had passed her the beige folder with the photographs, she set her cup down on the red table beside her. She opened the folder.

“You know,” McGuane said, more to Mel than to her. “I live across the Hudson all my life, and I had no idea Jersey is anything but an industrial tract and you know, The Sopranos. Then I come out here and there are all these lakes and trees and it’s like, I don’t know, Pennsylvania.”

“Except without the Amish,” Mel said. She offered up a weak grin. Julie wished she’d had the presence of mind to thank her out loud for adding some humor to the somber atmosphere.

Death is everywhere. Death is all around, all the time, she thought. At work, and now here. In my living room. In my house. Uninvited. I don’t want it.

Julie turned each photograph over.

More dead people. Just faces. Pale. Not really human anymore. Like white masks. Hollow.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” he said, his voice barely more than a mumble. “I’d rather catch this guy before he does it again.”

“I’ve never seen these people before,” she said. The sound of her own voice, weary and flat, made her feel heavier.

The pictures: two women and a man. Eyes closed. Empty shells of human beings. Gone.

Her half-Catholic, half-Episcopalian upbringing reared up in her. Their spirits have flown. They are in God’s hands. They are in heaven. Or some other finer place. Beyond trouble. Beyond this world.

Beyond the grasp of the one who killed them.

“There’s another picture,” McGuane said. “Inside.”

She checked the folder. Under a thin piece of onionskin paper, one last photograph.

It was a man’s back. Perhaps it was Hut’s. Nothing reminded her of him, but she had barely recognized him in the morgue, so she didn’t expect to identify him without seeing his face. That was why pictures like this were safe. They could be of anyone and no one at the same time.

All kinds of circles and drawings were carved into the man’s back, from the shoulder blades down to the small of the back, just above the buttocks.

“Do you have any idea what this might be?”

Julie shook her head.

“He carves things into the bodies. He has a ritual. We know a little about what the symbols are. We just don’t know where they lead us.”

Julie remembered the carving on Matt’s arm. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like this. Matt’s arm and this man’s back have different things on them. Don’t let your mind go with this, Julie. Don’t.

“No idea. What is it? They’re like tattoos.”

“Can I see?” Mel asked.

Julie glanced at McGuane who gave a slight shrug. Mel got up and went over to retrieve the picture. After glancing at it, Mel said, “You’re making her look at this kind of stuff, now?”

McGuane kept his composure. “We want to do everything we can to stop this guy.”

“It’s all right, Mel. Really,” Julie said. “We should help. I want to. I want to see who…what kind of monster…” She covered her face with her hands.

Just go away, she thought. Everyone go away. Let it be someone else who loses their husband. Not me. Let it be anyone else. Hut, where are you? Why did you leave? Why aren’t you here with me?

Mel and McGuane started talking. Mel went to sit down on the two steps that led up to the dining area, at the edge of the room. Julie felt she could shut them all out. Just block them, like she were a child with her hands over her ears.

Then, she brought her hands down from her face. They were still there. They watched her as if she were something that were about to break.

“We’ve tried to locate the orphanage,” McGuane said.

She glanced up from the pictures. “The what?”

“Orphanage. Where your husband grew up.”

She hesitated before speaking. She tried to grasp his meaning. “He had parents.”

McGuane glanced at her sharply.

“Tell me,” she said. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” McGuane said. “Nothing at all.”

“I know he was adopted,” Julie said. “But he was little. Three or four. I think four.”

“Mrs. Hutchinson, your husband wasn’t adopted until he was sixteen. Before that he was a ward of the state of New York.”

“What?”

“He was part of a special program, Mrs. Hutchinson. It was the 1970s, and there was some special aptitude your husband had to qualify for this program. As a boy.”

“Are you sure you mean my husband? Jeff Hutchinson?”

McGuane nodded. “I’m sorry that you weren’t aware. I assumed that your husband would have informed you about his past. About his childhood.”

She sat there, stunned.

“Did you ever speak with his adoptive parents about his past?”

“No,” she said, her face reddening. “What…what kind of program was he in?”

McGuane gave what looked to her like an ironic grin. “Not sure yet. I was hoping you could tell me, actually.”

“I have no idea,” she said, her voice taking on a far-away quality as if she were ransacking memories to try and remember one thing he might’ve said about something from childhood that seemed out of the ordinary. Her mother’s annoying voice erupted in her head, the bad advice given when she got engaged to Hut: Remember, wives never really know much about their husbands. It’s just the way marriage is. That’s why your father and I got divorced. They keep secrets. They hold back. To hell with it. Then, she remembered something. “Oh. He told me he was…” she glanced at Mel as if trying to get her to confirm a memory of a conversation. “You were there. It was about some accident when he was little. He said he was in a hospital for a long time.”

“All we know is that it was a school called Daylight. Or the Daylight Project. And it was not an ordinary program.”

“Why is that important?”

“Your husband may have known one of the other victims. All of them were there. Your husband may have known the man who killed him. We’re just looking into things for now. Trying to connect the dots,” McGuane said. “A man, roughly your husband’s age, was attacked by the killer. But not killed. His memory, after the attack, isn’t so good. But he knew about your husband. He knew about two women who were also killed. We’re having trouble with his story, simply because…well, he claims to have psychic knowledge.”

“Psychic?” Mel said, shooting a glance at Julie. Julie caught it: what the hell?

“Wait, are you saying that some psychic is claiming things, and the NYPD is listening?”

“We’ve had some help, at times, from the psychic community, Mrs. Hutchinson,” McGuane said, straightfaced. “I personally don’t really believe in that kind of thing. But, sometimes it helps.”

“So you’re going to use a psychic to find who killed Hut?” Julie could not repress a laugh.

McGuane glanced down at his soda. “There are all kinds of ways to find a killer, Mrs. Hutchinson. I’m sure you would want us to use every resource at our disposal.”

Mel chimed in. “Mom told me that sometimes psychics feel they see a murder scene,” she said.

“Sure,” Julie deadpanned. “Maybe we should ask Livy to tune in on her brain radio.” Then, more seriously, to McGuane, “You think that my husband knew psychics?”

“No, nothing like that,” McGuane said.

“Because he didn’t. He didn’t go for mumbo-jumbo. That’s one thing I can say for sure about him. He was a doctor. He was fascinated by scientific research. He didn’t think life was mystical,” Julie said.

“That’s true,” Mel said, and Julie was thankful she was there.

Mel got up to go get a glass of water. McGuane made a joke about crazies who phoned in solutions to murders. “This guy may just be one of the crazies, that’s true,” he said. “Still, he knew some things.”

“Where did it happen?” Julie asked, wanting to steer the conversation away from mumbo-jumbo.

McGuane looked out, beyond the living room window, as if thinking about how to delicately answer this question. “That doesn’t really matter right now.”

“It does to me.”

“All right. Just outside town. Out in some hills beyond the highway.”

“He died in the woods.”

“We found his car on the side of the road,” McGuane said. “In Newark.”

“But you found him nearby.”

“Yes.”

“I want to go there.”

Against his better judgment, McGuane agreed to drive her to the place where her husband had been murdered. The roads were slick from a previous rain, and he took the turns along the highway slowly, both for safety and because he felt as if he had a fragile item in his car.

They said nothing as he drove along the back road that led up to the hillside, beyond the suburbs, and Julie stared straight ahead the whole time, thinking of nothing whatsoever to mention.

When they got there, to the edge of the road where the killer had left the victim’s car, McGuane parked, got out, and went around to open her door.

“Thank you,” she said.

He had positioned the headlights of the car to shine on the narrow gravel path that cut through the woods.

“He took your husband through there,” McGuane pointed, and then made a circle with his finger in the air. “There’s a clearing when you go higher.”

“I suppose it’s too dark to go up there.”

“Mrs. Hutchinson, if you think this will help at all,” he said, “I’ll get a flashlight and we can go up there. It’s muddy, and frankly, any footprint we leave might obscure some vital piece of evidence. I hate taking that chance.”

She nodded, and glanced around the woods. “Do you know when he died?”

“We’re not sure. Not yet. I’d guess it was early afternoon, yesterday. Might’ve been last night. Some mountain bikers use that path. They’d been going up and down the hills around here this morning. One of them thought he saw a dead deer, and went to get a closer look. Only, well, it wasn’t…what he had thought. That was before nine this morning.”

“It rained yesterday, off and on,” she said.

“But it was fairly dry when the bicyclists came through here.”

“Where did the car end up? My husband’s Audi?”

“Mrs. Hutchinson,” McGuane said. “it’s important to examine every little detail of this crime scene.”

“It’s impounded,” she nodded, understanding. “Livy and I were here yesterday. Well, not here. Miles away, really. To the west. But we were in the woods, up in the hills.” She walked up to the edge of the path. She looked into the darkness between the trees as if half expecting someone to be there. Then, she turned, facing the headlights of McGuane’s car and said, “Please take me home now. I think I’m going to be sick.”

Later that evening, after the detective had gone, and Julie walked in the front door, Mel called to her from the top of the stairs. The kids were all ready for bed. It was nearly ten, and everybody was exhausted. Julie went to sit on the edge of Livy’s bed.

Matt unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor near Livy’s bed.

“It’s okay for a night or two,” Julie said. “It’s wonderful in fact. But you need to move it back to your own bedroom soon. Okay?” Even as she said this, she wanted to bring both of them into her own bed and hold them for as long as possible.

Matt’s reaction had surprised her. She had suspected he might have a violent outburst, or become agitated. But he chose silence, instead. He had barely said a word since Julie had told him of his father’s death, but stuck close to Livy who had bawled for hours before she had just gone to her room and begun reading. Julie wasn’t sure how Livy understood death, and even as she tucked her in, Livy looked at her as if she didn’t quite believe that her father was not coming home again.

Mel sat next to Matt on his temporary bed, while Julie began singing “Lullaby and Goodnight,” to Livy, who clung to her as she fell asleep.

“It’s nice of you to do this,” she whispered to Matt before kissing him goodnight, which he shrugged away as if he were too old for kisses on the forehead.

“I want to keep her safe,” Matt said.

Julie glanced around his sleeping bag. “You usually sleep with your camera.”

“Not tonight, Julie. I don’t feel like making a movie out of this,” he said. He covered himself up to his neck in the sleeping bag and then rested his head on the pillow. “You won’t let me go back to my mother, will you?”

Julie felt a lump in her throat. “Of course not. We’re family,” she said. “You and me and Livy. Don’t even think it. Remember when all those papers got signed? You’re stuck with me, bucko.”

When the kids were asleep, she went to the linen closet, and drew a footstool out so she could reach the very top shelf. She drew a metal box down. It clanked when she moved it. She took it into her room, and set it on the dresser. She found the small key to the lock. She opened the box. Wrapped in a thin cloth, the gun. She knew nothing about guns. She knew this was some special type of revolver that Hut had to get a license for. She hadn’t wanted to know about it. She had pretended that the bad people never showed up at your door in the suburbs.

Then, she went to find the clip to put in it. She didn’t think she’d use it. She didn’t think she’d ever need to. But she wanted to feel as if it was there for her, if anything ever threatened her children.

Before Julie went to bed, she looked up the phone number in an old Day Runner that she’d kept since their wedding day. She punched in the number on her cell phone. California. The area code had changed. She had to tap the number in again, this time with another area code.

At first no one picked up. Then, a man’s voice. “Yes?”

“Mr. Hutchinson. This is Julie.”

He said nothing in response.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She could not help her tears.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Hut’s father said. His voice had a slightly Midwestern inflection. She imagined a husky man of seventy-one with salt-and-pepper hair. “We heard from the authorities. How are you doing?”

She didn’t want to lie. She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “I don’t know.”

“How’s Matty and Livy?”

“Sad. Quiet. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.”

“The shock has just hit us both in the gut,” he said. “I’m glad you called. We needed to get in touch. At some point. Even if it would be against his wishes.”

“I know.”

“Joanne’s sleeping. She’s been sleeping since we heard.”

“We can talk another time. Would that be all right?”

“Of course,” he said. “And Julie, it’s good to hear from you. Even under these circumstances. We want to try and keep up now, if possible. Would that be all right?”

Julie tried to erase the words her husband had used over the years about his parents, about how horrible they’d been to him, about how they could not come to the wedding, about how they had treated him like a piece of trash since the moment they’d adopted him, about horrible verbal and mental abuse at their hands, about how he had to use college scholarships to escape them, and get beyond their cold darkness.

It didn’t seem to matter anymore. She wanted to know them. She wanted to know more about Hut.

“Of course,” she said. “I want my daughter to know her grandparents. And Matt.”

“Thank you,” the man said. “He never thought of us as his parents. Not really. But we loved him, despite everything. We really loved our son.”

It struck her as normal for him to say that, even though Hut had all but convinced her that his father was a monster and his mother was an overly passive contributor to his father’s moods. Hut was dead now, after all. It was easy for his parents to remember their love for him. She had always assumed that Hut would deeply regret the rift he’d created with his folks when one of them died. She had never anticipated that Hut would die first, and that she might finally get to know his adoptive mother and father, two people she had only briefly met, during a trip when Hut had just blown up with anger at them and he and Julie had to retreat back to a hotel “rather than spend ten more seconds with those awful people!” as Hut had yelled at the time.

She woke up late, and couldn’t pull herself out of bed until eleven. She had the vague memory of a dirty dream—something about a man pressing his fingers into her and licking her thighs. It made her feel a little guilty to have such a dream so soon after Hut’s death.

When she finally rose, she made some calls to the sheriff. Julie learned from the sheriff’s office that Detective McGuane had gotten some kind of ridiculous permission to transfer Hut’s body to a morgue in Manhattan.

“It’s necessary,” the sheriff told her on the phone, and she had first called Andrew Money, a lawyer she knew from work at the hospital, to see what her legal rights were in this—she’d left an overly detailed message for the lawyer, which she wished she could’ve erased right after she’d finished with it.

By noon, she had tried to reach McGuane by phone, furious that she could not plan a funeral and have her husband’s body safe from the dissectors of the autopsy room.

Finally, McGuane tracked her down, via cell phone. “Mrs. Hutchinson, we need to talk again. As soon as possible.”

“I can drive you,” Mel said.

“I can do it. I need the drive. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I’m going to drive you. Laura can stay with the

kids. You should not be behind the wheel of a car right now. Not with all this,” Mel said. “I can go shopping— where’s this guy? Hey, he’s right around the corner from Bed, Bath & Beyond. I need to get a few things. So, you just call me when you’re done. I can shop ’til midnight if I have to.”

It took them nearly two hours to get to the city, so she was at McGuane’s office just before three.

McGuane’s office was full of maps and pictures of what might’ve been forensics snapshots. A gallery of the dead in pictures.

A young woman sat opposite McGuane. She glanced back at Julie, as if startled from a private conversation.

“Mrs. Hutchinson, this is Officer Donati. She’s our point person in forensics.”

Donati nodded in her direction, a warm but silent greeting.

“Coffee?” McGuane asked, pointed toward a Mr. Coffee machine that looked filthy at the edge of his desk.

She shook her head slightly. “What is it you wouldn’t tell me on the phone?”

“Please, sit down,” McGuane said, overly polite, gesturing to an empty chair near the other officer.

Donati spoke up. “This happens from time to time with transfers between morgues and paperwork foulups, although in this case, it’s somewhat unique. It’s…”

McGuane cut her off. “Mrs. Hutchinson, your husband’s body is missing.”

Chapter Six

It was nearly four-thirty when she stepped out onto the street in Manhattan, and just began wandering. She felt as if the woman named Julie Hutchinson had been hollowed out, and now she was someone else. She walked down to Sixth Avenue, and cut east over to Washington Square. The great arch was fenced off, and the circle within the park had some acrobat passing a hat after a brief show. Dogs in the dog run were barking, and she almost wished she were a drug addict so she could buy some drug from the dealers at the edge of the park, some drug that would just put her further away from reality. Then along the streets, again, past NYU, past the windows of shops full of shoes or books or pastries or trendy clothes. She stepped into Shakespeare & Company, a bookstore that had been a favorite of hers from her student days. She browsed the shelves, wondering what she should be looking for.

Then, she remembered the conversation with her mother, after Mel had done a three-way phone conversation when the news of Hut’s murder had arrived: her mother had recommended a specific book. What was it?

Something about The Life Beyond.

She touched each book on the shelf, as if it would speak to her. None of them did.

“Can I help you?” a young woman asked.

Julie smiled, shrugged a little. “I guess I’m looking for a book. I thought it would be in self-help. It’s called The Life Beyond. At least, I think that’s the title.”

“Let me look it up,” the clerk said, and then retreated to the cash register counter. She emerged a few moments later. “I’m afraid we don’t have that one in at the moment. Michael Diamond’s books are a little hard to get these days. We could order it for you, if you like.”

Julie felt normal for the two minutes or so it took to order the book, but when she was on the street again, it was as if she were afraid to run into her old self. The sky, seen between the overhang of buildings, was shadowy with clouds. She smelled rain in the air. Rain and the exhaust of taxis and buses.

She wandered neighborhoods, remembering how it had felt to be younger and living in the city. She glanced in shop windows along Greenwich Avenue, crossed over to Ninth and passed by Electric Lady Studios, thinking of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, the legends who had recorded there, past the Barnes and Noble that had, when she’d lived there, been a B. Dalton’s, past Gray’s Papaya and moved through other stops along her memory’s lane, and there she was, outside her old apartment building. It was as rundown as it had been then, when she and Hut had their trysts, when she had just finished getting over a heartbreak of her twenties and decided that there was no such thing as romantic love, and then, suddenly, she had met Hut, and she believed in things again. She believed that love and romance and happiness were in the world for her.

She sat down on a stoop outside a junk shop on Breton Street, which conjured a scene from her twenties of buying funky lava lamps and scratched-up coffee tables, and she thought of her old friends—Alicia and Joe, whom she used to go to hang out with, see movies, explore the city, cry over relationships that didn’t work, and laugh when life just became too absurd, or the time Joe asked if she’d be the “Best Woman” at his ring ceremony with his husband, Rick, and she had stood on the corner of Bleecker and Cornelius and just wept with happiness for him because she felt someone should be happy and in love. Those were her old days, and then, Hut had come along, and she’d left it all behind. She’d called Joe and Rick less and less, and then Alicia had grown cold (or had it been me? Julie wondered). Alicia had an art studio somewhere now, and Joe was writing novels about the gay community. She had meant to read them, meant to follow up on Alicia’s shows and installations, but Hut had brought her out to Rellingford, and they had quickly built a life, which seemed at times beyond their means. She glanced up at the window that had been her apartment, across the street. Then down the windows to the Chinese laundry, and the overpriced Ethiopian Restaurant next door to it, and beyond that the best deli within three miles. She had loved this neighborhood. She had loved her too-tiny place with its weird neighbors and elevator that worked twice per year (the holidays, because the owner of the building got it inspected then), with its inner walls that Joe had called “birth canal pink,” and the crumbly ceiling in the bathroom.

She remembered Joe’s number. She’d surprise him. It had been at least two years since they’d talked. And now, here she was, a block away from his place. Opened her cell phone. Tapped in the number.

He picked up on the third ring. “Julie?” he asked. Caller I.D. ruined her surprise.

“Hey Joe,” she said, feeling as if she were not midthirties but mid-twenties.

“Well, we thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth. How the hell are you?”

“I’m in the neighborhood.”

“Want to come on over? Or we can go over to Starbucks.”

“I just was remembering. Remember when we all got tickets for Phantom?”

“Oh yeah, that was great,” he laughed. “We show up on the wrong night, miss the night we were supposed to go, and then Alicia manages to flirt with one of the ushers.”

“And gets us the best seats in the house. Sneaking into a theater was never so fun. God. We used to have such adventures. Some of which are not befitting a properly married suburban wife.”

“I know. I’ll be able to blackmail you in a few years.” As he said this, she could practically hear his good-natured grin on the phone.

“We were such good friends, Joe.”

“Hey. I’ll hear none of that. We still are,” he said. “You don’t sound so good. What’s up?”

Should I tell him? No. If I tell him, it’ll lead to a long sad story and I’ll cry and he’ll cry and he’ll insist on coming down here to comfort me and I’d have to look at him and feel as if my life were nothing but sorrow.

“Just a bad day,” she said. “And I’ve got to get back to the kids.”

“Well, don’t be a stranger. Rick mentioned you the other day. He said he thought he heard your name somewhere. Couldn’t remember where.”

“It’s always nice to be remembered. I miss you, Joe.”

“Ditto, Jules.”

After a bit more of the “let’s get togethers” and “be sure and call back soons,” she closed the phone, reopened it and was about to call her sister. Two skinny girls of eighteen or nineteen, dressed as if they were Fifth Avenue fashion models, walked in Prada and Gucci along the cracked sidewalk in front of her. “And so I was like, he’s gay you idiot, run for the hills,” one girl said to the other as they loped along, uncertain in the stiletto heels.

Julie glanced at the cell phone, and then set it down on the step. She opened her handbag, dug down to her wallet, opening it up and digging through a few torn small pieces of paper.

When she found the sliver of paper she had been looking for, she stared at the phone number for a few minutes as if an entire world were within it.

Whomever her husband had been seeing, this was her.

This mysterious woman in the city who had some hold on Hut. She looked at it. Looked at the scrawl of it. Not Hut’s handwriting. Did you have a lover, Hut? A woman whom you met in the city? The one who kept you there some nights, not sleeping on the Aerobed or the cots at the clinic—someone whom you burned to see when Matt or Livy or I got to be too much for you?

She wanted to call the number.

Instead, she called up her sister, to come get her, to take her home.

Mel had other ideas. “You need a meal in you, and the kids’ll be fine with Laura. She said they could spend the night if need be.”

They drove to Benny’s Burritos, and Mel got them a table at a corner window so they could have a little privacy. Mel ordered a chicken burrito that they’d split, and a margarita for Julie. “A little tequila never hurt anybody.”

“Except a drunk. You shop for anything?” Mel squinted her eyes, slightly, as she watched her.

“You really want to know?”

“Sure.”

“I got a Pilates workout tape. I wanted some nice

towels, but none of them seemed right. Some scented candles. They smell like blueberries. Oh, and I got you a gift. Just a little one. A bathrobe.”

“Thank you,” Julie said, managing a grin. She felt cold inside.

“Well, it’s just a terry bathrobe. Don’t thank me too much. I just don’t want to see you wandering the house in your underwear ever again.”

When the chips and salsa came, Mel pushed them toward Julie. “Start eating. I don’t think you’ve had more than toast in two days.”

Julie hesitated, then decided that appetite or no, she needed something. “It’s good.”

“It’s always good here,” Mel said. “So, why’d you keep me waiting?”

“I needed a hike.”

Mel grinned. “Good. First sign of life from you.”

“I’m running on fumes right now,” Julie said. “I am so angry. Pissed off. At the fucking cops.”

“You never swear,” Mel said. “You kiss with that mouth?”

“I’m sorry. They’re incompetent. I didn’t want him moved from Rellingford anyway. Why can’t they just do their dirty work at the Rellingford Morgue? And that stupid sheriff out there, just…signing off on this…not even asking…”

“Can you just calm down a second?” Mel asked, dipping a tortilla chip into the salsa, dripping a little on her sweater. “Look. I’m the one who told him it was okay to move the body. You were down for the count, and needed sleep. Julie, it’s a murder investigation. This is some psycho who is out there killing people. Four people so far. They need help in this. And do not give me that look—you were out cold or crying, and when I talked to that detective, and the sheriff, they both made it clear that my permission or yours didn’t count. This is something that just had to be done.”

“And so, they lost his body,” Julie said, grabbing her margarita practically out of the server’s hands.

“They what?”

“Apparently, it’s an ordinary screw-up,” Julie said. “Ha.”

“I can just picture you with those cops. Reading them the Riot Act.”

“I don’t know,” Julie’s voice grew faint. She looked out the window and saw a crowd outside the Tea Shop across the street. A lesbian couple walked by, arm in arm, looking as if they were happier than Julie had ever felt in her life. An elderly woman in a mangy fur coat walked an equally mangy little Yorkshire terrier, pausing at the window of the restaurant as if gazing at her reflection. “I don’t know. I think I was too stunned to react. I should probably call Andrew.”

“Hell, yes,” Mel said. “The threat of a lawsuit might just do something. You know, if they don’t find his body in the next twenty-four hours…”

“Maybe it’s what Donati said.”

“Who?”

“One of the officers. She said it happens now and then when bodies get transferred. They think all that happened is that he ended up in another morgue in the city. They’re blaming the driver, who had several pickups and deliveries. It’s all very…complicated.”

“Well they damn well better find him, that’s all I’m saying,” Mel said, biting into a slice of avocado.

“It’s all too much for me. Too, too much.” Julie continued to look over her sister’s shoulder, to the world outside, the world of smart young women parking their cars, a group of men in suits talking excitedly as if they just made some corporate deal that would make them all millionaires, the woman in the ratty fur coat, picking a newspaper out of the trash can on the corner.

Then, she re-focused on Mel’s face. Mel looked at her as if trying to read her thoughts. You can’t get inside me, Melanie. You can’t. I’m not that easy-to-see-through little sister you once had. Not anymore. I am made out of stone. I don’t feel anything anymore. I am impenetrable.

“It may be something else, though, Mel. It may be about the killer. The killer may come back somehow, to collect the bodies. One of the other victims also went missing. It’s just sick. It’s disgusting. I don’t even want to think about it anymore. I don’t. I can’t.”

A rundown Volkswagen Jetta was parked on the street in front of her house when they got home that night.

“How does she do it?” Julie asked, shaking her head. “She runs that crafts store in New Hope, gets her master’s in psychology and does crystal therapy…and has that awful boyfriend…and she still manages to get here this fast?”

Mel shrugged, as she turned the car into the driveway. “Toni Marino. AKA mom. What more is there to say?”

If she were ever to draw her mother, it would be with nothing but circles and squiggly lines. Her hair was a bird’s nest of jet black with glimmers of gray, her face was round, and round glasses upon her round nose. Even the word “mom” seemed to be a round word. She somehow had lost the angular half-Italian look of her Connie Francis-inspired youth and had transformed into Earth Mother by the age of sixty-four. “I picked up the kids from your sitter,” her mother said, too quickly, as a shadow crossed her face. Her voice still with a strange hybrid of the Jersey shore and Pennsylvania clip, hugging Julie while at the same time glancing around at the living room as if about to give one of her famous critiques. Livy was practically attached to her grandmother, clinging to her skirt like it was a security blanket.

“I am so sorry my baby,” her mother whispered, kissing the edge of her ear.

Julie fought back tears as she felt the intense warmth of her mother’s cheek pressed against her own.

Mel made some coffee, while Julie and the kids sat around the living room as if they had to entertain her mother. “The one thing I’ve learned about life,” her mother said with that wiser-than-thou voice. “The only thing, really, is that it’s about accepting loss.”

“We were talking about that in my coffee group,”Mel said.

“Your coffee group?” Julie chuckled, with a little too much condescension in her voice. “God. My God, that sounds like 1950s with white gloves and cute little casseroles. You mean the church ladies?”

Mel must’ve been working to keep a kind look on her face. Julie was impressed.

“The altar guild. My friend Elaine lost her husband to cancer three years ago. It was her faith that really pulled her through. There really is no death.”

“You’re only in that group because you have the hots for Father Joe,” Julie blurted, and then quickly apologized.

“It’s not like Episcopal priests can’t marry,” Mel said, shrugging.

“We all go to heaven,” Livy suddenly said, her small, wise voice a bit of a surprise.

“That’s right, honey,” Mel said.

“I don’t know,” Toni said. “A lot of people believe different. Death is just a problem of our vision. You know, how we see things upside down? How our eyes work? Our mind works that way, too. We go on. We

just can’t see it.”

“Not your ghost crap again,” Mel said, a bit under her breath.

“If you have your sexy Jesus, Mom can have her spooks.”

Mel shot her a look, then glanced at Livy, as if to say, what kind of talk is that around your daughter? “Wait just a second, sweetie,” Toni said. “They’re not spooks. And I’m only a lapsed Catholic, not a heretic. I believe in heaven.” She motioned for Livy to come sit on her lap.

Livy looked a little frightened, but Julie gave her the nod. Livy went over, and climbed aboard the Gramma Express. “Spirituality doesn’t start or stop with a church or a dogma. What is out there is out there. I’m not going to sit here and say that one group has cornered the market on the truth of existence.”

“Is daddy a spirit-chew-aliddy?”

Toni kissed her granddaughter on the top of the head. “Different people believe different things, sweetie. Some people believe we come back as newborns. Some people believe we go to heaven. Some people believe we never really leave. Some go, some stay, some come back. Like when babies are born. Maybe they’re old souls.

Who knows?” She kissed Livy on the top of her scalp. “I think you’re an old soul, sweetie.”

“Wow,” Livy said.

“I bet in your last life you were a brilliant doctor like your daddy.” Then, Toni looked over at Matt.

Matt had his camera on and it was aimed at her. “I’m on Candid Camera.”

“I like when you talk about this stuff,” Matt said, fiddling with the lens.

“Okay,” Toni said. “I think I was a sherpa in my last life.”

“Is that like a shepherd?” Livy asked.

“Mom,” Julie said, sternly. She felt a severe headache coming on.

“What? Reincarnation’s as valid as anything,” her mother said. Then, she gave her that look that Julie hadn’t seen in years—it was one of her “Take a life

lesson” looks. “You want to live a happy life, Juliet, you start thinking about what comes after. It’ll put a lot of things in place for you.”

“It’s like a nice fairy tale to tell kids,” Matt said, “but the truth is, there’s nothing after you die.” He spoke so suddenly that it was like a shock through the room. He pivoted the camera around to look at Julie. “It’s like the fairy tales about wicked stepmothers.”

Toni chuckled. “That’s a zinger, Matt. Do you ever come out from behind the camera?”

Matt put the camera down and stared at Julie and then her mother. “Talk talk talk,” he said. “That’s all anyone does. My father dies and it’s all about blah blah blah.”

He got up and stomped out of the room as if he’d been insulted.

“Teenagers,” Livy said, as if she’d heard this from her mother.

“Shouldn’t you go to him?” Toni asked, hugging Livy. She had an expression on her face that was halfway between being aghast and ashamed. “That boy needs you.”

“He’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t butt in where you don’t know…”

“Sometimes my daughters can be so cold,” her mother said, in a whisper meant to float over Livy’s head. Then, more softly, “Children need to talk about death. About what happens afterward. About where we go.”

“Where do we go?” Livy asked.

“Upstairs, sweetie,” Toni said. “Upstairs, only when we’re alive, we don’t know where upstairs goes.”

Julie couldn’t take her mother anymore, and left the room. As she went up the stairs, to her bedroom, she heard Mel say something about sleep and shock and Julie almost felt like going back down there and just telling them all to get out of her house and leave her and her kids alone, and wondered how much she could get away with—how cruel and mean she could get and still be forgiven later—how much slack did you get when your husband was murdered out in the woods by a psychopath?

She lay down on her bed, covering her head with the pillow, and submerged into sleep.

In a dream, his head was between her legs, and his tongue circled lazily, one circle wetly moved into another, opening her, with a kind of pressure of pleasure that disturbed her even while her body gave in to it. Hut whispered, his voice soft and vulnerable, like a little boy who has just discovered a new forbidden hideout, “Ah, yes. I love it. I love the taste. I love the smell. I want to be inside you. I want to dive into it. You’re the lake, and I want to swim through you.”

Her pelvis began to buck involuntarily, and she hated herself for the feeling she was having, which was not pleasure, but some kind of mechanical movement as if she had no control over her body and it had no connection to her mind, but was a machine that just moved back and forth and up and down when someone put coins in—knowing that Hut was gone, knowing that this was not really him, knowing she was in a dirty, filthy dream where nasty words were said that she’d never uttered in real life nor had he, and shivery forbidden fantasies could exist, and the reality of the world, of death, was beyond this.

Sometime in the night, someone touched the edge of her cheek. Julie opened her eyes, feeling nearly out of breath from a terrible dream that she couldn’t quite remember seconds after waking up.

In the bedroom, a small shadow before her. “Mommy?”

“Oh baby,” Julie said. She scooted further into the bed, allowing her daughter to climb up onto it. The heat of her daughter’s body pressed against hers was comforting.

“I have an idea. Let’s ask God to get Daddy back.” She kissed Livy on her forehead.

“I mean it,” Livy said, her voice wispy and full of

wonder at her own idea. “Maybe nobody’s ever tried, Mommy. We just ask. Maybe God feels bad for us and he’ll send Daddy back. I can ask in my brain radio. I can.”

“Oh, baby, honey, shhh,” Julie whispered. “I love you so much.”

“God can do anything. Matt said in the Bible, God sent back a guy named Lazzus.”

“Lazarus, sweetie. But it was different. That was a miracle.”

“Nobody ever asked for their daddy back. Maybe,” Livy said, getting louder, until finally she was yelling, “Maybe if someone did, it would happen. God can do it!” “I’m sorry.” Julie couldn’t control her tears.

“I just want God to send him back,” Livy said, too loud. “I want my daddy back. God can do it.”

Julie dreamed of:

The day she met Hut. On the subway. He, on his way to his residency, she, with a day off, thinking about going to buy an air conditioner for her steamy apartment. The train was packed, and he gave up his seat to her. She could not stop looking at him. He was handsome in ways she’d never seen—not a pretty man at all, nor one that had a natural beauty to his face. He just had what seemed to be a chalk outline around him, for her, an aura of something that made her want to know him. He had glanced at her a few times on the train, and then had leaned over and said, “You’d think the carnival was in town,” which made her smile, as she glanced around at others on the train.

When they’d come up into a muggy afternoon, he said to her, “You know, you look like someone I’d want to get to know.”

She had laughed. “That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

“It can’t be,” he said. “Surely it’s only in the top ten of the worst. It can’t be the worst of all.”

From there, they’d made a casual date—to meet at the Empire State Building like Sleepless in Seattle. “That way, if I scare you, you can have the safety of all those people, plus you can throw me off the roof if you decide I’m the wrong one. You can even give me a fake name if you want so I can’t stalk you later. I’ll buy the hot dogs.”

“I’ll bring a parachute,” she’d told him.

And then, she dreamed of:

The face of the dead man in the morgue. It had not been Hut, even though it had been him. What was Hut had fled, and left the empty husk of flesh behind.

The face of the dead man with closed eyes.

In her dream, his eyes opened.

Chapter Seven

After a week, Julie felt herself rise, a waking sleeper, from some dark place. She spent less time in bed. She began enjoying the taste of food again. Just a little. Less time avoiding phone calls from the detective. Less time avoiding her mother and sister and even her children. Livy started having bad dreams, but weirdly Matt was handling himself okay, and her therapist, Eleanor Swanson, said it was completely normal, everything that was going on. Normal, normal, normal.

Within a few days, her mother went back to Pennsylvania, and Mel came and went, and it wasn’t normal yet, and she felt as if she were hiding something, keeping a secret about how she wanted to scream and cry and yell and break things and kick walls in.

But she let some autopilot within her switch on, and focused on Matt and Livy, helping them navigate the slender canals of grief.

“Mommy!” Livy cried out from the backyard.

Some instinct kicked in, and Julie thought of the trowel she had left in the flowerbed, and all she could think of was that her baby was hurt.

“Mommy hurry!” Livy screeched.

Julie nearly flew out the kitchen door, out to the patio.

Livy stood next to the low weeping willow tree at the edge of the lawn.

“Honey? You okay?”

Livy had a glow to her face—as if she’d been sunburned, almost. She had her hands to her ears. “It’s Daddy!” she shouted. “It’s him!”

Julie went to her and squatted down in front of her so they were eye-level with each other.

“He’s on my brain radio,” Livy grinned. “He’s telling me he’s okay.”

“Oh, baby,” Julie said, and felt herself get all weepy as she lifted Livy up. Livy wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist. “He’s in heaven. He’s with God now.”

“No he’s not,” Livy said. Then, whispering in her mother’s ear as if it were a big secret that nobody was supposed to hear. “Gramma was wrong. He didn’t go upstairs. He’s with us. Right now.”

On the phone:

“Eleanor. It’s Julie. I think maybe I’d like to ask you to talk with Livy.”

Eleanor made an exception that afternoon. Livy clutched her mother’s hand as they stepped into the waiting room. Julie went to the assistant, a young man named Vincent who handled three of the psychologists in the suite of offices. Then, Eleanor came out, and gave Livy a warm smile. “It’s good to finally meet you,” she said. “I know your mom and brother Matt well. I’ve heard so much about you for so long, I feel we’re practically neighbors.”

Then, Eleanor asked Julie to stay in the waiting area so that she and Livy could talk for a bit. Livy looked back at her, eyes wide, mouth a small tight o, and for a second, Julie felt as if she were giving her daughter away to a stranger.

Afterward, Livy came out, a grin on her face, and tapped her mother on the knee.

“How’d it go?” Julie asked, setting a magazine down on the chair next to hers.

Livy looked up at her, and for just a moment Julie felt a chill as if her daughter contained some unknown well of anger and fury, and it was all in that glance.

“She’s a nice lady,” Livy said.

When Julie called to ask about Livy, Eleanor told her, “She thinks she sees her father. She told me that he started coming through her dreams, but that one night, she saw him standing over her in her bedroom and he told her he’d come for her. Now, how are you doing?”

“Me? Okay.”

“No,” Eleanor said. “Not okay. Livy told me that you aren’t talking to her as much. She said that you let things pile up.”

“Well, it’s been a little soon. It’s not like I’m completely recovered.”

“Julie, this is not something to take lightly. You are experiencing post-traumatic stress. Your husband was violently killed. It’s a major shock, to all of you. You can’t mask it. I want you to expect that your mind will be spinning around. I want you to expect that you’re going to have nights when you’re afraid of the dark. All of you will. I want you to come see me as often as you want. And I suggest that you try and get Matt in for sessions, too.”

Late one night, Matt was in the den watching one of his homemade digital videos on the family computer.

Julie stood behind his chair. The video had been made six months before, around Thanksgiving, and Matt’s voice on the videotape was generally happy as he narrated the world as he went through it. “Christmas shopping for Julie and Livy is nearly over,” he said, with a beaming exuberance that Julie hadn’t heard from him in a while. He was in the city with his dad—there was Hut, oh my God, so close she could nearly touch him by tapping the computer monitor—and they had just emerged from the Chelsea Market, Hut with a white cup of coffee, and Matt with a Snapple that he waved in front of the camera as he turned the camcorder on himself. He looked so happy. There were a few people on the street, and it looked like Matt might walk right into them if he didn’t put the camcorder down.

His father said, “Let’s turn it off for a bit, Matty.”

Matt filmed his father’s face, then, a close-up, and then the video went to darkness.

Julie leaned over to Matt and kissed the top of his head.

He reached up toward her, without turning around, and laid the palm of his hand against her cheek. “We can see him anytime we want,” Matt said. “That’s what movies do. They keep people alive.”

She slipped into the bathrobe that Mel had picked up for her at Bed, Bath & Beyond, made some chamomile tea and felt a little better. Julie sat up that night, late, after the kids were asleep and after Mel was asleep, and played Matt’s videos on the computer, one after another. They were funny, or silly, and usually involved Matt after school with his friends, or Matt and Hut and Julie and Livy—ordinary happiness, as they all made supper together on a rare Saturday when everyone was free, Livy shredding Romaine lettuce for the salad, Hut chopping tomatoes and onions, and Julie sautéing the chicken in the round wide pan. Hut joked about crying over onions, and that got Livy giggling. Matt now and then said, “Now just act natural. Just act natural,” and that got them all acting a little silly for the camera. Sometimes Matt turned the camera on himself, having watched too many episodes of The Real World on MTV, and talked about what he felt like, what he was going through. Nothing startling came through in any of this. Something within Julie ached for the normalcy of it all.

And then, there were several Boys’ Day Out, as they had called the Saturdays or Sundays when Hut would spend several hours exclusively with Matt. They’d go to a Yankees game, or fishing out on one of the local lakes, or doing what Livy called, “boy things,” which she demanded that her father take her on sometimes. Matt holding a big bass up to the camcorder and saying, “Julie, get ready to fry this up for supper!” or at the baseball game, Matt cursing as he videoed the game, and Hut’s voice saying, “Now, Matt, let’s not use those words again, all right?”

And then, a video of an area of cobblestone streets, where half the block was sunlit and half in shadows. The city. Hut looking a little tense. Matt swinging the camcorder to the street and just videotaping his Reeboks as he walked along. “That thing doesn’t always have to be on,” Hut said, a bit curtly.

Matt swung the camcorder up: a shot of his father’s face, neither looking happy nor solemn. Looking like he was angry at Matt. “Let’s just turn it off, Matt. All right?”

Matt lied. “Okay, dad. It’s off. I just like looking through the lens.”

A woman walked along the sidewalk opposite them, and then crossed the street as if coming right toward them. She was pretty, wearing sunglasses, and had pale, freckled skin and shoulder-cut red hair that gleamed as she walked from shadow to sunlight in the street.

“Put it down,” Hut said, and then the video went dark.

Julie stared at the computer monitor.

Then, she heard a piercing scream.

It was Livy’s high-pitched squeal, and Julie instinctively leapt out of the chair in the den and went running upstairs to her daughter’s bedroom.

Matt was already standing in the doorway with the light on.

Julie looked over his shoulder—her daughter stood up on her bed, her back against the wall, shivering.

“What happened?”

Matt mumbled something, but Julie passed by him and went to Livy. “Did Matty scare you?” she asked, and then felt her face go red as she looked at Matt.

He glared at her. “She had a nightmare, Julie. I’m not running around scaring my baby sister. Jesus.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Julie said. “I didn’t. I thought maybe she saw you in the dark.”

“Something’s wrong with you if you think that,” Matt said, and turned and went back to his room.

“Honey, what is it? What was wrong?”

“I saw a man,” Livy said. “In here.”

“Was it Matt? Maybe he was going down the hall?”

“No, Mommy. It was like a ghost. It was like a big shadow,” Livy whispered. And then, as if it had just occurred to her, “Maybe it’s Daddy. Maybe he came downstairs again. Maybe he was tired of being upstairs.”

“Livy, there’s nobody. But I think you were having a bad dream. That’s all. It’s not real. If you want, I’ll go check all the windows and doors.”

“Ghosts get through doors,” Livy told her.

Feeling a little spooked herself, Julie poured herself the last of the Sterling Vineyards Merlot in the kitchen, into a Dixie Cup, and sipped it as she walked around checking the windows and doors to make sure there really wasn’t the possibility of an intruder.

In her dreams that night, the man on the table. Eyes opened wide. They were milky white. No pupils, no iris’. It was Hut, but not Hut. His skin was translucent alabaster interrupted by blotches of bluish bruises. He rose up and reached for her. He had drawings all over his body—tattoos.

She couldn’t move.

He leaned over and kissed the edge of her neck. His lips were ragged and dry and he kissed again, with a gentle suction against her skin.

His fingers crawled down her belly, lingering just above her pubic region, and then twirling the soft hair as his hand pressed down against her, and all the while he kissed up her chin, to her mouth. She felt as if she couldn’t move, push him off her. She wanted to get away from him, but his tongue parted her lips and flickered just over her tongue and teeth.

And then she felt aroused and excited in the dream.

Ready.

“Do you want me?” his voice came to her, but not from his mouth. “Do you want me inside you?”

She awoke, jerked from the dream too suddenly so that when she opened her eyes she wasn’t sure if she was still dreaming or in her bed, but a man stood there, a dark man against the darkness, and for half a second, she thought it was Hut. Her sleepiness was like a pillow smothering her, so that she didn’t have the energy to flick on the light. Didn’t even have the energy to stay awake for more than a few seconds. She felt the narcotic heaviness of deep sleep draw her back from fuzzy consciousness. She slipped back into sleep, and when she awoke well before dawn, she began shivering, feeling as if she had a fever. She kept looking at the doorway as if half expecting someone to be there.

She remembered what her therapist had told her. About her mind at night. Night fears. Thoughts that would keep her up. Even hallucinations? Even thinking someone was in the house? Some stranger? Or that Hut would come home, just open the door and walk back in one day as if it had all been a dream?

Then, she remembered a detail about the dream: the dead man in them, who she could not completely think of as Hut, had those carvings on him.

Julie flicked up the light in Matt’s room. He rolled over, pushing back the sheet. The bedroom window was open wide. The room smelled like dirty gym clothes. Poster over his bed of Eminem. The place was a dump, but she never pushed him on it. “I’ll have to handle him,” Hut had told her after an early battle of wills between Matt and Julie. “He’s always going to be like this, and it’s up to me to do this. It’s his mind, Julie. He has some kind of block that won’t allow him to handle conflict well. You shouldn’t be in the middle of this.” Hut had even told her just to let Matt do what he wanted sometimes. She was the stepmother, and she had never felt completely comfortable stepping in and making him do things—even as simple as picking up the clothes he dropped on his bedroom floor.

“Julie?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the overhead light at first.

Julie went to sit on the edge of his bed. “Tell me about the drawings you made. On your skin.”

He squinted at her. “I’m sleepy.”

“It can’t wait.”

He looked over at his clock-radio. “It’s four a.m.”

“You’re not going to school. You can sleep in.”

He turned back over, his arms covering the back of his head as if defending himself. “Just let me go to sleep.”

“I’ve been up half the night,” she said. “It’s important, Matt.”

“Why?” he turned around violently, shooting her a nasty look, his face a scowl. “Why is it so goddamn important?”

“Do not use that kind of language with me, young man,” she said, feeling infinitely old as she heard the words come out of her mouth.

“You think I go around scaring Liv, and you wake me up when it’s still dark out. God. You just go around sticking your nose in places where you shouldn’t, Julie. You’re not my mother. You want to see the drawings? Okay. Okay, Julie,” he said, sitting up. He drew the longsleeved T-shirt up over his head. His chest seemed scrawny and inward-turning as if he had been emotionally beaten into submission. She winced when she thought of his mother—Amanda—and how she’d hurt him badly. How she’d tried to do terrible things to him.

She wondered if she was like Amanda now. If she was going to do something terrible.

He showed her his arm, his chest. The carvings had faded, leaving only slight striations on his arm and shoulder.

“Seen enough?” he asked.

She tried to remember the patterns carved into the dead person’s back from the photograph the detective had shown her.

She didn’t know what to say. She felt like crying but worked to hold back her tears. “I guess I’m a wreck right now,” she said.

When he spoke again, after nearly a minute had passed, his voice was gentler than it had been. “Poor you. You think I’m like my mother and I’m going to end up going crazy and hurting Livy or something.”

“Matty,” she whispered, touching his arm. “I don’t think that.”

“I’m not stupid,” he said. “She’s where they send crazy people. And I’ll end up there, too, because I see things sometimes. I just don’t tell you about them. You’ll never understand.”

“Do you want to visit your mother?” Julie asked, grasping for something hopeful to say. “I can drive you down there.”

Then he turned over, facing the wall, drawing the sheet back up to cover himself. “Turn out the light,” he said, his voice a monotone. “Go to bed. I’m sorry Dad’s dead. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me. I wish you weren’t falling apart every five minutes. I wish everything was different. But it’s not. And no, I don’t want to see my mother. Ever.”

She left his bedroom, soon after, and sat on the stairs in the hall, wondering if the pain and the pressure she felt in her head would ever go away.

Some nights, she stared at the wall of her bedroom and began imagining things, thinking that she heard Hut in the hallway. Livy had put the idea in her head—her bad dream about a ghost of a man.

His footsteps, heavy, coming toward her.

The bedroom door, open. Darkness in the hall beyond it.

Darkness seeping in to her room.

His breath upon her face.

Do you want me inside you?

Part Two

Chapter Eight

In the city: blue sky as far as he could see above the towering buildings. The sound of laughter and shouting and even some cussing from kids getting out of school in the city. The harsh words of others, tromping along, up from the subway steam. The shadows were still cool with the very last breath of spring, the sunlight beyond them, warm and fresh. He felt a little bounce in his step as he bounded up from the subway steps into wonderful daylight.

His name was Terry West, and he’d just gotten out of Harkness’ lecture on the underpinnings of Jacobean Tragedy by accepting the fact that he was going to get a “D” in the survey course, anyway. Terry was feeling damn good, and if that asshole Franklin hadn’t fucked with his head that morning—on the subject of his academic future—it would be the perfect day. He caught a bus uptown to meet Anne for a beer at her little studio apartment. When he arrived, she had on that sweater that was bright yellow that made him just want to pull it off. Beneath it, she wore nothing, and his cold hands trembled as he touched the edge of her nipples—each one, special attention from his fingers while his tongue slipped between her lips, and she giggled when she felt his hardness, and he was thinking: life is better than anyone ever told me it was going to be.

In the middle of it, when he had just slipped inside her, he whispered to her that he thought he was in love with her, but he wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, and that was cool. After they had sex, he showered solo while Anne flicked on cable and watched the old Match Game show on The Game Show Network. When he got out of the shower, dripping as he went from tiny bathroom to tiny living area, he sat down beside her and stroked her hair. “I have to meet my mother in thirty minutes,” she said. “She can’t know that we’re fucking.”

“I thought she liked me.”

“She thinks I’m still a virgin,” Anne said, and squirmed a bit when he tried nuzzling her neck. “She’s living in the 20^th century or something.”

“I guess you’re going shopping?”

Anne nodded. “That’s all she does. That’s all she ever wants to do.”

“Gee, your neck tastes good,” he said, trying to kiss her one more time, but she pulled away, and pawed the ends of the sweater arms over her hands like little mitts.

“Sex isn’t everything.” She shrugged away from him, got off the bed and sauntered to the bathroom. “When I get out of the shower, you need to be gone.”

“How about tonight? Maybe later?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

None of this ruined his good mood. He got outside, and sat on the stoop of the brownstone next to her building, and lit up a cigarette. Had a good smoke, watching people walk by, checking out the pretty girls, feeling a little intimidated by some of the men in suits who looked as if they owned the world, wondering if he himself would ever own much. He grabbed a hot dog down at Gray’s Papaya around two, and chowed down while calling up his buddy Rick who lived in a cool loft in Soho with four roommates (instead of at home with his mom, like Terry still did), and asked if they wanted to go shoot pool at Fat Cats on Christopher Street in about an hour.

Then, he’d gotten on the subway, and that’s when he thought the man had looked at him funny. He was used to gay guys giving him looks—after all, he was athletic and trim and twenty-two—and it didn’t offend him in the least. He’d always felt complimented, whether it was a girl or a guy. But this guy was looking at him differently.

It pissed him off. He glared at the man. The man grinned, but then turned away. The man opened a newspaper and began reading it.

He wouldn’t have thought anything more of this, except when he got off the train and began walking toward the exit, he accidentally dropped his keys, and when he squatted down to pick them up, he glanced back and noticed the guy was practically hovering over him.

Then, the man passed by. Terry waited for him to continue up the steps to the outside.

Outside, Terry saw the usual crush of people—and the man he’d seen wasn’t anywhere nearby. He called up Anne and left a message on her machine that he was with Rick and some others playing pool and maybe she might want to meet up after her mother left and they could grab pizza at Ray’s or something. “Or maybe we can do something after Bio tomorrow. Okay? Call me ASAP babay-babay,” he finished, their little injoke. When he dropped the cell phone in the pocket of his denim painter’s pants, he felt around for cash. He counted up about fourteen bucks in single wadded-up bills, and that’d be enough for a couple of hours of pool and air-hockey, and with a few bucks for the kick-ass jukebox at Fat Cats.

“I’m like four blocks from Fat Cats,” he told Rick via cell phone. “Are you down there?”

“Yep, me and Joe and Debbie. Deb’s kicking my butt in air hockey. Want to say hi?”

“Fuck. Anne’ll cut off my dick if she knows Deb’s there. Shit. And I just told her to come down if she wanted.”

“Maybe she won’t,” Rick said, and then the noise in the background rose as someone was yelling a victory yell and people were laughing. “A lot of cute girls here, dude.”

“Yeah yeah,” Terry said, and as he turned the corner toward Bleecker—to go get some more cigarettes—there was the man again.

As Terry passed by him, the man said, “Terry? You’re Terry West?”

He turned to face the guy, who didn’t look strange or scary, just utterly normal and kind of bland.

“What’s it to you?” Terry asked, and felt he sounded too wimpy.

More than an hour later, when Terry awoke, the first thing he did was cough.

Something about his vision was off. He couldn’t quite see. Things were blurry, and he tried to reach up to wipe his eyes clean, but his hands were tied behind his back.

He tugged at them, but they wouldn’t budge.

He didn’t remember a whole hell of a lot since the man had been talking to him, talking about his mother, talking about some emergency, and talking to the point where something within Terry had felt a little tired and too confused to understand everything.

His breath returned to him, hot.

It was plastic of some kind over his face.

Tied around his neck—a cord pressed at his throat.

He tried to make out the shadowy figure that stood before him, but the light was too dim, and his own breathing had caused a fog within the plastic.

Soon, the air around his face got warmer, and when he inhaled as deeply as he could, the plastic sucked up against his mouth.

He tried kicking out, but his legs were tied to the chair.

Then, it was as if his lungs burned as he used every ounce of his energy to inhale what little air was left to him.

As he went, as he felt himself sink into unconsciousness, someone—a man’s hands?—grabbed his left arm and held it as if trying to pull him back from the brink of death.

He sucked in as much air as he could, and kept inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling.

Chapter Nine

Julie arranged a little memorial service in May, just for close family and a few friends.

They had no body to bury—it had officially been stolen, according to McGuane, and they suspected the killer himself had some access to the morgue that they’d been trying to pinpoint.

Julie felt for the children’s sake, at least, there needed to be a service. She got Father Joe from Mel’s church, St. Andrew’s, to run through a liturgy just because Mel insisted on something religious, and Hut’s parents had made it for the weekend, and her mother had brought her boyfriend, and even two of Livy’s teachers had shown up.

Hut’s mother and father flew in, and when Julie had a moment alone with Joanne Hutchinson, she asked her about Hut being an orphan ’til he was in his mid-teens.

“Steve wanted a son badly,” she said. “I can’t tell you what it was like for us. We had tried to have children for years. And then when our son died. Our first boy. Before Jeff.” She called him “Jeff,” not the nickname, “Hut,” that Julie had only known him by. Even hearing the word, “Jeff,” sounded like a different person. She could imagine him as a sweet kid. Helpful. Generous. “Well,” Joanne said, “when the opportunity to take him in—Steve had been working with Big Brothers, and then got a call from a friend about some group home for kids who had been orphans all their lives…well, something got in us. It was like a gift from God, we thought. Steve loved working with teenage boys. He loved teaching them, and guiding them. He’s a man’s man, I guess, and he loves camping out and woodworking, and getting out with a football. Well, when he heard about Jeff’s situation—about having lived as an orphan his entire life—he insisted we adopt him. Steve was raised in foster care. He knew the routine. When they met, they bonded immediately. You couldn’t keep them apart.” As she said this, Julie felt that Joanne Hutchinson was leaving something out. But it wasn’t the time or place to ask. Yet, Julie got the distinct sense that Joanne had something more to say about Jeff.

Before they left on Sunday, Julie managed to get a few minutes with Joanne alone, while her husband was showering in their hotel room.

“I’m sorry to even bring this up,” Julie said. “But there’s so much about Hut I didn’t know.”

“He was quiet about his life, wasn’t he?” Joanne said.

“I know this is a strange thing to bring up now, but when you adopted him, did you know much about where he’d been?”

“Somewhat. He had been in a group home for a year or so at that point,” and then the tone of her voice changed—as if Joanne had guessed what this was about. “You mean the fire.”

“Fire?”

“He never told you,” she said.

“No.” But even as she said this, Julie remembered his nightmares. He didn’t have them often, but he had woken up more than once, early on, in the middle of the night, soaking the sheets with sweat. All he would tell her was that he had dreamed of something that happened when he was a boy, but he had never let her beyond that wall.

“I can’t say I’m surprised. It must have been awful. He had been trapped in a building when a fire broke out—that another student had set—perhaps a year before we adopted him. He got out in time, but some of his classmates died. He wasn’t burned, but had to spend time in the hospital for smoke inhalation.”

“His asthma,” Julie said.

“Yes, that and those night fears he had.”

The mention of “night fears,” reminded her of Hut, waking up in the middle of the night as if he were a Viet Nam vet experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome. He’d nearly leap out of bed, and not be sure where he was. But it had only happened once or twice.

“Was it some kind of government program he was in, as a boy? Some special school that tested him?”

“I’m not really sure. He got a good education, though. He was smart as a whip, and was a lot smarter than either of us,” Joanne said. “Sometimes, well, sometimes it was like he knew what I was thinking. He was perceptive. My goodness, he probably told you more than he ever told us. He never talked about those years. We loved him so much, Julie. More than was probably healthy for Steve. When our son turned away from us…well, it’s all in the past. None of it really matters, does it? He was our son, we loved him. Please, let’s not lose touch.”

Julie hesitated asking the next question, but felt she had to, even though it seemed a betrayal of trust with Hut. “Can I ask you something that might be painful?”

“Go ahead.”

“Did your husband beat Hut?”

Silence on the line. Then, Joanne said, “Julie, why would you ever get that idea?”

“Hut said…”

“That’s disgusting,” Joanne said. “That’s the most obscene thing you could say to me. And now. Now. With Hut dead. No, his father never laid a finger on him. That man loved him to distraction. Even when Hut did bad things—boy things, I suppose. Even when Hut…well, that’s all in the past. But my husband gave him everything he had and then some. His father is the kindest, gentlest soul on earth, Julie. How…dare… you.”

The Hutchinsons were only in for the service and the weekend, and they were on a flight back home before Julie could talk to either of them again.

Julie let some things go. She just couldn’t deal with housework, and she had the cleaning service come through that Mel had recommended, although every now and then, she let a week slip by and the laundry piled up and she’d see Matt wearing the same T-shirt for four days in a row and it wouldn’t bother her one bit and it didn’t seem to bother him, either. Sometimes, she forgot to load the dishwasher, and too many nights, they ordered from Domino’s or went to McDonald’s or called up Chinese Gardens for carry-out. Sometimes she cooked eggs for breakfast and left the pan on the stove and forgot about it. She accepted these minor infractions. Post-traumatic stress, she told herself. Shock. Death. Murder. The news of war overseas made her depressed, so she stopped watching anything but The Simpsons reruns and Judge Judy, as well as the collection of DVDs that they’d amassed—mainly rewatching screwball comedies from the 1930s and forgetting that there were too many half-used glasses of milk and soda and water sitting around in the rec room because the kids forgot to take them up and wash them out. She didn’t let it bother her, even when she noticed. The cleaning service might take care of it. Or they might not. Her mind was elsewhere. She did gain a great sense of accomplishment from working through two entire New York Times crossword puzzle books before June first, a record for her. She had avoided putting Hut’s things into storage or even sorting through all of his clothes that month. Sometimes, she just sat with his Burberry’s raincoat and looked at it as if trying to find him there. Livy now had her own therapist and felt completely like a princess because of it. Julie began wondering if Livy liked having her night frights just so she’d have something to talk about. But she’d been making a lot of progress since seeing Dr. Fishbain over in Ramapo Cliffs once a week. Mel had split up with her boyfriend and was thinking of buying her first house—at forty-one—not far away. Matt had kept to himself and refused the offer of therapy, and Eleanor had suggested that Julie just not push him on anything yet.

Between days back at work (three days on, ten-hour shifts, with Laura Reynen and Mel both helping with the kids), her three hours per week with her current therapist (because she needed three hours or more to get out everything that was going on in her mind), she had managed to keep moving, although somewhere in there she’d gained twelve pounds and so had started the Atkins Diet (lasted two weeks, but cheated the whole time), then the South Beach diet (maybe three weeks, against sneaking forbidden foods at two a.m. when thoughts of life and death sent her to the fridge) and settled into a modified version of those two diets with a little Weight Watchers and Dr. Phil on the side, and then a two mile walk every morning, and a jog twice a week with her sister. For some reason, giving a damn about the quick weight gain had gotten her out of the house and focused on something other than sorrow. She was moving forward, intentionally, away from death and Hut and murder and the ideas forming in her head about what life was about and why it should be lived at all. But the night fears continued— the dreams, the wakings, the sense that someone was there with her. She accepted a degree of insomnia, and afternoons turned into evenings too quickly, and she had to work to notice her children because it was as if her mind were clouding over real life and pushing her into the territory of dreams.

McGuane drove over to the house once or twice, for more questions, but Ben, her lawyer, suggested that she not answer much until he could explain how a body got lost or stolen in the morgue. Once, she saw McGuane sitting out in his car, on the street, looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to get out or not. Finally, he drove away.

One afternoon, by herself, Julie drove over to the break in the woods where the gravel path went up to the place where Hut had been murdered.

She felt a little scared, but parked the car, got out and went up the path. It was a beautiful day, and the birds were making a racket in the trees. She felt as if she were walking to his true grave.

When she reached the plateau with its clearing, she glanced about. It was just land. It was just nature. There was no sign that someone had been murdered there.

No marker.

“Goodbye, Hut,” she said out loud. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry we couldn’t die together someday when we were old and ready for it. I’ll take care of Matt and Livy and make sure they never forget their father. I know I never will.”

And then, she walked back down the path to the car.

“You look good,” Mel said as they jogged the perimeter road along the lake.

“It’s all the dirty dreams,” Julie said, huffing and puffing as she tried to forget the slight pain in her left shin.

“That usually does it for me.”

“I dreamed the other night that three strange men were just licking my toes. I felt kind of dirty, but I woke up laughing.”

“That’s so filthy it sounds almost clean,” Mel laughed. “They call that a shrimp job.”

“What?”

“Toe sucking.”

“Shiver me timbers,” Julie said. “I’ll never order a shrimp cocktail again. I never had dreams like this before. It’s a little disturbing.” They came to a stop when they reached the small strip of brown beach at the lakefront along the dip in the road.

Mel lit up a cigarette. “Better toe-licking dreams than the kind where you’re falling off a cliff, sez me.”

Julie chuckled, catching her breath, trying not to remember the bad parts of the dreams. “I had one dream where…well, I kid you not, I was watching a man having sex with a woman, and when he, well, you know, when it got down there, three uncircumcised penises came out of her…between her legs.”

“Oh my God,” Mel said. “That is the single most perverted thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you see a therapist. And the best part is they’re uncircumcised.” Mel sucked back on the cigarette, and then exhaled a smoky laugh. “I never have dirty dreams. I wish I did.”

Julie decided not to tell her sister that the man in the dream was Hut, and the woman was some red-haired young woman she’d never before seen except in a video of Matt’s. Instead, she said, “God, this is the first day I’ve really smelled how good summer is. I can smell jasmine and honeysuckle. And the lake. Even it stinks good. I haven’t noticed much of anything in weeks.”

“You’re getting back to life,” Mel said. “That’s great. I was getting a little worried. Now, tell me another dirty dream.”

By the middle of June, she had received the first life insurance check, and it had a lot of zeros after the three. She hated looking at that check, but she needed the money and thought how wonderful Hut had been to get such a major policy even when she had argued against it. She cried thinking about this, and felt guilty for not being a good enough wife, and that ate up a large chunk of a day. The check took care of some immediate problems, including paying off most of the mortgage, and since she felt the kids should have her for the summer, she called in some favors and got a few months leave—until at least the end of September—so that she wouldn’t be in the ER. She hadn’t really accomplished much in her few days back at work since Hut’s death anyway—they’d put her behind a desk and everyone had just watched her like she was the living dead. Livy still had nightmares about seeing someone in her room, and Eleanor told Julie it was perfectly normal for a little girl to have dreams like that after losing her father. “I bet you’ve had some nightmares, too,” Eleanor said in one of their therapy sessions.

In July, in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, in her therapist’s office, Julie leaned back, sinking into the cushy chair.

Eleanor had that look of God on her face. Julie thought of it as “God,” because Eleanor projected a calming presence that made Julie want to open up about everything. She was a beautiful, radiant woman—overweight, but her girth only added to the Mother Earth aspect of her personality. She had once told Eleanor that she reminded her of her mother—a younger version of her—and Eleanor had said, “We can work out that problem if you want.”

The office was decorated in muted beiges and browns, and always smelled of herb tea. It was the most relaxing place that Julie knew—a genuine refuge when she needed to work out problems.

“I feel like I’m bad because I want to find things out.”

“Why do you think that’s bad?”

“He’s dead. He was killed. My mind can’t wrap around that and still wonder if he loved me.”

“Did you love him?”

Julie nodded. “I want him back so bad. I really do.”

After she’d wiped the tears from her eyes, Julie said, “But I never really knew him. I thought I did. But I just don’t think I did at all. There were those things that went unspoken. Those things I just ignored.”

“You think he was unfaithful?”

Julie nodded. “But he’s dead now. So it shouldn’t matter.”

“He may not have been. He may have been. Why do you need to know now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. You just can’t say it yet.”

“No, I really don’t know.”

“Marriage is based on trust, and what that means, really, is the opposite. You have to put blinders on to get through it sometimes,” Eleanor said.

“My mother used to tell me that all men cheat.”

“Your mother would only know that for certain if she’d slept with every married man on the planet, Julie. Are you really concerned that he was cheating on you, now that he’s dead? Or is there something else?”

“You knew him. There was always something… unspoken…his first wife…” Julie began, fumbling for words.

“Amanda had problems that had nothing to do with Hut,” Eleanor said. “Her violence didn’t come out of her marriage to Hut, Julie. She had a long history from childhood, and what was going on with her at the point they divorced had everything to do with Hut wanting to protect his son. You are going through the grief process. Stage by stage. It seems like you’re right on schedule. Didn’t you read the Kubler-Ross I gave you? Allow yourself some time. Understand that sometimes ideas float around after a violent death takes place, ideas in the head of the surviving family members, not all of which are meaningful. But they may just be ways that we all work out the shock. I would guess you’re experiencing dreams.”

Julie nodded.

“Some good, some bad, some terrible.”

Julie closed her eyes. Trying not to remember the dream where the man on the shiny metal table in the morgue opened his eyes. “A dream here or there.”

“All right,” Eleanor said, leaning forward slightly, chin in hand, her God look in full glow.

“Just little things. Memories.”

“Any of them that make you angry?”

The white-blue skin of the dead man who could not be Hut.

Eyes opening.

Just milky-white eyes.

Looking up at her.

Down there.

His tongue thrusting between her legs.

“Sometimes.”

“Does Hut hurt you in the dreams?”

“No. No, nothing like that.” Julie could feel that she was blushing.

“Oh,” Eleanor said, reading her. “Sexual dreams. What gives birth, also takes life. Tell me about them.”

Julie nodded. “Really filthy ones. Like in porn movies.” She quickly added, “Nothing like our sex life. Which was good. It was fine. But this is like, I don’t know, cartoon sex. Ridiculous sex. Multiple…organs. Sex with women, sex with men, sex with…well, it’s all disturbing to me. I’ve never had dreams like this in my life.”

“You told me once, a while ago, that you didn’t think you were much of a sexual person.”

“I’m not. I’m just not. I never was. My sister is. She got the horny genes. Me, I just like it now and then if I really care for someone.” Her voice trailed off a bit, as if sorrow had returned with this thought.

“Sex and death are often intertwined in our consciousness,” Eleanor said. “Erotic dreams after the death of someone close to us…well, it’s not that strange. The French call the climax petite mort. Little death.”

“I’m not even sure I could call these dreams erotic. There’s this sort of cartoony surreal element to them,” Julie said. “Sometimes…” The milky-white eyes. The shiny maggoty-white skin.

“Sometimes?”

“Sometimes…it’s just surreal.”

“Your mind is going to work out all kinds of issues, Julie. Expect it to. You’re lucky it’s coming through as erotic. I had a patient once who dreamed his brother slit his throat. After his brother died. Just slit his throat with a knife.” As Eleanor spoke, Julie shut her eyes. She imagined Hut coming toward her, as Eleanor’s words created an image in her mind, “Just slit his throat. Every night, for fourteen weeks he had this dream. Imagine.”

That evening, after the kids were in bed, Julie played some of Matt’s videos on the computer in the den, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hut and the family they’d once been.

The rain slashed the dark sky beyond the den window, a summer storm that was the last of a hurricane that had hit far out to sea, far beyond northern New Jersey, beyond Rellingford, a storm elsewhere, leaving heat flashes in the sky and a downpour to cool off the muggy evening. There was something comforting about the harshness of the weather. Julie clicked the mousepointer around until she found Matt’s video files. There were nearly a hundred of them, and she kept opening and closing the videos, depending on what they showed. The past year or so of Matt’s life flashed by:

Matt and Livy at the lake. Livy splashing around the shallow end of the pool with her friends, while Matt’s voice goaded her on to make bigger splashes.

Matt videotaping Livy trying to practice the piano— playing a little song called “The Bluebells of Scotland,” and when she hit a wrong note, she turned to the camera and said, “You’re making me mess up.”

One day, out on the canoe with all of them stuffed in, Julie sitting at one end, the kids in the middle, and Hut at the other, steering. The lake was brownish, and the sky was dazzling blue. Julie’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail that stuck through a tan baseball cap. Hut had taken his shirt off, and his hair was slick from sweat, and his skin had turned a light brown.

Matt kept surprising Livy with the camera: “I see you!”

“Shut up.”

“Livy, do not talk to your brother like that.”

“Yeah, squirt.”

“Don’t call me squirt.”

“Okay, squishy.”

“Matthew, let’s not do this. Don’t tease her.”

“He’s teasing me.”

And then, Matt had finished this brief video with a shot of his father passing him a can of Coke and saying, “Come on, kiddo, enough with the Spielberg act for now.”

Julie clicked on other videos. There was a series of strange ones, and she wondered if Matt might be getting artsy with the camera. A static shot of a beautiful house on a lake—maybe the lake in Rellingford, or one of the ones nearby. The house was glassed in on one side, reflecting the woods and the water. It was just a minute of a house.

Another was a shot of a chair. Nothing special about the chair. Just a wooden chair. When Julie looked closer, she saw there was a bit of rope on the floor, beneath the chair.

Another video was of a wasp’s nest. Must’ve been in the eaves of their house. It was like a small gray curled hand, with holes in it. The camera kept going in and out of focus as Matt got closer to the nest. Then, the tip of his finger touched the edge of the papery nest, and quickly withdrew.

A small yellow wasp came out, its feelers vibrating. Then, a video that disturbed her, although she chalked it up to childhood fascination with the forbidden. It was just a dead dog, in the road, hit by a car, apparently. Matt had kept the camera on the dog’s body.

As she flipped the videos on and off, she began to dread some of them—he had filmed her sleeping once. From the light through the bedroom window, it must’ve been early morning.

Matt touched the edge of her cheek with his hand, and then quickly withdrew it.

The face of the sleeping Julie flushed a slight red, as if the warmth of his hand had caused a reaction.

In another one, Matt had simply filmed himself, in the hall mirror. He looked as if he’d worked himself into some kind of frenzy—his face was pale and shiny with sweat, his eyes were encircled with dark smudges, and he began touching his face all over as if checking to see if there were something wrong.

One of the videos had Matt talking to a girl at school, roughly his age. Where were they? It might’ve been the bathroom. The walls were green, with some light from a nearby window. She was pressed against the wall, and he kept closing in on her face with the camera. She had tears in her eyes. “Don’t make me,” she said. “Please don’t make me.”

Julie turned it off. Sat there, stunned. Didn’t know what to think. She glanced at the clock on the wall—it was nearly eleven.

After several more of these brief video clips, she found the video that had the woman in it.

The woman in the city.

She was young, and she was beautiful, and she looked like the kind of woman in her twenties who would make Hut happy.

Julie felt an insane kind of jealousy. She hated the woman. She wanted to know who she was. She felt she must be losing it if she thought a woman who happened to be at the edge of a video that her stepson had shot might be a woman who had been seeing her husband.

But still, her blood boiled a bit when she saw the redhaired woman, and her mind began imagining things.

She used the close-up feature to try and get a better look at the red-haired woman. Had she seen her before? She didn’t think so. Surely this was just a stranger who happened to cross the street at the moment Hut had asked Matt to put down the camcorder.

Then, she replayed other videos of the city trips on Boys’ Day Out. She saw the street again. Rosetta Street. She wasn’t sure where that was. Why would Hut and Matt be walking down that street more than once or even twice? Four times, over four or five months? Winter to spring?

Then, on the edge of one of the digital videos, she thought she saw a flash of red. She hit the close-up button, and zoomed in. The woman? Was that her face? It looked like it. It might’ve been just some other person with red hair. But it looked like the woman.

She went back to the first video that Matt had watched when she’d arrived. The Chelsea Market. Matt and Hut coming out, the camcorder capturing a moment when Hut took a sip from the white cup of coffee.

Just over Hut’s shoulder, a handful of people. She had thought they were waiting for a bus or just talking at the corner with each other.

The woman with the red hair was there, too. This time, without sunglasses. She was a bit indistinct, even in close-up. But she had glanced over to Hut and Matt and the camcorder’s unerring lens just before Matt turned the camcorder off.

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Mel asked. They went out for a brisk walk in the late afternoon sunshine, while Laura looked after the kids for an hour. They were walking along the road in front of the house, then headed down the hill toward the lake.

“I can’t. You know how he is. I just don’t want to nudge him.”

“Nudge him?”

“Push him. I saw some of his videos. Some are all sunny and bright and happy. But a few are just…strange. And he filmed me sleeping. And the one of his classmate. I don’t know. It seemed…intrusive. Like he was making her do something.”

“You’re reading too much into it, Jules. For all you know, that was a drama assignment. Or it was something completely innocent. You won’t know unless you ask him.”

“All right. All right,” Julie said, clenching her fists as she walked. “But those other tapes. In the city. Seeing that woman.”

“Maybe you’re looking for things to make yourself feel better about it,” Mel said, her voice having a curious edge to it as if she were hiding something.

Julie stood still. Mel walked a few paces behind her, then turned around. “What?”

“What did you mean by that?” Julie asked.

“Nobody would blame you. It’s overwhelming to me that Hut’s gone, too. That some psycho kills him in the woods not five miles from his home. But you have got to set your mind in balance, fast, Julie. You have two kids who are depending on you. Who need you badly. I’m sorry to put it this way. I am. But you have to pull it together, slap yourself awake and forget anything you’re afraid of from the past and move forward. You want to see a therapist? See a therapist. You want to take a month off work? I bet the insurance will kick in and give you summer off if you want it. But you have got to get yourself together and not dwell. That’s the best I can put it.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘feeling better about it.’ About what?”

“Hut. Being gone. Maybe if you think he was cheating on you, somehow you can deal with it.”

“This is not Little Julie weaseling out of anything,” Julie said. “This is not me at ten years old not wanting to deal with mom and dad’s divorce, Mel. I loved him. I loved him. I will never love any man like that again. I miss him. I ache at night knowing that I won’t ever wake up beside him again. I am torn down the middle when I have a dream about him. I have to fight to keep from crying when Livy comes to me in the middle of the night because she wants me to help get God to send him back to us. I have to look her in the eye. She has nightmares three nights a week that a ghost is coming for her. She is seeing a psychiatrist, for God’s sake. My six-year-old daughter. And Matt. Oh my God, Mel, Matt. I have to keep him from hurting himself and maybe anyone else. I have to keep him safe when his own mother would not. And I have to tell them that life is still good. That it’s still worth something. Even if I don’t feel it inside. Even if I’m not sure it’s true. I’m not sure there’s good in the world. I’m not sure that this life is worth living. I’m not sure that if the man I love can be torn from me by some—some obscene insane fucked-up human being who the police can’t seem to catch—that I can look at my children and say, ‘God loves you. The world is God’s creation. We have a wonderful life.’ I’m not sure I can ever, ever believe that. And I won’t lie to them. But I want to know who Hut was. I want someone else to tell me what I didn’t know. I want to feel that life is worth living. Do you understand me? Do you? Can you?”

Mel had a blank look on her face. Nothing had registered. “Julie. It’s been months. It’s not like you have this luxury life. Your kids need you. I’ll help out. But don’t dwell on every little unsolved mystery of his life. He was a man. No one is perfect. You loved him. You have a beautiful daughter. She needs you like she’s never needed anyone before. You’re never going to find out if he cheated on you. He’s dead. Think of Livy. Put her first, and things will fall into place. I’m not sure that therapist is doing you any good. If you want to talk to a minister or priest…”

Julie felt an overwhelming desire to explode at her sister, but instead turned around and walked back up the hill toward her house.

She went up to her bedroom, shut and locked the door. She called the phone number she’d found in Hut’s jacket so many months before she couldn’t remember which month it had been. It felt disloyal to his memory to call it, but she reasoned that if he had been having an affair—which, with the distance of his death and the perspective she’d gained from becoming a widow, suddenly, in a violent circumstance—maybe it was partly her fault, too, maybe she was too involved with the kids and the ER and the idea of them as a couple instead of what he needed with all the stress he had at the clinic. Maybe it was just the nature of men. “All men cheat,” her mother had warned her before she’d married. Perhaps it was true.

Mel’s wrong. It won’t make it easier. I don’t want Hut gone. I don’t want to believe he’s gone. I just want to know something. Something true about him. Even if it was that he wasn’t in love with me anymore. Even if it’s bad news.

She whispered it aloud, as she thought it, “I don’t want to lose him yet.”

She gasped. She hadn’t realized how overpowering the unspoken feeling had been.

Maybe no one will pick up.

She would tell the red-headed woman—whether real or imaginary—that Hut had died. That they’d both loved him. Blah blah blah, she’d say, being a wonderful and generous and forgiving widow.

Hang up, Julie. Just hang up the phone. You don’t need to know who she is. You don’t need to find out.

Someone picked up the phone on the other end.

Julie felt herself choke up. She couldn’t even say, “Hello.”

On the phone, the person who had picked up said nothing, but Julie heard breathing.

Julie waited a few seconds, glancing out to the golden afternoon beyond her window.

The breathing quieted, and then she heard a woman’s voice whisper, “It’s her.”

Then, the dial tone.

Julie tried calling back again, but the line was busy.

Then, she tried again. This time, again she heard the breathing.

“Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?” she asked. She heard a faint echo, as sometimes happened, and it pained her to listen to her own stressedout voice coming back at her, “Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?”

She closed the phone, and set it down and began weeping.

Chapter Ten

The next day, she tried the number again, but it was disconnected.

Julie got an email from her mother:

Dear Juliet,

Melanie told me about the cops and the psychic stuff, and I don’t know if you knew this, but there were programs, sponsored by our own government, for special schools and testing projects for children who showed psychic ability. Maybe Hut was one of those? There was a fire at one, in Chelsea, in 1977. Seven children died. Four instructors. It was an off-shoot of the Manhattan Psychical Research Institute, but was funded by tax dollars. I found all kinds of stuff online about it. What are the odds? Also, if Livy keeps having nightmares, you might want to get her another nightlight. That might help. Tell her that Gramma loves her.

Love, momma.

Julie sent an email to Mel:

Mel—

Please don’t encourage Mom with anything you hear from me about Hut and the murder. She now is Googling search engines to find out every psychic program in existence to prove her point that Hut was psychic. The Horror Show that is our mother is set loose upon me and I want it to stop. SOS.

Then, from Mel, she got this:

Julie—

I didn’t know any of this was off-limits. I’ll call mom off you. But do you think she’s right? She told me once that Hut told her that she needed to get her brakes fixed, and how would he have known that? Maybe he was psychic.

Love, Mel

Julie shot off another email to Mel:

Mel—

Stop it. It’s upsetting me. Yes, he had those little intuitions, but he was an intelligent, welleducated man, and many people could guess that a woman who drove a twenty-year-old car and never took it into the shop might want to get her brakes checked.

Between you and McGuane and mom, you’d have Hut involved in some conspiracy theory with UFOs. You don’t believe in psychics, do you?

Jules.

Mel wrote back:

Julie—

Sometimes, I believe in just about everything.

Open mind, sez me.

Mel

Then, one from her mother that sent her over the edge:

Dear Juliet,

I found this online. Did you know that between 1970 and 1995, the U.S. government spent more than $20 million on research about psychics? They called it “remote viewing,” and it was to find weapons and bunkers in wartime, during the Cold War and after. They set up testing programs here. New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago. I can send you a link to the article if you want. Why don’t you ask his parents if he had any psychic aptitude? Or maybe I can research some more. You know, I belong to a group that meets sometimes. They know about psychic stuff more than I do. I could call Alice in New York. She worked on that psychic hotline. I bet she’d know something. Let me know. I always knew Hut had more to him than met the eye.

Julie deleted the email before she read the rest. Then, she just blocked her mother’s email address so that she’d get no more emails from her.

In early August, Julie Hutchinson got a call from Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore in the city. She had forgotten all about the book—time had both stood still to some extent and had flown, and between the legal wrangle she’d been dealing with, and getting the kids to settle in to a normal day without their father, then out of school for the summer, and balancing her work with her therapy sessions, the last thing she’d been thinking about was a book she’d ordered in some kind of fugue state after Hut’s death.

“What’s it called?” she asked on the phone. “The Life Beyond. It’s by the TV psychic. Michael Diamond,” the clerk told her. “It’s been hard to get in stock because the publisher went under, plus he’s pretty popular with his cult audience.”

The call about the book somehow pulled her back.

Before she drove into the city, she took the manila envelope out again, pouring its contents onto her bed. She lay next to them—wallet, watch, keys. Flipped through each key and could name them all—but two.

Two keys, one to a doorknob, one to a deadbolt. Two keys, one with the name of a building in

Manhattan engraved lightly into it.

The other, with a number: 66S.

Sixty-Six-S. Sixty-Success. Sixty-Sex-ess.

She had not ventured into New York City since her

third visit to the precinct where McGuane had met her. Not for at least two months.

“Are you a fan?” the clerk asked, as she passed the package over the counter to Julie.

“I’ve never heard of him. My mother recommended I read it.”

“Oh,” the clerk said. “I thought you might believe in that kind of stuff.”

Julie glanced at the bag, then looked inside at the book. “He’s a psychic?”

The clerk nodded. “I can’t tell if he’s real or it’s all bullshit. He does readings with people on TV. Sort of like John Edward or James Van Praagh, or—what’s that woman’s name? Sybil something. When I was a little kid it was Jeanne Dixon. Like them. Only not quite the same. His books never really go over big, but he’s got that loyal following. His show’s on really late at night— maybe at one in the morning, on cable. I guess he’s not that popular. I saw the show maybe once. Usually the people who buy his books always look a little sad to me. But you don’t.”

“My mother,” Julie grinned, shaking her head lightly. “Now she’s the gullible one. She believes in practically everything.”

Then, she glanced at the display of books near the cash register. One seemed to jump out at her. “Oops, there’s another one I want to get.” She leaned over, and pulled the book off the shelf. Then, she slid it onto the register’s counter.

“Oh, I love his books,” the clerk said. “He’s very funny.”

“I’m an old friend of his,” Julie said, smiling. “And this one, too,” she added, grabbing a trade paperback off the counter. “I might as well buy up the whole store.”

“Be my guest,” the clerk said as she rang up the purchases.

It was a blisteringly hot, humid day, and she wore a skirt that felt too revealing, but without hose and wearing sandals and a light top, she felt less as if she were going to melt on the sidewalk. She strolled over to Washington Square Park, and went to one of the green benches along its outer rim, brushed off the dirt with the edge of her hand, and sat down. The place was nearly empty, and there was something comforting about it. She opened the bag, and drew the books out.

The first one was by Joe Perrin, her old pal, and she turned to the back to see his picture. He had used one from his late 20s—he had an ordinary niceness to him, and hair that was a little too long and fell over his left eye in a Veronica Lake send-up. She grinned, thinking of him laughing at using the picture. The credit for the photo was Alicia Caniglia. Julie wasn’t certain, but she thought she might’ve been there when Alicia snapped the picture. She recalled a day down in Battery Park, along the waterfront, and Joe saying he wanted to capture his youth while he had it so that when he became a famous writer, strangers would lust after him.

She missed him a lot, just looking at the picture, remembering days like that, of dreams of the future. Dreams of what was around the corner, of what could change in their lives, in the twinkling of an eye. She read the bio:

Joe Perrin is a thirtysomething writer who lives in

New York City with his life partner, Rick Girardo, and a German Shepherd named Dutch. His first novel, A Perry Street Affair, was nominated for a Lambda Award, and his second novel, View from the Pier, was optioned for the movies. He is currently at work on his fourth novel.

She read the first line from Joe’s book, aloud but quietly, as if she could conjure his voice from it. “In 1873, a surgeon named Edward Whistler walked away from his family and children and his successful practice of medicine in London’s Regent’s Row, and caught a ship sailing for a small island in the South Pacific, and there, fell in love with a man named after a turbulent volcano.”

She could hear Joe’s voice in the words.

She savored the moment, and then closed the book, putting it back in the bag. She brought the second book out. This was a novel by one of her favorite writers, M.J. Rose, but she quickly put that one back in the bag, making a mental note to loan it to Mel first, who devoured her novels.

Then, the third book.

A white cover, and a man’s face. Michael Diamond looked like he had been a geeky kid who had grown up to put one over on a population of Americans who wanted to believe in anything, so long as someone made it all sound true. He was not cute, and he was not attractive in the least, to her, but there was something in his eyes—in the photograph—that intrigued her. She opened the book, skimmed the table of contents, Who I Am, The Spiritual Side of Life, Death Is A Gift, Cases of Speaking With The Beyond…

She flipped to the opening chapter: Exposing Lies, Seeking Truth.

From The Life Beyond:

I want to add a note here about phonies and grifters and con men who get involved in the schemes of the psychic world. I do not mean the well-meaning ones who believe they have ability. I’m talking about the ones who are getting rich by spreading a lie about the afterlife that they themselves know is false. Or at best, that they can’t possibly know. They are too good at their jobs, frankly. They’ll be on television or in front of an audience at some seminar, and they’ll be so good at what they do that one is hard-pressed to discover the trickery involved.

First, let me say, if there were a hell, they’d all burn there, in my opinion. Why? Because they’re giving false hope to people, they’re adding to the delusions people have, and they’re intentionally doing it. I won’t name names here, but you can guess who the culprits are. They can speak in front of an audience of a hundred or more people, and somehow, they manage to know family names, and seemingly secret things, about these families. The truth is, they usually have done their homework.

First, most people coming to see a psychic to talk to a recently passed loved one—or even someone who died years ago—are put on a waiting list to see the psychic. Why? Because the supposed psychic or his research team needs to find out about the people on his or her list. If you have a relative who died in the past, chances are there’s an obituary that can be tracked down. My own father died several years ago, and if you looked up his name online or through public records, you’d eventually find out that he was a Colonel in the Army, that he served in Viet Nam, that he worked in military intelligence and then as a liaison in Bosnia even in retirement. You’d know the name of his brothers, of his parents, of his children and even how he died, because contributions were made to the American Cancer Society. You’d know his date and place of birth. You’d perhaps have a handful of names to research further, too. The internet today is such that people can trace entire family trees going back centuries if they want to. How easy is that for a psychic? All the psychic has to do is spend thirty minutes or so researching one or two families who are showing up for his audience, and then he gets up in front of the audience and says, “I’m talking to someone who says he has a son here. He’s showing me something about—a helicopter? Or a plane? Some kind of military plane? I’m getting the sense that he was a soldier of some kind. An officer? But there’s something about Bosnia, too. Does this sound like anyone here?” And sheep that I am, I’d raise my hand and gasp and say, “It’s my dad!”

When in fact, it’s simply research on or off the internet, which anyone can access if they know how.

Why would I want to expose fake psychics? After all, there will be those who believe I’m a fake as well.

Here’s why: I believe it is the greatest human evil to delude a single human being with an idea that is known to be untrue. To play into another’s delusion is equally evil. But to make a profit from that, well, some might say it’s the American way, but I’d say it’s the antiAmerican way, and no one should give people like that their business.

When I was a boy, I was poked and prodded by wellmeaning people trying to understand why a kid of seven could predict the outcome of a card game ten times out of ten. Or how that same kid would be able to locate missing objects at a great distance. Or why that kid managed to understand what someone in contact with him had been thinking.

All I can tell you is: it wasn’t through practice. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a fancy way of cheating people out of their money.

It was a genuine talent, and based on my research, it’s an inherited ability. On my television show, I don’t pretend to talk to the ghosts of the dead. I don’t pretend to call up spirits and get them to tell Aunt Mildred that she needs to move on with her life.

I am not a mystic. If you want a mystic, go get another book. Find a guru to follow. Or a priest. I am not here to tell you about God. Or gods. Or Goddess. Or the Hereafter. The life beyond is about the life beyond the borders that you impose on your mind. It is about learning to tap into talent you may already have that has not been developed. The brain is the most underused muscle in the body, in my opinion. We lift weights, we do aerobics, we go for jogs, or we swim, but we do not take our mind and exercise it, stretch it, allow it to grow.

I was born with an ability. It may be like an ability you have—only you don’t know how to switch it on. It is not magical. It is not a religious experience. It is an aspect to human life that has been untapped for centuries because the very thing I most believe in—Reason—has decreed that anything that does not make immediate sense is impossible. Yet we know now, via science, of the sub-quantum realm of existence—of being able to divide molecular structures to the left, and find that similar structures to the right respond at the same time, though they are untouched. Is this magic? At one time, it was considered such. Soon, I suspect, it will be part of scientific inquiry.

The human mind is an untouchable realm. We can test it, zap it, watch it disintegrate, observe those who suffer from its disorders, recognize a first-rate mind, but the one thing that we have never been able to do is define its limits.

Well, my friends, there are no limits to the human mind. It is a frontier of infinite proportions. And it’s time we began exploration of it.

I mind hunt. And what that means is: I sit with people, I get to know them as quickly as possible, and I delve into their thoughts, briefly. Perhaps this is a molecular occurrence. Perhaps it’s simply a strong intuition. For me, it’s a talent. I would guess that 5% of the U.S. population has this talent. Perhaps it’s as low as 3%. I suspect a thousand years ago, it was a stronger talent in the population. I suspect that despite the cloud of superstition over the ancient world, one of the reasons for the miracle-makers, the professional fortune-tellers and witches, may have been that this talent existed in gene pools and among families, and predetermined a certain unusual life for the bearer of the talent.

I have known others with similar talents. I have worked beside them. To us, it is simply ordinary. It is not supernatural. It is no more remarkable than if one of us were left-handed, or red-headed, or had one eye flecked with blue and the other with green.

But I’ve yet to encounter a talent that could genuinely speak with the dead and the dearly departed. I believe, truly, that these are the phonies of the psychic world. I wish I could deliver kinder, gentler news than that.

Beware of these fakers and con-men. I want you to believe, but not in something that I tell you to believe. Never believe in dogma for which you must pay. If you believe it, if you have your faith, that’s your decision. But don’t accept the easily-paid-for delusions of another.

I want you to go on the journey of your life and find your own treasure.

Do I believe in the life beyond?

Perhaps. I am not all-seeing, all-knowing. I don’t make claims to fake authority. I am a seeker after wisdom and truth, as you are. I am living life as anyone would, but with an ability that arrived with me at my birth that might provide some insight for you, I hope.

But by naming this book The Life Beyond, I wanted to suggest the freedom each of us needs to feel from the chains of the past—whether the past is something tragic that occurred recently, or simply a template for all our future actions that needs to be modified so that we can change our future life. I do believe in spiritual awakenings. I believe in souls. I believe that there is something sacred about the threshold that exists between life and death. And I have been at the deathbed of people and have seen what mystics might call miracles, but what I would call natural phenomena when the soul leaves the body.

Where that soul goes is not within my field of understanding. I am not out to prove or disprove your God.

I truly doubt it is any human being’s understanding. To the religious, it may be the peace that passes all understanding. To the non-religious, it may be that the door that shuts us off from this life is enough to know for now.

As you continue reading my book, I hope you will travel with me on the journey of what I know from my psychic readings, from my experiences with remote viewing, and from my understanding of how to move from this life to what I hope will truly be, for you, the life beyond—beyond the petty anxieties, the wasted efforts, the small-mindedness of the everyday problems.

An interviewer once asked me: Do you believe in an afterlife?

I have to say: it’s not a matter of belief. I know there is one. For, centuries ago, men dreamed of flying, but could not. And now, they can fly. So that means that in dreams, we can see all that is possible. Nothing within the limits of the human imagination and mind is impossible. If it were, we could not imagine it or dream it.

But what is the afterlife? I haven’t yet been there— that I know of—but perhaps in exploring the human mind more fully, we can find the questions to ask of ourselves, of each other, as to where our journey continues, in the life beyond.

Julie closed the book. She put it back in the bag, and folded the edges over. A woman, across the park, elderly and with a large, mean-looking mastiff, walked slowly, taking deliberate steps, as if she might fall at any moment. A long-haired young man of about twenty or so played guitar near the fountain rim, two or three friends sitting near him, singing along.

Julie then felt inside her bag, for the keys. Finally, she went to find the building on Rosetta Street.

Chapter Eleven

She’d narrowed it down to the block in Matt’s videos, Rosetta Street, which was near Chelsea, but toward the water. With the heat turned up full blast, she was drenched by the time she wandered down to the end of the Village, and then just beyond it, made a left onto James Street, and then a right onto Rosetta.

She had that feeling of déjà vu—remembering Matt’s video, the cobblestone of the street—it was not quite as lovely as it had seemed in the video, for most of it was taken up with meat-packing plants, and there was that awful smell in the air of raw beef and something uglier. The sidewalks outside one of the buildings had just been hosed down. A few people walked along the opposite sidewalk, obviously using the street as a shortcut from one business meeting to another, or a lunch, or lives that she could only imagine.

Then she came to the sunken doorway of the building she had been dreading since she had first found the phone number and the keys.

She tried each key on the door of the building, but neither worked.

She sat on the edge of a stone pediment, just at the edge of the steps down to the front door.

She was about to leave, when a young overweight woman with a bundle of groceries stepped off the sidewalk, heading for the door. “Forget your key?”

“I’m apartment sitting.” Julie thought it up quickly. She held up the two keys. “A friend’s cat is inside there, very hungry at this point.”

The young woman looked at her warily. Too innocently, she asked, “Which apartment?”

“66S.”

“Ah,” the woman said. “I already put in a complaint about your friend. Last week it was like a herd of elephants were dancing up there. I hope you don’t mind my telling you. Nobody does anything about anyone here, and I’m tired of it.”

The smell in the building was like a pure blast of just-sprayed Lysol mixed with the undeniable warm bleachy odor of a nearby laundry room.

“This weather, can you get over it?” the woman said. “I hope fall is nice. Fall is usually nice for about three weeks. I could use those three weeks about now. Hell, I could use three days. I can’t stand winter and I can’t stand summer. I should just live in one of those plastic bubbles.”

The elevator was small, and she helped the woman with her groceries as she shut the blue door so that the elevator’s inner doors would shut properly. “I don’t want you thinking I normally call the super when anyone has a party. I don’t mind that kind of thing,” the woman said. “Parties or whatever. I mean, sometimes I feel like the people in 553 have a disco going on. It’s just that this was pretty bad. I was trying to sleep. I work weekends and the noise was bad. Press five, would you?”

Julie pressed the buttons for the fifth and sixth floors, and the elevator lurched, shook slightly, and then moved upward with a slight whine.

“Do you know the people in 66S?” Julie asked, hesitantly.

“This building is the unfriendliest in the city,” the woman said, with the kind of cadence that made Julie think she’d used this line before. “I don’t even know my next-door neighbors. But you know, sometimes that’s a good thing. God knows I hear them enough. And someone on my hall has the yappiest dog alive. I love animals, but not that damn dog.”

After the woman had stepped off the elevator, she turned slightly, smiling. “I’m not saying your friends are bad. They just get noisy sometimes.”

“A herd of elephants,” Julie nodded. “I’ll tell them to take their shoes off next time.”

“Oh ha ha,” the woman laughed. The elevator door shut again. The woman’s pale round face, her dark hair, were all that Julie could see in the round window of the outer elevator door.

Julie drew the keys out of her pocket, clutching them tightly.

At the sixth floor, she got out, fully expecting a long hall with many apartments, but instead, there were only six, 66S being the very last.

At the door, she pressed the key into the deadbolt, and it turned.

She drew the key out.

She hesitated a moment, and then rapped lightly on the door. Then, she pressed the bell.

She waited for what seemed an eternity before trying the other key on the knob. It went in easily, and she turned it.

She stood in the doorway.

The air conditioning in the apartment was on high, and chilly. She could see a foyer that was made up of closets on either side, and a narrow hallway. The apartment must be a fairly large one—that was her first impression. The walls were white and off-white. There was an unshaded window at the very end of the foyer, allowing a smattering of light through its casementstyle windows.

“Hello?” she asked.

She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She felt strangely comforted by the plastic bag with the book in it, beneath her arm. She felt as if she could just say that she thought it was someone else’s place, if caught. She could say something like, “I was given the keys—see? My husband gave them to me.” She felt her heart beating as if it were in her throat as she stepped across the floor. She took each step forward carefully, trying not to make a clicking sound with her sandals on the parquet.

When she got to the window, the apartment turned to the left, and beyond the wall that divided the foyer from the rest, it was enormous. It became a loft that seemed to be at least 2000 square feet or more, with exposed brick along one long wall, and a factory-like skylight above. It was oddly furnished—the lamps all seemed to be huddled at one end, while a broad leather sofa, love seat and two chairs were arranged alongside the far wall. The furnishings seemed years out of style, and pushed around as if intended for storage. Copper pots hung from the ceiling along the kitchen area, with a central marble island, and a bright rectangle of clean wall where the refrigerator should have been settled. There was a long butcher block table just under the enormous loft-length opaque window that was divided, factory-style, into several casements. A paleness to the room, as if it had not been dusted—or entered—for a long time.

For just a second, she thought she heard a noise behind her, and she glanced back for a second in case the woman who owned the apartment had come home— what the hell are you doing here, Julie?—but there was no one. She turned back around the corner of the hall, to the foyer, but no one had entered.

“Someone’s here,” she said aloud, as if it would make her feel safer.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

It was not her voice, within her mind, saying this.

She couldn’t identify it, but she had a sudden feeling as if someone nearby had whispered this.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

And then she smelled something. Something that became overpowering—not just a smell. A stench. It was the smell she knew from childhood when a dead animal had lain in a ditch for days. Her mind flashed on the image from Matt’s video of the dead dog in the road. It was growing—the smell was growing. She glanced at the walls of the apartment as if they held something threatening, as if she half expected to see bloody handprints.

Then she was sure she heard something move in the room beyond the living room. Someone was in the bedroom.

Something moved there.

She heard the tap, tap, tap of shoes on a floor. Someone was coming.

Her heartbeat seemed too noisy, as if it were not inside her at all, but outside of her body, a clock, ticking too fast.

The voice in her head grew louder, pounding within her mind: What the hell are you doing here?

She saw the shadow of the person, first, in the open doorway across the room.

Then, she saw: a man standing there, only something was wrong. Something was messed up about his eyes, because it was as if his face was a blur of movement.

Julie took one step backward, then another.

He stood in the doorway, his face a fast-motion blur, his hands moving in what seemed like slow motion.

Then, she turned and hurried down into the foyer, and out of the apartment, shutting the door behind her, not bothering to lock it. Her heart beat rapidly—it felt as if it were thudding against her ribcage—and she pressed her back up against the hallway, looking back at the apartment.

She didn’t feel safe again until she was out on the street, out among the throngs of people along Hudson Street, moving as if they were fish in a murky sea.

She went into the Chelsea Clearwater movie theaters, and just sat through a movie she barely noticed, trying to erase the image of the faceless man from her mind. Then she felt that maybe it had been her mind, playing tricks, that it had been her fear, within her, perhaps building something up—and she was sure that there was no man there at all. That it was like a flash of seeing someone. Not a person at all. It was impossible for it to have been a person.

“The human mind cracks more easily than we suspect,” Eleanor had told her, in her first session after Hut’s death. “You need to be aware of it. Your brain is opening and closing doors. Some of them get slammed. Some get torn off their hinges. You bottle up too much, Julie, you don’t find a healthy way to let some of this out, it’ll rupture inside you. Just be prepared for when it happens.”

She left the movie before the halfway point, and, feeling better, called up Joe Perrin, and they met over at the Starbucks on 8^th Avenue. She felt as if she’d calmed down, finally, from that awful feeling she’d had. That face that was not a face.

And finally, she told Joe about Hut’s death.

“Oh my God, Julie. Julie,” he said. He brought his chair around the small round table and wrapped his arms around her. She wept into his shoulder, forgetting the world of the coffeehouse, forgetting anything but the comfort he offered. “My poor baby,” he whispered.

Her tears dry, she drank some of the cappuccino. “God, you’d think I’d be all cried out by now. It’s been months.”

“Tears are one of those self-renewing resources. And it’s only been a few months. Healing takes time.” He pushed a small plate with a big black and white cookie on it toward her. “Hungee?” It was their joke word from years ago.

She broke off a piece of the cookie, and took a bite. “Mmm. Reminds me of all our adventures.”

“Most of which are best forgotten.”

“Oh, Joe. I feel…I feel like I’ve lost my soul or something.”

“Well, I think your soul’s intact. It’s your mind that’s a bit scattered.” He had his head down a bit and looked up to her with those warm brown eyes that seemed both playful and a little sad to her, like a boy playing peek-a-boo.

“I’m sorry I’ve been distant. All these years.”

“It’s okay. It’s only been a few years, really. I saw you when Livy was what—two and a half? It wasn’t that long ago. Life takes over,” he said. “Rick and I are practically hermits since we tied the knot. If he didn’t get me volunteering at the Center, I’d probably just live in my little office.”

“I bought one of your books today,” she brightened. She brought the package from Shakespeare & Company up, opening it.

“Ooh, which one?”

She drew out the book. Dr. Notorious. On the cover, the torso of a young man, and just a sliver of his chin.

“I hate that cover,” Joe said. “The book is about a guy in the 19^th century who goes to the South Pacific— after becoming sickened by European society, where he was a doctor. He falls in love on the islands, and then has to choose between his love for a man and his duty to his culture, to his family. And they put a twenty-yearold gym bunny right out of the New York City Sports Club on the cover to sell it. I could write a book about measles, and they’d put a cute guy’s butt on the front of the book. But, that’s show biz, as they say.”

“Speaking of show biz—you sold a book to the movies?”

“Sure. Everyone does. They pay you a few grand and you get to say maybe it’ll be a movie. But Hollywood is never making that movie, believe me. When my friend Chris Bram wrote Father of Frankenstein it got turned into the great movie, Gods and Monsters. Why? Because it’s a great story that people can relate to, whether it’s about being gay or not. Me, I sell them View from the Pier and they will never make that movie because no actor is going to want to play a guy who knows he’s gay, falls in love with a guy, and then stays in a marriage to destroy his wife and children and the guy he loves. It’s too…dark, I guess. Even my editor called it unsympathetic, and she liked it. You can’t make a movie about that and expect to sell tickets.”

“Sure they will. It sounds wonderful. Joe, I’m so happy for you, for all this. And I can’t wait to read this one. I haven’t kept up with your career as much as I should’ve.”

He shrugged. “It’s not exactly a career. What’s the other book?”

“It’s some psychic book. My mother pushed it on me, and in a weak moment I ordered it.”

“You believe in that stuff?”

“Not really.”

“I do,” he said. “Since my dad died. The day he died, I dreamed that he came to me and told me that he loved me. He had never said it before. Not in real life. He was a military bruiser, basically. He didn’t want to have a kid like me. Even when I was on the football team in high school, he thought I was too soft. He blamed mom’s family—because there was another gay guy—my uncle. He said it ran in families. But in the dream, he said he loved me.”

“Oh.”

“No, not ‘oh.’ When I woke up, I saw him. I saw him as clear as day. He was at the foot of my bed and he said, ‘I’m glad you found love, Joe. You have a lot to give. I love you, Jojo.’ And then, he faded.” His voice cracked a little, and she thought she caught a glimmer of a tear in his eye, but his smile belied any sadness. “Maybe it was, you know, a cobweb of wishful thinking. Or one of those hypnogogic things, where you’re still half asleep and a dream seems real even when you’re awake in your bedroom. But it was some kind of gift. I believe it. Maybe I choose to, because it makes it all easier. It didn’t change my core beliefs. But it showed me that there’s something else out there. Something we don’t yet understand. He was as real as you are, right here. I think maybe we have these kinds of experiences all the time, only we don’t know how much of a gift they are. And it made me remember all the good things. All the things about him I’d pushed aside because of our differences. All the wonderful things he had been to me, despite his worst nature.” Then, he gave her a look she thought of as his “wait a second!” expression. “You must’ve had some kind of…unusual experience…or you wouldn’t be picking up books on the afterlife, right?”

“No,” she said. Thinking of what she saw in Apartment 66S. The face that was not there. The blur of movement that was the figure of a man. Only not a man. But I am losing it now. I am seeing things that are not there. I won’t mention this to Joe. Not yet. He’ll look at me sweetly and sadly and tell me that it’s normal to see faceless men after a tragic death. “Nothing. I think mom wants me to feel better. She’s got the hots for this psychic.” She brought The Life Beyond out and showed the cover to him, with Michael Diamond on it.

“Oh, him,” Joe said. “He’s so serious looking, isn’t he? Like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. I guess I’ve caught his show a couple of times. He’s a complete fake. He has to be. His stuff is too good. When a psychic’s that good, there’s some trick going on. I don’t think psychic stuff is like a McDonald’s or something. I don’t think one psychic can serve a billion customers. I think it’s more personal. You should have a psychic reading sometime. They can be really good. I know this woman who does them. It’s not creepy at all, believe me.”

After coffee, they walked through the old neighborhood. Joe updated her on each window, who lived there before, who had moved, who was turning into the cat lady, who had become the Neighborhood Watcher, and what had happened to the little old man in the fedora who used to feed pigeons on the rooftop, thus pissing off everyone who lived on the block because of the increased birdshit on the street. They wandered over to a bakery that was renowned for its cupcakes, and split one, and then went over to another bookshop nearby, called Three Lives & Company. It was a small, quaint bookshop packed with books. “Remember this place?”

She drew a blank. “Sure.”

He made a face that she could only classify as dimwitted. “Julie. It’s where we met.”

“Oh,” she said, clapping her hands together. “How could I forget that?”

“Yeah, some strange chick coming up to me telling me that I shouldn’t read Mary McCarthy because she claimed she was a fascist, when in fact it was Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian I had in my hand.”

“I don’t know why I was so hard on Mary McCarthy. She wasn’t a fascist at all. I loved The Birds.”

“And I told you that Ayn Rand wrote books for humorless Sarah Lawrence girls who wanted to get laid but still feel smart afterward,” he said. “And then you said that I was sexist and probably racist and probably homophobic. And I said…”

“You looked at me as if I had just slapped you hard in the face and said, ‘I can’t be homophobic because I’m a homo,’” she chuckled. “Whatever happened to those two stupid young people?”

“I don’t know, but I read Atlas Shrugged all the time and it never helped me get laid,” he said.

Finally, he walked her to where her car was parked, and kissed her on the cheek. “You need anything, I’m here. Rick and I can be out in the ’burbs on a moment’s notice.”

“I thought you were anti-suburban?”

“For you,” he said. “I’ll brave the wilds of Jersey. I miss my old buddy. I miss you. I want to see Livy, too. And Matt.”

“We blocked you out, didn’t we?” she said, sighing.

“Not really.”

“No, we did. Hut didn’t like you. I guess I can say that now. I think he thought you were a threat in some way.”

Joe grinned, big and broad just like he was a wicked kid. “I am the all-powerful Oz.”

“I can’t throw all the blame on him. I went along with it. I should’ve fought. But I was busy with the kids, and I was busy with the house and my job. And I just let it all go.”

“Well, none of that matters. We kissed and made up. You’re my old buddy, Julie. And don’t read that Michael Diamond book. Okay? He’s full of it. Go get a John Edward book. Or even Sylvia Browne. She’s good. Diamond has something wrong with him. I’ve seen his show. He just gets pretty nasty. I don’t think he helps people at all. He does more damage than good.”

Another kiss, and Julie was in the car, and driving out to the Westside Highway, to the Lincoln Tunnel, and then, north up to Rellingford, the city vanishing as she entered the suburban wilderness.

“What do you know about this?” Julie asked, dropping the keys on the table between them.

Outside, with Matt, on the picnic table in the backyard.

“They’re keys.”

“Keys to an apartment on Rosetta Street. You used to go there with your father.”

“That’s crazy,” he said, looking up at her.

“Matt, I know this might not be easy for you. I know we’ve had our ups and downs. But I want you to tell me about this. It’s important.”

“Important to who?”

“To me.”

He didn’t look her in the eye. “You’re nosy.”

She glared at him. “Just tell me.”

“I feel sorry for you, Julie. I really do. Sometimes I hate you. But I feel bad for you because you’re too much like my mother. You stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

It stung when he said it. He’d never said anything like that to her before. He’s been through Hell. Cut him some slack.

“All right. Well, you can hate me. It’s okay by me. That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means: I don’t remember. Maybe Dad took me there. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“You mean you don’t want to tell me,” she said, trying to remain calm.

“God, you are such a fucking bitch,” he spat, his face suddenly going red. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten this over-the-top angry. She’d understood—from Eleanor and from Hut—that Matt had something wired in his brain that just didn’t stop him from taking things too far. Knowing that helped her deal with it. “Why don’t you ask my mother about those keys? Why don’t you fucking ask her? She knows everything. She’s the one who knows it all. Quit fucking bothering me.”

Julie leaned forward, touching the edge of his hand. “Oh, honey. You know I love you. You know I’m not trying to upset you.”

“You know I love you,” he mimicked. “Love love love. Fuck this. Just ask her.”

Julie sat there, stunned. She knew from her sessions with Eleanor that Matt needed to feel safe. That he needed to act out. That he needed to say things that might be hurtful sometimes. It’s part of what he’s dealing with. He’s working out past abuse from his time with his mother.

“Ask her. Ask her whatever you want. Just leave me the hell alone, bitch.” He swiveled around on the bench and got up, one last look of contempt shot her way, and then stomped off into the house.

Then, she heard him go on a rampage—something that Hut had only referred to from the past—one of Matt’s fits of rage.

First, the sound of breaking glass.

And then, shrieking as if he were hurt.

In therapy:

“I can’t convince you not to pursue this?” Eleanor asked.

Julie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“What do you think you will accomplish?” “Closure?”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m not. Matt won’t talk to me. Not right now. He’ll yell at me, but not talk. I haven’t heard him swear in a long time. I’m not a prude about language. But it shocked me. It was so…sudden.”

“Violent?”

Julie frowned, slightly, nodding. “I didn’t feel threatened. He broke a couple of plates. He tried to slam his fist into the wall. No real damage. He was fine ten minutes later, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Just turned sullen and quiet and I figured I needed to leave him alone for a while. It just seemed… out of the blue.”

“Anger is normal. You’re being very confrontational, Julie. You must acknowledge that. You know that Matt has limited resources within himself. Whatever happened when he was young can’t just go away. A lot is going on inside him, and his father’s death probably left him afraid that you’d abandon him, too.”

Julie raised her eyebrows slightly.

“I’m not here just to tell you what you want to hear. Look, give him a break. He’s had too much loss in his life. He’s probably afraid that you’ll give him up. You’re not his natural mother. With his father gone, it’s normal for him to have that kind of fear. Plus, you’re digging, and he doesn’t like it.”

“I feel it’s important.”

“To whom?”

“To me.”

“Why are you asking my permission for this trip?” “You’re my therapist.”

“I’m not your mother.”

“She wouldn’t sign my permission slip.”

“This woman has attempted suicide three times in her life. She has a history of violent behavior. God knows what she did to her son in that short period of time when she raised him, but I doubt she was a fit mother for a child. I just think you’re playing with fire here.”

Julie called the psychiatric center that afternoon and set up an appointment to see Hut’s first wife.

Chapter Twelve

The psych rehab center was just outside Philadelphia in a lovely suburban world (called Greenwood) that had a fringe of country to it. The area was surrounded by woodlands, and she barely saw it off the highway in time to make the turnoff onto Beacon Drive, and from there, to the gates. It looked like an old mansion that had been grafted onto a nursing home, and its bright neo-classic exterior with pergolas and balconies and colonnades belied the monastic sparseness of the interior of the building.

“She lives in West,” the clerk at the front desk said. “I need you to hand over that bag,” she pointed to the handbag. “Any keys, pens, anything sharp, too.”

Julie passed her handbag over. “My appointment was at three.”

“It’s all right. We know traffic can be bad. She probably just had a nap at this point. Go down through the double doors, elevator on right—the red elevator, not green—and take it to the third floor. Make your first left, two doors down is the social worker’s office. That’s Gigi Kaufmann. Gigi. She’ll take you to see her.”

The social worker was in her mid-fifties, wore thick glasses, and her hair, nearly white, was wrapped around her squarish face like cotton candy. She spoke in a loud whisper, reminding Julie of being a kid in a library. “She was doing great, up until the news in April. I’m afraid it caused her some agitation. But she’s better now, I think.”

“Is there anything I should know? A way I should talk?” Julie found herself whispering as she spoke.

The social worker strode down the hall as if she were in a hurry to get this over with. The halls were painted a muted pastel yellow, and they passed other patients’ rooms, which seemed uniformly dreary and white. A woman in bed, her hair a bird’s nest tangle of white, sat up and stared at Julie as if she’d brought bad news. Two men, orderlies, stood at the end of the hallway by the barred window, one sipping coffee, the other gesturing as if toward a third person who was not there.

“She’s not dangerous to anyone, if that’s what you mean,” the social worker said. “She’s really a model patient. The medication helps, of course. It grounds her in reality a bit. You’ll find her quite chatty.”

“Is there anything I shouldn’t mention? Any subject matter to avoid?”

The social worker grinned. There was something uncomfortable in the over-familiarity of the smile, like she was sharing a joke. “Well, all I can say is, don’t talk about sex. She has some hang-ups, as they say.”

Before Julie could figure out what that comment meant, they were at the doorway marked Amanda Hutchinson. The social worker stopped, checked the clipboard that hung next to the door, and scribbled something across it in pencil. Stuck her head through the open door and announced too loudly, “Hello, Mandy. We’ve got a visitor.”

“Come over here, sweet pea,” Amanda Hutchinson said, motioning with her hand. Her voice betrayed her southern accent, something that Julie was surprised hadn’t faded away over the years. Amanda had been born in Georgia, had moved with her family to New York when young, and somewhere in there had moved South again before moving back to Manhattan when she and Hut had been together as a couple. She sat in a cushioned chair, near the window. There were ornate scroll-like iron bars across the window, as if the institution wanted to disguise the fact that this was to keep patients from jumping, and instead, made it look like decorative art.

Julie noticed that mental illness had been kind to Amanda. She didn’t have the look of the others on the hall. She had retained her beauty—at forty—and her mane of jet black hair was shiny and neatly arranged around her shoulders. She wore a minimum of make-up, and her face was a pure white. She had the formal air of a deposed princess that Julie had remembered from a previous visit, before Livy was born. Although, back then, Amanda had been more heavily sedated, and the right meds had not quite been found for her, so she had looked haggard. Now, she positively glowed.

Julie stepped into the room. It smelled clean and fresh, with a faint pine scent lingering.

Amanda held her hand up. “Come on, I won’t bite, even though they say I do.”

Julie grinned, and went to her. Took her hand. “Hello, Amanda.”

Amanda squeezed her hand a little too tightly, and Julie felt intense heat in the palm of her hand. “Aren’t you just the picture of delicious? You got balls coming here, Mrs. Hutchinson Number Two. Big hairy balls.” She said it in a southern sing-song voice, like she was the mistress of some great plantation.

“Call me Julie. Please.”

“I like calling you Number Two Wife. I’m Wife Number One. Mother to the heir apparent. You’re just second in the harem.” She let go of Julie’s hand, finally. Julie noticed that there were faint scars on Amanda’s hands, as if a cat had scratched her up.

Amanda rubbed one hand over the other, unselfconsciously. She seemed to enjoy the attention. “Tell me, sweet thing, you have any contraband?” She said “contraband” like it had seven syllables, the honeyed southern thing growing a bit old for Julie. It felt like an act.

Julie tried to keep the slight smile plastered on her face, but it was getting difficult.

“I just mean cigarettes, dear gaw-ad,” Amanda said, “you look like you thought I was asking for cocaine or something.”

“Want me to go get you some?”

Amanda’s eyes twinkled. “He must’ve loved hearing you ask ‘How high?’ whenever he asked you to jump.” She motioned toward a wooden chair in a corner. “Pull that thing over. Just throw all the magazines off.”

After Julie scooted the chair closer to Amanda’s, she sat down and hesitated before saying, “I’m really glad you agreed to see me.”

“Why wouldn’t I? I have nothing to fear now. I’m dispatched like a Queen to the tow-uh. Look at all this,” she laughed, pointing to the TV set on the wall, and narrow bed. “I suppose I’ll be here until the day I die. I’ll be moved downstairs where the little old ladies push their walkers around and talk about how life turned out awful for them. But it’s better than being out there, out where the wild things roam.”

“You’re not in here against your will,” Julie said.

Amanda Hutchinson smiled, broadly. She looked down to Julie’s feet, then up her legs, her hips, her waist, her breasts, settling on her face. Julie remembered something that Hut had told her, about Amanda’s ambiguity. She had always thought he’d meant something to do with her indecisiveness, but now wondered if he hadn’t meant that she was bisexual. She certainly seemed to be checking her out the way crude men sometimes had in the past.

“I completely volunteered for this, believe me.” Amanda turned, and looked out the window: through the bars, the beautiful lawn and the neat rows of boxwoods around a central stone fountain. A bitterness entered her voice. “I have been diagnosed, my dear. It’s a diagnosis that keeps me safe in the Tower, away from the dreaded Executioner. I wonder if Anne Boleyn longed for the sword to the neck by the time she’d lived in the Tower long enough? I don’t. I don’t want my head to roll. I keep that one awful thing alive. That one terrible thing. Hope. Hope that maybe I’m insane and all these meds will help me. That these Tower walls will keep me safe.”

Then, she shot a sharp glance back at Julie. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Wife Number Two?”

“I thought maybe there’d be pieces of Hut’s life that you…well, that we could discuss.”

“How’s my son?”

“He’s doing good.”

Amanda gave her that cat-like look, as if she were playing with her. “I’m surprised.”

“He’s a…a wonderful boy.”

“That’s more of a surprise. I haven’t seen him since he was six. He was a pretty little boy. But he’s dead to me, isn’t he? Does he ask about me?”

“Sometimes.”

Amanda laughed, full-throated, with something malevolent in the sound. It made Julie nervous. “I bet it’s not good when he does. I bet he gets violent. I bet he curses my name. As well he should. I’m a monstrous mother.” She said this last part as if it was of no consequence. “He’s a little brain-damaged boy.” She watched Julie for a reaction. “I dropped him on his head when he was a baby. I suppose that’s what Hut told you. I beat him until he just got to be damaged goods.”

Julie was ready. She reined in her reaction. Don’t give her ammo. Julie fingered the edge of her chair. She looked at her own hands. At the ring on her left hand. Do not react to her poison. That’s what Hut had called it. Her poison.

“You knew Hut when he was young,” Julie said, slowly.

“We were kids. It was the last good time of my life. Under the age of twenty. After twenty, it was all downhill for me. Nervous breakdown city. Hallucinations. Seeing…ghosts.” Amanda grinned wickedly. “But I don’t want to bother your pretty little face with any of that. So, now that he’s dead, you want to know about him? Why’s that, Wife Numbah Two? Because when he was alive, maybe you never knew him at all? That doesn’t surprise me, either. Nothing surprises me. You think he didn’t pick you out of a line-up of possibles. He did. I know him. I’ve known him since he was younger than Matt. You know, he’s still with us. He may be in the back seat of your car right now, for all I know. Just waiting to surprise you.”

“I don’t find this funny at all. This kind of talk.”

“Sensitive pretty little Wife Number Two. All right, fair enough. You want to know what Hut was like? I knew him before he was adopted out. I knew him when he was a bad bad little boy. Worse than Matt, and you think Matt’s bad.”

“Matt is an angel,” Julie said, feeling defensive.

“You’re good. You’re really good, Wife Number Two. You can lie with the same look in your eyes as when you tell the truth. My foster mother used to call it the clear blue eyes of a born liar. They say it takes a criminal mind to do that well.”

They both were quiet after this for several minutes. Amanda Hutchinson glanced around the room as if she were taking mental photographs of the moment.

Then Amanda broke the silence. “Did he ever tell you about when we were children?”

“Only a little,” Julie said. Then she added, “You were in a school together?”

Amanda kept a Cheshire cat grin on her face. “The drugs I get here stunt me a little. In the brain. They turn off things that hurt, and they seem to turn on the warm fuzzies. But I can’t get used to it. Not being able to figure things out, the way I used to. Like why you’re really here. It’s not about my son, it’s not about Hut. It’s about something else, only the warm fuzzies have taken over my brain and I can’t quite pinpoint it. You’re pretending it’s about remembering Hut in all his glory, the doctor to the poor, the wonderful man who gave you a daughter and me a son. But you want something from me. What is it? Let’s just get this over with. Fish or cut bait, as they say.”

“I’m not really sure why I’m here.”

Amanda gave a low growl of a chuckle. “It’s because your poor pathetic little life is a big fat lie, Number Two Wife. It’s because he never let you in on his secret. His deep dark wound of a secret that would destroy you if you knew it. And I can’t even tell you about it. Even if I wanted to. Even if I dreamed of doing it. The warm fuzzies have me. You found out about Rosetta Street, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here. You found out about 66S. You are so warm, Wife Number Two. Warm and getting warmer. But you get too warm, you burst into flames. I did. I got too warm. I got too hot. I burned up there, in 66S. I dream about it now, it’s a nightmare from hell, but I dream about it, and what happened, and you want to know why a mother hates her own son, Wife Number Two? Why my little baby Matthew is dead to me? Just go ask them. Ask 66S. You can get burned, too. Or if you’re smart, if you’re a genius, you will walk out of this room, and go home and pick your daughter up and get as far away from 66S as you can, before it happens to you, too. Because eventually, we all burn, Julie. All of us. We burn eternally.”

“I’m sorry,” Julie said.

“Do you believe in heaven? Do you? Or hell? Or anything?”

“Maybe.”

“You should. There’s something else out there. Something beyond this life. Something that’s worse than dying. Worse than suffering. Worse than the worst torture of being alive.” Her voice grew into an undertow of a growling sensuality, and Julie felt as if she were being hypnotized by it. “It’s not beautiful heaven. It’s not even beautiful hell. It’s a thousand times more terrifying than anything you can dream up in your feeble nightmares. The apartment on Rosetta Street is a burning place, Julie Hutchinson, Wife Number Two, it is a torture chamber, and you will find yourself on fire if you ever go there.”

“I’ve been there,” Julie said.

Amanda looked at her, as if just seeing her for the first time. Her eyes widened, and the smile crept up wider than before. She had a full toothy grin, and her face seemed to gleam as if it excited her to hear this.

“It’s a place of impossibilities. And burning. If you’d really been there—really been in 66S…we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“There was nothing there.”

“Oh. There was something. You just didn’t look hard enough.”

Julie briefly closed her eyes. Remembering the blurred gray face of the man in the bedroom doorway.

“Open your eyes,” Amanda said. “You were there. You saw something. Only you left. Fast. Fast as your pretty legs could carry you.”

Amanda Hutchinson went silent, and looked down at her hands, wiping them against each other as if washing them clean.

When Amanda Hutchinson spoke again, it was in a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” Julie said. “What?”

Amanda whispered again. Something playful in the curve of her lips, in the way her eyes flashed.

Julie smiled back, almost involuntarily.

Something about the way Amanda leaned forward made Julie get up and lean closer in to her.

Julie tried to make out the words forming silently on Amanda’s lips. Something in her went cold—something about being so close to Hut’s first wife—and yet she felt nothing but heat emanating from her.

“He’s trying to contact you. They do that, you know. After they’re gone. They try to. That’s why you’re here. You want to know. But I can’t tell you. The warm fuzzies have me, they have me, have me, have me,” Amanda said, softly, so softly that Julie could barely hear her. “You want to know who lives in Apartment 66S?” Amanda reached over to touch a strand of Julie’s hair—Julie gasped for a second, her nerves tingling— Amanda then gently placed the strand of hair back behind Julie’s ear like it was a flower. Her touch, almost sexual. Almost threatening.

Julie felt something at the center of her being, no, lower, something that was like a gentle tickling, from the inside. Her breathing slowed.

She smelled a musky scent from Amanda. Musk and something sweet.

Amanda’s breath—warm and sweet.

“Pretty Number Two Wife. So beautiful. So sad. So wanting.”

Julie looked into her eyes. Amanda’s eyes seemed endless to her—deep pools of darkness.

“66S,” Amanda whispered, letting it become a hiss.

Then, Amanda leapt toward her, and for just a second, Julie felt as if she were watching some wild animal, sprung loose from its cage.

Julie’s chair went backward, and her legs went in the air. Amanda Hutchinson was on top of her, swinging her fist down for the side of her head.

Once hit, Julie felt as if she were losing consciousness, and wasn’t sure, but felt a strange warmth—as if Amanda’s hand were now going down between her legs, down to touch her, beneath her skirt, the edge of her panties.

Amanda’s urgent whisper in her ear, “Does he come to you at night and touch you, only it’s better than he ever did before? Does he make you moan, Wife Numbah Two? Does he try to get inside you?”

Julie took a deep breath, and brought her knee up, knocking her attacker in the arm, pushing her hand away.

The fingers had just grazed the skin beneath her panties.

Then, an orderly was running in the room shouting, “Mandy! Get off her right now! Holy shit, Jimmy, get down here!”

“Ms. Kaufmann? Gigi?” Julie asked, nearly out of breath, tapping at the door of the social worker’s office.

The social worker came to the door, opening it a crack. “Yes?” Large steel blue eyes behind thick glasses. “Mrs. Hutchinson? My God!”

“I think…I think she’s upset. Something’s wrong.”

The social worker looked at her. “My God. Are you all right?”

The screeching could be heard down the corridor.

“I’m fine.” Julie wasn’t sure if this was true.

“Your face.”

“It’s all right. Please. She needs help now.”

After Amanda had been subdued, Julie stood just outside the doorway to her room. She briefly glanced inside. The orderlies had not yet righted the overturned chairs. They had just finished tying her in restraints to the edges of the mattress. Although she’d been given a shot of some kind of sedative, Amanda continued to struggle in the restraints. One of the staff nurses bandaged her fingers where the nails had torn.

The social worker touched Julie’s arm. “She’ll sleep now. It’s all right. Sometimes there are flare-ups. Let’s get you down to the nursing wing to look at those cuts.”

“She jumped me,” Julie said, as a young male nurse daubed a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide on the slight cuts on her arm.

The nurse grinned. “You’re lucky. She took someone’s eye out last winter.”

“My God.”

“It happens now and then. Mandy is docile as a lamb for eleven months of the year, and then one day— or night—snaps. Sorry for the gallows humor. I know it can be pretty scary. She went Lizzie Borden on me once, too. Right after I started.”

“I just didn’t expect it,” Julie said. “We were…well, I hope I didn’t do something to provoke her.”

“Probably not,” the nurse said. Then, noticing the cuts on her knee, “She didn’t…do anything else, did she?”

He means “did she touch me down there?”

“No, well, I mean, she sort of scratched me up…all over.”

The nurse nodded, as if considering all of it. “Sometimes, she does some inappropriate touching.”

“I’m sure that’s not what it was.”

He shrugged. “Business as usual,” he said. “You probably just upset her a little, and that’s enough for her to go full throttle. Ever since her son’s death.”

“Her husband,” Julie corrected. “Her ex. My husband.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t believe I got it wrong. Well, it really gets her going, sometimes. Probably you just reminded her of some bad stuff. And she never really sleeps much. She wanders sometimes, at night. Just wanders, and thinks someone’s following her. She thinks someone is trying to kill her.”

When Julie looked up at the doorway, the social worker stood there with a slight frown to her face.

“I’m afraid I have to ask that you not make these kinds of visits,” Gigi Kaufman said. “Whatever you said in there upset her tremendously.”

Chapter Thirteen

That night, Amanda Hutchinson awoke from a deep sleep that had been completely dreamless. She found that the restraints on her wrists had been loosened, and she easily slipped out of first one, and then another. Then, she sat up, working on the restraints on her ankles.

Her room, dark except for the patch of light from the hall, her door just half-shut, had been cleaned up, and overturned chairs had been righted. She listened for orderlies or nurses in the hall, but there were none.

She got out of bed and went to the window, looking out on the moon glow across the lawn and trees.

And then, she heard the voice in her head. A voice she had managed to block—that the warm fuzzies had blocked—and that she had thought would leave her alone.

But it was that woman. Julie. Coming to her. Pushing at her. Making her remember things that were best forgotten.

After she’d written the note, she went into the small bathroom and took off her clothes. She turned on the shower, making sure it was as hot as she could get it. She got under the water, and let it burst against her scalp, trying to wash memory from her, clean the past out.

Instead, his face came back to her, inside her mind, opening her up for other memories, breaking down doors she had let the warm fuzzies seal up.

She slammed her head against the tile of the shower stall.

Again.

And again.

Until she felt the blood dripping down along her face, down her shoulders and breasts, into the drain at her feet.

She kept it up as long as she could, bashing her head into the tile, trying to lock every door she had before someone tried to pry her open.

When she heard one of the night nurses calling out, trying to open the bathroom door, but she had jammed it so it couldn’t open, Amanda Hutchinson drew her bloodied head back and slammed it as hard as she could against the tile.

The last things she heard were a sharp crack, and the cry of the nurse as the bathroom door flew open.

Amanda sank down in the shower stall, resting her head on the cool floor by the drain. Her vision weakened, and the throbbing in her head went from burning pain to a frozen numbness.

She felt her consciousness fading. She tried as hard as she could to open one last hidden door within her mind, and let go of the flesh.

Chapter Fourteen

“You went to see who?” Mel nearly shrieked. “Take off the sister hat and put on the friend hat,”

Julie said.

“I’m wearing the smart hat. What in God’s name were you doing there?”

They were driving around looking at real estate listings in Forest Lake, because Mel was still thinking of buying a place nearer Julie—“but not so close that I see you every day,” Mel had said.

“Look at that one.” Julie pointed to a small house at the edge of a hillside. “Look, it must have a view of the lake in back. Write down the realtor’s number.”

“Why the hell did you go down there? What good would it do?”

“Quit yelling at me.”

“I am not yelling.”

“I didn’t think it would turn out like it did. I thought maybe…I don’t know. I thought maybe she’d know something I didn’t.”

“She’s insane, Julie. He divorced her because she tried to kill her own son. Isn’t that enough for you?”

She dreamed that night of Amanda Hutchinson, stunningly beautiful, dressed in one of Hut’s business suits. Julie lay on a bare mattress on the floor of some auditorium. She had the sense that people were watching her. She struggled, but her hands—though not tied down—wouldn’t move. Nor would her legs.

Julie became aware of her nakedness only when Amanda bent down and touched her foot. Amanda licked the edge of her foot and took a toe in her mouth.

Then, on all fours, Amanda climbed on top of her, bringing her face within an inch of Julie’s.

“Does he touch you like this?” she asked, her tongue flicking out and lapping at Julie’s lips. “Like he’s more alive than he’s ever been?”

In the dream, Amanda Hutchinson’s hair was no longer black, but bright red. Julie noticed that there was a chair, above her, hanging suspended from the sky as if by a wire that went all the way up to heaven.

Julie felt a hand on her belly, fingers moving down toward the thatch of pubic hair.

Amanda Hutchinson’s face became Matt’s face, but with the same long red hair.

He had carvings all over his skin.

But it wasn’t Matt. It was Hut. Hut with tattoos all over his body. Holding her arms down at her side while his enormous penis pounded her. And she felt herself opening in that space, between her legs, opening herself to his sex, to his forced entry, unlocking the doors for him, letting him through.

In her dream, she whispered, I want you inside me, Hut. I want you inside me.

She awoke, thinking she’d heard Livy cry out. It took her a minute to adjust to the darkness. She was used to this by now—the routine of Livy’s nightmares. She rolled out of bed, putting the terry bathrobe on, and padded down the hallway through the veiled darkness, punctuated by the numerous nightlights she’d scattered in the various outlets so that Livy could see her way to the bathroom without getting scared.

Right on schedule, Livy was standing in the hallway, her back against the wall. Julie flicked up the hall light. “Honey,” she said.

Livy looked up at her, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry, Mommy. It just scared me. I know it’s just dreams. But it seemed real.”

“Well, but doesn’t Dr. Fishbain talk to you about this?”

Livy nodded.

“Does it help?”

Livy nodded again. “But Dr. Fishbain doesn’t have

to sleep here.”

Then, Julie had an idea. “What if I could prove to you that there’s no ghost?”

“How?”

Julie enlisted Matt to help set up the old NannyCams that they’d used when Livy had been younger and before they’d discovered Laura Reynen as a sitter. Julie had loved the NannyCam—Mel had convinced her that all babysitters were potential child-abusers after Livy had been born (“it’s always on the news. Nannies can be bad.”) So Hut had, one day, brought home their first NannyCam, and Julie had discovered that, in fact, none of their sitters slapped the baby. It was the NannyCam that had given Julie the idea for getting the camcorder for Matt so that he’d have a way of expressing himself and having a fun hobby, as well.

They set up one of the NannyCams along the stairs, and then the other one at the entrance to Livy’s bedroom. Matt brought up the VCR from downstairs, and then she got the old one that was in the storage closet next to the linen closet. They tested them, since none of them ever watched VHS anymore, having gone to DVDs. Both machines worked fine. He set up the wires and cables, and put some tapes in each machine. “See, Livy? This one,” he pointed to the NannyCam in the hall, “goes to this VCR. And that one, in your room, goes to the other one. If anyone comes in, we’ll catch it on the cam.”

Livy went around lining up more nightlights, pulling them from the three bathrooms in the house, and then the ones that Julie had bought at Home Depot. “They’re like little soldiers,” Livy said.

“See? We’ll catch the ghost,” Matt said, attaching the NannyCam to a small block of wood to steady it.

“There’s no ghost,” Julie crossed her arms, a bit annoyed with Matt for saying it in front of his little sister.

Livy seemed thrilled to think that her bad dreams might end.

The first morning after they’d set the NannyCams up, Julie sat down with Livy and fast-forwarded through the resulting videotape in the rec room. The hall tape showed nothing but the sentry line of nightlights, occasionally punctuated by Matt coming out into the hall and walking sleepily to the bathroom. “He pees a lot!” Livy giggled.

She and Livy laughed while Matt sped up, walking like a fast-paced Charlie Chaplin up and down the hall to the bathroom. For fun, Julie showed it backward and then forward.

“See? Nobody.”

“Matt was funny,” Livy giggled. “Let’s make him walk fast again.”

“Okay,” Julie said. Then, she sped through the rest of the tape. “See? Nobody’s in the hall. No one in your room other than you.”

Livy shook her head. “He didn’t come last night.”

They repeated this morning ritual for the next several days, and Livy was thrilled to see Matt—or even herself—wander to the bathroom in the purple light of morning. One tape had her looking right into the NannyCam and singing a silly little made up song. She played the tape for Livy, and Livy laughed at herself and told her to turn it off before she exploded. Then, she let Livy watch herself sleeping in bed. “I snore!” she cried out with glee. “Just like you do Mommy!”

One morning, Julie woke up and Livy was in bed with her, pressed against her back.

“I had a bad dream again,” Livy said.

After they’d been up a bit, Julie got out the videotape and said, “Let’s watch the NannyCam and see.”

“No,” Livy said.

“Come on. We can laugh about how Matt waddles down the hall.”

“No, Mommy. I don’t want to see him.”

“I promise you won’t,” Julie said, playing with Livy’s hair. “I promise you, Olivia Hutchinson, that you will not see a single person on the videotape unless it’s you or Matt going down the hall to the bathroom.”

Livy reluctantly agreed, and they went to watch the tapes. Julie sat in the rec room and fast-forwarded through the NannyCam tapes. There was Matt on his nocturnal trip to the john, and then, she saw a blur of movement. She stopped the tape, and then froze on the picture.

“That’s him!” Livy cried out, pointing to the screen. “That’s the ghost!”

Julie shushed her, and told her that it was nothing. “It’s just shadows, baby. It’s not a ghost.” But she shut the tape off, and tried to get Livy to think of something else. She took her out into the garden and they planted some seeds from packets that they’d bought at the local nursery. Livy, now and then, mentioned the ghost, and Julie did what she could to talk her out of it.

But later in the day, when Livy was in her room reading, Julie went back down to the rec room to watch the tape.

It wasn’t much. Might’ve just been a problem of the tape. She played it in slow motion.

She held her breath for a moment, surprised.

It was a blurred figure moving down the hall, but in weird jumps of motion. Then, she played the video at regular speed, but it was impossible to see it. She could only see it when she slowed the tape down.

She went backward and forward with the tape.

The hallway with the nightlights in a row like luminaria outside Livy’s bedroom.

It wasn’t that it was a blur—it was that whoever was crossing in front of the nightlights darkened them in such a way that they created a blurring effect. There was no way that it was Matt. It was a large person. An adult.

Then, she put in the tape for Livy’s bedroom NannyCam.

Fast-forwarded through the night as Livy tossed and turned, throwing her American Girl doll from the bed (where it should not have been in the first place), and pulling her pillow down to her chest. And then—Julie paused the tape, freezing the picture.

It looked like a dark movement, near Livy’s bed. For just the flash of a second.

Then, it was gone.

After it moved back into the shadows, Livy’s eyes fluttered open, although it was hard for Julie to make out much about her face in the darkness.

Livy sat up, and looked as if she were watching someone in her doorway. She clutched her blanket and pulled it up around her shoulders, and then shut her eyes tight.

Julie got Matt to watch the tape with her, and he said, “Wow. I wonder what that is?” He squinted. “It’s hard to make out in the dark. Sometimes video sucks.” “Do you think it’s a person?”

“It has to be, Julie. Look at that—the way it moves

around. That has to be an arm—right?”

“I don’t even know what this means.”

“Maybe it means someone is coming in our house at

night,” Matt said.

She showed the tapes to Mel, but she told her she wasn’t sure it was a person at all. “I don’t know. I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Mel said. “I think it’s just shadows and stuff. I don’t really see anyone.” But she suggested that Julie get some kind of protection system in place. Julie decided to go all out: she got a burglar alarm system that keyed to the windows and doorways. They installed it within a week, and although it cost a small fortune, she decided it was well worth it. She made Matt memorize the code, but she kept it fairly simple. “At least until it gets cool, we keep the windows closed, and only in and out through the front door, okay?” She told both of them not to play with it. Then, she tested it once to see how fast the local police could get there.

She had a nice talk with the cops who showed up, and told them about the tapes. One of them volunteered to sit down and fast-forward through the tape to see what he could make of it. When Matt came back up from the rec room, he said, “Julie, you must’ve erased the tapes last time you watched them.”

“Yeah,” the cop said. “It looked like Seinfeld reruns on one of them.”

“Mel,” Julie said.

Matt turned to the cop and said, “My Aunt Melanie. She loves Seinfeld. She taped over my movie of last year’s Fourth of July parade, too.”

Julie kept taping the hall and the bedroom for several days, but didn’t see the shadowy movement.

And Livy began sleeping through the night.

On the phone with her mother the next day: “Did you read it?” her mother asked.

“Read what?”

“That book. The Life Beyond.”

“Some of it.”

“Well? Did you love it?”

“Mom, you know I don’t believe in that stuff.” “I’ve seen him twice. He’s fascinating.”

“I am not going to delude myself, Mom. I’m not

going to pretend that there’s someone out there who speaks to the dead.”

“No, it’s not like that. He doesn’t do that,” her mother said. “He just picks up things about you. When I was there a year ago, he told a man that his brother was looking for him. And within a month, it turned out the brother he thought was dead was actually alive. And a woman who had blocked childhood memories suddenly recalled that she’d witnessed her mother and her uncle making love. And that’s why she’d hated her mother so much. It’s halfway between psychic and therapy.”

“I have a great therapist.”

“Anyone can be a therapist,” her mother said. “Michael Diamond is a psychic. A real one. Did you read the whole book? I thought not. He’s not like those others, sweetie, believe you me. I’ve researched them all. He’s not as flashy, maybe, but he delivers the goods. And we have tickets to his show. I’ve been waiting for them to come through since mid-May. And guess what? It must be fate. They came through today.”

“I am not going,” Julie said, and clicked the phone off.

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t know how you roped me into this,” Julie said. It was a lie: she knew how her mother had done it. Julie’s interest had been sparked by Michael Diamond’s book, and by her curiosity about Hut’s childhood, and how it might be connected to psychic ability, whether that existed or not. People believed in it. Detective McGuane had even told her that while he didn’t wholly believe in it, he had seen psychics consult on murder cases once in a while, with impressive results. She didn’t believe in it. But people did. Even the U.S. government, for God’s sake. Even homicide detectives in New York City, the city that wasn’t exactly the city of gullibility. Cops who couldn’t catch killers believed it.

She sat sandwiched between her mother and sister in the television studio with its uncomfortable chairs and blinding overhead lights. The place was packed, but Julie guesstimated that there weren’t more than 200 seats. The stage was round and small. Three large cameras and their operators moved around on it. And various lights came up and down. Taping wasn’t scheduled for another twenty minutes.

“I can’t wait to get his autograph. I loved his new book,” her mother said. She had a small cloth bag stuffed with paperbacks. “Melanie, you really should read some of them.”

“I prefer to stick to the classics,” Mel said, grinning, poking lightly at her sister.

When the show began, Michael Diamond came out onto the stage. He was tall, and looked something like a gawky high school kid who had just hit his mid-40s. His hair was a little too long, and he had the sheen of one who has just been made up to look fantastic—but Julie was unimpressed. He looked slick and sort of comfortably geeky at the same time—not her type at all, although Mel raised her eyebrows a bit, her signal that she thought he was cute.

He spoke more to the cameras than to the audience, but within several minutes had stepped off the stage, and went into the audience. He asked about someone who had lost a child, and a woman in the back raised her hand.

He jogged up the steps to where the woman now stood. The woman was short and stout, and had a mullet-style hairdo, and wore a sweatshirt and jeans. Diamond went to her, and took her hand. One of the cameramen followed, trailing thick electrical cords up the steps.

“What’s she saying?” Julie’s mother asked.

“Quiet,” Mel whispered.

“Here’s what I’m getting,” Michael Diamond said. “You have been beating yourself up for years about the event. Do you have an item?”

The woman nodded, producing a small shoe from a wadded-up brown paper bag.

On the monitors that hung over the stage, the cameras went in close up on the small red sneaker in Michael Diamond’s hand.

Diamond closed his eyes. He said, “His name was Jimmy. He was four. No, five. You lived on a…cul de sac. In…somewhere in Connecticut.”

“New London,” the woman nodded.

Diamond opened his eyes. “Please, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let me tell you, and you can tell me if I’m wrong.”

He closed his eyes again, pressing the shoe against his left ear as if the sneaker were a seashell and he was listening to the ocean. With his free hand, he pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes, rubbing at his eyelids.

Then, he opened his eyes and passed the shoe back. “I’m sorry. His name was Dennis. You lived separately from his father. A woman with the name of M. Mary? The name Miranda is somewhere in there. Or a name like that. Mary Anne? Marianna. That’s it. Is it?”

The woman nodded.

“You need to forgive her,” Diamond said. “She’s not at fault. It was an accident.”

The woman took the sneaker back, staring at it.

“If he were here, he’d want you to forgive her. That’s really all I can say,” Diamond said, touching her gently on the shoulder.

The woman’s head slumped against his chest.

“You need to get some rest. You can’t put yourself through this. You’ve relived that car accident for two years. Dennis wouldn’t want it.”

“I hate her,” the woman whispered, her voice barely audible in the microphone that hung suspended on a boom one of the TV crew held overhead.

Michael Diamond pulled sharply away from her, and put both his hands on her shoulders—more to separate himself from her than to console. “You need to look in the mirror, Alice. You need to see what role you played in this. Accidents happen. You need to forgive Marianna. She was only a girl herself. She had just gotten her driver’s license. You could as easily blame yourself. But Dennis would not want you to do that. Dennis is gone.”

Julie touched the top of Mel’s hand. Mel looked over at her, a question forming on her face.

Julie whispered, “He seems a little harsh.”

After two more readings, Michael Diamond went to the stage and said, “Someone is here who recently lost a husband. Someone named Jewel?”

“Julie!” her mother called out, pointing to her daughter.

“I’d like to do a one-on-one this time,” Diamond said. His face was enormous on the monitor screen that Julie watched. She felt she could count every pore in his skin. She saw flecks of yellow in his brown eyes.

Then she looked from the screen down to the man in front of her. He half smiled, and for some stupid reason, she felt comfortable with him, as if she’d known him all her life.

“Okay,” she said, and just before she got out of her chair, Mel leaned over and whispered, “sit on his lap.”

The one-on-one was a segment of the television show where the subject sat with Michael Diamond on the low-backed curved sofa at the back of the stage.

“You’re still grieving,” he said.

“Yes,” Julie said. She was about to say: And I don’t believe in psychics, thank you.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in me,” Michael Diamond said. His words sent a shock through her. “Belief has nothing to do with it.”

“Tell me about the brain radio,” he said.

“That what?”

“The brain radio,” Michael Diamond grinned. He

kept his hand on her forehead. She felt a warm gentle pressure from it, but the headache she’d had began to dissolve.

“It’s what Livy—Olivia—my daughter—calls it when she hears things.” Then, Julie realized that was inadequate as an explanation. “She thinks she talks to people with it. Or hears songs on the radio even when the radio isn’t on.”

“She talks to your husband. Sometimes.”

“When he was alive. They had a pretend game like that.”

“Do you listen to what your daughter says about it?”

“It’s usually silly, fun stuff.”

“Your husband was murdered.”

Julie gasped. She glanced toward her mother and sister, who sat at the far end of the couch. The bright lights and the anonymous eye of the camera seemed to wall her in. “Yes. He was.”

“It’s terrible,” Michael Diamond said. “You’ve been fumbling through things since then. You’ve seen movies? Movies of some kind. There’s a place. A place in the city. A number and a letter. You won’t face what others want you to face. You…you haven’t listened. No. No, that’s not true. You’ve tried to listen. You just don’t know what it is you’re hearing. Your daughter. Your daughter needs you. She needs you. Someone else needs you. Needs her. Someone needs both of you. Someone desperately wants you. Male. Someone male. Someone wants you to understand. Badly. But death is all around you. Fear of death is inside you. Ah,” he said this last part as if catching his breath upon seeing something— something that left him awestruck.

And then, she felt it.

No longer in the studio, no longer with lights and camera and mother and sister and audience and sofa—

She felt as if he had pressed his warm hand beneath her breast, and rested it just along the thumping halo of blood encircling her heart—as if he had reached within her, and emanated a strange warmth that took her back to her dreams of Hut:

Making love to Hut in the warm bath, candles glowing all around the tub, Hut pressing into her, as she gasped and felt love in a way she had not thought possible—

Giving birth to Livy, the way Hut had clutched her hand tightly, had breathed with her, and kissed her on the forehead as Livy arrived into the world—

Holding Livy for the first time, a bloody, hideous baby that was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen, and Hut there, his happiness extreme as he laughed with her, with the exhaustion at the end of labor, with the surrender that childbirth demanded—

And then, a moment in time that had been long forgotten—but it came to sudden life within her mind as she felt an electric shock—seeing Hut in the shower, water cascading over his body, his muscles taut, drawing back the shower curtain and seeing the look on his face, the seething anger, and he turned to face the tile wall, and then, seeing the scratches along his back, and wondering if he had been in an accident, and then she realized it was something else—something about why Hut hadn’t been home in three days—

And then, her vision turned red, and Hut, not vibrant Hut, but the dead man from the metal table, milky eyes, shiny maggoty skin, his arms around her, pummeling her with his hips, driving himself into her, turning her over onto her stomach, taking her like that—and she felt ecstasy as he whispered filthy things, his lips pressed into her earlobe, his tongue etching fire as he said things she’d never heard a man say.

Julie felt as if her consciousness were shot out of the barrel of a gun—it hurt to open her eyes. She had to force them open, feeling as if heavy weights kept them closed, kept her in the darkness of her own mind.

Open. She saw the others there. The watchers. The audience.

She flushed with embarrassment. She felt shame the likes of which she hadn’t felt since she’d been a child, caught naked with a little boy, playing doctor. She felt as if all her secrets had been announced on loudspeakers, and the people in the audience had used what was in her mind as entertainment, something for their amusement: her shame.

Her breathing felt labored. It was as if she’d been running and had suddenly stopped, unable to catch her breath.

She was in the television studio. On the sofa.

Michael Diamond’s palm was warm and moist against her forehead, and he was whispering something to her…no, not to her. To the others. The audience. To the world.

Some secret about her. Something she had harbored.

“You want him to be alive,” Diamond said. “You feel guilty because you stopped loving him. And then, when he was killed, you wanted more than anything for him to be alive because…because it meant that you could leave him. But now, you are stuck remembering only love. You’ve forgotten the winter that settled between you both. The fighting. The arguments. The dislike. The indifference. The lack of trust. You were in love with him for two years, and then you caught him in too many lies. You stopped trusting him. You were planning on leaving him. One day. One day soon.”

Michael Diamond’s face shone with sweat. His eyes had gone from a beautiful deep blue to gray, and the whites seemed bloodshot. It looked as if—in the few minutes he’d been doing the reading of her, that he’d been up for nights. “I’m sorry,” he said, under his breath. Then, more loudly, “Love and Death are strange companions. Those whom we were conflicted about in Life, we now are tied to in Death.”

Julie felt as if she had been invaded. As if someone had crawled inside her, and taken, forcibly, things from her. She felt icy inside, and burning on the surface of her skin. “What the hell did you just do to me?”

She pushed herself up from the sofa, but felt the room—the watchers—the cameras—spin around her.

Her knees buckled beneath her, and she collapsed.

Julie lay on the couch in the Green Room—which was not green at all, she noticed, glancing around at the pale walls—and finally took a sip of the orange juice that had been offered by the assistant who had rushed in after they’d helped her out of the studio’s auditorium.

She looked up at her mother, who stood nearby. “Why did you set this up?”

“Honey, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I’m sorry,” Toni said. Her mother’s eyes were red from crying.

Julie closed her eyes and tried to push away the conscious world. She had to force herself to breathe more slowly. Counting to four seconds in, four seconds out. For the first time in her life, she understood what a panic attack might be.

After her mother left to go sit in the car, Mel sat with her awhile, once Julie felt strong enough to sit up in a chair. They brought some sandwiches in, and Mel cajoled her sister into taking a bit, “for energy.”

“I can’t believe he’d…he’d lie like that,” Julie said. “That’s show biz,” Mel said. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe a word of it. He’s a con-artist. Cute, but still a con-artist.”

“Did mom set this all up?” Julie asked. “Did she?”

Mel shot her a harsh, unforgiving look, as if Julie had just said something terrible.

When she was feeling better, she demanded to see Michael Diamond, and Diamond’s assistant rushed her into his office, which was a suite of rooms down the long corridor.

He looked different to her than he had in the studio. He seemed older, and perhaps exhausted, as if he’d been up for several nights in a row. His hair was slicked back and his forehead had speckles of sweat. Something about his face reminded her of a hawk. She remembered the cover of his book, where his face seemed geeky-sexy. Now, it just seemed tired. He sat on the edge of his desk, his arm extended for her to shake.

She kept her arms crossed.

“If you’re so psychic, tell me what I’m thinking,” she said.

“I’m sorry that was so harsh,” Michael said. “I know you’re in pain. Look, we’ll cut the segment. Don’t worry. It won’t be televised.”

She said, “What did you do to me in there?”

“You don’t believe in psychic ability, Julie. I’m not here to change your mind. I’m sorry what I said hurt you in some way. I can’t take it back. It happened. It’s what I picked up from you,” he said. “You know, sometimes, I feel things that are terrible. I pick up images and words from someone—on the show—that I couldn’t possibly verbalize. It would be too awful. It would be too painful for the person to hear. But something inside you wanted it to come out. What I said, what I saw inside you, Julie, wanted to come out.”

While he’d been speaking, she felt as if she were being drawn to him. As if he had a level of charisma that went beyond normal charm or attraction. She felt she trusted him the way she trusted her therapist. When she took a deep breath, she tried to analyze the feeling, but could not.

“What was inside me?” Julie asked. “What did you see?”

“Just a glimpse,” he said. “Of something terrible. I…I don’t know what to tell you.”

“If you’re psychic, read my mind.”

“It’s not like that,” he said. “Mrs. Hutchinson, you’ve got an aura of death around you. I’m sorry to say this. You’ve been touched by someone who died.”

“That’s easy enough to figure out,” she said, feeling a bit harsh but happy to throw it back at him. “My husband died in April. That’s what you were so glib about in front of your audience.”

“No, this is a woman,” he said. “Somehow, she’s connected to you. She had answers for you but couldn’t let them out.”

She went out and got in the car. Mel was in the front seat, her mother in the back. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “Just drive. I want to go home.”

She could feel them making concerned faces to each other, but she was pissed off at everybody. Fighting back the urge to cry like a baby. I am not a two-year-old. This is all bullshit. Hut was not part of some psychic program. Michael Diamond is a grifter with a camera in his face and probably six ghostwriters writing his bullshit books. It was all a guessing game. He had seen Hut’s obituary. He might’ve even heard about the murder. He had exposed himself already: in his book, hadn’t he said about how, if a show had a waiting list, the psychic could research the people in the audience? He’d have their names, a phone number, an address. How hard was it to find Hut’s obituary?

At home, Julie had another argument with her mother on the phone and accused her mother of setting her up for Michael Diamond’s show at a particularly vulnerable time in her life. As soon as she’d hung up the phone, it rang again. Thinking it was her mother, she picked up and said, “I am not changing my mind.” “Hello?” A woman said on the other end. “I’m sorry,” Julie laughed. “I thought you were my mother.”

“Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“Yes.”

“I’m calling about Amanda Hutchinson,” the woman said. Julie placed the voice: it was Gigi Kaufman, the social worker with the owl eyeglasses. “I’m afraid something tragic has happened.”

Julie held her breath, waiting.

“She died late last night. It was…well, she left a note. For you. Once the certificate is signed and everything has been put in order, we’ll send it on to you.”

Chapter Sixteen

A week later, after she got home, she checked the mail. Bills, mainly, for Comcast cable, and Sprint, and there was some invitation to a Health Care Forum in Montclair, and then a letter, with the name Kaufman on the return address.

She opened it up. It was a photocopy of the note that Amanda Hutchinson had written the night she had killed herself.

“Dear Wife Number Two Julie Hutchinson,

If you’re reading this, it’s because my plan to somehow jump out of this body worked. It’s the warm fuzzies. They fucked my brain up too much. They made me think different. They made me remember things wrong. Say things I don’t always mean.

You knew Hut. But you didn’t know him. You thought he loved you. But I knew he didn’t. It was all because of the hand. Five fingers, all separate, but they are all part of the hand. You can put your hand down a garbage disposal and turn it on, and it can tear into you and make your blood spurt up out of the sink. But when you pull your arm out, the hand is still there. Do you understand?

You will see Hut. He will haunt you. He haunts me. Even in the warm fuzzies I see him. He has come back now and he will never let you or your daughter alone. Do you understand? Do I make myself clear? Don’t hate the one who killed him. Sometimes, death is not the worst thing.

It’s not that you can ever bury someone. Julie, there is no death. There is no death.

I am going to try to die. If I don’t, you’ll never see this note. If I do, you’ll read it. Consider this my warning to you.

Worse than seeing Hut, Julie. You may see the other ones, too. The fingers. They may be all around you, grasping. Because from you, something has come out. I knew when you visited me. Something is inside you and it’s coming out, and they want that. It’s something they can’t have because of who they are. They are not dreams, Julie. They are real.

We kill our children so they can wake up, only they wake up somewhere else. And they shouldn’t wake up. I should’ve killed Matt the night I tried to. I wish I had. He was already dead to me.

If I wake up from this, you’ll know. But if I don’t, thank God.

Love,

Amanda, Wife Number One.”

Julie put the note down, folding it over. She had the urge to throw it out. It seemed obscene—insane and evil in a way she had never thought the written word could be. She felt a lump in her throat, thinking about Matt’s mother. And now, how she was going to tell Matt. She had to do it.

She knew that if she didn’t do it now, she’d lose her courage.

She found him at the kitchen table, with a microwaveable macaroni and cheese snack bowl. A carton of Jersey Farms Milk next to his half-empty glass, and a jar of Ovaltine beside it.

She sat down next him.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking at her suspiciously.

“Matt, I’ve got some bad news.” She felt her eyes tearing up.

“It’s my mom,” he said. “I know.” He took up a forkful of mac and cheese, slipping it between his lips. “They called here earlier.”

“I want you to know—” she began.

“Fuck it,” he said. “She’s been dead for years as far as I’m concerned. She tried to kill me. That’s something you don’t forget. She tried to set me on fire, Julie. She poured gasoline all over my body and tried to light me up. Do you think I’ll ever forget that? Or how I was crying and asking her not to do it, and she just kept telling me I was from the Devil and needed to go to Hell. Do you think I care if she finally died?”

Julie couldn’t control herself. She reached out and slapped him on the cheek as hard as she could. It knocked him back slightly. “It’s your mother,” she said.

Her red handprint on his face. It remained too long. Seconds passed. He stared at her, his mouth a small o.

“I hate you, Julie. I hate you. Hate you. Hate you,” he spat. And then he began weeping, his shoulders heaving, and she drew close and held him tight, and no matter how he struggled, she wouldn’t let go. She whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and finally, he stopped crying and kissed her on the cheek and told her he prayed every night that she would be his mother but was afraid that she’d leave him now that his dad was dead.

“You’re my son,” Julie whispered. “You and Livy are my children. Don’t ever be afraid that I’ll leave you.”

Julie got in the Camry and just drove off. She knew she shouldn’t leave Livy and Matt home like that. She knew that she should turn around, ten minutes into the drive, and go back home. What if something happened? Something unexpected? What if there was a gas leak? What if she’d forgotten to turn off the stove? What if…

Didn’t matter. Drive. Just drive. Drive and be free. She sped along the winding roads of Rellingford, down into the darkness alongside the lake, taking the curves too fast, unconcerned about pedestrians (though the street was empty), windows down, her hair blowing back, feeling as if she were sixteen again, sixteen and free of every obligation, every weight, every care.

She parked near the gap in the woods that was the beach. She first took off her shoes in the car, and walked barefoot out onto the grassy dirt patches that became fine sand, and then, her bare feet felt the welcome chill of the lake as she waded in. Across the lake, the lights of houses. The richer people of Rellingford lived on that side of the lake, with houses that cost a fortune. It was like seeing a string of pearls along the throat of night.

She unbuttoned her shirt, and took it off, and then unzipped her dress, slipping out of it, getting it wet in the process.

Then, her bra, and finally, her underwear.

She tossed them back to the shore.

The mugginess of the evening clung to her naked

form. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t in months. She stepped forward into the water.

Another step.

Another.

She put out of her mind the snapping turtles and the freshwater eels and snakes and any of what Livy would call the squirmies, and went further into the water until she was up to her neck. It was so dark that she felt as if there were no separation between the water and the woods and the sky, and she dipped her head beneath the surface of the water.

Coolness.

Up again, to breathe, to gasp.

The lights across the water.

The dark sky above, but now, she saw the faint prickles of stars, and as she kept watch on the sky, they seemed to come out by the hundreds and thousands.

It had been years since she’d looked up at the stars. Years, even, since she’d gotten into the lake that was less than a quarter mile from her house.

Years since she’d felt young.

And she remembered:

She and Hut had been talking divorce. Well, she had been—he had ignored her. He had told her she needed therapy. He had told her that she needed to start taking anti-depressants. He had told her she needed to quit the job at the ER and be a better mother.

They had been fighting.

The last three years had felt like hell to her, but she’d put up with it, for Livy. For Livy and Matt both, and for the shred of memory of love she still carried.

Somehow, it had all been wiped away in the murder.

Somehow, her mind had changed the bad memories to good.

Somehow, she’d turned Hut into a saint after his death.

He was a difficult, complex man, perhaps. And she’d loved him as much as she could, until he had turned mean, and cold, and unfeeling.

And the day she saw him strike his own son, she had been planning on how to leave him and somehow get Matt away from him.

All pushed aside, blocked, when he’d been murdered.

And the touch of one man had opened it, like an old Christmas present at the back of a closet, forgotten, hidden, pushed aside, and then, drawn out into the light of day, its wrapper torn back. Michael Diamond. He was bullshit. But he knew things. How had he known? How had he been able to know about Amanda Hutchinson’s death?

She walked back to shore, dressed, and hurried back to her car.

At home, in bed, she stayed up later, reading Diamond’s book, The Life Beyond.

She had an eleven a.m. with Eleanor Swanson, who wanted to meet at Julie’s house. “My office is being redecorated by the group.”

“The group?”

“The Seven Arts Medical Association. Every five years they decide they need a different look, redo the offices, and suddenly, I’m paying more in rent.”

“Oh,” Julie smiled, and set a cup of coffee down on the table in front of her.

“Thank you, dear,” Eleanor said. “I’m glad we could meet here. I’d have suggested my house, but it’s a mess right now.”

“It’s nice to do this here,” Julie said. They talked a bit about the heat and vacations, and then Julie said, “I have to talk to you about these sexual dreams.”

“Still going on?”

“They’ve intensified, Eleanor. I mean, they’re full of perversions and things that I’d never do.”

“Hut’s in them?”

“Sometimes it’s Hut. Sometimes, not.”

“Well, what’s disturbing about them?”

“It’s like I close my eyes. And suddenly, they just begin. It’s a rollercoaster.”

Eleanor nodded. “Maybe you need a little something to help you sleep.”

“I’ve tried sleeping pills. I have a prescription. But it doesn’t take them away.”

“I’m not much of a conventional therapist. I’m no good at just sitting and listening. If I think I can help, I’ll try and bring my insights to this. You’re in your mid-thirties, you lost your husband. By your own account, you had a less-than-satisfactory sex life with him. Now, I think your subconscious is making up for lost time. Sure, there might be disturbing or—as you put it—perverted elements to the dreams. But all of us have them. All of us have pent-up fantasies that now and then become unleashed in our dream life. Women peak after thirty. You’re right on schedule. Part of this is, you’re horny. The way all adult human beings get, particularly when they’re lonely.”

“But, it’s not as if I enjoy them.”

“Don’t you?”

Julie stared at her. “They’re horrible. Some of them.”

“But you’ve told me all along they’re erotic.”

“Yes, but…there are things in them…”

“What things?”

Julie hesitated. She crossed one leg over the other, leaning back in her chair. She looked up at the ceiling. “There’s a kind of cruelty to them. There’s a meanness. In them, Hut is dead. I mean, dead. A corpse. His eyes are…well, they’re not human. And there’s a woman— with red hair—who…who…”

“Ah,” Eleanor said. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“I couldn’t say it before. I just couldn’t.”

“You experience pleasure in these dreams, but you feel guilt because Hut is dead, even in the dream. Thus, they’re cruel and mean. And jealousy, too, with this other woman.”

“Even when he’s making love to me,” Julie said. “Like necrophilia or something.” Suddenly, Julie asked, “I’m not some nut who thinks my husband’s trying to speak to me from the great beyond, or anything. I mean, you don’t believe that kind of thing, do you?”

Eleanor wore a half-smile. It was a God smile, and her eyes were God eyes. “Why would you ask that?”

“I…well, my mother took me to this psychic…”

“Oh.” Eleanor wrinkled her nose as if she smelled a fart.

“He told me that someone who was lost was looking for me. And that…doors in my mind were locked, and needed opening…and other stuff.”

Eleanor smirked. She lifted her cup and took a sip of coffee. Glanced up, mid-sip, like an amused parent. “Sometimes mysticism helps people get through grief. Did it help?”

“I don’t know. I just…these dreams feel like… sometimes, I think it’s like he’s not really gone. Until I wake up.”

“Julie, dreams are just dreams. It’s the mind, sifting through things. We can do some more work here, if you want. But you’re working through guilt and anger and shame and fury and fear. All the things that accompany the death of a loved one.”

“Did I really love him? I’m not even sure.”

“See? Even now, you’re expressing a perfectly normal anxiety. Don’t fight the dreams. Don’t fight what you’re going through. Follow it. Go on a journey. Celebrate life when you can, but let your subconscious work through what it needs to. Now, tell me about this visit to the fortune teller.”

Then, Julie told her about the TV studio, and Eleanor said, “Oh. Of course! One of those TV people. It’s great show biz to do what they do. Do you know the technique? There’s a way to anticipate what people will say next, just from eye movement and very minor facial movement. But you can’t believe that nonsense. It’s not rational. Do you believe it?”

Julie frowned. “I don’t think so. It just seemed… true.”

“Maybe there’s something to it. I just can’t say. My favorite is John Edward. He’s adorable,” Eleanor grinned, ear to ear. God and the Earth Mother converged for a moment. “Do you ever watch him? I don’t often, because I just hate seeing mysticism being promoted like that. It’s not my thing. But you can believe what you like. I don’t mean you’re wrong. Or even that they’re wrong. I just don’t think it’s true, myself. Did you learn anything good from this guy?”

Julie shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It felt too private, even for Eleanor.

Julie went online that night and ordered a few of Michael Diamond’s books on tape from Shocklines, a bookseller that sold occult, horror, and other strange books. She also found his book called Unlocking Dreams, and ordered that one, too.

Within three days, the tapes and book had arrived. She went out jogging with her Walkman hooked up, listening to his book called The Mind’s Journey. When she drove Livy to Dr. Fishbain’s in Ramapo Cliffs, she kept the book on the tape player in the car, and sat in the parking lot, listening, while Livy had her appointment.

From The Mind’s Journey:

“Some have called this astral projection. That, to me, implies mystical, magical places and other dimensions. Remote viewing is something that seems anything but magical to those who do it. Your consciousness roams. At first, it just rises up from your body, after meditation and relaxation of the body have been achieved. It remains near you, mainly because you fear this new ability. Then, as you get used to it, your mind—or mind’s eye as I like to think of it—moves outward, exploring. As you become more brave, it goes further. The view from this is like a wide-angle lens. Peripheral vision is out of focus, but the central vision is nearly normal, with some distortion. I liken it to being slightly drunk—you swing around a bit, you move in fits and starts. But it is simply consciousness, projected outward.”

In the night, Julie awoke—it was still dark—but she had the sense that someone else was in her room. She half expected it to be Matt, because she was sure it was a man.

After several minutes, she was wide awake enough to get out of bed. She flicked on the bedside lamp, as if to dispel the shadows. No one there.

She turned the lamp off. Pressed her hands into her forehead. A terrible headache had come on.

She rose to go to the connecting bathroom to get some aspirin and a glass of water. In the dark, she fumbled through the medicine cabinet for the aspirin, and when she shut the cabinet mirror, she saw Hut.

His face.

He stood there.

She was too terrified to turn.

Her throat went dry, and she dropped the aspirin bottle into the sink.

She leaned over clutching the rim of the sink, staring at him.

His eyes were not the milky white that they had been in her nightmares. They were normal. Even in the dark she could tell that.

He looked just as he had the morning before he’d died.

She raised a fist and slammed it into the bathroom mirror, cutting the edge of her hand. Don’t believe. Don’t. It’s a dream. It’s a nightmare. It’s your mind fucking with you because some part of you doesn’t want to look at his death. Some part of you is resisting the idea that he’s gone. Some part of you feels guilty because you didn’t love him enough. You didn’t make yourself available to him enough. You weren’t a good enough wife. You’re not a good enough mother. You are punishing yourself with this.

She felt a panic—a sense of insanity inside her mind, of hallucinations brought on by stress and grief, or else it was some trigger inside her that had been pulled tight and then released. For a moment, she felt as if she were dreaming, because that would seem all right.

But it was no dream.

She struggled to reach to the light switch by the door, sure that at any second, the dread she felt would somehow stop her heart from beating.

The light came up in the bathroom.

Behind her, the photo collage of their first few years together, with Matt and Livy at the tidal pool in La Jolla, with Livy with her gramma, and Matt’s sixthgrade class picture.

No one.

She was alone.

The mirror on the cabinet, cracked like a spider’s web.

The blood on the edge of her palm was real enough.

She opened the cabinet again and brought out the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She got a cotton swab and dipped it into a capful of the peroxide, and then pressed it lightly on her cut. She washed it off, then swabbed, then washed, and then pressed toilet paper against it to stop the slight flow of blood.

She couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. The following night, she stayed up reading more of Michael Diamond’s books, and re-reading sections she’d only skimmed of The Life Beyond.

“Mommy!” Livy called out.

Julie woke up, with a start. She had a feeling as if she’d been having a nightmare. Livy’s voice rang out, shrill.

When Julie got to her bedroom, Livy stood on her bed, in her jammies.

“Honey?” Julie asked, rushing to her.

Livy, trembling, tears pouring down her face. She pointed to a shadow along the wall. “Daddy was here.”

“Aw,” Julie sat down beside her and flicked on the lamp on the table. The shadow vanished. “See? Maybe you were dreaming.”

“No. He was here. I woke up. He was right there.”

Julie hugged her daughter. “Oh, baby, it’s all right. Maybe it was on your brain radio.” Julie tried to block her own strong sense of seeing Hut standing behind her, in the bathroom of the master bedroom.

Standing there, just watching her.

“Something’s wrong with him,” Livy whispered, as if her father might hear her.

Joe Perrin and his husband had come out to the ’burbs one Sunday when the weather was perfect, and they had a little barbeque out on the patio. Burgers and corn on the cob and Rick brought some great French wine from the place in the Chelsea Market and they brought their big friendly German Shepherd, Dutch, which both Matt and Livy took to right away. After the meal and some retreading of old memories, Julie sent the kids into the front yard, playing with the dog, and Rick opened the wine.

Joe and Julie and Rick hung out on the picnic table, blue plastic cups in hand, looking over the back lawn, beyond the neighbor’s house to the dip down the hill and the bit of lake they could see through the trees. They talked about anything and everything and eventually, third or fourth cup of wine in, Julie brought up Michael Diamond and Amanda Hutchinson.

“Joe, but he said I had a connection with her. A woman. And then, his wife is dead.”

“Sounds psychic to me,” Rick said, grinning.

“Oh, you,” Joe said. “Rick doesn’t believe in it.”

“It’s nonsense. Julie, if we could get into each other’s minds, wouldn’t we have solved the greatest problem in the world?”

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“The distance between two human minds,” Rick said. “If we could really get inside somebody’s head, would we have wars? Would we need territory? Wouldn’t we understand each other so well that we’d just support and help everybody?”

“Rick’s theory of the benevolent universe,” Joe laughed. “No, Ricky, I think if some of us got inside the heads of people around us, we’d probably try and manipulate things. Take control. Turn people into, I don’t know, love slaves. I mean, now, I’m saying this if I were single, so don’t take it personally, honey, but if I could get inside other guys’ heads, I’d just have them take off their clothes and dance around for me all day long and do my wicked bidding.”

Julie grinned, having drunk a little too much wine. “If I could get inside people’s minds, I’d probably try to get them all to give me a dollar. All I’d need would be a million people, and then nobody would be hurt, would they?”

“You think people are greedy,” Rick said, nodding.

“No, I think I’m greedy,” Julie said. “My point is, if I were psychic, I’d do all kinds of things. And I think I’m a nice person.”

“So do I, baby,” Joe said, lifting his plastic cup in a toast. “Just imagine if the people who aren’t so nice could do this. Well, maybe they’d all become the Michael Diamonds of the world.”

“I just don’t buy it at all,” Rick said. “It’s like believing in ghosts. It’s like once you open up yourself to that kind of magical thinking, you’ll swallow anything.”

“I believe in it,” Joe said. “With some restrictions. I don’t believe that psychics can really see anything you don’t want them to. I think our own minds can block things.”

“Hon, I love you, but that’s magical thinking,” Rick said. “That’s like, if I think about flowers, suddenly I’ll get flowers.”

“It is not,” Joe said, ticked off. “Maybe you should consider things outside of your narrow view.”

They got quiet, too suddenly.

Julie reached out and touched Joe’s hand. “I don’t know if I believe in this stuff or not. But I could’ve dismissed everything that happened with Michael Diamond. Except that he told me that Hut’s ex had killed herself. I don’t know. I feel like I’m becoming surrounded by all this psychic crap. From the whole thing about the school Hut went to, to this.”

“What school?”

“Oh. God. I feel a little awkward talking about it. My husband was tested for psychic ability as a kid. In some program. It’s all been news to me. I guess that’s why I was willing to see Diamond. Hut must’ve wanted to put it all in the past. He did that a lot. He put his first wife in the past. He put his adoptive parents in the past. I think he may have even been ready to put me in the past. I don’t know. It all gets confused in my head. I see things sometimes now. I have these…delusions. Hut’s death may just have been too much for me. But…he was who he was. And I need to get on, right?”

“Right,” Joe said.

“But give yourself a lot of time to heal, Julie. Don’t shortchange this process,” Rick said.

“You sound like my therapist.”

“Dr. Rick,” Joe laughed, swatting his partner lightly behind the ear. Then, he said, “So Hut had secrets. I knew it. He was a man of mystery.”

“He was. I’m not even sure how much to believe. My mom sent me some stuff. Our government sometimes had these aptitude tests when kids showed some unusual ability.”

“The Remote Viewing tests,” Joe said. “I read about them. In the Fortean Times. They were cut off around the Gulf War in the ’90s. But they go back a ways.”

“Joe? Really? You read about them?”

“It never amounted to much. But a lot of tax dollars were spent.”

“Wasted, is more like it,” Rick said. “Just like I don’t believe God came down from the sky and made a virgin get pregnant and I don’t believe that vampires get up out of their tombs at night to suck blood, I don’t believe this stuff. I think human life is rough enough without these…popular delusions.”

“You told me you were skeptical,” Joe said. “I didn’t know you thought I was delusional.”

“Baby, not you. I respect your beliefs. I just don’t believe this stuff.”

With this social stalemate threatening to bring storm clouds, Julie suddenly got the idea that they should get the croquet set out and get the kids playing in the front yard. It helped break the brief, slightly drunken tension between Rick and Joe, and Dutch, the dog, loved chasing after the croquet ball.

Rick and Joe were going to get the guestroom, and when everybody was getting ready for bed, Rick pointed to the little nightlights. “What’s with all the nightlights?”

Julie was in the bathroom, standing there with Livy, both of them brushing their teeth in the mirror, Livy standing up on the footstool that allowed her to get up high enough for the sink and mirror. When Julie rinsed, she said, “It’s because it’s too dark at night.”

“It’s for me,” Livy said. “I see a ghost sometimes.”

Right on schedule, her erotic dream took her over when she fell asleep.

The dead man who was not quite Hut turned her on her stomach. He began licking from the nape of her neck down her shoulder blades, following the slight knobs of her spine, his tongue wet and flickering as he tasted her skin. He held her wrists back with his hands, and he went lower, and when he reached the dip in her back, just before the rise in her buttocks, he made a slow long circle there, and bit slightly down on her cheek before his mouth went between the cleft.

She moaned into the pillow, but she was not in her bed, but on a dirty mattress in what seemed like a dungeon, with gray stone walls around her, and what looked like metal instruments of torture hanging from the ceiling.

He licked her inside and out, up and down; every part of her below the waist grew moist and warm with his ministrations.

Then, he rose over her, hefting his weight onto her back until she felt crushed, and her breath came hard to her, and then, he entered her from behind, first in one entry, then another. She felt a burning sensation. Oh, but it felt good, and the dead man whispered in her ears, his spit sliding just inside her earlobe, “Do you want me inside you, Julie? Do you? Do you want me all the way in? Every way? I want to open you. I want to open you, Julie.”

And she opened her mouth wide to say yes, but a muffled sound came from her that was not quite her voice.

Then, someone said, too loud, “Julie? Julie?”

Julie looked up in the dark. A man stood there. Her eyes adjusted, and she reached for the bedside lamp, fear pulsing through her.

Flicked the light up.

It was Joe, wearing a San Francisco ’49ers T-shirt that went all the way to his knees. “Are you okay?” “Joe? Joe—what’s wrong?”

“You were screaming,” he said. “In your sleep.” Then Julie realized that she lay there naked, the

covers thrown off the bed, her pajama bottoms pulled down around her ankles. Quickly, Joe looked away, and Julie reached for the bedspread, pulling it up over herself.

Chapter Seventeen

After Rick and Joe and dog left for the city again, Livy asked to talk to her in private. Julie went with her to her room, and Livy shut the door behind her.

“What’s up?” Julie asked.

“He came into my room last night,” Livy said. “Who?”

“Daddy.”

“Honey, it’s not Daddy. You know that.”

“It is,” Livy said. “But he told me you wouldn’t

believe me. He told me he was going to come for his family and that he loves all of us and not to cry.” “Livy, it was a dream you had.”

“Maybe,” Livy said, looking at her curiously as if she didn’t believe a word that her mother said.

“There’s nothing to be scared of. We have the burglar alarm. We have the NannyCam. Don’t be frightened by these dreams. You’re safe.”

“I’m not scared anymore,” Livy said. Then, she went to open her bedroom door again, and went down the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

Julie sat down on Livy’s narrow bed and looked up at the NannyCam on the bookshelf by the door. She went to get the videotape from the previous night.

She fast-forwarded through the tape of the hallway NannyCam. Joe and Rick stumbled back and forth to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Matt got up to use it. And then, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Empty hall. Bedroom doors either shut or slightly ajar.

And then, a movement through the hall.

Julie felt her heart leap into her throat. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She paused it—looking to make sure that it wasn’t somehow Joe or Rick. That it was someone else.

It was a tall man with broad shoulders, but she couldn’t make out much else. It was like a dark shadow moving in the hallway, obscuring the nightlights as it went.

And then, it passed Livy’s bedroom.

It kept going down the hall.

Straight down the hall to Julie’s room, pushing the door open slightly.

Then, the shadow passed into her room.

It could not have been a shadow, she knew. It was someone. Some man.

Some stranger had gotten into her house and had gone into her bedroom.

And then the NannyCam’s videotape went to static as if it had shut off prematurely.

She checked the burglar alarm, made sure it was operational. Checked all windows. Double-checked the locks on the doors. Grilled both Matt and Livy when they got home from school in case there was any joke going on, but she didn’t tell them what she’d seen.

Then she asked Matt to move the wires and the videotape equipment for the NannyCam to her bedroom. They put one on her dresser, to the left of her bed, aimed for a shot of her entire bed. Then, the other one on the doorway. When Matt asked what it was about, she told him it was just an experiment to see when she snored because she had to see if it was sleep apnea or not. He didn’t quite get it, but he didn’t ask her too many more questions after that.

She couldn’t fall asleep that night until five a.m., because every time she started to close her eyes and drift off, she thought she heard a noise and woke up. She ended up sleeping all day, and then getting up that night to try it again.

She looked at the tapes of the first night, anyway. But there was nothing. It was too dark in her bedroom. She could just make out her sleeping form. Then it went to morning, and she fell asleep. Light came through her window. The clock’s display read: 6:20 a.m. Matt and Julie would probably be waking up. Nothing happened. The light came more fully up, and Matt came in to get her out of bed.

The next night, again, she had trouble sleeping. She took an Ambien, and did something she knew was stupid. She had a glass of the wine that Rick and Joe had left behind. Sleeping aid and booze, she thought when she watched the video later: nice descent into pathetic, Julie.

That night, she had the dream of the dead man, again, lifting her up, her legs around his waist as he pierced her, and she opened for him and he entered her deeply and she felt as if she had been plugged up, that she had no opening, and he took his fingers and pushed them into her mouth and she tasted his skin and in the dream she kept telling herself it was a nightmare and she had to wake up, she had to wake up right now!

She fast-forwarded the video, watched herself finish off the glass of wine and lie down.

And then, when the clock’s display read 3:00 a.m., a shadow moved into the room.

She could not see more than his dark form—his body was so much like Hut’s, it shocked her—but his face was darkness, and he came to her bedside, putting his face near hers. Then, he slowly slipped a hand beneath the covers and drew it back, exposing her in her night shirt. Then, he ran his hand down along her breast, squeezing lightly. She shivered as she watched it.

Slowly—it might’ve taken him a half-hour—he unbuttoned her top and unlaced her bottom, pulling them both off, while she slept through this, moving slightly.

When he had her naked he pressed his mouth against her forehead while his hands roamed down over her breasts, and then further down, between her legs. He pressed his hand down into her, and the sleeping Julie lifted her hips to him.

“Fuck,” Julie said aloud, watching this, not believing it, her mind spinning out of control.

Then, he brought his hand back up to her mouth, and pressed his fingers between her lips. Julie couldn’t quite see, but it looked like the sleeping Julie sucked at his hand. Then he went to her breasts, taking each nipple in his mouth. For the flicker of a second, she was sure that he was looking straight at the NannyCam lens, knowing that he was being watched.

Then he kissed down her navel and belly and went to her pubic hair. He moved around so that he was crouched over. He was naked. Had he taken his clothes off? She hadn’t been able to tell because of the darkness. His penis was hard and long and poised over her mouth as his face went between her legs.

Julie stopped the tape, freezing it. She felt as if she were having a heart attack. She felt as if she had been raped, but wasn’t sure if she could really believe what she was seeing. It was like this was a tape, not of her bedroom, but of her dreams, of what she experienced in them.

She hit “play,” and the tape continued.

The man’s head went between her legs and moved around in circles as he dipped and wiped his penis across her face. Then, sleeping Julie opened her mouth and took him inside her. His buttocks began pumping against her face while he lapped at her vagina.

Then, after minutes, he drew out of her mouth and sat up beside her on the bed. Looking straight at the NannyCam, he rolled her over on her stomach. He got down on all fours and began licking down her back, to her buttocks—as she had remembered from the dream—and then he pressed himself deep into her, and sleeping Julie cried out into the pillow, and he had his face next to her, against her ear, and she cried out again, and his buttocks pounded harder into sleeping Julie.

And then, the tape went to static.

Part Three

Chapter Eighteen

She rewound the tape several times, and watched it slowly and quickly and backward in parts. She tried to get close to the Sony Trinitron to see if she could make out a face. At first, she’d felt horror at watching it, then she was fascinated and generally confused. She cried on one viewing of it, because she was sure that it was a rape, but she didn’t understand how it could be rape because she looked as if she were going along with it. After all, although her eyes seemed closed—she couldn’t quite tell—it looked like the sleeping Julie opened her mouth on command for him. It looked like the sleeping Julie was fine with rolling over. There was no struggle. Worse, she had begun to think of the man as Hut, although their sex life was not nearly as exotic as the mating she saw on the video.

Watching it, she grew increasingly angry, and finally turned it off, and drew the tape out. She called up Mel and told her about it, and Mel suggested that she call the police. “What if it’s the man who killed Hut?” Mel asked. “What if he somehow drugged you?”

“With a sleeping pill? A mild one at that?” “You never know how this stuff works,” Mel said. Then she regaled Julie with the story of a teenaged daughter of a friend who was drugged with something called the date rape drug and was conscious through the whole horrible ordeal. But the family brought charges, and the boy responsible was behind bars. Then, Mel interrupted herself, “I’ll be over in half an hour.”

Mel came by and Julie reluctantly popped the video into the machine and pushed play on the remote control. When the video played, everything was the same as before—with the clock reading three a.m.—but there was no dark figure coming into the room at all. Instead, Julie threw off the covers and began taking her nightclothes off. Once she was naked, she began stroking her nipples. Then, she lifted her left hand and reached with it down between her legs.

“Oh my God,” Julie said, and turned off the tape.

Mel sat there and stared for a few seconds at the television screen. She looked over at Julie.

“Mel, I swear to God, that is not what was on the tape before.”

Mel offered up a warm look, and she looked too much like their mother at that moment. “Julie? What’s going on?”

“That was not what I saw. I saw a man. I saw…Hut,” she said it aloud, finally. Something in her mind cleared. “I slept through it last night. But I know I saw him.”

“You know what we both just saw on that tape,” Mel said in a too-sympathetic tone. “Why would you tape yourself like that?”

“Mel,” she said. “You know I’d never do that.”

“All I know is I didn’t see Hut in it, Julie. Hut is dead. He was murdered. I know that’s hard to face. To look at. And I love you. You’re my sister. We’re best friends. I have nothing against anyone getting their jollies from innocent stuff, but…I didn’t expect this. Are you doing okay? Is that therapist even helping you through all this? I’ve seen the house. I know it’s a lot to keep up with, but have you looked around? I can only come over and help so much, Julie,” Mel said, her hand laid gently on Julie’s arm.

Mel told her to rest, that she’d take the kids for a few days, but bring them over after supper so she could get some peace and do whatever it was that “will make you whole again.” She lectured her that she needed to somehow face herself, deal with life as it was, “the hand that the fates dealt.” Mel talked a blue streak about responsibility and shirking and getting back on your feet and her work at the hospital and planning on the future happening even if Julie wanted to remain behind, and it just went on and on. Julie listened, nodded at the appropriate times, but began to resent Mel—resent her family—resent Hut and his death and the cops who couldn’t catch the guy who’d killed him and a few others and even Rick and Joe and their oh-so-perfect coupledom and finally she just told Mel to leave, that she was getting a headache and they could talk about this later.

Then Julie wandered the house, room to room, looking at it in a way she hadn’t in a long time. There was dust and dirt where the kids had brought it in from outside. Hadn’t she cleaned up for Joe and Rick? Perhaps she’d been preoccupied. Then the kitchen, with dishes and glasses piled in the sink, and three dirty saucepans on the stove, with some stains around the counter, and empty soda cans near the toaster. That wasn’t too bad. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but she hadn’t even called in the cleaning service in weeks to help out. She saw the piles of clothes on the washing machine, and more of them as she passed the kids’ rooms—in the corner of Livy’s room, her T-shirts and shorts from the summer in a heap. The whole house seemed dull and gray.

She went into her bedroom and for the first time felt as if it were stuffy. She went to open the windows, and then saw her own clothes on the other side of her bed. In her bathroom, the medicine cabinet’s mirror was still broken. She hadn’t even thought of going to Home Depot to get another one. And she had done so little shopping in the past week that she wasn’t even sure if the kids had snacks or if they had what they needed for the first weeks of the school year. Mel had taken up the slack, and she supposed Matt had done some of it, too.

How could she have had friends over with the house in that condition? What was wrong with her? She looked at her cracked image in the mirror and wondered what it was that made her see a man who looked in the dark very much like Hut, having sex with her while she slept, forcing himself into her and against her body, and yet, somehow seeing a video of herself masturbating? What had brought her to this, she wondered. Where am I in all this?

She lay down on the bed, but could not stop looking over at the NannyCam’s metal eye, watching her.

How can someone put an image in my head like that? Make me see it on a video that changed when someone else saw it?

She got up and tried calling her mother, but couldn’t. Next, she tried calling Michael Diamond’s office, but tracking him down was next to impossible.

Julie couldn’t bring herself to watch the tape again until after more wine. She watched it again, and this time, it was exactly as she’d seen it with her sister: she was masturbating, alone in bed, and the room seemed to have more moonlight in it, for she could tell that her eyes were not closed. The video itself didn’t seem that fuzzy. They were open. She felt disgusted with her own body, watching this. She felt as if a nerve pinched inside her mind as she tried to make sense out of this—out of the dreams, out of the tapes, out of seeing things that weren’t there. Seeing things that could not be there.

She had two choices: she was either losing her mind, or this was something else.

Her laptop open on her bed, she connected the cable and went online. She pulled up some search engines—Google and Hotbot and Yahoo—and began searching for the terms “school,” “psychic,” “remote viewing” and “1977,” hoping this would come up with something. In each case, there were pages upon pages of listings, and she scrolled up and down the screen, taking a stab at each listing or mention. None of it seemed to point to anything helpful.

After about an hour of searching, she nearly gave up, but came upon a link to a webpage that didn’t have much on the surface—mainly just a mention that there had been a sleep study for psychic ability in the 1970s in Los Angeles, and it had been completely unsuccessful. In the brief article, the writer referred to the “legendary scandal of Project Daylight.”

Julie saved this page, and opened a new browser window, looking up the words “Project Daylight,” “remote viewing,” and “New York.”

Nearly one hundred references came up for these search terms. It completely surprised her.

She began clicking links into each one of the terms. All seemed to go to conspiracy-theory-type sites. Some of the sites dealt with paranormal phenomena, some with urban legends, some with UFOs. When she found mention of Project Daylight, she found mention of a sleep study of children with sleep disorders—whether “night fears,” or general insomnia. Each website she visited seemed to have a different piece of this puzzle about Project Daylight. Brief mentions. “Nobody really knows about Project Daylight, other than a fire destroyed the house where the research took place.” That was really the most definitive statement she could find. There were at least twenty children in the program, and many of them had come from the foster care system. One of the children had shown what they called an “advanced PSI ability,” and she wasn’t quite sure what PSI meant, other than psychic and a variant on the acronym ESP. In due course, she found its definition, and it did, indeed, refer to paranormal ability such as clairvoyance, telepathy, psychometry, and psychokinesis. She knew the first two terms, but was unsure of psychometry or psychokinesis, but she could take a wild guess.

The Chelsea Parapsychological Institute kept coming up as a connection with the Daylight Project. She looked them up, too, and found that they’d shut down in the early 1980s, although it gave their old address.

It was the building on Rosetta Street.

Sixth floor of the building.

66S. Sixth Floor, Sixth Apartment, Letter S.

And she found out something else about the Chelsea Parapsychological Institute.

It had been run by a retired Colonel in the Army who had once worked in military intelligence. A man named Alan Diamant.

She remembered something in Michael Diamond’s book about his father.

She sat at the kitchen table, with Diamond’s books open. She skimmed pages, trying to remember where he mentioned his dad. Then, she remembered. It was the first thing she’d read. She opened The Life Beyond, and scanned the introduction.

She found it:

“My own father died several years ago, and if you looked up his name online or through public records, you’d eventually find out that he was a Colonel in the Army, that he served in Viet Nam, that he worked in military intelligence and then as a liaison in Bosnia even in retirement. You’d know the name of his brothers, of his parents, of his children and even how he died, because contributions were made to the American Cancer Society. You’d know his date and place of birth. You’d perhaps have a handful of names to research further, too. The internet today is such that people can trace entire family trees going back centuries if they want to. How easy is that for a psychic? All the psychic has to do is spend thirty minutes or so researching one or two families who are showing up for his audience, and then he gets up in front of the audience and says, ‘I’m talking to someone who says he has a son here. He’s showing me something about—a helicopter? Or a plane? Some kind of military plane? I’m getting the sense that he was a soldier of some kind. An officer? But there’s something about Bosnia, too. Does this sound like anyone here?’ And sheep that I am, I’d raise my hand and gasp and say, ‘It’s my dad!’”

Back at her laptop, Julie did a search on terms she thought most likely to come up with an obituary of a man named Alan Diamant. It took her three tries, adding search terms each time. Finally, an obituary from 1982 showed up as part of the online archives for the Journal for Paranormal Research of America. It had all the particulars: Colonel in the Army, Viet Nam, went from military intelligence to applied research to parapsychology to founding—and funding—the (CPI) Chelsea Parapsychological Institute for the decade of its existence. Married, divorced, re-married, divorced again, mention of the closing of the CPI, mention of two children. Mention not of cancer, as Michael Diamond had indicated in his book, but “as the result of an accident.” There was a picture accompanying the obituary of Alan Diamant in his late 20s, in uniform. The obituary turned into an article about founders of various paranormal groups, and there was mention of government supervision of certain programs.

That was it.

“It doesn’t mean it’s his father,” Joe Perrin told her when she called him up. “Even if it is…”

“If it is, he might know about Hut. If Hut was there. If any of this matters,” she said. “Joe, you told me you believe in this kind of thing. I’ve experienced something recently.”

“A ghost?” His voice carried with it a half-joke in the word, as if he were uneasy mentioning it.

“I don’t know. A phenomenon of some kind that would make any sane person start drinking and any insane person start jumping out windows,” she said, completing his joke to keep it light.

“I believe in ghosts,” Joe said. “And I know our government backed programs for remote viewing. I’ve read too many articles about it not to believe it. It’s tough thinking they might’ve used kids, but if it was a sleep study, maybe.”

“I’m going to ask him.”

“You got balls,” Joe laughed, but she didn’t. His comment reminded her too much of something Amanda Hutchinson said to her.

“Well, if it’s not his father, he’ll laugh. He told me that I should come talk to him. Maybe he’s psychic. I just am beginning to push to that side of things.”

“Belief?”

“Belief. Or being open to this. Now. Given everything. And if Alan Diamant, well, maybe he knows something. Maybe he was there. If your dad runs a parapsychological foundation, it’s pretty likely that you may grow up to be a psychic,” she said. “Right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But Diamant is a different name than Diamond.”

“I don’t know. It’s not so different,” she said. “Maybe he’s ashamed of his father. Or maybe the name Diamond is just more…”

“Hollywood,” Joe completed her thought. “He’s cubic zirconia. Diamonds are not always a girl’s best friend.”

“Ha,” she said.

“Don’t forget me when you’re in the city,” Joe said before they hung up on each other. “I’ll do some snooping around in all these books and magazines I’ve got piled up. Do you want a psychic reading? I can ask my friend Lauren. She’s excellent.”

She decided to tape one more night. She went to Matt and asked about his camcorder. Could it be set up with a timer? Yes. Could he set it up so that it could shoot reasonably decent video in the dark? Yes. Could she then take the DVD and put it right into the computer without him seeing it? Yes. This time she intended to be drugged out of her mind with whatever substance could knock her out. She had an old bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet that she and Hut never drank, but she knew it was the good stuff. She took a few swigs before going to bed, very late, and then lay down on her bed. This time she kept her clothes on—her shirt and jeans and a sweater.

She drank three small glasses of whiskey and sat up too late, and then sleep came and it was deep.

In the morning, she took the NannyCam tapes and watched them, and there was nothing. Same for the camcorder’s tape. She tried it three more nights. Nothing. Nothing.

And then, the fourth night was a charm.

Although the visuals were too shadowy in the NannyCam tapes, Matt’s camcorder had night vision technology, and she saw the dark of her room with greenish glows. The green-black figure of a man. His face so much like Hut’s it made her gasp.

And then, as she watched, she had the strangest feeling she’d ever experienced. It was as if he was looking at her, watching him. Knowing that she would watch him hours later. Knowing that she would see this videotape.

He went to where the camcorder was set on the tripod, and looked directly into the camera. It was Hut. The video was dark and glowing green and grainy, but there was no doubt about it. He seemed to be trying to say something, but there was no sound on the video. Then, he fumbled with the camera. He lifted it up, and now, he had it in his hands and was filming the bedroom. Filming her. With one hand, he unbuttoned her sweater, and then, beneath this, unbuttoned her shirt. He spread the material apart, and pressed his hand in the brief gap between her breasts. Then he kept the camera focused on where his hand went. He delicately drew back each side of her shirt, exposing her breasts, and then put his fingers around the nipple of her right breast, and twisted it slightly. He cupped her breast in his hand, then drew the camera back.

He continued to undress her with some dexterity, filming each movement he made.

When he had her completely naked, he put his hand between her knees and pushed them apart. Then, he put the camera there, close enough that she could see herself—and he began stroking her there, between her legs, all the while keeping the camera focused where his fingers played.

She couldn’t watch it anymore. She shut it off. Covered her face in her hands. She couldn’t even conjure tears.

“I’d like to speak with Eleanor Swanson,” Julie said, holding the cell phone close to her face.

Eleanor’s assistant told her that she was out for a few days. “Just a brief holiday,” he said. “If it’s an emergency, I can make sure she has your message before the end of the day.”

Julie paused, and then said, “No, it’s all right. I’ll call her when she gets back.”

She remembered Matt’s video that had struck her as odder than odd: the one where he’d videotaped her sleeping. She went to the desktop computer in the den and pulled up his videos. They were numbered, but not otherwise labeled. She knew there was one of her sleeping, and then the very strange one of the girl that was probably from his school. It had been in the back of her mind to ask him about them, but she hated to push him on anything after what he’d gone through. Eleanor had told her to expect that he’d be like stone about his mother’s death for at least a few months until he got through a protective layer inside him. “And then expect Niagara Falls and some yelling and maybe some well-placed anger,” Eleanor had said, suggesting several therapists he could see if he still didn’t want to talk to her again.

Julie tried to open some of the videos, but none of them would open, and she wasn’t technologically advanced enough to figure it out.

Then she made a call to Michael Diamond’s office. They gave her the runaround and put her on hold (twice). She made sure all the doors were locked, windows closed and locked, checked the burglar alarm and got in the Camry and drove to the city.

In the backseat of the car, she’d tossed copies of The Mind’s Journey and The Life Beyond.

Chapter Nineteen

“I’m sorry,” the woman at the front guard desk said, looking at her with what Julie assumed was the kind of sizing up a security guard needed to do if they smelled a stalker. “His show tapes Mondays and Tuesdays. If you’d like to get tickets, the ticket window is—”

“I’m not here to get tickets,” she said, and then left abruptly. She got a bagel and bad coffee from a street vendor, and stood on the corner of 53^rd and Sixth Avenue, wondering when she had transitioned from a widow to a stalker.

On her cell phone, she dialed the studio, got a recording, and on the recording was an eight-hundred number for buying Michael Diamond’s books and tapes. She called it, and got an operator.

“I need to reach him,” she said.

“I’m sorry. We’re a warehouse fulfillment service,” the man said on the phone.

She hung up.

Then she opened the book, and looked at the last few pages. Diamond was shilling his tapes and books and seminars and…consultations.

She called the number listed for the consultations. “I’d like a consultation. But I want it immediately.”

“I’m sorry,” the young woman said, her voice practically a chirp. “Mr. Diamond has a waiting list. The consultation price is $2,000 for one hour, and I can put you down for…how’s October 12^th?”

“Listen. I don’t care about his schedule. You tell him—or his handlers—that this is Julie Hutchinson. The woman he had on the show recently. The one who he told that someone would die. That person died. You tell him that if I don’t see him, and fast, I’m bringing a lawsuit down on his head that will ruin him forever.”

He agreed to meet her at a restaurant called Pastis that was just outside the Village, toward Chelsea, in the meat-packing district. They sat outside, the restaurant’s awning shielding them from the sun. She ordered steak frites, and he ordered beans on toast and a glass of white wine.

“So, you’re threatening me,” he said.

“I had to see you.”

“I know.”

“What…what was that all about?”

“In the studio? It’s what I do. I viewed you.”

“Viewed?”

“I go inside people, sometimes. It’s like possession, I guess, only I’m not a ghost. It’s my mind—it’s not magic. It’s a genetic mutation, I think. My grandmother had this, too. One percent of the population has it. You know, I thought you hated my guts after our session.”

“I did. But…you said things that…well, they were accurate. I had buried them, but they were true. I’ve never admitted them to anyone. Not my mother, my sister, not my kids.”

“I know.”

“You know all?”

“No, I don’t. I know very little, in fact. What you consider normal intuition—I’ve got zero. Truthfully, if I didn’t have this ability—we call it Ability X—I’d be a bum in the street. In fact, I was, for several years. It goes in and out, depending on a host of factors. But it’s come on strong in the past six years, so…well, I’ve had to make hay while the sun shines. So, you need my help with something you don’t really understand. Is that right?”

Julie nodded. Their food came, and Julie picked at her French fries.

“But you don’t really believe,” he said. “Now.”

“I thought you said belief doesn’t matter. There are things I need to know.”

“About your husband.”

She nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but…” “You’ve seen his ghost,” Diamond said.

“I wish that’s what it felt like. I think I’m losing my mind, since he died. I think my mind is flashing on and off or something. A few nights ago, I thought I saw him. As close as you are. I thought I saw him, but then, when I turned on the light, he wasn’t there. And then, on a video I made. He is in it. But the video goes bad. All the videos went bad.”

“I have to tell you, Julie. I don’t believe in ghosts. Not like you’re saying. I don’t believe there are physical manifestations of spirits where you can see them.”

“So, I guess I’m halfway to the psych hospital,” she said, and tried not to imagine Amanda Hutchinson.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I meant, sometimes what happens is our brain gives access to projections— so what we see isn’t a ghost, so much as…well, a movie. A movie our mind creates, influenced by either our own psychic ability, or someone nearby who has that ability. Your daughter, for example.”

“Livy?”

“Well, you told me about her brain radio. She thinks she communicates with her dead father.”

“I didn’t tell you that.”

He grinned. “For all you know, you live in a psychic household. Let’s assume your daughter has some psychic ability. Anyone else in your family have this?”

“My mother thinks she does. But she doesn’t. Believe me, she doesn’t.”

“It’s usually genetic.”

“Ah.”

“I can tell by that ‘ah’ that you think this is one loony bin candidate talking to another. Think what you want, just stay with me on this. You’ve read my books. You know what remote viewing is. That’s why you’re here. You know about the Stream, don’t you?”

She nodded. “In your book. It’s what connects consciousness between people.”

“It’s fluid, and just because physics hasn’t yet described it, doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be mapped out just like DNA. I believe it’s the connection between entire species. Ants have it—and it’s obvious they do. Birds that migrate have it. As we go up the food chain, it seems to have been weeded out. Who knows why. And now, it just shows up as a genetic burp. That’s what I think I am: a burp.”

She laughed, and for just a moment forgot her headache—the one that hadn’t disappeared in days.

“I am here,” she said, “to find out if you know about something called Project Daylight.”

A strange look flickered across his face, as if he were deciding on something that might affect her.

“It was your father running that program. Am I correct?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“It was on the sixth floor of an apartment building on Rosetta Street.”

Again, he nodded. “It began as a sleep study for children with certain disorders. My father hired several medical people to oversee aspects of it, but this was a cover for what it was really about. He had received funding from the Army to find out if there was a key to turning on Ability X in people. Children with the ability seemed to have an easier time of it. My father was misguided. He assumed all children were good. But they are not. Some children…well, particularly children who had come from abuse and were angry and had the seed of something more in them…well, the place was badly ventilated, apparently, and when the fire broke out—caused by faulty wiring, ultimately—many people died. My father was burned. Forty percent of his body, mainly his legs. He lived a few years beyond this, but ended up taking his own life. Project Daylight was a disaster, it cost too much money, and the Army wanted to hide it once the fire happened. So, it got buried.”

“My husband was in Project Daylight.”

“Then, your husband was psychic. Or had some level of ability. As a child.”

“He never told me about his childhood,” she said.

“Given what happened in Project Daylight, I doubt he would,” Michael Diamond said.

Although she wanted to open up to him, Julie became worried as Diamond spoke to her that she would sound too crazy. She wanted to unleash everything, to ask a thousand questions. But it all came down to one question. The one question she had never known in Hut’s entire life. “Do you know who my husband was?”

Diamond put down his fork, and said, “I’m not sure. All of us in that program, Julie, lost memories.”

“You were in it?”

“My father had some psychic ability, and I inherited it. My mother, too. People with Ability X often seek each other out. I’m surprised you don’t have any.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“You don’t really believe in it, do you?”

“I believe that people believe. And maybe I want to know more,” she said. “Did you…did you know Hut? Well, his name was Jeff. I don’t know what his last name would’ve been. He was a ward of the state at the time.”

“Well, memories were lost, believe me,” he said.

She nodded. “A boy was burned.”

“He died,” Diamond said.

She remembered something that Detective McGuane had mentioned. “Died? I thought he lived. The cops think that man who killed my husband might have been that boy.”

“Do they? They think a dead boy killed someone?” He let the question hang in the air. Then he said, “I can show you the few memories I have of it. But they’re vague. They’re out of focus.”

“Show me?”

“Whether or not you believe in Ability X, Julie,” he said, “doesn’t matter. I can bring you inside myself. I can show you what I remember. At least fragments.”

“How?”

“If you really want that, I need total access,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, I need to delve into you—into your psyche. I need to unblock, and open doors in your mind. I need to let things out that you don’t want to get out. It’s not selective. I can’t pick and choose which door to open. I’m just the locksmith. I can unlock the door, but I can’t prevent things from spilling out. Do you understand?”

She squinted as she looked at him. “I guess I’m still skeptical. But, when you touched me in the studio that day…”

“Ah. The laying on of hands. In religious mysticism, it’s the most important way to Stream. To move from my consciousness into yours. Once you’ve let me inside you, you can slip into me.” He took a sip of wine, and grinned like a teenage boy who just shot off a bottle rocket. “It’s like I feel everything the other person has felt. It’s like unleashing impulses. It’s like…well, pardon me for saying so, like an orgasm. And it’s scary.” He touched the tip of her fingers as she reached for her water glass. She withdrew her hand.

Maybe he’s just nuts, she thought. Maybe you need to get out of this lunch. Maybe whatever little bullshit ability he has isn’t going to be what you want. You’re smart, Julie, Eleanor told you that you might hallucinate and see Hut. That it was the normal grief and stress and longing. That it’s not some supernatural event. It’s just the human mind with a few cracks in it.

“Maybe I am nuts,” he said, too easily.

“You read my expression,” she said. “You wrote that in your book, about the con artists. They know how to read people from body language and even the looks on their faces. My therapist said it, too. Things most of us don’t even notice, but you’ve trained yourself to do.”

“But you don’t believe that, do you?” he said. “Not after recent experiences. You didn’t seek me out because of lack of belief. When I viewed you, Julie, I was there, with you, inside you, Julie. The birth of your little girl. Making love to your husband. I was there, with you, in your memory. As creepy as it sounds, it’s not. It’s a beautiful experience. It’s a connection of souls. It’s like a spider web inside each of us, and each strand of that web is a different world within us, and each strand shoots out and connects with strands of others, outside of us. A few of us are lucky enough to go inside. We need permission to do it. We can’t just slip into someone else. They have to want me inside them.”

His words made her shiver, slightly. Reminding her of words the dark figure had whispered to her in her dreams: Do you want me inside you?

She closed her eyes, made a brief wish, opened them. His face seemed open and warm and unassuming.

It was like stepping off a cliff, stepping into his world of psychic “reading.”

A world of illogic and mystical crap and all the things she’d fought her whole life never to believe.

“Can I trust you?” she asked. “I mean, really trust you?”

He nodded, without hesitation.

“I saw his wounds when he died. I was at the morgue. He is dead. But I see him. I think…I think I’m being haunted by him. Look, I’ll pay you whatever it takes just to find out if I’m sane or not.”

“I don’t want your money,” he said.

His apartment was less impressive than she’d expected. It was a three-flight walk-up on Perry Street, in the Village. When he opened the door, she saw a place that looked like it had only been lived in for a few weeks.

“Most of my money goes to organizations I believe in,” he said, noticing her raised eyebrows. “It’s the main reason I write the books and do the show. That’s the carnival aspect of Ability X. My income mostly goes to nonprofits that deal with, oh, the usual.”

“Animal rescue groups and homes for wayward girls?”

“Something like that. When you live mainly in your mind, you have modest needs.”

“On the table,” he said, directing her to what looked like a massage table near the window.

He drew the shades. He stood over her. For a moment, in the shadows, he reminded her of someone else.

Then, he sat down in a chair beside her.

“This’ll seem awkward. Just try to relax. All right? This is called body work. Just think of it like a massage. I need you to loosen your shirt. Would you mind taking it off?”

“Why?”

“Trust me or don’t trust me. You’ve had massages, I assume.”

“Yes. But usually…in a spa.”

“Tell you what, keep your cell phone on autodial for 911 if you’re afraid of me.”

She was about to pull out her cell phone. Everything had begun to frighten her, but she’d begun feeling a certain numbness inside. She remembered the video of watching Hut looking at the camera, saying something, and then filming her in the most obscene way. Is this what insanity is? Is this what Amanda Hutchinson felt like? Is this how it crawls inside you? Finally, she said, “I’m not afraid of you.”

The look on his face was of utter seriousness.

“Clothing interrupts the Stream.” He said it so matter-of-factly that she felt as if any threat had been removed.

He wasn’t even interested in her, in that way. She could sense it.

“If I were a doctor, you’d have no problem removing your clothes. If I were a masseur, you’d be naked before I could say, ‘get on the table.’ Think of me like that.”

She fought an internal battle, wondering if she had gone off the deep end. But finally, she unbuttoned her shirt, and drew it off.

“I’ll get you a towel,” he said. “For modesty.”

He got up and went toward the bathroom. When he returned, he tossed a large white fluffy towel at her. It smelled fresh, as if he’d just done his laundry.

“I’ll go make some tea,” he gestured toward the boxcar kitchen.

After he’d gone over to the sink, she slipped out of her skirt, but kept her underwear on. She wrapped the towel around herself, and it managed to cover most of her, breasts included. She had an awful feeling that she was stepping into a trap. That she had let a dream rape her, and now she was setting herself up for a man who was a virtual stranger to do the same. And yet, she had to see where this went. She had to know what was in his mind, his memories. She had to know more.

After he poured himself some tea, he returned to the living room, and sat down beside the table.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She stared straight ahead: her view was the bathroom door, with its mirror. She saw her face, and Michael Diamond as he sat down in a chair beside the massage table.

“I want you to know that you are safe. I won’t be touching you, but your mind will think I am. Have you ever gone to a Reiki therapist? They hold their hands just so, above certain points of the body. They believe they’re directing their healing life energy to the subject. This is somewhat similar. My hands will be this far from you the entire time. I want you to be aware of it, because there will come a point when it feels as if I’m touching you. Do not break the Stream. I Stream into you. I want you to close your eyes. Now. All right. Think back to a time when you first remember seeing a flower. Yes, a flower,” he said the words slowly, carefully, and she felt his hand on the back of her scalp. As he kept his hand there—barely touching her hair—she began to feel an intense heat, as if his hand emanated an aura of warmth. He guided her through looking at the first flower, then the first friend, then the look on her mother’s face when it was Christmas, and each time he took her mind somewhere new, she felt the presence of his hand again—not his hand itself, but the warmth beneath it as it hovered at the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades, down her spine, as he parted the towel, to the base of her spine, and then, slowly back up again.

She remembered other things from her childhood, remembered a fight her parents had, remembered when she and Mel had dressed up their pet schnauzer in baby clothes, and then the memories came forward as if, by touching her, he had begun opening doors in her mind that she’d been shutting behind her.

Soon, she had lost even the sound of his voice, but felt him there, his hand no longer moving just above the surface of her skin, but inside her in some impossible way—beneath the surface of consciousness, and his hand guided her along through memory, through doors that opened, one after the other, and behind them, memories. Then, more than memories—fantasies began coming to her—of flying in the air, of swimming like a fish through the water, and then she felt as if she were butting up against some door that wouldn’t open, but his hand was there, with her, and finally it flew apart as if smashed, and behind it was a blood-red room, and she was there, and a man without a face, and he caressed her and touched her, parting her legs as he parted her mouth with his tongue, and in this red room, she felt no shame and had no care that they were being watched by the outsider, by the psychic who chaperoned her journey into her subconscious. The faceless man against whom she twisted and bucked in a sexual fantasy of frenzy and animal lust, now took on the form of Michael Diamond himself—for a flickering moment—but then, as if propelled by pathways of the pulse, she was ejected from her inner fantasy, and moved again to memory—to a row of iron doors that looked as if they were locked, bolted, and bound by some kind of interconnecting bloodroots, but she heard a distant sound of a series of pops, and the doors opened, all of them, and it was as if she were spying on herself, spying on her life with Hut, on the life they’d built, only she watched it like it was one of Matt’s movies, she watched their life, and as she watched, she saw Hut for who he really was, not the man of her fantasies and not the man of her illusions, but a man who was cold with her, and brusque, a man who was selfish with his time and displayed little love even for his son—a handsome, vain man who watched her at times as if she were not entirely human to him…

She heard Michael Diamond’s voice, “Let’s move beyond all of this, there’s another place we need to go. You may be afraid, you may not want to go there. But fear isn’t what it seems. Fear awakens us to our abilities, our senses that have been hidden. Fear is the key to the final door inside you.” She felt as if someone had taken her wrist, and tugged on it, pulling her into a dark place inside her mind, a dungeon where some beast growled in a corner.

“There’s a place inside you,” Diamond whispered. “A place where you’ve been, but you don’t remember. It’s been hidden from you. But you know it. I want you to face your fear and venture there again. With me.”

Julie moved as if swimming underwater, with dark vines moving slowly as if pushed by some unseen tide, and the doors were there, before her.

One of them began to open.

When it did, she saw Hut.

His eyes, milky white, his grin impossibly wide. His arms outstretched.

And she moved to him, as if some invisible tide pushed her toward the dead man.

Julie’s eyes opened, suddenly.

Got her bearings: she was in Diamond’s apartment.

It was mid-afternoon.

An overwhelming pounding behind her eyes, as if she had a terrible headache that had just erupted. She glanced straight ahead at the long, vertical mirror on the front of the bathroom door. Her face—her eyes were bloodshot, she’d been crying—and Michael Diamond sat in a chair next to her. He looked up, at her staring at his reflection.

Only it wasn’t his face in the mirror.

It was a blur of grays and blues.

It was the face of the man in Apartment 66S. His body was different. She saw him as if he were naked, standing in the mirror. Covered with burns. Covered as if most of his body had been consumed in a fire.

Chapter Twenty

“You’re the boy,” she gasped. “You’re the boy who burned. The boy didn’t die. He didn’t. He lived. It’s you.” Her throat clutched as she said it, and she pushed herself up on the massage table, drawing the towel more tightly around her.

“Julie?” he asked.

She looked at him, and he was normal again, then into the mirror and he was also Michael Diamond, dressed, rising now from his chair.

She dressed quickly, feeling a pulse of horror within her body. Diamond may have been speaking, but she didn’t hear a word. She just knew that if she didn’t leave his apartment, she would scream, or she’d want to jump out a window. She felt the urgency of it, as if something was coming toward her, some shrieking insanity swooping down from shadows. She thought of Amanda, with her caged animal beauty, her fierce attack, and wondered if she hadn’t experienced what was going on in her mind. If she hadn’t begun to see people’s faces as blurs of gray and blue. She felt as if she’d been infected with something, some awful poison, something that had begun eating away at her sanity.

She raced down the stairs, not caring if she tripped and fell, and out into the street. She was disoriented, and couldn’t remember where her car was parked. She wandered through the village, her heart seeming to beat a thousand times a minute. She felt as if she would die at any moment, and she was about to let it happen, she was about to let the anxiety and breathlessness within her win.

As she rounded a corner at Bleecker and Cornelius, she saw a crowd gathered around what must have been an accident. She felt drawn to it, and went to the group of people, who all stood still, watching the delivery boy, on the street, his bicycle mangled. Several feet ahead, on the road, a taxicab, with its driver standing half in and half out of the car, door swung open, looking shell-shocked.

The boy had been knocked off his bike, and his head was twisted unnaturally around. His left arm was bent over his right shoulder. He looked as if he were no more than seventeen years old.

His Chinese food he’d been delivering lay in mashed white cartons beyond the small crowd.

The sound of the ambulance, rounding the corner. She looked in the boy’s eyes, she had to, she wanted

to see what death was again, she wanted to believe it was final, and that whatever had been that boy was now gone, irretrievably.

Then she felt a tender cracking, as if inside her skull, and for a moment, she wondered if this was what a brain aneurysm began with—a slight cracking sound— and then, she heard her husband’s voice.

“ I would never leave you, Julie,” he said. “Death is everywhere. But not where I am. Do you want me inside you?”

She dropped by Joe and Rick’s place.

“Jesus, Jules. You’re white as a sheet. And that’s something I never thought I’d ever get to say out loud,” Joe said after he opened the door.

“I’m losing my mind,” she said.

After she told him everything, Joe said, “He might as well have raped you, Julie. He told you to take your clothes off? You did it? You went along with it? How do you know he didn’t hypnotize you or something and then do something awful to you while you were under? You’ve got to be more careful. God, should we call the cops?” Realizing his tone, he calmed a bit. “No, we call them, how is it going to look? Julie? Do you really think he killed Hut? I mean, that you happen to read his books. You happen to go to his studio. You happen to…”

“I know it sounds crazy, Joe. But you believe in this stuff. What if he had psychic talent to draw me to him? I mean, what is the extent of this kind of thing?”

“It sounds like something I’ve never heard of. I mean, if I believed that…”

“What about the burns I saw? In the mirror?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and for the first time ever in their friendship, she thought she detected a flicker of distance in him. As if he were looking at her in such a way that he needed to see her as damaged. As deranged.

“Joe, I’m not crazy. I know I’m not. I saw him. I think he did what he said—he streamed into me. And when I came out of it, too suddenly, I saw him for a split second. He told me that I couldn’t be inside him unless he first opened me. He said it. And that’s what it was. I saw inside him. That’s what I saw with the burns. But…if he were burned as a kid, how could he look so…normal?”

Joe thought a moment, and said, “I worked with a woman once who had been in a car crash. Eighty percent of her body had burned. Five years later, with a lot of surgery, she looked better than she ever had. I guess, maybe if you saw him naked, you’d see the burn. If…if you really saw something that was real. Julie, now don’t get pissed off at me or anything, but if you saw this for just a second, couldn’t it maybe have been some kind of hangover from what he did to you? Like waking too fast from a dream?”

“Joe,” she said. “I saw things. Things I’ve forgotten. Things that…he unlocked inside me. And then, I thought I heard him. Inside me. But not from me. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe it was my mind on hyperspeed. But I saw him.”

“Diamond?”

“No,” she said. “Hut.”

Julie finally opened up about the apartment on Rosetta Street.

“I know that block. It’s creepy already. I had to walk through there at night one time, and I swear the ghosts of all the cows they killed down there are wandering.” He grinned. “You still have the key to the place?”

Julie nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said.

This time, to get through the building’s security door, Joe buzzed one of the first floor apartments and pretended to be the son of an old lady on the sixth floor. It took three tries before he got buzzed in—“It’s not the nicest way to sneak into a building, but it works sometimes,”—and when they got to 66S, Julie reached for her handbag, but Joe said, “I guess we didn’t need the keys after all.”

The door was ajar.

“What if someone’s in there?” she asked.

He smiled. “We say we had the wrong apartment

and we back out slowly. Gee, makes me feel like I’m one of the Hardy Boys.”

Inside, the light switch didn’t work. It was growing dark outside, but there was still some light from the large factory-style windows of the apartment.

“Hello?” Joe asked, his voice booming. He turned back to her, “Open the door wide so we can get more light in here.”

She pulled the door back, and a rectangle of white from the hall light illuminated the foyer.

“Stinks,” Joe said, holding his nose.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“There’s bound to be another light around the corner,” he said, talking completely through his mouth as if trying to close off his nose from the smell that emanated from within.

She watched his silhouette as it melted into the grayness.

Then, a light flicked up in the next room. She went down the hall, and into the living area. It was now completely empty of furniture, as if someone had moved.

There was one high-backed wooden chair at the center of the room. It reminded her of a chair she had seen in a dream. Somehow she’d seen it, but she didn’t mention this to Joe.

“I guess they got evicted,” Joe said. “Nobody home.”

Then, he went to check in the bedroom. She waited, remembering seeing the man standing there. The man who had the same blurred face that she’d seen in Michael Diamond’s mirror.

Julie’s imagination began to run wild. You’re a fool, you can’t have seen anything in the mirror. You can’t have seen a man with a blurred face anywhere. It’s the dreams you’ve been having. It’s Hut’s death. It has gotten to you and instead of dealing with it, you’ve been dancing around it. You saw the video with Mel. You saw that all you filmed was yourself, maybe dreaming of sex with Hut. Maybe dreaming of things because the raw deal you got with his murder was too much for you to handle. Hut was part of some psychic study as a kid. No wonder he never talked about it. But he did talk to Livy about her brain radio. He did try to tell her—she was sure of it—that something bad had happened in his childhood. Maybe when he talked about the Hutchinsons being horrible to him, he was confusing it. Maybe his memories had been like crossed wires. Or maybe Michael Diamond had been telling the truth: that the fire in the building took the memories. Blocked them. That’s nuts to think any of this is real. You don’t genuinely believe in…but the Streaming session with Diamond had seemed too real. She had never felt someone else’s consciousness, inside her like that. Am I going insane? Is this what it is? But she could answer her own question: it was as if someone was fucking with her. As if someone had already crawled inside her mind and was screwing with the way she saw things. The way she perceived. The video. The Streaming. It was all about her brain itself hitting short-circuits. It was not insanity. At best, it was shock and paranoia. Post-traumatic stress. Seeing her husband’s body on a metal table. Seeing how he’d been carved into. Seeing Matt’s arm, with its carvings. Seeing things. That’s all it was. Seeing things. It wasn’t that she herself was losing her mind. It was a problem of vision. It was a problem of how things are seen, and what happens when a shock occurs.

She waited for Joe, and her mind spun until she just wanted to feel as if something made sense.

Joe came out of the bedroom and said, “Nothing there, either.”

She could see in his face the doubt. Even Joe, who believed in psychic phenomena wholeheartedly, thought she had gone off the deep end.

“Look,” he said, anticipating her mood. “You’ve had some shocks. I’m not saying that none of this adds up to anything. But I think if we’re going to call the police, we need more. I’ll look up some stuff and call some friends who are more expert on this. I’ll find out more about Project Daylight. Don’t worry about this. Let me drive you home, okay?”

Joe drove her back in her Camry, and when they got near Rellingford, he offered to spend the night, but she could tell he wanted to get home. She insisted that she was all right. So, they drove to the train station and she saw him off. She enjoyed the ride back with all the windows down and the slight wind blowing through the car, giving her a nice chill. She felt better. She wasn’t sure what to make of Michael Diamond or what she’d seen—or hadn’t seen—at his place. But she’d handle it later.

When Julie walked in the front door of her house, her sister was in the living room, covered with a blanket on the couch, with Livy, in her jammies, curled up around her.

Mel opened her eyes. “How’d it go?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Thanks for coming over,” Julie whispered, lifting Livy up in her arms. Livy was so sound asleep that she barely stirred as her mother carried her to her bedroom.

She was too tired to clear out the guest room for Mel, so she and her sister slept together up in the big king-sized bed in Julie’s room. When Julie got up in the morning, Mel already had coffee made. The kids had gone off to school. It was after eleven.

Mel barely said a word, but hugged her. “I love you, Julie. You’re the best little sister in the whole world. But I don’t want you going in the city anymore. And I don’t even think your friend Joe was much help to you. And I certainly think that Michael Diamond was bad news from the start. I wish I’d told mom to go by herself to that stupid show.”

Julie said very little, certainly didn’t want to add to her sister’s sense that she was losing it by telling her about Project Daylight and Michael Diamond and seeing blurred faces and burnt bodies. As the thoughts spun through her head, Julie giggled a little and then noticed Mel’s unforgiving look. She knew what Mel was thinking. You’re thinking that I am a terrible Mommy and I need to somehow be strong and pull through and just focus on Mommydom and forget that I had a husband, forget that even though you saw your little sister masturbating on videotape that I saw a man who might’ve been a dead man molesting me in my sleep and you think that I need meds and a good long rest and you’re probably even thinking of taking Matt and Livy away for a while until I get a good doctor and end up like the Numbah One Wife, Amanda Hutchinson, who thought I had big hairy balls. Absurdities encircled her thoughts, and nothing made sense, and she knew that the longer Mel watched her, the worse she would feel, the more she would go whirling into an oblivion of fear and belief and shadow.

Julie thanked her for the coffee and for cleaning the house. She thanked her for taking care of Matt and Livy. She told her that the rest had done her good last night, and that she knew she’d been experiencing crazy thoughts. “Eleanor called it post-traumatic stress disorder,” Julie said. “But I’m getting good care. Honest. I am.”

“You went to see this con man again?” Eleanor asked, on the phone. “Julie, you have been through a trauma. Your husband was murdered. Do you think your mind is going to work right, at this point in time? Do you think you’re not going to hallucinate now and then? See things? Wish you could see him? Wish you could hear him? When soldiers come back from war, they often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Why? They’ve witnessed atrocities. You have experienced a personal atrocity. Your husband, the father of your child, was murdered, in a terrible way. Psychics like this man are preying on people like you. They may be worse for you than anything else. He may be giving your subconscious mind permission to break down.”

“Can I see you?”

“Immediately,” Eleanor said. “I’ll be at my office in twenty minutes. I consider this an emergency.”

A bald man in a gray, expensive suit sat in the overstuffed chair that Julie normally occupied during her sessions with Eleanor Freeman.

He rose up, as Julie entered the room. She had the feeling that he had too much of a good sense of himself. He must be a doctor.

“This is Dr. Glennon, from Hillside,” Eleanor said. Julie shook his hand, and went to sit on the couch next to Eleanor.

“I’ve brought Dr. Glennon in, Julie, because I thought you two might talk more openly. I feel I’m a little too close to the situation to be of much help.” “But…” Julie began. Then, “The situation?” Eleanor smiled. “What you’re going through. Your sister called last night. She was worried about you.” “She called you?”

“Now, don’t be angry with her,” Eleanor said. “She’s thinking of your well-being. You’ve been through a lot, Julie, and my fear is that I haven’t been as much help as I should’ve been."

Julie picked at the hem of her skirt. “All right.” Then, to the doctor. “You’re a psychiatrist?”

Dr. Glennon nodded.

Eleanor patted Julie on the knee, and then got up and walked over to the doorway. She stepped out of her office, shutting the door behind her.

Julie glanced back, toward the door, feeling like a little girl being left behind by her mother on the first day of school.

An hour later, she stopped by the pharmacy to fill her prescriptions for Xalax, and some drug she’d never heard of called Darmien. She had seen them advertised on TV commercials constantly—the green pill was Darmien, and it ensured “a restful vacation in one night,” according to the advertising. Less familiar with Xalax, she had remembered Dr. Glennon mentioning something about how it was a mild sedative. She wanted whatever would be necessary to somehow help her mind clear up. Glennon had told her, “You can take them together, and they’ll act fairly quickly. Take them when you’re feeling run down, or when your mind seems to be doing that thing you called letting off sparks.” He seemed like a good man, and he told her that the drugs had few side effects and would just be for the short term.

She took the Xalax and Darmien with some Snapple when she got home, and then she went to lie down in the bedroom and let the supposed relaxing benefits of the new miracle drugs take her over.

At first, she watched the ceiling with its swirls of patterns, and then she felt as if she were moving into the patterns. She felt quite wonderful and rested and only vaguely sleepy. The sex dream came, of course, and in the dream she had no fear at all. Hut parted her legs, his mouth pressing into her, his hands reaching up and around to grasp her breast and stroke her. It wasn’t like the nightmares of sex and lust, this was lovemaking, thank God, she thought, thank God for drugs and psychiatrists, this wasn’t post-traumatic stress, this was love, this was love that never died, this was no ghost making love to her, but a man of flesh and blood, and the world was fuzzy—she remembered Hut’s first wife’s phrase, “the warm fuzzies,”—that’s what this was, the warm fuzzies had her in their thrall. She felt taken care of again, secure in his arms, his ministrations, and she realized he had never done this before, when they were married, he had never taken her like this in real life, this pounding and battering and swirling and lifting, but with the warm fuzzies, he transformed into this sexual dynamo who wanted her, and her alone, wanted to be within her, wanted to find her pleasure and press into it, delight her, awaken her, but the warm fuzzies pulled her back, ah, she could not be awakened. She could not. The warm fuzzies drew her down into a rich comforter of Hut, his body, wrapping around her as he moved upward, kissing her navel and flicking his tongue within it. She didn’t care that several cameras were filming them—it was a porno movie, she saw people filming them as he took her again and again and she gave herself to him. Then, moving to her breasts and taking each nipple in his mouth, like he was a baby, like he drew strength and comfort from her, like she was his mother and his lover and his wife and his whore and his savior.

And when he came up to her face, when she looked in his eyes, his eyes were normal, his face was normal. Not milky white. Not a nightmare at all.

His body was covered with strange markings, whirligig drawings and little sunbursts etched into his skin, but it was him. It was Hut.

She was sure.

He pressed himself into her, inside her, and she opened, she blossomed—ah, the warm fuzzies made it easy. That Darmien sure could get a girl in trouble, she giggled softly. Had she said it aloud? Ah, but it was her warm fuzzy-maker, that Darmien, and she didn’t even have to move or struggle or embrace him. Her arms and legs felt as if they couldn’t move, but it didn’t bother her. She liked that he had taken control. She liked that Hut was there, taking her. Taking her the way men took women in fantasies. She loved this fantasy.

She awoke several hours later. In the dark. God, another insane dream, she thought.

Someone had screamed.

As the seconds passed, she was sure of it. But the house was silent. No, not a scream. It was as if the silence itself had made her wake up.

The scream, or cry, or quiet, she wasn’t sure whether it was that or even a little shriek—it must have been what had snapped her out of sleep. Or it was in a dream? she couldn’t quite remember—like a spider web of a dream that she’d somehow broken through.

The headache from hell battered at her, but she managed to dress. Had she undressed herself? She couldn’t remember. She went into the hall, and flicked the light on, but it didn’t come up. Have to change the bulb. Damn it. She went down to Livy’s room. It was dark, but everything was in place. She looked in at shadow upon shadow—the toys, the doll collection, and then the small, perfect bed, piled high with pillows, which was how Livy liked to sleep. Hokey Pokey Elmo sat square on the bed as if watching her. She saw a bit of Livy’s hair over the pillow. Livy liked to scrunch down under the blanket at night, “like an oyster in a shell,” Hut used to joke. She stood in the doorway, feeling a bit of relief. But when she passed Matt’s room, she stopped. Then, she turned the knob. It was locked. She had allowed him his privacy like that, ever since she’d walked in on him masturbating the year before. She had felt more embarrassed than he had, and she didn’t blame him for locking up now and then. She could easily unlock it with a credit card or even the front door key, so she wasn’t worried. Matt was fine. In fact, she thought she heard him snoring a little through the door.

She felt a chill from the hallway, and went down the stairs to the living room to check to see if a window had been left open.

Instead, the front door was open wide. She glanced at the small plastic box that housed the burglar alarm system. It no longer had its little green lights flickering. Damn it. Damn it. She’d forgotten to turn it on. Had she even left the front door open? Had the damn Darmien and Xalax made her too groggy even to be sensible?

She looked out into the night, and the stars seemed to have dimmed above the trees, against moonlit sky.

Julie shut the door, locking it. She flicked up the living room light switch. It was dead. Then she went to the kitchen, and got a flashlight from under the sink. She went out the backdoor, and checked the switches. She toggled them back and forth, unsure as to what she was really trying to accomplish. No light came on in the house.

She went back inside with the flashlight, and as she walked from the kitchen down the main hall, and the flashlight’s beam hit the back of a mirror, it illuminated the room.

She was sure that someone stood behind her. She turned around quickly, shining the light.

The beam of light hit Michael Diamond’s face.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Julie,” he said, his hands going up. She kept the flashlight on his face. She thought about the gun. Upstairs in the bedroom. She thought about how fast she could run there. Could she get there fast enough? Could she lock the bedroom door behind her? Could she get the key out—in the dark—and open the metal box—and get the revolver and get back out to make sure her children were safe from the man who she was now sure had murdered her husband?

“Julie,” he said. “I’m not trying to scare you.”

“Shut up,” she said. “What…you broke into my house?”

“No,” he said. “The door was open. The lights were off. Please. Let me explain.”

“What in hell are you doing here?” she asked, and then wondered how long it would take for her to find the cell phone and call the police.

“Please. I can understand every single thought you’re thinking of. I was the boy who was burned.”

“You said he died.”

Michael didn’t respond to this. “But my memories are like flashes of lightning, Julie. I can’t see everything. You know what I did with you. You know where I took you, where you showed me what was inside you. You were there. You aren’t crazy. This makes sense if you believe, Julie. If you believe. You resisted me. I could feel it when I went into you. You had fear, and fear is the thing that has power over you now. But you’ve got to let it go. Somehow. You know how I Streamed into you. How you went to doors in your mind. You saw things. You relived things. But there’s something important now. Something more important than that. There’s a door in you that needs opening, but they’ve blocked it.”

“They?”

“If I told you who, you would not believe me,” he said.

“Try me.”

“Your husband,” he said.

“My husband is dead.”

“There is no death, Julie,” Michael Diamond said. “Let me show you.”

He moved toward her, and she stepped backward, and felt fear clutch at her. She was sure he was going to kill her, she stepped back, and felt for the door knob to the front door. She turned it. But it was still locked. The chain was on, as well. She pressed her back against the door. Her mind flashed on things—on what she could grab to protect herself. Where she could run. Her heart beat a mile a minute as she began hyperventilating.

He came nearer, and she kept the flashlight beam on him. He unbuttoned his shirt.

The light shone on his skin. It was scarred and layered. “They set fire to me. They wanted me to burn, Julie. They stood by and watched me die. But I can show you. Just as you showed me what was inside you. I want you inside me. I want you to see this,” he said, and reached out and took her trembling hand while she kept the flashlight on his chest. He drew her hand to the middle of his chest and she felt a surge of energy, and she knew it was the Stream because she felt herself—not her body, but her true self, something in her mind—flow into him, sucked along as if she were liquid and were being poured into a dark lake.

The first thing she felt was that gradual warmth and a sense of safety, and then pleasure sensations ran through her. She heard his voice, with her, guiding her. “Julie, this is the Stream, I’ve brought you into it,” and she tried to resist moving along with his voice, but she didn’t feel the same fear as she had seconds before. She saw memory screens inside the darkness: his father holding his hand as he led the little boy toward the doctor who took him through several doors, into a room with a series of beds. Two boys and three girls, of varying ages, lay on the beds, their eyes closed, small wires attached to what looked like polka dots on their foreheads and just beneath their left nipples—for they were in their underwear, sheets drawn up just to their stomachs. He cried when he was told to take his clothes off and get onto one of the beds, and watched in terror as the polka dots and wires were attached to the top of his head, making a slurping sound as they suctioned his forehead.

“This one for your heart,” the doctor said as he placed his cold hand near his chest. “It’s so we can make sure you’re okay.”

The lights were kept on, and his arms were tethered to the bed so that he had a range of movement but he couldn’t get up. “I have to pee,” he said, repeatedly, but no one came to take him to the bathroom. He was in a white room with long mirrors on all the walls. He wasn’t even sure where the door was.

Eventually, he peed in his underwear, and fell asleep, exhausted and a little scared.

Another memory screen: a classroom of twenty children, with three stern-looking women at the front of the class, near the big teacher’s desk. He sat in the third row back and they were all being told to close their eyes and try to think of nothing but darkness. But he couldn’t. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw something awful, although as soon as he opened them, he couldn’t remember what it was.

“You don’t go home?” Julie asked in the Stream, shocked that she was able to speak at all.

The little boy answered her. “For some of us, our mommy and daddy never pick us up. We stay in that room with the lights and all the mirrors. They put the polka dots on us every night.”

It was night, she assumed, but the lights above never gave an indication of morning or midnight. One of the boys plucked the polka dots off his forehead, and laid them on the bed. “Mikey,” he said. “They’re stealing your dreams.”

“Are they?” he asked. “My dad wouldn’t do it.”

“Don’t lie to him,” the sad little long-haired boy said. He must’ve been about fourteen, but he looked younger than Michael, who was almost thirteen. “They’re checking for brain activity. That’s all. They want to see patterns while we dream. Don’t worry, Mike, nobody can steal your dreams.”

“They are too,” the older boy said. He was at least fifteen, but seemed older. “They’re trying to steal from us.”

The girl of eleven or so who Julie thought might be the long-haired boy’s sister, piped up, “I just want to go home.”

“There is no home,” the older boy said. “None of us have parents.”

“I do,” Michael said, and the little girl nodded, “Me, too.”

The older boy smirked. “If you call those people parents. They’d sell you if they thought it could buy them something. Don’t you think that, Mikey? Don’t you? Since as far back as you can remember, don’t you remember how they hated you? How they think you’re a freak because of what goes on in your head? That they think you’re going to go nutso because you keep predicting things—bad things—like you’re a bad luck charm? Like you’re a jinx? I wouldn’t want a kid like that around the house,” he said. “Who would?”

The long-haired boy said, “What about you?”

“My parents died,” the older boy said. “In a car crash. I knew it was coming, only I didn’t tell them.”

“That’s mean,” one of the girls said.

“Is it? I was only four. What did I know? I didn’t know people died like that,” the older boy said.

“Don’t you feel bad?” Michael asked.

“Why should I? I didn’t make them die. It was an accident.”

“But you saw it coming.”

“There’s a lot of things I see coming,” the older boy said, looking at the boy with the long hair.

(A voice outside of the memory, Julie’s, “Who are they? What are their names?” and it jolted her off one memory screen and onto another.)

There was an isolation booth. A glassed-in cage, but with a doorway that led into a larger room that was the testing room.

(“Why is this important?” Julie asked.

“Something bad happened here,” Michael said.)

Then, another memory: the older boy and three girls and one other boy stood on the stairs in the schoolhouse, blocking the way for Michael to pass.

“You can’t come up,” the older boy said.

“Why not?”

“We’re testing someone.”

“You’re testing someone? You’re not supposed to run the tests. Where’s Dr. Stone?”

“Getting a taste,” one of the girls—a tall, wiry one with braces, “of his own medicine.” She and one of the other girls giggled.

“If you know what’s good for you,” the boy said, “you’ll just go back downstairs.”

Michael noticed the way the five of them had carved spirals and things on their bodies. “Why’d you do that?” he pointed to the girl’s arm.

“We’re a special secret club now,” she said.

“You can’t join,” the older boy said, quickly.

“Why not?”

“You’re not good enough,” he said. “You’re fake. You’re one of the twenty-six percenters. We don’t want you. We want the ninety-nine percenters.”

Another memory screen:

Michael was weeping, wiping his eyes out as he walked down the corridor, and when he came to the Sleep Room, he looked through the door window and saw something that almost made him laugh, and then it scared him.

(“What is it? What did you see?”)

In each of the narrow beds, the doctors and teachers and the parapsychologist, all lying down as if sleeping, polka dots on their foreheads. Michael tried to make his mind roam into the room, but something blocked him. Why were they just lying there? What had done this?

His mind sped through possibilities—thinking of his classmates, and he knew it was the older boy. Something terrible. Something they had done: the ones who gathered at the top of the stairs. They had scrambled the minds of their teachers, of their doctors, and of Mr. Boatwright, and maybe even his own father.

They weren’t dead, he was sure. Their eyes were open, and their lips seemed to open and close as if they were fish pulled from water, dying on dry land.

And then, Julie heard what sounded like an explosion and saw a little girl screaming as she tried to open the door to a glass booth—inside it was an inferno. The door finally opened, and a boy, on fire, came running out.

And then, Julie felt other things. She felt a sense of benevolence like she’d never experienced. She felt kindness. She felt something sacred. Michael’s voice in her mind, “I died, Julie. I died then. You’re with me, feeling that. Don’t forget it. Don’t ever forget what you’re feeling. It’s not a terror. Death is not a terror. It is the doorway to something sacred. See, how I felt it? Stay with me. Stay with it.”

Wave after wave of elation seemed to sweep through her. “It’s the human soul,” he said, with her inside him. “It’s the human soul, inviolate. Don’t ever forget that, Julie. Don’t. Death is just a stop along the way.”

Then, she felt herself heave as if about to vomit, and she sucked air—but it was not her, was it? She experienced his memory—his fragments. He was alive. They stood around him, pointing. The other children.

The older boy stepped forward and whispered in the ear of the boy who had been burnt. “You passed the test,” he said.

It was Hut. She knew it was Hut. She could see in the boy’s face that it was Hut. Hut was the older boy. Hut helped set the boy on fire. Hut was doing something evil. Something terrible as a child.

The fear rose up in her. The fear grew quickly, like a fire itself in her mind, and she felt Michael’s consciousness grasp at her, trying to tug her back, but the fear shot her out of the Stream and she was once again in her front hall, her back pressed against the front door, but the flashlight had fallen to the floor.

Michael Diamond had released her hand.

“Julie,” he said, his breathing heavy. “I did kill him. But not because of revenge. But because he was bringing things into existence. He was doing something terrible.”

She stood there, breathing heavily also. She crumbled to her knees and sat down on the cold floor.

“You murdered my husband,” she said. “And now you come here with this. This…magic trick. To make me feel things. To make me think you’re not the man who stabbed my husband. Who sadistically killed him.”

“You believe,” Michael Diamond said. “You can’t go back from that. Once you believe, you can’t.”

Inside her own consciousness, without the sense that Diamond was inside her, Julie felt a growing belief. She felt it more than she had ever felt anything before. His words: the human soul inviolate. Inviolate. There was something more than just this existence. She’d sensed it, she’d been exposed to it in the past, but she had never believed it because she had no direct experience. But now, here all this was. As if it were meant to come to her. As if it were falling into place for her.

And yet, he murdered Hut.

“I want more,” she said, feeling hungry. “I want to be inside you. I want to see more. I can’t live like this. I can’t be like this. I can’t have all these things in my head. What I’ve seen. What I’ve experienced.”

“It’s unexplainable in words,” he said. “Here, take my hand. Just take my hand. I can bring you back inside me, but there’s something inside you that’s still blocked, Julie. Something they blocked.”

“They?”

“There are at least five of them, still. They’ve done terrible things. Worse than you can imagine. If I were to tell you,” he said.

“Show me.”

In the dark, he took his shirt off and crouched down beside her. Then, he guided her hands to his chest. “Accept the Stream,” he said. “I’ll bring you in. I’ll show you what you want.”

Soon, she felt as if she were flying into shadows. She knew from her reading that this was the astral projection that was often written about—the remote viewing, where one consciousness invaded another. And she saw the memory screens—it was like blinking, and each time a new image or moment of his life came up.

From his early life and his first experiences of Ability X (even his language invaded her mind, and she understood and accepted it) when he was seven and his father, in his military uniform, in a boardroom of some kind, tested him with cards, and then with mind games where the boy had to tell what he saw in pictures from his father’s thoughts. The little boy scribbled houses and horses and cats and women and his father each time nodded, and then the boy was in a room with his little sister Margie, and more tests. And she saw the building that was the Chelsea Parapsychological Institute, and she was there when the sleep study began, but his consciousness guided her through these screens, into other memories, after the fire. Of the hospital where he spent nearly a year, and she watched from above as skin graft procedures were done, and painful salt water treatments, and the boy in the bed howled in pain and begged his father to see his sister. Then, the roaming through the open Stream—floating down the halls of the hospital while the pain intensified for the boy in the room. Moving through windows, out into daylight, out into the world and traveling above the trees until finally, coming to a graveyard, and drifting down among the oaks like a kite falling to the ground, coming to rest on the grave of a little girl named Cassandra Diamant. His sister. More screens came up, and she blinked through them feeling as if she were swimming underwater with her eyes only half open.

And then, operation after operation while the boy recovered, a teenager, nearly a man, and learning to test himself, test his abilities, but still too weak. Not recovered. And then, she went further, and felt as if she were going into the whorls of a dark shell. She was inside him, behind his eyes, seeing what he saw. And it was as if he were directing her back in time to look out through him. She saw the clippings on the wall—the murders. She saw things that he could Stream—and there was Hut, somehow he’d Streamed to Hut, Hut when he was in his late twenties, with Amanda, who looked more beautiful than Julie imagined she had been, more beautiful and radiant than any woman Julie had ever seen, and Amanda had Matty, a two-year-old then, and they were in Tompkins Square Park in the city. They were talking, but Julie couldn’t hear their words. But she saw Hut’s face. She saw a level of darkness there—as if there were an aura of ravens around him—and he was arguing with Michael, he was angry, and then laughing at him, and some of the words came through, “you idiot,” “wasting your life,” “you can’t see what we’re trying to do,” and Amanda looking as if Hut had frightened her as he picked Matt up and took her hand, tugging her away from Michael Diamond.

Michael turned around on the street, and there was Hut again, only it was the Hut that Julie remembered. It was the Hut that she’d seen their last morning together. Again, she couldn’t hear the words. Not clearly. The volume was too low on what she experienced, but she felt what Michael Diamond felt, and she saw the anger in Hut, and then the two men went to the curb, and Hut told him to get in. Hut had a small knife. He was threatening Diamond. But Diamond got into the Audi, and they drove. The consciousness crashed in a wave, and Julie felt herself being pulled into an undertow, deeper into Diamond’s mind.

And then, she was at the clearing, and it was Hut with the knife. Diamond argued, and Hut jabbed the air in front of him. Julie understood. Hut had wanted to kill Diamond. In her mind, Michael Diamond said, “I had been the instrument that allowed him, and the others, to discover about resurrection.”

She shot out of his mind, just as sure as if she’d been catapulted.

Again in the dark, but she opened her eyes, and it had begun to be light out. It was already morning. She was soaked with sweat, as was Diamond. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

“Try to stay calm,” Michael Diamond told her. “Please. It’s something that they discovered when they tried to kill me.”

“What is it?”

“There is no death, Julie.”

“At least, not how we think of it. Death is like a train station. You leave one train and get on another,” he said. “Only some people—with Ability X—can alter the process. I don’t completely understand it, nor do I care to. I experienced death briefly. They were testing me, Julie. They’ve tested others. Most fail. Even with Ability X, the failure rate is high. They’ve killed some people. Some of their own children.”

“Who are they?”

“There are at least five of them, but I’m sure there are more by now. I’ve been trying for the past seven years to locate them, but they…well, they block me. They can do that.” He must have read the shadowy expression on her face. “I know it’s hard for you to believe. You’ve just come to this.”

“But if Hut…if Hut were really…”

“You saw inside me. You experienced it.”

“You carved into his body,” she said. “And others. I saw them.”

“I only killed your husband, Julie. They killed the others. And more that still have not been found. They kill their own children, Julie. Just as they tested me, they’ve been testing each other for years. They carved the symbols into your husband’s back. They were there, watching. That’s why he stopped the car at the path into the woods. I couldn’t detect them, but I know they were there, and I did my damnedest to make sure that your husband could not come back from the dead. They are a death cult. They have turned their ability into something…unspeakable.”

She felt a shivering rack her body, and she pushed herself up from the floor. The ordinariness of the early morning light coming through windows, of the shadows being erased along the living room and down the hall to the kitchen, made her wonder what life was, and where the real and the unreal separated.

“You’ve been inside me, Julie. I’ve been inside you. You can’t go back from that. You know—inside you— that what I’m saying is true. I showed you,” he said.

She rose up, keeping her back to the door. “I don’t know,” she said, trembling. “You have this ability. I know you do. I don’t know what to think. I just don’t. What if you’re lying? What if you can show me things that never happened?”

He pressed his hands to his forehead, as if he were stopping a headache. “Don’t doubt me. Please, Julie. It’s important. I’m here with you because I knew what you were going through. When you came to me, and I went inside you, I knew the pain you’d felt. I knew the desolation. It’s because your marriage was a lie. He used you. He is still using you.”

“He’s dead. My husband is dead,” she said, angrily. She stepped around him and went toward the kitchen. “I need time. I need time to think.”

“There’s no time,” he said. “They’ve already tested others.”

She half turned, stopping. “What do you mean?”

“Your children,” he said. “They have some of their father in them. They have the genetic material for Ability X. You know that your stepson has things he can’t express. You know that your daughter thinks she has a brain radio. That she communicates with her father. Some of them have already murdered their own children, trying to resurrect them. Do you think your children are safe?”

Julie glanced upstairs to the bedrooms. “Stop it. Please. If that’s true. My God, if that’s true, then why didn’t Hut just come here and take them? Why all these months…” She tried to block out the videos she’d seen. That’s insane. It was your mind. It was stress. Posttraumatic stress. Eleanor called it that. Shock. Shock of having your husband murdered. Shock and despair and anger and grief and mourning and cracks in your mind where you fall off a cliff of life and dangle from a thin branch over a chasm. Nervous exhaustion. Night fears. Erotic dreams. Rape dreams. Short-circuiting in the face of an enormous shock. That’s what it was. This is insane.

“You don’t come back all at once,” he said. “First, your autonomous nervous system kicks in when Ability X turns on another part of the brain. Then, it takes weeks before your memories come back. And they only come back if others with the Ability are there to bring them into you. To get inside the Stream with you. To re-open the doors that have been closed. But you’ve seen him. In your dreams. In the movies in your head. The movies on screen. He is blasphemy, Julie. He violated the sacredness of death. He violates the soul. He does not believe in the soul. He puts himself above the laws of nature, which are here for a reason, Julie. It’s what I learned in my death. If I could take away my life now, I would. I’ve tried. But I can’t. Only when my brain itself breaks down, will I finally find release and enter the Stream that connects us all. And then my soul will go where it is meant to and not be shackled by this body. I wish I could make it untrue, Julie,” he said, getting up from the floor. He came toward her. “I wish I could say I made it all up. That I’m just a murderer. That I murdered your husband and I’m here to hurt you. But it’s not true.”

“Don’t come near me. Please,” she said, feeling an immense ache within her.

“You’re feeling separation from me. It’s all right,” he said. “It passes. It’s what we feel when we’re too much within another. You don’t have Ability X strongly enough. Everyone has it to some small degree. Your husband has it greater than anyone I’ve ever known. You seem to have perhaps three percent. A drop of it. But it’s enough to make you ache when you separate from going inside someone in the Stream. It’s what we all feel,” he said, and as he went toward her she slowly moved back, through the doorway into the kitchen. “I learned something in my death, Julie. I learned about the soul. And death is the sacred doorway. I should not have been pulled back into life. I should not have come back into my burnt body. But they were there, and they got inside the Stream, and they drew me back because I was their experiment. I was their guinea pig. But I came back better. They don’t always. Sometimes, they come back violent. Sometimes, they show up with nothing but evil in them. Sometimes, they come back as a child who can’t learn right, who can’t remember, who can’t express himself, who gets angry and violent and pulls knives.”

She stared at him, angry now. “Matt? Matty?”

“He killed him. When he was only three. That was too young. But he doesn’t care, Julie. It was a test. I know, because his wife came to me. Amanda. She came to me and she was losing her mind with fury for what she’d allowed them to do.”

“Matty? He’s not dead. He’s in his room, sleeping. He’ll wake up soon.”

“She told me that she fought him—your husband— to make him stop. But the problem with what they do, Julie, is they want fear. Fear makes the adrenaline pump. Fear makes them come back. It wakes up a part of the brain after one part of it turns off. Fear is a switch. It gets the Ability going at hyperspeed. They need that. It opens a door that should be permanently sealed in the brain. It turns on something. When one part of the brain diminishes, another part begins to rewire and come alive. Do you know how they did it to that little threeyear-old boy? Do you?”

“He doesn’t have the carving,” Julie said, her eyes watering up with tears and she went to the knife block and pulled out a long sharp knife. She held it up, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life.

“Amanda stopped them from carving into his skin after he was dead. But before he died, they had to frighten that little three-year-old. They had to do something so terrible to him, Julie, that his system would go into shock. And then they drowned him. They made his own mother do it. Your husband made his wife wrap her hands around the boy’s neck and press him into a bathtub and the fear was like electricity so that even she felt it. But he had some of the Ability. He came back. But he didn’t come back without something not right. That’s what they do, Julie. They think that they’re changing the world. They think by doing this, they’ll eradicate death. They’ll close the door of death. But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the body rots. Three days are crucial. If the mind does not awaken in three days, corruption sets in, and it’s too late. If the brain doesn’t turn on, then natural death occurs. But they stay inside them for three days. They stayed inside me for three days after the fire. They made sure I turned on and came back from the dead. And they did it with your husband. And his son.”

“Hut saw her. That’s not true,” Julie said. “He saw her. He told me. He said she was trying to kill him. When he was eleven.”

“Maybe she was trying to send him where his soul had been meant to go,” Diamond said. “Julie, there’s no time now. I want to ask that you and your children come with me. I’ll protect them. They can’t really hurt me. They can’t do anything to you once you’ve died and come back.”

“No,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her left hand. She held the knife up, sobbing. “Matty’s a good boy. He’s good. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“It doesn’t make you bad,” Diamond said. “But there are no guarantees how we come back. None. Nobody understands how the brain—and mind—work, Julie. Nobody understands the enormous part of our minds that is untapped. They play with fire. They murder and call it understanding.”

“That’s insane. You’re talking insane. This is not real. This is not happening. Please, just leave. Just go. I…I’m confused. I don’t…I don’t want this. Please.” She tried to reach for the phone on the counter by the sink, but wasn’t quite there. He stepped toward her, and she jabbed the knife in the air.

“We’ve been inside each other. You know this is true. You know it.”

“Stop saying that! It’s obscene. It’s disgusting. He’s dead. You killed him. Please. Why don’t you leave? Why don’t you leave?”

“I know you won’t stab me,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve been inside you. I know you, inside and out. I know.”

“Don’t, please,” she sobbed, slashing at the air, less than a foot from him, crumbling to the floor, wishing the world would disappear, wishing she could feel safe again.

“There’s something I need, Julie. You know where they are. But they blocked you. But I can unblock it inside you. I just need to go find that door. I need just a little time to find that door. I can stop them for good, Julie. Inside you, you have a memory. You’ve been to where they’re giving their tests.”

“66S? Is that what this is about?”

“No,” he said. “That was a young woman’s apartment. A woman I knew. Her father had been friends with my father, and he gave her the apartment after it was converted into units. A woman named Gina Lambert. Another one of us. But she was the daughter of a girl named Nell who had been in Project Daylight. Her mother was one of them. And they got her. They killed her to test her. They killed a boy named Terry West. He was still in college. He had Ability X. Do you want to know how? They had to create great fear in him before he died. But he still died. He didn’t come back. Do you want to know how monstrous they are?”

“I don’t know anything, I don’t.”

“Let me inside you one last time. Just one last time,” he said, “Please let me get inside you.”

She jabbed the knife at him, almost touching his skin. “No, please, no.”

“There’s a place inside you. I know it’s there. We were almost there. Almost. I almost found it. If you can let me in, I can stop them. I know I can. There’s always hope. It’s a blessing and a curse. But sometimes, it’s all we have. Yet, when faced with this, there is no hope. There can be no hope. Do not let hope cloud your resolve. Help me find them. Help me open that one door in your mind.”

“Please,” she wept, slashing blindly, “Go away. I don’t want this. It’s not happening!”

He reached out and touched the edge of the knife, and then the tips of her fingers. “Let me inside you, Julie.”

She felt a spark between them, and a lubricating familiarity as he slid into her and she shut her eyes for just a moment and felt him moving, and now she tried to resist but he was pushing her hard, slamming up against her on the inside, his consciousness roaming and tearing at walls and doors and things that she felt were the tunnels into her memory.

And then she saw it at the moment he did.

It was simply a house.

It was a house with glass walls on one side.

She had seen it before but she wasn’t sure where. She could not name whose it was. She vaguely remembered a video of Matt’s that was just a house on a lake. On the lake, she thought. Their lake. Somewhere right here. Somewhere in Rellingford. On the lake. She remembered the rich people’s houses across the lake, and felt as he searched her memory for who owned this house and why she was there, and she saw a woman coming to the door as she stood out in the side yard looking at the brown lake, and she turned to see the woman more clearly, but the image was out of focus and she almost had a name…

And then something exploded. She felt a sudden rush of wind inside the Stream. Diamond was no longer there with her. She opened her eyes.

At first she thought the noise was from outside the windows, a cherry bomb blast.

She looked at Michael Diamond’s face. He wore an expression of shock.

He tried to reach around to his back.

He fell hard on the floor.

Behind him, Hut.

Chapter Twenty-Two

She felt the world spinning around her. She saw Michael Diamond wriggling and then trying to crawl. She stared at him. Looked up at Hut. She looked at Hut as if she’d never seen him before. Trying to comprehend. Trying to make it all make sense to her. Reason was gone. She knew Michael Diamond. She knew him. She didn’t know Hut. She had never known Hut. He had hidden from her. He had…used her? For what? For making a child? Another child? Another test to pass? Livy? With her brain radio? Was that it? Were they all making children? Stealing children? With Ability X? That’s insane. It couldn’t be. Why? What purpose? Why kill them? Why do it? Hut can’t be here. It has to be like the movies. It has to be just me. How is it possible? But she remembered the feeling within the Stream. She could not deny that. She had felt…wonderful and terrified, as if it were something that…her soul had known existed. Diamond believed in the soul. The human soul, inviolate. Not to be violated. Not to be played with. The soul’s journey along the Stream after death. After life. Beyond life.

Something in her brain began to fade, as if she no longer could tell the difference between dream and reality, and words and images came up to her, trying to draw her back from what she saw in front of her, trying to make her close her eyes, and return to the Stream that Michael Diamond had taken her into with him.

Hut stood there in a white shirt and khakis, the revolver from the metal box in his hand.

“Don’t scream,” he said, softly. “The kids are probably waking up now. They heard the shot. Even the neighbors, although it’ll take a little while to identify where this came from. Shhh.” Then he bent down and took the knife from Julie’s fingers, and put his foot against Michael Diamond’s throat. “Look at him. He’s dying. But he can’t die. But he can suffer. He can go towards death. But in three days, he’ll come back. Once you pass the test, Julie, you can’t die ever again.” Then he leaned closer to Julie. She could feel his breath, which was sweet. “If you let me inside you now, I can take all the pain away,” he said.

She stared at him, feeling as if she were surrounded by ice.

“This is shock,” he whispered, stroking the side of her face gently. “Do you want me inside you?” Hut asked. “If you let me inside you, Julie, I can take away hurt.”

She felt his consciousness come into her and suddenly, she felt sleepy and tired as if she’d been given a sedative. He was stroking her on the inside, altering the pain, softening her confusion, making her black out.

As she sank down into a dark oblivion, she thought of Livy and Matt, and she wanted to claw her way up from the darkness for their sakes. Please Livy. Please Matt. Don’t let him touch you. Don’t let your Daddy near you. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if I’m really here or if my mind is gone. Please God help my children. Please Michael. Please someone. Hut please don’t hurt them. Don’t let this be happening.

Part Four

Chapter Twenty-Three

The headache blasted into the back of her scalp. Jesus. I have to tell Dr. Glennon that Darmien is like an axe. Christ, I’ll never take it again.

Her eyes opened. She looked at the clock. It was after three.

She began to get fragments of memory back. It was dream-like and vague, but then she felt terror clutch at her. She got out of bed, and went down the hall to Livy’s room.

Her bed was empty.

Then, to Matt’s.

First, she called the police, talked to the sheriff but midway through speaking, she could tell that he was patronizing. “Julie, I’m sorry. Have you checked with the schools? With anyone? Could they possibly be somewhere together?” Then, he said, “All right. I’ll send someone by.”

She demanded Detective McGuane’s number, and when she got it, she called and had to leave a message on his voicemail. She spoke slowly and as coherently as possible. She tried not to bring up everything that Michael Diamond had told her or shown her. She was beginning to doubt herself by the end of the message.

She finally went to the kitchen. The knife was on the floor. She picked it up and put it in the sink. She thought she saw something under the cabinetry on the tile. She reached down and felt around to see what it was. It was the revolver.

A police cruiser came by, and she met the two cops outside. She worked hard to retain her composure. She didn’t tell them everything. She watched for their reactions to her story. She didn’t say “my dead husband,” and she didn’t say “psychic.” She just told them that some crazies broke in. That she passed out. That there was a gunshot, and she had the gun. That her children were missing. They wrote some things down and told her to wait at home, keep the doors locked, keep the phone line clear.

But as soon as they’d left, and she returned to her house, she got the revolver and got into her Camry and drove down to the perimeter road of the lake.

She drove slowly on the opposite side of the lake. The house in her mind had been a large one. It had a seventies-style architecture—rectangles and squares and too much glass. She stopped in front of several of them, but each time, it just didn’t seem right.

And then, she saw the house, with a circular driveway in front.

She had been there. She remembered being there, but she could not remember who lived there. Why she had visited it. Had it been another dream? She remembered Matt’s video of the house clearly now—he must have been in the canoe. Maybe with his father. A Boys’ Day Out. Matt must’ve held the camcorder up and just videoed the back of the house on the lakeside.

And here she was, at the front. She parked on the road, and walked up the driveway. She did nothing to conceal the gun in her hand. She stepped off the driveway onto the slate walk that went around the side of the house. It was an enormous house, and although it had huge glass windows, the shades were drawn. She went back to look at the lake, and then to look at the house.

It was the one she remembered. It was the one from Matt’s video.

She felt her heartbeat, too rapid, and a clutching at her throat. She raised the revolver slightly as she went back around to the front of the house.

She stood at the bottom of three steps that led to the front porch. A slender patch of garden bordered the porch—peonies and pansies and irises.

She took each step slowly, feeling a thudding on the inside. A gentle shivery wind down her back.

When she got to the door, she rang the bell and waited.

No one came to the door. She rapped at it. Waited. The revolver felt heavy in her hand, and she lowered it. She began to doubt her vision. Her memory. Was this the house? Whose was it? Who was the out-of-focus woman from her memory that Diamond’s consciousness had brought her back to see?

Who would she know who would know Hut? Would know Amanda? Might have known them years before Julie had ever met Hut? He didn’t have many friends outside of people at work. But none of them lived here. Who lived on the lake? Who was it?

When the door finally opened, she already knew. The name came up to her. A name that Michael Diamond had mentioned.

Nell. That had been what she was called as a girl in Project Daylight.

Eleanor, on the other side of the door, looked startled. “Julie?” she asked as if she had expected someone else.

Julie brought the revolver up, pointing it at her. “Where are my children?”

She stepped over the threshold of the house as if she were in a dream. How could this be real? How could Eleanor, a therapist, for God’s sake, be part of some insane psychic conspiracy? What was she thinking? How was it possible? But possible didn’t matter anymore.

“Now, don’t get excited,” Eleanor said. “You’re experiencing—”

Julie cut her off. “I know. Post-traumatic-stress blah blah blah.” She kept the revolver pointed at her.

“Julie, put that thing down,” Eleanor said. “Right now. You are not in any danger, believe me.”

“Where are they?” Julie asked, her voice hardened.

“Matt’s asleep. He needed rest.”

“Did you hurt him?”

“Of course not. He was getting violent. You know how he is. We had to…give him something.” Eleanor spoke as if she were in her office again, dispensing advice.

“You are good, Eleanor. Or Nell. Or whoever you are. You are good,” Julie said.

The man she knew as Dr. Glennon came out of a room down the hall. He spoke to Eleanor, “Well, I can’t say we didn’t expect this.”

“I know,” Eleanor said. “Hut’s been careless.”

Dr. Glennon nodded to Julie. “Mrs. Hutchinson, please, just think for a minute. I know you’ve gotten some mumbo-jumbo from that Diamant character. But he’s taken care of.”

“Did you give him some Xalax? Or Darmien? Something to make him sleep? Is that what you gave Matty, too?”

Dr. Glennon held up his hands, slightly defensively. “I know what that man told you, Mrs. Hutchinson. But there’s more to it. Believe me.”

Eleanor said, “Julie, we had to do it this way. We had to wait until Hut was fully himself again. He’s better than he was. He really is.”

“You people brought him back from the dead.”

“I would’ve thought you loved him enough,” Eleanor said, “to want him back. He has Ability X stronger than anyone we’ve known. You loved him. He loves you. He loves you, Julie. Surely, you’d want to be with him.”

“Not like this,” Julie said. “You’re a pack of fucking psychic vampires.”

Eleanor shot a look at Dr. Glennon, who went to sit down on the stairs to the second floor. He looked exhausted. Julie noticed sweat on his forehead. She was scaring them. Just a little. She didn’t know how they’d be scared. “You’re nothing but zombies.”

“Oh, Julie,” Eleanor tsked as if she were a child. “This is the human brain. It’s not mystical crap like Diamant believed. Project Daylight was a scam. They were trying to find out things to justify war. To justify invasion. To milk little children of their abilities. But we all learned, together. We learned. And we’ve put it into action.”

“You kill. You kill each other. You kill your own children. I didn’t even know you had children, Eleanor.”

Eleanor began to look at the revolver as if she wanted to grab it. Julie grinned. She was happy to feel that she had power in this situation.

“You’ve been in the Stream, Julie,” Eleanor said. “You know how life and death are definitions of the imperfect human brain. There is no death, Julie. There doesn’t need to be. Those of us with this ability can change how human beings exist. We can alter the course of the future.”

“Not all of you come back. Are you dead yet Eleanor?”

“I guess there’s no reasoning with you,” Eleanor said.

And then, Hut came around the corner, with others behind him. People she didn’t know—three or four of them. The red-headed woman from the video was there. Gina? Was that her name? She stood back with a middle-aged man who had tortoise-shell glasses on and thinning hair.

“Zombies,” she said.

“Baby,” Hut said, moving toward her too rapidly. He looked well rested. He looked healthy. He wore one of his favorite T-shirts, and blue jeans, and didn’t look like he was in his forties at all. He looked better than she remembered him looking. Life was in him.

“No, Hut,” she said. She raised the revolver. “I saw you shoot Michael Diamond.”

“He’s not dead, though,” Hut said. “He’s somewhere safe now. He won’t harm you again. And he won’t harm us.”

“You shot him. And he fell. If I shoot you, maybe I’ll feel good. Maybe it’s enough.”

“If you shoot me, will you shoot all of them?” Hut asked. “Will that get you what you want, Julie?

“Where’s Livy?”

Eleanor cleared her throat.

“Matt’s resting, upstairs,” Hut said. “You can go see him if you want.”

“You drugged him. You…you killed him…when he was practically a baby…you tested him,” Julie said.

“What is it you want, baby?” Hut asked. His eyes seemed kind. He didn’t look like the undead. He didn’t look like a vampire. He didn’t look as if he meant to hurt her. She hated him most for that. She tried to remember Michael Diamond’s words. Things he’d said. She tried to remember the feeling of Michael Diamond inside her and being inside him. The safety of it. The warmth. The complete connection between the two of them. “What is it you want?”

“I want my children.”

“Yes,” Hut said. Dr. Glennon looked up at him as if this were the wrong answer.

“Julie, you’ve been through an enormous shock,” Eleanor said, taking a step toward her.

Julie turned the gun on her. “Back, Eleanor.”

“Nell, please,” Hut said. He stood still, his arms outstretched. “Julie. You’re the love of my life. I hated being separated from you.”

“You came to me at night,” she said. “You Streamed or you broke in or you did something. And you raped me while I was sleeping.”

“In your dreams, you told me you wanted me inside you,” he said. “I asked, and you said yes.”

“Because I thought it was a dream,” she said. “Where’s Livy. I want to see her.”

“You can’t right now,” the red-haired young woman said from the back of the hall. “She can’t,” she added, turning to the middle-aged thinning-haired man. “Can she?”

“Oh my God,” Julie gasped, nearly losing her balance. “You killed her. You already killed her.”

Everyone remained still in the room. No one spoke.

“She’s only sleeping,” Hut finally said, gently. “You have to believe that.”

He motioned to Dr. Glennon on the stairs to move out of the way. “It’s all right,” he said. “Julie, let’s go upstairs. She’s upstairs now. You can be with her.”

At the open door to what she had assumed would be a bedroom, Julie glanced back at Hut, who was close behind her. She kept the revolver ready, because she was determined that somehow, some way, she would see Livy and Matt through this. Her life didn’t really matter anymore. Her children were all that mattered. She could shoot at least two of them if she had to, and it might buy enough time to get Livy out to the car, and get her cell phone in the glove compartment and call the police as she drove away. If she believed in what they were doing, they wouldn’t really hurt Matt. They couldn’t, if it was true. If it was true, Matt was already resurrected from the dead. Once the police came back—and she’d tell them that they had kidnapped her children, she wouldn’t tell the police about psychics and resurrections and Ability X Y or Z. She would be sane. She would stop this, somehow.

She glanced back to Hut, but he wasn’t threatening her at all. She had a pang in her gut—as if the bond of their marriage still existed and was causing her pain. Fuck that. Fuck it. He’s a murderer. He’s insane. He’s a zombie. He’s a psychic vampire. He’s not even real. He can’t be. But even if he is, he believes everything he says.

Hut said, “Let me tell you about life after death. The only way to overcome it is to have the talent and knowledge, and 99.999 percent of human beings don’t have it and never will. And many of those who have it never use it. I suppose a few have, and have been elevated to the level of gods. But there’s no God, Julie. No matter what Diamant told you about the human soul. There’s no soul except for life in the flesh. The brain is the seat of power.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. You and your doctors from Hell.” She glanced into the room, but could not yet bring herself to go in.

“Every obstacle, baby, contains the seed of its own destruction. Within my being is something more powerful than the horizon we call death. It’s not any goony theory of magic or miracles. It’s simply a process that can most likely be described scientifically. My only understanding of it is that I have it. That my brain did not die when my body did, and that there is something that comes from my mind and manages to overcome what you and others call death. I was not really dead. Perhaps no one is, but the poor bastards don’t have the ability to summon themselves back to the world of the living. And so, they rot and putrefy. But my mind communicates life, back into me. Back into my bones. Into my flesh. Not from magic, not from the spirit world. But from an Ability that others have. Others have and don’t always even know they have it. It’s like a vacuum. Sucking at you. Drawing you away. Drawing you out. It’s passing from one state of consciousness into another. It’s the body that rots. Consciousness can move molecules. Consciousness can raise the dead. I’ve done it. But I’m still not sure how it happens. I resist death. Three days is all I need. Three days to remain dead, for my consciousness to grow strong again after the point of weakness of the physical death.”

“You’re talking but I hear nothing but bullshit,” she said.

She stepped into the bedroom.

Julie stepped into the room, feeling as if she were entering a dark cave. Yet, it was just a small bedroom, with the narrow bed pressed up against the far wall. Candles were lit around the child’s bed, and some of the Inner Sanctum’s members were there—a man of about thirty with thick blond hair sitting on a barcalounger near the shuttered window, and a teenaged girl who had a Sony Walkman in her hand and earphones in a halo over her head. She drew them off, looked at Julie, then at the blond man, and then at Hut.

“Christ,” Julie said. She had lost the nervous feeling, knowing she had a purpose here that was not about herself. That was not about weakness. But she saw her daughter’s hair, from under the covers, and the lump of her body under the covers.

The blond man’s face betrayed nothing but caution. He had half risen up in the chair, and then, seeing Hut, sat back down.

Eleanor’s voice behind her. “Now, Julie, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you just…”

“I’m not your patient anymore,” Julie said. “Talk to your Great God Hut.”

“He’s not a—” the blond man began, and then silenced himself.

Julie said to herself: don’t be afraid. You don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter. All that matters is Livy. All that matters is my little girl.

“You’re ghouls, aren’t you?” Julie whispered. “I’m not even sure if you’re human.”

“Good grief,” Eleanor said. “Julie, this isn’t mysticism. It’s pure science. It’s just a science we didn’t know about.”

“I don’t need to hear about this death cult anymore,” Julie said. She had that one thing left in her. She had hope. Maybe Livy was alive. They’d only had her one day, after all. Not even a full day.

“It’s reality. Objective reality,” Eleanor said. “It’s not a cult.”

“It’s not therapy, either,” Julie spat back. She pointed the gun at the teenaged girl. “Get away from my daughter.”

If you just ignore them, they’ll feel your will. Will is everything. They’re weak people who believe in nonsense. They think Hut is a God.

“Julie,” Hut began, but silenced himself.

If you’re psychic, guess what I’m thinking. Guess what my plan is. Guess.

She fought to keep her eyes from welling with tears. She moved to the bed, and sat at the edge of it.

“Livy,” she whispered softly. “Livy.”

“She can’t hear you,” Eleanor said, nearly as softly. “The auditory nerve is—”

“Shut up, Eleanor,” Julie said. “Just shut up.”

Julie felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Eleanor. Old friend. Comforter. Therapist. Monster.

Julie shrugged her away.

“My God.” Julie barely was able to get the words out.

Minutes seemed to pass, as she turned the words over in her mind.

She’s dead. They did it. They killed her.

They tested her.

The way they killed Matty. They used her for their test.

Her own father…

She hadn’t really believed it would happen. She hadn’t believed in her heart that it wasn’t all fantasy. That it wasn’t all mumbo-jumbo. PSI. Ability X. Resurrection. Death Cult. Project Daylight. Then, her voice returned. “My God. She’s dead. She’s dead. You already killed her, you really killed…” Julie murmured, covering her face, the tears breaking from within her, a dam burst, and she could not see when she had brought her hands away from her eyes, for the tears had nearly blinded her. “Monsters! Monsters!”

Hut’s voice, “She’s not dead. I know she’s not. Death is a state of consciousness. It’s not what you think.”

“You sick perverted bastard,” Julie thought she said, but wasn’t sure, because she felt knocked out, wiped clean, somehow destroyed by the knowledge of her daughter’s death.

“Three days,” her husband said. “You can’t believe the lies Diamant told. You can’t, Julie. Matty wasn’t right. Mandy and I were too much to produce a child that worked. Two Ability X’s don’t work right in bringing children into the world. Livy will work, because in you, like most people, the gene’s recessive. I know it will work.”

“I don’t listen to dead people,” Julie said. “I don’t listen to mumbo-jumbo.”

She reached out to touch the edge of Livy’s hand.

“It’s not some religion,” Eleanor said. But it was as if she were off in some fog at the edge of the room. “It’s not something as silly as faith.”

“It’s science,” the blond man said. “Pure and simple. It’s a truth that’s been locked away.”

“Locked away by crap mysticism and Christian hogwash,” Eleanor added. “And just plain ignorance. There is no God. There’s no Devil. No heaven. No hell. There is nothing but animal life. We are animals. But we have developed the ability to take this beyond our lifetimes, Julie. Our single lifetimes. To wipe away thousands of years of ignorant mysticism, of this ridiculous Christian magical thinking about life and death.”

“Can’t blame Christianity alone,” the blond man said. “You just can’t. Other religions, too. They just…”

But their voices receded into the dark background of her mind. They babbled on, she knew, but she leaned forward toward her daughter, her beautiful Livy, and remembered the first moment she had known Livy was in her body, and the first moment Livy had cried out at birth, and how, as a baby, Hut had helped change diapers, and how Julie had somehow believed that her family was wonderful and that she and Hut were a team, and that Livy was going to grow up to be a doctor like her daddy or a nurse like mommy or to be an actress like Livy wanted to, or grow into a teenager who would go to her prom, fall in love, go to college, experience the world, travel, and she, her mother, would have all those years with her, would watch her as she grew and changed and became the wonder that Julie knew she would become.

Julie lay down on the bed, cradling her daughter’s lifeless body.

Around her, she saw others draw together in the shadows. She ignored them. All that mattered was Livy.

She is all that remains.

Let them burn away, let the world burn away for all I care, she thought.

She kissed the edge of her daughter’s fragrant hair: chrysanthemums and lilacs, musky and sweet mixed together. She didn’t want to think about how they’d killed her. About how they needed to create fear before death to make their ritual work right. She didn’t want to think about her baby crying out for her Mommy while they did something awful and monstrous to her in her last minutes of life.

Julie closed her eyes, blocked out the others in the room, and held her child tightly.

Perhaps minutes had passed, or hours. Perhaps she drank the chai they brought her, and perhaps she nibbled on some cheddar crackers that Eleanor set down on a plate with some cream cheese. Perhaps it was a day that passed. She slept, she woke, she clutched the gun, but no one bothered her. No one tried to move her or take her weapon away. She got up once or twice to use the bathroom in the hall, and when she did, she felt them watching her but she refused to look them in the eyes. She had blocked the others out, and only knew her child’s body, pressed against her own. She lay on the bed, slept, woke, tried to feel that inside feeling with her daughter that she’d felt with Michael Diamond.

Then, she felt life stirring in Livy’s body.

Eleanor’s voice, beyond the darkness of Julie’s mind, “Look. Look.”

It’s not real. It’s not real.

Julie felt the warmth and the pulsing heartbeat along her daughter’s side, and even the smell of life emanated from her.

The slight heat of her daughter’s breath against her cheek. Had she imagined it? The warmth? The trickle of air?

Eleanor whispered something that almost sounded like a prayer.

Julie opened her eyes and gazed at her daughter’s face.

Remembering what Michael Diamond had told her.

“There’s always hope,” he said. “That’s the last thing to go in life. It’s a blessing and a curse. But sometimes, it’s all we have. Yet, when faced with this, there is no hope. There can be no hope. Do not let hope cloud your resolve.”

“But what hope?” she wanted to ask him now. “What hope?”

And then, his voice was in her head again. Not imagined. Real. Inside her. His connection to her remained, somehow, even among these monsters.

“The human soul is inviolate, Julie. There is always hope because of that. The human soul is inviolate.”

She tried not to think of Matt. Of how Diamond had said he’d died. Maybe it wasn’t completely true. Maybe there was truth on both sides. I must put those things out of my mind. Only Livy matters. Only Livy.

The human soul is inviolate.

Her soul was somewhere in her body. It could not die. There was no death except for the flesh. But the soul had its journey. Michael Diamond had moved elsewhere when he was burned at Project Daylight. Opened another door. Passed into a passageway that had remained unseen. And then, came back. And he wasn’t dead, was he? Not even now? Maybe they’d done something to him. Maybe they’d buried him alive. Or subdued him in some way, but if she could somehow get him to help again… But even as she thought this, she felt that she was doing the kind of magical thinking that had never gotten her anywhere.

But Livy did not have to go through that passage. Not yet.

She may not even come back bad. She may not be spoiled, the way Diamond had told her. She might be the same. She might even be better. Michael Diamond had been better, after all. Maybe Hut wasn’t. Maybe Matt had come back with slight problems. But it didn’t mean they all did. She believed it. She believed it with a ferocity of emotion. There was no more reason in her life. She had to cling to belief. She had to remember that the world was not all murky darkness. It had benevolence. It had love. It had stronger elements than this Death Cult imagined.

It had hope.

Even in this murderous circle, there could be good rising from it. A hand could be uplifted. It could be raised in prayer. A hand could be held. They weren’t alone. Livy would not be alone. I’ll be there for you, Liv. I will. I will not abandon you. I’ll help you find your soul. I promise.

The human soul, inviolate.

She clung to this idea, as she felt her daughter’s small fingers clutch at her arm and heard the faint growl of a child’s voice.

THE END

Author Biography

Douglas Clegg is the award-winning author of several novels and collections, including the bestselling novel, The Priest of Blood, as well as Isis, Neverland, Purity and many others.

Clegg is currently at work on a novel about murder, madness and family set on the New England coast, where he also happens to live. Look for the fully-illustrated trade hardcover of Isis, a tale of the supernatural, in bookstores everywhere September 29, 2009.

Also on Kindle from Douglas Clegg:

The Vampyricon Trilogy:

The Priest of Blood

The Lady of Serpents

The Queen of Wolves

_________________

Purity, a novella

The Words, a novella

Wild Things: Four Tales

And now, for a thrilling excerpt from Douglas Clegg's novella, THE WORDS, also available for the Kindle!

About THE WORDS:

Never speak them.

Never whisper them.

The Words.

The Words is a novella of otherworldly terror and madness from Douglas Clegg, the award-winning author of The Priest of Blood, Isis, Purity, The Hour Before Dark and many others.

The two teenagers invoke the words -- the names of those who walk beyond the veil, in the dark of the Nowhere...

When Mark befriends outsider Dash, he believes his new friend to be an outcast rebel. But a dark mystery unfolds as Dash leads Mark into dangerous games and rituals involving stories of the occult and a strange drug that allows Dash to see into another world -- a world of absolute darkness and terror.

“Your flesh will remember the words even if your mind forgets."

One summer night, on their way with friends to a party, they make a fateful detour to a place where the words of Dash's secret ceremonies will bring a new terror into the world...and where Mark will face unspeakable horror as it comes to monstrous life.

A tale of teen alienation at the crossroads of darkness and absolute brotherhood, The Words will get under your skin...and stay with you long after the lights go out.

"Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby." -- Dean Koontz.

"Clegg delivers!" -- John Saul

"Douglas Clegg is one of the best!"-- Richard Laymon

"Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation!" -- Bentley Little

"Clegg is the future of dark fantasy!" -- Sherrilyn Kenyon

THE WORDS

by Douglas Clegg

“What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being…”

- M.R. James, from “Casting the Runes”

One: The End Is Like This

The end is like this:

After the last match goes out, he mouths the words to the Our Father, but it brings him no comfort. He remembers The Veil. He remembers the way things moved, and how the sky looked under its influence. He doubts now that a prayer could be answered. He doubts everything he has come to believe about the world.

The echo of the last scream. He can hear it, even though the room is silent. It seems to be in his head now: the final cry.

Hope it’s final.

The scream is too seductive, he knows. He understands what’s out there. It’s attracted to noise, because it doesn’t see with its eyes anymore. It sees by smell and sound and vibration. He has begun to think of it by its new name, only he doesn’t want to ever say that name out loud. Again.

Your flesh won’t forget.

Prickly feeling along the backs of his hands, along his calves. In his mind, he goes through the alphabet, trying to latch onto something he can work around. Something that will give him a jump into remembering the words.

He presses himself against the wall as if it will hide him. Rough stone. No light. Need light. Damn. He thinks he must be delirious because the goofiest things go through his mind: Michelle’s phrase, Unfrigginlikely, Spaceman Mark. Those aren’t the words. Spaceman Mark. Hey, Space! What planet you on today? Planet Dark, that’s what I’m on. Planet Midnight.

And out of matches.

The wind dies, momentarily, beyond the cracked window.

The damn ticking of the watch. Someone’s heartbeat. The sensation of freezing and burning alternately – a fever. The sticky feeling under his armpits. The rough feeling of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The interminable waiting. Seconds that become hours in his mind. In those seconds, he is running through sounds in his head – the words? What are they? Laiya-oauwraii…no. That’s the beginning of the name. Don’t say it again. It might call it right to you. You might make it stronger. For all you know. What the hell are the words?

He clutches the carved bone in his left hand. It’s smooth in his fist. Like ivory, a tusk from some fallen beast. Slight ridges where the words are carved. Like trying to read Braille, only he’s never studied. If only I could read them. Need to get light. Some light.

Distracted by the smell.

That would be the first one it got.

Over in the corner, something moves. Darkness against darkness.

Someone he can’t see in the dark is over there.

Eyesight is failure, Dash once told him. Perception is failure. All that there is, all that there ever will be, cannot be perceived in the light of day. At night, the only perceptions turn inward.

The words? he thinks. The words. Maybe if you remember them, you can stop it. Maybe it reverses. Or maybe if you just say them…

Moves his lips, trying to form vowel sounds.

The dry taste. Humid and weather-scorned all around.

In his throat, a desert.

Every word he has ever heard in his life spins through his mind. But not the words he needs. Not the ones he wants to remember tonight.

A beautiful night. Dark. No light whatsoever but for the ambient light of the world itself. Summer. Humid. Post-storm. One of those rich storms that sweeps the sky with crackling blue and white lightning, and the roars of lions. But the storm has passed – and that curious wet silence remains. Taste of brine in the air from the water, a few miles away.

He remembers summer storms like this – their majesty as they wash the June sky clean, bringing a gloom on their caped shoulders, but leaving behind not a trace of it. The smell of oak and beech and cedar and salt and the murky stink of the ponds and bogs. Their years together, all in those smells. All in the dark.

The night, summer, perhaps just a few hours before the sun might rise.

Might.

He wonders if he’ll ever see another storm. Another summer.

Another dawn.

Those damn words.

“Your flesh will remember the name even if your mind forgets,” Dash had told him, and he had still thought it was a game when Dash had said it. “The name gets in your bones and in your heart. Just by hearing it once. But the words are harder to remember. They don’t want you to know the words because it binds them. So, listen very carefully. Listen. Each time I say them, repeat them exactly back to me.”

He’s shivering. Sweating. Nausea and dizziness both within him, the pit of his stomach. Something’s scratchy around his balls – feels like a mosquito buzzing all along the inside of his legs. Twitching in his fingers. Tensing his entire body. Afraid to take another breath.

A conversation replays in his head:

“It’s not that hard. Watch.”

“I can’t. I just…”

“All you do is take the thing and bring it down like this. Think of it as a game.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Don’t think of it like that. Pretend it’s a game. It doesn’t mean what it looks like. You’ve been trained to think this is bad by church and school and your parents. And the world outside. But it is not real. It is just a game, only nobody else knows this. They’re stupid. Nobody’s going to get hurt. Least of all one of us. Least of all you or me. I would never let it happen. You’re like my brother.”

“I know. But I can’t.”

“All right. I’ll do it. I’ll just do it. Just remember what you’re supposed to do. As soon as it happens. As soon as my eyes close. Promise? Okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

“And the words. After. If it’s too much. You know what to say. You remember?”

“Yes.”

“You know how to pronounce them? You have to know. If this gets out of hand, you can stop it. The name for me, and the words to stop it. If it’s too awful.”

“I know, I know.”

“’Cause it might get too awful. I don’t know.”

“Sure. Of course. I remember how to say them.”

“And the name?”

He has no problem remembering the name. He’d like to blot it out of his mind. The name is on the tip of his tongue, and he can’t seem to forget how to say it, how to pronounce it perfectly. The words have somehow vanished from his mind.

He tries to remember the words, now. How they sound. The language was foreign, but he couldn’t read them off the bone. Especially with no light. But even if he had some light, he knew the letters looked like scribbles and symbols. They didn’t look like sounds. All he can remember is the name, and he doesn’t want to remember that.

A name like that shouldn’t be said in a church.

A New England church. Saint Something. Old Something Church. Older than old, perhaps. Nearly a crypt. Made of slate and stone. Puritanical and lovely and a bit like a prison, now. Church of punishment. Rocky churchyard behind it. He remembers the graves with the mud and the high grasses and the smell of wild onion and lavender, as if it were years ago rather than the past hour. Smell of summer, wet grass, and that fertile, splendid odor of new leaves, new blossoms.

The smell of life.

He is inside the church. In a room. The altar is at the opposite end.

Danny had the lighter, he thinks. If I get it, maybe I can at least save her.

He wasn’t sure if the shape in the doorway was Danny, or the thing that he didn’t even want to name. Not Dash. Not anyone he had ever met or known. An ‘It’. A Thing. A Creature. Something without a Name.

But it has a name. He knows the name, but he does not intend to ever say it again. He knows the name too well, but it’s the words he keeps trying to remember. The ones that are on the bone. The words that might stop it from continuing.

He tries to lick his lips, but it’s no use. His mouth is dry.

Dry from too much screaming.

Nearby, there’s a very slight noise. A sliver of a noise. He is sensitive to sound.

In the Nowhere.

Someone might’ve just died outside. He doesn’t know for sure. Who? He just heard the last of someone’s life in a slight moaning sound. The open window. No breeze. Just that sound. A soft but unpleasant ohhhhhh.

The puppy is whimpering. Somewhere nearby.

Other sounds, barely audible, seem huge.

Branches against the rooftop. Scraping lightly.

His heartbeat. A rapping hammer.

In the dark, the ticking of his watch is too loud. He slowly draws it from his wrist. Carefully, he presses it down into the left-hand pocket of his jeans. The watch clinks slightly against his keys. He holds his breath.

Needs to cough.

Fight it. Fight it. Swallow the cough. Don’t let it out.

Closes his eyes, against the darkness. Closes his eyes to block it out. To make it go away.

Holds his breath for another count. The cough is gone.

Brief sound.

Someone’s breathing. Over there. Across the room. Small room. More than closet, less than room.

Her? Thank god. Thank god. He licks his lips. Mouth, dry.

After a few minutes, he can just make out her shape.

He’s staring at her, and she’s staring at him, but they can’t really see each other. Just forms in the dark. Michelle? Ambient light from beneath cracks in the walls creates a barely visible aura around her as he stares.

Dead of night. Dread of night.

The dread comes after the knowledge. He remembers the line from the book. That awful book that he thought was fiction.

But the words do not come to him. The sounds of them, just beyond his memory.

Breathing hard, but as quietly as he can.

Smells his own breath. The stink of his underarms. Glaze of sweat covering his body. Shirt plastered to him. Hair wet and greasy against his scalp.

The chill that hasn’t left him, not since he came up out of the earth. Burning chill.

She’s going to do it.

Or I am.

One of them is going to scream again. He knows it. He wasn’t even sure if he had stopped screaming a half hour before.

Problem is, when the screaming starts, it happens.

And neither of them wants it to happen.

But the puppy is okay.

It doesn’t want the puppy.

That’s what someone said before. How many minutes ago? Did he say it? Had he said it and just not remembered it? “It doesn’t want the puppy.”

She whispers something. Or else he imagines she whispers.

Or it’s the sound of the leaves on the trees, brushing the rooftop.

If it’s her, it’s wrong for her to whisper. Neither of them knows what decibel level it needs to find them, but she whispers anyway, “Please say it’s a game. Please god, say it’s a game.”

He’s not close enough, but he wants to hold her. Hold her tight. Rewind the night back to day, back a year or more, so he can undo it all. He wants everything to turn out okay, but he knows it won’t.

Most of all, he wants her to shut her mouth up. He wants to hold her and press his lips or his hand against her mouth and keep in whatever she’s trying to let out.

Silence. Come on, silence. Don’t…

Even her whisper is too loud.

And it hears her.

And it wants to make her scream.

If she screams, it’s all over.

Not just the game. The game will never be over.

If we can just hold out ‘til daylight, he thinks.

But the noise begins. From her throat. He wants to shut her up, but he can’t. He can’t. She’s over there in the dark, and he’s on the other side of the room from her.

The scream is coming up from her lungs in a staccato gurgle. A hiccupping gurgle.

She can’t hold it in.

That’s when he hears the sound.

Not her scream.

Dear Sweet Jesus, do not let that noise out of your mouth. Do not scream. It is inside here. With us.

He hears the sound it makes as it moves. Wet, popping sounds, like bones springing free of joints, and then that stink of over ripeness. Rotten. Steaming. Then that awful thumping begins again.

And the steady hissing, as if dozens of snakes trail behind it.

He leans back against the wall, wanting to press himself into the wood as far as he can go. Wanting his molecules to change and move through the wood so he can just escape. He’s praying so hard he feels like his skull is going to crack open, only the prayers are all messed up and he’s sure they don’t work if you get them wrong. Dear God, Dear Jesus, please help this poor sinner, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace and the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Then, it whispers something in the darkness.

He begins shivering when he hears the words.

The girl in the corner finally begins to scream as if she already knows the game is up.

It sweeps toward her. Sweeps.

He can’t stop it. He’s too scared. He’s so scared he’s afraid he’s going to pee his pants and start giggling because something inside his head is going a little haywire.

And then, he feels the wet fingers –he hopes they’re fingers – along his ankles.

He tries to remain perfectly still.

Perfectly still.

Like a statue.

Like I’m not alive.

Like I’m not even here.

Remember. Come on. Remember. Remember.

Damn it, the words.

Two: Before the Night

All that screaming and darkness happened one night when they were eighteen, but the truth was, it started long before, at least for Mark.

The longest day of the year; the shortest night of the year. But they didn’t take off for the party until the dark had fallen. No one in his right mind went to a party early.

But that was the end of it.

The beginning was a game. A game within a game.

The game was about darkness....

Be sure and get THE WORDS, a novella of horror by Douglas Clegg. Visit DouglasClegg.com to find out more about his novels, novellas, and stories.

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