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“Can’t it?”

Simon sighed, frustrated. “No, Lois. It just can’t. Because the alternative . . .” He trailed off then wiped his face and began again. “Look, God knows I don’t write off the supernatural by default; I can’t and believe what I believe. But even the supernatural has rules. Take demonic possession, right? There are patterns, stages—infestation, obsession, spiritual corruption, personality shifts, and then full-on pea soup crap. Look at it afterwards; it makes a certain sort of ill sense. All this stuff, though . . . it’s contradictory, paradoxical. There’s no logic to it.”

“Yeah, well, maybe magic’s like that. Metaphor made real.”

“Fucking magic? Listen to yourself!”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“I’d call it you being already in recovery, overextended as all hell, upset over Clark getting sick, your project being derailed, your friend—this guy you pinned all your hopes on—being dead; traumatized, and understandably so! And trying to take control of everything, the way you usually do: by making up a reason, some problem to solve, something to fight. Making yourself—”

“Crazy?” I asked, toneless.

Simon looked at me then looked away, obviously struggling to choose his next words carefully; Safie simply sat there, silent, studying us both. “. . . I didn’t say that,” he eventually replied.

“You just think I’m making it all up, that’s all.”

“Miss Cairns,” Safie hastened to point out, “he didn’t say that, either.”

A lag followed, during which I stared at my own hands clasped loosely in my lap. Thought vaguely about the odd fact I’d never previously noticed how my fingers and Clark’s fit together in almost the exact same way, from crossed thumbs to slightly crooked little fingers; wondered if he, too, would have twinges of arthritis in his knuckles by the time he was my age, if he ever got there. Then wondered how it was he could have ended up with both Simon’s long second toe and my own s-curved, squashed fourth one, so bent it almost fit underneath my middle, which I’d inherited in turn from Mom and she from her father. Genetics really are an amazing thing.

“All right,” Simon began again. “Say what you’re saying has some validity—”

“Say it does.”

“—even then, what’re the odds? Mrs. Whitcomb had a direct encounter with Lady Midday back when she was a kid, right? She was touched, chosen—gifted. All you did was watch her films, find out her story, and Safie, here—she did those things, too.” Switching focus: “Back me up, Ms. Hewsen; been seeing evil angels, hearing ghosts? Puke up any tubers recently?”

“No,” Safie admitted.

“Okay, so there we go. Maybe the films aren’t cursed, after all.”

“Why’d she try and throw them down a Hell Hole then?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You said she probably wasn’t happy with them—that they didn’t do what she wanted them to. That’s enough reason, I guess.”

“Uh huh, sure. And then a fucking tree just happened to grow out of the hole around them, to make sure somebody like Jan Mattheuis could stumble across them. . . .”

“It’s not impossible. Unlike some other things I could mention.”

I blew out a breath, impatiently. “Holy shit, you can be a stubborn ass, Simon Burlingame,” I snapped, which actually made him smile, at least slightly.

“Takes one to know one,” he replied.

I’m not sure where the conversation would’ve gone from there, if anywhere. But luckily enough (for—as ever—certain values of luck), that’s when my phone rang.

I picked it

up, cleared my throat, pressed Accept.

“Yes?”

“Hi, Lois,” Wrob Barney’s voice greeted me, all too familiar. Gleeful.

“Thought I blocked you,” I said.

“My old number, sure. This is a burner. I’ve got a drawer full of ’em.”

“Very gangsta. What do you want, Wrob?” At the name, I saw Simon’s eyebrows shoot up while Safie’s face fell, appalled. I switched to speaker, so they could both hear what I was hearing. Wrob must’ve known, but he didn’t seem to care; that didn’t bode well.