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“Read the title,” she says. So Nim does.

(Oh.)

For a moment, she’s back on that blackwater beach, under that starless sky. It sort of hurts to breathe. The letters swim in front of her, drunken and dripping, pixilated in some almost tidal way—twenty characters if you count the apostrophe, letters slightly raised, DomCasual BT script at 22-point font. The Late’s name underneath, silver-stamped; his real signature or a very good imitation, probably traced from a treasured memento, by somebody like Veruca.

Because: There it is, the thing itself, its lacquered cover slick like skin under her increasingly sweaty fingers. And she can’t take her eyes off it.

While Veruca watches, her own green gaze reflective, serene. Almost sad.

“You see why I had to come, now?” she asks, gently. To which Nim can only nod, once. And then—

—

Flash-cut to later, as Nim logs on to CreepTracker.org while Veruca cat-naps, getting herself good and charged for the full-frontal assault on Darbersmere Central. CreepTracker’s Nim’s favorite chat-hangout of choice, not to mention run by another “friend” she’s yet to meet in the non-virtual flesh (and man, is she starting to think that may never seem like a good idea again, no matter how calm and reasonable Ross Puget may seem when he’s just text on a screen, plus a blurred icon that’s all crested prematurely-grey hair and wide, crooked smile…)

Word on the ‘Net, and it’s not like he denies this, is Ross used to co-run a three-way hazmat cleaning service—Glouwer-Cirrocco-Puget, currently defunct due to one of the founding members being kind of dead, the other kind of nuts—that was either a total scam or less about asbestos removal than scouring sites of “psychic fragments.” With a space/pause between and that’s somehow more convincing than the most detailed explanation could ever be—in person, or otherwise.

Nim’s fingers fly over the keyboard, 60-words-a-minute speedy, more sure than she’s felt since she first touched “The Emperor’s…” fabled frontispiece. Asking—

GirlInTree: KirlianPhotog:

GirlInTree:

KirlianPhotog:

Her server sings its “you have mail!” song, and she keys the link Ross just sent her: more like link salad, actually—different sites, different names, different angles. But the key-words stay the same: BODY FOUND…C.O.D. NOT APPARENT…NO CHARGES…WITNESS TESTIMONY LATER DISCOUNTED…INTOXICATED…UNDER INFLUENCE OF DRUGS…EXTREME COLD…BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT…

KirlianPhotog:

GirlInTree:

Seven people over three years in two separate clubs—one in New York, one in San Francisco. Owner Alicia Darbersmere had no comment…

KirlianPhotog:

GirlInTree:

A pause: Know what, exactly? Then—

KirlianPhotog:

GirlInTree:

KirlianPhotog:

And then there’s another chime—another email. Man, Ross codes almost faster than Nim can read…

(but not quite)

GirlInTree:

KirlianPhotog: GirlInTree:

KirlianPhotog:

GirlInTree:

“Saying” it ultra-cool, a throw-away snark-snap, old-school Buffy-style. But feeling the hairs on the back of her neck go up nonetheless, oblivious to cliché, as her stomach clenches and flips: The disgusting gastronomic concept from which Tim’s notorious “memoir” takes its title playing itself out behind her eye-sockets, utterly unwanted, bad enough when done to a damn fish. Let alone a child…