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“Have you thought about accessories?” Edwin asked.

“What would you suggest?”

“First, how much space do you have?”

“I’ve got a Ping-Pong table in the basement I never use. I’m gonna take the net down, set the train up there.”

“I’ve got a roll of fake grass you might want to put over the table first, make it more realistic.”

“Oh, I love that idea. Yeah, gimme one of those.”

“And if you have that much space, maybe some buildings? A station? Maybe an industry or two? I have plenty of building kits.”

“Load me up. I’m jumping in with both feet.”

Edwin started pulling things off the shelves, Wendell saying yes to every one of them. Edwin said, “I bet your wife is going to be surprised when she sees you coming home with this.”

Wendell let out a long sigh.

“Oh my,” said Edwin. “That sounded ominous. You know, I have an instinct for these things. I believe your wife—what’s her name?”

“Nadine.”

“Nadine. What a lovely name. I believe you’re going to be surprised by how much she loves this hobby.”

Wendell shook his head skeptically. “I got my doubts about that.”

“Let me help you get all this stuff to your car. It’s like an early Christmas, isn’t it? Except you’re your very own Santa.”

Once Edwin had helped Wendell put everything into the back of his minivan, he returned to the store and turned on theclosedsign.

All in all, a successful day. And that wasn’t even counting sales in the shop.

The incident over at the Pidgeon household had gone off well. Edwin hadn’t needed to be there in person. He just knew. He would get that familiar tingling—not unlike the sensation his customers felt when they picked up his offerings—when an event was under way. He would take a moment, close his eyes, see his efforts come to fruition.

Not that he always had a perfect view. What he thought of as his remote eyes—the headlights on every diesel and steam engine he sent out into the world, or the tiny engineers sitting in the cabs—might not be pointed in the right direction, might not even be in the room where things went down, but he could still gain a strong sense of what was transpiring. This was not some piece of tech, notsome miniaturized surveillance device. It was an organic extension of himself. He didn’t need a viewing screen. The images were all there, playing in his head.

He looked at the clock on the wall. Still a few hours before Gavin was due to arrive. He would go into the back of the shop and see what he could accomplish in the meantime.

The time passed quickly, as it always did when he threw himself into his work. Reinforcing the hills with more plaster. Adding a pond. Laying more track. The work was never done, and this current project was not only far from finished, but Edwin was running low on some of the raw materials. It was easy enough to get more plaster and nails and screws at the local Home Depot, but the trains didn’t hit the shelves with the necessaryresonanceunless they were run through a layout with ingredients more special than those. This was no ordinary testing track.

It was a finishing touch.

When he heard a rapping on the front door, he dropped back down into a Rubbermaid bin part of a rib—one of the last bone fragments from Tanner—that he had been using to reinforce some tunnel portals. He went up front to answer it. The store was in darkness, with but a single light on in the window to illuminate the one train that ran in a simple circle twenty-four hours a day.

It was Gavin. He unlocked the door, opened it quickly, and pulled the man inside.

“I hope I’m on time.”

“Punctual!” Edwin said. “I like that. I like that very much.” He glanced out at the street. “Did anyone see you?”

Gavin shook his head. “I waited till there was no one around before I knocked.”

“Very good, very good, excellent.”

“Kinda dark in here.”

“Well, the shopisclosed.”