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When John answered, his voice was notably cooler. “I think you should have William pick up the dress from your place.”

She stared back at him, thrown.

“That way,” he went on, “you won’t have to come to the hotel with a heavy garment bag and shoebox on top of your morning coffee and magazines.

” He walked away, but when he was halfway to the doors, he turned back.

For a long moment, he said nothing, just looked at her.

When he did speak, his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

She could tell he wanted her to say something to fill the awkward space. She didn’t.

“It’s just that I have one thing to do here,” he said, “and that’s to find my way home. Sometimes...” He took a breath.

“I just can’t let myself forget that, Persephone. I’m sorry I can’t help you in this way—I really am.” He turned again and

walked away, leaving her alone.

The thing was, he really did look sorry, just not as sorry as she felt.

need

IN THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF years, John was the closest to being like me. He was the closest thing to a purpose. And we had a good life together until

we didn’t. Then, in what felt like a blink of an eye later, he was gone. Until I saw him on the television, after having missed

him for so long. You’d think those years without him would be like a blink of an eye, too, but in Heart Time, well, it was

too long for me to bear.

I always needed someone who wouldn’t leave, you see, and in the end, well, wasn’t it clear now that he hadn’t really left

me at all?

I told myself I had to see him because he needed me, but the All knows I realized immediately after the thought that I’d already

lied to myself. Because yes, John needed me, but I had been waiting for someone like me for eons... I was looking for answers,

too, and so I needed him more.

10

It was early afternoon, and John and Ruben were in the back of the Navigator, en route to Hannah’s Malibu beach house having

just left Wvy, a sneaker store on the corner of Fairfax and Melrose.

“It’s so cool we didn’t have to wait in line,” Ruben said as he gazed down at the booklet in his hand, which featured several

trainers, t-shirts, and a biography of Maximum Peace.

I still don’t understand the fuss , John had said. They look pretty... busy. Ruben, who’d been holding a trainer in his hand at the time, made to cover its “ears.” It can hear you! Are you trying to give it a complex?

“Wvy x Maximum is one of the biggest collabs in art,” Ruben said now. “These sneakers are a work of art, man, and the t-shirts

are living art.” (Apparently the dyes on the shirts were meant to change after washing.) “Dude is so dope. An artist’s artist.”

Upon entering the store, they had crossed paths with Maximum as he was on his way out, but when the man saw John he asked

for a photo. Ruben ended up getting one, as well, after which Maximum promised to see y’all later, let’s build , which Ruben took practically for a scheduled event. As for the trainers, Ruben left the store without a pair, as the prices

were astronomical. I just had to see them for myself before they ended up in some dude’s museum-worthy never-worn sneaker collection.

“I’ve been thinking,” Ruben said as they neared the beach house, “maybe Persephone is the key to vanquishing the Grey Man.”

“You’re seriously using the word vanquishing in a sentence? Without irony?”

“Listen, she can keep him from destroying you—OK, bonus for defensive skills. But what if we’ve been missing the actual point?

That she can literally obliterate him? Like, go on the offensive?”

John watched the paparazzi on the other side of the window clump onto the beach house’s narrow strip of driveway. “How many

you think are out there?”

“Dude, if you’re scared, you can say so. Of the Grey Man, not the photogs.”

John didn’t dignify this with a response.

“I’m just saying, we got this, but I know it isn’t easy knowing that thing is after you. I can only imagine—”

“Ruben.”

“You can talk to me—or Persephone—if you want, OK? I know you like to hold your feelings inside, but you don’t have to be

a meme, that’s all I’m saying.” Ruben glanced out the window. “I count about twenty. But they aren’t forming a blockade.”

“If they were, we’ve got Bean.”

Ruben gave a salute. “We’ve got Bean.”

They exited the truck to the susurrus of camera clicks.

“This is awesooome!” cried Ruben, laughing as he ran forward.

Behind him, John stifled a smile.

William answered the door, clad in a shiny black top and black biker shorts and a black and white headband with matching wristbands.

“You look like you’ve stepped out of an infomercial,” said John. He narrowed his eyes. “Where are you coming from?”

Willian grinned. “Just got my cycle on with Hannah. Spin class. Then I had to take care of a few things, including some macchiatos.

Jumping in the shower real quick.”

“Back in orbit.”

“Back in orbit.”

They were at the beach house for just under half an hour before Mabel arrived, and after a brief round of awkward greetings

and John trying in vain to see into Mabel’s past, they all stood in Hannah’s living room, where a wall of glass opened to

the beach.

“Mabel,” said Hannah, “what are you drinking?”

“I’ll take a bourbon, just two caps of water. If you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind one bit.” Hannah sat on her snowy sofa. “William, just a sauvignon blanc for me. Anyone else?”

Persephone requested a water and William nodded before going with Jin Mi to the bar.

Ruben raised a finger. “Any juice?”

William said, “Orange, apple, pineapple.”

“No red?”

“You know that’s not a flavor, right?”

“Never mind, I’m good.”

Mabel placed her bourbon atop a white petrified-wood stump. “John, there’s things—”

“You need to tell him,” said Hannah. “Is that right?”

William rushed over, lifted Mabel’s glass, and placed a white leather coaster beneath it.

“Thank you, baby,” Mabel said.

“Ma’am,” William said with a nod before making his way outside.

“You had your fifteen minutes, Mabes,” said Hannah. “We all know what’s what here. This thing you insist on doing”—Hannah

waved a hand through the air—“no need to drag it out.”

John made another effort to see something, anything, of Mabel’s past. “Mabel, why don’t you and I talk privately—”

“Why don’t we head out to the deck,” said Hannah. “I see Ezmond’s got it all set up for us and we don’t want to be rude.”

John glanced through the glass wall. A white-linen-covered table sat bedecked with glass vases filled with fresh flowers and

white and gold china. Two ivory-clad servers stood with their hands clasped on one end of the sun-drenched deck. The freckled

server with the buzz cut shifted uncomfortably from leg to leg.

An explosion and dust so thick he can choke on it. Screams and harried orders and the entire world has exploded. He’s wound

tight, every muscle twitching as he clutches his rifle while trying to make out the Humvee through dust clouds the color of

café au lait. The sand out here is powder and gets into everything—into boots and between toes, beneath kerchiefs and into

teeth. Shouts. Frantic orders. Another explosion. He raises his rifle and squeezes the trigger and wonders which came first:

the screams or the tat tat tat tat of his bullets.

“John,” Hannah said. “The deck?”

11

After brunching for a half hour, Hannah was pulled into a last-minute conference call to spin a firestorm a movie star client

had sparked, which evidently involved drugs, a small arsenal of firearms, and a trapeze artist. Mabel and John excused themselves

and descended the sand-worn wooden steps to the beach. She walked quickly and John followed her toward the water, where she

discarded her sandals before inching to the edge, letting the ocean nip at her toes. The waves were choppier than they had

been earlier and the wind was picking up.

“Who are you, Mabel?”

“Oooh! This water’ll wake you up if you aren’t already.”

It was strange, the way her Southern accent ebbed and flowed. It could be positively down home or nearly undetectable.

She opened her thin, dark brown arms to the ocean. “This will never get old. Not in tens of thousands of years. You know,

the human species morphs a little every minute, with every gene mutation. So slow a process you can’t tell unless you can

see the big picture. Nothing is static. Everything changes.”

He glanced back at the others. They were still on the deck, and Hannah was still on her call, shaking her head and massaging

her closed eyes beneath her wide-brimmed hat. The sun had just tucked itself deep into gathering clouds and John eyed the

sky warily, unable to shake the feeling that those clouds and the shift he sensed in the air portended something. “I get glimpses,”

he said, “into people’s pasts. In those first moments of meeting someone, I see them, clear as anything.”

“You sound as if you don’t like it.”

“Should I?” John was taken aback. “Did I used to?”

“No,” she said gently.

“I can’t see anything from your past, though.” He added cautiously, “But I have seen you. Before the interview, I mean.”

Mabel didn’t turn from the horizon.

“It wasn’t here,” he said. “Not in this world.”

Her expression didn’t shift, but he got the impression she was listening very carefully.

“Where I came from,” he continued, “where I was after I died and before I came back, there’s a house. Grey and in the middle

of an ocean. You were in it. In that water.”

Mabel drew a deep breath. The ocean had lost its blue brilliance and was now a faded green-grey. The waves in the distance

were higher and had increased in number. “The ocean around your Grey House,” she said, “is an ocean of memories.”

She knew.

“Anything you’ve ever known, even the things you think you’ve forgotten, are there. But it isn’t just your ocean, it’s the Ocean. The Ocean of Memories holds memories of every single person who’s ever existed and ever will. Newer memories stay