see my parents watching me with a pride so fierce even the most panicked and pessimistic corner of my brain can’t ignore it or explain it away. Mum and Dad know what I want for my future now, and they know that, no matter what they think, I’m going to get it. But the way they look at me is still the same. The first Golden Explorer is Vanessa, which surprises no one. The literal golden compass Katharine hands out is palm-sized and beautifully ornate, and Vanessa holds it in the air like an Olympic medal. Obviously, I’m not jealous. A scholarship would be nice, but I can do without it. I can live with roommates. I’m in a very healthy place and I’m excellent at setting boundaries. The second Golden Explorer is a quiet, hardworking guy named Nick, who is so shocked he almost walks right off the edge of the stage. I clap for him like I did for Vanessa. Maybe I could get a job so I can afford to live alone? I’m certainly not about to ask my parents for help, not when they have to put money toward my sister studying abroad and— Katharine announces the third winner, Bradley Graeme, and I pause in my thoughts to clap again. No one steps forward, though. Laughter ripples through the room, and Sophie smacks me on the shoulder. “Brad.” I blink. “Yeah?” “What’s your name, genius?” What— I look over at Celine and she is laughing so hard, a hand over her mouth, her eyes bright and happy and…I think proud? I look into the crowd at my parents, sitting beside Neneh and Giselle, and they’re all beaming and waving their hands at me as if to say Go. Then I look at Katharine, who is waiting at the podium with an amused smile and one last golden compass. She leans into the mic and says, “That’s you, Brad.” Jesus H. Christ. I won a Golden Compass. I won a scholarship. I all but run over to the podium. “What? Thank you, but…I didn’t finish the expedition! Surely I shouldn’t…” Katharine says into the mic, “Bradley is now explaining to me why he should not receive this award.” Celine cups her hands around her mouth and calls, “Brad. Be quiet.” Everyone laughs some more. “It’s true that, due to an unfortunate accident,” Katharine says to the crowd, “Brad could not finish his final expedition. However, our team decided to average out all the data we had for his performance as a Breakspeare Explorer, and the results were undeniable. Brad scored a 4.9 on our matrix.” I. Did? WHY? HOW? Actually, never mind. I’ll take it. Katharine’s still talking. “His performance was consistently high. Therefore, we made an executive decision to honor the work he was able to do, rather than count him out based on what he couldn’t complete.” She hands me the compass. It’s heavy and slightly warm and mine. “You are a Golden Explorer, Bradley. Congratulations.” “…Thank you!” I manage. The next few minutes are a daze.


just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible. And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood where Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that. As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulating skeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and distant, just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and staggered on. There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise. Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of


“We bought an extra two years of the United States staying [in Afghanistan] and killing terrorists and protecting the country,” he said. John Bolton agreed that moments like this—when staff persuaded President Trump to take the prudent course, even if only temporarily—bought just enough time to protect the country from the worst possible outcomes. “The damage Trump did in the first term is reparable,” Bolton told me. But a second MAGA administration “would do damage that is not reparable, especially in a White House surrounded by fifth-raters,” he predicted. Nearly every Trump appointee I spoke with made a similar prediction. Another MAGA president won’t hire a stable of experienced public servants. From the start, he or she will populate the administration with a “D Team” of political operatives who pledge allegiance to a cult of personality, not the Constitution. “[Trumpism] is like a progressive disease,” Bolton explained. “It might remit for a while, but it never gets better.” Or as a Pentagon leader under Trump told me: “In Round Two, you won’t see Jim Mattis and John Kelly. It will be the fucking enablers.” A future MAGA cabinet will be led by unapologetically un-confirmable figures and Trump look-alikes. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) is a prime example of an institution that will be targeted by the Next Trump. VA leaders were on the receiving end of withering White House pressure during the Trump years to manipulate the department’s budget and programs for political purposes. While public servants fought back against the constant interference, the writing was on the wall: in a successor MAGA administration, America’s veterans won’t be so lucky. “What the Trump folks wanted to do… was ‘turn it upside down,’ ” recalled Tom Bowman, who served as Trump’s deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs. Bowman explained that the White House wanted to push veterans into the private healthcare marketplace, a move that would potentially have left millions of vets out in the cold or abandoned amid a monumental bureaucratic transition. The White House ignored the warnings of medical personnel and agency leaders. The VA, Bowman said, “had a tremendous amount of authority to manage and deliver changes to veteran healthcare.… [T]he White House knew it, and they were ready to force VA leaders to disrupt and even dismantle the veterans’ healthcare system without a medically competent and safe follow-on plan to implement.” In particular, the president was tempted to reallocate the department’s $250 billion budget, which was second only to the Pentagon in magnitude. Even if the administration shifted 25 percent of the VA budget to other priorities, that would have been more than $60 billion. “That’s real money for a president, and the White House wanted to spend it somewhere else,” a former VA official told me. In other words, the VA could be a piggy bank for Donald Trump. When he interviewed candidates for the department’s top positions, he quizzed them about how they could whittle down the size of the VA and reallocate its resources. VA leaders (especially those who had served in uniform) were


fall to find that the creek hadn’t washed it away, the sun hadn’t bleached it out. It stayed all year. It stayed the next fall, too, but after the snows melted my junior spring, it was either gone or the marker had faded completely. Still, I looked for it every time; the place where it had landed was an anchor for me, a sacred point keeping me safe at Granby. I looked for it now, as I crossed back. I only felt worse, of course, to find the spot empty. Don’t start collecting things, don’t start collecting things, and then I had the next line: People will say we’re in love. It was from Oklahoma!, from a song about people who were, of course, actually in love. Fuck. Well, there it was. I didn’t need agreement from Fran or Carlotta: Thalia was telling me herself. 38 I was still in the middle of the bridge when Lance called. I only answered to stop myself from deciding to chase after Yahav. Lance sounded like he was breathing through sand. He said, “I thought you said you weren’t touching Twitter again.” “I didn’t!” “Okay. Okay. Did you know that when you ‘like’ a response on Twitter, people can see?” “Of course. Why? What?” “Someone has receipts on you hearting this Elizabeth Warren GIF? It’s—she’s in, like, a feather headdress and she’s—” “I saw that,” I said, “but I did NOT heart it. Are you out of your mind? Have we met?” I sat down. The bridge was wet, and the wet soaked through my jeans. “It’s not just you liking a racist GIF but it’s that you liked it as a response to that thread, like you were agreeing that this woman was only posing.” “Yes, I can see that, but I did NOT like that post.” “Go on your Twitter. Go find it.” I put him on speaker and looked at my recent activity and for fuck’s sake there it was, a red heart. And I saw, to the side, “20+” notifications, which likely meant I had hundreds. I felt a hot panic, a stuck-inside-a-sweater-in-a-dressing-room wave of nausea. I hated everyone and I hated myself and I even hated Lance for calling and most of all I hated being hated. “Jesus, I was on my phone. You know my thumbs are stupid.” “Right, sure. I believe you, but the woman who found this, she screenshotted it and posted this thing and she’s got 130 retweets.” “Literally? On a Saturday? I just unliked it.” “That might make it worse. Listen, there’s a lot of other stuff, too, people still just flipping out about what you wrote.” I knew, without looking, what they were saying: I was a hypocrite. I’d spent dozens of episodes digging into the abuse of women in Hollywood, and as soon as my own husband was accused I’d scampered to his defense. It would be one thing if I hosted a knitting podcast, but now I had betrayed the cause, and I was racist, too. Maybe I only believed white women,


Then interviewing. Then being matched with my first client—a dorky twenty-year-old who gave me a pleading look and asked, “Can you pretend to be my age? And Canadian? We met in eighth grade at summer camp, and your name is Klarissa, with a K. Also, if anyone asks, I am not a virgin.” “Are they likely to ask?” He considered it. “If they don’t, could you casually bring it up?” It turned out not to be that bad, so I asked Cece if she wanted to try it, too. I swear I don’t secretly hate her. It was just the only thing I could think of upon realizing that we’d both made the stupidest of career choices (i.e., academia). We’re overeducated and too poor to survive—as evidenced by our crappy apartment, full of exposed wiring and scary spiders that look like the love children of murder hornets and coconut crabs. If we had a sitcom-like group of friends, we’d hold an asbestos-removal party. Sadly, it’s just us. And the barely avoided scurvy. “So.” She steals my tea mug and hops on the counter. I let her: no need for caffeine after the sheer agony of a thousand needles. “They sent me to this guy.” “What’s his deal?” Meaning: What deep-seated, soul-scorching trauma dragged this poor sap out of the primordial swamp and made him shell out wads of cash to pretend he’s not alone? “He’s one of yours.” “Of mine?” “A scientist.” Cece is a linguist, finishing up her Ph.D. at Harvard. We first met when her former roommate moved out: apparently, Hedgie had chewed her way through his boxer briefs. Also apparently: blasting “Immigrant Song” while making poached eggs on Saturday mornings is not something normal people put up with. Cece was desperate for someone to help with rent. I felt as if I’d just been skinned alive, and was desperate not to be living with J.J. Two desperate souls, who found each other in desperate times and desperately bonded—over the fact that I could scrape together seven hundred dollars a month, was not attached to my underwear, and owned a set of noisecanceling headphones. Frankly, I lucked out. Roommate feuds are a pain, what with the passiveaggressive notes and the aggressive-aggressive Windex poisoning. I was ready to bend, twist, and carve my personality a million different ways to get along with Cece. As it turns out, the Elsie that Cece wants is conveniently close to the Elsie I am: someone who’ll companionably pig out on cheese while she complains about academia; who, like her, chooses to use children’s Tylenol because it tastes like grape. I do have to fake an appreciation for avant-garde cinema, but it’s still a surprisingly relaxing friendship. “What kind of scientist is he?” “Is there more than one kind?” I smile. “Chemist. Or engineer? He was . . . handsome. Funny. He made a joke about mulch. My first mulch joke. Popped my mulch cherry.” Her tone is vaguely dreamy. “He just . . . seems like someone you’d want to date, you know?” “I’d want


of wine, and drinking to me. 'As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.' 'That's true, indeed,' said I, moving my chair to the table. 'So you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!' interested to know all about it. 'Have you been there long?' 'No,' he returned. 'An escapade of a week or so.' 'And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?' 'Not yet. Going to be, I believe - in so many weeks, or months, or something or other. I have not seen much of 'em. By the by'; he laid down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence, and began feeling in his pockets; 'I have a letter for you.' 'From whom?' 'Why, from your old nurse,' he returned, taking some papers out of his breast pocket. "'J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The Willing Mind"; that's not it. Patience, and we'll find it presently. Old what's-his-name's in a bad way, and it's about that, I believe.' 'Barkis, do you mean?' 'Yes!' still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents: 'it's all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary there - surgeon, or whatever he is - who brought your worship into the world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather fast. - Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great-coat on the chair yonder, and I think you'll find the letter. Is it there?' 'Here it is!' said I. 'That's right!' It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It informed me of her husband's hopeless state, and hinted at his being 'a little nearer' than heretofore, and consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with 'my duty to my ever darling' - meaning myself. While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink. 'It's a bad job,' he said, when I had done; 'but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn't be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men's doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!' 'And win what race?' said I. 'The race that one has started in,' said he. 'Ride on!' I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces in it,


and refills her wine glass from the opened bottle on the coffee table. “Wine?” “No, thanks.” Ethan watches her lift her glass to her lips, preparing himself for his wife to confess her role in murdering Chelsea. She returns her glass to the coffee table before meeting his eyes. “Brody snuck into our garage yesterday and attacked me. Before your mother came.” “What?” He stands from the uncomfortable chair, scanning Sloane’s face and arms for a sign of injury from Carr’s attack. He balls his hands into fists, imagining that sadistic prick inside his garage, coming at his wife. “He threatened to make it look like I conspired with him to kill Chelsea if I didn’t help him.” She scoots toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Because your mother showed up, then you came at me guns blazing at dinner. “I thought I had it handled.” Ethan paces in front of the fireplace. Thinking about that murdering bastard breaking into his house makes his skin crawl. “Brody’s crazy, Ethan. Delusional. Dangerous. He’s never going to let me be free of this. I thought about what you said earlier, and I want to come forward about our affair.” Ethan stops. “We’ll say you didn’t know,” Sloane continues. “That I just told you tonight, and you advised me to make a statement in the morning.” Ethan runs his hand down the back of his head. “I can’t see any other way out.” Sloane glances at her purse lying atop the coffee table beside the wine. “And believe me, I’ve thought of everything. This is the only way to keep Brody from having a hold on me. I know it’ll make me a suspect, at least for a while, but there’s no way they can prove I helped Brody kill his wife. Because I didn’t.” He starts pacing again, not sure of what to say. If Jonah finds out Ethan knew about Sloane’s affair, he could lose his job. His entire career. What had been his purpose in life. “Will you go with me? Help me?” He stares at the floor, remembering what Evelyn told him when they met for coffee. And the firefighter’s account of Sloane shouting at the nurse not to give Narcan. “Ethan!” Sloane stands from the couch. “Will you? And can you please stand still?” He spins toward her. “No! No, I can’t. I talked to Evelyn. I know you told her to go on break so you could take over as Chelsea’s doctor. And that you uncharacteristically shouted at a nurse when they asked you to give Narcan.” “Because I knew Brody drowned her!” Ethan steps forward, putting his hands on his hips. “How?” She sighs, glancing at the wine on the coffee table. “I went freediving with him in the San Juans, and the same thing happened to me.” Ethan frowns. “What do you mean?” “I got tangled in bull kelp. Brody had to cut me free. He—he saved me.” Ethan’s stomach twists into a knot. Sloane meets his gaze with pleading eyes. “That’s how I knew it


Just as I thought. No change.” She rolled the tape away. “Perfect.” Miss de Vries thinned her lips at that. “Very well.” She sighed. “Show me how you’re getting on.” Alice took a breath and fetched the beginnings of the costume. It was littered with pins and pieces of tissue paper, a fragile, half-formed thing. Alice could feel the ridges and sore parts between her fingers where her hands had been pressed to the needle. Miss de Vries smirked at her. “You carry it as if it’s about to disintegrate.” “It’s at a delicate stage, Madam.” “Hmm.” Miss de Vries stepped forward, let a tentative finger touch the black-crusted beading on the bodice, the silk. “Who taught you to sew?” “My father,” Alice said. “He’s a haberdasher.” “Haberdashers can’t make gowns like this.” Alice was pleased, but she tried to hide it with a frown. Pride always came before a fall. “Have I offended you?” said Miss de Vries. “No, Madam.” Alice hesitated, holding a pin in her hand. Miss de Vries looked at it, the glint of metal, the sharp edge. Alice threaded it carefully into her apron. “Are you close to your father?” That was a courteous enough remark. But Miss de Vries had never shown any special interest in Alice’s circumstances before. Alice shook her head, treading carefully. “Not in the least.” She didn’t wish to think about Father, or their grim front parlor, or his prayer books on the mantelpiece. At home the floorboards were coated with cheap red stain and covered with frayed carpets. Up here in Madam’s rooms things were soft and luxurious, downy and pure. They were immeasurably nicer. “How sad.” There: Miss de Vries was looking straight at her. The ironic smile had disappeared. Her gaze was fierce and penetrating, picking Alice right down to the bones. Then she unscrewed the letter tucked into the cuff of her sleeve. “Put everything away. And when you go downstairs, tell Mr. Shepherd to come and see me.” She raised the letter. “I have a visitor coming tomorrow. I need to change the menus.” Alice was relieved. Standing near Miss de Vries was dangerous: she was altogether too observant. “Yes, Madam,” she said, retreating. And then, to be obliging, “Should I tell him who’s expected?” Miss de Vries was scanning the paper, mouth moving silently with the words. She spoke offhandedly, but there was something in the ferocity of that gaze that held Alice’s attention. “Lord Ashley, from Fairhurst. Mr. Lockwood will accompany us.” The names meant nothing to Alice. “Very good, Madam.” She began to carry the fabric away. “Oh, Alice?” Alice turned. Miss de Vries’s eyes were on her again. The light had changed, grown yellowish. It made Madam look softer, gentler. “You’re doing splendidly,” she said. It was so unexpected, so entirely unlike Madam’s usual cool, disinterested tone, that Alice felt wrong-footed. She didn’t think anyone had praised her handiwork before. They paid her wages—that was all. Even Mrs. King never said well done. Alice didn’t mind being buttered up a little. She rather


deemed impassable, whereas the ships were too few. Many had been lost upon their long journey, and there remained now not enough to bear across all the great host together; yet none were willing to abide upon the western coast while others were ferried first: already the fear of treachery was awake among the Noldor. Therefore it came into the hearts of Fanor and his sons to seize all the ships and depart suddenly; for they had retained the mastery of the fleet since the battle of the Haven, and it was manned only by those who had fought there and were bound to Fanor. And as though it came at his call, there sprang up a wind from the north-west, and Fanor slipped away secretly with all whom he deemed true to him, and went aboard, and put out to sea, and left Fingolfin in Araman. And since the sea was there narrow, steering east and somewhat south he passed over without loss, and first of all the Noldor set foot once more upon the shores of Middle-earth; and the landing of Fanor was at the mouth of the firth which was called Drengist and ran into Dor-lmin. But when they were landed, Maedhros the eldest of his sons, and on a time the friend of Fingon ere Morgoth's lies came between, spoke to Fanor, saying: 'Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Fingon the valiant?' Then Fanor laughed as one fey, and he cried: 'None and none! What I have left behind I count now no loss; needless baggage on the road it has proved. Let those that cursed my name, curse me still, and whine their way back to the cages of the Valar! Let the ships burn!' Then Maedhros alone stood aside, but Fanor caused fire to be set to the white ships of the Teleri. So in that place which was called Losgar at the outlet of the Firth of Drengist ended the fairest vessels that ever sailed the sea, in a great burning, bright and terrible. And Fingolfin and his people saw the light afar off, red beneath the clouds; and they knew that they were betrayed. This was the firstfruits of the Kinslaying and the Doom of the Noldor. Then Fingolfin seeing that Fanor had left him to perish in Araman or return in shame to Valinor was filled with bitterness; but he desired now as never before to come by some way to Middle-earth, and meet Fanor again. And he and his host wandered long in misery, but their valour and endurance grew with hardship; for they were a mighty people, the elder children undying of Elu Ilvatar, but new-come from the Blessed Realm, and not yet weary with the weariness of Earth. The fire of their hearts was young, and led by Fingolfin and his sons, and by Finrod and Galadriel, they dared to pass into the bitterest North; and finding no other way they endured at last the terror of the Helcarax


“That means it’s just the five of us for tonight’s game and the big show tomorrow night and . . .” I hesitate. Nobody is going to want to hear the next part. “And listen, after the final game, I need everybody to stick around and help close down the camp.” “Huh?” Porter asks. “Wait, wait, wait. Nobody said anything about staying past closing night.” “I know,” I say. “Heather and Jordan volunteered, but since they’re MIA, somebody has to do it. I’m staying, too, of course. If we all pitch in, it’ll take maybe two days max.” Javier shakes his head. “Nope. I got plans.” Tasha scoots closer to Javier and nudges him with her shoulder. “You sure you gotta go?” Javier smiles, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Uh. I mean, no. I guess not.” “What plans do you have anyway, Javier?” Kyle asks. “Hanging out with your grandma?” The smile is gone from Javier’s face immediately. “Yeah. So?” Javier tilts his head to the side. “She’s good company. And she can cook.” He puts his hand on Tasha’s leg, and Porter rolls his eyes. “I can stay,” Javier says. “But I think there’s some squirrels living in the wall of my cabin. Can we do something about that?” I add the issue to my laundry list of other things I need to tell Mr. Lamont about once I can actually get ahold of him. He leaves way too many of the responsibilities to me, and I hate it sometimes. I bite the end of my pen and try to think in a straight line. “It’s too late to get any new people hired on, and I can’t do this by myself. I’m inviting some of my friends up to help out.” I take my phone out and send a group text to my girlfriend, Bezi, and my friend Paige. ME: Do yall want to come up to the camp for a few days? Bezi, I know you were gonna pick me up anyway but can you come up a few days early? I can comp you a cabin and maybe yall can help me fill in a few of the “victim” roles? I’m short staffed. PAIGE: I’m in. Three little dots pop up and then disappear, as if Bezi is typing and erasing a response. Bezi is big on outdoor stuff. She loves the camp setting, but she hates that Mr. Lamont is running the Camp Mirror Lake game out here. She thinks it’s weird, and if I’m being honest, she’s not wrong. Mr. Lamont’s motivations for running the camp are clear—he loves money and the attention that the camp gets even when it’s not always positive. Bezi’s response pops up a moment later. BEZI: Sure, babe. Hey Paige . . . be ready when I pull up because I am not waiting around. I know you like to take your sweet time. PAIGE: Whatever Bezi. Don’t rush me! ME: If yall get here soon enough you can play tonight’s game. PAIGE: I’m about to be so dramatic.


point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay. One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me --a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret. Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible


the plans the men were making. Occasionally they heard faint echoes of brawls and quarreling among the mutineers, and on two occasions the vicious bark of firearms rang out on the still air. But Black Michael was a fit leader for this band of cutthroats, and, withal held them in fair subjection to his rule. On the fifth day following the murder of the ship's officers, land was sighted by the lookout. Whether island or mainland, Black Michael did not know, but he announced to Clayton that if investigation showed that the place was habitable he and Lady Greystoke were to be put ashore with their belongings. "You'll be all right there for a few months," he explained, "and by that time we'll have been able to make an inhabited coast somewhere and scatter a bit. Then I'll see that yer gover'ment's notified where you be an' they'll soon send a man- o'war to fetch ye off. "It would be a hard matter to land you in civilization without a lot o' questions being asked, an' none o' us here has any very convincin' answers up our sleeves." Clayton remonstrated against the inhumanity of landing them upon an unknown shore to be left to the mercies of savage beasts, and, possibly, still more savage men. But his words were of no avail, and only tended to anger Black Michael, so he was forced to desist and make the best he could of a bad situation. About three o'clock in the afternoon they came about off a beautiful wooded shore opposite the mouth of what appeared to be a land-locked harbor. Black Michael sent a small boat filled with men to sound the entrance in an effort to determine if the Fuwalda could be safely worked through the entrance. In about an hour they returned and reported deep water through the passage as well as far into the little basin. Before dark the barkentine lay peacefully at anchor upon the bosom of the still, mirror-like surface of the harbor. The surrounding shores were beautiful with semitropical verdure, while in the distance the country rose from the ocean in hill and tableland, almost uniformly clothed by primeval forest. No signs of habitation were visible, but that the land might easily support human life was evidenced by the abundant bird and animal life of which the watchers on the Fuwalda's deck caught occasional glimpses, as well as by the shimmer of a little river which emptied into the harbor, insuring fresh water in plenitude. As darkness settled upon the earth, Clayton and Lady Alice still stood by the ship's rail in silent contemplation of their future abode. From the dark shadows of the mighty forest came the wild calls of savage beasts--the Chapter 2 15 deep roar of the lion, and, occasionally, the shrill scream of a panther. The woman shrank closer to the man in terror-stricken anticipation of the horrors lying in wait for them in the awful blackness of the nights to come, when they should be alone upon that wild and lonely


were in a meeting and made Jeanne put her on the line. Is that okay?” “You don’t have to stop being friends with her just because . . .” “Just because she broke your heart?” “Well, yes.” The fact is that Nick and Emily were friends. Andy had liked it so much—he liked the idea that they all fit together. Usually bringing a date to meet his friends felt like brokering peace at a NATO summit, but if NATO were made up entirely of twelve-year-olds at their first mixer. It wasn’t at all like that with Nick and Emily. “Just so you know,” Nick says, “if I’m ever in your place, I expect you to hold a grudge for the rest of your life. Give them the evil eye when you pass on the street. Spit after you say their name.” Any man who breaks Nick’s heart will be lucky if all Andy does is give them the evil eye and hold a grudge, but he doesn’t say so. * * * At eight thirty in the morning the newsroom is always like a coiled spring, still lacking the movement and energy of later in the day, but with plenty of latent force if you know where to look. Most reporters, except those on the night desk or manning the wires, don’t wander into work until ten or eleven, but Andy gets in before nine in order to match the schedules of marketing and circulation, then usually stays until the paper goes to print—about nine at night. It’s a long day, but he’s never minded because it beats the hell out of his empty apartment. Now, though, Nick is mirroring his schedule. “It’s not like I can go back to sleep after you crash around the kitchen,” Nick grumbles, which is a lie, because Nick wakes up first every day and starts a pot of coffee. “So I might as well go in.” Whenever Andy attempts to protest, Nick shuts him up with a glare, making Andy suspect that Nick secretly likes waking up early. This is the most disturbing thing he’s learned about Nick or possibly anyone. That morning, there’s a manila interoffice mail envelope sitting on Nick’s desk when they get in. Andy brings a paper cup of coffee to his mouth and absently watches Nick unwind the string from around the button and empty the contents onto the desk. What falls out is a book. Usually interoffice mail envelopes bring nothing but rejected expense reports and a stapled packet of receipts. He tries to remember if Nick mentioned ordering a book for one of the stories he’s working on, but even if he had, it wouldn’t likely be about Roman chariots or whatever this is. The Charioteer by Mary Renault. Nick opens the book and almost immediately slams it closed. “Something wrong?” Andy asks, even though it’s pretty obvious that there is. “No,” Nick growls. “Who sent it?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Is someone bothering you?” A list of people who could blackmail, extort, or otherwise harm Nick spools out in


wanted to listen to his Virgil. He took that seriously.” Michelle studied the leavings of her scone. “I liked that about him. He took me seriously. Even when I didn’t.” “Yes,” Dawes had said quietly. But Michelle had only returned to New Haven once over the summer. All June and July Dawes had been researching from her sister’s place in Westport, sending Alex into the Lethe House library with requests for books and treatises. They’d tried to come up with the right series of words to frame their requests in the Albemarle Book, but all that came back were old accounts of mystics and martyrs having visions of hell—Charles the Fat, Dante’s two towers in Bologna, caves in Guatemala and Belize said to lead to Xibalba. Dawes took the train from Westport a few times so they could sit together and try to find someplace to start. They always invited Michelle, but she only took them up on it that one time, on a weekend when she was off from her job in gifts and acquisitions at the Butler Library. They’d spent all day poring over society records and books on the monk of Evesham, then had lunch in the parlor. Dawes made chicken salad and lemon bars wrapped in checkered napkins, but Michelle had only picked at her food and kept checking her phone, eager to be gone. “She doesn’t want to help,” Dawes had said when Michelle left and the door to Il Bastone was shut firmly behind her. “She does,” said Alex. “But she’s afraid to.” Alex couldn’t really blame her. The Lethe board had made it clear they believed Darlington was dead, and they weren’t interested in hearing otherwise. There had been too much mess the previous year, too much noise. They wanted that chapter closed. But two weeks after Michelle’s visit, Alex and Dawes had gotten their big break: a single, lonely paragraph in a Lethe Days Diary from 1938. Now Alex pushed off from the wall outside of Sterling and hurried up Elm onto York. “Tell them I can’t meet on Saturday. Tell them I have … orientation or something.” Dawes groaned. “You know I’m a terrible liar.” “How are you going to get better if you don’t practice?” Alex dodged down the alley and entered the Hutch, welcoming the cool dark of the back stairs, that sweet autumn smell of clove and currants. The rooms were spotless but lonely, the battered plaid couches and scenes of shepherds tending their flocks trapped in gloom. She didn’t like spending real time at the Hutch. She didn’t want to be reminded of the lost days when she’d hidden in these secret rooms, wounded and hopeless. Pathetic. She wasn’t going to let that happen to her this year. She was going to find a way to keep control. She snatched up the backpack she’d loaded with supplies earlier— graveyard dirt, bone dust chalk, and something labeled a Phantom Loop, a kind of fancy lacrosse stick she’d pilfered from the Lethe armory. For once, she’d done the homework. Alex loved


walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with Harriet and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr. Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's friendship and woman's feelings would not justify. He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly might have heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition as to money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr. Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. Elton. Harriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child, and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. Elton, and found to his great surprize, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr. Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not do; Mr. Elton had been determined to go on,


We stand in the shadow of the stained-glass window, its colors muted by the darkness outside. Directly beneath our feet, an unruly red splotch two shades darker than the surrounding carpet takes up most of the landing. Earlier today, I thought it was caused by light streaming through the stained glass. Standing on it now, though, I see it for what it is. A bloodstain. A big one. I leap away from it, onto one of the lower steps, where I find another, smaller stain. And another on the step below that. Hopping to the foyer floor, I stare up at Jessie and say, “You could have warned me.” “And miss that reaction? I don’t think so.” She descends the rest of the stairs, stepping on several more bloodstains in the red carpet and making me notice a pattern to the splotches. It looks like someone bleeding profusely had tried coming up the Grand Stairs before being stopped at the landing. “Evangeline Hope,” Jessie says, knowing exactly what I’m thinking. “It’s assumed she was stabbed in the foyer, tried to escape up the steps, and was stabbed again on the landing, where she bled out.” I shudder and turn away, looking instead to the large front door leading to outside. “Why didn’t she try to leave?” “No one knows,” Jessie says. “There’s a lot about that night that remains unknown.” She starts moving down the hall on the right, the one that ends at the sunroom. We don’t make it that far. At the halfway point, just past Lenora’s portrait, Jessie stops at one of the hallway’s many closed doors. She pushes it open and flicks a switch just inside. Light floods the room, coming from both a green-glass fixture on the ceiling and matching sconces on the walls. “The billiard room,” she announces with an enthusiasm usually reserved for tour guides who really, really love their job. “Where Winston Hope met his end.” My first thought is that yes, this feels very much like a room where a man of Mr. Hope’s stature would die. The décor is brutish. Various antique firearms hang on the walls, along with the heads of animals that were probably killed by them. A lion. A bear. Several deer. A pair of matching leather armchairs sits atop a zebra pelt in front of a fireplace. On one wall is a rack of pool cues, although there’s no pool table to be seen. The only sign it was ever here is a rectangular path in the middle of the room where the floor has been worn down by well-heeled soles. “What happened to the pool table?” “Winston Hope died slumped over it,” Jessie says. “Since his throat was slit, I guess it was too bloody to salvage.” I turn her way, startled. “The rhyme says he was stabbed.” “Oh, he was,” Jessie says. “Once in the side, before his throat was slit. I guess that was too complicated to make rhyme.” “How do you know so much about all of this?” “Mostly Mary,” Jessie says. “She knows


Daniel Arlington. You are ill-equipped to play the role of Dante, let alone Virgil. But with my supervision and some humility on your part, we’ll get through this together.” Alex considered stabbing him with a pen. “Thank you, sir.” Walsh-Whiteley took off his glasses, withdrew a cloth from his desk drawer, and polished the lenses slowly. His eyes darted left and Alex tracked the movement to a yellowing photograph of two young men, perched on a sailboat. He cleared his throat. “Is it true you can see the dead?” Alex nodded. “Without any elixir or potion?” “I can.” Alex had read the room as soon as she’d entered. The driftwood on the shelf beside the photo, shells and pieces of sea glass, the quote framed in a paperweight: Be secret and exult, because of all things known, that is most difficult. But she hadn’t read Walsh-Whiteley—not successfully. She’d been too nervous to see the desperation lurking behind all of that bluster. “There’s a Gray here now,” she lied. The office was blessedly free of ghosts, probably because the Praetor was one step shy of a cadaver himself. He started, then tried to remain composed. “Is there?” “Yes, a man…” A gamble now. “An older man.” A frown puckered the professor’s brow. “No … he’s hard to make out. Young. And very handsome.” “He…” Walsh-Whiteley looked around. “To the left of your chair,” said Alex. Walsh-Whiteley stretched out his hand, as if he could reach through the Veil. The gesture was so hopeful, so vulnerable, Alex felt an acute pang of guilt. But she needed this man on her side. “Has he said anything?” the Praetor asked. The longing in his voice had an edge, sharpened over years of loneliness. He’d loved this man. He’d lost him. Alex resisted the urge to take another look at that photo on the mantel, but she felt sure Walsh-Whiteley was one of those smiling faces, young and suntanned and sure that life would be long. “I can see Grays, not hear them,” Alex lied again. Then added primly, “I’m not a Ouija board.” “Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.” Where’s your sneer now? But she knew she had to tread carefully. Her grandmother had read fortunes in the leavings of Turkish coffee, bitter, dark, and so thick it seemed to take its own slow time down your gullet. “You’re selling people lies,” Alex’s mother had complained. A funny irony from Mira, who lived on the hope she found in crystals, energy baths, bundles of sage that promised purity, prosperity, renewal. “I don’t sell them anything,” Estrea had said to her daughter. That was true. Estrea Stern never charged for the fortunes she told. But people would bring over loaves of bread, tinfoil skillets of Jiffy Pop, babka, chewy strawberry candies. They would leave kissing her hands, tears in their eyes. “They love you,” Alex had said, marveling, watching with wide eyes from the kitchen table. “Mija, they love me until they hate me.” Alex hadn’t understood until she’d seen the way those same


been sent?" He looked at Leto's hand. "Your ring is missing. Does the boy have it?" The Baron looked up, stared into Leto's eyes. "You don't answer," he said. "Will you force me to do a thing I do not want to do? Piter will use simple, direct methods. I agree they're sometimes the best, but it's not good that you should be subjected to such things." "Hot tallow on the back, perhaps, or on the eyelids," Piter said. "Perhaps on other portions of the body. It's especially effective when the subject doesn't know where the tallow will fall next. It's a good method and there's a sort of beauty in the pattern of pus-white blisters on naked skin, eh, Baron?" "Exquisite," the Baron said, and his voice sounded sour. Those touching fingers! Leto watched the fat hands, the glittering jewels on baby-fat hands--their compulsive wandering. The sounds of agony coming through the door behind him gnawed at the Duke's nerves. Who is it they caught? he wondered. Could it have been Idaho? "Believe me, cher cousin," the Baron said. "I do not want it to come to this." "You think of nerve couriers racing to summon help that cannot come," Piter said. "There's an artistry in this, you know." "You're a superb artist," the Baron growled. "Now, have the decency to be silent." Leto suddenly recalled a thing Gurney Halleck had said once, seeing a picture of the Baron: " 'And I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea . . . and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.' " "We waste time, Baron," Piter said. "Perhaps." The Baron nodded. "You know, my dear Leto, you'll tell us in the end where they are. There's a level of pain that'll buy you." He's most likely correct, Leto thought. Were if not for the tooth . . . and the fact that I truly don't know where they are. The Baron picked up a sliver of meat, pressed the morsel into his mouth, chewed slowly, swallowed. We must try a new tack, he thought. "Observe this prize person who denies he's for hire," the Baron said. "Observe him, Piter." And the Baron thought: Yes! See him there, this man who believes he cannot be bought. See him detained there by a million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of his life! If you took him up now and shook him, he'd rattle inside. Emptied! Sold out! What difference how he dies now? The frog sounds in the background stopped. The Baron saw Umman Kudu, the guard captain, appear in the doorway across the room, shake his head. The captive hadn't produced the needed information. Another failure. Time to quit stalling with this fool Duke, this stupid soft fool who didn't realize how much hell there was so near him--only a nerve's thickness away. This thought calmed the Baron, overcoming his reluctance to have a royal person subject to pain. He saw himself suddenly as a surgeon exercising endless supple


Jasmine put on a month-long performance piece in Washington Square Park, during which she ate only the food people brought her and wore only the clothes people brought her. How this wasn’t just vagrancy and an insult to the homeless, I was unsure. It garnered enough attention that in January she was the subject of a lengthy feature in New York magazine. The article revisited her piece about Jerome, included new quotes from her about him, and featured a black-and-white photo of the two of them at a costume party in 2003 as Artemis and Zeus. There was no new revelation, just a bigger platform. Twitter was once again where the fallout happened. People tagged Jerome’s new gallery, telling them to drop him. They asked Jerome for a long-overdue public apology. (This, he’d been advised, was a trap: There was no apology they’d accept. And defending himself would be worse.) They tried to drag me into it again, asking how I could stand by him. Fortunately, they caught on soon enough to the divorce going through, and assumed Jasmine was the reason. I didn’t correct them. You might guess that I had come around on Jasmine Wilde. That I’d realized how wronged she was, how much a victim. Or maybe you’re hoping that I realized: If Jasmine had voluntarily dated Jerome, maybe the love between you and Thalia was just as simple. Absolutely not. I’d thought about it, how Thalia, at seventeen, had only been four years younger than Jasmine was when she dated Jerome. It seemed so little, but then four years is the difference between eleven and fifteen—ages no one could argue are the same. Four years was the length of my entire time at Granby: an entire education. It had been four years now since I’d returned there to teach and my life had changed. The good news was, I was not the arbiter of Jerome’s goodness. And the divorce made that official. I’d seen someone for a few months before the pandemic hit, and then, during that brief wave of postvaccine optimism in the summer of ’21, Yahav flew out to LA for a conference and we spent the weekend sleeping together, which threw me back into full-tilt longing and then into a pained equilibrium, an acceptance that Yahav’s place in my life would be two to forty-eight hours here and there for an unspecified number of years. Like a stomach bug that overtook me entirely for a weekend and then vanished. “By the way, funny thing,” Jerome said. “Somebody rang my cell yesterday looking for you. They were trying to figure out your address. I hung up.” “Yeesh,” I said. “Man? Woman?” “Sounded like a young woman, pretty nervous. I think, you know, an amateur sleuth.” I’d been so flooded with emails in the past three years that I’d put an autoreply on my account asking people with information about the case to contact the defense team. The thing was, no one ever had information about the case. They had theories. There was that one serial killer


to justify retaining power, under the false pretense of maintaining “law and order.” That, in turn, increases the potential for widespread armed conflict. The process can take decades to unfold. If history is any guide, though, it might come to a head suddenly, with the literal pull of a trigger. And the odds of that happening in the not-too-distant future are historically high. Political assassinations and civil unrest will become more likely. According to U.S. Capitol Police, in the five years after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the number of recorded threats against members of Congress increased more than 400 percent, to 9,625 in 2021. Lawmakers told news outlets that they were living in a state of fear and some were changing their votes for safety reasons. Many representatives retired after Trump’s presidency, publicly citing the danger to their families. We are witnessing what appears to be the largest spike in threats to U.S. public servants in modern history. In terms of volume, it’s worse than the chatter we saw in the period following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The list of near-death incidents is growing. The year after Trump left office, a man showed up outside the home of Representative Pramila Jayapal, allegedly brandishing a firearm and threatening to kill her. After a campaign event against MAGA Republican Mike Lee, independent U.S. Senate candidate Evan McMullin was reportedly chased by a man in a truck holding a pistol. And in November 2022, a man broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the hope of killing the woman second in line to the presidency. She wasn’t there. Instead the suspect beat her husband close to the edge of his life. The MAGA movement’s embrace of antigovernment rhetoric and violence toward public officials is elevating the risk of political assassinations. The invective is broadcast openly on the far right. “When do we get the guns?” a young man asked to applause at a large gathering of nationally known conservative activists in late 2021. “That’s not a joke.… I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” The danger doesn’t stop with national figures. A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found that one in three local election officials felt unsafe on the job. Half of that cohort said they’d received threats. Community leaders say they’re getting death threats with regularity. The Trump presidency unleashed a domestic extremism pandemic that swept the country. We are still dealing with it today, and it will lay the predicate for future civil unrest under the Next Trump. The surge is being driven by many of the conspiracy theories referenced earlier, such as the Great Replacement Theory, QAnon, and the Big Lie. Don’t believe me. Just look at the data. During Trump’s first year in office, the FBI investigated roughly one thousand domestic terrorism cases. I remember writing congressional testimony on the subject. The number was shocking because—for the first time in my career—the volume of domestic terrorism


the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superinten- dent over the head with it -- or any other man." "Who makes them tear around so?" "Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it -- and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat- heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's more -- if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rub- bing of an old tin lamp." "How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know anything, somehow -- perfect saphead." I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school. CHAPTER IV. WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, any- way. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done


homestead had never passed its primal time in conjunction with the histories of others, beside which the histories of these were but as a tale told by an idiot. They walked about the garden paths with thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost, bringing their actions at every moment in jarring collision with the dim ghosts behind them, talking as though the time when Tess lived there were not one whit intenser in story than now. Even the spring birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody missing in particular. On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of their predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John Durbeyfield was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott, declaring that they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned. By this time Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened away from its hated presence without once looking back. His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the dance. It was as bad as the house--even worse. He passed on through the churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a somewhat superior design to the rest. The inscription ran thus: In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror. Died March 10th, 18-- HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN. Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there, and drew nigh. "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be." "And why didn't they respect his wish?" "Oh--no money. Bless your soul, sir, why--there, I wouldn't wish to say it everywhere, but--even this headstone, for all the flourish wrote upon en, is not paid for." "Ah, who put it up?" The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the churchyard, Clare called at the mason's house. He found that the statement was true, and paid the bill. This done he turned in the direction of the migrants. The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually reach the place. At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place till about seven o'clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty miles since leaving Marlott. The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs Durbeyfield's tenement, which was a house in a walled garden, remote from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old furniture as best she could. It was plain that for some reason or other she


White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:-- `The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!' `Consider your verdict,' the King said to the jury. `Not yet, not yet!' the Rabbit hastily interrupted. `There's a great deal to come before that!' `Call the first witness,' said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, `First witness!' The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. `I beg pardon, your Majesty,' he began, `for bringing these in: but I hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.' `You ought to have finished,' said the King. `When did you begin?' The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. `Fourteenth of March, I think it was,' he said. `Fifteenth,' said the March Hare. `Sixteenth,' added the Dormouse. `Write that down,' the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence. `Take off your hat,' the King said to the Hatter. `It isn't mine,' said the Hatter. `Stolen!' the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact. `I keep them to sell,' the Hatter added as an explanation; `I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.' Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring at the Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted. `Give your evidence,' said the King; `and don't be nervous, or I'll have you executed on the spot.' This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter. Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her. `I wish you wouldn't squeeze so.' said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. `I can hardly breathe.' `I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly: `I'm growing.' `You've no right to grow here,' said the Dormouse. `Don't talk nonsense,' said Alice more boldly: `you know you're growing too.' `Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' said the Dormouse: `not in that ridiculous fashion.' And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court. All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court,


Mark out on the ice. “Burn him,” Mark repeated. It was the only sane thing to do. “Yeah,” she said, and for a moment she just wanted to stay here in this soft, comfortable chair, then she pushed herself to her feet. She shuffled to the curtains and peeked out. The nurse who’d brought her back sat at the desk between two other nurses. Behind her, Mark sighed. Louise turned. “It felt so good,” he said. He met her eyes. “It felt so good not to be responsible for anything again.” She slipped through the curtain, feeling enormously self-conscious. The nurse looked up from her station as Louise hobbled past. “Dr. Daresh is on her way for the postsurgical conference,” she said. Louise smiled but didn’t stop hobbling. If she stopped she didn’t think she’d be able to start again. “Bathroom,” she said. “Be fast,” the nurse said, then looked back down at her screen. Louise hobbled out of the recovery unit and limped across the waiting room, passed the bathroom, and headed for the elevator, feeling like she was making a prison break. As she waited for the elevator, she wondered if people thought she was a battered wife or a car crash victim. By the time she got to the lobby she didn’t care what anyone thought. By the time she got into her cold little Kia she just hurt. Her skin ached. Every bruise felt connected to another bruise. She didn’t remember navigating traffic to get onto the Crosstown, or going over the bridge, or turning onto McCants, but the next thing she remembered she was pulling up outside the house. The paramedics had left the garage door open. She got out and walked directly into its maw and snapped on the light. She didn’t look at the enormous bloodstains on the floor. She slapped the door-close button and the door ground shut, hitting the driveway with a bang, making everything inside turn dim. She got the grill tongs and a white plastic bottle of lighter fluid sitting next to them and went out back. She dragged the rusty green grill they’d maybe used once in her life away from the wall of the house, opened it up, and used the tongs to scatter the old ashes, then built up a mound of sticks she found in the yard. The more she moved, the more it worked the stiffness out of her joints. She sprayed the sticks down with lighter fluid until they glistened. On the shelf next to where the lighter fluid had been she found a long fire starter. Then she heaved the garbage bag off the trash can and threw its lid open. Pupkin sprawled on his back, smiling up at her, gory and merry, cutting his eyes to one side, mischievous and sly. Mark’s blood stained one half of his white plastic face. Pupkin fun! she heard him sing inside her head. She picked him up with the tongs. Wheeeee! Pupkin said. She didn’t look at him as she marched him into the backyard and


home. Yes, a security tech was scheduled, but she wasn’t going jogging with Bella or anyone else for that matter. Not yet. Her stomach was queasy and she attributed the slight case of nausea to her lying and, of course, the pregnancy. Soon she’d go to the ob-gyn to confirm what she’d learned in the hospital, and talk to a specialist who would give her more information about her pregnancy. Then she would give her father the happy news, but she wasn’t ready yet. Telling anyone about her baby, Jay’s baby, seemed a bit of a betrayal somehow, since she’d never been able to confide in her own husband. “Don’t go there,” she said, and drove home. To an empty house. She and Jay had each had pets when they’d gotten together, but over the years the animals had aged and eventually passed on. As a couple, they’d talked about adopting another dog or cat but hadn’t gotten around to it. Jay’s half-blind dog Bruno had been his constant companion when he and Kristi had reconnected, and she’d had wonderful Houdini, her black cat who’d always had a hint of mystery, plus little Hairy S, a scruff of a terrier mix. All now gone, she thought sadly. As was Jay. But there was the new little kitten and soon, hopefully, another dog. With renewed determination, she shook off her melancholy and walked into the house, hesitating inside, but sensing no one had entered. The technician wasn’t due for another couple of hours, so she decided to take Bella’s advice and go for a run. She even considered calling her friend, but thought better of it. She wasn’t ready for company yet, but she would be and soon. She’d need her friends and she’d just have to gut through all their happy little stories about their lives, the tales of their husbands’ foibles, their kids’ accomplishments, the constant struggle with their co-workers and bosses, even their pets’ hilarious antics. It was time to get out of her own whirlpool of self-pity and get on with her life. True, her life was somewhat isolated and lonely, the nature of being a writer, and the subject matter of violent crime could be a real downer, but she’d just have to make an effort. She discovered the kitten curled on her bed, a little fluff of black fur with round eyes that was already burrowing into her heart, a female that she’d dubbed Lenore in honor of one of her favorite poems by Poe. She spent some time petting the little purring beast, then located her favorite Nikes, kicked off by the back door, slipped them on, and took off, running through the neighborhood and following her usual route. She noticed the houses as she passed, many with pumpkins, even jack-o’-lanterns on the porches. There was a new strength in her pace, a fierceness in her stride, a determination to find herself. And not only that, she thought as she crossed the streetcar’s tracks, then jogged under the canopy of huge live oak trees and past


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

larvae, all the little nauplii and tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. In the sea there are more things invisible than visible! I never thought of that before. And in the ponds too! All those little pond-life things-- specks of colourless translucent jelly! But in air? No! "It can't be. "But after all--why not? "If a man was made of glass he would still be visible." His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside, walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting- room and lit the gas there. It was a little room, because Dr. Kemp did not live by practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over, and read the account of a "Strange Story from Iping" that the Mariner at Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr. Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly. "Wrapped up!" said Kemp. "Disguised! Hiding it! 'No one seems to have been aware of his misfortune.' What the devil is his game?" He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. "Ah!" he said, and caught up the St. James' Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. "Now we shall get at the truth," said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of columns confronted him. "An Entire Village in Sussex goes Mad" was the heading. "Good Heavens!" said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping the previous afternoon, that have already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted. He re-read it. "Ran through the streets striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great pain--still unable to describe what he saw. Painful humiliation--vicar. Women ill with terror! Windows smashed. This extraordinary story probably a fabrication. Too good not to print--cum grano!" He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. "Probably a fabrication!" He caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. "But where does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a Tramp?" He sat down abruptly on the surgical couch. "He's not only invisible," he said, "but he's mad! Homicidal!" When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible. He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined to think that overstudy had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study--and then to confine themselves to the basement and ground- floor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning's paper came. That had much to say and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a very baldly


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

show because I wanted to take care of the audience in your clumsy hands—” He laughs dryly. “You’ve made me well aware.” “—but it’s fun because I’m doing it with you,” I finish, reaching for his hand. Finally, he looks up. And I think I get what’s happening. God, I am so dumb sometimes. “I have fun with you,” I tell him, tugging him closer. “This first week on set was great because I’m comfortable with you. I insisted you do confessionals because I like being with you. I risked my life talking to River because I believe in your amazing ideas. You are doing your job so well, and I’m sorry if—” My words are cut off when Connor steps forward, cupping my face. His mouth fits to mine and in an instant, every thought melts away. It is a simple kiss, soft lips, firm pressure, and then he gives me another from a different angle before he pulls away. Connor’s green eyes search mine, flickering back and forth in question. My thoughts scream to not let him retreat again, but before I think to tug him back to me, he’s already resolved, stepping closer, crowding my space. I stand on my toes as he bends to meet me, his mouth softer and hungrier now, going after those angles we found last time, deeper, his tongue teasing and hot. Connor groans and the sound drops me into a pool of want, and all I can think about is diving down, finding more of that hoarse need he’s hiding away. I keep expecting him to break it off, to pull away again and apologize, remind me that we weren’t going to do this again, but the more we kiss, the more his intensity ramps up. Connor lifts me, setting me in front of him on the counter, pushing my legs apart so he can step between them. His hand roams up my back, around my ribs, cupping my breast while the other pulls my hips forward, pinning me to his body. I’m rewarded with another groan, and another when I grind against him. He doesn’t stop me as I unbutton his shirt, spreading it open, flattening my hands against the warm wall of his torso, broad and tight. Connor’s mouth is on my neck, his fingers curling around the strap of my tank top, dragging it off my shoulder and lower, stretching the fabric, pulling my bra with it to bare me to his mouth and teeth. The feel of his bite and kiss on my nipple is pleasure undiluted, making my vision spot black as my body greedily steals every available molecule of oxygen. His hair is so soft in my hands, and he seems to like when I pull it, grunting into my skin, biting me in delicious retaliation when I’m rough. When I pull it hard enough, he moves with the gesture, standing again and claiming my mouth. I want his kiss for hours. I’ve never been kissed like this before, with such command and confidence, with an energy


His hands are purple with cold, and he tucks each into the opposite sleeve in a vain attempt to warm them. “I have a message for the queen,” the envoy blurts out. “From the palace of Alea.” Clytemnestra sits up. Of all the possible news, this is the most unexpected. “Is Queen Timandra safe?” She must look ready to lash out, because the man seems afraid to speak. He gulps. “Timandra has deserted King Echemus, my queen.” His voice is low, and for a moment. she thinks she hasn’t heard correctly. The envoy looks up and, seeing that she isn’t reacting, continues, “She was seen riding away in the night. They say she married King Phyleus in secret and now is pregnant by him.” The name tells her nothing. She frowns, trying to understand. “This message isn’t from Timandra, then.” The envoy shakes his head. “It is King Echemus who sends me. He claims Timandra went mad after he sent her friend away from the palace.” Chrysanthe. “He says he wants her back.” “Where is Timandra’s friend now?” “No one knows.” “Is Echemus looking for her?” The envoy frowns, as though Clytemnestra’s questions were missing the point. “Echemus only wants Timandra back, my queen.” Orestes stares at him. Behind the columns near the hearth, Leon is waiting for Clytemnestra’s instructions. “You can rest here tonight,” she tells the envoy. “Leon will take you to the bathhouse. Tomorrow you will go back to your king.” “What should I tell him?” “That I grieve for his loss, but I can’t bring his wife back. Timandra is someone else’s wife now.” The envoy pulls a face, torn between laughter and gravity. “Yes, my queen,” he says, then leaves the room, following Leon. Alone with his mother once more, Orestes walks to the wall and starts tracing the contours of the painted lions with his fingers. He used to do it all the time when he was a child, touching the frescoes as though they were windows to another world. “Why did Aunt Timandra go mad?” he asks. There are fresh cuts on his face—he has been wrestling harder in the practice field, like a fighting dog that has learned the only way out of the arena is to take the others down. Clytemnestra takes a deep breath. “She cared about her friend. And King Echemus sent her away.” “So she left him.” “Yes.” “Why didn’t she tell you she would leave?” “She couldn’t tell anyone. You heard the envoy; she ran away in secret.” “You will never see her again, then.” Clytemnestra loses herself in the bright blue of the frescoed sky. It is the same shade as the summer sky beneath which she and Timandra played and wrestled. Of all her brothers and sisters, she was always the most like her. “I knew this would happen,” she says. “A priestess back in Sparta delivered a prophecy to my mother years ago. She said that the daughters of Leda would marry twice.” And thrice. And they would all be deserters of their lawful husbands. But


had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for mur- derers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim: "The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light showed; every- body in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more showed -- up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed around for the watchman, a- wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: "Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?" I says: "Pap, and mam, and sis, and --" Then I broke down. He says: "Oh, dang it now, DON'T take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this 'n 'll come out all right. What's the matter with 'em?" "They're -- they're -- are you the watchman of the boat?" "Yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "I'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and some-


never recognize me. I could mess with her so bad.” “Please do. If she went yesterday, why is she still here?” I could answer my own question, though: possibility of recall, a return flight she’d scheduled cautiously late, the promise of the world’s worst high school reunion, a chance to spend one more night away from home and kids and work. But I knew she wasn’t here eagerly. Unlike Sakina, Beth had not volunteered for this. Getting called out for underage drinking twenty-seven years after the fact, being asked why she hadn’t told the police about her backstage flask, getting grilled by the defense over why she’d named Omar—none of that would have been pleasant even without the media circus. Beth was one of the only Granby students to testify at the original trial—and who knew what being here now was bringing up? If I were her, I’d be long gone. Geoff said, “I heard her husband is the guy who started that—what’s the tech thing with the beaver logo? No, not a beaver, an otter?” “So how did she do?” “You haven’t even listened to your own podcast? Last night’s episode was about her and then all about how they tried to crucify you up there with Britt. Which was such desperate bullshit.” I said, “I suspect I’m here as a decoy now. If I stay in town, the state will keep focusing on me, but then, surprise, I never get up there.” Geoff said, “Okay, she sat down way over by the orange juice station. So, yeah, it was mostly about the flask. She doesn’t remember Thalia drinking, she only admitted to passing the flask around. And then they basically took her back through what she’d told the police in ’95.” “Oh. Wait, no, I didn’t want you to answer that. I can’t—” “Shush shush shush, you’re not listening to a podcast, you’re not talking to another witness. You’re just eating oatmeal. Look at you sitting there, eating the hell out of that oatmeal.” I shoved a spoonful in my mouth. “She didn’t come off well. The defense, like—honestly, they made her look pretty racist, or at least classist. Her whole thing was ‘everyone knew’ about Omar, and they go, So you’re saying you put a lot of stock in rumors.” I said, “They’re broadcasting the actual testimony?” The last I’d talked to Alder, he hadn’t been sure if he’d be allowed to, or if he could even pick up the sound well enough. “The juicy parts,” Geoff said. “You ever sat through one of these things? It’s ninety-nine percent tedium.” I said, “Okay. I’m taking one more bite of oatmeal. Just tell me if anything completely shocking came up. Like, anything you think I don’t already know.” “Doubtful. Oh, they were asking if she’d ever been in the equipment shed, if she knew other kids who’d been in there. Because you know the state, in their opening, they argued the location change didn’t matter since Omar would’ve had a key to the shed. Did that door even have a


did in UNCLE TOM, `Tink ob yer marcies, chillen! `Tink ob yer marcies!'" added Jo, who could not, for the life of her, help getting a morsel of fun out of the little sermon, though she took it to heart as much as any of them. -------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chapter" I.5 Being Neighborly "What in the world are you going to do now, Jo." asked Meg one snowy afternoon,as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. "Going out for exercise," answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It's cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as I do," said Meg with a shiver. "Never take advice! Can't keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, I don't like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I'm going to find some." Meg went back to toast her feet and read IVANHOE, and Jo began to dig paths with great energy. The snow was light, and with her broom she soon swept a path all round the garden, for Beth to walk in when the sun came out and the invalid dolls needed air. Now, the garden separated the Marches' house from that of Mr. Laurence. Both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still countrylike, with groves and lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two estates. On one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls and the flowers, which then surrounded it. On the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson. To Jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed. She had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the Laurence boy, who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to begin. Since the party, she had been more eager than ever, and had planned many ways of making friends with him, but he had not been seen lately, and Jo began to think he had gone away, when she one day spied a brown face at an upper window, looking wistfully down into their garden, where Beth and Amy were snow-balling one another. "That boy is suffering for society and fun," she said to herself. "His grandpa does not know what's good for him, and


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

sprinted back to the door and turned the key, fumbling in their panic. Harry pulled the door open and they ran inside. Hermione Granger was shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint. The troll was advancing on her, knocking the sinks off the walls as it went. "Confuse it!" Harry said desperately to Ron, and, seizing a tap, he threw it as hard as he could against the wall. The troll stopped a few feet from Hermione. It lumbered around, blinking stupidly, to see what had made the noise. Its mean little eyes saw Harry. It hesitated, then made for him instead, lifting its club as it went. "Oy, pea-brain!" yelled Ron from the other side of the chamber, and he threw a metal pipe at it. The troll didn't even seem to notice the pipe hitting its shoulder, but it heard the yell and paused again, turning its ugly snout toward Ron instead, giving Harry time to run around it. "Come on, run, run!" Harry yelled at Hermione, trying to pull her toward the door, but she couldn't move, she was still flat against the wall, her mouth open with terror. The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started toward Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape. Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: He took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll's neck from behind. The troll couldn't feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry's wand had still been in his hand when he'd jumped -- it had gone straight up one of the troll's nostrils. Howling with pain, the troll twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for dear life; any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him a terrible blow with the club. Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright; Ron pulled out his own wand -- not knowing what he was going to do he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head: "Wingardium Leviosa!" The club flew suddenly out of the troll's hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over -- and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner's head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble. Harry got to his feet. He was shaking and out of breath. Ron was standing there with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done. It was Hermione who spoke first. "Is it -- dead?" "I don't think so," said Harry, "I think it's just been knocked out." He bent down and pulled his wand out of the troll's nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue. "Urgh -- troll boogers." He wiped it on the troll's trousers. A


tried to close his eyes---to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation before any one else beheld it. They would not shut---they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too. Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried out for Joseph. Joseph shuffied up and made a noise, but resolutely refused to meddle with him. "Th' divil's harried off his soul," he cried, "and he may hev his carcass into t' bargain for aught I care! Ech! what a wicked un he looks girning at death!" and the old sinner grinned in mockery. I thought he in- tended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly com- posing himself, he fell on his knees, and raised his hands, and returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were restored to their rights. I felt stunned by the awful event, and my memory unavoidably recurred to former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one who really suffered much. He sat by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating, and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs nat- urally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tem- pered steel. Mr. Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died. I concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days, fearing it might lead to trouble; and then I am persuaded he did not abstain on purpose---it was the consequence of his strange illness, not the cause. We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neigh- bourhood, as he wished. Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin, comprehended the whole attendance. The six men departed when they had let it down into the grave. We stayed to see it covered. Hare- ton, with a streaming face, dug green sods and laid them over the brown mould himself. At present it is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds, and I hope its tenant sleeps as soundly. But the country folks, if you ask them, would swear on the Bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, you'll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on 'em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night since his death. And an odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one evening---a dark evening, threatening thunder; and just at the turn of the Heights I encoun- tered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him. He was crying terribly, and I supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided. "What is the matter, my little man?" I asked. "There's


You’re gonna run your car off the road and into the Pacific. I’ll be haunted for the rest of my life by a straight, Catholic ghost.” “I’m really not that tired,” Maud said, but she followed her into the house. “Your eyes are so bloodshot they look like they’re bleeding. What time do you have to get those kids from school?” Maud told her the pickup time for Louise. Alice took something out of a metal box next to the bed. “Lie down. I’m heading back up there to finish. You’ll need these. Turn your head. She squeezed an earplug and slipped it into Maud’s ear. “Other side.” The foam expanded, muffling Alice’s voice. “I’ll wake you up in two hours.” The bed was soft and the sheets musky. Alice flipped a switch on the wall as she left, and on the ceiling shutters crawled over the skylights. The room went black as the bottom of the sea, a drenching, exquisite nothingness. Who would have known that in the middle of the day this luminous space could be so transformed? Earplugs by the bed and shutters on the skylights. She has insomnia, Maud thought, closing her eyes. Just as she had another life, so did Alice, a life with Gloria, her work on the land and the buildings, the walks she took with Clark before dinner, the hours reading in her study. Those other lovers. She listened to the rhythm of Alice’s hammer on the roof, and it was as if she were kneeling next to Alice, the two of them pounding, or as if Alice were pounding for both of them, and it didn’t matter whose hand held the hammer, and then the thudding started to fade, and she thought, She was right—I’m falling asleep. She woke up not knowing where she was, and then remembered. She pulled out the earplugs and went outside. Alice was still on the roof, Clark flopped next to the chimney, licking his paws with his velvety tongue. “You still have ten minutes,” Alice said. Like a cutout, she was framed by the sky, the sun glancing off the roof. “How does he get up there?” Maud said. “He can’t climb the mountain anymore, but he can climb a ladder.” “Thanks for the nap.” “I don’t like surprises,” Alice said. “And, all right, I missed seeing you. Even though you make me talk too much.” That night, lying next to Peter, Maud put her hand between her legs. The sensation came back so easily and without context, almost without trying. When Gabriel’s face appeared, unrelenting, stubborn, she didn’t fight it. It felt good to be back in the fog. April bloomed into May with yarrow and poppies at El Polín and blue hound’s tongue and popcorn flowers in the fields at Esperanza. The Briones house and walled garden stood again on their foundations, the house roofed in tile, the garden roofed by sky. Seedlings tiptoed from the soil: the golf clubs of bean seeds, the pronged tongues of squash. The yerba buena and strawberry plants gathered


dying soldiers out of them. She started making wraiths. In horror, Io watched as the girl marched back into battle. Dying from the inside out. Like Emmeline Segal and Drina Savva and Raina. She gripped Edei’s sweater and pulled him back. The words tore from her lips like a blade through sinew: “Edei, Bianca is keres-born!” Bianca’s head snapped to where Io and Edei stood across the bridge. “Who are you?” Palms raised, Edei said, “We’re here to help. We joined you a few minutes ago.” The young mob queen removed her glasses—her eyes blazed scarlet. She had been wearing dark glasses that day to hide the keres-born powers mirrored in her irises. “No you didn’t. I know your faces.” Her red gaze traveled to the rooftops around them, the fight breaking out on the bridge. “You’re not supposed to be here.” It’s a dream, Io thought in terror. So wake up. Wake up, Io! But she had no control here. This was Bianca’s world, and this was the day she ascended to the throne of the Silts. There was no one more powerful than her, here, now. Bianca’s hand twirled like she was mixing an invisible drink. Immediately, the red mist around them began shifting, slowly at first, then faster and faster in rhythm with Bianca’s fingers. It engulfed Io and Edei in a cocoon of red, like they were standing in the eye of a hurricane. Through tears in the wall of red, Io caught a glimpse of Bianca Rossi crossing the bridge toward them. “You dare invade my dreams? You dare force me into this wretched memory?” Bianca screamed from somewhere in front of them. “Who the hell do you think you are?” She sounded close, too close— A hand came out of the red mist and punched Io straight in the stomach. Io doubled over in pain, bile rising up her throat. She reached for the Quilt, the threads, anything, but her hands grasped only air. Bianca appeared through the wall of mist. Edei reached for Io— “Don’t move, Edei,” snapped Bianca. He stopped midstep, eyes terrified. Lip curled, Bianca raked Edei up and down. “Hire her, you told me. I can’t solve this without her. I knew she wasn’t to be trusted, but you? I could never have believed I was nursing a viper in my own bosom.” “Is that all you have to say, boss?” His voice was dipped in sarcasm. “What else would you like, Edei?” Bianca barked. “Eight days of slaughter, of sleepless nights by the door, listening to people shriek in pain. Eight days of fighting and losing, eight days of endless death. Someone had to take action, and no one was brave enough but me.” “Is that what you call sending injured fifteen-year-olds back to a fight they have no chance of surviving? Bravery?” “I did what I had to.” You did what you had to, Rosa had said. It was the exact same excuse Io had used to justify sending Thais away. “Tell me,” Edei said, shoulders shaking with constrained rage.