“She’s been gone for a while,” Grace said. “You’ve been a little gone, for a while.”

She stood next to the seaward window, along with Ghost Bird. Ghost Bird had her back to Control, staring out at the night. Was she charting her original’s progress? Was that vast form now in open water, seeking depth and distance? Or had she departed for someplace stranger and more remote? He didn’t want to know.

When Ghost Bird finally turned, the shadows made of her face an impression of a fading smile and wide, curious eyes.

“What did it share with you?” Control asked. “What did it take?” More caustic than he’d meant, but he was still in a kind of shock, knew that on some level. Wanted his experience to be the common one.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

What side are you on? Lowry asked.

“What side are you on?” he asked.

“Enough!” Grace said. “Enough! Just shut the fuck up. That’s not helping.”

But he couldn’t shut up. “No wonder you’re on edge,” he said. “No wonder you didn’t tell us.”

“The biologist took out the convoy,” Ghost Bird said.

“Yes, she did,” Grace admitted. “But I have been careful and quiet and not provoked her. I know when to stay away from the lighthouse or the shore. I know when to fade into the forest. Sometimes there’s a kind of foreshadowing in the air. Sometimes she will make landfall where she found the owl, then push on through the interior, headed here. As if she remembers. Most times, I can avoid her. Most times, she isn’t here.”

“Remembers what? This place?”

“I don’t know what she remembers or doesn’t remember,” Grace said. “I just know your presence here attracted her, made her curious.” Not Control’s presence, that much he knew. Ghost Bird’s presence. The biologist was drawn to her as surely as he had been drawn to her.

“We could be just like the biologist,” Control said. “Stay here. Wait it out. Wait her out. Just give in.” Goading them.

But it was Ghost Bird who answered: “She earned the right to choose her fate. She earned the right.”

“We’re not her,” Grace said. “I don’t want to become her, or anything like her.”

“Isn’t that all you’ve been doing? Waiting?” Wanting to see just how well Grace had adjusted to living on an island with a monster.

“Not exactly. But what do you want me to do? Tell me what I should do, and I will do it!” Shouting now. “Do you think I want to wait here, die here? Do you think I like it?” The thought occurred that Grace had made use of the biologist’s list of pain-inducers, that her thinness, the hollowed-out quality to her face, wasn’t just about being haunted by a monster.

“You need a way out,” Ghost Bird said.

“Through a hole in the sea that may not be there?”

“No. Another way out.”

Control propped himself up with a groan. His side was on fire. “Are you sure the ribs are just bruised?”