“Well, answer me, Grace,” Ghost Bird said, rising now, standing in front of them with her hands at her sides, in the kind of relaxed yet perfectly balanced stance someone took if they expected trouble. If they’d had combat training.

The light through the landing window faded into shadow as a cloud crossed over. A bird outside was muttering or whispering in time to the circling of the knife blade. Far distant came the suggestion of something sonorous, mournful, perhaps an echo off the lighthouse stones. A gecko scuttled up the wall. Control didn’t know if he should be worried about the foreground or something in the background. This was the only question that mattered to Ghost Bird, and Control didn’t know what she would do if Grace wouldn’t answer.

Grace stared over at Control, said, “If I sat here and told this copy”—pointing at Ghost Bird—“everything I’ve found, we would still be sitting here when hell froze over.”

“Just answer the question,” Ghost Bird muttered.

“Are we just passing through?” Control asked. “Should we be moving on?” That’s what this came down to, in a way. Not Ghost Bird’s question but Grace’s attitude, the constant suspicion that wore on him.

“Do you know how long I’ve been on this island? Did you ever ask me that?”

“Have you seen the biologist?” Ghost Bird demanded in a kind of staccato growl.

“Ask me.” The knife stabbed, vibrating, into the wooden floor of the landing. The hand on the holster had gone still, resting on the gun.

Control gave Ghost Bird a quick look. Had he misread something vital?

“How long have you been on the island?” he asked.

“Three years. I’ve been here three years.”

Outside, all seemed still, so impossibly still. The gecko frozen on the wall. Control frozen in his thoughts. Satisfaction, that Grace could not quite suppress, etched into her worn face. To have told them something they couldn’t have known, couldn’t have seen coming.

“Three years,” Control said, a plea for her to recant.

“I don’t believe you,” Ghost Bird said.

A generous laugh. “I don’t blame you much. I don’t blame you at all. You’re right. I must just be some crazy bitch who went mad out here all on her own. I must be unable to cope with my situation. I must be fucking nuts. Sure. Must be. Except for this …”

Grace pulled a sheaf of pages out of her knapsack. Brittle, yellowing, they had handwriting on them. A rusting clasp in the corner.

She flung the pages at Ghost Bird’s feet. “Read it. Read it before I waste time telling you anything else. Just read it.”

Ghost Bird picked it up, looked at the first page in confusion.

“What is it?” Control asked. Some part of him not wanting to know. Not wanting another dislocation.

“The biologist’s last will and testament,” Grace said.

PART II
FIXED LIGHT

Writing, for me, is like trying to restart an engine that has rested for years, silent and rusting, in an empty lot—choked with water and dirt, infiltrated by ants and spiders and cockroaches. Vines and weeds shoved into it and sprouting out of it. A kind of coughing splutter, an eruption of leaves and dust, a voice that sounds a little like mine but is not the same as it was before; I use my actual voice rarely enough.