"Hello, Jessica. You're looking... very yourself. I have what you need."

"How can you know what I need?" she said, in a voice that was frightening because it was so nearly normal. "How can you, when I don't know myself?"

"Because I'm John Taylor, and I find things. I found what you need. But you have to believe in me, or you'll never get what I have for you. If I just disappear, you'll never know ..."

"Show me," she said, and I knew I'd pushed it as far as I could. I reached carefully down into the pew, picked up the shoe box, and presented it to her. She snatched it from me, and the cardboard box disintegrated under her gaze, revealing the contents. A battered old teddy bear with one glass eye missing. Jessica Sorrow held the bear in her dead white hands, looking and looking at it with her wild unblinking eyes, and then, finally, she held it to her shrunken chest and cuddled it to her, like a sleeping child. And I began to breathe once more.

"This is mine," she said, still looking at the bear rather than at me, for which I was grateful. "It... was mine, when I was a small child. Long ago, when I was still human. I haven't thought of him in ... so long, so very long..."

"It's what you need," I said carefully. "Something that matters to you. Something that's as real to you as you are. Something to believe in."

Her head rose sharply, and she turned her unwavering regard on me. I did my best not to wince. She cocked her head to one side, like a bird. "Where did you find this?"

"In the teddy bears' graveyard."

She laughed briefly, but it surprised me anyway. "Never ask the magician how he does his tricks. I know. I'm crazy, but I know that. And I know I'm crazy. I knew what I was buying with the price I paid. I'm always alone now, divorced from the world and everyone in it; because of what I did to myself, what I made of myself. La la la ... just me, talking to myself... It wasn't an easy or a pleasant thing, to cut away my humanity and become the Unbeliever. I walk through the world, and I'm the only one in it. Until now. Now there's me and teddy. Yes. Something to believe in. What do you believe in, John Taylor?"

"My gift. My job. And perhaps my honour. What happened to you, Jessica?"

"I don't know, any more. That was the point. My past was so appalling, I had to make myself forget it, had to make it unreal, had to make it never have happened. But in doing that I lost my faith in reality, or it lost faith in me, and now I only exist through a constant effort of will. If I ever stop concentrating, I'll be the one to disappear. I've been alone for so long, sur-