“Anybody home?” I croaked. “Are you dead?” There was no response from whatever was left of Tom Worecski.

I crawled to the door, and Frances. Her breath still fluttered in and out of her parted lips, quick and shallow. Her eyes opened.

“Oh, why did I do that?” she whispered.

“Shut up, Frances.”

“Don’t be silly; you wouldn’t be able to tell who I was. He didn’t used to be a very good shot, you see. The nerve of the bastard, practicing up. It’s not fair.”

“Frances, please—”

There was a sound, from on the floor — from the inert body of Tom Worecski. I should have known; it was in all the horror movies. One last resuscitation. But in this movie, the heroes weren’t going to be able to kill the monster one more time.

The sandy head lifted from the floor and turned its frantic ice-pale eyes on me, and its mouth said, “Who are you? What’s… where am I?”

“Good grief,” Frances sighed. She sounded weakly amused. “He didn’t kill the host.”

“Are you sure? I mean, that he’s not—”

“We can… could always spot each other. He’s not there.”

I looked back into those nearly colorless eyes and tried to see them as the eyes of a stranger. For a moment I couldn’t think what to say to him. Then I called on my memories of the same experience. “You’re safe. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’ll help you in a minute, but please — just wait, okay?”

I knew it wasn’t going to work. He stared at me, and at Frances who had most of her blood, it seemed, on the outside of her.

“Don’t—” I began, but of course he turned his head and saw Mick, too. He would now have hysterics, and there wasn’t time for them.

Perhaps Tom had let him surface to scenes like this before. He didn’t have hysterics. He folded back up on the carpet with his hands over his face, in a pitiful attitude of submission and hopelessness. Eventually, I think, he passed out; I didn’t see him stir.

I turned back to Frances. “Now, shut up and mount up.”

“What?”

“Ride, damn you. I’m not half as near to dying as you are. Mount up and we’ll both get out.”

She smiled, almost. “And then what? Shall I steal another body once we’re out? Or just stay in yours forever?”

“What’s wrong with Mick’s solution: taking someone who’s getting out of the living racket anyway?”

“Why should it be better to steal people’s deaths than their lives? It’s a rite of passage. How do you know that Mick’s suicides weren’t harmed by what he did?” She winced, and shifted slightly against the molding.

I wanted to fetch a couch cushion to prop her up, but I was afraid she’d die while I was away doing it. I looked around for anything else I could use, and saw her near hand, palm down, on the carpet. Showing between her fingers was a bit of black leather thong strung with a black onyx bead.