Wyte was still coming down from whatever had possessed him. Voice slick with some hidden discharge. Muttering: “Like wheat. Like paper. Just shredding them. Just running through them.”

Finch babbling back. Exhilarated. Heart still beating so hard in his chest.

Wyte’s face had regained a semblance of the normal, skin sealed over the bullets. Already now looking drawn, diminished. Finch kept seeing Wyte killing the Partials.

Wyte had rebuttoned his trench coat. The lining torn. Hung down below the hem. Mud-spattered. Blood-spattered. About a dozen bullet holes in it. Small orange mushroom caps peeked out from the holes. Others had burst through the fabric. Around the buttons, purple fungus rasped out, probing.

“Wyte, Dapple’s dead,” Finch said.

“I know, Finch. I saw. Get in the boat.”

Finch climbed in and sat down. Held himself rigid as Wyte made the difficult negotiation of casting off and jumping in without capsizing them. Wyte sat down opposite. The boat glided across the water, back the way it had come. Like magic.

“You saved my life, Wyte,” Finch said. And it was true. Monstrously true. Kept staring at Wyte with a kind of awe. Wyte’s strength had manifested in a way Finch still couldn’t quite believe.

“But not Dapple,” Wyte said. “Dapple’s dead. And I feel beaten and bruised all over.”

Had Wyte passed a point of no return? More things that had colonized him peered out from the collar of the coat. Spilled out from his pants legs. Erupted in red-and-green patterns from his boots. A stench of overwhelming sweetness. Of corruption.

“Don’t go back to the station,” Finch said. “Not today.”

“We were sent there to die, weren’t we?” Matter-of-fact.

For my sins.

“Maybe we weren’t,” Finch said, thinking about the Partial standing over Shriek’s body. Lecturing him about how Partials saw more than gray caps. “Maybe it’s all falling apart. In front of our eyes. Everything.”

Wyte made a wet clucking sound. He was trying to laugh. “Didn’t it fall apart a long time ago?”

Knew Wyte was thinking about his wife, his kids, the little house they’d shared together so long ago.

Finch didn’t want that in his head, shot a glance up toward the ridge. Anyone could pick them off. Anyone. “Stay at home. I’ll figure it out. Call you.”

Wyte nodded again, almost slumped over in his seat. A kind of glow had begun to suffuse his features. Green-golden.

Or you’ll call me. Suppressed a shudder.

Finch’s vision blurred. Too many things to keep inside. Every time he thought he’d tamped down one thing, another came rushing up.

A long silence. A complex smile played across Wyte’s blurring lips. Finally said, “You know, Finch, I think we’re a lot closer to solving this case.”

A double take from Finch. A stifled smile. “Yeah, Wyte. Sure you do. Rest now. Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

Wyte nodded. Closed his eyes.

A flake of something floated onto Finch’s shoulder. Then another and another. He looked up to see that it was snowing. It was snowing in Ambergris.