In room four, Izabel took off her shoes and lay down on the bed. The acupuncturist came in, a very tall woman who Izabel hadn’t seen before. Izabel wondered whether she was married to the receptionist and if they had very tall children together.

The woman took Izabel’s left hand in a handshake with her own left hand and used her right hand to feel the pulses in Izabel’s left wrist, focusing on a pulse along Izabel’s radius. Then she walked around the table and felt Izabel’s right wrist.

“Sit up,” she said. “And turn.”

Izabel put her legs over the side of the bed and rested her feet on a stool.

The woman lifted Izabel’s shirt. “Round your back,” she said, and Izabel did.

The woman followed her fingers up Izabel’s spine, down Izabel’s spine, up again, stopping at a certain vertebra, moving out from there, placing a needle to the left and then to the right of it. She placed eight needles in total.

“Lie down on your side slowly,” the woman said. And as Izabel did, the woman met her head with two pillows. Then she moved a long pillow between Izabel’s knees and put a blanket over her legs.

“Thank you,” Izabel said.

“Twenty minutes,” the woman said, and she left the room.

Izabel thought about the killer. She thought about Kaito and Cami and Jana. She thought about what Opa had said. She thought about Andy and Hestia. She thought about swimming. She thought about the man who made sandwiches.

The woman came back in, looked at her back, said, “You’re still making work of them,” and left again.

Within seconds, the left side of her back seemed to blossom into chills. She wondered if any one pin was the center of it. The chills moved out in waves. And then the right side of her back went, too, and the chills moved up to her shoulders. The waves grew stronger and more uncomfortable. As she considered if she should yell out about them, they settled, and Izabel fell asleep.

“Good,” Izabel heard the woman say.

Izabel opened her eyes.

“Sit up.”

Izabel did and the woman removed the pins.

“You need a few more points,” she said. “But I’ll only touch them.”

“Okay,” Izabel said.

“Lie back.” The woman felt Izabel’s wrists again and then set about her body. She touched a point on Izabel’s ankle, on the side of her foot, on the top of her head. “Do any still hurt?”

“My head,” Izabel said.

She touched the point on her head again with the needle. “Better?”

“Yes,” Izabel said, surprised.

“A point of disharmony,” the woman said.

Chapter Twenty-Four