No makeup at all.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!”

The wind chimes above the store’s door rattle the scale, a piercing arpeggio that rips Kit from her vision, even as Patricia releases her hands.

Kit opens her eyes, wide, spinning to face (Daphne) the door.

“Get away from me!” she yells again, falling to her back, hands in front of her face.

The man in the doorway looks to Patricia.

“The hell’s going on in here?”

It’s a man. Just a man. The basketball court, the park, the car, the music, the Nelson home, the bare hands, the face, all…

…gone.

Kit imagines a new series of texts on her phone that remains off.

Beck Nelson…

“We’re in the middle of something,” Patricia tells the man. She looks to Kit. “You okay?”

“The last time I looked like that,” the man says, pointing a finger at Kit, “was at a co-op in East Lansing, 1995. I took too much.”

Patricia crouches, holds Kit’s face in her hands.

“Well, it’s a start,” she says. “And nobody says it’s easy.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“But you can,” Patricia says. “And you will. And I’ll help you. But first…I need to do my job for one second here.”

She rises, greets the man. Kit sees the remains of the Nelson house in her memory. As if the yellow eye she sits upon will never see anything else ever again.

Then she’s up. Even as Patricia tells her to wait, Kit rushes to the exit. The man is describing a book, Patricia is asking him to hang on, and all Kit hears are those chimes, descending as the door swings closed behind her, as she flees the store.

And the whole world seems to descend with the notes.

“Stay away from me,” Kit says. She trembles as she moves through downtown Samhattan. As everyone she sees is a thought away from death. One thought, repeated, over and over. A woman. A name.

A face.

Kit hurries. But where to? When the monster lives where the mind’s walls meet, where can she possibly go?

Yet despite the paralytic anxiety, despite the unfathomable odds, she does.

She goes.

And somewhere deep in her head, her own voice continues to say:

There is strength in this.

Barbara Pollen’s hair remains mostly blond, despite her sixty-six years. It’s pulled back tight enough into its trademark ponytail to give her face a windblown look; the chief of police always appears to be moving against something. McGowan recognizes it as a hallmark of a lifetime in law enforcement. So is the pint of pissy beer in front of her on the booth table. To say nothing of the empty one beside it.

McGowan doesn’t even consider employing small talk as she slides in across from her superior.

Pollen is not in uniform. McGowan steels herself for a revelatory conversation. But she starts first:

“I’ve got four kids who call themselves the Vann Guards. Was on the TV at Zach Gold’s house. And if you remember, Zach’s was the name Lords gave us.”