Holly says, “I’m going to count down from ten to one, Jerome. Each time you hear a number, you’ll be a little more awake. Okay?”

For several seconds Jerome says nothing. He sits calmly, peacefully, touring some other reality and perhaps trying to decide if he would like to live there permanently. Holly, on the other hand, is vibrating like a tuning fork, and Hodges can feel his fingernails biting into his palms as he clenches his fists.

At last Jerome says, “Okay, I guess. Since it’s you, Hollyberry.”

“Here we go. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . you’re coming back . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . waking up . . .”

Jerome raises his head. His eyes are aimed at Hodges, but Hodges isn’t sure the boy is seeing him.

“Four . . . three . . . almost there . . . two . . . one . . . wake up!” She claps her hands together.

Jerome gives a hard jerk. One hand brushes Dinah’s Zappit and knocks it to the floor. Jerome looks at Holly with an expression of surprise so exaggerated it would be funny under other circumstances.

“What just happened? Did I go to sleep?”

Holly collapses into the chair ordinarily reserved for clients. She takes a deep breath and wipes her cheeks, which are damp with sweat.

“In a way,” Hodges says. “The game hypnotized you. Like it hypnotized your sister.”

“Are you sure?” Jerome asks, then looks at his watch. “I guess you are. I just lost fifteen minutes.”

“Closer to twenty. What do you remember?”

“Tapping the pink fish and turning them into numbers. It’s surprisingly hard to do. You have to watch closely, really concentrate, and the blue flashes don’t help.”

Hodges picks the Zappit up off the floor.

“I wouldn’t turn that on,” Holly says sharply.

“Not going to. But I did last night, and I can tell you there were no blue flashes, and you could tap pink fish until your finger went numb without getting any numbers. Also, the tune is different now. Not much, but a little.”

Holly sings, pitch perfect: “‘By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea, you and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be.’ My mother used to sing it to me when I was little.”

Jerome is staring at her with more intensity than she can deal with, and she looks away, flustered. “What? What is it?”

“There were words,” he says, “but not those.”

Hodges heard no words, only the tune, but doesn’t say so. Holly asks Jerome if he can remember them.

His pitch isn’t as good as hers, but it’s close enough for them to be sure that yes, it’s the tune they heard. “‘You can sleep, you can sleep, it’s a beautiful sleep . . . ’” He stops. “That’s all I can remember. If I’m not just making it up, that is.”

Holly says, “Now we know for sure. Someone amped the Fishin’ Hole screen.”

“Shot it full of ’roids,” Jerome adds.