“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Kim. She drifted forward, and Erik backed away before her. Kim fixed him with a hard, critical gaze. “The dead see many things that are hidden from the living. I know why you had to leave Vienna University in such a hurry. I know why Interpol chased you across half of France. Shall I mention the dog with two heads, the monkey that aged backwards, the pig with the added human brains that could say seventeen words in Portuguese? And you really shouldn’t have surgically reworked that homeless girl’s circulatory system, to make it more efficient. Such a mess . . .”

“Shut up!” said Erik. “Shut up! Get out of my head!”

“Wouldn’t go in there on a bet,” said Kim. “It’s not my fault you wear your sins so openly.”

“They weren’t all failures! I achieved things, important things! I did!” Erik was breathing hard, almost on the edge of tears. “Don’t think I can’t hurt you because you’re dead!”

His left hand dived inside his coat, but JC was immediately there, putting himself between Kim and Erik.

“Don’t even think about it,” said JC.

Erik swallowed hard and looked away, unable to meet JC’s gaze, even muffled behind sunglasses. He nodded quickly to JC, and to Kim, then hurried away to hide behind Natasha, who ignored him.

“If you’ve all finished butting your heads together, perhaps we could concentrate on the extremely imminent end of the bloody world!” said Melody. “We are running out of time, people. Quite possibly literally.”

“Sorry,” said JC.

He moved over to join Melody at her instruments and made a show of studying the displays thoughtfully, as though they meant something to him. If Melody wasn’t entirely fooled, she was kind enough to keep it to herself.

“Any clues as to who or what our Intruder might be?” said JC, after a while.

“Nothing definitive,” said Melody. “But it’s not just . . . something from the afterworlds. This is Big, really quite unbelievably Big. One of the Great Beasts, perhaps. The Hogge, or the Serpent . . . Bad news on every level you can think of. If I really understood what these displays are telling me, I think I’d be very upset.”

“One of the Great Beasts?” said Happy, incredulously. “That is way out of our league!”

“Speak for yourself,” Natasha said immediately.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” Happy said viciously. “I can feel your fear from here.”

“You feel me again without my permission, and I’ll slap your face off,” said Natasha.

“Children, children . . .” JC murmured. “Play nice, or there will be spankings. Melody, could the presence of the Intruder in our world explain why I was touched by the Light? Was I granted this new strength to . . . even things out? Give us a fighting chance?”

“Who knows why the gods do anything?” said Erik.