"So, if someone leaves a strong enough imprint when they go, you got yourself a strong ghost. I mean, badass. Maybe like this Nightmare."

"Maybe," Bob admitted, grudgingly, then spun his skull to face wholly away from me. "I'm still not talking to you, Harry."

I drummed my pencil on the blank piece of paper. "Okay. We know that this thing is stirring up the boundary between here and the Nevernever. It's making it easier for spirits to come across, and that's why things have been so busy, lately."

"Not necessarily," Bob chirped up. "Maybe you're looking at it from the wrong angle."

"Eh?" I asked.

He spun to face me again, eyelights glowing, voice enthusiastic. "Someone else has been stirring these spirits, Harry. Maybe they started torturing them in order to make them jump around in the pool and start causing waves."

There was a thought. "You mean, prodding the big spirits into moving so that they create the turbulence."

"Exactly," Bob said, nodding. Then he caught himself, mouth still open. He turned the skull toward the wall and started banging the bony forehead against it. "I am such an idiot."

"Stirring up the Nevernever," I said thoughtfully. "But who would do that? And why?"

"You got me. Big mystery. We'll never know. Time for a beer."

"Stirring up the Nevernever makes it easier for something to cross over," I said. "So … whoever laid out those torture spells must have wanted to pave the way for something." I thought of dead animals and smashed cars. "Something big." I thought of Micky Malone, quivering and mad. "And it's getting stronger."

Bob looked at me again, and then sighed. "All right," he said. "Gods, do you ever give up, Harry?"

"Never."

"Then I might as well help you. You don't know what you're dealing with, here. And if you walk into this with your eyes closed, you're going to be dead before the sun rises."

Chapter Fifteen

"Dead before the sun rises," I said. "Stars, Bob, why don't you just go all the way over the melodramatic edge and tell me that I'm going to be sleeping with the fishes?"

"I'm not sure that much of you would be left," Bob said, seriously. "Harry, look at this thing. Look at what it's done. It crossed a threshold."

"So what?" I asked. "Lots of things can. Remember that toad demon? It came over my threshold and trashed my whole place."

"In the first place, Harry," Bob said, "you're a bachelor. You don't have all that much of a threshold to begin with. This Malone, though-he was a family man."

"So?"

"So it means his home has a lot more significance. Besides which-the toad demon came in and everything after that was pure physical interaction. It smashed things, it spat out acid saliva, that kind of thing. It didn't try to wrench your soul apart or enchant you into a magical sleep."

"This is getting to be a pretty fine distinction, Bob."