Novo stopped instantly and closed his eyes, and when he inhaled I felt my own lungs expand too. The yard went silent, holding itself at the top of his breath, and a cloud went over the sun so that everything was gray for less than a second, and steel-cold, like a blade. Then the blade flashed, Novo breathed out, and the world went back to what it was before. All the bargain hunters picked up where they left off—trawling through cutlery, sniffing the armpits of coats, counting out change, like nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. All except Henry, a gargoyle at his window, his eyes the only part of him quick and alive, fixed on Novo, all recognition and devotion but also something more. Something darker. Something like pain. Or fear. I pointed up at him, “Look,” and I held Novo’s arms and turned him slightly, in the right direction, so he could see.

For a moment he was as still as Henry. The two of them were the same cold column of stone. Everything else inside that moment was still too, the crowd under his spell and also the circling birds and the ants all-day-long seething in the pavement cracks and the nodding flower heads and the leaves that should have been shivering in the breeze.

Even the breeze.

Everything stopped. And, where time is anything but linear, I think there’s a place, in or out of the known universe, where that is still happening, where Henry and Novo are still seeing each other for the first time in a garden full of spellbound strangers and a dead old lady’s things, with me as their witness. And what I’m witnessing is strong enough to bring life itself to a halt.

Novo moved first. Nothing else. He said something under his breath, like “Unbelievable,” and his searchlight eyes turned on me. I felt his fingers, light as feathers, on my arm.

“Do you know that man in your house?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Who is he? Not family?”

“No. He was already there. Kind of part of the deal. It’s Henry.”

“Henry,” he said. “Henry,” and he opened his arms then, high and wide, in something like triumph, and with my own eyes I saw Henry Lake’s weightless body float straight through the window and out into the paralyzed air in bewildered slow motion, moving more like a strung puppet than a man. He got closer, limbs flailing, until he was hovering just above us, his mouth clamped shut, his eyes burning white-hot with the things he wanted desperately to say.

“What are you doing?” I said to Novo, but he didn’t answer. “Why are you doing that to him?”