More than once Mollie had to snap a portal shut because something tried to hop, shamble, ooze, or hurl itself through to the Cosmodrome. Vaguely human shapes fused together at the face, perpetually eating each other; roving eyeballs slithering on a carpet of tentacles; once she even glimpsed through the fog something that she swore could have been a real-life human centipede.

As he dressed for work on Saturday Franny kept the TV on. Then wished he hadn’t. It was filled with pictures and reports from Talas, actually now an area hundreds of miles outside of Talas because the troops kept retreating from the encroaching darkness. The networks replayed images of troops shooting each other, a general committing suicide on air, people or things that maybe had once been people gnawing on dead bodies, and occasionally a flash of some grotesque, inhuman shape in the drifting fog. Reporters speculated and yammered endlessly about the cause of the phenomenon.

Apparently no one in authority had seen fit to tell the fourth estate what was actually going on. After a moment of reflection Franny decided they were probably right. If you told people the world was going to end the resulting panic would … What? Make it worse?

The embedded reporters spoke in hushed tones about what they felt—fear, rage, lust. They tried to stay professional, but sometimes they lost control. Cold sweat broke out of Franny’s chest and back as he remembered what he had felt in that hospital. He turned off the television and bolted from his apartment.

The precinct was nearly deserted with most of the officers still occupied by the ongoing standoff at the Jokertown Clinic. Michael was already at his desk. Franny slid into his chair. There was a stack of files next to his battered old P.C., and a note on a Post-it stuck on the screen. It was from Maseryk telling him he might be needed to carry messages between the hostage negotiators to Baba Yaga and Grekor, but in the meantime he should start to clear the backlog on his desk. Franny rubbed a thumb across his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them Michael was staring at him.

“Headache? Already? You just got here,” Michael said.

“Yeah.” Michael looked tired, and his eyes were shadowed with grief. “You okay?” Franny asked.

“Family troubles.” Michael fell silent. Franny waited, sensing his partner really did want to talk. The dam burst. “Kavitha, she left me! Took our daughter. Isai is confused, upset. Minal blames me one minute and Kavitha the next.” He bowed his head and pressed a palm against his forehead. “Everything’s just so fucked up.”

You have no idea.

Michael looked up again and forced a smile. “But hey, at least you made it back.”

“Yeah.”