In minutes, they were passing the baseball diamond on the way to the cemetery. They both leaped at the same time, and at the apex of their ascent, Melody pointed toward the edge of the boundary of graves in the distance. Owen saw the miasma, the color of canary feathers, roiling just above the ground, and he could barely hear it sparking and whining. “I want to trap him in that,” she said as they floated back to the ground. He wasn’t sure her plan was sound. The Ambrogio had the upper hand, as he could separate them from their cords. They had each other and they had Melody’s knowledge. But he thought messing with the miasma was cosmically wrongheaded. Owen considered that if by chance he was disintegrated—an utterly painful process he wasn’t inclined to experience—in the morning, he would never have existed and there would be somebody else worrying about the rotting Sleeping Beauty at the library.

Once in the graveyard, Melody told him to get down behind one of the larger headstones and hide. They found two situated close by and both ducked. Owen kept looking nervously over his shoulder at the creeping yellow fog that was still a considerable distance away.

“So,” he asked, “what am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t let Crenshaw get too close to you. Remember, he can’t grab you, but if he gets close enough, he can insert his hand into your chest and unhook your cord. Meanwhile, the ability you have over him is that you can jump up and put a good amount of distance between you and him in one bound.”

“What am I supposed to do, then, ask him to walk into the miasma?”

“I think we should jump around him and confuse and frustrate him as death draws closer. Then I will employ my maneuver, grab him—it only lasts a heartbeat or two—and throw him into oblivion.”

“That sounds kind of iffy. Do you remember how fast and powerful he was when he went after Feit?”

“I’ll use his ferocity against him and merely direct his energy as I’ve been taught.”

Owen shook his head. “Sounds sketchy.”

“My first teacher, Arthur Bishop, taught me how to deal with hostile entities.”

“And during the day, you’re just a mild-mannered mother and wife?”

“There’s nothing mild-mannered about my approach to either of those,” she said. “And I’m an insurance agent in addition to everything else.”

“An insurance agent?” Owen laughed out loud. “You’ve been life insurance for me.”

Melody nodded and smiled. “That’s my specialty, life insurance. And I’m aware you’re a librarian.”

“Not fair. You know more about me than I do about you.”

“I understand your library is going to disappear in a couple of years.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Dedicate yourself to making it the best it can be in that short time?”

“That wasn’t exactly my plan.”