Danny realized she was not smiling so much as baring her teeth.

“The beating heart,” Eric said. “Middleton is important.”

Alana nodded. “We are, for some reason, a place where things happen. Where Eric can do magic. Where the monsters try to get through. Where my mother’s world touches this one. We’re close to something vital here. And if Colchester wins, he brings about The End. For everyone. Everywhere. He’s selling out the whole human race.”

Danny didn’t have a smartass response to that. Maybe he was also a little afraid of Alana. She looked right at him again.

“Danny, I know you are smart. You can build things and hack computers and think fast, and you think you know everything. But this is…this is bigger than you can imagine. It’s out there. And it hates us just for existing. Jesus Christ, does it hate us. Whether you believe it or not. Colchester is going to open the cage. Then he gets everything he ever wanted. And the thing on the Other Side…it gets to feed.”

“And you can’t magic it away,” Danny said to Eric. “Wave a wand or something.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Eric said.

“Convenient.”

“Oh, bite me. There are no shortcuts, all right? That’s how you get some fucked-up, monkey’s-paw, Pet Sematary-type zombies knocking at your door. Magic always costs more than you’re willing to pay. Trust me.”

Danny drank the last of his coffee in silence. They all looked at him.

He knew they needed him. He had money, he had resources, and most importantly, he could plan. They didn’t necessarily like him, he knew. (Even Carrie was ambivalent about him sometimes, despite the sex. Did that bother him? A year ago, he never would have cared what they thought.) But they knew he could run everything through his brain like a computer, and come up with angles they would never see.

And he realized they were all connected. They had all been protecting Middleton. He and Carrie worked the day shift. Eric and Alana covered the nights.

It had to be all four of them. Somewhere deep inside, he knew that.

But admitting it — relying on something as illogical and irrational as instinct, admitting it was real — that was hard. Maybe too hard.

“What?” Eric finally asked. “What more do you need?”

“I don’t know, all right?” Danny said. Which for him was like giving blood. He hated not knowing. He fucking hated it. He wouldn’t look at any of them. “I just don’t know.”

They were all quiet for a moment.

Then they noticed the hostess standing at their table.

Later, Danny wondered why Colchester couldn’t simply leave them alone. And he finally figured it out. Like Eric said, Colchester was evil. And evil is reliably greedy.

Colchester couldn’t pass up a chance to hurt them all.