Ernst fixed Belgiovene with a pointed stare. “So I’m afraid it’s up to you to—”

“Take him out? Me?” Belgiovene leaped from the chair. “No way. I don’t whack a brother. That’s a line I will not cross. Find somebody else.”

And with that he strode from the office.

Ernst watched him go, then sighed.

I guess that leaves me.

He’d work himself up to it. On today of all days, the beginning of what he had worked all his life to bring about, he was being forced to eliminate a brother of the Order. He could almost hate Slootjes for putting him in this position.

He nursed the negative feelings, certain that the more he thought about it, the easier it would become.

BARBARA

My mind still reeled from all that Ellie had just told me. We’d strolled the Coney Island boardwalk—down past the Parachute Jump and then back—looking like any normal mother and daughter out to breathe the salty air. But as we walked she’d filled my head with tales that were anything but normal.

She spoke of vast, unimaginably huge forces that spanned the multiverse. So vast and so few in number that they needed no names. Lesser beings with their need to classify and codify had concocted tongue-twisting designations, but the entities answered to no one, not even each other. They searched out worlds populated with sentient and sapient beings where they could toy with the inhabitants. Competition for these worlds put certain entities in conflict as one would try to usurp control of a world controlled by another.

Earth was one of those worlds in contention, and the histories of its civilizations had been warped and woofed by the influences and subtle intrusions of these entities.

“Our little corner of reality is about to change hands,” she said. “The people who support the new landlord are delighted that the Change has begun. Those who support the departing landlord are terrified.”

“But where are you in all this?” I said. “You’re just a girl from the Midwest. Why you?”

“I was a girl from the Midwest who could hear the signals and was bathed in the Prime Frequency. Depending on one’s perspective, I was the right girl in the right place at the right time, or wrong girl in the wrong place at the worst time.”

“So if you hadn’t been standing in that spot in the Sheep Meadow at that moment, none of this would have happened?”

“Correct.”

I felt suddenly weak and dropped onto a nearby bench.

“So it’s my fault?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was determined to find the origin of that awful sound I’d heard.”

“But I could have stopped you, or at last made you put it off till the next day…or delayed you even an hour.”

“I didn’t know it would sound again, or what would happen if it did. And you certainly couldn’t know. So guilt is not an option here.”

“But it’s ruined your life.”

Her expression remained impassive. “It changed the life I had. Now I have a new life.”