“Maybe,” Jake said as they started up. “And maybe you do, too.”

Callahan’s stomach suddenly felt heavier, as if he’d just finished a large meal. He supposed the added weight was fear. “I thought I was rid of it,” he said. “When Roland took it out of the church, I really thought I was rid of it.”

“Some bad pennies just keep turning up,” Jake said.

EIGHT

He was prepared to try his unique red key in every door on the nineteenth floor if he had to, but Jake knew 1919 was right even before they reached it. Callahan did, too, and a sheen of sweat broke on his forehead. It felt thin and hot. Feverish.

Even Oy knew. The bumbler whined uneasily.

“Jake,” Callahan said. “We need to think this over. That thing is dangerous. Worse, it’s malevolent.”

“That’s why we gotta take it,” Jake said patiently. He stood in front of 1919, drumming the MagCard between his fingers. From behind the door—and under it, and through it—came a hideous drone like the singing voice of some apocalyptic idiot. Mixed in was the sound of jangling, out-of-tune chimes. Jake knew the ball had the power to send you todash, and in those dark and mostly doorless spaces, it was all too possible to become lost forever. Even if you found your way to another version of Earth, it would have a queer darkness to it, as if the sun were always on the verge of total eclipse.

“Have you seen it?” Callahan asked.

Jake shook his head.

“I have,” Callahan said dully, and armed sweat from his forehead. His cheeks had gone leaden. “There’s an Eye in it. I think it’s the Crimson King’s eye. I think it’s a part of him that’s trapped in there forever, and insane. Jake, taking that ball to a place where there are vampires and low men—servants of the King—would be like giving Adolf Hitler an A-bomb for his birthday.”

Jake knew perfectly well that Black Thirteen was capable of doing great, perhaps illimitable, damage. But he knew something else, as well.

“Pere, if Mia left Black Thirteen in this room and she’s now going to where they are, they’ll know about it soon enough. And they’ll be after it in one of their big flashy cars before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“Can’t we leave it for Roland?” Callahan asked miserably.

“Yes,” Jake said. “That’s a good idea, just like taking it to the Dixie Pig is a bad one. But we can’t leave it for him here.” Then, before Callahan could say anything else, Jake slid the blood-red MagCard into the slot above the doorknob. There was a loud click and the door swung open.

“Oy, stay right here, outside the door.”

“Ake!” He sat down, curling his cartoon squiggle of a tail around his paws, and looked at Jake with anxious eyes.

Before they went in, Jake laid a cold hand on Callahan’s wrist and said a terrible thing.

“Guard your mind.”