But you will, Susannah thought. Because we need you to. We need you to.

She grasped it tightly and began turning it slowly counter-clockwise. A pain went through her head and she grimaced. Another momentarily constricted her throat, as if she’d gotten a fishbone stuck in there, but then both pains cleared. To her right an entire bank of lights flashed on, most of them amber, a few bright red.

“WARNING,” said a voice that sounded eerily like that of Blaine the Mono. “THIS OPERATION MAY EXCEED SAFETY PARAMETERS.”

No shit, Sherlock, Susannah thought. The LABOR FORCE dial was now down to 6. When she turned it past 5, another bank of amber and red lights flashed on, and three of the monitors showing Calla scenes shorted out with sizzling pops. Another pain gripped her head like invisible pressing fingers. From somewhere beneath her came the start-up whine of motors or turbines. Big ones, from the sound. She could feel them thrumming against her feet, which were bare, of course—Mia had gotten the shoes. Oh well, she thought, I didn’t have any feet at all before this, so maybe I’m ahead of the game.

“WARNING,” said the mechanical voice. “WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS DANGEROUS, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK. HEAR ME I BEG. IT’S NOT NICE TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE.”

One of Roland’s proverbs occurred to her: You do what you need to, and I’ll do what I need to, and we’ll see who gets the goose. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it seemed to fit this situation, so she repeated it aloud as she slowly but steadily turned the LABOR FORCE dial past 4, to 3 …

She meant to turn the dial all the way back to 1, but the pain which ripped through her head when the absurd thing passed 2 was so huge—so sickening—that she dropped her hand.

For a moment the pain continued—intensified, even—and she thought it would kill her. Mia would topple off the bench where she was sitting, and both of them would be dead before their shared body hit the concrete in front of the turtle sculpture. Tomorrow or the next day, her remains would take a quick trip to Potter’s Field. And what would go on the death certificate? Stroke? Heart attack? Or maybe that old standby of the medical man in a hurry, natural causes?

But the pain subsided and she was still alive when it did. She sat in front of the console with the two ridiculous dials and the toggle-switch, taking deep breaths and wiping the sweat from her cheeks with both hands. Boy-howdy, when it came to visualization technique, she had to be the champ of the world.

This is more than visualization—you know that, right?

She supposed she did. Something had changed her—had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of ability to create powerful, talismanic objects—one of them had already served to open a door between two worlds. And she?