The dead man stares. It’s then Mookie realizes this is his thinking-about-it face. Most people’s faces are expressive – the way the skin tugs at the cheeks, the way the eyelids narrow. But his flesh is stretched out. The eyes permanently exposed.

Finally, Burnsy nods. “Done.”

They shake hands. Burnsy’s hand is hot like beach-sand.

Skelly says, “I’m proud of you two crazy kids for making it work.” In her hands is an old wooden box. Scalloped edges. Distressed brass trim.

“We’re not exactly giving each other hand-jobs,” Burnsy says.

Mookie nods at the box. “What’s that?”

“That? Nothing.” Mookie keeps staring, so Burnsy goes on: “I collect. Find all kinds of strange stuff above and below. Especially when I’m hunting up a spook for someone like you. I got soul cages. Monkeysblood crystals. Jumping vicar-seeds. Plus I got a wholly unholy host of funguses-amonguses. I’ve got crow-dimple, black-shelf, glow-worm, hob-tongue…”

But all the while, Burnsy’s eyes are following Skelly as she moves to put that box back on the shelf. Mookie gently catches her hand. He looks to Burnsy. “What’s in it?”

“Like I said, nothing.”

“By nothing, you mean something.”

Burnsy reaches for the box, but Mookie takes it, pulls it away.

He lifts the lid. Inside is a warped glass phial with a cork stopper. He picks it out of the box – Burnsy winces, mutters something about being careful – and, inside, a sap the color of milled wheat oozes sludgily back and forth.

“What is it?”

“I dunno.”

“You’re lying. You do know.”

“It’s a… a sap. Like amber. But more yellow.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Down in the…” Burnsy sighs. “Down in the Tangle. I was lost. I was following some of Oakes’s old-ass maps and I fucked up somewhere. I came upon this gobbo campsite and they were there roasting cankerpedes and I knew they were all riled up because they were fighting and fucking and so I thought I better find a way around. Ahead was this little crevice – like a vent running through the wall and I thought, OK, I’m gonna crawl in there. I did and… fuck it if it didn’t go anywhere but a dead-end, but at that dead-end I found these tubes. Like those wasps make. Mud-daubers? I broke it apart and…” He points to the phial with a blister-tipped finger. “That stuff came out. So I bottled it up.”

As Mookie moves the glass toward the light, the dull yellow patina suddenly brightens as though flecks of glitter hang suspended in the sap. Gold like a burnished lamp.

“This is Ochre,” Mookie says, his heart suddenly racing.

“No. What? I… y’know. Probably not. That stuff’s a myth. Though, shit, careful with it, don’t drop it for Chrissakes–”

Skelly steps up. “That the real deal, daddy-o?”