“I’m not done yet, Eddie, no matter how I sound. Are you?”

Eddie thought of Odetta’s eyes and shook his head.

“Not done, but I could use a cheeseburger and a Bud.”

“Bud?” the gunslinger said doubtfully, thinking of apple trees and the spring flowers in the Royal Court Gardens.

“Never mind. Hop in, my man. No four on the floor, no T-top, but we’re going to roll some miles just the same.”

And they did, but when sunset came on the second day following his leave-taking of Odetta, they were still only drawing near the place of the third door. Eddie lay down, meaning to crash for another four hours, but the screaming cry of one of those cats jerked him out of sleep after only two hours, his heart thumping. God, the thing sounded fucking huge.

He saw the gunslinger up on one elbow, his eyes gleaming in the dark.

“You ready?” Eddie asked. He got slowly to his feet, grinning with pain.

“Are you?” Roland asked again, very softly.

Eddie twisted his back, producing a series of pops like a string of tiny firecrackers. “Yeah. But I could really get behind that cheeseburger.”

“I thought chicken was what you wanted.”

Eddie groaned. “Cut me a break, man.”

The third door was in plain view by the time the sun cleared the hills. Two hours later, they reached it.

All together again, Eddie thought, ready to drop to the sand.

But that was apparently not so. There was no sign of Odetta Holmes. No sign at all.

13

“Odetta!” Eddie screamed, and now his voice was broken and hoarse as the voice of Odetta’s other had been.

There wasn’t even an echo in return, something he might at least have mistaken for Odetta’s voice. These low, eroded hills would not bounce sound. There was only the crash of the waves, much louder in this tight arrowhead of land, the rhythmic, hollow boom of surf crashing to the end of some tunnel it had dug in the friable rock, and the steady keening of the wind.

“Odetta!”

This time he screamed so loudly his voice broke and for a moment something sharp, like a jag of fishbone, tore at his vocal cords. His eyes scanned the hills frantically, looking for the lighter patch of brown that would be her palm, looking for movement as she stood up . . . looking (God forgive him) for bright splashes of blood on roan-colored rock.

He found himself wondering what he would do if he saw that last, or found the revolver, now with deep toothmarks driven into the smooth sandalwood of the grips. The sight of something like that might drive him into hysteria, might even run him crazy, but he looked for it—or something—just the same.

His eyes saw nothing; his ears brought not the faintest returning cry.

The gunslinger, meanwhile, had been studying the third door. He had expected a single word, the word the man in black had used as he turned the sixth Tarot card at the dusty Golgotha where they had held palaver. Death, Walter had said, but not for you, gunslinger.