In an instant, Ella was gone. In her place was a human child, a toddler. She had short, frizzy brown hair and a round face set in a happy smile; her chubby hands gripped the tea tray determinedly. Only her absolute stillness indicated that she was not alive. That, and her vacant eyes, staring sightlessly ahead.

“Can you hear me?” he asked softly. There was no movement; the little girl was no more responsive than Ella. He reached out to touch her cheek, then pulled his hand back suddenly, revolted: her skin was warm and pliable—alive. He stood and went back to the desk, keeping his eyes on the girl. John clawed at the tiny switch again, flipping it back, and the toddler shimmered and blurred for a second, then the image solidified: Ella stood calmly in her place again, nothing more than a large toy doll. John sat down heavily. “Maximum range,” he muttered to himself, recalling Clay’s brief moment of consciousness at the hospital. But the photographs he’d insisted on giving them hadn’t revealed anything. Or had they?

He went to Clay’s desk and picked up the phone: There was a dial tone; it had not been damaged when the place was ransacked. He dialed his own number. Please pick up, Jessica, he thought.

“Hello?”

“Jessica, it’s me.”

“Who’s me?”

“John!”

“Right, sorry. I’m a little jumpy. Charlie’s fine—I mean, she’s still asleep; she’s not worse.”

“Good. That’s not why I called, though. I need you to meet me at the library—bring the envelope Clay gave us, it’s in my backpack.”

“All the pictures are gone,” Jessica said. “We left them at Jen’s house when we fled for our lives, remember?” she added with a hint of sarcasm.

“I know. We don’t need the pictures. There was a roll of microfilm in the envelope.”

There was a pause on the other end, then, “I’ll see you there.”

John turned to look at Ella, scratching his thumb thoughtfully across the surface of the disc. “And you; you’re coming with me,” he said quietly to Ella. He picked her up gingerly, repelled by what he had seen, but she felt just like the doll she seemed to be. She was large enough to be awkward to carry, so he placed her on his hip like a human child, and left through the front door. He stowed the doll in his trunk, put the picture of Charlie and her father in the visor, and pulled out of Clay’s driveway.

*  *  *

When John got to the library, Jessica was already in conversation with the librarian, a middle-aged man with an irritated expression.