“Second verse, same as the first. Choice. Slippery slope. Also, he’s broken.” She could hear the pieces rattling around in his voice. “I’m afraid that if I tell him to stop, there’s no guarantee I can get him to start again.”

“Why even have power if you never use it?” Jack muttered, crossing to take Dan’s face in his hands. “Come on, dude, you know me. Calm down.”

“I didn’t get his name!”

“Whose name?”

“Still two hundred short!”

“Dan.”

“Polycarbonate!”

“Okay.” Jack stepped back, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “I’ve never seen him this bad. You might as well let him go, Charlie. He’s too fried to tell us anything.”

“If we let him go . . .” Charlie jerked her head toward the river. The sirens had gone quiet, the fire dealt with. It wouldn’t take long for the police to find him. They clearly had a fairly good idea of his natural habitat.

“Fucking elephant shit!”

Jack coughed out a small cloud of smoke and shifted upwind. “So we stash him somewhere until he’s chilled.”

No longer fighting to get free, Dan maintained a constant pull against her grip, tendons corded under her fingers. He’d been cranked tighter than Auntie Jane’s sphincter since she’d grabbed him.

Wait . . .

“While we were crossing through the Wood, he relaxed.”

“You were in there for like five seconds,” Jack pointed out. “How’s that time to relax?”

“I’ve shifted plenty of drunks, I know limp. I’ll bring him out in the park, wait for us there.” Maintaining her grip on Dan’s wrists, Charlie charged toward him. Eyes wide enough she could see the bloodshot, yellowish whites all the way around, he stumbled backward, mumbling about being late. “Tell David we’re coming.”

Kicking up faded cedar mulch, they crashed between junipers in a parody of a two-step and out into the Wood where sunlight spilled through a canopy of birch and ash and alder, drawing lines of gold from sky to earth. There were no paths through the underbrush. No birds. No insects.

Dan froze, drew in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “So quiet,” he said after a moment.

Allie’s song, Jack’s song, her mother, her sisters, the aunties . . . Charlie thought she even heard Gary’s bouzouki taking the lead on “The Mist Covered Mountain.” When Dan opened his eyes and tugged against her hold, she let him go. He couldn’t get anywhere without her, and she was curious about what he’d do.

Hands out to either side, he walked slowly forward, placing each duct-tape-wrapped rubber boot carefully on the leaf litter, grimy fingertips lightly caressing bark and leaves. “My head is empty.” He spun around suddenly and fixed Charlie with a remarkably sane stare. “I can’t hear you.”

“I’m not talking.”