His mother’s face fell, and for the first time, she looked worried. “He’s gone.”

“I know he’s dead. I mean, where’s his ghost or his spirit or—”

“He’s gone,” she said. “There’s nothing left of him.”

“He—”

“They’re not like us, the butler and the girl.”

Understanding dawned on him. “Then if he can be killed, she can be killed.”

His mother nodded.

“Is that why I’m still part of the House?”

“Perhaps,” she mused. She thought for a moment. “You can capture her, you know.”

“Can I kill her?”

She shook her head. “No. Not anymore. You could have if you were alive. But dead you can only hold her, restrain her. You can still bring her back, though. You can return her to the House and keep her here, keep her away from your wife and son.” She looked at him as though she’d just thought of it for the first time. “Your son,” she said wonderingly. “My grandson.”

He smiled at her. “Tony.”

“Tony.”

“I think you’d like him, Mom.”

“I’m sure I will.”

The egg shook, rumbled, and Daniel leaped to his feet, tottering on the unstable branches of the nest. His mother moved off the egg, and helped him out of the nest.

It shook again, vibrated, jerked.

Suddenly the egg cracked open, and from it emerged… nothing.

A beatific smile crossed his mother’s face, and she started to fade. As she grew slowly insubstantial, her hair seemed to return, and she looked more like the mother he remembered. He reached out to her, but their hands passed through each other.

“I love you,” his mother said. “We all love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’ll see you in—” she began.

And she was gone.

The House darkened, the interior dimming as if a light had been switched off, the blank world outside growing indistinct. He felt panicky, didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but he thought of Margot, thought of Tony—

and he was back home, in their bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed and staring down at a sleeping Margot.

He felt lost, confused. He supposed, in the back of his mind, despite all of the surface layers of skepticism modern life had heaped on him, he had assumed that all would be revealed after death, that the answers to the cosmic questions and metaphysical concerns that had bedeviled mankind since the beginning of history and provided the impetus for every religion would be instantly supplied to him and he would become some sort of wise, enlightened, loving being, far different and far superior to the ordinary average guy he’d been.

But he was the same person as before, no different, no smarter, no more enlightened.

Just dead.