I look up at the sky. Even on a dark, cloudy night, the pink haze of the Beyond swims above, dim but there. The Murderer, I notice, looks up too. And if it’s not just my imagination, there is longing in that look.

“I need to know what saved me that night. What secret my mom had, to protect me from the Memory Thief. How those things are linked to the sea.”

He looks down at me, and his frown is now a sad, lost kind of thing. But then he begins to quake with anger, and another stone bust falls from the hospital roof. This time Germ and I both have to dodge to avoid it.

“You can’t save Helen Bixby and her baby anymore,” I push on. “But I think you can save me and my mom.”

“You don’t know that that will move me Beyond,” he says. “Nobody knows that. The Beyond does not make promises, or spill its reasons.”

I hesitate. I know he’s right. And yet, it also feels like this has to be the moment his afterlife has been waiting for. I just don’t know how to convince him.

He looks around. “You and your mother took my house. It’s MY house.”

“I didn’t know it was yours,” I whisper apologetically.

His angry quaking slows, but his eyes remain hateful.

I cast about for anything else to say. “This has to be what you’ve been waiting for. Two lives lost, two lives saved. It evens out. It all makes sense.”

He blinks at me for a moment, and strangely everything seems to change. He looks at me, then Germ, then back at me. Suddenly, inexplicably, he laughs.

“Two,” he says, then laughs again. “Two lives.”

Something about the way he says it makes me feel knocked off balance. He’s laughing at what I don’t know, and it scares me.

“You were a quiet baby,” he says after a moment, turning serious.

I wait.

“It’s what saved your life that night,” he goes on. “Not any great secret. Not any discovered power.”

I blink, wary now, worried. “What do you mean?”

The Murderer shakes his head. He looks up at the sky again, straightens up again. Now he looks solemn.

“They came for her that night,” he says begrudgingly. “And they came for the last of the Oakses.”

I stare hard at him, chills rising on my arms. The weather is changing, but I barely register it. It’s getting colder, the fog thicker.

“They who?” I ask. “The Memory Thief? Who else?”

The Murderer goes a little dim, maybe the tiniest bit of fear crossing his face.

“Two witches,” he says. His eyes widen at me. “The Memory Thief. The Time Witch.”

Confused, I’m trying to think what to ask next. But the Murderer goes on, unprompted.