He didn’t remember getting out of the pool, or what he’d said to the little girl. She was crying loudly and then stopped. Mrs. Wood was dead, her soul was nowhere around anymore, but her empty body slowly made its way to the surface, taking its place among the floating leaves he’d meant to clean. There was a kind of peacefulness to everything, a terrible brokenhearted peacefulness, like something that had gone on too long had finally found a way to finish. Like he’d begun to disappear again. It might have been hours or minutes before the neighbor lady came, and then the police, but by that time he knew he wouldn’t tell a soul what had happened, the things he’d seen and heard. It was a secret she had given him, the final secret of who she was, and he was meant to keep it.

Carter decided it was all right, what was going to happen to him now. It felt inevitable. Maybe Wolgast had lied, or maybe he hadn’t, but the work of Carter’s life was over; he knew that now. Nobody was going to ask him again about Mrs. Wood. She was just a thing in his mind, like some part of her had passed straight into him, and he wouldn’t have to tell nobody about it.

The air around him broke with a hissing sound, like air leaking from a tire, and a single green light appeared on the far wall where a red one used to be; a door swung open, bathing the room in a pale blue light. Carter saw he was lying on a gurney, wearing a gown. The tube was still threaded into his hand, and looking at the place where it pulled at his skin under the tape made it hurt fiercely again. The room was larger than he’d guessed, nothing but pure white surfaces except for the place where the door had opened and a few machines on the far wall that looked like nothing he knew.

A figure was standing in the doorway.

He closed his eyes and leaned back, thinking, All right now. All right. I’m ready. Let them come.

“We have a situation.”

It was just past ten P.M. Sykes had appeared at the door of Richards’s office.

“I know,” Richards said. “I’m on it.”