He remembered this same strange feeling, this sense of being alien and apart—he remembered how it had overtaken him just before his attack of convulsions the month before. He felt a drifty, cold wisp of fear travel down from his chest to his groin. And he thought: Not now. Not yet. Not again.

But no, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t as easy as that. It was this place. This abbey. This ruined churchyard. This stately country house. This England. What had any of them to do with him? With the son of a cowboy star from the golden coast? They didn’t want him here. He could feel that. They rejected him. They wanted him to go away and leave them alone. Hell, they’d murdered guys like him in this place once upon a time. Irritating, intrusive Jew-boys. They’d locked them up in the infirmary and just barbecued them. Yippee-aye-oh-kye-ay, babe. This place was not his place at all.

And if he didn’t belong here, where did he belong? Who the hell was he anyway?

He snorted. It was a little goddamned late to ask.

The lightning flickered above him, crackled. And in seconds, the thunder boomed. The black clouds rolled and turned, and the wind walked among the graves. And Storm walked among them, his sad eyes moving on the speechless, haunted stones.

Who the hell was he? That was the question. Who the hell was he to come here and torture Sophia about her past? Make her unhappy for his own selfish sake. She didn’t want him here either. He was as alien to her as he was to this place. He only loused things up for her. Asking her to do this thing that was foreign to her nature. Because he was foreign to her nature. Because he didn’t belong with her, in her world.

He had failed her, hadn’t he? He would’ve killed to be her hero and he’d failed her, dead to rights.

He came to stand before the decaying crypt. A waist-high temple with pilasters worn to beaded strips, an iron door worn thin, broken through. He shook his head.

Haunted by whom? he thought.

Haunted by you, pal.

It was the scariest ghost story ever told. You just had to be there.

The rain began slowly. He felt a drop blown onto his cheek. He glanced up into a sky that seemed to hang not six feet above him. Another droplet fell, and more. He heard them patter on the tombstones. Tip-tip. Tip-tip.

Yeah. He smiled with one side of his mouth. Tick-tick. That’s right. Time’s running out on you, Jackson.