In the space of a few minutes, they establish a grid with stakes and string that looks equivalent to an archaeological dig. Layer by layer, the excavation continues through the topsoil and subsoil. The deeper they dig, the fuller the mycelium network, veins of gray and white that are woven together more and more thickly. What at first is as thin as a strand of yarn becomes as swollen as a thigh. They stop cutting through it and instead brush and blow away the soil, revealing the larger fungal web that grows out of a central axis they finally expose deep in the night. It looks less like a door and more like a sarcophagus.

Peaches and Director Ricketts stand at the lip of the pit looking down on what has been unearthed. “Besides you,” she says, “this is our most exciting discovery.”

“Yes,” he says, feeling at once pride for her approval and a nibbling anxiety at the threat of what they have uncovered.

“Of course you know what I’m thinking?”

He says, “You’re thinking, What is the science? What is the data? What are the rules?”

“Because once we know them, we know how to break them.”

12

Nora’s ear is hot and numb from pressing the phone to it, and her fingers are dirty with ink from scratching down notes.

There is a case in Tacoma. An employee of the Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant biked to an apartment building to deliver a late-night order of wontons, chop suey, and Mongolian beef. He was buzzed in and climbed the stairs to the third floor, but before he could knock, his feet squelched and he looked down to see a pool of blood oozing from beneath the door. It opened a second later, and he was dragged inside.

There is a case in Shoreline. A woman was out for an early-morning walk with her golden retriever when the dog broke away from her. It didn’t respond to her commands, bolting around the house of a neighbor. In the backyard, she found Boo Boo sniffing and mewling at the corpses of a family of four, all of them shaved and etched with markings.

There is a case on Bainbridge Island. A father called 911 and said he wasn’t sure whether he needed an ambulance, the police, or a priest, but there was something wrong, desperately wrong, with his daughter. She’s not herself, he said. She hasn’t been herself. Before he could elaborate, he cried out in pain and the line went dead, and when the cops arrived, they found the driveway entirely covered with crosshatched markings made with sidewalk chalk, a cipher that was replicated in blood inside the home.

And more. How many, she isn’t sure, because she’s now calling different departments and asking for an account of all violent crimes reported over the past few days.