She’s been on sick leave for two days. She needed to look after Jack and quarantine herself until she was certain she wasn’t infected. Sarge was as pissed at her as he was worried. Several more bodies had piled up, and the Seattle Times ran a piece that morning on the rash of deaths that hinted at the Blind Prophet’s return. The press secretary at SPD had called the reports unsubstantiated, but the social media feeds had already lit up with speculation. All this time she’s kept busy, monitoring her in-box and the news while adding to her diagram, but now she’s ready to move. Instead of collecting damage, she needs to prevent it.

She reaches out to Chives, but his wife answers his cell. He’s fallen ill. He’s not acting like himself, his wife says; he’s been closed up in the dark of his room all day, breathing raggedly, refusing to answer her questions, lashing out at her when she brings him soup. Nora instructs her to call Chives’s doctor and demand echinocandin treatment for him. “Not later,” she says, “now. And take some of it yourself as a preventive.”

Jack will be her partner instead. It’s a word that feels right, given their history. No longer spouses, but no longer separate either. Partners.

There have been twelve deaths so far. Twelve that they know of, at least. They can’t trust the data to be definitive. How many bodies are waiting to be discovered? How many infections are waiting to bloom? The first twelve could be 80 percent or 30 percent or 1 percent of what’s actually happening.

Jack says, “So you’ve got cases from the past mixed up with cases from the present.”

“Maybe.”

“You seem to think there’s some sort of connection to Seattle’s favorite serial killer, Albus Crotter.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, why don’t you just go interview him?”

“Because a year ago he jumped off a cell tower, and ever since then, he’s been staring at nothing and being fed through a tube.”

“Oh. Right.”

She hopes he’ll be quiet now, because every time he talks, her thoughts break up and swirl away. Part of her wishes he had taken a little longer to heal, if only for the peace and quiet.

“Hey,” Jack says with the beginning of a smile. “Do you remember how Mia was always scared of the dark?”

“Hmm,” she says, trying not to listen.

“We’d shut off the lights at night, and they’d always be back on by morning. I tried night-lights. I tried glow-in-the-dark stars. I tried bribing her with candy and taking away screen time and everything else. None of it worked.”

“Hmm.”

“I was just thinking about something she said. About the dark.”