I was so intent on silencing the voice in my head that I did not realize I’d crossed into Washington Square. The arch was gleaming, the trees were stunted, and the creeping vines were gone. The park was cleaner than it had been since I was a girl, and the shadows were perfectly still. I was passing under the arch when it occurred to me that no fence had blocked me when I’d crossed Broadway, and no guard had demanded my license. Thorne had done it. I didn’t know how, but he’d done it—broken Barbarossa and reunited the Westside with the East in a single night. It simply wasn’t possible, but I didn’t care, because on the far side of the park, in the light of a burning streetlight, I saw a three-story town house with a high stone stoop. My home had returned to me.

I raced up the steps, scraping my key along the railing as I had done my entire life, and let myself in. The house was dark and tidier than my house had any right to be.

“Damn it, Hellida,” I called. “Who gave you permission to clean?”

I walked to the kitchen, which smelled of soap and the fading odor of roasted potatoes. My piles of newspapers, my closetful of garbage, my counter of rotting jam had all been thrown away. I would reprimand her in the morning. For now, I wanted nothing but a cup of tea and fifteen or twenty hours of sleep. I put the kettle on and saw by the clock that it was five or six hours later than it should have been. Where does the time go, I was wondering, when I heard the voice behind me.

“Gilda. My Gilda.”

It wasn’t Hellida speaking.

It was my father.

Not in my head, but in my kitchen.

Virgil Carr. Doddering, beautiful, mad. Alive.

When he saw me, he began to cry. I didn’t know what to do, so I made us tea and watched him sob.

He was older. His whiskers were still thick, and his eyes were deep-set glittering gold, but the sideburns were white and the lines around his eyes cut close to the bone. His skin was clear—not the rusty red I remembered—and his clothes were clean. He trembled as he reached for his teacup, from age or shock I could not tell. The tea was scalding. I let it scald, drank it quickly, and poured another cup.

“Calm yourself,” I told us both.

“Speak softly. Your mother is sleeping.”

“My mother?” The phrase made my head swim, my stomach rock. One rebirth was a miracle. Two was more than I could bear. “I’ve died, haven’t I?”

“Of course.”

“That boat sank and I sank with it and I’m dying right now, and you are the last thing I’ll see.”

“What boat?”