“You know he won’t.” She picks up her saucer and sets it down again. “We’re all just energy, you know, me, you, this table, this town. All moving at certain frequencies. When we pass from this life, our essence keeps going, keeps moving.”

The airiness of her vocabulary is irritating, or maybe it’s more than that. “What’s your point?”

She bats away my hostility without effort. “There are things that change us fundamentally on this side, too, like loss and trauma. Just think about it. We know trauma changes the brain. Why wouldn’t it affect our energy? Of course it would. It does. You’re the right person to help now, Anna.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“This is your life’s work for a reason. The things you’ve lost have drawn you to help these children and young women. I think you know that already, but you can’t see what I can.”

My chest feels tight listening to her. I don’t want to know more, except I do. “What?”

“The ghosts of the kids you’ve helped, they hang on you like stars. They’re all around you, even now.”

Like stars? The image feels almost ludicrous. Spangled with loss. Despair. “What do you want from me?”

“You came to see me, if you remember.” She pauses, looking at her chapped pink hands. A workingwoman’s hands. “I’m just the messenger here, Anna. I don’t know who took Cameron, but I feel a lot of darkness and chaos coming from him. He doesn’t really want to kill her, but he doesn’t know if he can stop himself. He’s trying to fight his own demons, but they’re powerful. I don’t think Shannan was his first victim, Anna. And Cameron won’t be his last, either, if he’s not stopped.”

I hate everything she’s saying, even if I haven’t quite made up my mind about believing her. “Can we stop him?”

“I think so.”

Against my legs, the dog twitches, flexing in a dream of running or hunting. The warm side of her body rises and falls, with a small wheezing pause between the two.

Tally looks down at her, too, her expression softening. “She sounds like a cricket, doesn’t she?”

She does, I think, before refocusing. “We’re running out of time, Tally. With every day that passes, the odds grow slimmer that we’ll find Cameron alive.”

“Learning more about Shannan might bring you closer.”

“That’s what my gut tells me. We have aerial surveillance going, looking for her car. But we’re talking about a thousand square miles of wilderness. It’s like a needle in a haystack.”

“Some people find those needles, though, don’t they? I think it’s going to work out somehow. You were drawn here after all. The universe doesn’t do random.”