Eddie looked beyond this and saw that other Jake—the one without the tan or the look of hard clarity in his eyes—standing at a small display table. Kiddie books. Probably both the Nineteen Fairy Tales and the Modern Nineteen.

Quit it,he told himself. That’s obsessive-compulsive crap and you know it.

Maybe, but good old Jake Seventy-seven was about to make a purchase from that table which had gone on to change—and very likely to save—their lives. He’d worry about the number nineteen later. Or not at all, if he could manage it.

“Come on,” he told Jake. “Let’s go in.”

The boy hung back.

“What’s the matter?” Eddie asked. “Tower won’t be able to see us, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“ Towerwon’t be able to,” Jake said, “but what if he can?” He pointed at his other self, the one who had yet to meet Gasher and Tick-Tock and the old people of River Crossing. The one who had yet to meet Blaine the Mono and Rhea of the Cöos.

Jake was looking at Eddie with a kind of haunted curiosity. “What if I see myself ?”

Eddie supposed that might really happen. Hell, anything might happen. But that didn’t change what he felt in his heart. “I think we’re supposed to go in, Jake.”

“Yeah…” It came out in a long sigh. “I do, too.”

Five

They went in and they weren’t seen and Eddie was relieved to count twenty-one books on the display table that had attracted the boy’s notice. Except, of course, when Jake picked up the two he wanted— Charlie the Choo-Chooand the riddle book—that left nineteen.

“Find something, son?” a mild voice inquired. It was a fat fellow in an open-throated white shirt. Behind him, at a counter that looked as if it might have been filched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, a trio of old guys were drinking coffee and nibbling pastries. A chessboard with a game in progress sat on the marble counter.

“The guy sitting on the end is Aaron Deepneau,” Jake whispered. “He’s going to explain the riddle about Samson to me.”

“Shh!” Eddie said. He wanted to hear the conversation between Calvin Tower and Kid Seventy-seven. All of a sudden that seemed very important…only why was it so fucking dark in here?

Except it’s not dark at all. The east side of the street gets plenty of sun at this hour, and with the door open, this place is getting all of it. How can you say it’s dark?

Because it somehow was. The sunlight—the contrast of the sunlight—only made it worse. The fact that you couldn’t exactly see that darkness made it worse still…and Eddie realized a terrible thing: these people were in danger. Tower, Deepneau, Kid Seventy-seven. Probably him and Mid-World Jake and Oy, as well.

All of them.

Six