I slept even later than I had the day before — well into the afternoon. The house was quiet. I lay in bed for a while. Very irrationally, I was hoping what I’d seen in the last twenty-four hours would somehow go away. My mind kept poking at this heap of impossible experiences, as though it might hop up and say in a funny accent, “Why, excuse me, I seem to have wandered into the wrong universe! I’ll be on my way now.”

Instead, the pile of impossible just sat there, refusing to leave or be integrated with the rest of my psyche.

I knew I couldn’t function that way. But deciding to tackle the situation might’ve been the hardest thing I’d ever done. Every cell in my body resisted the idea.

I understood why. It was in my nature to withdraw. Maybe my panic disorder had made me that way. In the past, new places and experiences had made it flare, so I tried to stick to routines as much as possible. And when something new and scary did happen, my impulse was to get the heck away from it.

It could have been worse — some people with panic disorder end up prisoners in their own homes, too afraid of triggering an attack to go out. That hadn’t happened to me, maybe because I had attacks at home, too. But I did try to avoid the new. I mean, photography was literally the only new thing I’d tried since I was eighteen.

But now “the new” was overrunning me, and I was going to have to confront it. If I didn’t start trying to make a place for myself in this new world, it would shred me.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, what I’d seen the blond woman, Kara, do — that was miraculous. What if I could do something like that?

I showered, then went hunting for my clothes in Callie’s dryer. Someone’s snoring was audible in the hallway, even though all the bedroom doors were closed. I hoped it was Kara, not Williams.

When I got to the kitchen, there was someone new there. A man. He was drinking coffee. He looked up at me, and his face shifted into what appeared to be a friendly smile.

“Hi. You must be Elizabeth. I’m Graham Ryzik. I’m here to show you the ropes.”

This was it. I had to confront the new. I seized my courage in both hands and made a bold first move.

“Um. Hi.”

Good lord, I’m going to have to do better than that.

“Um. Coffee?”

He grinned and motioned toward a can of grounds and some filters on the counter.

I turned my back on the scary stranger and made myself a cup of coffee. Then I brought it over to the table and sat down with him to drink it. It was really good. I didn’t usually drink the caffeinated stuff.

“Well,” he said, “you seem to be handling all this pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

He smiled again. Big smiler, this guy.

“Want some breakfast?”

“Okay.”

He got up and made enough eggs and toast for two.

I watched him. He was good-looking — tall and slender, with brown eyes, blond hair, and a TV anchorman’s even, chiseled features. He was wearing khakis and a fitted pale green sweater made out of some fine material. He was maybe ten years older than me and carried himself with confidence. I wondered if he was a lawyer or a doctor. He seemed professional, sophisticated.

He brought me a plate, and I thanked him. We ate in silence.

When we were both finished, he pushed back and sat there looking at me, smiling a little.

I looked back at him. Confront the new, I reminded myself.

“Can you explain things to me?” I said.

He nodded. “That’s what I’m here for. I oversee the Upper Midwest. New talent is part of my responsibility.”

“Oversee? So this is an organization of some sort?”

“You could say that. Basically, we look out for things that shouldn’t be happening and try to fix them. We have a territory with different regions. Each region has an overseer.”

“What are you called?”

“What, like the ‘League of Justice,’ or something?” he said, laughing. “We don’t have a fancy name for the organization.”

“Oh. Okay.” I felt dumb.

He sat for a minute or so, drumming his fingers on the table softly.

I noticed he had a tattoo on the back of his right hand — a square geometric design. The ink was blurry, as though he’d gotten it a long time ago.

Maybe he was a rebellious teen, or something.

The thought made him seem more normal. I took a steadying breath. Normal was good.

“It’s always a bit hard to know where to start with newbies,” he finally said. “It’s particularly hard with you, since you’re so much older than most. You have the capacity to understand a great deal — you know, unlike a seven-year-old.”

This happens to little kids? God, how horrible.

“But if we get into too much detail right off the bat,” he continued, “it’s going to be overwhelming, and we also won’t get to working on your abilities. As I understand it, your development has been a bit unusual. Figuring that out should be our first priority.”

“Okay,” I said, “so give me what you think I need for now. I’ll ask questions if I need to.”

He nodded, looking a little impressed. I was sort of impressed with myself, actually.

“Well, the first thing to understand is that there’s more than one world,” he said, sounding like he’d rattled this stuff off before. “We call this one the First Emanation, but there’s also a Second Emanation. You can think of it as another world that grew out of this one.”

“Like a parallel universe?”

“Sort of. They’re not as separate as that phrase implies. People can travel from one to the other. And the geography there echoes the geography here, though it’s not all from the present time.”

I nodded and tried to look like I was getting it.

“Okay. So, the F-Em has a large population of creatures — animals and people.”

“FM?”

“As in ‘First Emanation.’ Big ‘E,’ little ‘M,’ as in ‘Emanation.’”

“Oh. Right.”

So much for getting it.

“The S-Em has a population as well. We call those beings ‘Seconds,’ for short. Some Seconds look just like you or me, and some look different. The essential distinction between Seconds and the beings of this world is that they can perceive and manipulate something we call essence. Working essence enables them to do things that aren’t possible for most human beings. They can reshape reality itself in different ways. Usually the effects are small, but they can be substantial.”

“Are you talking about magic?”

“Not really. It might seem magical to humans, but to Seconds it’s not mysterious or supernatural.” He stopped to think. “You know how we can use our eyes and hands to notice and manipulate stuff on the macro level?” He picked a piece of toast up from his plate and tore it in half. “Well, Seconds have this other ability that lets them sense and manipulate stuff on the ultra-micro level. To them, it’s all very normal and reasonable, just like hands.”

Ultra-micro. “So, essence is cells and molecules and other small stuff?”

“It’s more fundamental than that. It’s what lies under all matter and energy — the basis of existence itself.”

He must’ve seen my mystified expression.

“Human science can get you part of the way there. See all the things around you? They’re all different, right? This is cloth,” he said, pointing at a dish towel, “and the table is wood. This plate is ceramic. If you look at them, touch them, they seem different. But those differences are misleading. Actually these things are all made out of the tiny particles that make up atoms, right? Science tells us everything in this room — including us — is just particles and electromagnetic fields and space.”

I nodded, but that stuff wasn’t a big part of high school physics. Building a bridge out of spaghetti I remembered. The more theoretical stuff was foggier.

“Okay, well if you follow me that far, just imagine essence as what constitutes particles, space, and so forth.”

Right. Okay. I guess.

“Are you sure it’s not just magic?”

“Yep, I’m sure. Look, what if you went back in time and showed some stone-age people a TV with a remote control? It might seem to them that you were controlling the TV with magic, but to us it’s just a piece of technology.”

It occurred to me that I didn’t really know how a remote control worked. I felt myself blush.

Graham smiled. “Even if you can’t explain the details of how a remote works, you know there’s a scientist somewhere who could. You don’t think it’s magic.”

Okay, so people in this other world had some kind of amazingly advanced biotechnology, so advanced it seemed like magic. I could accept that. It was like a sci-fi movie.

But what Graham was saying didn’t seem to jibe with what Callie had told me.

“Callie described the other world in religious terms.”

“Ah.” Graham paused for a few seconds. “Callie has her own way of understanding these things. It’s what works for her, given her beliefs and experiences, but based on what I know, it’s not an accurate picture. What I’m telling you is what the rest of us understand to be true.”

For some reason, that was a big relief, maybe because all that judgment and hellfire stuff didn’t seem to be part of the equation.

“Given your potential,” Graham continued, “it would be better if you had a more precise and nuanced understanding of how the S-Em works.”

I nodded, but the thing about “potential” didn’t sound good. My feeling of relief dissipated. I didn’t want these people to have any more interest in me than was absolutely necessary.

I cleared my throat. “Potential to do what?”

“Be a cop, basically. Humans generally can’t travel to the S-Em, but some Seconds can travel here. That’s where people like us come in — we police the Seconds who come to the human world. If they break the rules, we take care of it.”

So, these people were basically a secret branch of law enforcement? Maybe Williams really was in the FBI — some secret X-Filesy part of it.

Then I thought about the place Williams had taken me.

“By ‘take care of it,’ do you mean you kill them?”

Graham looked a little uncomfortable. “Most Seconds don’t intend any harm to humans. If they come here, they don’t cause any problems. But a few of them are dangerous. Sometimes, the only solution is termination.”

What he was saying was rubbing me the wrong way. Or maybe it was the pile of decayed corpses I’d rolled around in a couple nights ago that had rubbed me the wrong way.

“Do they get a trial?”

“I’m sure there’s a process in place.”

Huh. That was pretty vague.

As though feeling the tension, Callie’s glass tea kettle cracked with a loud pop. We both jumped. I let out a nervous laugh, and Graham smiled. Steam billowed up from the hot burner as the water drained onto the range.

“I’ll get it,” he said, standing up and grabbing a dishtowel. “Weird. These things are supposed to be just about indestructible. Anyway, we’re able to deal with troublesome Seconds because we’re actually like them: some human beings are also born with the ability to sense and manipulate essence. Those of us with the right abilities can meet Seconds on a more level playing field, especially if we team up. And since a number of powerful Seconds support our activities, they can back us up if we get in trouble.”

What kind of trouble? said an alarmed little voice in my head.

“What you said about being a cop … am I going to have to —”

Just then, Graham’s cell phone rang.

He pulled it out and looked at it. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Please excuse me.”

He headed into the living room and began a conversation I couldn’t quite hear. It lasted a while and seemed to prompt several other calls. Finally he wrapped it up and came back to the kitchen’s entrance, pocketing his phone.

“Sorry about that. Hey, why don’t we do a few tests to see exactly how your development is coming along?”

“Um, you don’t think I can ‘reshape reality itself,’ do you? ’Cause if so, I have some bad news.”

“Hold on,” he said, laughing. “Working essence can take a lot of different forms. Most of it isn’t so spectacular as that phrase makes it sound. Let’s just see what you might be able to do.”

I could’ve told him right then that I didn’t have any special abilities, other than possibly taking weird pictures. But I followed him to the living room. We settled on one of Callie’s comfortable white couches. Graham opened his mouth to say something, then froze, looking over my shoulder.

I turned to look. Kara was standing at the end of the hallway, looking as surprised to see Graham as he was to see her. He recovered first.

“Kara. It’s good to see you. What brings you here?”

Kara looked down at her hands, which were gripped together.

“Williams called me early this morning. Callie got hurt. I came to heal her.”

“Is she okay?” Graham said, sounding concerned.

“Yeah. I did some more work on her just now. She’ll be up and around soon.”

“Good, good. So, you’ll be heading back to the Twin Cities today?”

“I guess.”

“Best not to leave your area unguarded for too long.”

She nodded quickly and vanished into the kitchen.

Hm. Kara was afraid of Graham. I studied him a little more carefully as he began to explain the testing process to me. He didn’t seem scary. Maybe I was missing something.

Two hours later, I was well and truly shaken.

Graham had asked me to report whatever I saw. Then he’d changed from one person into another as I watched — a heavyset middle-aged farmer, a schoolmarmish old lady, a slinky beauty, a broken-down old man. Each time, I had to describe the person I saw in detail.

Seeing Graham change like that reminded me of Williams, with his Blandy-McBlandsville disguise. I didn’t want to be reminded of Williams.

Afterwards, Graham picked up a decorative bowl from Callie’s coffee table, and I watched as it shifted from bowl to football helmet to soccer ball, and finally to a living armadillo, which turned its head and looked right at me. I had to describe each one of those things, too.

Apparently finished with the special effects, Graham sat back with a sigh.

“Well, this has got to be pretty unusual. I haven’t seen anything quite like it.”

“Is something wrong with me?”

My tone seemed to get his attention. He leaned forward and caught one of my hands, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Elizabeth, I know this must all be very unsettling. It’s always like that at the beginning. I promise, it’ll start making sense. You’ll adjust, and it’ll get better.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound so quavery.

I reminded myself that I was supposed to be confronting this stuff, not just reacting passively and letting my fear of it rule me.

“I’ll explain what’s going on, as best I can. Remember how I mentioned earlier that Seconds and some humans can sense and manipulate essence?”

I nodded.

“There are two ways to manipulate essence. One is called a ‘working.’ A working changes essence from one state into another. And remember, essence is the substance of everything. That’s why I said we’re capable of reshaping reality itself — if you change the building blocks, you change the building.”

“Right, okay.”

“The other kind of manipulation is called a ‘half-working’ or ‘halfing.’ When you make a half-working, you don’t change essence fully from one state to another. Instead, you let it oscillate really fast between its original state and what you’d like it to be. So long as the essence has the shape you want more than half the time, that’s the shape normal people are going to see.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It saves a lot of energy. Essence really wants to stay as it naturally is. It takes power to keep it in an altered state. When you disguise yourself, you might have to keep it up for a long time. Halving your energy use can make all the difference.”

“And that’s what you were doing just now?”

“Some of those were halfings, yeah.”

It was hard to believe. I hadn’t seen any sort of flickering or blurriness. One moment he’d been himself, and the next he’d been someone else.

“So, moving on to how you’re developing,” Graham said, “when people like us come into our abilities, it happens in four stages. First we perceive essence that’s been worked or half-worked. Once you can see halfings, they won’t fool you anymore. You’ll still see the worked shape, but you’ll also see the original. It’s like seeing two things occupying the same space at once.”

That thought made me slightly seasick.

“With full workings,” Graham continued, “there’s no ‘original’ state of things left to see. Sensing them just means being aware that the essence in that spot has been altered. To me, it feels like a strange eddy in the stream of reality.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to commit workings and half-workings to memory.

“Typically, people start perceiving changed essence all at once. It’s an all-or-nothing thing, like throwing a switch. It’s called ‘seeing through.’ If the essence has been disturbed, they’re aware of it. It isn’t happening that way for you. You’re getting little glimpses, but it’s mostly still hidden.”

I shook my head. “I’m not seeing either type of thing you described — workings or half-workings.”

“But you are — partially. Most of the halfings I just showed you, you didn’t see at all. You only perceived the worked shape. But with a couple, you described something that was part of the original, not the halfing. For instance, the young woman I created had black hair, but you said she was a blonde. That means you saw my real hair color instead of the illusion. I bet you’ve gotten glimpses of reality through other halfings too and just not realized it.”

“But I’ve never seen anything unusual, except in that picture I took.”

“Williams led me to believe there was more than one photograph.”

“Well, there were two he seemed interested in, but one of them just showed a regular person. I thought so, at least.”

“Huh. Can I see them?”

“You’ll have to ask Williams. He took them.”

Graham frowned. I guess Williams had neglected to mention that bit of thievery.

Suddenly I remembered Williams’s FBI file. Maybe when the chief had looked at those pages, they hadn’t appeared to describe some other person. Maybe I’d been seeing through a half-working Williams made.

“Okay, never mind.” Graham said. He got up and ducked into Callie’s dining room. When he came back, he was holding a camera — a little point-and-shoot job.

“You want me to try to take some more weird pictures?”

“Yep,” he said. “We’re going to visit your spooky cemetery.”

A spasm of fear clutched at me. I reached down and gave my rubber band a couple hard snaps. Confront the new, I reminded myself. Exploring what was going on with my pictures was a good step forward.

“So you think the weird pictures are part of this seeing-bits-and-pieces thing?”

“Yeah, I do, and I want to see it in action. Let’s wait until dark, though. It’ll be easier to disguise our presence.”

I sat down and ran through the camera’s settings. It was pretty straightforward; using it shouldn’t be a problem. We’d see how much trouble my subject matter posed.

After I’d examined the camera, I thought I might ask Graham some more questions. Unfortunately, he was on the phone again.

I wandered down the hallway, curious about how Callie was doing. I found her and Kara in one of the bedrooms. Kara motioned me in. Callie was still deeply asleep. Her skin looked much better — still pink and inflamed, but no longer blistered. I wondered if Williams had been back to the house for healing as well, maybe while I was sleeping away the morning. The thought made me shudder. I didn’t want him nearby when I was asleep.

I felt awkward standing there gawking.

“Will I wake her up if I talk?” I whispered.

“No, she’s drugged,” Kara answered in a more normal tone.

“Is she going to have scars?”

“No. The burn’s superficial now. Even if I left it this way, it wouldn’t scar. But I won’t leave it — it’s too painful. I’ll do a little more tonight.”

I nodded. “What you can do, it’s really amazing. If I hadn’t seen how bad it was, I would never believe it.”

Kara shrugged. She looked uncomfortable. “So, Graham’s here training you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She didn’t follow up, so eventually I took my leave and headed to the room I’d been using, which I thought was Callie’s. I wondered if she’d given it to me because the en-suite bathroom meant I didn’t have to go out into the hallway if I didn’t want to. If so, that was really thoughtful. Maybe she understood about being terrified, even if she wasn’t scared of Williams herself.

By 9:00, Graham and I were sitting in his sedan behind St. Mary’s. It was quite dark — the sun had set more than an hour earlier.

He said, “Stay here a sec,” and got out of the car. He turned on a flashlight and walked into the cemetery. I watched him moving through the gravestones; then the dark claimed him, and I could only see the little ember of his flashlight bobbing along.

Before long, he came back to the car and gestured me out. I followed him through the dark cemetery. He led me toward a big maple in the back.

“You see that tree?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Do you see anything near it other than grave markers? Look carefully.”

I let my eyes rove around the trunk and the surrounding area. Several stones were close enough to be under the tree’s canopy, but I couldn’t see anything else. There was only the tree and a bunch of gravestones between us and Gil Jensen’s southernmost field, which abutted the church property.

“No, there’s nothing else there. Not that I can see, anyway.”

“Okay. Take a picture of the tree,” he said.

“This little flash isn’t nearly enough to light it.”

“Just get the trunk.”

Feeling a bit silly, I walked to within about ten feet of the trunk, close enough for the flash to do some good, and snapped a picture of it. Then I returned to Graham.

“Here you go. One tree trunk,” I said, holding the camera out to him.

He smiled and didn’t take it. “Look at the image. What do you see?”

I turned on the camera’s LCD screen. The image did show a tree trunk. It also showed a standing figure.

“There was no one there!”

“Oh, but there was,” Graham said, grinning. “That’s Bob.”

In the picture, a large creature was standing in front of the tree. He was furry, had long arms, and was very obviously male. He was smiling toothily and waving.

Goosebumps ran up my arms. My heart rate kicked into high gear, and my lungs seemed to close. An attack was coming. I sat down on the ground and snapped my rubber band. Surprisingly, Graham settled down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders, making soothing noises. That startled me, which actually helped. The oncoming panic paused and hovered, then receded. Thank god.

Once I relaxed, Graham scooted away from me a bit, giving me space. I looked up at him and found him watching me with a little smile. A number of seconds ticked by. I really didn’t know what to say.

“So,” I started, and then cleared my throat. “The abominable snowman lives behind St. Mary’s?”

Graham laughed. “Pretty close, actually. Bob’s a good guy. Never causes any trouble. But some of his people who aren’t so law-abiding do crop up in the Himalayas.”

Yet another thing for which I really had no response. I looked at the photo again. Bob was heavily furred on his torso, but the fur thinned out on his limbs, giving way to leathery skin. That skin was pale blue and marked with gray rings. His fur was white with gray rings. Doyle Shumaker had looked at my photo and joked about a “bagel monster.” Pretty accurate, actually.

I looked into the darkness beyond the flashlight’s glow. Bob the non-abominable snowman might be standing right next to me. He hadn’t just disguised himself as something else; he’d made himself invisible. So what else was out there that I couldn’t see?

“Elizabeth, it’s okay.” Graham was looking at me with sympathy. “It’s a big adjustment, I know, but it’ll be okay.”

“Wait,” I gasped, and put my head between my knees. I cupped my hands over my mouth and breathed into them, trying to head off hyperventilation. Several long minutes passed before the nausea and dizziness passed, and I could speak.

“Why can’t I see it? Why can I take a picture of it but not see it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of someone photographing Seconds but not being able to see them. I’m guessing it’s another way you’re glimpsing through half-workings, like I was talking about before. But why your development is working this way, I’m frankly not sure.”

He rubbed his face, thinking.

“You know, it might have to do with how late your abilities are manifesting. Most of us see through as little kids. About twenty percent get there as teens. Your abilities are appearing so late that you already have a set view of the world — what’s possible and what isn’t. Maybe your mind is resisting the ‘impossible’ things your eyes are taking in.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I want to start seeing what’s in front of me. How do I do it?”

“Well,” Graham said, “let’s go have a chat with Bob.”

I followed Graham back under the maple. It was nerve-wracking to think that a creature like the snowman was out there, and I was blind to it. I kept expecting something to take a bite out of me.

Graham positioned me about ten feet from the tree’s trunk and suggested I sit. Then he sat down right next to the tree and proceeded to have half a conversation with nothing. It was bizarre to watch.

“How’s it going, Bob? … Really? Well, I’m sorry to hear that. When did you last hear from her? … Ah. No, that doesn’t sound promising. … I don’t think that would be the best approach, no.”

This