We went to check on Callie when we got back to the house. She was resting comfortably in the guest bedroom. Kara didn’t seem to be home, but she’d clearly done more healing. Callie now looked fine. I spent a while standing there marveling at her skin as she slept. It was perfectly restored. In fact, she looked a little younger, as though Kara had taken away some of the years’ wear and tear along with the burn.

The memory of what she’d looked like when Williams carried her in rose up powerfully in my mind. The thought twisted my feelings from wonder to anger.

“What was it that burned Callie?” I asked, when I went to sit down in the living room with Graham.

He glanced up at me but didn’t answer.

“Graham?”

He sighed. “Williams originally came here to deal with an S-Em incursion Callie reported — a large fire nearby.”

“You mean the one at the old mill up at Bilford Crossing?”

I remembered that you could still see the column of smoke on Sunday, more than a day after it had caught fire.

“Yeah, that’s the place.”

“So Callie got burned in that fire?”

“I imagine so.”

“I don’t get it. What does the fire have to do with the other world?”

Graham looked uncomfortable. “There’s no reason for you to worry about that kind of stuff, yet. Let’s just focus on your development, okay?”

It was nice that he was trying to protect me, but it wasn’t going to fly. I needed a better picture of what I was facing.

He must’ve seen my thoughts on my face.

“Okay, okay. You remember how I said that some Seconds can travel from their world to this one?”

I nodded.

“There are several ways that can happen. One way is the opening of a strait. A strait is a place where you can open a passageway between the worlds. Some of them are worked into existence, but most appear spontaneously. You might think of the worlds as having skins that are thicker in some places and thinner in others, and sometimes a connection forms at the thin spots. I’ve also heard it described as rippling, so that in some places the worlds bulge out and can touch, but in others there’s a lot of distance between them.”

That confused me. “Well, which one is it?”

“Neither, really. Those are just metaphors. No one really knows how the worlds coexist, spatially or dimensionally. There are different theories.”

I nodded, feeling a bit dense.

“The mill is built on a strait, which seems to be stuck open. The human firefighters can’t put out the fire because it’s actually coming through the strait from the S-Em. They can’t get at what’s really burning.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It’s actually not too big a deal. It takes a major working to open a strait. You’re supposed to close a strait after you go through it, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. It’s not good to have them sitting open, so closing them manually is something we have to do on occasion.”

“So, Williams came up here to get it closed, and just happened to find out about me because he saw my pictures?”

“Yes, as I understand it.”

So I’d been an added headache from the get-go. And then I’d kept him tied up with the police for hours. No wonder he’d been so monumentally pissed off. Not that I felt bad about that. Well, not so far as he was concerned. I guess I’d feel pretty bad about it if the result was something dangerous coming into our world through the opening.

Then again, he can’t have been working on it too hard, not if he’d been having a leisurely brunch with Callie at Pete’s Eats on Monday.

“If closing one of these things is no biggie, why’d he take Callie? You should’ve seen her when he asked her to go. She was scared. She told me she’s not a fighter, more of a watcher.”

“Absolutely right. He should never have taken her,” Graham said angrily. “It’s ridiculous. Apparently, he very nearly got her killed.”

We lapsed into silence. I realized I still didn’t have a clear sense of what threat the open strait posed.

“So,” I said, “the worry is that something dangerous might come through the opening and start, I don’t know, eating my neighbors, or something?”

Just as Graham started to answer, the front door opened and Williams walked in.

A shudder rippled over me.

He stopped short when he saw us on the couch. “You’re finally showing up? I called you a week ago.”

There was no mistaking his anger. It made his accent stronger.

“I expected you to handle the situation on your own,” Graham said evenly. “I’m here to work with Elizabeth, not do your job for you.”

He showed no sign of being afraid of Williams.

The big man looked like he wanted to put his hands around Graham’s neck and squeeze. A tense couple seconds passed before Williams turned and stalked down the hallway.

Graham watched him go, then turned back to me with an expression of patience, as though he often had to deal with difficult underlings.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Elizabeth. It’s getting late, and this must’ve been a tiring day for you.”

I nodded and trundled off to bed, trying to feel smug about having seen Williams get the smack-down. Unfortunately, I was still deeply afraid of him, so my satisfaction was half-hearted.

I showered and got in bed. It was after midnight, but since I’d slept until well past noon, I wasn’t all that tired. I lay there, unable to go to sleep.

When Callie woke and went out to the living room to talk to Graham, I heard their voices. I couldn’t quite make out what either was saying. I crept to the bedroom door and cracked it open.

“… has to go,” Callie was saying. “I’m certain.”

“She’s not ready for that, Callie,” Graham answered, “not any more than you were. I don’t want to risk her without more information.”

Was he talking about me? I had to be the most unready person there.

“You say she can see the truth, now. If so, it won’t be dangerous. Not if she pays attention,” Callie said. “If she doesn’t go, things are not going to work out.”

Graham made a frustrated noise. “Why does she have to go? How are things not going to work out? Can’t you be more specific?”

“I assume she’ll be able to see better than I could, but I’m not certain. You know the Lord doesn’t show me everything. He gives what He gives, and it’s up to us to use it for good, with faith that it will be enough.”

There was a pause. Then Graham said, “All right. I’ll think about it.”

“It has to happen,” Callie said more insistently. “She must go. I’ve seen it.”

Graham made an angry sound, but didn’t say anything further.

I eased the door closed. Callie seemed to have some precognition. At least, she thought so, and Graham hadn’t dismissed it.

I quietly got back in bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

I had a bad feeling the place she wanted me to go was the old mill. That thought made sleep a very long time coming. I mean, confronting the new was all well and good; doing something incredibly stupid wasn’t.

I slept briefly and badly. When I woke, it was about 9:00 in the morning. The house was quiet, and I wondered if everyone else was asleep. Callie was up, though. I found her in the kitchen, cooking something. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, not sure how to interact with someone who’d basically risen from the dead.

“Hi, Callie. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning and smiling at me. Then her smile faded, and she studied me for a while. Finally she spoke again. “I was wrong about you, Elizabeth. You do the Lord’s work, even though you don’t recognize it.”

I flushed. It was phrased in Callie-speak, but it was a genuine compliment.

“Thanks, Callie. I don’t know that I entirely deserve that, but I appreciate it. And please, call me ‘Beth.’”

“Beth,” she said, as though trying out the name.

We smiled at each other.

“Callie, I heard you talking to Graham last night about me needing to go somewhere. Can you tell me about that?”

She looked a little worried, so I hurried on.

“It’s great that Graham wants to protect me, but I think decisions about where I go and what I do are mine to make. Right? So what is it that you think I need to do, exactly?”

It wasn’t really that I wanted to make a decision. I already knew I didn’t want to go anywhere near that fire. But I did want to get a sense of what these people were planning for me.

Callie still didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes shifted over my right shoulder.

From behind me, Graham said, “Let’s you and I discuss this privately, Elizabeth.”

Damn it. How had he come down the hall so quietly? I turned and looked at him. He was freshly showered and looked rested. He turned and headed back to his room.

I glanced at Callie. She’d been watching me, but her gaze skittered away. She turned back to the stove.

“Come on, let’s talk about it,” Graham said over his shoulder.

I followed him back to the other guest bedroom. I wondered in passing where Williams had slept the night before.

Graham sat down on the edge of his neatly made bed and gestured me toward the armchair in the corner of the room. As I turned around to sit, I noticed his eyes were aimed a bit low. Was he checking out my ass? It really sort of looked like he was. I was so surprised that it took me a few seconds to regroup and get my mouth moving.

“I heard some of what you and Callie were talking about last night. I’d like to get the full story.”

He nodded. “That’s fair enough, Elizabeth.” He paused. “I take it you may have guessed at Callie’s gift.”

“She can see the future?”

“After a fashion. She doesn’t see the future in a specific way. It’s more like a sensation, a feeling about what we should or shouldn’t do. It’s not an exact prescription, and there are generally no details.”

“Thinking I have to go to the mill, if that’s what she was saying — that’s pretty specific.”

“Yes and no. Where exactly are you supposed to go when you get there? And what are you supposed to do there? Exactly how bad will the results be if you don’t go, and how much better will they be if you do? She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me any of that.”

I nodded. That did leave a lot up in the air.

“Worst of all,” he continued, “she doesn’t know what the cost will be to you. I wouldn’t like it if something happened to you.” He paused. “I mean, you’re my responsibility. It’s my job to protect you until you’re really ready for what we do.”

“Does she have any sense of why I need to go to the mill? Does it have to do with some ability I might have?”

“She doesn’t know, which is part of the reason I think it’s a bad idea. I think we should wait and see if she can offer any more information before we take you there.”

I nodded. I was still worried, though, because it sounded like Graham was open to the possibility of taking me there later, depending on what Callie came up with.

Graham must’ve seen I wasn’t comfortable with the situation because he added, “The other reason I don’t want you there is that we haven’t prepared you for that kind of encounter with the S-Em. You’ve seen firsthand how dangerous that fire is, right? Let’s keep you away from it, if we can.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, trying not to show how much better that made me feel. I hated to look like a coward, even if that’s what I was.

“Hey,” he said, “you wanted to see your brother, right? Why don’t we do that this morning?”

My mind flew to Ben.

“That’d be wonderful! Also, I should really call my boss. He was expecting me back at work on Thursday.”

“Okay, let’s go. You can use my phone on the way.”

A minute later we were in the car, and I was happily giving him directions to Ben’s house. I was so glad Graham recognized that I had no business going near the mill. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea at all. Thank god, I thought to myself, at least one of these people is sane.

“Okay, so I said there are ground rules,” Graham said as we turned into Ben’s neighborhood. “They’re pretty simple: don’t tell anyone about the S-Em or about the Seconds living among us. Not anyone, for any reason. No exceptions. Don’t tell anyone about your abilities or about anyone else’s you happen to know about. Don’t talk about essence or workings or anything like that.”

I waited for him to go on, but apparently there wasn’t any more. I was surprised.

“That’s it? I would think rules like that would be common sense. Otherwise you’d all be in mental hospitals, or maybe top-secret government research labs.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” Graham said. “But we take these rules very seriously, so it’s important to make them explicit.”

He gave me a searching look.

“It means you can’t tell your brother, all right? If you get married one day, you can’t tell your spouse. You can’t even tell your priest.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. A small loneliness washed over me. “Sounds like the rules would make marriage and family pretty hard.”

“That might be why we tend to pair off with one another,” he said, and gave me a little smile.

Was he flirting with me? No, he couldn’t possibly be.

“But seriously,” he continued, “you have to be really careful. Don’t keep any images that show Seconds in their true form. Delete them without putting them on your hard drive, and reformat the card they were on. Don’t do internet searches on terms like ‘Second Emanation’ or on the names of any Seconds you get to know. Don’t keep a diary. Not an accurate one, anyway. Always be certain a person is one of us before saying anything incriminating. At least a few governments around the world have suspicions about this stuff, and you don’t want to give information to an undercover agent by accident.”

I nodded. I hadn’t really thought about how many ways there were to slip up. It occurred to me that I’d already broken the rules in a big way by showing the picture of Bob’s foot around Pete’s, but if Graham didn’t bring it up, I sure as heck wasn’t going to.

“So,” he said, “why don’t you make that call to your boss. Let’s think about what you’re going to tell him.”

As Graham coached me, I realized I was going to have to get used to lying a lot more. His advice was to keep it simple — a straightforward excuse or explanation was easier to remember and often more convincing. It could also be helpful, he said, to blame yourself. That way people spent their time being annoyed at you instead of questioning your story.

“The thing is, I don’t know if Dr. Nielsen will have found out about how I left town and then was questioned by the police about Justine. If he knows about that, it’s going to get complicated.”

Graham pulled into a space a few houses down from Ben’s. “How could he know about that? It’s a police matter.”

I rolled my eyes. “Clearly, you’re not from a small town.”

He laughed. “Well, let’s think of how you might handle either situation. That way you’ll be prepared to follow the conversation wherever it goes.”

After some discussion, I called Dr. Nielsen at home and told him I still wasn’t feeling well and might need to take another sick day on Monday.

“Beth, that’s fine,” he said. “Head injuries are unpredictable that way. But why didn’t you call earlier? I was expecting you back on Thursday. I’ve been worried.”

“What, really? I thought I said Monday, not Thursday.”

“Janie and I both thought it was Thursday. She was really worried, by the way. You should call her.”

“I must’ve been so out of it that I said Thursday when I meant Monday. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, Beth. You did seem a bit disoriented when we spoke. Please let me know how you’re feeling Monday, so we know whether to expect you Tuesday. In the meantime, Judith is happy to fill in.”

I thanked him and hung up. When Graham nodded his approval of the conversation, I went ahead and called Janie.

“Oh my god, Beth, I’ve been so worried about you,” she said. “When you didn’t come in Thursday, I called your house. By the end of the day, I was tearing my hair out! I went to your place and knocked and knocked, but you didn’t answer. Friday, too. Where have you been?”

I gave her my story, explaining that I’d been home but must’ve been on pain meds and sleeping heavily when she called and dropped by. I apologized profusely and tried to sound embarrassed instead of guilty.

“Jeez, don’t worry about it. I can totally understand doing something like that. And,” she said, lowering her voice, “I think Mrs. Nielsen is sort of enjoying being back at the helm.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I bet.”

Judith Nielsen had been her husband’s receptionist from when he opened his practice in the early ’80s until four years ago. That’s when she’d decided she wanted more leisure time, and he’d hired me to replace her. She was sort of a dragon lady, so I suspected Dr. Nielsen had been a little relieved at her decision. He certainly got away with being a lot more crotchety with me than he had with her.

“Hey, is it really true that Justine up and left Ben without even telling him?” Janie asked. “I heard it from Suzanne yesterday. I’ve been dying to ask you.”

“Well, I don’t really know what happened between them. I guess she might’ve left him.”

“Wow.” She paused. “Are you psyched or what?”

I laughed. “No, not really — she sucks, yeah, but Ben loves her, and the kids must be so upset.”

“Yeah, yeah, you would take the high road,” Janie said. “Mama always said you were too nice for your own good.”

I laughed again, though the compliment wasn’t justified — I might be the reason Justine was gone, after all. She might even be dead because of me.

“Okay, I’ll see you next week. Feel better, okay? Let me know if you need anything.”

“Will do, Janie, thanks.”

I hung up and looked at Graham.

“Very good,” he said. “The one thing I’d change is that you said, ‘I’ve been at home’ when you were explaining yourself. But if you were really making the call from home, you probably would’ve said, ‘I’ve been here,’ right?”

I looked at him, surprised at his recall of what I’d said.

“Yeah, I guess I would.”

“Also,” he said, “a word like ‘here’ is more flexible. If you get caught in the lie somehow, you can always say you meant something else by ‘here’ — not your home, say, but a friend’s house.”

“Wow, you’ve really thought about this stuff.”

“In our line of work, it’s an unfortunate necessity. And it’s often the small stuff that catches you up — stuff you say without thinking because it seems so unimportant.”

He waited until I nodded my understanding.

“Okay, we should talk about how you’re going to handle your brother. That’s going to be a more challenging situation.”

But the visit with Ben turned out not to be so challenging after all, at least not in the way Graham meant. Ben was too wrapped up in his own fear and sadness to be interested in what I’d been up to for the last few days. He was just angry that I hadn’t been there for him. He did say the police had told him I had an alibi for the time Justine disappeared. Beyond that, it was all about his situation — whether their fight on Sunday might’ve driven Justine away, where she might’ve gone, whether someone might’ve kidnapped her, whether she was dead.

There was also a lot of focus on how the kids were handling their mother’s absence. The short answer was “not well,” but I didn’t get the short answer.

We both did a lot of crying, Ben from grief, me from guilt. It was awful. Worst of all was glancing up and seeing Tiffany peeking around the banister to watch her father cry. The look on her face was unbearable.

“Denny’s?” I asked, confused.

After leaving Ben’s, I’d gotten in Graham’s car, and he’d kindly left me alone with my misery. I hadn’t paid attention to where we were going. He’d driven most of the way to Wausau, and I hadn’t noticed.

“Sure. Thought we could get a bite to eat.”

As soon as I thought of food, I realized I was starving.

“Okay, yeah.”

We were seated and got our coffees. It occurred to me that Graham might be able to help with Justine, beyond just asking his contacts if they knew anything. He talked about Williams as if he’d known him a while. Maybe he could make some educated guesses on places the bastard would stash someone he’d kidnapped.

Unfortunately, we’d been seated in the center of the main dining room and were surrounded by people. Asking about it here would probably break the rules.

The main course passed pleasantly enough. I could tell Graham was trying to distract me from my worries. He asked about my family and my experiences growing up in Dorf. He touched on a sore spot when he asked about my father, and I had to admit I’d never known him. But he recovered artfully and quickly steered the conversation onto safer ground. He really was quite charming. I sure didn’t have the social graces he did. I mean, I could eat a meal without dropping food on myself, but that was about it.

I asked Graham about himself and found out he’d been born in North Carolina and had grown up on the Outer Banks. It seemed like an exciting place to be a kid. When I said as much, he got to talking about shipwrecks and hurricanes. And also beach parties, where “all the girls ran around in bikinis.” I could’ve sworn he glanced at my chest during that story.

Dessert arrived — a piece of cherry pie each. After a few bites, Graham sat back and eyed me. Then he asked if I minded a personal question.

“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, you can always ask it, but I might not answer it, if it’s too personal. But I probably will. Answer it, I mean.”

I felt myself blush. I really could find the most awkward way to handle anything.

He just nodded. Then he said, quietly, “Have you been diagnosed with panic disorder?”

I leaned back, surprised. True, I’d had that near-attack at the cemetery, but most people had never heard of panic disorder.

In answer to my unspoken question, he pointed at the rubber band on my wrist. I fingered it self-consciously. It had been the suggestion of one of the shrinks my mother took me to when I was a kid. When an attack started coming on, the pain of snapping the band was supposed to disrupt whatever physiological chain reaction was causing it. It only worked for me sometimes, but sometimes was better than never.

“Yeah. I was diagnosed when I was six. It’s really kept me from doing … well, anything.”

I looked down, annoyed at myself. I didn’t want to sound whiney, but the disappointment was so close to the surface. Sometimes it was hard to keep it in. I loved Dorf, but I also hated it. It was safe and easy, and it kept my attacks at a manageable level. Sort of. But being stuck there was hard. I’d accepted the situation, but acceptance and happiness are different things.

When I looked back up at Graham, he was smiling at me kindly. “I think you’ll find you don’t have panic disorder, after all.”

Annoyance welled up. If I had a dollar for every person who’d told me my panics were either imaginary or my own fault, I’d have a new car. Well, okay, not a whole new car. But new brakes in the Le Mans — definitely.

I took a slow breath and tried to pack away my irritation. “That sounds like wishful thinking to me. So far, it’s pretty much dictated my life.”

“Yeah, I bet.” He paused and looked around. “Let’s talk about it in the car.”

Curious but guarded, I followed him out. He opened the car door for me, then got behind the wheel and turned to me.

“People like us are in a terrible position before we begin seeing what’s really out there,” he said. “Even before we can see workings, many of us are able to sense them on some level. Fearfulness, anxiety, panic attacks — that kind of stuff is common in the pre-sighted. The mind doesn’t react well to getting contradictory information from the senses, especially about something that could be a threat. Do you see what I mean?”

“So you’re saying that every time I have a panic attack, there’s a Second nearby that I can sort of sense, but can’t see?”

“Maybe. Or it might not be a direct cause-and-effect thing — a Second gets within a hundred feet of you and, bang, you have a panic attack. It is that way for some of us. Others just live in a state of heightened anxiety, and panic attacks are sprinkled in randomly. But in general, the more we’re exposed to things we can’t see — Seconds, workings, even someone like me, if I’m using a halfing-disguise — the worse the effect. It’s very lucky you live in such a small town, where there aren’t many Seconds. If you lived in a more populous area, your mind would’ve been destroyed by now. Late bloomers just don’t survive unless they grow up in the boonies.”

I sat for a long time, mulling it over. Finally I said, “Have you ever been to Madison?”

“I live there. It’s regional headquarters for the Upper Midwest.”

“Are there lots of Seconds there?”

“Tons. They like college towns. A transient population makes it easier to blend in.”

I sat there, totally at a loss. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know how to feel.

My life had had two central constants — my mother and my illness. I’d already lost my mother. Now the other constant was being rewritten, maybe erased. Losing a bad thing should be a good thing, but instead it was profoundly disconcerting. Like I was losing who I was.

After a few minutes, Graham said, “Elizabeth, I know this is very difficult. You’ve had to deal with being pre-sighted for far longer than most of us do. It’s a testament to your strength that you’re as sane