PSA: I do not own Love Me Do, Mary Anne Cotton, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
or any other poems, books, or song lyrics referenced in this fic. I have borrowed them
for the purposes of entertainment.

Trigger/content warning for: mentions of rape, violence.

Alert: I don't have a beta at this time, and thus there may be spelling/slight grammar errors in this fic.
Apologies if you find any, and let me know so I can fix them, please and thanks.

Written to a mix of the Beatles, the Journey soundtrack, and The Airborne Toxic Event.

Fingerless
by Shu of the Wind

-for talesofinkandglass-

July, three years ago

What a great many people never seemed to realize was that there were multiple kinds of intelligence. Not just a few, Oliver thought, making another fold in the paper, but an extraordinary number which could never truly be registered or catalogued by an IQ test. Not an infinite number, obviously, but it also wasn't restricted simply to book smarts. The IQ test couldn't register how easily one could comprehend one's own emotions, or how quickly someone could pick up a complicated physical movement—a pirouette, for example. And besides, IQ tests themselves were inherently faulty, at least in how they were widely perceived. Rather than determining one's true level of one, specific kind of intelligence, it simply calculated, on a simple scale, what the potential for one's intelligence could be, if one applied oneself. But the higher someone scored on an IQ test, the harder that someone had to work to keep up with their own potential, and possibility and dedication did not always go hand in hand.

Gene had always been smarter than him. It was a proven fact, Oliver thought; he might have registered on a higher numerical level than his twin, might have a higher visual-spatial reasoning capability, but the fact remained that in a multitude of different ways, Gene was simply smarter. He had a different kind of intelligence than Oliver did, and it meant he thought differently, felt differently, even though their genetics were exactly the same. His emotional intelligence—his empathy, for example, and one might even say his psychic intelligence—were more advanced than Oliver's were. Oliver might have been the one going to Oxford at fourteen, but Gene was the one who could talk a teenage girl off of a window ledge with nothing more than a smile and an outstretched hand.

It was, he thought, turning the paper over and folding again, a different sort of smarts than most people would ever acknowledge, but that didn't change the fact that Gene's emotional maturity and acumen had been decades ahead of Oliver's for years. He didn't envy Gene for that. He thought sometimes, seeing his brother possessed, or watching him head to the roof after a nightmare, or even when Gene shut the door on his side of their connection, that being so damn empathetic was sure to be a constant trouble. For Oliver it was always the puzzle; for Gene it was always the people. What was the use of being envious of one ability when one had the other in spades?

Always so clinical. The thought floated into his mind, easy, smooth, as Gene opened the door and leaned against the frame. Oliver frowned at his project, and then unfolded a wing. You're way smarter than I am, Noll. Besides, if you were thinking about anyone other than me, you'd be all holier-than-thou and content with the fact that you're probably always going to be smarter than anyone else in the room just by existing. Your ego could deal with a smack.

I don't see the point of arguing about this when I already know I'm right¸ Oliver thought back, and bent a wingtip. Their adoptive mother had become quite fascinated with Japanese culture in the four years since the Davis' had taken them in, and she had quite pointedly left a book of origami patterns on his bed a few days ago, when he had mentioned having little to do. He was over halfway through it already, and even if he wouldn't admit it aloud, doing something with his hands soothed his mind. Perhaps I can get her to get a book of magic tricks next, he thought, and left the hawk on the desk. "What is it?" he asked aloud, because Gene was bubbling with enthusiasm. He didn't need to read his twin's mind to see that much.

"Come on," said Gene in English. "Dad wants to show us something."

The Davis house was older than Gene, Oliver, and the Davises put together, and creaked enough to match, but he'd spent too much time wandering around at midnight to not automatically step over the worst boards. Gene fell into step with him, as always. When they'd been very young, they'd been permanently hand-in-hand. It had been, Oliver thought, an instinctive attempt to exchange power, to make the Noise go quiet. The telepathic connection between them had always helped, but when they'd been too young to realize what exactly had been happening (other than knowing that if Oliver ever grew angry, he would blow things up) tangling their fingers together had kept each other in check. Now that they were older, and such behavior was socially unacceptable, they kept close together. Instinct, he mused. Self-preservation.

Gene hummed something under his breath, an old song that Oliver barely recognized, and nudged Oliver in the side. Stop reminiscing, you sound like me.

Considering our own experiences within the realm of PK events and poltergeisting, it's impossible to separate my work from my own interpretations of our lives.

Gene rolled his eyes. Idiot.

Oliver sniffed, and Gene nudged him onto a creaky board.

What did Professor Davis want?

Dad—Gene looked at him pointedly—wanted to tell us about the phone call that came in this morning while you were hiding in your room making paper birds like you've been doing all week. Mum brought home another stack of paper for you, by the way. I think she's going to leave it somewhere for you.

Oliver bit the inside of his cheek, and considered that. Mrs. Davis has been very kind to us.

They've adopted us, Noll, of course she is. This was an old argument. Oliver could sense the frustration, even behind the carefully sculpted shields that Gene had been developing for years. I wish you'd call them Mum and Dad. I know you do aloud, but you don't think it. They might not know it, but I do.

I am reserving judgment, Oliver said clinically, and pushed away the thoughts that automatically flooded into his mind. A slammed door. Silence. Broken glass. You cannot fault me for reserving judgment.

Gene rolled his eyes, but there was still a tense coil of frustration and hurt in the back of his mind that Oliver didn't quite comprehend. It was logical, he surmised, to keep his emotions from becoming too entangled with adults considering previous experience. What?

Spock, Gene told him, and then knocked on the Professor's office door. It was already half open; light streamed in through the windows, dappling the floor with zebra spots. "Dad? You wanted to talk to us."

"Gene," said Martin Davis, sounding pleased. He spun around in his chair, and pulled off his reading glasses. "Noll. Come in and shut the door, will you? Luella's working on something, and I'd rather not distract her."

The Professor's office, Oliver thought privately, might just be his favorite room in the whole of the Davis house, even though it was so very thoroughly Martin's place. He couldn't help it. There were just so many books for him to run his fingers over. When they'd first come to the Davis house, he'd dropped down on the carpet and pulled out a book on poltergeisting and hadn't left until he'd finished reading it, no matter what Luella Davis had done to try and tempt him out. He'd been ten. When she'd told Professor Davis about it, Martin had called him into the office, told him he could read whatever books he liked, and then let him loose. Those first few days, Oliver had chewed his thumbnail nearly down to the quick trying to pick what he wanted to read first. The books in that office had finally explained, in ways that not even Professor and Mrs. Davis had ever been able to, what he and Gene were, and with help from Lin's qigong, he was finally learning to control it.

Gene shut the door, and then together they sat on the small sofa that had been put up when the Davises had realized that it was going to take a crowbar to get Oliver out of the library. Martin Davis rubbed his eyes for a moment, and then opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk. His work drawer. Interest curled in his belly. Oliver glanced at Gene out of the corner of his eye, but his twin only had that moonlike Mona Lisa smile on his face; not a single hint to be found there.

Oh, let something surprise you for once, Gene thought at him.

You know what it is, don't you?

I may have picked up the phone earlier when he was talking with someone important, Gene thought primly, and Oliver couldn't help it. The corners of his mouth twitched up.

"First things first," said the Professor, and Oliver snapped to attention. "I received a call this morning from the Society asking me to attend an investigation of a haunted manor up in Scotland, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to go away for a few days, maybe as much as a week. Your mother will be coming with me, at least for the first few nights, because I need her abilities, so while you won't be alone in the house—Mrs. Leonards will be here, along with Mr. Lin and a few others—you will be the only Davises, so I expect you to behave that way."

"Yes, sir," said Gene, and when the Professor's eyes snapped to Oliver, Oliver nodded his agreement. A few days to themselves wasn't perhaps the most interesting occurrence in the world, but it would give him time to continue working on his own research without either Professor or Mrs. Davis worrying about his experiments, and Oliver intended to take full advantage of that fact. The Professor smiled a bit, and not for the first time, Oliver had to remind himself that Professor Davis showed no talent for telepathy or empathy at all. He was just very, very good at reading people.

Oliver schooled his face to marble blankness and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"However," said the Professor, and opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk—the assignment drawer. "Since we'll be away for a few days, I don't want either of you to get bored, and there has been something sitting in my desk for quite a while that someone needs to look into. If you feel you have the time and the energy, I'd appreciate you checking into it."

There. That was what Gene had been so excited about. Oliver tightened his fingers on his knees and felt the electric excitement burn through him like oil. A case, an actual case. They'd assisted the Professor on his cases many times, and had gone to every corner of the country with him—from the Isle of Wight to Dublin to Glasgow—but they'd never had a case of their own. Oliver cleared his throat. "Are we to be working with you on this one, sir?"

"This one I want you boys to look at independently, if you don't mind." A supernova of excitement went off in the back of Oliver's brain. Even Gene hadn't known this bit, then. "Of course, I would appreciate you bringing along Lin; he'd get a bit grumpy if you disappear off to the Fens without letting him know, to say nothing of how your mother would react."

A flash of what had happened the last time Mrs. Davis had caught them sneaking out of the house hit him hard. Oliver looked pointedly at the mirror, and said nothing. Gene stifled a shudder.

"If you take the train up, you can be there in a few hours." The Professor offered the file, not to Gene but to Oliver, who took it with both hands and stared at it. Dark blue, with silver writing along the top. Phone Booth—Fens—Mary-on-the-mount. "We've received a few reports recently that there have been temperature drops and unexplained phenomena centered around this phone booth, and since the rest of our assets are currently tied up in this manor in Scotland, I would truly appreciate it if you boys could take a look and tell me what you think. If you decide to take it, I can get some equipment scraped together for you and let our contact down in the village know."

There wasn't even a need for a psychic link. Gene looked at Oliver. Oliver looked at Gene. Then Oliver looked up at the Professor. "We would be honored, sir."

"Good," said Professor Davis. "Your train leaves tonight at seven. Be sure to tell your mother what you've decided, and pack for rain. Apparently," he said, and there was a ghost of a smile on his face, "they've had more rain in Mary-on-the-mount in the past few days than they've had for the past twenty years."

He winked at Oliver. Before Oliver could sniff, Gene bumped him in the side, and grinned, and Oliver couldn't help it. He smiled back, and let his brother squeeze his wrist. Then he glanced at the Professor again.

"Can we have an infrared camera?"

Day One
Two regular cameras, one infrared, three microphones, a handful of thermometers, and one enormous tent. Oliver straightened, and nodded a little at his handiwork. The tent—not exactly a camping tent, but more a filming pavilion than anything; he'd found it online—just cleared the top of the old, cracked red phone booth, shielding all three of his cameras from the rain that had been pouring on their heads since they'd stepped out of the train. The back of his shirt was completely soaked, and if it hadn't been for his hat (which Luella Davis had insisted that he bring, despite Oliver's distinct loathing for hats) he would have born a distinct resemblance to a drowned animal. He knew that much because Gene had forgotten his hat, and had just given up trying not to get wet; his hair was plastered to his face and even his eyelashes were dripping.

Done? asked Gene, and Oliver looked over the setup one last time. Mary-on-the-mount was a village of maybe five-hundred, maybe seven-hundred-fifty people, judging by the paperwork their client (the chief of the local constabulary) had had in his office. The phone booth itself was never used, for reasons nobody could quite work out—even if the vast majority of people in Mary-on-the-mount had mobile phones, this place wasn't even graffitied. Not a speck of paint on it to be seen. Even so, he'd been very careful to keep his fingers off the wood as he'd set things up; his psychometry wasn't under his control, not totally, not like the telekinesis, and the last thing he needed was to be on his knees gasping because he'd synced too strongly with a memory of someone calling their mother. On Gene's other side, Lin (who was sitting on a nearby bench, a computer in his lap and an umbrella on his shoulder) glanced up at Oliver.

"All connections are made and strong. Footage is clear."

"Temperature?"

"Currently nine degrees centigrade."

Gene made a face. "It's warmer than that out here, surely. It feels like we're in a bathtub."

"Not in the phone booth," said Oliver, and there was a little flicker of satisfaction deep in his gut. Can you sense anything, Gene?

Gene shook his head, but not in a no. It's all…mixed up. There is a presence here, but it's gone quiet, the way they always do when someone new appears. It feels…sad.

Oliver gave Gene a warning look—he knew that tone in his brother's voice—and turned back to Lin. Lin Koujo was twenty-four years old, with uneven bangs to hide his right eye—his dead eye. Or that was what Lin had called it, when he had come in for the interview with Professor Davis four years ago, and Oliver and Eugene had been hiding in the priest hole they'd found in the Professor's office, trying to keep up with English accents. My right eye is useless, Lin had said. The price of my contract with my shiki. I am half-blind.

How many shiki do you have? The Professor had asked.

Four.

Oliver had blinked. No one he'd ever heard of in the past hundred years had ever mastered more than three shiki. For this man to have four…who knew what else he could do?

The Professor had steepled his fingers. Considering we're working with things most people can't see, I don't know if your eyesight or lack of it has much to do with anything, now does it?

Lin had digested that. Then he had smiled, and signed the employment contract.

Oliver shook the memories off. "And everything's been set up in base?"

"Yes, Noll," said Gene, but he was smiling. "Come on. We should get you out of the wet."

"Kettle," he said to Gene, but with one last glance at his phone booth, Oliver acceded to reason. After all, even with his hat, he was soaking wet.

The inside of the constable's house was less small than narrow, with two floors and a living room with more frills than could be called reasonable. They'd been offered what had been the constable's wife's quilting room as their base, and so their TV screens had been set up between a trio of sewing machines. Why one woman would need so many, Oliver wasn't quite sure, but then again, he'd never been all that interested in quilting anyway.

The video feed was coming in perfectly. Gene had asked the constable's wife—Elsa, Oliver thought, pale-haired, doughy, only just as tall as he and Gene were though she was three times their age—what she thought about someone coming along and taking their equipment, but Elsa had just blinked and said, "Why would anyone want to do that?" Either as a constable's wife she had a ridiculous sort of faith in the people of Mary-on-the-mount, or it had just never occurred to her that people might want to steal their equipment. For now, they were going to have to depend on the reputation of the police (considering they were in a house belonging to the chief of the Mary-on-the-mount police, that might help matters) and on their own surveillance equipment to prevent theft.

Oliver was going through how to convince Lin and Gene to take watch shifts throughout the night when someone rapped on the door. Gene gave him a look. We agreed Lin would ask the questions, Noll.

It's not Lin's investigation, it's ours.

And we're fourteen, so let Lin ask the questions so we get some decent answers.

Over in the corner, Lin was watching them. He did that a lot, even after Oliver had stopped making the room shake when he was frustrated. He could feel the power in him, tightly knotted, and Oliver closed his eyes, let out a breath, and smoothed it over. Gene sensed it, and prodded at him curiously, but didn't ask. "Come in."

Chief Constable Harris was in his fifties, grey-haired, round-cheeked, and slimmer than Oliver had been expecting, considering the contents of his pantry. He wore glasses that kept slipping down his nose, just one size too big. "Hello, boys," he said to Oliver and Gene (Oliver ground his teeth) and then he glanced over at Lin. "Is everything set up the way you and your nephews want it?"

"Everything is fine, thank you," said Lin. On the computer screen, temperature readings were going up and down in three-degree segments, from nine to six to nine again, and Oliver frowned. Gene, do you hear anything outside?

Nothing. The spirit's still hiding. Why?

Must be a hole in the phone booth, Oliver thought back at him, and tuned in to Lin and Constable Harris's conversation again. Then he caught himself. Assumptions usually resulted in logical fallacies. He would have to check the phone booth later, once they had gone through their first night of observation.

"—else happened that you can think of in regards to the phone booth since you filed the report with the Society?"

The constable scratched his chin thoughtfully; he had either forgotten to shave that morning or his facial hair grew exceptionally quickly, because Oliver could hear the rasp of scruff against skin even from across the room. "Mostly it's been simple stuff—lights flickering, the phone falling off the hook when no one uses it, how chilly the damn thing is. Nobody wants to go near it; they don't like it."

"And roughly how old is it? I couldn't find a manufacturer's plate inside."

"It must have been built in the sixties, maybe a little earlier—I remember it going up when I was in secondary school." Constable Harris thought for a moment. "Maybe 1964, 1965? You'll have to double-check with the phone company records, I'm sure they'll have it written down somewhere."

1960s. Oliver dropped down onto the floor, pulled his own laptop (a gift for his and Eugene's last birthday) and started searching Mary-on-the-mount 1960s to see if there was anything amiss. The Professor seemed to be sitting beside him, speaking in his ear. History has all the answers, Oliver, if you just look hard enough.

"There isn't much crime here, is there, Constable?" It was phrased as a question, spoken as a statement; Lin cocked his head at the constable, just a little, as though he was a falcon studying prey. "My nephews are concerned for the cameras, is all. Aren't you, Noll?"

This is punishment, Oliver thought, though for what, he wasn't quite certain. Lin's visible eye was sparkling with mischief. "Yes, Uncle Koujo," he said, and then turned his face away quickly so he couldn't catch Gene snickering. Maybe for keeping them out so long in the rain. He'd have to rethink that next time. I can stay inside, they can set things up.

The only results he was getting for Mary-on-the-mount in the 1960s was an unexpected flood and a veritable cacophony of Beatles fan-sites; apparently they'd had a concert here in 1963. The whole county had gone mad for them. He scrolled back up to the top of the screen and added crime to his search parameters.

"—I ask," said Constable Harris, and he lowered his voice. "Why did you bring these boys with you, Mr. …Lin, was it? It seems a bit…well, unorthodox."

"Gene has the strongest clairvoyance of any psychic I have ever come across. Noll is going to Oxford and is an exceptionally talented psychic in his own right." The corner of Lin's mouth quirked. "They've been helpful a time or two. Besides, their parents are in Scotland right now, and I couldn't leave them on their own. Their mum'd kill me."

Constable Harris blinked, and then squinted at Gene and Oliver again, as though he was seeing them through a layer of saran wrap. "Really?"

Helpful, Oliver scoffed silently. We solved those cases for them. They were our cases.

Bite your tongue, Noll, if it helps, Gene said. Let Lin handle it. Or imagine what the constable would do if Lin said that. His eyes would probably fall out.

Age discrimination is a crime, you know, said Oliver, but he wasn't really irritated. Not about this, anyway. Gene rolled his eyes.

We're fourteen. It's not age discrimination if you're not old enough to be working in the first place.

"If you could tell me a little more about what you know of the phone booth, Constable, that would be helpful," said Lin, and, standing, started to usher the constable towards the door. "Take a shower, boys."

"Yes, Uncle Koujo," said Gene. Oliver mumbled something under his breath that might have been a yes and kept working on his computer, his towel still draped over his ears. Missing person: Catherine Lee, missing person: Michael Tanning, rash of thefts, missing person: Lea McAllister, found person; Catherine Lee…not a very violent town. He wondered if there'd been more than a handful of deaths by foul play in the last century and a half.

"Well, somebody had to have died," said Gene, and flopped down across from Oliver and his computer, lying spread-eagle across the carpet. "There wouldn't be a spirit otherwise. The question is if it was violent or not." He tilted his head up to look at Oliver. "Are you showering first?"

"I'm fine," Oliver said, still scrolling through the databases. Missing person: Isaac Bremmings, missing person: Linda Koslov—that had to have been at least fifteen people by now, all of them teenagers. Something curdled, deep in his gut. "There's only one spirit in the phone booth?"

"So far as I can tell." Gene cocked his head. "Why?"

Because there have been more people going missing in this town over the past fifty years than there are buildings on the main street? Five already this year. He closed his eyes for a moment, sending the information to Gene, and returned to scrolling. It might not have anything to do with the phone booth, but his instincts, his gut, the thing that had kept them safe for years, was nudging at him to look deeper into it. He wasn't about to ignore that.

"When do you want us to take shifts?" said Gene, and Oliver blinked, looking up at him. He was smiling. "You really do look like Dad when you do that, you know."

Oliver frowned a bit, but didn't dispute that. "I'll be awake for a while researching. I'll wake you up at midnight, if you like."

"Fine by me." Gene stood. "I'm going to shower." Let me know what Lin says, he added, and then Gene had grabbed a dry towel and walked out of their base.

Oliver waited until Gene had shut the door behind him before pulling up a word document, and going through the names.

The singing was slow, quiet. It sent ripples through the darkness, a pebble dropped into a pond. Oliver came to himself quite suddenly, his hand laced through his brother's, and blinked. Gene was watching something in the distance, but his fingers tightened around Oliver's when he realized Oliver had come to. You're here.

Why? Oliver asked, but he didn't let go of Gene's hand. There was a humming in his ears that he didn't quite recognize, almost rhythmic, but not quite there. You haven't pulled me in a dream for months.

Not unintentionally, said Gene. He was very pale; his hair was wet again, just like it had been out in the rainstorm, and in his matching pajamas, he looked very small. Oliver felt around in his brother's head for a moment, and their powers mixed, weaving like spun sugar. It tasted like copper on his tongue.

What happened? he asked, and finally, Gene turned to look at him. His eyes were red.

Something bad, he said.

Oliver said nothing. He just nodded. Show me, he said, and Gene drew a breath and let it out and closed his eyes. Oliver didn't; he watched as the world blurred, shifted, like a TV screen gone to static. There was grass under his feet, then concrete, then grass again. He looked up at the sky, and the moon settled to a crescent. According to the weather site he'd checked at the end of his shift, they were currently in a half-moon phase. So, a different time, then. Probably years ago.

He didn't recognize where they were. A street. In Mary-on-the-mount, probably. It was raining, but not as hard as it had been before; just a drizzle. Gene tightened his grip on Oliver's hand. This way, he said, and they started off down an alley. It smelled of old beer and piss and vomit, and on the wall there was a poster of a band with shaggy hair and the date 23 July 1963. They passed by it quietly. It was like they'd stepped into a painting, and the only sound was their footsteps and the humming that was still in Oliver's ears. Then they were through, into the dream, and he could hear it all. Wind. Rain. Trees. There were raindrops on his hair, behind his ears. Oliver shook his head a little and kept walking.

They turned right again at the end of the alleyway. There were a few parked cars on this road, and a few lights on in the houses. It was Mayberry Street, Oliver realized. The street where the constable lived. The house where they were staying was dark, the windows boarded shut, and a sign out front read For Sale By Owner. The phone box wasn't there.

Gene's fingers went stiff. Noll.

Oliver squinted through the rain. There was a swarm of figures coming down the street, four of them, bundled up in heavy coats. A few were smoking, lit cigarettes like little red beacons through the misting rain. Two boys, two girls. They couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen. One of the girls had fashionably bobbed hair, and she was wearing a short skirt, sharing her cigarette with a boy she was holding hands with. The other two—the girl was frumpier, the boy more shy—were walking behind them, talking quietly. The boy was smoking. They passed the spot where the phone booth would be, and Gene tugged on his hand.

Come on, he said. We have to follow them.

Have you seen this before? Oliver asked, but Gene just smiled, sadly. He looked like he might cry. Gene blinked furiously, and then shook his head. Only tonight. First time. Come on. You have to see.

He pulled Oliver forward.

Gene knew him too well, Oliver thought. Whenever Gene had these dreams, and tried to explain, he could never do it quite to Oliver's satisfaction. What did the air taste like? How many people were there? What street? What building? How short was the man? How tall was the woman? How long did it take for him to die? How long did it take for her to bury them? Where was the sun in the sky? Oliver had been pulled into Gene's dreams too many times to count when they'd been too little to know any better, and some of them had been so terrible Gene still had nightmares about them. The other children in the orphanage had always been scared of Gene, because Gene had known things—about their parents, about their siblings, about them—that he should have never, ever have known.

The quartet of teenagers turned off onto another street. The smoking couple went one way; the quiet one another. Gene turned after the quiet ones, and Oliver followed; they were close enough to hear the conversation, now.

"—concert." The girl had a little lisp, just enough to be noticed, not bad enough to need speech therapy. "Thanks for bringing me. I know Jeanie really wanted to come."

"Jeanie." The boy scoffed, and let out a breath of smoke before dropping his cigarette and squashing it under his shoes. "Jeanie's a bitch. Besides, she doesn't even like the Beatles." The boy—just a little taller than the girl, dark-haired, with a little gap between his two front teeth—started singing under his breath. "Love, love me, do—"

The girl smiled. Oliver couldn't really make out her face, just the flash of her teeth in the sudden light of the street lamp, a little bit of color in her cheeks like she was blushing. She had a little mark on her chin, not a mole, just a dark spot. He was pretty sure Mrs. Martin would have called it a beauty mark. "You know I love you—"

"I'll always be true—"

"So please—" They were singing together, quietly, laughingly. It wasn't particularly in tune, and it was clear neither of them really knew how to sing, but there was a pretty sort of harmony to it that made his ears ring. Gene was humming along with them, because of course Gene knew every Beatles song in existence. "Love me, do."

The boy and girl laughed. The girl tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Really, though, Noah. Thanks for inviting me."

"No problem, Pru."

Under the sound of the rain, the humming grew louder.

They walked for a while longer, Noah and Pru ahead, Oliver and Gene trailing behind. Oliver could almost hear the humming, now. Once, he tried to look behind them, and Gene squeezed his hand tight and shook his head. Don't, he said. You can't change it.

I know that, said Oliver, but he still faced forward again.

Noah and Pru were walking close together, their hands scuffing against each other every once in a while. At one point, Noah lit up another cigarette, held it in his bare hand, and then floated it a few inches over his palm over to Pru; Pru squeezed her eyes into squints and made it write her name in the air in smoke. PK users, Oliver thought. Both of them.

They stopped at a road called Cartwright and Noah kissed Pru on the cheek before turning left. Pru touched the spot with her fingertips, smiling, and kept moving straight, her hands deep in her pockets. The rain was coming down harder now, and Oliver could hear someone else walking along behind them, boots splashing in puddles on the sidewalk. Prudence looked over her shoulder, and then pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and walked faster. The dream was rippling with her fear; it left a sour taste in Oliver's mouth. Gene and Oliver walked faster; so did the figure behind them. The glimpse Oliver caught as they turned the corner was one of great bulk, a big coat, a hat.

No. The word was a whisper under the humming. No. Don't touch me.

The humming was coming from their tail, Oliver realized, and had been this whole time. He'd been following them since Gene and Oliver had entered the dream, since Prudence, Noah, and their smoking friends had left the concert. He'd been following Pru. Pru was jogging now, her breath coming in quick gasps, and she seized a lamppost and used it to whip herself around the corner. Behind Gene and Oliver, the boot-steps broke into a run, and then they were all sprinting. Somehow, the twins were keeping up. Oliver thought it might have been Gene pulling them along with his power. He'd brought them into the dream; he could control it, every part of it, if he wished.

Prudence screamed.

"Noll, wake up."

Oliver shot up out of his sleeping bag, and nearly vomited. His head was spinning, his eyes hurt; it felt as though he'd been using power without passing it to Gene first. Only a little, but enough to make the world whirl. There was a thunk, and the table fell out of the air and onto its side. Lin shook him lightly by the shoulders. "You were dreaming," he said, but Oliver pushed him off.

"Gene's dreaming," he said, and he hovered over his brother, watching. The clock on the wall read 3:04AM. Sweat beaded Gene's upper lip, his forehead; he was pale and cold. "Gene," he said, and then slipped into Japanese. "Okinasai."

Gene's face screwed up. Oliver touched his brother's shoulder, and caught an image, a flash—a knife, blood, fingers flying. He shook Gene, lightly. "Gene."

Gene's eyes snapped open. Oliver sat back on his heels, watching his brother breathe, short, shallow breaths that were much like hyperventilation, if they hadn't been so very, very controlled. Gene's hands fisted in the sleeping bag, and Lin, frowning, went to go put the table back where it had been. Oliver still felt as though he'd been pushed through the far side of a bad fever, but the nausea would pass, in time, once Gene was all right.

"Gene," he said, and Gene turned to face Oliver, blinking to keep his eyes clear.

"He killed her," said Gene. He rolled onto his side, drawing his knees up against his chest. Oliver glanced at Lin, and then lay down beside his brother, linking their hands. It was the only way he knew to fix Gene, when Gene was so destroyed. "Later. But first he cut off all her fingers."

And the rain washed away the blood, Oliver thought, just to himself. Gene closed his eyes again.

Oliver lay awake, and thought.

Day Two
Prudence Gallagher. Seventeen. Vanished 23 July, 1963. She'd been on the list of missing persons he'd crafted, the first one in this long chain of disappearances so far as he could tell; the next to disappear had been Noah Walker, seventeen, the boy who had walked her most of the way home. Oliver wondered if that had been a coincidence, or part of a plan, and something in him twisted and went sour.

When he found her photograph online, there she was: honey-blonde hair, a beauty mark just below her lower lip, green eyes, a shy smile. It was a snapshot of her and the group of friends that had been there that night; she was wearing the same coat.

They'd never found her body, but her fingers had been sent home to her family, one at a time, once a week. No ransom note. No telephone call. Just fingers in the mail, with little notes. Do you miss her yet?

Love Me Do was circling in his head. He couldn't get it to go away. Not even listening to Japanese enka.

Gene slept hard. Lin did not, which was no surprise. Oliver spent most of the morning going over the information they'd gathered during the night—temperature readings, video footage, sound—but there was little to nothing to report. Just a chill. The phone booth dropped to about five degrees C at three-oh-four in the morning—exactly, Oliver thought, when Gene had woken from the dream—and had held there until dawn, when it warmed back up to nine degrees. When Gene reached out to the spirit there, there was no response. "It's like he's hidden behind something," Gene said, his eyebrows furrowing; he still looked pale and sick from the dream, and when they had had breakfast that morning, eggs and soldiers, he hadn't eaten a thing. "I can hear his voice, but not the words."

"It's a he?" Oliver asked, and Gene nodded.

"That I'm sure of. Young. Not Prudence," Gene added. "But there's an…I don't know what else to call it. An imprint of her, maybe. She's still around here. I can feel her. Not in the booth, though."

That was it, then. The ghost they'd been called here to deal with was not Prudence Gallagher. Doesn't mean there's no connection, Oliver thought, but he kept that in mind.

He caught Lin on the phone with Professor Davis after coming back from breakfast. They hadn't told Lin, yet, about Gene's dream, but Lin obviously knew something was going on—he'd seen Oliver float the table, seen Gene curl in on himself, go silent—and he had probably told the Professor. Oliver waited until Gene had gone back in the house to check readings before cocking his head at Lin. "Are you taking us back?"

"No," said Lin, and checked the thermometer they'd hung outside, for ambient temperature. "This one's working fine."

"Why not?"

"Because this is your case," said Lin, and the disapproval in his voice made Oliver want to flinch. Lin looked at him for a long moment, quiet, thoughtful—Oliver could feel the man's shiki bristling in the air—and then Lin walked back inside after Gene.

Oliver glanced at the phone booth again, then up the street, where the duo of couples had turned off in different directions. It was still raining, harder than it had been yesterday; Oliver checked his mobile, turned up the collar of his coat, and waded off through the puddles.

Cartwright Street was still there. It was foggy, and difficult to recognize things—transferring them from dream to reality, from the past to the present, was harder than Oliver anticipated—but he found the corner where Prudence had turned, the lamp post she'd used, and followed her footsteps. Here, he thought, and stopped about halfway down the street. He caught her here.

There were at least six houses around here. He could remember lights and porches in the blur of motion that the dream had ended in, when Lin had woken him up. There were people here. Why didn't they come out to see what was going on?

Maybe they had, and they'd just been too late to notice what had happened.

Oliver turned, and went back to the lamp post. The likelihood of being able to make a psychometric connection with a girl fifty years dead was miniscule, but still—he had to try. He had too much power, even for one half of a set of psychic twins; if anyone could do it, he could. He brushed his fingers over the post, and closed his eyes. People had hung little flyers up, and it took a while to wade through those memories. Deeper and deeper. Rain and snow, sun and wind. Crashing cars. He pushed, and time moved faster. He could feel himself slipping. Gene tugged on the bond between them, and Oliver passed him power. Gene passed it back. Deeper and deeper. The world spun. He couldn't feel his body anymore, too deep in the lamp post—

Fingers catching and releasing. Tears. Panic. Terror. It hit him in the gut like a fist. Oliver clung on as best he could. His hands hurt. He was Prudence. Her lungs had gone tight. She was running. Someone was behind her. A man. He's gonna rape me. Kill me. Something. Her asthma was going to kick in in a second and then she wouldn't be able to run and he'd catch her. If she could get home—

She let go of the lamp post, and Oliver crashed back into his own body. He heaved, and threw up in the street before he could stop himself. A cascade of Gene's worry hit him in the heart, but Oliver pushed it away, and took deep breaths. He turned his face to the rain, rinsed his mouth with raindrops, and then spat it out again. His heart was jumping in his chest, part from Prudence's adrenaline, partly from his own.

Gene'll have told Lin, Oliver thought, and forced himself to stand up straight, to keep walking. He had an image of Prudence Gallagher's house clear in his mind—the yellow roof, the lopsided fence—and if he squinted, he could see it through the rain. But it was empty; when he made it to the gate, holding on to the nearest fencepost and hating his own weakness, there was a sign in the front. For Sale. Just like Constable Harris's house in 1963.

Oliver clambered over the fence, and tried the windows.

It took four windows before he finally found one that was unlocked. Oliver dropped hard onto the floor of the Gallagher house, jamming his knee against the wood, and he hissed something under his breath that might have been French. (Prudence had known French, known it fluently, because her mother had been from France—) There were still memories layered over and over in his head, Prudence's thoughts. She'd seen the house, clear and bright. He was in the den. There had been a TV in the corner. He touched the wall, passed Gene power, and again it hit him like a blow, an image: Prudence Gallagher, her parents, her little brother, watching a TV show in black and white. He yanked his hand off the wall, and kept moving.

Her parents' room. Her brother's. (Her brother's name was Michael and he was ten and going to primary school in—) Gene passed him power; Oliver passed it back. There was so much sadness in this house. When he trailed his fingers over the walls, it stuck to him like flypaper. Prudence's room was towards the back, the window shut and curtained, her closet still smelling of lavender and old soap. (Her mother had hung lavender sachets in the closets, to keep the moths off—) He looked inside, found nothing, and then shut the closet door, turning to the room.

It was empty. Of course it was. The house was for sale. There were marks in the walls that might have been from pins. He ran his fingers over them, but only found happy feelings there—posters, photographs, clippings from magazines.

Noll, said Gene in his head. Lin's furious.

Fine, said Oliver, and went to the window. There was nothing of consequence here, either. But when his foot landed on a creaky board, memory blasted through him like a gunshot. He passed power to Gene. Gene passed it back. Let him be mad.

Mum's gonna kill you if you hurt yourself.

You're here. I'm not going to injure myself. Oliver went rooting in the closet again. There was a hammer, with memories of workmen clinging to it. He took it, and went back to the creaky board. Someone had nailed it down, but when he dug the teeth of the hammer into the gap between the boards, it came up easily. There was something down there. A plastic bag. He pushed the board to the side, pulled the thing out. It felt like a notebook. When he peeked into the bag, he saw a pair of gloves laid over it. I found something.

You're not supposed to break into peoples' houses, Noll, said Gene. Oliver shrugged that off, and put the board back where it had been.

Technically it's no one's house. Prudence had never made it here before she died. He checked the doorknob, but there was no terror, not like there'd been at the light post. Frustration, happiness, tears, life, but no gut-curdling terror. There's nothing left here. Her parents didn't have anything to do with it.

Gene said nothing. Oliver went back to the window he'd come in through, and boosted himself out, shutting it behind him. He used a touch of the power Gene had sent him to snap the lock shut behind him. No point in letting anyone else get in.

Lin was waiting for him at the top of the street.

"I should've known better to let you out of my sight," Lin said. Oliver had never felt the man so angry. His shiki were boiling around him, strands of vivid energy that left trails of black over his sight. Oliver blinked a few times, and then they were gone. He had too much of Gene's power, if he was seeing Lin's shiki. He passed some back to Gene.

"Yes, you should have," said Oliver, and wiped a strand of wet hair out of his eyes. This time, he'd forgotten his hat.

Lin scoffed. "What am I supposed to do with you if you keep running away like this? If any harm came to you, the Professor and Mrs. Davis would kill me. Gene would kill me."

"Nothing happened to me."

"But it could have," Lin snarled, and then he had Oliver by the shoulders. Oliver thought about throwing him off with a blast of power, but decided against it. "If anything had happened to you, Oliver, it could have hurt Gene. Do you understand? With you two linked the way you are it's not impossible, and he was keyed in to everything you were doing when I left. And even if the link didn't affect him, your injury, your death, most certainly would. If you can't think about your own safety, think of your brother's."

No. Oliver nearly mouthed the word, and then pressed his lips tight together. He would have never done anything to endanger his brother. Not ever. Not ever. If something had happened, he would have cut the link, he would have done something, he would have backed off, he would have run—

Gene, he thought, and clenched his hands into fists. The plastic bag rustled. Gene.

Lin snarled something under his breath in Chinese, and then yanked his hands away. "I'm putting one of my shiki on you from now on, Oliver," he said. "If you're this reckless again, it will have my full permission to incapacitate you, and when you wake up from that, you'll be back in the Davis House. Do you understand me?"

"But—"

"Do you understand me?"

Oliver hissed through his teeth. "Fine. It won't happen again. Are you satisfied?"

"No." Lin straightened, closed his eyes, breathed for a moment. "But that will do for now."

It was a scrapbook.

Oliver had waited until his brother and Lin were both asleep (or at least pretending very, very well) to open the plastic bag he'd found at the Gallagher house. The notebook was three inches thick and plastered with bits of paper: photographs, stubs from movie and concert tickets, little paragraphs like diary entries, theatre pamphlets. There was even a graduation booklet from her primary school. Her handwriting was neat and loopy, like little smiles. Michael + me at beach, 1959, and she would have been thirteen or fourteen then, around his age. She was wearing a big floppy hat and throwing sand at her brother.

He'd synced too deeply with the lamp post. He'd felt too much of her final moments. Prudence Gallagher wasn't a ghost, wasn't part of their investigation, but she was still dead when she should have been alive, and for some reason that was sticking with him. Oliver turned the page. Secondary school. Ugly uniforms, big smiles. There was a photograph of a boy he recognized, cigarette in his mouth. Noah Walker, 1962, courtyard. So that was his name. Oliver wrote that down in his notebook, and turned the page again. Snapshots of a life.

This isn't part of our job, he thought, but then something else, some other voice that sounded a lot like Gene, whispered: Who knows that it's not? Besides, doesn't she deserve as much rest as the spirit in the phone booth?

Oliver frowned. He glanced at Gene. His brother was sleeping. Color had finally come back into his face, after nearly twenty-four hours of him wandering around wide-eyed and pale, and his hands weren't clenched into the sleeping bag the way they usually were after a dream that nasty. Oliver wondered if he was dreaming again.

Lin had called the phone company while Oliver had been out in the rain. The phone booth had been put up between the first and fifteenth of August, 1963, roughly two weeks to a month after Prudence Gallagher had been taken by her unknown assailant. Her family had had a thumb and three fingers by that point, he thought, and by the middle of September, all her fingers would have been hacked off. One at a time. Inch by inch. He wondered if Lin's shiki was still hovering over his shoulder, and decided that there was nothing to be done about it. It wasn't as though he had the sort of clairvoyant abilities his brother had; he wouldn't be able to tell the damn thing to piss off.

Air whistled over his ear. Oliver ignored it. He curled up in the window seat, glancing down at the cameras and the phone booth—all untouched, so far as he could tell—and then stared out into the rain. His fingers felt hot, like he'd dipped them in embers, and before something exploded, Oliver took a few deep breaths, releasing his qi to the universe with each one. He was angry, he realized, marveling a little. He'd never had a case that made him angry before. The senseless fury and brutality of Prudence Gallagher's murder seethed in him like a poison. So far as he could tell, so far as Prudence had been able to tell him, there wasn't much that she had done in life to end up with a death like that one. Whatever it had been. Because she had to be dead—Gene wouldn't be having clairvoyant dreams about her otherwise.

They could hold a séance, but he doubted that Lin would let them do one for a spirit with such a bad end as Prudence's. Age discrimination, Oliver thought again, and this time he did grind his teeth in his frustration. Just because they were children didn't mean they couldn't handle it. Gene was stronger than anyone realized. He glanced over at his twin again, tentatively prodding at the link, but there was no point. Gene was dead asleep.

If they summoned Prudence Gallagher's spirit, though, what would that do to their investigation? This was the first time the Professor and his wife had seen fit to give them an investigation of their own, and if they abandoned it for something that was…well, flashier than a haunted phone booth, then there was no guarantee Professor Davis would ever give them a case again. And Oliver wasn't quite sure he'd be able to survive, rationally, without a case. Not anymore. They made sense the way the rest of the world didn't; he could solve them, understand them, clearly, rationally, the way so many of the puzzles of the world couldn't be solved.

The phone booth was their priority. Prudence Gallagher was a low second.

There was a beep from the computer. Oliver glanced at Lin—asleep, for once, breathing quietly, his hands folded neatly even in unconsciousness—and then slid out of the window seat, creeping to the monitors. Another temperature drop. Nine degrees to six. Then to four. Then to one. It hit zero as soon as the clock turned to 3:04 AM, and Oliver swallowed hard.

"Lin," he said. "Gene. Something's happening."

Lin came awake in an instant. Gene had to be prodded telepathically before he opened his eyes. Regardless, within thirty seconds, all three of them were clustered around the computer screens. Oliver had the headphones on, pressed hard against his ears, and then he heard it.

Tap.

"Knocking sounds," he said. The temperature went down another degree, and hit zero.

Tap tap.

"Which microphone is registering them?"

"East side. The one closest to the door."

Tap tap tap.

"Look," said Gene, and pointed at the screen, and if Oliver had blinked, he would have missed it. A flicker of movement inside the phone booth. He looked at another video feed, and there it was. Tall. Thin. The absence of color, rather than simple black. His mouth was dry and his heart was pounding as Oliver pressed the headset even harder over his ears. There you are.

The spirit turned to Camera Three, the one they'd propped up beside the actual phone. It smiled. It was more a baring of teeth than anything, a flash of white and red in an empty face, but it made Lin hiss, like a cat, like one of his shiki. The video feed skittered.

Tap tap tap tap—

In the booth, the glass panels began to tremble. The temperature was still dropping. -2, -3, -5, -7, -16, down and down and down—

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap—

"Is that it?" Oliver said to Gene, and when Gene didn't answer, he pushed at him with his mind. Is that the spirit you sensed?

No, said Gene, no, I've never felt this one before—

More than one ghost? Oliver thought, and then the glass in the booth shattered all at once, and Gene began to scream. He clapped his hands over his ears, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Oliver reached for him instantly, but Gene slammed doors down in his mind, shut all the windows, pulled all the curtains, threw up a wall. He screamed.

GENE!

Gene was on his knees, now, bending over as if he was about to vomit, hands clenched tight in his hair. He was shouting in French, shrieking, and Oliver thought he heard the name Noah before the door slammed open and Chief Constable Harris and his wife rushed in in their pajamas. Lin was hovering over Gene, shaking him, whispering in Japanese. Oliver thrust all the power he could at his brother, worming it through the holes in Gene's defense, but he kept his eyes fixed on the video screens. When Elsa Harris saw the black figure on the screens, she screamed too. "Sweet Jesus Christ—"

Shut up, Oliver thought, shut up, because the tapping was making sense now. Patterned. Long pauses and short ones. Morse code. He seized a pencil and started writing it out, dots and dashes. It was an endless loop, five words over and over again, and as soon as Oliver had it all down, every screen went black. When the feed came back, the spirit was gone. The temperature had shot back up to nine degrees. Even the tapping had stopped.

Gene stopped screaming. It was so sudden it left all of their ears ringing. Then, and only then, did Oliver get off his stool and come to his brother; then and only then did Gene let down all the walls he'd shoved up and seize Oliver's hands.

"It was him," said Gene. "It was him. It was the one who killed Prudence Gallagher."

Chief Constable Harris went stiff. Elsa was still blubbering about monsters. Lin glanced from Gene to Oliver, and then straightened to go and deal with the adults.

He's not the one in the phone booth, Oliver said, more statement than question, but Gene nodded.

I don't know where he came from. He wasn't there before. The phone booth—someone else is in the phone booth. He's still trapped.

Oliver thought about the construction of the phone booth. The disappearance of Prudence Gallagher. The humming. The figure in the dark. Why no one had seen Prudence being taken, even after she'd screamed for help.

"I think I know what's in the phone booth," said Oliver.

Day Three
They gave an excuse to the phone company—cited bad electrics—and tore down the phone booth the next day. They only had to chip a few inches down into the pavement to find the first bone.

It took hours to uncover the pelvis and the skull. Oliver took one look at the gaping eye sockets, and pressed his lips tight together. According to the doctors that were called in, forensic and pediatric alike, the bones belonged to a human male. Maybe sixteen, maybe seventeen. Oliver asked them to check the dental records and compare them with one Noah Walker, and then turned to stand next to Gene. Gene seized his hand as soon as Oliver came within range, and Oliver did not protest.

It is Noah, Gene told him quietly, and then he reached out a hand and brushed against something that Oliver couldn't see. "It's all right," he said. "We'll find her. You can go on, now."

Oliver caught a flash of an image from Gene's mind—a teenage boy, cigarette between his teeth, mussed hair and a soft smile—before the ghost turned, and faded. There would be, he thought, nothing more to find in the phone booth. But that was a distant afterthought, something that faded within seconds. He was still thinking of the Morse code message that should have been impossible, a note from someone who should have been dead.

Do you miss her yet?

Ghosts rarely traveled. There had only been one recorded instance in the Society's archives of a ghost that was not attached to a specific location, and that had been one that had been focused on a specific person. But the black phantom, whoever he was, didn't seem to be fixated on anything in particular. He hadn't been present when Gene had made the first spiritual sweep of the phone booth, and he wasn't present now that they'd dug up Noah Walker's bones. Twenty disappearances in the past fifty years. Exactly twenty. There had been more, but others had been found, rattled, confused, but all right.

Love Me Do was still spinning around in his head.

They left the construction people and the doctors to their work, and returned to base. Oliver wondered if they could possibly convince the constable and his wife to let them stay here a little longer, considering Prudence Gallagher. It wasn't completely out of the question. Then he caught Lin watching him. "What?"

"Your mother will be returning to the Davis house tomorrow night," said Lin. "I believe the Professor requested that the three of us be there to meet her at the station."

"We can't leave," Oliver said. His tone was hard and cold. "There's still a ghost out there to exorcise."

"One that may be beyond your abilities."

"Nothing is beyond my abilities," said Oliver, and flicked a glance at Gene. Gene laughed silently, and shook his head.

Idiot scientist.

Lin pressed his lips tight together. Oliver pressed his advantage. "I have absolutely no intention of leaving Mary-on-the-mount until that thing is destroyed, Lin. I don't know what it is, but if it can be dealt with, it will be done. I strongly suspect that it's been taking teenagers for the past twenty years—how or why, I don't know—but it's killing, and it's going to keep killing, and unless we can kill it, it will just continue."

"A thing like that isn't a ghost any longer, Noll," said Lin. "It's a monster. It's not something that can be exorcised."

"Then we burn it to the ground," said Oliver. "We don't leave here until it's gone."

They stared at each other. The fight in the street was still too close, too raw, for Oliver to say please. Not that he was good at saying please, anyway. Finally, Lin grunted, the only noise of agreement that he ever really made, and said, "I will send a message to the Professor. This is his decision, not mine. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," said Oliver, and then turned to Gene. "Are you up for a séance?"

"Ready and waiting, captain," said Gene, and offered a silly little salute. His fingers were shaking. When he reached forward with his mind, Oliver linked with him, lightly. I'm sorry I scared you.

Stupid empath, said Oliver, and Gene burst out laughing.

Lin did not ask.

It was Lin who went to the constable and his wife to explain the situation, and Oliver and Gene who set up for the séance. It would have to be, he decided, close to where Prudence Gallagher had been taken; now that Noah Walker's skeleton had been found, Oliver doubted that that thing—whatever it was—would return to the phone booth again. So where Prudence had vanished, that single clear spot on the sidewalk, was their best bet, and their only lead.

He considered several options—that it was possessing someone and continuing to kill, that it was a ghost that simply led teens to their deaths (there had been no fingers in the mail since Prudence Gallagher's death, after all), that it really was a monster, as Lin had said—and then set them all aside. There was simply not enough evidence for any particular theory to bear fruit. Not yet.

Traditionally, a séance should have been left to midnight. With the time limit of Luella Davis' return, Oliver didn't want to wait. They held out until sunset, researching, trying to find connections between the rest of the missing teenagers, and then Oliver collected a tape recorder and the candle in a plastic holder he'd bought at a local convenience store, and led the way down to Cartwright Street. It was dark, and the houses were quiet, their windows shut and barred. He wondered if they'd heard about the skeleton of Noah Walker yet, and if that was why they were being so quiet.

They set up one of their infrared cameras on the street, carefully, and then took their places. No point in hiding from the rain. They put up an umbrella to keep the candle from going out, and then Oliver, Gene, and Lin joined hands, and Gene began his quiet speech. A perfect spiritualist, thought Oliver, and wondered if they were going to have to translate Gene's findings from French. It wasn't impossible.

"Prudence Gallagher," said Gene. "If you are here, come and sit with us. Come and speak with us. Prudence Gallagher, we call you from where you have hid, we draw you from your corners, we beg of you to come and be among us. Prudence Therese Gallagher, if you are here, join us now."

The candle flickered. Oliver had not felt a breeze.

"She's coming," said Gene, and then his hand went stiff in Oliver's, and his head fell back. Rain plastered his bangs to his forehead, and his eyes flickered wildly beneath the lids. Oliver saw Lin tighten his grip on Gene's hand, felt the shiki ruffle his hair again. The candle sputtered. Chief Constable Harris had done them a favor, and cordoned them of with caution tape; he was standing there in his uniform, smoking furiously, as Gene shifted and rolled his head on his neck, and then opened his eyes again. He licked his lips.

"I am Prudence," said Gene, and the rhythms of his voice were strange. The song in Oliver's head grew louder. Love, love me, do…

"Prudence Gallagher," said Oliver, and he sounded so frail and childlike, his voice high and cracking. "You've died. Do you know this?"

"Yes," said Prudence through Gene's mouth. "Of course."

"Do you know how you died?"

"I was murdered."

Oliver shot a look at Lin. Lin was watching Gene. "Do you know how killed you, Miss Gallagher?" asked Oliver, and Gene's mouth twisted up into a sad smile.

"No," he said. She said. "I…slept a lot. And every time I woke up I was missing another one of my fingers."

She started humming. Love Me Do. Oliver bit his tongue. "Miss Gallagher, did you see the man who killed you?"

"No," said Prudence, but she wasn't answering Oliver's questions anymore. Gene was staring at something over Lin's shoulder, but when Oliver looked, there was nothing there. "No. Don't come near me."

"Miss Gallagher," said Lin.

"NO!"

"Miss Gallagher!"

"Alice started to her feet," said Gene, and he was rocking back and forth, his eyes filling with tears, "for it flashed across her mind that she had never seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity—"

"Miss Gallagher!" Oliver said again, louder this time.

"—she ran across the field after it and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge—"

"Miss Gallagher, come away from the dark and speak to us—"

"—and in another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was going to get out again."

"Miss Gallagher!"

Prudence Gallagher giggled, said, "Look for me down the rabbit hole," and then Gene went limp. The candle blew out. Oliver let go of Gene's hand, and clenched his fingers into a fist. Then he stood up, ignoring the slop of water down into his boots, and kicked the nearest thing that came to hand—one of the posts holding up the caution tape. Chief Constable Harris bit down on his pipe. "Steady on, boy," he said, but Oliver ignored him. He whirled on Gene. Are you all right?

Gene grinned a bit. Never better, little brother.

We're four minutes apart.

Four minutes of glory until they ended with you, said Gene, and then coughed. Blood spattered the asphalt. Oliver lunged forward and seized his brother's hands, taking power and giving it, and Gene rested his head on Oliver's shoulder and breathed. There was red on his lips, like some sick artist's idea of a joke. Gene took a shuddering breath, and then another, and said, "That girl was intense."

When you get all your fingers cut off and sent to your family in little envelopes, you end up intense, Oliver thought, and Gene blinked at him.

Was that a joke? Not the fingers bit, but the way you said it.

Oliver ignored him. He looked at Lin. "Down the rabbit hole?"

Lin shrugged. Then he saw the blood on Gene's lips, and went very, very still. "Eugene," he said, but Gene shook his head.

"I'm fine. I've had worse." Gene straightened, still breathing shallowly; if he took any deeper breaths, he'd hack up blood again. Oliver could feel it in his bones. I shouldn't have asked him, Oliver thought, and closed his eyes. I shouldn't have asked him to do a séance. Gene always synced too deeply with the spirits, used too much power—he was like Oliver with his psychometry, except he did it far more often, and thus it was far more dangerous.

You're supposed to be smarter than me, you ridiculously idiotic empath, Oliver thought furiously, and Gene grinned at him again. There was still blood on his teeth.

Oh, grow up, Noll. I'm a big boy, I make my own decisions. I'll live. "She said rabbit hole," said Gene, and went to where Oliver had kicked over the line of caution tape, stepping over it. Oliver and Lin followed, hurriedly, in case Gene fell over onto his backside. "I can't think of a rabbit hole in a place like this being big enough to hold a girl. But—"

He stopped. Ten feet away from where Prudence Gallagher had been taken, there was a manhole in the ground, covered with a copper lid. The writing on the lid said Sewage. Gene crouched, stuck his fingers into the holes, and heaved it aside, glancing up at Lin and Oliver.

"I think this looks a hell of a lot like a rabbit hole," he said. "Don't you?"

"The sewage system was built on top of a set of old catacombs that have been here since Queen Maud." Chief Constable Harris led the way down the manhole, holding a torch in one hand, using the other to lever himself down the latter. Oliver did not look away from the ladder, or take a deep breath. The stench of the sewage was too much for him to really think clearly, and that was most certainly saying something. "I checked the old records for the investigation into Prudence Gallagher's disappearance, and nobody ever thought to check down here. They had their eye on a man from the postal service for a while, but he produced an alibi, and they came up flat. I think this is the first time anyone's looked into the Gallagher disappearance in three decades."

Gene touched down on the sewer path, and held a sleeve over his nose. "God," he said. "Jesus God, it stinks down here."

"It's a sewer, boy. 'course it does."

"No," said Gene. Oliver stepped off the last rung, and turned on his hand-held torch. "It smells like blood down here."

Lin's shiki rustled against Oliver's hair, and he thought he felt something brush against his ear. Gene blinked, looked around, and then put a hand up to the air beside his cheek before glancing at Lin. "You didn't have to do that," he said.

"In case we're separated," said Lin, and then turned on his own torch. In the black, he looked eerie, like something out of a horror film. "If we are, and it's a distinct possibility, then you leave me, do you understand? The shiki will bring you back to the surface. It's not just if we're separated, either. If anything happens to me, I want you to get on a train back to Cambridge, and I want you to tell your parents what happened here. As soon as possible. You don't come back for me, Noll. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," said Gene, and then poked Oliver. Oliver snarled, silently.

"Yes, Uncle Koujo."

"I really think the boys should be left up on the surface, powerful or no, Lin." That was Chief Constable Harris; he turned on his own torch, and ran it over the walls. Bored teenagers had left graffiti down here, old pictures and swearwords peeling off the stone walls. "If your theory's right, then this isn't a place to bring kids."

"My theory," said Gene unexpectedly, and stepped past Chief Constable Harris. "It was my theory that he's down here. And I'm right," he added. "He's all over this place."

The Chief Constable blinked. Oliver smirked, and hurried after Gene.

I thought you said let Lin handle it?

He's irritating, said Gene, and ran his torchlight over the walls. To their right there was the sewage system, a river of filth and rot that Oliver kept his eyes away from. To their left, there was just plain stone. "This way," said Gene, and turned down one of the smaller passages. Oliver did not hesitate. Neither did Lin, though Lin had to bend nearly in half to fit into the hole. Chief Constable Harris had to go down on his hands and knees and crawl, because even if he was about Lin's height, he was much burlier, and it was the only way he could get his shoulders to fit.

The passage sloped down, widening slowly, until Lin could stand almost fully upright, and the Chief Constable no longer had to crawl. Gene led them like an expert, turning at some forks, avoiding others. The smell of the sewer had either faded, or they were too used to it to notice anymore, because suddenly Oliver could breathe without choking. Eventually even the graffiti faded, until they were just running their hands over rough stone. The old catacombs, Oliver said, and in front of him, Gene nodded.

He took them down here to die, said Gene, and Oliver wondered if Prudence had left Gene with more memories than Gene had said. When he prodded, Gene put his shields up.

Private, Noll. No peeking.

Oliver grumbled something under his breath, and accidentally-on-purpose flashed his torch in Gene's eyes. Gene snorted.

It was getting cold. Oliver checked the thermometer he'd thought to put in his pocket before they'd made their way down to Cartwright Street; they were at three degrees centigrade. When he let out a breath, smoke fumed from his mouth. "We're getting close," Gene said, and again Oliver felt Lin's shiki brush against his cheek. It was maddening not being able to see the stupid thing, even if he could feel it against him, warm like a cat, scaled like a lizard, with little fingers and an opposable thumb that had caught in his collar. He wondered what it had been, before making a deal with Lin.

If you want to know, ask Lin. He'll probably tell you if you say please.

Shut up, said Oliver, unable to think of anything else.

"I can feel him," Gene said. "He's here." We should have brought a real exorcist, said Gene, and when he reached back with one hand, Oliver took it.

Lin knows what he's doing, he said. Besides, there's no Catholic exorcist within a hundred miles of here. Professor Davis didn't think we'd need one.

You should call him Dad, Noll.

Oliver rolled his eyes.

"Gene, come away from the front," said Lin. Gene obeyed without question, pressing himself against the wall to let Lin take the lead, Lin with his shiki and his dead eye. Oliver took second place, passing a handful of power to Gene, and Gene handed it back to him, quietly. When Lin looked back at him, Oliver set his mouth in a firm line.

"I can help," he said.

Lin studied his face. Then he nodded, slowly. "Don't overexert yourself," he said. "It'll take too long to get you to a hospital if you collapse."

"Understood," said Oliver, because even if Lin was phenomenally frustrating, he was still learning qigong from him; Lin seemed to know Oliver's power better than Oliver himself did, sometimes. He flexed his fingers, and heat began to swell beneath his fingernails.

Chief Constable Harris sputtered something under his breath. "Seriously, Mr. Lin—"

Oliver passed Gene some power. Gene passed it back. Then Oliver snapped his fingers, and the torch in the Chief Constable's hand wrenched itself free. It spun in slow, maddening patterns in the air, and Oliver watched it with satisfaction, ignoring the pressure in his throat, as if he was about to vomit. Gene fed him more power, and then took some away, and the pressure eased.

The Chief Constable didn't seem to be able to speak. Oliver reached out with his free hand, plucked the torch from the air, and shone it at the ceiling. "I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself and my people," said Oliver. "I would appreciate it if you do not continue to imply that I can't, Chief Constable."

Chief Constable Harris stared at him for a long moment. When Oliver tossed the torch back at him, he nearly dropped it. But he didn't say another word.

The tunnel slanted down, down, down. Gene kept close behind him, close enough that Oliver could feel his brother's footsteps. There was no particular sign on the walls, no mark to show their way, but when they came to another fork, Gene said "Left" without hesitation, and Oliver added it to the list of directions that had been slowly accumulating in his head. He could get them out of here, if Gene's memory failed. That, at least, he was sure of.

Ahead of him, a door creaked. Lin straightened. Oliver walked out of the tunnel, and when he drew a breath, he nearly choked. He'd never smelled a rotting body before, but the scent was unmistakable—like something swollen, a bag of meat about to burst. Gene, who had, simply sneezed, and then said, He must have taken one recently.

Melinda Carson, Oliver replied automatically. Six months ago. She was fifteen.

"Oh, Jesus," said the Chief Constable, and covered his mouth and nose, running his torchlight over the walls. There were dark smears on the stone; someone had left behind a three-fingered handprint. Chief Constable Harris crossed himself, and then said it again. "Oh, Jesus Christ."

Gene was whispering under his breath. Oliver thought it might have been a prayer. He ran his torchlight over the body of Melinda Carson, and then along the wall. The room was larger than he'd been expecting, about four meters by four meters, and the ceiling was high and arching, like a church's. There were more bodies dumped in the corner. All of them were missing fingers.

He's here, Gene said again, and Oliver thought he heard the shiki hiss.

"Lin," said Oliver, and Lin nodded, and lifted his free hand.

"I know."

Someone began to hum. It was the same, stupid little rhyme that had been in Gene's nightmare, that had echoed over Prudence Gallagher's screams. Around them, the walls began to shake. The bulb in Constable Harris's torch exploded. Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten, lying in bed with her eyes wide open—

The Chief Constable was muttering a prayer behind them, crossing himself. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters—"

There was a scream. Laughter. Then more screams. Male. Female. Young. Younger. The youngest taken was twelve years old, Oliver remembered, and tightened his grip on Gene's hand. Their power melded, like metal in a crucible. Oliver clenched his hand into a fist, and waited.

Sing? Sing? What song should I sing? Mary Anne Cotton is tied up in string—

"Show yourself!" Lin shouted, and then spoke a word. Oliver thought it might have been Chinese. There was a thin whistling sound, a little scream.

"Do you miss her yet?" a voice whispered. It was the Chief Constable. Oliver whirled, and shone the torch in his eyes; they were blank and black, blacker than black, an absence of color where white should have been. Gene made a sick choking noise, as though he'd smelled something wretched, and the Chief Constable smiled.

"Do you miss her yet? Miss Mary Anne Cotton, all tied up in string?"

Oliver threw his hand forward, and squeezed. His power snapped out his fingers in a sparkle of lightning, and the Constable rose from the ground, shooting up into the air so fast that Oliver nearly slammed him into the ceiling before he seized his wrist in his other hand, and squeezed. Slowly, Constable Harris sank back down to the ground, laughing, still singing that stupid little song under his breath. "Where? Where? She's up in the air! And now they sell puddings for a penny a pair!"

"Shut up!" Gene shouted. The light in his torch exploded this time, from the force of Oliver's temper. Constable Harris closed his mouth, his lips moving but no sound coming out. "What do you want from us?"

"Miss Mary Anne Cotton, all tied up in string," the spirit said again, and giggled. The voice was almost feminine. "I swallowed them whole, to the very last drop, and they were so scared."

"Lin," said Oliver, and around his nails, the skin cracked. Blood ran down his fingers. "Bind it."

Lin put his fingers to his lips, and whistled. The two remaining shiki screamed past Oliver and Gene, and Oliver felt them take the weight and the substance of the spirit, binding him to the Chief Constable, who was still laughing, as though this were all a great joke.

"What did you do to Prudence Gallagher?" Gene said, in a hard, cold voice that Oliver had never heard before. The spirit inside the Chief Constable snickered.

"Ate her all up. Down to the marrow. Down to the quick. All that lovely power."

It ate her? Oliver said, and disgust rolled in his stomach. He thought of the ten fingers, stuffed into ten envelopes, sent every week. Do you miss her yet?

"You're lying," said Gene. "Her spirit told me. You kept her alive. You cut off her fingers. And then you killed her."

"Me?" The spirit cackled. "Me! Me cut off her fingers! I ate her—she's the one who cut off her fingers!"

Gene's eyebrows crinkled together. "Explain," he said, but there was no need. Oliver swung his torch around, searching the bodies, and when he saw the skeleton close to the ground, something clicked in his head.

"She did it herself," he repeated, and then lifted his torch to the ghost again. The Chief Constable bared his teeth. "You possessed her. She did it to herself."

"She cut off her fingers with all her other fingers gone?" said Gene, but Oliver shook his head.

"PK." The Chief Constable's smile just grew deeper. Oliver thought of a spinning cigarette, of a spinning torch. "All of the people you took, they were all PK potentials. Weren't they? That's how they kept taking their own fingers. You possessed them, and you used their powers."

"Down to the quick," said the ghost again, and laughed.

If that's true, you'll be a target, Noll. Gene's eyes were wide with panic. You need to get out of here while he's still bound.

I'm not leaving you two.

Lin said—

"I'm not leaving," Oliver said, clear, cold, and one of the rocks on the floor exploded into dust. Power punched him in the gut, and Gene squeezed his fingers tight, siphoning it off.

"Lin," said Oliver. "What do you suggest?"

Lin was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "My shiki are almost at their limit."

"Use the ones you placed on us," said Oliver. "What are our options? We can't use the Nine Cuts, not while it's in the Chief Constable. You or Gene would kill him. I don't know what I would do."

The one time he'd tried to use the Nine Cuts, he'd leveled a stone wall. Oliver thought of the aluminum weight he'd thrown on camera, and bit his cheek. He didn't want to experiment as to what would happen on a human being.

"Down to the quick," the ghost said again, and then there was a crack. The Chief Constable jerked his head to the side, and when he turned back, his jaw was hanging loose. The ghost was breaking his shell. "Down to the quick."

Thoughts flashed back and forth between Oliver and Gene, quick as lightning, until even Oliver wasn't sure which thoughts were his and which were Gene's. We could put it in a vessel, shatter the vessel. Destroy it.

It's too powerful for that. It'll kill the constable first.

We should have brought an exorcist—

—didn't have time—

—maybe a binding—

—the Nine Cuts—

—that will just make it angry—

—need to eliminate it from the equation—

—keep it out of this place—

—trap it—

—collect it—

—use it—

"Lin!" said Oliver, and he spat out a command in Japanese.

Lin's good eye went wide; he looked up at the Chief Constable, and then back at Oliver, and said, "It may not work."

"Try it!"

Lin looked at him for a heartbeat. Two. Three. There was another crack, and the Chief Constable's wrist went crooked.

"All right," said Lin, quietly, and he drew a knife from his belt. Gene grabbed Oliver's wrist, squeezed it. He knew what Oliver had asked Lin to do—he'd heard it—but neither of them had ever seen an onmyouji bind a shiki before, and without his torch, Gene could barely see.

Lin drew the blade of the knife across the palm of his left hand. Blood stung at the air, and in the Chief Constable, the spirit ran a tongue over its lips. "Eat you," the spirit said, "I'll eat you," and it opened its broken jaw wide and it screamed. Oliver clapped his hands over his ears. The sound was high and winding, a drill into his eardrums; next to him, Gene keened under his breath. There were claws now, growing out of the Chief Constable's fingers, and the skin was splitting like a rotting fruit, green showing up beneath. Lin put his fingers to his lips again, and whistled, and this time, Oliver and Gene's tagalongs came away, and manifested. They were like dragons, like snakes, long and thin, elegant and dangerous.

Lin was speaking in Chinese. He smeared the blood on the head of one shiki, then the other; they pushed their heads up into his hand like cats. Then he ran a finger through his own blood, and painted on his cheeks, one character on each. Oliver recognized them, but didn't know the Chinese reading, didn't know what they stood for. The spirit was screaming, and the Chief Constable was moaning, and Lin's Chinese cut through it all, lyrical and winding, a whisper of a whistle echoing in the air behind him. He lifted his dagger.

Air struck him with enough force to knock him back. Lin hit the wall, and coughed. The dagger fell to the ground. The shiki hissed. They ran to him, seized him by the arms, and lifted him to his feet. Lin looked at Oliver. "I don't have enough power," he said.

Oliver bit his tongue until it bled. He thought of him and Gene, their cycle of power, back and forth, making each other stronger. He thought of Gene leading him into the dream. Then he seized Lin's wrist with both hands. If you don't have enough, he said, then take ours, and he shoved a burst of psychic power into Lin Koujo.

Lin screamed. Between his teeth, lightning snapped. Oliver pushed again, and again, keeping an ear on Lin's heart, as Gene soothed the raw power, made it more palatable, translated it into the shiki. It couldn't have been more than a three-second push, but Lin was shaking all over, almost like he was on fire, and Oliver dropped his hands. His palms were burned, shiny red, like a lobster's back, and they hurt. Still, he held out a hand, summoning the dagger, and the dagger came. Up in the air, the Chief Constable screamed, and another arm split, those long clawed fingers coming up to seize one of Lin's shiki—

The whole room was rattling with power—

Lin slashed a line through the air, shouted in Chinese—

There was a burst of white light—

Something struck Oliver on the back of the head, and he tumbled into silence.

After…

He was done. Oliver looked down at the origami giraffe in his hands, thoughtfully, and then placed it on the windowsill besides all the others. His head hurt. It had been hurting for nearly a week now, ever since he'd been released from the hospital, and it was going to keep hurting until the crack in his skull was fully repaired, but that didn't make it any less irritating. The doctors had instructed the Professor and his wife most explicitly that Oliver Davis was not to be allowed near any computers; something about the screen straining his eyes too much for his poor skull to handle.

Oliver, who had read about head injuries and TBIs, thought that this was patently ridiculous, and had been about to tell the doctor so when Gene had clamped down hard on his wrist.

Don't you dare, he'd said.

And Oliver, whose head still ached, whose hands were burned, and who could not even hold a pen, had bit his tongue and stayed silent.

Lin had also been admitted to the hospital, for cuts and bruises, but not much else. Chief Constable Harris, according to Gene, had been wheeled straight into the ICU; it had been a miracle they had been able to get him out of the catacombs in the first place, considering as soon as the spirit had been removed from his body he had fallen to the earth in a heap. His jaw and both his arms broken and the skin all flayed. The doctors said it was like a wild animal attack.

Doctors are usually far less intelligent than most people believe them to be, Oliver replied snappishly, and wished he could turn the pages of a book. At least then he could do more than just lying in bed staring out the window like some sort of invalid.

They moved him to the Davis house, eventually. Both the Professor and his wife had cut their journey to Scotland short upon hearing that both Oliver and Gene (who had collapsed as soon as he'd pulled Oliver out of the sewer) were in the hospital. Luella Davis had come into Oliver's room, taken one look at him, and would have shaken him silly if it hadn't been for the bandages around his head. As it was, she had delivered a blistering lecture at the top of her lungs (in Japanese), then her face had crumped, and she'd gathered him up into her arms and wept into his shoulder. Oliver had patted her tentatively on the back, and thought very hard about the sort of adult who would burst into tears at the thought of him being hurt.

He started calling her mum in his head, after that.

Lin had had to spend five days on his own out in the forest on the Davis property to rid himself of all the power Oliver had shoved into him. (Oliver, who had racked his brains and could not recollect such an exchange of power ever happening before, or even being theorized as possible, was planning to write a treatise on the subject for the Society for Psychic Research; when he ran it past the Professor, Professor Davis said it might just earn him a doctorate.) After he'd slept it all off, he'd visited Oliver in the hospital, and requested that he never, ever share power with anyone with Gene ever again.

Oliver had looked down at his hands, and agreed without a fight. Even with all the possibilities for research, doing it again would destroy his hands, not to mention overload whoever he was giving the energy to.

When Oliver's head had healed enough for him to go home (and for him to stop having to sleep all the time) Gene had shared with him the memory of Lin snaring another shiki. The blood-binding. The spirit—Gene had started calling it Fingerless, for it had never offered a name, never given a history—shrieking, writhing. Lin's servants binding it to them, to him. Lin swallowed it, said Gene, and shuddered. Just like it swallowed all the people it possessed.

It would have been useful, Oliver thought, with bitterness lying coppery on his tongue, for my research if I hadn't been knocked out.

Apparently the backlash of Oliver gifting Lin with some of their power had destabilized the room. The rock had been his own fault.

Idiot scientist, Gene said affectionately. Getting knocked out in the middle of the action. I'm the one who had to lug your sorry carcass back up to the surface, you know.

You've said that exactly 37 times since we came back to the house.

And I'll say it more whenever I please.

The bodies of Prudence Gallagher, and all the other victims, had been buried in the catacombs. Gene had sent their ghosts on, one at a time. He had started wearing black after the honorary funeral for Prudence, and though Luella Davis had asked him why, Gene had just smiled and shook his head without answering. He was listening to the Beatles more often now; once or twice when he came into Oliver's room, he was whistling Love Me Do.

You're mourning her, said Oliver one day, and Gene gave him that moon smile again. Why? She was already dead.

You know, Noll, said Gene, and cocked his head. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like for you to have children, and unleash a hundred little yous on the world. It's kind of terrifying. The whole country filled with insensitive, idiotic scientists.

Oliver hit him with a pillow.

The little menagerie of origami animals on his windowsill had grown to its greatest possible number. Oliver closed the finished origami book, set it carefully on the bedside table, and stared out the window again. It looked like it was about to rain. He closed his eyes, listening to Gene's stereo through the wall—Dear Prudence, he realized—and had nearly fallen asleep when there was a soft knock on the door.

Oliver sat up in bed. Gene never knocked, Lin had gone out on assignment with Madoka again, and Luella Davis—Mum had gone out. That left only one person in the house. "Come in."

The Professor looked like he'd aged half a decade since he'd given Oliver and Gene their assignment in his office, maybe two weeks ago. He peered around the door, taking in the sight of Oliver still in bed, the bandages around his skull, and said, "How are you feeling?"

Like I want to tear the pillow into a million tiny pieces. "Fine," said Oliver, and then looked out the window again. A few raindrops hit the glass, like tiny messages. "Better daily."

"Good." The Professor took the chair beside his bed, propping his elbows on his knees. He really wasn't that old, Oliver realized. Maybe his late thirties at most. Mustache, glasses, small beard. Sandy hair. He looked like a college professor, not a parapsychological expert. He looked up at Oliver. "I wanted to talk to you, Noll."

"I know," said Oliver, and closed his eyes. "My behavior in the catacombs was reckless and inexcusable. I put not only Gene and Lin in danger, but also Chief Constable Harris, who will, I hear, never regain the use of his hands. You gave this assignment to Gene and me, and due to my irresponsibility and thoughtlessness, I nearly managed to get all of us killed. I will understand," he said, and his throat closed up, "if you will decline giving me further assignments after this. I will also understand if you would like me to go and stay somewhere else."

"Noll," said the Professor, and Oliver looked up from his hands. His spine went stiff. The Professor's eyes were glassy. He reached out with one hand, touched Oliver's shoulder. "Noll, no."

"Sir?" said Oliver, and then the Professor had leaned forward, put his arms around Oliver, and pulled him into a hug.

Oliver went completely stiff. This was different, he thought, than Luella Davis. He expected Mrs. Davis—Mum, he corrected himself again—to be emotional; she was a naturally emotional person. It had nothing to do with her sex, or her age, or anything else; she was just like Gene, too many feelings for too many people that spilled over at any possible moment. The Professor wasn't like that. He'd never seen Professor Davis be so affected as he was now, and it made his stomach clench.

It only lasted for a few moments, a few breaths. Then the Professor pulled back. The shine was gone from his eyes, but his voice was still hoarse. "No," he said. "No, Noll. That's not what I wanted to say."

Oliver stared very hard at the print of van Gogh's Sunflowers across from his bed. "Sir?"

"You're right in that you were reckless with the lives of both yourself and your teammates," said the Professor. "I expect you to be more cautious in future. But I would not regard this assignment a failure. You managed to uncover a very despicable thing, and solve it, without an exorcist or any other immediate spiritualist power at hand. You managed that, Noll. You should be proud. And you need to know that no matter what you do, or how many mistakes you make, you will never be unwelcome in this house, Oliver. Do you hear me? You and Gene are our children, our sons. You will never be unwelcome here."

Oliver searched the Professor's eyes. He licked his lips. "Sir?"

"What, Noll?"

"Do you mind that I never really call you dad?"

The Professor laughed. He shook his head. "Call me whatever you want, Noll. I don't care in the least."

Oliver nodded. They sat in silence together for a while. Then the Professor clapped his hand on Oliver's shoulder a few times, and stood. "I should go see to your mother—to Luella. She's been worrying about you for days. It'll reassure her to know that you know what we feel about this."

"Professor?" Oliver said, and the Professor turned to look at him again.

"Yes?"

Oliver licked his lips. "I'm sorry," he said. "And…thank you."

The Professor's face softened into a smile. He nodded. "Thank you, Oliver," he said, and then he left the room.

Outside, the storm broke.