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She felt pressure building behind her left eye, a sensation she remembered from childhood.

Vic left the bike, began walking toward the shed on her suddenly unsteady legs. Halfway there she bent and picked up a broken chunk of asphalt, the size of a dinner plate. The air vibrated with another distant concussive roll of thunder.

She knew it would be a mistake to call her son’s name but found her lips shaping the word anyway: Wayne, Wayne.

Her pulse hammered behind her eyeballs, so the world seemed to twitch unsteadily around her. The overheated wind smelled of steel shavings.

When she was within five steps of the side door, she could read the hand-lettered sign taped up on the inside of the glass:

NO ADMITTANCE

TOWN PERSONNEL ONLY!

The chunk of asphalt went through the window with a pretty smash, tore the sign free. Vic wasn’t thinking anymore, just moving. She had lived this scene already and knew how it went.

She might have to carry Wayne if there was something wrong with him, as there had been something wrong with Brad McCauley. If he was like McCauley—half ghoul, some kind of frozen vampire—she would fix him. She would get him the best doctors. She would fix him like she had fixed the bike. She had made him in her body. Manx could not simply unmake him with his car.

She shoved her hand through the shattered window to grab the inner doorknob. She fumbled for the bolt, even though she could see that the Wraith wasn’t in there. There was room for a car, but no car was present. Bags of fertilizer were stacked against the walls.

“Hey! What are you doing?” called a thin, piping voice from somewhere behind her. “I can call the cops! I can call them right now!”

Vic turned the bolt, threw the door open, stood gasping, looking into the small, cool, dark space of the empty shed.

“I should’ve called the police already! I can have the whole bunch of you arrested for breaking and entering!” screamed whoever it was. She was hardly listening. But even if she had been paying close attention she might not have recognized his voice. It was hoarse and strained, as if he had recently been crying or was about to start. There on the hill it did not once cross her mind that she had heard it before.

She turned on her heel, taking in a squat, ugly man in an FDNY T-shirt, the retiree who had been out in his yard with hedge clippers. He still held them. His eyes bulged behind glasses with thick black plastic frames. His hair was short and bristly and patchy, black mottled with silver.

Vic ignored him. She scanned the ground, found a chunk of blue rock, grabbed it, and stalked across to the slanted doors that led to the basement of the burned church. She dropped to one knee and began to strike at the big brassy Yale lock that kept those doors shut. If Wayne and Manx weren’t in the shed, then this was the only place that was left. She didn’t know where Manx had stashed the car, and if she found him asleep down there, she had no plans to ask him about it before using this stone on his head.

“Come on,” she said to herself. “Come on and open the f*ck up.”

She banged the stone down into the lock. Sparks flew.

“That’s private property!” cried the ugly man. “You and your friends have no right to go in there! That’s it! I’m calling the police!”

It caught her notice then, what he was yelping. Not the part about the police. The other part.

She threw the stone aside, swiped at the sweat on her face, and shoved herself to her heels. When she rounded on him, he took two frightened steps back and nearly tripped over his own feet. He held the garden shears up between them.

“Don’t! Don’t hurt me!”

Vic supposed she looked like a criminal and a lunatic. If that was what he saw, she couldn’t blame him. She had been both at different times in her life.

She held her hands out, patting the air in a calming gesture.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want anything from you. I’m just looking for someone. I thought there might be someone in there,” she said, gesturing with her head back toward the cellar doors. “What did you say about ‘my friends’? What friends?”

The ugly little gnome swallowed thickly. “They aren’t here. The people you’re looking for. They left. Drove away a little while ago. A half an hour or so. Maybe less.”

“Who? Please. Help me. Who left? Was it someone in an—”

“An old car,” the little man said. “Like an antique. He had it parked there in the shed . . . and I think he spent the night in there!” Pointing at the slanted basement doors. “I thought about calling the police. It isn’t the first time there’s been people in there doing drugs. But they’re gone! They aren’t here anymore. He drove away a while ago. A half an hour—”

“You said that,” she told him. She wanted to grab him by his fat neck and shake him. “Was there a boy with him? A boy in the back of the car?”

“Why, I don’t know!” the man said, and put his fingers to his lips and stared into the sky, an almost comic look of wonder on his face. “I thought there was someone with him. In the back. Yes. Yes, I bet there was a kid in the car!” He glanced at her again. “Are you all right? You look awful. Do you want to use my phone? You should have something to drink.”

“No. Yes. I—thank you. All right.”

She swayed, as if she had stood up too quickly. He had been here. Wayne had been here and gone. Half an hour ago.