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Vic looked longingly at the pill. Still she hesitated.

“You are going to answer my questions, yes? With your tiles.”

“You haven’t asked anything I need them for yet.”

“I need to know how to kill him. He died in prison, but it didn’t stick.”

“You already know the answer to that one, I think.”

Vic took the OxyContin from Maggie’s hand and accepted the carton of lemonade when she offered it. The juice was warm and sticky and sweet and good. She knocked the Oxy down on the first swallow. The pill left a faint, bitter aftertaste.

“The car,” Vic said. “The Wraith.”

“Yeah. When the car fell apart, he fell apart. At some point someone probably yanked the engine right out of it, and he dropped dead at last. But then the engine was put back and the car was fixed up, and there you go. As long as the car is roadworthy, so is he.”

“So if I destroy the car . . . I destroy him.”

Maggie took a long suck on her cigarette. The tip of it was the brightest thing in the dark. “Bet on it.”

“Okay,” Vic said. It had only been a minute or two, but the pill was already starting to kick in. When she closed her eyes, she felt as if she were gliding soundlessly on her old Tuff Burner, moving through a dim and shady forest . . .

“Vic,” Maggie said gently, and Vic pulled her head up off the armrest and blinked rapidly, realized she had been just a moment from dozing off.

“Some pill,” she said.

“What do you need to ask my tiles?” Maggie prodded. “You better get to it, while you still can.”

“My kid. I’m going to have to go to Christmasland to get him. They’ll be there tonight, I think, or early tomorrow morning, and I’m going to be there, too. But by then Wayne will be . . . different. I could hear it in his voice when I talked to him. He’s fighting it, but the car is making him into one of those f*cking things. Can I fix him? I need to know that. If I get him back, is there some way to cure him?”

“I don’t know. No child has ever come back ff-from Christmasland.”

“So ask. Your bag of letters can tell you that, can’t it?”

Maggie slid off the edge of the couch onto the floor. She gave the moth-eaten sack a gentle shake. The tiles clicked and rattled within.

“Let’s see what we can s-suh-see,” she said, and plunged a hand inside. She troweled about, came up with a fistful of tiles, and dropped them on the floor.

XOXOOXOXXO

Maggie stared at them with a look of weary dismay.

“This is all I get most days. Hugs and kisses f-f-for the lonely, stammering girl.” Maggie swept one hand across the floor, grabbing the letters and jamming them back into the bag.

“Okay. It’s okay. It was worth a try. You can’t know everything. You can’t find out everything.”

“No,” Maggie said. “When you come to a library to f-f-find something out, you should get what you want.”

She dug around in her faux-velvet pouch and came up with another fistful of tiles, threw them at the floor.

PPPPPPPPP

“Don’t st-st-stick your tongue out at me,” she said to her letters.

She snatched up the tiles, dropped them in the bag, then shoved her hand in the Scrabble purse once again. This time her arm disappeared almost to the elbow, and Vic heard what sounded like hundreds of tiles grinding and clattering around. Maggie came up with another fistful, let them fall.

FUFUFUFU

“Fuck me? Fuck me?” Maggie cried. “Throw my earrings back in my face? Fff-f-ff-fuh-f*ck you.”

She plucked her cigarette out of her mouth, but before she could sink it into her own arm, Vic sat up, caught her wrist.

“Don’t,” Vic said. The room swooped this way and that, as if Vic were sitting in a swing. Still, she held Maggie’s arm. Maggie stared up at her, her eyes bright in their sunken hollows . . . bright and frightened and exhausted. “We’ll get it another time, Maggie. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs some rest. You were in Massachusetts a week and a half ago. You came back by bus the whole way?”

“I hitched some,” Maggie said.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday I had a s-s-s-suh-sandwich from s-s-s-s-s—” And like that she went mute. Her face darkened from red to a deep, grotesque shade of violet, as if she were strangling. Spit foamed at the corners of her lips.

“Shhh,” Vic said. “Shhh. Okay. So we’ll get you something to eat.”

Maggie exhaled smoke, glanced around for a place to extinguish her cigarette, and then put it out in the far armrest. It hissed, and a black coil of smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

“After your nap, V-V-Vic.”

Vic nodded, slumping backward. She didn’t have it in her to wrangle with Maggie.

“I’ll nap and you’ll nap,” Vic said. “And then we’ll get you some food. Get you some clothes. Save Wayne. Save the library. Make things better. Do it all. Wonder Twin powers activate. Lie down.”

“Okay. You take the couch. I’ve got a nice old blanket. I can just stretch out on the f-f-fl-fluh—”

“With me, Maggie. There’s room on the couch for us both.” Vic was awake but seemed to have lost the ability to force her eyes open again.