Niceville

nothing at all, watched as she lifted an arm and knocked once, softly, on the glass.
    “Dilly, it’s Lenore. It’s
time
, honey. We have to go. Everything is ready. Everyone is waiting.”
    Dillon Walker felt a shudder of fear ripple through him, which, hating any form of cowardice, he crushed at once.
    Dilly
.
    Lenore always called me Dilly
.
    He stood up and came around the desk, pausing in front of the door. He looked around the room with regret, and then back at his desk, half expecting to see his dead body slumped across the papers. But the chair was empty and he was here in his slippers and his comfortable olive-drab corduroy slacks and his black polo shirt, feeling very much alive.
    The figure, now that he was close, was very naked and very much in the shape of his dead wife. The image knocked again and called his name.
    She uses the mirrors
, Lenore had said, moments before her death.
She uses the mirrors
.
    He felt himself at the edge of some great thing, on the brink of agreat revelation, an encounter with something powerful and strange—something
 … outside
.
    Not to open that door would be an act of cowardice, a sniveling and greedy attempt to scrape a few more seconds of life off his plate. His work here was not done, but it would be completed by others. No man was indispensable. He thought about Kate, and Reed, and Beth, about Rainey Teague and his adoption, about Miles and Sylvia, and the essential strangeness of Niceville. If what was beyond the door was really Lenore, then everything that was hidden from him would be revealed, and he would one day see all of his family again. Sooner or later, for every living man, the time came to leave.
    He opened the door, thinking he would see Lenore, but instead darkness flew at him, black wings, razor-edged beaks, claws ripping, yellow eyes with a green light, a crushing force thick with rage and hate. The feeding began. Like Gray Haggard, he lasted far too long.

Kate Kavanaugh Has a Visitor
    For a long time Kate refused to think about what her father had said about the mirrors, refused to even attempt to make sense of it. She put her head back, closed her eyes for a while, felt a warm wave of fatigue roll over her.
    She slept.
    The phone rang.
    She picked it up, looked at the call display— L. STEINERT .
    “Lacy?”
    “Hi, Kate. I’m sorry to call you at home.”
    “You sound tense.”
    “Not tense, no. But I’m trying to get in touch with Nick and he’s not answering his cell. Tig says he was out on a disappearance, and that he had gone to get some bloodstains checked, but he’s not at the police lab either.”
    She looked at the time—after four—he’d be home around nine, if nothing went crazy at work.
    “He usually cuts out for lunch around this time, if he’s working. You could try the Bar Belle at the Pavilion. It’s his favorite lunch spot. I have their number, if you like?”
    A pause.
    “No, it’s not … I’ve left messages. He’ll call back sooner or later.”
    “Okay. I’m sorry. Was it urgent?”
    “No. Well, I think he’d like to know.”
    “Is it good news? He could use some.”
    “Nobody knows this yet, so keep it close until I can get to Nick.You need to know about it too, since you’re his legal guardian. It’s about Rainey Teague—”
    “Oh hell. Not dead?”
    “No. He woke up.”
    “What?”
    “Yes. Well, I mean, he didn’t just suddenly sit up and ask for a cookie. The doctors are with him. But he’s come out of the … whatever it was, and he’s … ‘responsive’ … was the way they put it. You remember I was talking to you about Lemon Featherlight?”
    “Yes. He wanted to see Nick.”
    “Lemon was the one who found him. Awake, I mean. Lemon had gone to see him after he spoke to Nick this morning—he tell you about that?”
    “No. He hasn’t. What was Lemon doing there?”
    “Lemon and Rainey were friends. I know, sounds odd, but Lemon took what happened to Rainey pretty hard, so after he spoke to Nick he thought he should go down and see the kid again. Anniversary of it, I guess, or whatever. Lemon’s a strange guy, but he’s got a good heart. Anyway, he walks into the CCU room and the nurses are all clustered around the bed, bells and whistles are going off, and he can hear Rainey crying and asking for some guy named Abel Teague. Nobody knew who the hell he was, maybe a relative. Anyway, it was all pretty chaotic, but now Lemon wants to see Nick again. Like, ASAP, if he can.