Eddy made a lot of money this year and he’s going to make more. He can see a structure to things, now: people, institutions, certain days. All he has to do is walk up and hold out his hands.

The tailbrain’s paid for itself a dozen times over, and it wasn’t cheap. Eddy buys clean yellow Peruvian, keeps a string of boys, eats real horse steak. He can even afford the icy wash that wrings his muscles clean every morning.

Eddy doesn’t know how to ask his tailbrain what his body does at night, but even if he did, he wouldn’t.

Dot’s been collecting thumbs a long time, and few doors in the Answer remain barred to her. She picks one from around her wrist, warms it in her hands and presses it to the little pad: the soft eldritch click makes her grin. Through the door and she’s among the huge black sarcophagi, padding toward the center.

There’s a single pane of perfect glass there. Dot breathes mist on it and quickly traces the mystic cat’s-eye symbol, the one in the zero, the I and O.

Light suffuses the glass. Around her, the tombs of the ancients hum to life.

“It’s going through your head,” says her mother, like maybe she missed that.

“Brain piercing is perfectly safe,” says Alberta. “I went and got it done at a licensed clinic, okay? Not some stand at the mall. I can show you a copy of the certificate–”

“You look like a damn–a damn Stooge Brothers joke!”

“Who?”

“I am taking you back there tomorrow,” sobs her mother, “and we are getting that taken–don’t roll your eyes at me!”

But Alberta is rolling them, so far that her pupils disappear.

“Alberta?” says her mother.

Foam starts to leak from Alberta’s mouth.

Caradog wakes in horror, and a grimy toilet stall, and the cold knowledge that he doesn’t know his own first name. But here–on his hand–sweaty blue pen: AK 89TH W.3

That’s the key, he knows it. Caradog lunges out into the bathroom and sees someone–there’s no time for trust! He smashes the surprised man’s head into a sink, then grabs his face and shoves him back into the stall.

Some time later, Pensieve wakes. Where is he? Who is he? He stumbles out of the stall and–there, in the mirror, blue pen backwards on his cheek–

Saturday mornings Kit goes to the home to put half his flowers in a vase for his mother, who is still asleep. He needs the rest of the day for practice.

First he goes out to a vacant lot in the industrial park and stands in the middle, and rails at the sky. He tries to make deals. He begs kneeling.

Next he goes home for lunch, which is a casserole he made himself, and pretended to find.

Of the three town funeral homes, at least one is always occupied. He sits in back. He leaves the rest of his flowers.