Lenora had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich because it was hard to turn one into a conversation. You could eat it with your hands. You could look busy with it. There was no sauce to identify, and nobody had to come over and tell you how their grandmother made it.
The woman behind the counter put down her plate.
“Hot,” she said.
“Good.”
“The plate.”
Lenora moved her wrist. They had understood each other. She liked that.
It was nearly four. Outside the Bellwether Diner, a fuel truck stood under the canopy of the gas station across the road. Beyond the rear windows, Ohio corn bent and lifted in the breeze. The diner occupied a junction well away from town, where an old state road met a newer highway. Two police vehicles were parked on the front apron. Lenora had hoped their occupants were eating somewhere else.
One of them was on the next stool but one.
“Six miles?” asked the man beside him.
“About that,” the deputy said. “But Sixteen's closed.”
“I understand the closure. I was asking about the town.”
The man wore a navy blazer and had the sort of face people trusted in an airport. He had already put his phone away, picked it up again, and looked at the waitress twice without saying what he wanted.
“Marnie,” he said now. “Could I have that coffee fresh?”
She looked at his cup. “It is fresh.”
“Freshly made, I meant.”
“So did I.”
Lenora turned the sandwich over. Both sides looked promising.
“Grant Mercer,” the man told the deputy, offering his hand. “Security consultancy. Before that, the Royal Marines. Captain.”
The deputy shook it. “Ellis Ward.”
“Good to have someone here who knows the ground, Ellis.”
Ward sat a little straighter. Mercer had made knowing where the town was sound like a service to the nation.
At a booth near the front window, a large man in a green wool cape lifted a finger. His beard spread over his chest; his leather satchel occupied most of the seat beside him.
“If we're giving credentials,” he said, “Basil Pritchard. Doctorate in comparative eschatology.”
Marnie carried the coffee pot past him. “Did you decide on food?”
“I was explaining my field.”
“You can do that with eggs.”
“The study of what different cultures believe about the end of the world. It has rather more present relevance than people tend to suppose.”
“Eggs stop at three.” She took his menu. “Burger?”
“Yes. And I have some forty thousand people following my work online.”
“Just the one burger, then.”
Lenora took a bite before she could help her out. Marnie did not need help.
A thin man at the far end of the counter raised his empty water glass. He had loose silver hair, a long neck and a shirt collar that seemed to have been put on during an argument.
“Do you serve wine?”
“No,” Marnie said.
“Not even with a meal?”
“It would still be wine.”
He lowered the glass carefully, missing its wet ring. “Coffee, then.”
A game chirped from another booth. A woman reached across its table toward her adolescent son, who took his phone out of reach without looking up.
“Turn it down.”
“It is down.”
“Down more.”
The boy pressed the side of the phone. A final bright little explosion sounded.
“Sorry,” his mother said to the room.
“Nobody died, Carla,” he said.
“I am still your mother.”
At a small table by the window an older man paused over his pie, adjusted the hearing aid behind his ear and resumed eating. A broad man in work boots watched the road from the opposite booth. Marnie had called him Deke when she refilled his cup. Lenora had not asked his business and was grateful that he had not offered it.
The thin man heard the word “died” and turned toward the boy.
“Mercutio,” he said. “Now there was a death.”
The boy's thumb stopped.
“Adrian Vane. I played him twenty-seven years ago. The review was”—he lifted a hand, as though the proper word might land on it—“very good.”
“Did you win?” the boy asked.
“It's Shakespeare.”
“Okay.” His thumb moved again.
Adrian looked down at his glass. Lenora almost said something to save him, then imagined the rest of the afternoon. He would ask if she knew his work. She would say she was a comedian. He would ask where. There would be a small contest over who had suffered more for the public.
“Separate checks?” Marnie asked her.
“I'm not with any of these people.”
“Didn't think you were.”
“Lenora Kane,” she said, when Marnie asked what to put on the check. “In case you're naming the sandwich.”
Her daughter would have heard the unnecessary joke. Lenora could almost see the look she would get for making a simple answer take longer. She ate another mouthful.
The light outside changed while she was chewing.
It did not grow darker. The station canopy was still lit by the afternoon sun, but a white band had crossed the far end of its forecourt. It passed behind the fuel truck and hid the pumps from the ground up.
“That's thick,” Deke said.
Mercer turned on his stool. “Ground fog.”
The corn outside the rear window leaned toward the station. The fog was coming the other way.
Lenora put down her sandwich.
A woman appeared beside the fuel truck. She stood still for a moment, looking to her left. Then she ran out from under the canopy.
Marnie stopped with the pot in her hand.
“What's she doing?” Ward said.
The woman crossed the two-lane road without looking. Something white rose behind her. It had no clear edge, but part of it stretched ahead of the rest and moved when she moved.
There were thirty yards of open apron between her and the diner. From inside, with a plate and a stool and a wall to lean on, it had looked like hardly any distance. Now Lenora watched the woman cover each part of it.
She stumbled. Caught herself. Ran again with one arm held out.
“Help!”
Mercer was already at the door. He pulled it open.
“This way. Come straight to me. Grant Mercer. I can help you.”
He sounded like a man bringing someone down from a ladder. Ward followed him, his hand at his holster, then stopped where the aisle narrowed between a booth and the doorway.
The white thing caught the woman a few feet short of the entrance.
What had looked like a strip of fog spread across her face. She struck at it with both hands. It held the left side of her head, and Lenora saw fingers form out of the whiteness. Too many joints first; then a hand almost right.
Mercer caught the woman's wrist.
“I've got you.”
The hand on her face turned. A second white arm reached toward his. Where it touched his knuckles, he let go.
He backed hard into Ward.
For a moment the woman was alone in the doorway. Her free eye found Lenora. Her mouth worked, but the sound came out from somewhere beside it.
Lenora got off the stool.
Her knee struck the counter on the way. She heard Adrian say something; she could not attend to it. The woman's sleeve was in reach. Lenora took it in both hands and leaned back.
The sleeve slid up. Her fingers met wet skin.
“Here,” she said. “Here. Come on.”
The woman tried to move toward her. That helped. Deke arrived on the other side and put an arm around the woman's middle. Marnie set down the coffee pot wherever she was standing and caught the back of her coat.
The white hand came with them.
It had a cheek now. One smooth, brown cheek hanging beside a hollow where the rest of its face should have been. The woman made a thin, high noise when it pulled away from her.
Lenora's grip nearly failed. Deke hauled both women backward. Marnie dragged the coat clear, and Deke swung his shoulder into the door.
It slammed on a length of whiteness. The thing narrowed and drew out through the edge. A strip of black door seal hung loose against the frame.
Ward had his gun out. He had not fired.
“Put that away,” Marnie said. “Unless you know what you're shooting.”
Lenora knelt beside the woman on the floor. Her trousers were wet at the knee. The woman's left cheek was torn open in a broad, shallow patch, though Lenora could not make sense of its edges. Skin was missing where skin ought to have been. Blood ran down to her collar. Her eye was still there. She blinked it and reached for Lenora's wrist.
“Don't touch your face,” Lenora said. She sounded too sharp. “Let me get something.”
The woman held tighter.
Marnie shouted through the serving hatch behind the counter. “Luis! Towels. Water. Somebody's hurt.”
The cook came out through the swinging service door with a towel in his hand. He looked at the floor, then at the woman, and went back for more.
Deke kept his weight against the front door. The torn seal left a narrow gap at the lower edge on the latch side. White mist seeped through it. Marnie took a clean folded towel from Luis and pushed it into the gap; Deke braced his boot against it.
Behind the glass, a cloudy face took shape at the height of Mercer's own.
“I've got you,” it said.
Mercer stood beside the counter with one hand tucked against his chest.
“I've got you,” the thing repeated. It used his easy, confident voice. There was a little smile on the one cheek it had.
Carla got out of the booth and drew her son away from the window. He had silenced the game. The older man looked from their faces to the door, his fork still in his hand.
Luis crouched beside Lenora and offered another towel. She folded it over her fingers and brought it toward the woman's cheek.
“Can I?” she asked.
The woman nodded once, then flinched before the cloth reached her. Lenora waited. The woman touched the towel with her own hand and drew it the rest of the way.
“Keep the doorway clear,” Marnie said. “Give her room.”
Adrian pushed back a chair. Basil stood up in his booth, catching the cape under him. Mercer told Ward they needed to maintain order.
Lenora held the cloth where the woman had put it. Outside, Mercer's voice offered help again.
Basil could not bear the voice at the door. He wanted it to stop. He also wanted the others to attend to what it was doing.
“It copied him,” he said.
“We heard,” Marnie said.
“Precisely. But what does that suggest?”
She pointed at a booth farther from the entrance. “That you move your bag so we can put her down.”
He took the satchel out. Deke and Luis helped the woman to the bench. She bent forward over the towel, clutching Lenora's sleeve. Basil stood with his bag held against his stomach, displaced from his own seat and unable to object without looking ridiculous.
Mercer was telling Ward not to draw conclusions too soon.
“A distress response can take many forms. I've worked in emergency environments.”
“Her face,” Ward said.
“Yes. I'm aware.”
“What was that thing?”
Mercer looked toward the glass. The cloudy face had sunk out of sight.
“Let's establish a perimeter first.”
“The door is the perimeter,” Deke said. He had returned to it. “It doesn't shut right.”
Ward put away his gun and lifted his radio. He called in the diner name, the junction and an injured woman. Basil listened for the answer.
There was a burst of broken speech. Ward moved toward the counter and tried again.
This time Basil heard, “Sixteen remains closed,” followed by a place he did not catch and “spreading.”
“We have people trapped at the Bellwether,” Ward said. “I need to know which way is clear.”
Static filled the room. He pressed the radio closer to his ear, then lowered it.
“Are they coming?” Carla asked.
“I don't know yet.”
Her son leaned toward her phone. She turned its screen so he could see the failed call. The phone began trying again.
“There's a freezer,” Luis said. He had a phone of his own in one hand, a wet towel in the other. “We could go in there.”
“Then what?” Marnie asked. “We can't see anything, and we've got the one door.”
“Better than this.”
“For how long?”
Luis looked at his phone. “My wife's out somewhere.”
He tried the call again. Basil could hear it ringing. Nobody answered before the sound cut off.
“We should wait for assistance,” Mercer said.
“You just heard him,” Marnie said. “He doesn't know if there's any.”
Basil thought they were wasting time discussing where to hide. They should be asking what the thing was, and they should be asking him.
“I am Basil Pritchard,” he said, loudly enough to gather their attention. “This is within the range of my studies. Comparative eschatology deals with manifestations at the boundary of the human and the nonhuman.”
“You said the end of the world,” the boy said.
“Which is often understood as a change in the conditions of human existence.”
Carla put a hand on her son's shoulder, although he had asked a sensible question for once. Basil wished adults did that before children spoke.
“You're saying it's the end of the world?” Adrian asked.
“No. I am saying there are precedents for what we're observing.”
He had no precedent for that woman's cheek. He could think of depictions of faces taken, names borrowed, persons replaced. That was not quite the same thing. The distinction mattered, and he would have made it if the people in front of him had allowed him to finish.
“Then tell us something we can use,” Marnie said.
Outside the door, a voice said, “Doctor.”
It was faint. Basil looked toward it.
Deke leaned forward without taking his boot from the cloth. “Don't get close.”
“Doctor Pritchard.”
The boy looked at Basil.
There. Even he had heard it. Basil had announced himself, and the thing had acquired the announcement. Mercer had told the woman he could help her; it had acquired that too.
“It attends to speech,” Basil said. “Particularly to what we tell it about ourselves. Nobody answer it.”
“Doctor,” the voice said, clearer now.
Adrian's coffee cup rattled against its saucer. The older man put down his fork and looked around, trying to find the speaker. Lenora pointed at the front door until he turned that way.
“It needs us to identify ourselves,” Basil continued. “Therefore we withhold the correct identification.”
Lenora looked up from the injured woman. “You already gave it yours.”
“I'm describing a way of interrupting the process.”
“Wouldn't not talking do that?”
“If it were only a question of sound, it could have used the boy's game.”
“Don't start,” Carla said.
“It is an observation.”
“About your mistake. Keep him out of it.”
Basil felt heat behind his ears. He had been trying to protect them. The insult was especially galling because Lenora was right about his name, though naming himself had also produced evidence nobody else had thought to obtain.
“A false name could deny it something usable,” he said. “We need not offer the true one.”
“Could,” Ward said.
“Yes.”
“You know that, or you're guessing?”
“An informed hypothesis is not a guess.”
Lenora returned her attention to the woman. That dismissal stung more than another reply would have.
Marnie took Deke's place at the door while he helped Luis move the booth table out of the woman's way. She held the cloth down with her shoe. Basil came a few steps closer.
“Doctor Pritchard,” the voice said. “You understand.”
He stopped.
Something pale stood beyond the glass, close enough to obscure the apron. A mouth opened in it. The mouth was badly placed, too far to one side, but the voice had a patient, encouraging tone. Basil had heard that tone very seldom from a person who meant it.
“Don't,” Marnie said.
“I won't give it my name.”
“You just did.”
“You understand,” the voice repeated. “Tell us.”
The last two words were muffled. Basil bent to hear them. Below Marnie's shoe a corner of towel had come loose. He took it between finger and thumb.
“Leave that alone.”
“A moment.” He shifted the corner an inch. “Arthur,” he said through the gap. “My name is Arthur.”
There was a pause.
Basil thought the silence meant it was working. He looked up at Marnie, ready to point it out.
Then the voice said, “Arthur.”
It sounded more like him than it had a moment before.
“No,” Basil said. “You see, that's—”
A white strand came through the opening he had uncovered. It rested on the back of his fingers. He pulled his hand away, and the strand rose after it, thickening. Marnie pushed the cloth down, but part of the thing was already inside.
“Move!” she said.
Basil backed into a chair. His satchel slid off his shoulder. He caught the strap as the chair fell, and the white arm passed the place where his face had been.
The voice at the glass said, “Doctor Pritchard understands.”
It gave the words his own pleased emphasis.
Deke pulled Marnie away from the door. Mercer was calling for everyone to remain calm, from well behind everyone. Ward put a hand out to stop Carla running into the fallen chair.
The arm widened into a hanging sheet of white. It drew in fog through the gap beside the cloth. Basil could see light through it, but where its fingers passed the side of the booth, the vinyl split.
Luis and Deke lifted the woman again. Lenora kept her cloth in place and backed with them.
“Kitchen,” Marnie said. “Through here.”
She held the swinging service door open beside the counter. The boy went through with Carla. Ward touched the older man's arm, got in front of him and pointed through the door. The man stared at him, then at the thing near the floor. He reached behind his ear and switched off his hearing aid. Ward took his hand and led him.
Adrian struck his shoulder against the door frame. Mercer followed him closely enough to make it worse. Basil squeezed through last, his cape hooked around the chair for one miserable second before it came free.
The kitchen smelled of grease and coffee. A walk-in freezer occupied the back left corner; the rear door was beyond a narrow strip of floor where Luis had been working. On the right, near the open serving hatch, a gas range stood with a skillet on it. There was nowhere to put twelve people without somebody being in somebody else's way.
Marnie shoved the service door shut. Through the hatch, Basil saw a white body moving along the counter on the dining-room side. Its borrowed mouth remained close to the glass at the front, yet the voice seemed to come from the part that had followed them.
“You understand,” it said.
Basil wanted to tell it he did not. The want frightened him.
Luis picked up the skillet. A thin white hand came through the serving hatch toward his face. He held the pan between them and backed against the range.
“Get away,” he said.
With his free hand he turned the burner higher. Blue flame rose beneath the lifted pan. The reaching fingers passed over it.
They broke apart.
There was no scream. The wrist frayed into small white threads, and the rest of the arm drew back through the hatch. For a few seconds, Basil could see the ordinary counter again.
Luis stared at the burner. Then he set the skillet on the cold part of the stove, leaving that flame exposed.
“It burned,” he said.
Marnie looked at him. “You saw that?”
Basil had seen it too. He said so, quickly, before somebody could mistake his silence for continued ignorance.
“Then we've got that,” she said.
The woman sat on the floor against the freezer door, breathing through her mouth. Lenora crouched beside her. The boy held a towel across the bottom of the swinging door where Marnie showed him. His mother knelt with him, one hand resting on his back.
Ward pointed to a spot beside the rear door and guided the older man into it. The man understood the gesture and stayed there. He gave no sign of hearing the voice coming back from the serving hatch.
“Doctor,” it said.
Basil tightened his grip on the satchel. This time he let the word go past him.
The woman wanted the towel moved a little higher. Lenora understood after two attempts, when she guided Lenora's hand with her own. The cloth had become heavy and warm.
“We need a clean one,” Lenora said.
Luis passed one down. He had put his phone in his pocket, though he kept touching the pocket as if that might improve the call.
“Will you tell them I'm here?” the woman asked.
“The deputy told them.”
“Did they hear?”
Lenora looked at Ward. He was trying the radio again. She could not promise that they had.
“We'll tell them again.”
The woman leaned her head back against the freezer door. She shut her eyes, then opened them quickly.
Marnie had reached over Carla and her son to push a second towel into the bottom of the service door. She turned, wiping her hands on her apron.
“We can't sit on this floor.”
“Your van,” Luis said.
“Eight seats.”
Ward counted the people he could see, making a small movement of his lips. “Twelve.”
“Mine takes five,” Mercer said. He produced his keys. “It's up front.”
“So we fit,” Carla said.
“If we get his car round here.” Marnie pointed to the rear door. “Van's already facing the drive. Room for him beside it, along the building.”
Mercer looked toward the keys hanging on a labelled hook by the door.
“I could bring the van out first.”
Marnie took one step into his way. “I'm driving my van.”
“Naturally. I only meant—”
“Bring your car.”
He closed his hand around his own keys. Lenora could see him deciding how much agreement to put on his face.
“Fine. We need a diversion.”
Adrian gave a short, unhappy laugh.
“What?” Mercer asked.
“I know when I'm being cast.”
His voice rose on the last word. The thing at the serving hatch moved toward him. Lenora saw its mouth turn first and the pale body follow, leaving the corner near Luis. Adrian stepped away and struck the rear wall with his elbow.
“Stop talking,” Deke said.
Adrian pressed his lips together. The thing stayed on the dining-room side, its face lifted toward him.
“It followed his voice,” Lenora said.
“Exactly,” Basil said.
She almost asked if he had named that theory Arthur. It was an easy line, and he was staring at her as if he expected it. She let him stare.
“Marnie,” she said. “Can we make a noise somewhere else?”
“There's a weather speaker on the roof.”
She pointed to a little wall box beyond the range, beside the metal ladder that led to the roof hatch. A microphone hung below it on a long cable.
“Turn it on here. Press the button to talk. We use it if there's a warning and people are outside.”
“No one has to go up?” Ward asked.
“Hatch can stay closed.”
“Will it draw them?” Mercer asked Basil.
“One might reasonably expect—”
“You don't know,” Deke said.
Basil's mouth tightened. “We have just observed one respond to a raised voice.”
“One,” Deke said.
Lenora looked at the thing beyond the hatch. For now it seemed content with watching Adrian, but she did not want to find out how long that would last.
“Some of them may go toward the roof,” she said. “That may give him time to get the car.”
Mercer nodded. “It's our best option.”
She disliked the relief with which he said it. “You're the one who goes out.”
“Yes. I understand that.”
Adrian watched the microphone. “And I stay here.”
“While the car comes round,” Marnie said.
“While everybody else goes.”
“That's not what she said,” Mercer told him.
“I have heard it before.”
He was standing badly, one heel raised, a hand flat on the wall. Lenora could smell alcohol when he turned toward her. His face had lost its theatrical ease, and he looked older than he had at the counter.
“Who comes for me?” he asked.
Nobody answered at once.
Marnie looked toward the woman on the floor. Luis stood beside the burner. Ward and Deke were nearest the rear door. Each had a person or an opening to attend to, and Adrian could see it.
“I do,” Lenora said.
“You?”
“I'll stay.”
“You'll be over there making remarks.”
“Then don't go over there.” She pointed to the wall box. “I'll be next to you.”
“And when they leave?”
“When the car's in place, we stop. I get you out.”
“You mustn't wait for me to finish.”
“I've walked out on actors before.”
He looked away. The joke had given him something else to distrust.
Lenora felt her knee aching where she had hit the counter. She had wanted a meal and an hour without having to earn anyone's attention. Now she needed this man's attention, and she had made that harder for herself.
“Adrian,” she said. “I need you to do it. I'll take your arm. If you can't keep going, we stop then.”
He looked back at her.
“You stay where I can see you.”
“Yes.”
“That's a promise.”
“Yes.”
He swallowed. It took an effort. Then he eased himself away from the wall and went to the microphone.
Marnie showed him the switch and the button. His hand trembled around the microphone. He tested its weight, lowered his shoulders, and found a place to stand with his feet apart.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything that'll carry,” Marnie said.
“Keep your name out of it,” Basil said.
Adrian looked at him. “We've done the introductions.”
“Don't answer anybody,” Lenora said. “Give them something to listen to and leave it there.”
He nodded without liking the instruction.
Ward asked Marnie which highway direction led to town. She pointed roadward. “You know the turn,” she said. “Tell him when we're in the cars.”
“We'll try that way,” Ward told Mercer. “I don't know it's clear.”
Mercer pocketed his keys and rubbed his palm on his trousers.
Marnie assigned the van's seats. Carla and her boy would stay together. Deke and Luis would help the woman, and someone would guide the older man so he could see what was happening. Basil could ride with them. Mercer would take Lenora, Adrian and Ward.
“I'll ride with you,” Ward said directly to Mercer. “I'll give you the turn.”
Mercer smiled. “Of course.”
Deke eased the rear door open a few inches. The strip of parking outside was still visible, with corn beyond it. White wisps slid along the building toward the driveway. Marnie's van stood toward the outer edge, leaving the narrow passage she had described.
Lenora touched Adrian's forearm. He looked at her hand, then at the microphone.
“Ready,” she said.
Marnie turned on the wall box. Adrian pressed the microphone button.
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
His voice came back from above the roof, larger and a little rougher. The woman on the floor raised her head. Even the boy looked up.
Adrian took a breath.
“I regret to announce a small interruption to our afternoon's entertainment. Please remain outside. The management has received a number of complaints about the audience.”
Lenora watched the serving hatch. The pale face there tilted upward. Its mouth closed. Then it slid away along the counter, out of her sight.
Deke looked through the crack at the rear. He beckoned Mercer with two fingers.
Mercer went out sideways. Deke closed the door behind him.
Adrian had seen the signal. His next breath shook, but his voice still carried.
“There will be no refunds,” he told the things outside.
Lenora stayed beside his arm.
Grant kept close to the diner's right-hand wall as he went up the driveway. He had told himself he would walk briskly. After three steps he was running.
Adrian's voice rolled over the roof above him. Something white had gathered near the top of the wall, spreading upward toward the sound. Grant ducked under it. He did not look back to see whether it followed.
At the front corner he slowed. The sedan was where he had left it on the apron, near the driveway, its nose toward the road. Beyond its hood he could see a few feet of pavement, then white. The station canopy had disappeared. He could hear neither the fuel delivery nor ordinary traffic.
He got the key out. It struck the side of the lock before it went in.
He could get in, start the engine and go. Once he was away from the junction, he might find nothing worse than bad weather. The others had a van. Marnie had made quite a point of that.
He opened the driver's door.
Mist curled around its edge. He put his foot inside, pulled his head down and shut the door hard enough to shake the glass. He checked it with his elbow. Shut. The windows were up.
The engine started at once.
He put his hand on the gear lever and looked through the windshield. There was the roadward route. All he had to do was turn out of the apron and choose a direction.
“Grant.”
The voice came from beside the passenger window.
He kept his head forward.
“Grant. Help me.”
Walter used to run the words together when he was afraid. Grant had disliked it in him, the way an ordinary request became an obligation before you had agreed to anything. This voice ran them together in exactly the same way.
Grant turned.
A white shape stood close to the passenger side. There was a man's mouth in it, lower than it ought to have been. The rest of the face had scarcely formed. It leaned toward the closed glass.
“Help me.”
Walter was dead. Grant knew that much without needing a theory from the man in the cape.
He had known Walter was dying, too. There had been time to call for help and leave everything where it was. Walter had said he was going to testify. The material that could incriminate Grant was still there, and removing it had taken time. Walter's need had continued while he did it.
Grant had told himself there was no useful distinction between calling at once and calling a few minutes later. He had gone on telling himself that after Walter died.
The voice at the window made the interval feel long again.
“Please, Grant.”
His hand slipped on the gear lever. He wiped it against the seat.
Walter's motor-lodge reservation was paid through the next night. Grant had used it because cancelling would not bring Walter back and he needed somewhere to sleep. That explanation had seemed adequate in the lobby. He did not want to sit alone in a car and hear what this thing would say about it.
Above him, Adrian was speaking about an audience that had failed to buy tickets. It was ridiculous. It was a living man doing something difficult, with other people beside him, and Grant wanted to get back to them.
He set the car in reverse.
The white shape moved with the passenger window. Grant accelerated too quickly. He stamped on the brake when the diner's front corner filled the mirror.
“All right,” he said to himself. “All right.”
He could do this. The apron was broad enough to line the car up with the side driveway. The wall was visible on his left in the mirror. He used that, turned the wheel and backed slowly until the rear of the car entered the drive.
The thing at the passenger window fell behind. He kept going.
He reversed along the wall, correcting twice. Once he came so close that the side mirror nearly scraped the building. He straightened, kept going and found the rear parking strip.
The van stood toward the outer edge. A little space remained between it and the diner, enough for the sedan if he did not lose his nerve. He backed into that space, past the van's front quarter, until his driver's window was beside the kitchen door. The sedan's nose still pointed down the driveway toward the road.
He stopped with his foot on the brake.
Ward looked out through the partly opened rear door. Grant lifted his hand behind the glass. Ward looked from him to the sedan's rear seat, then gave a thumbs-up and turned into the kitchen.
Grant put the car in park. He could see the van's broad side to his right and the white wisps moving around its tires. Forward, its nose crowded the narrow way out. Even if he changed his mind, he could not pass it safely while people were coming through the door.
Adrian was still talking.
Grant rested both hands on the wheel. The slight tremor in them might have been worse if he had stayed alone at the front. He watched the kitchen door and waited for somebody to need him.
Adrian had run out of things to say about tickets. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wanted water, but the water was on the counter beyond the serving hatch, and he could not ask anybody to fetch it.
Lenora was still beside him. Sometimes she looked at his hand, sometimes at the hatch. She had stopped trying to be amusing. He preferred her this way, though she looked frightened, and seeing that made it harder to keep his own fear out of his voice.
He pressed the microphone button more firmly.
“Very well. Mercutio,” he said. “If we're going to have a performance, we might as well have one worth hearing.”
The voice above the roof sounded better than he had expected. There was a hollow ring to it, but the breath underneath was his. He began a speech he knew without having to reach for it, moving into the familiar words slowly. He had carried them for twenty-seven years. Here, at last, there was a practical reason to say them aloud.
The microphone shook. He steadied it with his other hand.
Luis stood beside the range with the skillet. He kept looking toward the hatch, but once he glanced at Adrian and held the look before turning back.
That helped. The voice grew stronger.
Adrian could still do it. He had played an adulterous neurologist for a personal-injury commercial that had never aired; he had gone home from that job and waited to see himself on television. No one in this kitchen had to know. They had asked him to do something now, and the doing of it was helping them.
He reached the end of the speech and needed another breath. His chest would not take as much air as he wanted. He loosened his collar with two fingers, still holding the microphone.
At the rear door, Ward put his thumb up.
Lenora turned toward him. “There?”
Ward nodded and pointed outside. “Car's here.”
Adrian saw the nod. He could stop. The relief was so strong that he swayed toward Lenora before she turned back.
Then a voice spoke from the dining room.
“Adrian.”
It was close, beyond the open serving hatch. He looked.
A pale face had risen over the counter. The eyes were shallow marks. Its mouth belonged on a person, but the lips moved with a small delay after the words.
“Mercutio. Very good.”
He knew what it was. He had watched it use Pritchard's name. He still held the microphone so tightly that the edge of the button hurt his thumb.
“Very good,” it said again.
For one brief moment, hearing it mattered more than knowing. There was no waiter passing his table, no boy looking back at a game, no suggestion that the performance had taken too long. It was attending to him.
He could accept the words and turn away. He could stop. He had already done what they needed.
“Thank you,” he said.
His voice came out above the roof. It also crossed the few feet of kitchen between him and the hatch.
“Adrian,” Lenora said, reaching for his arm.
The face's eyes deepened. He saw the change and began to move backward.
Something white reached across the end of the range. It came from below the hatch, where he had not been looking. Lenora caught his elbow. He tried to step with her, but his heel struck the wall and he could not get his feet under him.
The hand closed on his lower face.
Its palm was cold. He had time to think that, and to feel the fingers searching along his jaw, before the pain came.
He made a sound he did not recognize. The microphone fell. The amplified noise cut off when his thumb left the button.
Lenora pulled at him. He wanted her to stop because moving made it worse. He could not tell her that. He put a hand over hers and held it there.
Luis thrust the skillet under the white arm. Its edge caught the reach and pushed it sideways over the uncovered burner.
Blue flame showed through the wrist. The hand opened, taking something with it.
Adrian went backward with Lenora. His knees struck the floor. A warm trickle ran down his throat and over his shirt.
For a moment the pale face at the hatch had a man's lower jaw. Then Luis pushed the pan against it, and the part that stretched over the stove came apart in the heat. The cook pulled his hand back quickly. Adrian couldn't see what remained beyond the hatch.
Lenora was crouching in front of Adrian. She put a towel in his hands.
“Hold it here.”
He looked at it without understanding.
She guided his hand to the right side of his chin. Pain spread up into his teeth. He pushed her away, then reached for her sleeve when she moved back.
“I'm here,” she said.
He tried to ask about his mouth. It came out badly. She understood enough to look at his face, and the way she looked frightened him more than the blood.
“We get out now,” she said. “Keep holding that.”
She stood and snapped the wall-box switch off. The little light on it went dark. Adrian could see the microphone lying on the floor under the dead box.
Luis turned the burner knob. The blue flame vanished.
White mist pressed into the serving hatch again. Deke came from the rear door and caught Adrian under the other arm. Adrian tried to stand with them, sagged, then pushed with his legs again.
Lenora did not let go. He could still feel her hand through his sleeve, and he held the towel against his face as they brought him upright.
Adrian's shirt was wet down the front. From beside him, Lenora could see the missing patch along the right side of his chin, below his mouth. She could not look at it for long. He kept trying to say something and stopping at the first sound.
“You can tell me in the car,” she said.
His hand tightened on her sleeve. Perhaps that was what he had been trying to say: that he still wanted her there.
Marnie took her keys from the kitchen hook. She looked once at the serving hatch. Luis held the skillet between himself and the whiteness coming through it. The burner beneath was dead. They had very little time.
“Go to the van,” Marnie told Carla. “Take him with you.”
Carla and her son got up from the service door, leaving the towels in place. The boy pocketed his phone. Ward went in front of the older man, touched his shoulder and pointed through the rear door. The man looked outside and shook his head.
Ward pointed at the minivan, then at Carla and the boy. Carla held a hand out. After a moment the older man took it. They went through the doorway together.
“She needs more cloth,” Lenora said, looking at the woman against the freezer. The towel she held was soaked through.
Marnie looked at Basil's cape.
“That'll do.”
He put a hand to the fastening at his neck.
“It's wool.”
“We need something for her to hold.”
He hesitated, then undid it. Without the cape he looked hot and uncomfortable in an ordinary shirt. He turned the wool inward and folded it twice.
“This side's clean,” he said.
The woman watched him come closer.
“Don't cover my eye.”
“I won't.”
He knelt and put the folded cape beneath the towel she was holding, so that its thick edge rested against the injured cheek. She caught it with both hands. He waited while she adjusted it, then took up his satchel and went out after the others.
Deke opened the rear door wider for Adrian. Lenora held his arm while Deke supported him at the waist. Adrian tried to move his head away from Deke's shoulder.
“Don't,” he managed.
Deke lowered his hand from the back of Adrian's neck. “All right. I've got your belt.”
They stepped onto the narrow apron behind the kitchen. Adrian's sleeve was warm under Lenora's hand. She was tired, and her knee hurt. She watched where she put her feet.
The sedan stood along the building, driver's side nearest them, facing the roadward drive. Beyond it, toward the corn, Marnie had opened the van's sliding door on the building side. Carla and her son were helping the older man to the back row. Basil climbed in after them and moved to the far end of the middle seat, his satchel on the floor at his feet.
Ward went around the sedan's nose, opened its front passenger door in the space between the vehicles and got in. He closed it before Marnie passed behind him to reach her own driver's door.
Lenora tried the sedan's rear handle on the building side. Locked.
She struck the window with her free hand.
Mercer looked back. He worked the lock switch, and she pulled the door open. Its edge nearly touched the diner wall. Deke turned Adrian sideways to get him through the opening.
“Head down a little,” Lenora said.
Adrian bent and sat. His legs were still outside. She helped him bring one foot in, then the other, and asked him to shift across the seat. He looked at her in disbelief.
“I have to fit in too.”
He dragged himself toward the far side. She could hear his breath through the cloth. Deke braced the door while she got in beside him, then let her pull it shut.
The kitchen door, the corn and the pale wisps outside were all on the other side of the glass now.
Lenora reached across Adrian for his belt. He pushed her hand away and found it himself. It took him a long time to get the metal tongue into the buckle. She waited instead of helping again.
He looked at her when it clicked.
“Yes,” she said. “Good.”
She fastened her own belt. In front, Mercer was watching the van.
Deke had gone back into the kitchen. He and Luis brought the woman out between them. Her feet touched the ground, and she tried to take her own steps, but after the first one her knee bent. They slowed and let her put her weight on them.
Through the sedan's right rear window, Lenora watched them lower her into the van's middle row. Basil moved his satchel farther under his feet and helped draw the cape clear of her knees. The woman shook her head when Deke reached for the cloth at her face. He left it in her hands and got into the near seat beside her.
Luis stood outside. He looked past the van toward the road, his hand on his phone pocket.
Marnie leaned across her empty front passenger seat and called through the open doorway, “Luis. In here.”
He looked at her. She held his gaze and pointed to the seat.
“We go together.”
He went around the van's nose toward its far-side passenger door.
“They're in,” Mercer said, moving the gear lever.
“He's not,” Lenora said.
The sedan crept forward an inch. Ward put a hand on the dashboard.
“Wait.”
Mercer stopped. “I can see him.”
Lenora watched the minivan's front door open on the corn side. Luis climbed in. White mist rose behind him, but the door shut before it reached the opening.
Deke pulled the sliding door closed. Marnie turned from looking back at her passengers and raised a hand where Ward could see it through both windshields. Ward raised his in return.
The van moved first. It angled away from the outer edge and into the side driveway ahead of the sedan. Mercer followed closely, then braked when the van slowed by the front corner.
Lenora saw the diner windows pass on her left. The woman had crossed that apron. Lenora had left half a sandwich on a plate, and she could still taste the last mouthful if she thought about it. Everything outside the glass was white now. The gas station and the police vehicles were hidden.
At the junction, Marnie's taillights turned onto the newer highway.
“That's it,” Ward said. “Follow her toward town. Stay on the highway.”
Mercer turned after her. The sedan rocked over the edge of the apron and settled onto the road.
Adrian raised his head.
“Is it—”
“We're on the highway,” Lenora said.
He lowered his head again. The towel was red through its folds.
Marnie's taillights disappeared for a second. Mercer leaned forward, searching for them, and the sedan drifted toward the road's edge. Ward pointed. Mercer corrected sharply. Adrian struck his shoulder against Lenora's.
“Easy,” she said.
“I can drive,” Mercer said.
The taillights returned. He let the gap grow enough that he did not have to keep touching the brake.
A voice spoke beside Lenora's window.
“I've got you.”
She kept facing forward.
“I've got you,” it said, using Mercer's voice.
Adrian's hand moved toward the glass. Lenora caught his wrist. He stopped, then pulled his hand back into his lap. She let him do it. She did not know whether he had been going to answer, touch the window or merely turn away from her.
The white shape kept pace for a few yards. A cheek came close to the pane, with a mouth below it that stretched too wide. Mercer pressed the accelerator, then eased off when Marnie's lights grew larger ahead.
The shape fell away. Lenora could no longer hear the voice above the engine. She waited to hear it again.
They drove on.
Sometimes she could see the center line. Sometimes the van ahead seemed to be moving through empty air. Ward kept his radio close, listening between attempts to call. Nobody answered clearly enough for Lenora to make out words.
Adrian held the towel in place. Once it slipped and he made a small, angry sound. Lenora helped him lift the cleanest fold without trying to inspect the wound. He accepted that. Afterward he left his elbow resting against hers.
Her hands began to shake. They had been busy long enough for her not to notice. Now she could see the movement in the tips of her fingers. She laid them flat on her thighs. It did not stop.
Several minutes passed before the white thinned.
First Lenora saw a strip of grass beside the highway. Then a fence farther back, then the tops of trees with clear air between them. Ahead, Marnie's van was whole again. Its tires sat on pavement; the late-afternoon sun shone on its roof.
Ward lifted his head. “Slow down.”
Marnie signalled and pulled onto the broad paved shoulder. Mercer stopped behind her, leaving room between the cars.
Lenora looked back. White still covered the highway in the direction of the diner. It did not come closer while she watched. She could not see how far it spread beyond the road.
Ward was opening his door.
“I'm checking the van. Stay in here a minute.”
He got out with his radio. Marnie opened the sliding door for him. Carla leaned forward from the rear row; her son moved aside so Ward could see the older man. The man held up a hand when Ward got into his sight. Deke shifted to let him look at the woman. She was awake, still holding Basil's green wool against her face.
Ward counted the people in the van and looked back through the sedan's open front door at Mercer, Lenora and Adrian. Between the cars, he pressed a hand to his forehead before lifting the radio again.
He gave the junction they had left, the direction they had taken and the fact that they were on the newer-highway shoulder. He said there were twelve people, two with serious facial injuries. He asked for medical help.
Lenora heard a click. Ward called again. She did not hear anyone promise to come.
Marnie went to the woman in the van. The woman said something Lenora could not make out. Marnie paused with her hand near the cape, listened, and left the cloth where it was.
Luis sat in the front passenger seat looking at his phone. He tried a call, waited and lowered it. Marnie went around to his side, opened the front door and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her. He did not get out.
Mercer switched off the sedan's engine. The keys stayed in his hand.
“They should know who provided the second car,” he said to Ward when the deputy returned. “When you make your report.”
Ward looked at him. “You brought it round. I'll say that.”
“And got everyone away.”
“I was in here,” Ward said. “I know what you did.”
Mercer put the keys in his pocket and looked forward.
Basil came to the open front passenger door, holding his satchel against his leg. Without the cape, he seemed uncertain what to do with his free hand.
“How is he?” he asked Lenora.
“He's right here.”
Basil bent so Adrian could see him. “Can I bring you anything?”
Adrian shook his head, then regretted moving it. He closed his eyes until the pain eased.
“The cloak was useful,” Basil said after a moment. “We shouldn't keep taking that towel away from her.”
“Then don't,” Lenora said.
He opened his mouth, closed it and went back to the van. Lenora could see him speaking to the woman before he touched the edge of the wool. Whatever she said made him leave it alone and sit beside her instead.
Adrian opened his eyes.
“My mouth,” he said.
It was painful to hear him force the words into shape. Lenora looked at the towel, then back at him.
“We need somebody who knows,” she said. “I don't.”
He waited. She could not find a promise she could make about that.
“You stayed,” he said.
“Yes.”
He glanced toward the clear window, as if there might still be an audience outside. Then he looked at her again.
“You heard me?”
She thought he meant the call for help, or the answer to the thing, and for a moment she wanted him to be clearer. He had to take another breath before he could speak.
“Before.”
“I heard you,” she said. “I was listening.”
He held her gaze. His shirt was bloodied, his face covered by an ordinary kitchen towel. He looked angry and frightened, and he seemed to want to say more. She gave him time.
He did not say it.
Lenora took one hand off her thigh. It was still shaking. She could have made a joke about nerves at her age. She knew the words for it and could hear exactly how she would deliver them.
“Could you hold my hand?” she asked.
Adrian looked down at it. Then he put his free hand around hers. He kept the other one against his face.