"Okay, you start like this. Whatever is freaking you out, stop thinking about it."

She gripped the bag with both hands. "What do I think about instead?"

"You think about whatever comes next. Think about what you have to do to keep going."

"Is it really that easy?"

"Yes," he said. But it wasn't.

He'd spent all afternoon while Daphne was out trying not to think about her and mostly failing. It was impossible not to think about her, and thinking about her led to other things. Thinking about her meant thinking about home and Charlie and Dio's bathroom floor and before that, the bathtub and the hospital and her brother.

Finally, he'd bitten the inside of his cheek, and that helped a little. Then he sat down on the floor across from the baby, who was still wet-haired and dripping, wrapped in a ratty bath towel. Truman propped his elbows on his knees and they sat looking at each other.

She was nothing like the babies whose mothers lived in the Avalon. Those ones were sticky and neglected-looking. They screeched or cried and their noses were always red and dripping. Raymie was grave. That was the only word for it-grave, and a little severe, and now, without the layer of dirt from the storage, very clean.

They sat across from each other on the dusty carpet like they were waiting for something. Truman desperately wanted a cigarette, but if one thing had been drilled into him, it was that you were never supposed to smoke around babies. Probably even crazy-looking nightmare babies with metal teeth.

"So," he said, after a long pause. "Obie was your dad, huh?"

Raymie nodded solemnly. "Did you know him?"

"Yeah, I knew him."

"Were you one of the wounded?"

"I don't know what that means."

"Wounded. Hurt, injured. A process in which the skin is cut or broken."

"No, I know what it means, but I don't know what you're talking about."

Raymie stared up, blinking at him. "He helped people sometimes, in the hospital. They were wounded. Did he help you?"

Truman looked back at her. "Yes," he said.

At the hospital, they'd sewn Truman back up, pumped him full of someone else's blood. They gave him pain medication that made his wrists numb and his dreams terrible. Surgery had saved him, but before the operating room, there'd been Charlie, dragging him out of the water, slowing the blood. Alexa, with the phone to her ear, speaking rapidly. Truman himself only had vague recollections of hands, voices, sirens, an oxygen mask. Nothing.

He'd been afraid of a lot of things-afraid that he would go to Hell and that he would ruin Charlie's life. He'd been afraid that his mother, watching from some undetermined location, would be disappointed and ashamed of him. He'd been afraid it would be messy and disgusting and weak and cowardly, but never at any point had he been afraid that he would survive. That first night, he lay in the adjustable hospital bed and watched the beat of his heart blip up and down across a black screen.

Obie had come into the room very late, in his chalk-green scrubs, bringing water in a plastic cup. It was Obie who made the whole thing seem much more real than Truman's stitches or his blood in the tub or the sick way the room seemed to spin around him.

"So," he said that first night, when Truman was still dizzy from blood loss and painkillers. "Worst day of your life, huh?"

And Truman had laughed at that, because something was building in his chest and laughing was, of course, easier than crying. Then he began to cough.

Obie offered him the water, shaking his head when Truman tried to raise a hand to take the cup himself. "Don't," he said. "You'll disturb your sutures."

He held the cup while Truman drank from a straw with an accordion joint. He rested his hand on Truman's shoulder and the weight of it felt warm through the fabric of the hospital gown. That was the part he remembered best. How, when Obie touched him, it hadn't hurt.

"I see you went for the bleed-out." The look on his face had been knowing and wise and very sad. He'd smiled and then turned away, busy with the monitors and the IV drip.

Hearing bleed-out said aloud felt like being hit hard in the stomach. Truman had begun to cough again and Obie came across to him and pushed the button that raised the bed.

Truman closed his eyes and when he opened them again, Obie was still there, standing over the bed, looking down at him. Obie's hair was shaggy, longer than the way most of the other men on staff wore theirs. He clasped his hands behind his back as though he were waiting for something.

Truman winced. "How are my arms?"

"You've got a bunch of superficials and a couple not-screwing-arounds. You would have died if your stepdad had stopped to pick up a newspaper or something."

Truman cut his eyes away, taking in the linoleum floor, the pastel garden wallpaper. "Where's Charlie?"

"I don't know. Home, maybe." Obie was still looking down at him-intense gray gaze and sad, indeterminate mouth. "What do you remember?"

Truman stared up groggily and shook his head. "Like . . . before the tub? I remember waking up. There was ice on the windows because the furnace is broken. Charlie was still at work. I didn't go to school." Other memories surfaced slowly, and he winced. "I remember getting drunk-really drunk."

He looked away, waiting for Obie to point out that drinking before five was bad news and drinking before noon was just sad but drinking before eight in the morning was completely unstable.

Obie didn't mention it though. He only sat down on the foot of the bed, looking expectant. "But that's all? Nothing unusual or strange? What about after?"

Truman glanced away. He didn't point out that pretty much everything about the day you decided to kill yourself could be considered unusual. "Nothing. I don't know."

That wasn't quite true. He remembered the flooded bathroom and the oxygen mask. He remembered a dream of a girl. She had wide, dark eyes and black hair. He imagined reaching for her hand, grasping it in his, and smiled dazedly at the ceiling.

Obie leaned close, snapping his fingers in Truman's face. "No, no, no, you're getting dopy. Focus. I know it's hard, but stay with me. I need you tell me what you remember."

"Nothing. Please, I can't think. I need to sleep."

Obie raised his eyebrows. "You really don't remember anything-anything at all?"

Truman shook his head, trying to forget the chaotic dreams of blood loss. The girl was still there, pale and perfect, surrounded by a huge smear of metallic gray. "Nothing."

"Okay, that's all I needed to know. You did good. You can go to sleep now."

And with a kind of miserable relief, Truman did.

Later on was when the night got bad. The shadow of the dresser seemed to stretch out, oozing over the floor, filling up the room, and then he heard a voice. A real one, and not the kind that echoed up out of drug states or dreams.

Come with me. I have something to show you.

And as drugged-up and exhausted and afraid as he was, he'd gone. Despite the monitor wires and the IV, he felt himself stand up and cross to the corner of the room, only mildly surprised that when he looked back, he was still lying in the hospital bed. Then he'd stepped through the black door and into a derelict church, where the shadow man and his own smiling cadaver were waiting for him.

In the days that followed, his room was full of nurses and orderlies. They wandered in and out constantly, but Obie was the only one who looked at Truman like he was actually seeing him-all of him-and not just what he'd done. Obie told jokes and stories and laughed easily, smiling his wide, rueful smile. Holding Truman's hands still while he shook, careful not to tear the sutures. Truman slumped sideways over the bedrail with his head resting against Obie's shoulder. It had been more than a year since he'd let anyone touch him like that, not like a stranger, but like family.

Truman closed his eyes, mentally recited the first two lines of the Hail Mary, and stopped remembering. Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap, staring at the wall. Her back was straight and tense.

"Is it working?" he asked.

She took a deep breath and nodded. Then she got up and crossed quickly to the other side of the room. "Here, move the dresser."

"Daphne, it's bolted down."

"It's okay," she said, dropping to her knees. "I'll do it."

She reached underneath, fumbling around. After a few seconds, something began to smoke blackly. Then she stood up and pushed the dresser away from the wall, revealing mangled scraps of blackened metal where the bolts had been, just like she'd done to the door of Obie's apartment.

With the dresser out of the way, she took out a felt-tipped marker and drew a high rectangle on the wallpaper where the dresser had been. Then she stepped back and stared at it.

"What are you doing?"

She pointed to the rectangle. "Making a door."

"That's a rectangle."

"Well, most doors are."

Truman watched incredulously as she added a handle and then a pair of hinges. "What are those for?"

"It's important to include details. Do you have everything you need?"

Truman looked around the little room, and realized it was empty. Everything was packed. The drawing of the door seemed very final, suddenly.

He thought about Charlie coming home from work, finding Truman gone for the second morning in a row. He'd get worried after a few days, maybe call the police. But maybe it was better this way. Charlie was a good guy. He could have had a day job if they hadn't needed the money so bad. Maybe even a girlfriend. He could have had a life if he wasn't stuck raising someone else's kid. The thought made Truman feel guilty, and at the same time, he was filled with a wave of love for Charlie. He missed him already.

Walking away from his school and his friends and his whole messy, stupid life-that was easier.

He picked up the backpack and slid his shoulders into the straps. Then he scooped Raymie off the bed and moved to stand behind Daphne.

She knocked once on her fake door. "Passiflore," she said clearly, and then reached for the handle, which turned into a brass doorknob as her hand closed over it.

THE PASSIFLORE.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Stepping through the door is like stepping into the dead of night. Everything is black and cold and empty. Then the stillness is broken by a rushing sound and a gust of wind. Somewhere ahead of us, a door swings wide, revealing a rectangle of dim, yellow light.

It opens out onto a stone path, and as soon as we're through, I'm struck by the smell-a clean, fresh aroma, like dirt and water and growing things.

We're standing at one end of a huge garden. All around us, raised beds spill over with orchids and lilies, and the path is flanked with carefully shaped rose trees. The sky above us is dark, but the place is lit with bamboo torches and paper lanterns, and by their light, I see that the garden is walled in by a courtyard. On all sides, the building towers above us, studded with windows. The door we've just stepped out of is painted a lush, peeling green. When I let it swing shut behind us, it vanishes into the wall. Somewhere nearby, a stream is rushing along, chuckling over rocks.

The garden is full of shadowy figures grouped in twos and threes, but if anyone's noticed our sudden appearance, no one seems surprised.

Over by a huge stone fountain, a pair of the Lilim are clinging coyly to a man who is clearly not a demon. He's young and handsome, with artfully disheveled hair and features like a movie star. One of the girls winks at me and smiles a conspiratorial smile. The look she gives Truman is more predatory.

He stands beside me unsteadily, staring around the garden and resting his hand against the wall. He's still holding Raymie, who has her arms around her rabbit and is making little growling noises. He looks disoriented.

A plaque in the stone path at our feet announces that we are presently in the Kissing Garden at the Passiflore Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Truman is making me nervous. He's very pale and keeps glancing around like he sees something I don't.

"Are you all right?" I ask. "Was the jump-door very hard on you? Moloch said that might happen. Do you feel sick?"

He shrugs and shakes his head. "No, I'm fine."

When Raymie starts to squirm in his arms, I take her from him. Somewhere nearby, there's a restless clanging that never stops.

"Come on," I say. "We should see about getting ourselves a room."

The path leads out through an archway at the other end of the garden and into the hotel, which is impressive, even by the standards of Pandemonium. The ceiling is vaulted like a train station, covered in paintings of Greek gods. Everyone's helmet has wings. There are slot machines everywhere, clanging and flashing. People crowd shoulder to shoulder around felt tabletops, counting their chips. We make our way across the casino floor, surrounded by lights and bells and cocktail servers in short dresses.

"Flower," Raymie says wistfully, watching a tray of brightly garnished drinks glide by, balanced on the upturned palm of a waitress.

Everything smells like smoke.

A painted sign points us toward the reception desk, its words framed in intricate scrollwork and round, art deco roses. But when we try to follow it, the way is crowded and confusing. I try a likely route, only to discover we've turned the wrong way. Instead of finding ourselves in the lobby, we're standing in a deserted hallway.

It's red-the whole thing, ceiling and carpet and walls, which are covered in a mismatched collection of mirrors. They look jumbled and slightly chaotic against the wallpaper, some in heavy gilt frames, others completely unadorned. Out of curiosity, I continue on and turn the corner, only to find that it doesn't lead anywhere. The hallway ends in a solid wall, paneled floor to ceiling with mirrors, and I have a feeling that if we don't leave immediately, my mother will show up and demand that I come home.

When I start back the way we came though, Truman hesitates, looking over his shoulder at one of the gilt-framed mirrors.

"Are you coming?" I say, pausing in the mouth of the hallway to wait.

He blinks and glances back at me. The mirrors are empty except for his own reflection. One too-thin boy with hollow eyes and lank, shaggy hair.

"Did you see something?"

"No," he says, then hesitates. "I mean, it was nothing. Just my mind playing tricks."

With Raymie balanced on my hip, I retrace our steps and locate the reception desk.

We cross the lobby, me and Raymie in front with Truman trailing behind. Raymie is reaching for him over my shoulder, but she has the good sense to stay quiet.

The clerk at the front desk is young, with gold earrings and a small goatee.

"We'd like a room please," I tell him, holding Raymie so that her face is pressed close to my shoulder to hide her teeth.

The clerk nods and enters something into the computer. He's wearing a brocade vest and a gold nametag that says CLARENCE and gold rings in both his ears. He reminds me of a genie or something else magical, but after a close inspection, I decide that he's human after all. His teeth are straight and white, and his eyes are a mild hazel.

He studies me politely. "I haven't seen you around before. You just come in through the Kissing Garden?"

I nod. He says Kissing Garden like he is completely unconcerned by what goes on there. The idea of a garden where girls like my sisters prey on gamblers and tourists is unsettling and the fact that this doesn't seem to bother Clarence in the slightest is almost as disconcerting.

I'm filling out the information card when Truman starts to cough. It's a harsh, hacking sound, and Clarence leans on the counter, looking concerned. "Hey, you all right, man?"