A bulldozer couldn't get through the tension in this house; we're all knotted up like the aftermath of a gunshot. Everyone except Paul filters out into the living room, all looking at Kincaid. Kincaid looks right back.

"Arabella," Dr. Barg murmurs.

She turns like she's on a hinge, not a molecule's difference in body language, not a single pale feature out of place.

"Please go set the signs back up."

She starts to bluster, starts to object, but her eye catches mine, and all those dreams of participation flush away. She acquiesces with a flare in her temper, and marches out the front door. Seconds later, the popular opinion of Countess Bathory is swinging up the driveway. I can't help but giggle.

Dr. Barg is one big frown. "You really think this will work?"

"You've got a better idea?"

Dr. Barg nods, sucks his teeth. "Your idea," he says. His blitheness is a slap in the face. "Remember that part." He hobbles over to the dining room table and slumps into one of the chairs, leaving me to contemplate his subtext.

Napoleon's sign goes up, and Bram Stoker's. Rumors and dementias nibble at my mind, blotting out the crush and tumble of the thoughts leaking in from outside. I can still feel Arabella, her misdirected annoyance at her muscles and the air, her free-running worry about Paul. I try to focus on Kincaid, but all he's got is resignation, the data-hungry stillness at the heart of sheer terror.

His curiosity spikes as Paul wanders up to him. I feel the old man's confusion at the wall clock and the length of rope Paul's got with him, a jolt of excitement as Paul reaches for Kincaid's arm. The excitement is dashed as Paul loops the rope around Kincaid's wrist, and confusion takes over when Paul knots the other end around his own right hand. Paul sits down across from him, tests the slack on the rope; he nods to himself, then me. I keep my eyes on Kincaid as I walk over to them.

"You got a bead?" Paul asks me, as I lean on the chair.

"Close enough for jazz."

Paul nods. I can't even see his aura, he's wrapped up so tight. "Mr. Kincaid"—his pupils jiggle—"can move your head?"

Kincaid's cheeks bunch like he's trying to smirk. Paul smirks with him, with an asthmatic laugh that's maybe one percent humor.

"Weird question, huh?" He keeps the smirk on. "It's about to get weirder. We're gonna have a little talk here, but it can be rough the first time."

There goes Kincaid's pulse. I give Paul a quick rap on the shoulder.

"Sorry," Paul says, to both of us. "Gallows humor. Anyway, if you feel anything, short of breath, dizzy, anything, you nod three times, you got it?"

Kincaid's breathing like a punctured tire. He glares at Paul, and, chest heavy, he nods.

"Good. Now"—he holds the wall clock in between them, face up—"focus with me."

Kincaid gives Paul a look I'd charitably call "incredulous". But Paul's not making eye contact, and after all the staring and mumbling he can manage, the old man finally looks down. The clock ticks away in time to my heartbeat as I watch from my place by the whiteboard, scanning both participants.

At a minute and ten, Paul's pupils separate. Kincaid gives the unconscious shiver we all expect, but his focus remains on the clock. Paul's aura is an inscrutable blue.

At a minute and thirty, the back door opens. My attention bristles half a second before I know it's Arabella. She comes in to stand by our other spectators, with a loaded glance just for me.

Two minutes; Paul and Kincaid breathe in unison. Both of them are thinking in time to the clock, thinking about the shape of the minute hand, the smoothness of the second hand. They're thinking about how long they've been doing this, trying to count backward to the start. They're thinking about the people staring at them, and all the myriad ways they've gotten themselves into this.

At two minutes and thirty, the clock hits midnight, and both minds think of church-bells.

I feel the shift from commonality to synchronicity: a sudden lurch, an echo like a rock off a cliff. Paul's aura pools up around Kincaid's, and their thoughts electrify as each of them is sucker-punched by the other's memories.

Kincaid is too petrified to look up, to obedient to risk breaking it off; their thoughts flow to the subject of me for just an instant, and then they're locked back into each other. Gingerly, his hands still anchored to the clock, Paul's aura slides further around Kincaid's, and there's a surge of psychic static as Paul begins the search. His aura's brighter than ever, his mind undefended, soaked and steeping in Ozzy Kincaid as he tries to find the memories of the murders.

Which is why I take this moment to clamp my hand on Paul's shoulder.

I get shock, the outrage of the others, an instant before I'm drowning in Paul. He feels like a box of dead cockroaches, sounds like a tape running backwards; I can tell I'll be paying this back in gray hairs. Luckily, what I need is right on the surface.

In this moment, I'm Paul, still fresh in his body, still firing off synapses just to see what parts respond. He's at a party, looking at faces, seeing past them to the thoughts behind.

There's a whisper by his shoulder, an alarmed tone; there are people looking around, a back door, a scream. There are memories of news broadcasts full of hate and an empty building seen from a sealed back room.

There's a jolt of malice and he's in an alley, still the same suit, shaking clammy hands with a man in a long coat; and as they're sealing some deal Paul hates making, I see through the other man's body and into a serpentine wad of thoughts I remember just vividly enough.

Then my thoughts go into fast-forward, and I'm slamming backward

Against the whiteboard.

Kincaid's lolled back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, gumming out some nonsense I'm pretty sure wants to be a prayer. Everyone else is focused on me, Boys placid, Arabella stunned, Barg amused. Paul has abandoned his chair, and is all but doubled over as he glares at me.

"You got me to let my guard down," he snarls, and I can feel his manic shuffle to find the memories I scanned. "You got me to risk blowing everything sky-high—"

"Fuck you."

That kicks the adrenalin up a notch. All four of Paul's pupils bulge.

"Excuse me?"

"You know what I mean," I spit. I push off the wall in a jangle of limbs. "You fucker, you cocksucker, you son of a bitch, you know what I mean."

"Was I right?" Barg asked.

I just nod. My eyes are still on Paul. "What do you have to say for yourself?" I spit. "Why did you do it? Why?"

Paul looks at Dr. Barg, at Arabella; and, crumpling up in defeat, he looks again at me, and speaks in a wheezy growl.

"Just to piss you off."

I look down at my feet. This soon after a link up, I don't need eye contact to make Paul feel guilty.

"I'm headed out." I take Kincaid's cell phone off the table, walk over to the coat-rack. "Let me know what happens next," I say to Dr. Barg as I pass. "I'm gonna go see if I'm right."

"You need back-up," Dr. Barg says.

I glare at him. He's a glass full of mud, a phone on the edge of reception.

"No I don't." But I don't bother closing the front door behind me.

I cut across the lawn, knock my elbows against as many signs as I can. I catchbroken similes, retarded bits of historical apocrypha. Every lull is another flash back to Carmel's bandages, and Tommy's memories, and Paul's promise to a stranger in an alley. It takes concentration for me to connect it all.

The front door opens as I'm hopping in the Cavalier. I put the key in the ignition, and wait for her to climb into the passenger seat.

"Hard to convince?" I ask.

I get a snort in response, the pop of the door closing. "He almost sent Boys," Arabella says, as she's clicking on her seatbelt.

I look at her, small, thin, unprepared; but there's fire in her mind, and iron, and I know I'd need an army of negotiators to even make her consider a change of plans.

"Could be a circus," I say.

Arabella's a grin in the night. "Buy me some peanuts?"

I scoff, and turn the key. "If that's the best you've got, we could have serious problems."

We pull out of suburbia, and point the car toward Redwood City.