A tingle of caution jumpstarted time as I knelt beside Dewey: the orbs were warning me that someone was approaching from behind.

Maddie stumbled toward me, keeping upright with one hand against the wall. She stopped behind me and saw Dewitt and her face crumpled.

When I reached for her, she collapsed. Unconscious or dazed.

Then the whine sounded, distant sirens. The orbs gathered Maddie into my arms and I headed downstairs. My tears blurred the stairwell walls.

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In the top flight of a rarely-used stairwell in the psychiatric hospital, Shandra swayed in the hammock. She still felt the weight of eight million psyches scraping against hers, but vaguely, from a distance. And slowly, the world slipped into place around her.

She swayed there in a long silence, her shattered mind reassembling.

She tried not to think of the things she'd felt. The woman who'd suffocated her baby with duct tape, the old man who'd starved his Alzheimer’s-stricken sister. She remembered Rachel Kravitz instead. She’d never done that before. Never pushed, never forced her psychic imprints on someone else. She’d always taken--unable to resist--and never given. Never inflicted.

Yet in the aftermath of pushing, she’d opened herself wider to the world. The anguish filled her and she almost lost herself in the nightmare world.

She’d learned two things.

One: she could show other people the psychic imprints she felt, at a terrible cost to herself.

Two: PJ could lift her curse, end her suffering. PJ's longshot power could save her from the hell of her life.

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I blinked into the sunlight outside the art building, my head throbbing in time to my heartbeat. I carried Maddie across the street like a bride across a threshold, and saw that the rental car was gone.

I'd lost Dewitt. I'd lost him. My brother, my friend. The inevitable other half of 'Lark and ...' I'd lost him.

I stared in empty blankness until the sirens roused me. Then I jogged along the sidewalk, past a plumbing supply store, Maddie jostling in my arms. The orbs kept me fast and balanced. An ambulance turned the corner, so I popped the next door with a smack from an orb, and sidestepped inside.

An apartment building. Narrow stairway with a wood banister. Five or six stories, smelling of hairspray and roast chicken. I started climbing. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know anything.

I’d lost Dewitt.

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Voices sounded nearby, so I headed upstairs, then through a door to the roof, an expanse of asphalt and ventilation shafts. I laid Maddie in the shadow of a tin housing and sat beside her.

The Manattan skyline loomed across the river. The distant traffic crashed into the emptiness left by the silent sirens, growling like surf around our rooftop island.

I’d lost Dewitt.

My neck burned from the mozzy’s sting. My breath sounded shaky. I felt blood on my cheeks and wiped my face with my palm and realized those were tears, and the realization made me laugh.

What would Dewitt say? You’re such a girl.

And what would I say? I’m sorry.

I wanted to feel everything, every moment of loss, every ounce of grief. I knew I’d wake every morning for the rest of my life on the Rock and find nobody in the hammock, nobody brewing beer, nobody driving the pickup. Just … nobody.

But I couldn’t feel that. I knew he was gone, but I couldn’t feel what I knew. I just sat there, with swollen eyes and tears on my cheeks, full of nothing.

After a time, Maddie moaned and rolled onto her side, then sat cross-legged beside me. A mottled bruise shone on her forehead and her lip was split. On the river a half-mile away, a cargo ship crawled past, and in the yard below us, laundry flapped on a clothesline.

"Remember that night on the Titanic?" she finally said.

I half-smiled into the distance. "Spring lamb in mint sauce."

"And caviar."

"You mocked my turnips," I said.

"Mashed turnips are not romantic," she told me.

"They're authentic, though."

On our anniversary, our last anniversary, I’d draped the lobster boat with fabric and fastened a table to the stern, with a checked tablecloth, and two place settings. The Bankheads took us into the dark swells of ocean and Dewitt, dressed in a tux I’d rented--two sizes too small--acted as waiter, serving the five courses I’d cooked, recreations of the Titanic menu. He’d sipped our champagne from the bottle on the sly, then finally just joined us--and finished the lamb and baked haddock--and we’d all gotten happily, giddily drunk.

On the way back, I’d held Maddie as she stood with arms outstretched over the bow, while Dewitt belted the love song from Titanic. Of course he knew the whole thing--he’d memorized lyrics for thousands of songs--but he'd sounded like strangling a goat, and he'd refused to stop until he’d finished.

In the Brooklyn sky, the gray clouds pulled themselves apart. Maddie watched them for a while then asked me, "What has he been working on?" Meaning at night, while he slept.

"Languages, mostly. Thai and Dutch."

"I thought he already knew Dutch."

"That’s Danish." My brow creased. "No, you’re right. He learned Dutch last year, planning the trip to Amsterdam."

"Amsterdam?" She stood, wrapping her arms around herself. "He never even got to Californya."

"Yeah."

After a bleak moment, she said, "That goddamn island."

She crossed to stand at the very edge of the roof. After a moment, I went and stood beside her. Six floors below, limp potted plants dotted a cracked concrete slab, and the wind blew Maddie's crimson-streaked hair around her black eye. She looked gruesome. I must've looked just as bad, with my bruised face and inflamed neck. After everything, we were still perfectly matched.

"You don’t have to move back for good," I told her. "Just stay on the Rock until the--the funeral."

"Stay with my parents?"

"Yeah."

"In my old room," she said. "You’re not going to ask me to stay with you?"

I watched the cargo ship on the river. "No."

"Is my bed still there?"

"Yeah."

She turned on the edge of the roof, her back to the drop. "Dewey told me they’re using my bedroom for storage now."

"Yeah."

She opened her hand and showed me three mozzies. "Do you think I’m going to follow you to the Rock and break the news to my parents? Tell them you killed Dewitt?"

"I didn’t--"

"You and Rachel Boone."

"PJ killed him, I saw the--" I swallowed. "I saw everything."

"You think I’m going to follow you home?"

"Maddie, you’re coming with me one way or ano--"

She spread her arms and fell backward off the roof.