“The Malocchio,” continues Smythe when I don’t say anything. “Is also known as the Evil Eye. It’s a curse of bad luck, to death. No one has ever been known to survive it for more than a few hours.”

She’s very still. Like any sudden move on her part and I’ll explode or something.

“A curse,” I say.

“The curse, some would say,” says Smythe. She arches an eyebrow. “You don’t seem impressed.”

“Because you’re telling me I’ve been cursed,” I say.

“They don’t have curses where you’re from?”

I blink at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think you’re from here,” says Smythe.

“I was born around Akron, but—.”

“This is Willamette.”

“Isn’t that out west?”

“Northeastern Ohio.”

“I've lived here all my life. Never heard of it.”

“County seat of Portage County,” says Smythe.

“That’s Ravenna.”

“Never heard of it,” says Smythe.

I lean back in my chair.

Smythe says, “The dead practitioner. The woman from the house? The kidnapper? She had a level three sponsorship.”

“She had a what?”

“Right. You don’t have those either.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think that she opened a gateway to somewhere else,” says Smythe. “Where you’re from. Sometimes they do that. Harder to track a body when it’s not from this universe. You closed the gateway when you shut the door, cutting her off, see? But then she had you.”

“Had me for what?”

“Practitioners sometimes use human sacrifice to fuel their spells. The truly awful ones do anyway.”

“Human sacrifices and curses,” I say. What the fuck?. This has to be some kind of weird interrogation technique. They didn’t evacuate the building. There is no curse. They’re all out there huddled around a monitor, stifling their giggles, as they watch me on TV.

“The man with the beard?” says Smythe. “I think he’s a practitioner too. I think you got caught up in their rivalry. He killed the lady and her helper and thought you were an ally. He tried to help you. He did something right or that car that hit the house would’ve killed you instead of giving you an express trip to the basement.”

“Come on—.”

“What did you take from the convenience store?”

“What?”

“We watched the recording,” says Smythe. “You left with one of the scratch-offs. The clerk says you stole it.”

I snort. “I thought he was going to delete the files.”

“Oh, he got the local ones. The company keeps an offsite backup he didn’t know about. His version of the story doesn’t quite line up with the video, but we don’t have sound. The scratch-off. Did you win?”

“Yeah….”

“So. You walk through a door in one house and come out into an identical house. A house you think has two living rooms and two kitchens only they’re gone now. You go back to the bar which has been changed into a dry cleaner’s. You go to your apartment building. The fob works. The key works, only someone else is living there. The ATM eats your card because you don’t have an account there and never did. You’re not in the system. Your driver’s license looks authentic but the town listed doesn’t exist and the state has no record of you at all. There’s no record anywhere of you or Nick Bonaventura. Ben, you’re not from here.”

“But….” She’s right. I know she’s right. She's got to be. I’m not from here.

“You’re gonna be okay,” she says and takes my hand. “And I want to get you that sandwich that Rigby went and got for you. You’re hungry, right?”

I haven’t eaten since last night. I’m ravenous and getting shaky. I nod.

“But before I get you that, I have to make sure you’re safe. The Evil Eye is no joke and we don’t know what Mr. Beardy did to you.” Smythe leans in. She says, “You say you can see dark and light stuff and push for things to happen?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that how you knew about Eddie?”

“Eddie?”

“The man out front when you came in,” says Smythe. “You remember him?”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “He had darkness kinda swirling around him which was odd because things were hardly moving at all in here otherwise.”

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“Okay,” says Smythe. “That’s it? You saw that and told Rigby?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but he had a body in his trunk. Eddie comes in here all the time complaining about the neighbors and asking about cases he hears about in the news or on his scanner. Mostly we thought he was just lonely. But sometimes people get fascinated with police work for the wrong reasons. I think now he was fighting some powerful urges and lost that battle sometime yesterday or the night before. Right before Rigby got to him, Eddie went for Sanderson’s gun. After Rigby tasered him they searched his car.”

“Wow.”

“So, you can see things and push for another outcome?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“So you can control it?”

“I think so. Some. I don’t know.”

“Try it.”

“Excuse me?”

Smythe gave me a lopsided smile. “Normally I don’t tell cute young white boys to push their luck with me, but you go ahead.”

I laugh.

“No really. Go on ahead. Do something.”

“Like what?”

“Ben, I have no idea. But you don’t get the sandwich until you do. If you can control whatever this is then everybody will feel a lot safer.”

I sit there for a moment and think. Is what she’s saying as crazy as all the other shit that’s been going on? What Smythe is telling me is bizarre but it seems to fit.

And I do seem to have some control over it, right? I mean, it didn’t work out with Billy the Clerk, but it did in the stairwell and the bank. In those cases, I was trying to accomplish something specific. Smythe needs some kind of demonstration but nothing is happening in the room. The colors are there but faint and they’re hardly moving at all.

Can I get them moving somehow?

I try for a moment but nothing I do seems to change things. There’s maybe a bit more light here than there was. Okay, maybe I can work with that. Maybe I can just push in general. Force away the dark and something will—.

Her phone dings twice.

She takes it out of her suit pocket and looks at it. She frowns. She holds up a finger as she reads the message over.

“Oh shit,” she says and looks at me. “I have to go.” She stands. “Right now. You stay here. Don't do anything. I’m not going to lock you in, Ben, but you stay right there, I swear to God.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

Then she’s out the door.

She comes back thirty seconds later with my sandwich and then she’s gone again without a word.

I’m in the bank.

The getaway driver bursts through the door into the lobby and I’ve got the shotgun up and pointed at him.

I don’t hear the click of the safety. His rifle stays pointed at the floor.

I fire and his head comes apart.

MAC sits up. His neck is fine. He’s just looking at me.

I pump another shell into the shotgun, point it at him, and fire. His throat dissolves in gore and his head tilts back way too far as he falls. For a moment I think it’s going to fall off and that I’ve decapitated him.

But he rolls over instead and stands. He’s fine. No wounds showing anywhere. He’s smiling at me.

I jack in another round.

I ram the gun into his midsection and pull the trigger.

Red awfulness sprays out from his back and purple things slide out of him onto the floor.

He doesn’t go down.

He’s fine, in fact.

I pump the shotgun.

He hisses at me, finally angry. Drops of spittle spatter onto my face. It keeps spattering and it smells awful.

I’m wet.

I’m dreaming.

I’m in the interrogation room and it’s raining. Stinking water from the sprinkler system above me. Some gets into my mouth. I spit it out. It tastes even worse than it smells. I remember hearing that water for sprinkler systems sit stagnant for years and now I can testify that it’s true. Yay.

Is there a fire?

I don’t hear an alarm.

The water is chilly.

I try the door. It opens. I poke my head out. I don’t see anybody. The place is still empty. I guess they did evacuate. I don’t see a fire or any smoke. Other sprinklers aren’t going off. Just mine.

Great.

I swore to Smythe that I’d stay in the room, dammit.

I close the door and curl up under the table. Maybe I’ll get used to the smell. I try to convince myself the water's not that cold.

Smythe comes to get me an interminable time later. She’s got a blanket that she wraps around me as soon as she coaxes me out of the room. She doesn't want to get wet and I don't blame her a bit.

Torelli is with her. She has him take me into the bathroom where there’s a shower.

I clean up and find that they’ve left me some generic underwear and a lovely orange jumpsuit to wear. So I’ve got that going for me. My clothes and personal effects, all I’ve got in the world now, are probably evidence or something, bagged and tagged and on a shelf.

Smythe is waiting for me in the hall when I step out. “Sorry about the duds,” she says. “It’s what we’ve got.”

“Did it work? Did something happen?” I ask her.

She beams. “Oh yes,” she says, but she leaves it at that. “Right this way.”

She leads me to Interrogation Room 2 which is much like Room 1 except it isn’t wet or raining and there’s a large mirror on one wall. Just like on TV.

Smythe smiles at me as she sits. “It’s a bit old school, yeah, but not everybody watching prefers video.”

“Gotcha,” I say.

Torelli comes in and leans against the wall like before.

“Sorry about the sprinkler system,” says Smythe. “It’s not supposed to do that, obviously. Do you know what happened there?”

“No,” I say. “I was asleep. I did have a nightmare though.”

“About the bank?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll have those for a while.”

“Yeah.”

"You know," Torelli says. “Only two types fall asleep in interrogation rooms.”

Smythe rolls her eyes. "Here we go."

“It’s true,” says Torelli. I swear I don’t think his face would change expression if his parents were blown up in front of him. “Either they’re guilty as sin,” he says. “Or they’re dead tired.”

“Of course he’s tired,” says Smythe. “Look at the day he’s had. And now his nightmare has set off the sprinklers.”

“He probably did something to them.”

“Like what?” says Smythe. “If he did, it’d be on tape. He didn’t do anything. It’s his luck.”

Torelli snorts.

I don’t say anything.

Smythe smiles at me. She says, “Thank you. I can’t say much but I got a lead on a case I’ve been working.”

“Good,” I say. I mean it. I think I like Detective Smythe. She reminds me of my mother. I'm surprised to find I like Torelli too.

“You think he did that?” says Torelli. “That case has been cold for two years. It’s coincidence.”

He’s right. I am tired. “You know what? You got a coin?”

Torelli looks at me. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a quarter.

I take it. I’m about to flip it. I stop myself. “You got any more?”

A few minutes later my hands are full of coins. The pile is mostly pennies, but there are a few quarters, nickels, and dimes. If I’m really in a different world now, the money still looks the same.

I look at Torelli. “Heads or tails?” I ask.

Torelli shrugs. “Heads.”

“Oo, I’ll take tails,” says Smythe.

When I toss them into the air, I say, “Edge.” And then I push.

The coins fall with a clatter and they all start to roll every which way.

The door opens. Standing there is one of the biggest women I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean fat. I don’t mean tall. She’s simply on a different scale. She’s also a pretty brunette with her hair resting on her shoulders. Six-four if she’s an inch. Curvy in her dark suit.

Standing beside her is another woman who might be five feet tall in her heels. Her hair has tighter curls than mine. Her coloring is a little darker than her companion’s. Maybe Latina. She wears mirrored sunglasses and she’s chewing gum.

Some of the coins have rolled out the door and past their feet. Both women look down to watch them go.

All the coins still left in the room have rolled to the wall where they’re upright, resting on their edges. There’s one or two tilted against a table leg. Smythe picks up a quarter that’s propped against her shoe.

She laughs. “Edge it is,” she says. She looks at the women. “Who are you guys?”

“Agents Ochoa and Tyler,” says the big one. “FBI.”