The Shadow Men

Within a Mile of Home

Once, Trix had woken in the middle of the night to find someone standing at the foot of her bed. It was the most terrifying moment of her adult life. Lured up from dreams by a sense she could not identify, she’d lain awake for a while with her eyes still closed, certain that someone was there. Swimming in that just-woken state, which had the feel of a dream and yet seemed so real, she’d wanted to open her eyes to prove that she was wrong but also to confirm that what she sensed was true. There’s someone waiting for me to wake, she’d thought, and I can’t open my eyes.

And then the movement-a shuffling of feet, a rustle of clothing-and she’d opened her eyes and sat up at the same time. Her scream had been one of terror and rage, and the shadowy shape had fled the room, crashing into the door frame and leaving a dent that she had never gotten around to sanding away. Tooth, one of the policemen who’d come later that morning had said, examining the indentation. With any luck it’s knocked loose and the asshole will lose it. She’d slept at Jenny and Jim’s for three nights afterward, then mustered the courage to return home. A hundred “what if” scenarios had played through her mind, and sometimes they still did. In another world you were raped and murdered, one of her friends had said in the pub one night. That comment had given her three days of nightmares, but even in those she succeeded in chasing the intruder away. It came back to her now as she crept onto the landing of a stranger’s house. She knew it was not true. She had woken and scared the intruder away, and that was the only truth. Because she was unique.

And now she was the intruder.

She followed Jim out onto the landing and wondered if this was how that unknown man had felt as he’d worked his way through her house-breath held, feet settling lightly in case of creaking floorboards, heart thumping. But she thought not. She had not chosen to be an intruder, and she took no delight in it at all.

The layout of this house was different from Veronica’s home. Something about it felt the same-occupying the same space, perhaps, or maybe the general shape and substance echoed the building back in the world they’d just left. But if it had once been the same building, someone had spent a lot of time and effort expanding and enlarging it.

The landing cornered around the gallery staircase, and as they reached the head of the stairs Trix paused, listening. She touched Jim’s shoulder and he stopped, too, glancing back at her, then down into the hallway below once again. She could see the silvery flicker of a TV screen spilling from one of the rooms down there, and she heard the gentle laughter of someone relaxed at home.

She leaned to her right and looked through a partially open doorway, then froze when she saw the girl-a teenager, maybe fifteen years old, lying back on her bed with one hand behind her head, the other resting on her stomach, fingers tapping gently. Trix saw the wire snaking across the bed to the small device on the table. In the halflight, she could not make out the headphones.

Jim put his finger to his lips and started down the stairs. Trix followed, and as they descended she felt a curious weight growing around them. At first she thought it was caused by her shallow breathing and thumping heart, or the darkness, or the reality of where they were-somewhere different. But as Jim stepped down into the hallway and the girl upstairs started shouting, she realized what it was. The fear of impending discovery was solidifying all around them.

“I’ll never… see the likes… of you… again!” the girl screamed from behind them, and as Trix glanced back and up she thought for a surreal moment that the girl meant them. She sees our strangeness, the fact that we’re from somewhere else and don’t belong here, and -But the landing was empty. The teenager was singing.

Jim clasped Trix’s arm and squeezed, calling her attention. She looked back at him. He was nodding to the front door, five paces away across the oak-floored hallway. His eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, and she could almost smell the fear coming off him. Not scared of being caught, she thought, but frightened of what that would mean for Jenny and Holly.

At that moment, Trix vowed that they would not be caught here. Whether or not they slipped out without being seen, they would not be caught. She clenched her fists and pressed her lips tight together, and then a voice came from the TV room. “What’s the point of a personal stereo if you don’t keep your voice to yourself?” the man said, not unkindly. It sounded as if he was smiling as he spoke.

“They call them iPods now, dear.”

“Well, forgive me for-”

The girl shouted again, tone-deaf and enjoying every line of whatever she was listening to.

“Go,” Jim whispered.

“Jim, we could”-Trix pointed back beneath the gallery staircase. It was dark back there, two doors half-closed on shadowy rooms.

“No,” he interrupted. “We need to get out of here.”

Somewhere in one of those rooms, a dog growled. Oh, fuck, Trix thought, that’s just what we need.

“Go and ask her to turn it down, sweetness,” the man’s voice said.

“You go! Lazy bastard.”

“I’m watching the game!”

More shouting from upstairs. It was so out of tune that Trix smiled to herself, but then Jim pulled at her, taking his first step across the hallway.

The dog’s growls became louder. Soon it would start barking.

Come on! Jim mouthed, taking another step.

The dog barked, the teenager shouted the first line of a new song, and a woman appeared in the living room doorway before them, smiling softly.

Trix wanted to say something to her. Tell her they weren’t a threat, they didn’t mean any harm, they’d just come through and only wanted to leave the family in peace. But she felt her own jaw drop open in stunned shock, and these words lived only in her mind. Jim’s fingers closed tighter on her arm, and she leaned forward, ready to dash to the front door and escape out onto the street.

“Conor!” the woman shouted. “There’s someone in the house.” Her eyes flickered to the left, and Trix followed her gaze. A dog was emerging from one of the back rooms, still in shadows but glittering eyes and wet, bared teeth visible. It was a terrier, compact and coiled, and she knew she should not let its size deceive her.

The woman looked back at Trix, caught her attention. Trix smiled.

“Otis, sic!” the woman shouted, and the dog came for them.

Jim ran for the door and flipped the catch, and Trix went with him. As he was hauling on the door she turned and lifted her foot, an unconscious defensive gesture, because in her mind’s eye the dog was already leaping through the air, teeth bared and ready to sink into her shin.

“What the fuck are you doing in here!” a man shouted, and a shadow suddenly filled the doorway behind the woman. Holy shit, he’s seven feet tall! Trix thought, and though perhaps panic made him seem taller than he actually was, he was certainly big enough to do them both a lot of damage.

The dog had not pounced. It was hunkered down, hackles bristling, teeth still bared.

“We’re not here to cause a problem!” Trix said, and behind her Jim opened the door at last.

The man was stepping past the woman, moving her gently to one side with a protective arm pressed across her chest. His other arm hung at his side, hand fisted into something resembling the head of a sledgehammer.

“Trix,” Jim said softly.

“What?” another voice said. The girl stood at the head of the stairs, headphones still on and the music player clasped in her hand. Her mouth hung open in surprise, eyes flickering from Trix and Jim to the dog to her parents, then back again.

“We’re leaving,” Jim said.

“Damn right you are!” the man shouted, and he darted across the hallway. The dog leapt then, tangling in the man’s feet and sending him stumbling toward them, hands outstretched, eyebrows rising in surprise as momentum threw him forward.

Jim tugged Trix through the doorway, and the man’s left hand closed around its edge, clasping tight to prevent himself from falling over. Trix saw the dog cowering back against the lowest stair, ears flat against its head, head lowered, eyes staring up at the big man. Behind and above them, the teenager seemed frozen in place.

“Trix, run!” Jim said, and he pulled her out into the dark. She turned her attention from the shocked and angry family behind them to the ground beneath her feet, startled by the three steps down to the street that had not been there before. Jim’s Mercedes was no longer parked at the curb-of course not-and in its place stood a big station wagon, glittering with droplets of rain.

They hit the sidewalk and turned right, running along the street, listening for sounds of pursuit, and Trix wondered whether Jim was feeling as dislocated as she. There were no obvious differences around them, at least not immediately. But she felt not only that she had not been here before, but never could have been. She glanced back at the home they had just left-Veronica’s house, in another world-and it was nowhere near the same. The front door still stood open but no one looked out, and she wondered at the scene taking place in there right now. The wife calling the police, perhaps, husband bristling, dog slinking back into one of those dark rooms, the teenager watching from above with a kind of detached surprise. At least they weren’t following. At least-

A shadow appeared at the open doorway, big enough to be the man. And he had something in his hand.

“Jim, gun!” Trix said, and they ran faster. Surely he wouldn’t fire at them in the street? Would he really shoot at all, even though they’d actually done nothing? With every step she expected to hear the sharp report of a pistol and feel the bullet’s impact, and by the time they rounded a corner she was panting hard, fear running cold down her back.

“Keep running,” Jim said. “Just in case.”

“In case he’s following?”

“It’s not as if we can explain,” he said, and it was as close to humor as either of them could find right now.

They ran on, side by side now, and Trix realized what an unlikely pair of joggers they would make. Jim was wearing jeans and a dark button-fronted shirt, having left his jacket in Veronica’s living room. And she wore tight black trousers stitched with several zips, a vest top, and a light jacket. Running, they were so obviously fleeing something that they might as well have painted “guilty” on their foreheads.

At the next road junction she grabbed Jim’s hand and pulled him left, then leaned against a high timber fence and tried to catch her breath. “Can’t keep running,” she said, and he nodded his understanding.

“We’d know by now if he was coming after us,” Jim said, glancing nervously back the way they had come. He was panting, as was Trix, but she thought it was more out of surprise and fear than exertion.

“So what now?” she asked, though she had already figured where Jim’s first instincts would take him. He’d promised to deliver those letters, yes, and they’d both sworn not to open them. But Jim had not promised to go directly to this Boston’s Oracle. Veronica must have known that he never would, and had not burdened him with the need to break that promise. In Trix’s eyes, that gave the old woman more of a human aspect than anything else she’d said or done.

“Now we find Jenny and Holly,” Jim said. “My apartment, your place, Jenny’s parents’. The first thing she’d do is go somewhere familiar. If this is even the Boston they slipped into.”

“If anywhere’s familiar,” Trix said. “Don’t you feel…?” She shrugged, because exactly what she felt was difficult to express.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing around at the buildings surrounding them. There was nothing too unusual about them, no unique construction methods or materials. But Trix felt totally out of place here. Perhaps it was a combination of many smaller factors-the air carrying an unusual taint, the sky hazed with a different level of pollution, the echoes of unknown voices singing on the breeze-that made her shiver. It was as if they were being watched, and it was not the last time she would imagine that.

That cityscape, she thought, able to dwell on it for the first time. It’s one of those I’ve had nightmares about-one of those Bostons where I’m now dead-and Jim has painted it, and it’s almost like…

As they turned from Prince Street onto Hanover-the smells of the North End’s restaurants almost inescapably tempting-a car cruised by, three teenagers inside singing along cheerfully to a song pumping out of the radio speakers. One of the girls looked at Trix and smiled. They sang in English. It surprised Trix, though it shouldn’t have. This city might be some kind of parallel world, but it was still Boston.

“We need to get a cab,” Jim said.

“Yeah. Carless now.” She watched the teens’ car drift along the street.

“It’s going to be nearly impossible to get one here. Maybe out on the main road, whatever it is that runs over the Big Dig. Otherwise we can head toward Quincy Market. It’ll be easy enough to find a cab there. That’s probably better, getting some distance, just in case those people called the cops.”

“And if they have?” Trix said. “What would we do? How would we explain who we are?”

“We’d just…,” Jim said, voice disappearing into a shrug.

“In this Boston, we’re both dead,” she said. “Husks in the ground, or dust if our families had us cremated.” She shook her head, trying to absorb the strangeness of that truth. Every breath I take contains molecules I’ve breathed before in another body.

“I don’t care,” he said. His face changed little; there was no dawning realization, only acceptance. “I’m only here for one thing.” As he turned from her, she saw him check that the two folded envelopes were still in his back pocket. Each had been marked with a name and an address, and she was keen to check them out right away. But this was all for Jim. For now, she would follow his lead.

Less than ten minutes later they flagged down a cab on North Street. The driver was a big, cheerful Irishman, and he turned down the Celtic-punk CD just enough to be able to shout over it. Something about this comforted Trix, though at first she couldn’t quite place what it was. Jim shouted his apartment address, the driver waved a hand and pulled out into traffic, and the music provided a drum-and-fiddle theme to their journey. It was as the Irishman started shouting about roadwork and how the city still wasn’t spending enough on road maintenance that she was able to sink back into her seat and relax. He doesn’t see anything different about us, she thought. To him we’re normal. Clasping Jim’s hand, she closed her eyes and rested.

I wonder if Trix is feeling this as well, Jim thought. The sense of being followed was subtle, an itch on the back of his neck and a tightening across his scalp. He did not turn around to look back; all he’d see would be headlights, vague shapes walking along pavements, shadows in this place where he should never be. The feeling was slight. And besides, whoever followed them would be at home in those shadows.

He looked forward past the big driver at the streets unrolling ahead. Trix’s hand felt solid and real in his, and he gave her a slight squeeze, smiling when she squeezed back. The driver was speaking, but his words were all but lost in the rush of music blasting from the speakers. Amid such cacophony, Jim found it ironically easy to rest and gather his thoughts.

From what he’d seen of the skyline from the upstairs window in the house they had just fled, this Boston looked quite different from the city where he had been born. How strange that a few significant changes could affect the view so fundamentally, even though ninety-five percent of the city was probably nearly identical.

Yet already he felt so much closer to Jenny and Holly. He and Trix had come through into this reality from another, stepping across the threshold with little more than watery eyes and a sense of shock at their accomplishment, and maybe somewhere in this Boston, Jenny and Holly were breathing, living, striving to discover what had happened to them and waiting for him to find them again. Though this was a strange city, the sense of being an invader here was rapidly fading away.

He could feel the folded letters in his back pocket. Soon they would go to the first of those addresses and look for the first name, but before that he had to see for himself just how different this place was. As Trix had said, both of them had died in this reality and left their loved ones grieving, so his apartment would belong to someone else. But it was the first place Jenny would have checked, and perhaps…

“Perhaps she’s still there,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” the driver called.

“Nothing,” Jim said, raising a hand. “Turn the music up.”

“That I can do!” The driver flicked a dial on the dashboard, and the music roared louder, filling the car and allowing Jim to clear his head.

“She might be,” Trix said, leaning into him and resting her head against his shoulder. “But if I know Jenny, she’d have moved on.”

“Holly will be her priority. She’ll be trying to figure out what the fuck has happened, but she’ll be steered by Holly. They’ll have to eat, and have somewhere to sleep. And if they can’t find anyone who knows them, it’ll be a hotel.”

“Providing she came through with money.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “And providing the currency here is still dollars.” He wondered what would happen when it came time to pay the cabdriver. He reckoned he had fifty bucks in his pocket, but would the driver recognize the president on Jim’s currency? And beyond that… would they have to steal? And if they were arrested, what story could they give? Their names here matched those of long-dead children.

As they left the North End, Jim took more notice of their surroundings, leaving the problems of money and identity until later. The overall impression he’d gleaned from that brief look at this new Boston’s skyline was becoming more refined now, and initially he was surprised by how little had really changed. The JFK Federal Building was still there, which told him plenty, and Boston Common was still a welcome oasis of nature within the city. It was across the Common, roughly in the theater district, that the cathedral they’d seen from the house rose toward the night sky. It was well illuminated by display spotlights, proudly flaunting its magnificence over the lower buildings surrounding it.

“That is massive,” Trix said, and Jim realized she was leaning across the backseat with him to get a better view.

“What’s the cathedral’s name?” Jim shouted, taking a risk. The driver glanced curiously at him in the mirror, then grinned again and switched into a new, even more verbose mode. Tourists, he must have thought, and Jim vowed to keep an eye on their route.

“That’s the world-famous Cathedral of Saint Mary in the Park, and that in front of it is Saint Mary’s Park. Green an’ lovely, even at night.” He turned the music down, and Trix glanced at Jim and raised her eyebrows. What have you started? But this was good. They needed information, needed to know what this Boston held for them. And who better to ask than a taxi driver?

“Almost thirty years to build, and fourteen souls taken into the cathedral’s bosom,” the driver said. “If you visit it on your stay, make sure you take a look at the shrine in there, built to those brave souls. Beautiful, it is.” He looked in the mirror again, the smile slipping.

“Where are you from?” Trix asked.

“Well, you’re asking me two different things there, young lady,” the driver said, his good humor restored. “As to where I was born, that was Cork back in the home country. But where I’m from?” He waved both hands around him, holding the wheel with his knees. “Lived here since I was three years old, and never been back. So anyone asks where I’m from, I say Boston. Who wouldn’t, eh?”

“Who indeed,” Jim said. A few raindrops speckled the cab’s windows, smearing his image of the cathedral, and he wondered whether Jenny and Holly were getting wet in the same shower.

“You’re here visiting?” the driver asked.

“Looking for someone,” Jim said. Trix tapped his leg, but he moved her hand aside. Why shouldn’t he tell the truth?

“Who’s that, then? Maybe I can help.”

“I doubt it. So… I haven’t been to Boston before, would you believe? The Irish influence is big?”

“You kiddin’ me?” the driver asked. “It’s way beyond just influence. Some of them”-he waved both hands again, a gesture that Jim thought perhaps the man used all the time, but which he was sure would wrap them around a lamppost within the next mile-“… New Yorkers. Y’know? There’s Irish there, for sure, but none of them are really Irish.” He looked in the mirror again. “You’re not New Yorkers?”

“Baltimore,” Trix said, and the driver nodded.

“Knew it. Baltimore. Good city. This one, though, yeah, heavy Irish influences. The best pubs in the States are here, and the best of them are run by guys who’ve come over from the home country to escape the Troubles.”

“The Troubles are”- over, Jim wanted to say, but the man was staring at him in the rearview mirror yet again-“terrible,” he said.

“Got that right,” the man said, voice more cautious now. “Since they started blowin’ up planes and trains… well, Boston’s like the Ireland that should’ve been. Peaceful. Mainly.” They were heading southwest toward Jim’s apartment, and as the streets flitted by left and right he found himself growing increasingly nervous rather than excited. He fully expected to find no sign of his wife and daughter at that address, and that should move him on in his search. But there was something else niggling at him.

He glanced over his shoulder into the glaring headlamps behind them.

“You, too?” Trix asked softly.

“What?”

“Getting the sense we’re being followed?”

“Yeah. Ever since…”

“We came through.”

“Probably the least of our worries. We’re dealing with this,” Jim said. “Coping. I don’t know how, or why, but we are.”

“The why is because this is for Jenny and Holly. We’ve come through to look for them, and that’s making us strong.”

“So what about them?” Jim asked, and his voice broke. What about them? They were dragged through; they didn’t come through of their own accord, with their own aims in mind. They didn’t understand like he and Trix. They had no inkling of what was going on. What could the trauma of this do to them?

“They’ll be fine,” Trix said.

“You can’t know that.”

“No, and I can’t say anything else. Just believe it.” She glanced behind them, then back at him.

“Unsettled, that’s all,” he said softly. “With all that’s happened, all the weirdness. No one’s following us. They can’t be.”

“Right,” Trix said, meaning it to sound emphatic. But to Jim she just sounded scared.

They settled close together in the backseat, not quite touching but drawing strength from proximity. And ten minutes later they pulled up outside what should have been Jim’s home, and he knew already that things here were very different. Through the rain-speckled windows he could see that Tallulah’s still took up the first floor, but above that the floors were dark, several windows boarded up, and it felt nowhere like home.

For a moment Jim wondered whether Miranda was still the restaurant hostess, and what her reaction would be were she to see him. But there would be no reaction. Back in the Boston he knew, she had been his friend and, after Jenny’s disappearance, apparently his erstwhile lover. But in this Boston he would be unknown. He had never been here before, and to attempt to imprint his memories on this place would be futile. And maybe even dangerous.

“It would have been too strange,” Trix said, leaning into Jim to see from his side window.

“Yeah. But this would have been the first place she’d come.”

“They’ve been gone for half a day.”

“And I doubt she’d have hung around.”

“So where to if you’re not getting out here, pal?” the driver asked. There was an edge to his voice now, nervousness or tension, as if he could suddenly sense that things were not quite right.

“Just… drive on,” Jim said. And he thought, Where to indeed? Where would Jenny go once she had been here, and seen the differences? Trying to put himself in her head was just too traumatic, because the confusion and terror she must be feeling were shattering. Instead, he started to analyze her probable approach objectively.

“After here, she’d go to your place,” Jim said.

Trix’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but then she nodded. “Yeah. But… I’m not sure I want to go there myself.”

“Right. After that, probably her parents’ place. Then following on from that-”

“Oh, shit,” Trix said. “Her parents.”

“What?”

“She’s not Unique, Jim. Somewhere in Boston there’s another Jenny.”

“Another Jenny,” he echoed. It set his head spinning, and he felt suddenly sick.

“Maybe her parents don’t live in the same place here,” Trix said. “Didn’t you help them with their mortgage, back in… well, our Boston? So here, maybe they’re still living somewhere else. Maybe outside the city. And maybe Jenny will have gone to the cops, realized things were amiss, and maybe-”

“Too many maybes,” Jim said. He lifted himself from the seat and took the folded envelopes from his back pocket. He checked them both, and then held up the one he now knew applied to where they were right now. “We go here. Yes?”

“Yes,” Trix said, and she sounded relieved. She wanted to go there right away, Jim thought, and perhaps that would have been the safest thing to do. He looked across at the building one more time, at the dark windows that he had stood behind a thousand times in another world, another life. He wondered what was behind those windows here… but just as quickly realized he did not want to know.

“You know O’Brien’s Bar?” Jim asked. “It’s down on… East Broadway.”

“Know it?” the driver said. “Sure I know it.”

“That’s where we need to go,” Jim said. Trix sighed and seemed to settle lower in the seat beside him, and he felt a slight sense of relief at having made a more definite plan. They’d go to find the Oracle of this Irish Boston, give him the letter Veronica had sent through with them, and then tell him their problem. They couldn’t do this on their own.

“Sure,” the driver said softly. “From the second you got in, I knew you needed help.” He turned up his music again, even louder than before, and Jim watched the rain-washed streets flit by.

O’Brien’s Bar was an innocuous pub nestled among a terrace of houses a couple of blocks from Telegraph Hill. Over the tops of the buildings, they could see the white steeple top of the Dorchester Heights Monument, just a block away. In the other direction was a view of downtown Boston. This part of the city, in Jim’s city, had always been Irish, but now the Irish presence was greater than ever. South Boston was truly an old-world Boston neighborhood, mostly residential, with local bars and markets. But in this Boston, where the Irish were the pinnacle of Boston society, Southie was a hell of a lot nicer.

Across the street from the bar was a small park, lit now by streetlights and apparently deserted this late at night. Perhaps shadows moved within the shadows, but Jim could not see, nor did he care. His own safety was not the priority. There were benched tables outside the bar, chained to metal hooks in the pub’s front wall so that they didn’t walk at night, and even at this late hour lights shone inside. They exited the taxi and Trix paid the cabbie-still dollars, thankfully, and Lincoln was no stranger to him-and Jim could tell that the bar was all but empty. There was faint music playing somewhere in the background, but the usual hubbub of voices was absent, and there was a sense that this place was about to go to sleep for the night. It was a strange way to view it, and disconcerting, but he looked up at the facade and saw tired windows reflecting streetlights; the double doors were a closed mouth, and the building gave the sense that it was something with knowledge and wisdom.

The cab drifted along the street, its engine sounds echoing from silent buildings, and then they were alone.

“Is this one going to be as weird as the old woman?” Jim asked.

“Who knows? What’s the name again?”

“Peter O’Brien.” Jim looked at the envelope in his hand, the messy lettering, and something ran a cool finger down his back. The hair on his arms bristled, and his senses suddenly became clear and sharp, flooding him with input: the scent of damp soil from the park and spilled beer from the sidewalk, the night sounds of doors closing and car engines ticking as they cooled, the kiss of fine rain against his skin. As he turned around to look across the street at whatever was watching them, Trix was already doing the same.

“It’s just the darkness,” he said, staring past the street lamps and trying to penetrate the small park. There was a bandstand at its center and a network of pale paths crissing and crossing, and here and there planting beds exploded with the silhouettes of shrubs and small trees.

“No,” she said, “not just the darkness.”

“Bums, then. Lonely lovers. Drunk teens fucking.” But he knew that none of these was true, either. Whoever or whatever watched from over there was more connected to their journey than that. He rubbed the envelope between his fingers and wondered what it contained.

Jim heard the bar door open. He turned away from the dark park and took a step back toward the curb, and the shadow that filled the doorway seemed to swallow the weak light emerging from inside the building.

“Already poured your drinks,” the shadow said, and his voice was higher than Jim had expected, and much more welcoming. “It’s not cold, and the rain’s not too bad. But I’ll welcome you in to take shelter from the night.”

Take shelter from the night. Jim almost asked if he sensed the watcher as well. But that would be no way to greet the Oracle of this Boston. “Peter O’Brien?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“That’s me. And you’ll be from out of town.”

Trix actually laughed, an unconscious reaction to such a mundane observation. “You could say that!” she said.

“Hope you like good beer,” O’Brien said. He moved back from the doorway to let them in, and in doing so allowed them to make him out properly for the first time. As Trix stepped into the pub, Jim held back and sized the man up. Smartly dressed in black trousers and shined shoes, a white shirt and black suede waistcoat, he was a barrel of a man, well over two hundred pounds, but he carried the weight well. He was tall and broad, and even before he’d turned a little to fat, Jim knew that he’d been a powerful presence. Yet there was a lightness about him that quelled any unease Jim might normally feel in the company of such a huge stranger. He moved back like a dancer to let them in, graceful and gentle, and his smile lit up his face. His hair was long and tied in a ponytail, and a scruff of graying stubble softened his features more.

“Jim Banks,” Jim said, extending his hand as he entered. For a second he saw a flicker of something on O’Brien’s face-fear? Discomfort? The smile flexed a little, but it returned just as fresh and welcoming as before. He took Jim’s hand and pumped it twice, firm but not too hard. In that touch, Jim felt the warmth of hope.

“Pleased to meet you, Jim.”

“And you. I hope you can help me.”

“Well, I’ll say to you what I say to anyone coming to my bar seeking more than a drink and a pie and a place to rest their feet. I can only do my best.” He closed the door behind them but did not lock it. Jim thought perhaps this bar was open every hour of every day, but not always for drinks.

O’Brien showed them to a table in the corner. A candle burned in the mouth of an empty wine bottle, spilling hot wax down the green glass, and three recently pulled pints sat before the chairs. Three chairs. The table was large enough to seat six, at least.

“You knew we were coming,” Trix said.

“Not you specifically,” O’Brien said. “Just someone.”

“We know who you are,” Jim said. “And what. And we were sent here by someone like you.”

O’Brien raised his eyebrows. Then he held up a hand and nodded at their chairs. The three of them sat, and the process felt almost ceremonial to Jim, a thought given more gravity by O’Brien’s nimble manner. He placed both hands flat on the table and seated himself comfortably, spine straight, shoulders loose, before picking up his pint and taking a long draft. He smacked his lips and nodded gently. “Nectar of angels,” he said.

“What’s the brew?” Trix asked.

“My own. I’ve a microbrewery in the basement. I call it Old Bastard.”

Jim took his first swig. The taste exploded, the alcohol evident but not overpowering, and he felt the rush of its influence spreading through his body. “Certainly well named. And delicious.”

“A bartending Oracle,” Trix said softly. She was looking at O’Brien with a mix of fascination and wonder.

“Who better to have their fingers on the pulse of a city?” O’Brien said. He took another long drink, swallowing half of his pint in one go, and looking back and forth between them over the edge of the glass. He wiped his mouth and placed the glass gently back on the table.

“So, you’re from elsewhere,” he said. “That much I know, and I’ve known it for the last hour. Kicked out the last of my patrons. Pretended I was closing early, when sometimes I don’t close at all. ’Cause I figured you’d be along. Sometimes…” He looked at the window and sniffed softly.

“You can smell trouble?” Jim asked.

“Is that what you two are, then? Trouble?”

“No,” Trix said, shaking her head.

“No,” Jim confirmed. He placed the envelope on the table, keeping one finger on it. “We’re partly messengers, but mainly…” He felt tears threatening, as the weight of events pressed down on him. Sitting here in this ordinary bar with this extraordinary man, he felt control slipping away. By coming through and beginning his search for Jenny and Holly, he had been taking positive action. But now he was about to place himself in the hands of another once again, and he wasn’t sure quite what he thought about that.

The only person he knew he could trust for sure was Trix.

“We’re looking for Jim’s wife and daughter,” Trix said. “They’ve been pulled through from our own Boston into another. Maybe this one.”

“Yeah,” O’Brien said. He looked back and forth between Jim and Trix, his expression unreadable, eyes twinkling with humor or, perhaps, disbelief. He crossed his arms and sighed heavily, but it was merely the action of a tired man. “And you’re Uniques. The both of you. Friends.”

He knows, Jim thought.

O’Brien looked at Trix, seeming to see deeper than mere flesh and skin. “ Good friends. And that”-he nodded down at the envelope, which Jim had placed facedown on the tabletop-“that’ll be for me.”

“From your counterpart in our Boston,” Jim said.

O’Brien nodded thoughtfully, drinking the rest of his pint and putting down the glass so gently that it made no sound. He stretched and looked around the bar, glanced at his watch, then focused his attention back on Jim and Trix. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “You look tired, both of you. And it’s been a long day for me, too, what with…” He waved one hand, and Jim wondered what wonders O’Brien had performed today, what problems he had solved and lost things he had found. “A couple of hours’ sleep will do wonders for us all, and come sunrise I’ll be better able to help you.”

“You can’t help us now?” Jim asked.

“I could,” O’Brien said. “I could start. But I can’t just”-he clicked his fingers-“out of thin air. I need to talk to you about them. In depth, personally, and a lot of it will be about you as much as them. I need to understand your link to them in order to grab hold of it and pull them in. I need to know them so that I can find them. A name’s nothing to me without knowledge of who that name belongs to, and it might not be so easy for you, tired as you are. Maybe your Oracle’s better at this sort of thing. You understand?”

“Not really,” Jim said.

“I do,” Trix said, smiling, and Jim thought of her story about her grandfather.

“But-”

“A few hours,” O’Brien said. “There’s a room made up on the second floor, bathroom attached. It’s a double, but…” He raised one eyebrow.

“That’s fine,” Trix said, smiling.

“I thought it would be.” O’Brien leaned forward and used one finger to pull the envelope from beneath Jim’s hand. For a second Jim wanted to press down, hold it back, but he was not sure why. Insurance? Fear? Or maybe there was no reason at all. O’Brien dragged the envelope across the table to him-it whispered, like a voice in the dark-turned it over, and looked at the writing on the front without expression.

“You’ll wake us?” Jim asked.

“Sure. You’ll hear me.” O’Brien looked up from the envelope. “And Jim… Don’t worry. We’ll find your family, for sure.”

Jim nodded, unable to talk because the tears were a pressure behind his eyes once again. He and Trix stood, and he realized how right O’Brien had been. He was exhausted. A couple of hours’ sleep would take the edge off his exhaustion, and then tomorrow… tomorrow, he would find his wife and daughter.

“Come on,” Trix said, grabbing Jim’s arm and steering him toward the door O’Brien had pointed out behind the bar.

“Sleep well!” the Oracle called.

As they walked up the curving stairway, Jim heard the sound of paper tearing. And then he heard O’Brien speak again, cursing under his breath. “Oh, you bitch,” Peter O’Brien said, anger and resignation in his voice.

What could Veronica have written? Jim wondered. But silence followed, and Jim continued up toward what he hoped would be a moment’s peace.