A DAY GONE COME

July 1922

Verret’s Lounge was a modest little bar at the corner of Washington and Baronne. Its interior was all dark wood paneling and velvety green carpet. These days, Deacon Ravel spent most of his nights there when he wasn’t running errands or delivering messages for the Family. Tonight, the large industrial fan they used to cool the place was out of commission, so he’d stripped to his undershirt while he shot pool, drinking copiously and dipping out now and then for some fresh air and a smoke. The place smelled like a locker room.

Deacon put the six in the corner pocket and mopped his brow with the bar towel Linc the bartender had lent him earlier that night. He thrust his chin at his cousin Learned and stepped aside while the heavier man eyeballed his next shot.

When he turned, he almost collided with Weeby Jackson, a clean-cut teenager who walked with a limp. Weeby was still fully dressed, but beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. The set of his face let Deacon know that the boy was determined to ignore his discomfort. “Gotta visitor, Mr. Deke,” the boy said. “Said to tell you it’s Dip from the Waifs.”

“Send him round back.”

“Consider it done.”

The back courtyard was lit by green glass floor lamps that spouted halos of dirty dim bulbs. Two bare wooden picnic tables stood to Deacon’s left, but back and to his right was a floral-printed canopy under which sat a low couch and two folding visitor chairs. Dipper stood waiting in powder-blue slacks, a damp pinstriped suit, and a blue-and-white striped vest.

“Sit, sit, Negro!” Deacon said as he strode past to the couch. “Ain’t no job interview.”

“No interview, naw,” Dip said. “But serious just the same.”

“Well, that don’t sound good,” Deacon said. He hated that things had come to this, but at least Dipper seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

“Ain’t here about trash pickup this time round,” Dipper said. “You might say I went ahead and took it out myself.”

“They’s been a bit of buzz in the old beehive lately,” Deacon said. “Cain’t say it’s the good kind.”

“I’ll give it to you straight,” Dipper allowed. “I been summoned. Problem is, I ain’t sure what I’m walking into if I come like I been told.”

“Well,” Deacon said. He glanced at Weeby standing stock-still and stone-faced outside the bar’s back door. “Weeb. Bottle of VO and a couple glasses, then make yaself scarce, heard?”

“Yezzir,” Weeby said, and pivoted crisply away.

“I thought it was handled,” Deacon said. “Legs was broke and messages was sent. But then you mixed it up with some white boys over in Gretna? Six or seven of them and one of you?”

“I ain’t proud,” Dipper said. “That one didn’t go the way it shoulda.”

He paused as Weeby returned to set the bottle and glasses before them. When the boy withdrew, Deacon poured them each a couple fingers.

“Le chaim,” Dipper toasted, and they drank.

“Five of them boys dead as Latin,” Deacon said. “And that’s the problem. You shoulda kilt ’em all. The other one telling crazy stories about a ten-foot nigger with a scream that kills.”

Dipper’s expression brightened a little. “Well, that don’t sound like me a tall…”

“Not to nobody don’t know nothing,” Deacon said. “But the Powers ain’t exactly enthused if you catch my drift. They discussing punitive measures.”

Dipper’s face fell. Carefully, he lifted his glass to his scarred lips and drank. “Drastic measures?”

“They’s voices in your favor,” Deacon said. “But my advice is hand over that cornet and beat feet awhile. Let things blow over. That way the calls for banishment lose they teeth.”

The corners of Dipper’s mouth sagged. He looked sick. “You know I can’t,” he said. “You know I can’t part with the horn. I swore a oath.”

“Use your head, baby! How you think that’s gone sound to the Kid?”

“We could cut,” Dipper said hopefully.

Deacon’s scalp tightened. “Nigga, you cross horns with the Kid, you die. You ain’t seen the kind of sorcery that motherfucker will put on ya. Now, this ain’t coming from me. I talked to Jelly Roll, dig? He will honor your service by allowing you to leave without barring your return—provided you stay gone a good long while.”

“But—”

“But unless you turn over the horn, ain’t nothing nobody can do. If that white motherfucker remembers wa’ant no nigger shouting, he was playing a horn, that spells trouble don’t none of us need.”

Dipper fell silent, considering. Then, “What about the Karnovskys?”

There it was, Deacon thought. That was the same spirit that had gotten Dipper into trouble to begin with. If he’d been alone when the Klansmen attacked, he wouldn’t have employed such deadly force—not to save his own skin.

“Off-limits,” Deacon said. “They’ll be under the Powers’ protection indefinitely.”

Dipper sagged, relieved. Deacon saw now that the question bothered his cousin worse than he’d realized.

“I can’t give you the whole thing,” he said. “It’d violate my oath, and I could never safely play another note. But. I’ll give you the mouthpiece right now if that will settle it.”

Deacon sipped his whiskey and took a moment to savor its familiar burn before he answered. This was what Jelly Roll had demanded when Deacon went before him to plead for Dipper’s life. It had been a gamble to ask for the whole horn, but if he hadn’t, Dip wouldn’t have been willing to part with even this much of it.

“The Powers gone be pissed,” Deacon said. “But I might can smooth it over.”

Dipper nodded sadly. He stood, and calm settled over him and his eyes swam shut. Without opening them, he gestured quickly and the blazing trumpet appeared in the air before him. Its shine lit the courtyard like a frozen flash of lightning.

Deacon shut his eyes as Dipper reached for the instrument.

For another moment, his vision showed red, and when he felt the light recede, he opened his eyes. Dipper held the gleaming mouthpiece in the palm of his hand. The rest of the horn had gone back where it came.

“Deke.”

“Yeah,” Deacon said softly.

“I’ma turn this over to you on one condition.”

“Being what?”

“Show it to the Powers. Let ’em know you have it and that I promised I’d go for good—but don’t turn it over. You keep it.”

“Me?” Deacon said. “I ain’t played since the Home. What I do with it?”

“It ain’t for you to use,” Dipper said. “But a day gone come.”

A day gone come. Deacon rolled onto his back and tears ran down to his temples. Was it here, though? Had the day finally come? Lord, but he hoped not…

So this is death. The words sounded faint and calm in Perry’s mind, and he was impressed with his own cool. He felt himself falling, falling through a blackness so profound that he couldn’t be sure whether his eyes were open or closed.

He tried to open his eyes—or he tried to try. He imagined the curvature of the earth and clouds upon clouds piled below him and decided that if his eyes were closed, they should stay that way a little while longer.

I know what’s happening, Perry thought. I’ve been shot, and this is me falling down dead. That must mean that time had slowed even more than it had when the evil song had fired its gun, and if it slowed any further, Perry might hurtle like this forever. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He enjoyed the absence of gravity, but he hated that feeling of waiting for something else to replace it.

Something damp touched Perry’s right arm, and he knew he must still have a body. He had suspected that his body had been riddled with bullets, damaged beyond repair, and that he had stepped out of it, tripped, and fallen. He wondered briefly where he would end up after all this. Had he been good enough to get into Heaven? He was sure he hadn’t been bad enough to get into Hell. He’d never done anything truly wrong.

… Except for messing with the Clackin’ Sack.

Except for saying the Words and trying to use the sack on himself and his friends.

Shouldn’t he be afraid? Perry decided that he must be terrified, but his terror must have become too much for him, and his body had been too small to contain it. Somewhere nearby, it too fell through nothing and nothing, unable to rattle Perry’s bones.

Well, in that case, Perry wasn’t afraid after all, was he? And if he wasn’t afraid, he might as well do something.

“Brendy!” he shouted in the darkness.

Now he felt his heart beating in his chest. It was faster than normal, but not out of control. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, going like a metronome. Perry counted four, five, six…

Then, away in the distance: “Waaaaaaaaugh! Perry! Where you iiiiiis?”

“Don’t know!” Perry bellowed. “Close! I can’t see nothing!”

“I’m faaaaaallling!”

“Yeah!” Perry shouted. “Me too! Where Peaches at?”

“I’m sorry I got mad! I don’t wanna die!”

“Brendy! Where Peaches at?”

More wetness. This time the sensation enveloped Perry, dampening his skin, clothes, and hair. Had he passed through a cloud of some kind? He smelled salt. It reminded him of the sea aroma Perry had smelled when his family had taken a boat trip out onto the Gulf. Perry pushed the thought away. Memories were no good to him. What was important was right now, and moments from now.

The wetness passed, and Perry fell free again. He could feel himself drying rapidly, but somehow he wasn’t cold.

He could hear Brendy sobbing. She must be crying big little-kid tears, because he heard her crying better than he’d heard her calls.

“Brendy,” he called. “Everything gonna be oh! Kay! You gotta answer me now, you hear? Where? Peaches? At?”

“I gots her, I think. I think I’m holdin’ her hand. The fire hit her! She burnt!”

Now Perry offered a silent prayer. This one was different from any he’d prayed before bed or during church. It came from a part of him that barely understood words. It poured from him as a feeling, and as it bubbled up through Perry’s consciousness, he translated it to himself. Please, Lord, please. Please let Peaches be okay. And then because it seemed that ship had sailed, Please let her live. Just let her live, Lord, and I’ll care for her till she’s better.

Peaches was the only person who would know what to do right now. Without her guidance, Perry felt worse than lost. What would she do if she found herself falling and falling through nothing? Change direction? That wouldn’t work. How could Perry even be sure that he was falling down and not up? The normal physical laws didn’t seem to apply. He thought of what Peaches had told him about grown-ups, about how they were just old kids pretending, making things up as they went along. The idea had horrified him, but maybe something in it could aid him. Maybe he should just… make something up. He couldn’t see how doing so could make matters any worse.

“Okay!” Perry called. “All right. You got her. So I count to three, then we stop! Falling!”

“We gonna hit!” Perry couldn’t tell whether it was a question.

“No!” Perry shouted. “I count, and then on three, we go somewhere else where we ain’t falling, aight?”

“Where we go?”

“Anywhere with solid ground! If I ain’t there, I come find you. Stay with Peaches!”

“What about Jailbird?” Brendy asked.

“Oh, we got some things to talk about,” Perry said, and the stone in his voice surprised him. “If he ain’t there after we count, I find him. I promise.” Then, “You ready?”

“Ready!” she called. She sounded almost hopeful.

“One!” Perry shouted. “Two! Three! GO!”

The transition was so perfect and so complete that Perry forgot all about falling and darkness. He forgot years and years, and he was small again—not so small he couldn’t talk, but small enough that if he spoke, he’d have to struggle to make himself understood.

He sat in a church pew. His legs were so short that they stuck out straight in front of him, not even dangling over the front of the pew. To dangle his legs, Perry would have had to scoot forward on his booty. He fidgeted, scanning the sanctuary.

From here all he saw were backs of necks, backs of heads. Grown-ups sat in their Sunday finery as a preacher blustered about the straight and narrow. Perry reached for his mother’s arm, pulling at her flesh, but she pulled away without turning. Perry wanted her to look at him. He wanted her to say something, to shush him at least, or glare at him to behave.

Perry squinted at the woman, willing her attention.

“Saints, I tell you true,” said the preacher. Her voice stretched out on the perfumed air, and it seemed to bend as it hung, changing to become more familiar. Still, it was a voice Perry had never heard—at least not in waking life—and he recognized it the way he would beautiful music played by expert hands.

“All it takes is a little consideration. All you gotta do is listen real careful to that Still Small Voice, and it will tell you everything you got to know.”

Perry had heard that voice somewhere, all right. In his dreams? Not in the ones he built himself, and not in the surface dreams that had him jousting dragons or freeing his brother pirates from space prisons, but in the secret dreams, the ones that played out on a mental stage fully removed from Perry’s own unconscious mind. The ones dreamed not just by him, but by everyone all the time, the dreams that people wander into and out of without remembering in daylight.

“The Kingdom is within all of us. We know right from wrong. You know right from wrong. You know because the Lord knows within you, Perry.”

“What?” Perry asked.

“Let us lift our voices, church!”

The congregation rose to their feet, and Perry’s mother rose with them. Still, she didn’t look around at him, and Perry had begun to doubt her identity. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying so hard to get her attention. Maybe she’d be upset with him if she ever did turn.

I was standing on the corner

Down in old Saint Louie Town

And my dog started barkin’ at two men

Who was cussin’ in the dark

The song’s opening bars filled Perry with dread. Please don’t, he tried to say. Don’t sing that song. It’s a bad one.

It was Stagger Lee and Billy

And both men been drinkin’ late

Stagger Lee say he threw seven

Billy swore that he threw eight

Perry tried to argue with the congregation. You don’t understand. If you sing his song, he’s here. If you sing it, he knows. He’s not like the rest.

New connections flashed like lightning across Perry’s brain, brightening and dimming so quickly that his consciousness couldn’t hold on to them. He ceased his arguing, listening intently, hanging on every lyric. He concentrated, trying to remember as closely as he could, to file it all away.

Now, Stagger Lee shoved Billy

And he drew his forty-five

Said, Billy, you in trouble

You ain’t leavin’ here alive

Aw, Stagger Lee!

The singing died away, and raucous piano music rose to the fore. The pianist pounded the keys, and a saxophone began to scream. The two instruments dueled each other in a graceful tug-of-war, rising and falling and tumbling together like raptors warring over a mouse.

I’m Stagger Stagger Lee

I’m Stack Stack O Lee

Y’all know just what you seen

I done shot that Billy down

As the church band played the last few bars, Perry scrambled to stand in his pew and roared into the noise. The howl that rushed out of him was one of anger and triumph, and Perry hadn’t known such a cry existed within him. Feeling it in his throat brought tears to his eyes.

Even as the tears spilled down his cheeks, Perry’s surroundings began to dissolve. A lump clogged his chest.

“No!” he called. “Tell me why! I want to know why he took Daddy—!”

But the image faded, and blackness reigned again.

The little room smelled of black mold and damp concrete. One lightbulb hung, naked and grimy, from the center of the ceiling. Deacon Graves Sr. knew he’d been dreaming, but he could remember only a couple details. There had been a bar, a cousin or a relative. A bright light. He sat on the hard little cot where he spent most of his time and tried to comfort himself with the thought that he was still alive and kicking. Stagger Lee could have killed him easy as breathing, and yet here Deacon was. That meant Stag must need him for something.

Deacon had seen Stag only once since the powerfully built man had shoved him through the room’s narrow doorway—and Deacon wasn’t sure whether that counted. He’d been asleep, dreaming of his grandson, Perry, and Stagger Lee had appeared out of nowhere, just as he had in real life, and dragged Deacon back to waking.

But had Stag just appeared? Was that how it had gone? Deacon ignored his hunger and the aching in his swollen knees and thought back to his abduction. He’d been idling at the light, and then all of a sudden Stagger Lee was there, pulling him out of the car. But—

“The radio,” Deacon said aloud.

Stagger Lee had first appeared as a column of black smoke rising from Deacon’s dashboard speakers. He remembered frowning at the sight, trying to make sense of it. Deacon hadn’t smoked in years and years—and never in his prized Comet. At first, he thought the car’s cigarette lighter must be on the blink. But the smoke had expanded to fill the car’s front seat. Deacon had seen eyes suspended in the cloud, glowing, glaring murder. It wasn’t until after the smoke began to speak that Deacon realized that it had become a man.

Well, not a man. Not exactly.

And that was when Deacon had recognized the apparition for Stagger Lee. Who else could he be? It didn’t matter that Stagger Lee was just a old blues song. Didn’t matter that songs were songs and people was people and couldn’t no song put on a pair of wingtips and go walking round town. Deacon had known exactly what was happening, and he did his best to shield his family from whatever magical goings-on had brought this nightmare into the daylight.

Thinking fast, Deacon had used some of the little magic he knew. Without stopping to listen to what Stagger Lee wanted, Deacon belted out a couple of familiar bars:

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say

Funky butt, funky butt, take it away!

Stagger Lee hissed as if he’d been burned. OLE MAN, he said. YOU HUSH UP THAT SINGIN’, YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.

“More where that come from,” Deacon said. “I ain’t afraid to die. I’ll put it on you sumn fierce. Now, what you want with me?”

Stagger Lee’s expression softened some. ASSOCIATE O MINE NEED YO HELP. YOU DO AS MY ASSOCIATE ASK, TELL IT WHAT IT NEED TO KNOW, NO HARM NEED COME TO YOU… OR YO FAMILY.

“My family?” Deacon said. He opened his mouth to sing again.

NEGRO, YOU KNOW WHO I’M IS, AND YOU KNOW I SHOOT YOU DEAD AND QUESTION YO GHOST. HOW YO FAMILY FEEL BOUT THAT?

Deacon envisioned a room in the Majestic Mortuary. He saw new fissures carved into his son’s face. Saw his daughter-in-law wet eyed and keening. Saw his grandkids looking to the older folks for sense. He wasn’t afraid to die, but he sensed that he had entered this life on specific business—business that he had not yet finished, couldn’t finish if he died again too soon. He didn’t examine the thought any further than he had to.

“I come quietly,” Deacon said, “long as you stay the hell away from my people.”

DON’T BE TRYNA DEAL WITH ME, BABY, Stag said. THE DEVIL DEALS, AND HE AIN’T GOT NOTHING ON ME.

So Deacon had agreed, and the next thing he knew, he was drawn into a shining whiteness. For an instant, he heard what sounded like every song ever written, hummed, or played colliding in a white-noise din, and then there he was, in the dingy little room. He reached into the pocket of his slacks for the mouthpiece he carried everywhere he went, but he had stashed it in his car. Fingering it always gave him some comfort even though he had no idea how he’d acquired it or why.

So there was nothing to do but wait.

Perry was nothing and nowhere. He was a loose net of awareness hanging against an unrelenting void. He even missed the sensation of falling. He waited for what seemed a long time, and he couldn’t help but think about what was happening to him. Was this what sleep was like? Did people experience something like this every single night and promptly forget upon waking?

He felt a stirring somewhere in the depths of his consciousness. His nose began to tickle a bit. It was not so much that his senses began to awaken; it was that an environment began to form, bringing with it stimuli for Perry’s senses to read.

He hoped he liked whatever the next place was. The church had been all right, he guessed, but Perry hoped that this time, wherever he went, Brendy and Peaches would be there with him. Together, they’d decide what to—

Water rushed into Perry’s mouth and nostrils. He swallowed quite a bit of it before he knew what was happening. He experienced a quick, razor’s-edge moment of disorientation in which he knew two things: the first was that this water was not breathable like that of the Bayou Saint John, and the second was that the worst thing he could do right now would be nothing. If he thrashed with all his strength, he might just break the water’s surface and reach the air he needed.

With a strangled shout, Perry threw himself upward, hardly swimming at all. It was as if he grasped the water and pulled it down past his head. Perry broke the surface, sputtering and coughing. He thrashed around, trying to locate the shore.

“Buh-BRENDY!” he screamed.

“Perry drowning!” Brendy shouted. “Rock! Bring Perry over here!”

It was as if someone had stuffed a flock of pigeons into a cannon and then fired them all, unharmed, into the air. Perry heard a flapping of wings, a bizarre cooing sound, and then Brendy’s voice again. “Right! Bring Perry!”

Perry felt himself drawn up into the air and swept to his right like a dry leaf carried on the wind—and this wind smelled of smoke and herbs. Almost immediately, he felt grass beneath him and realized that a drizzle fell from—well, from up. Perry could not locate any sky. He closed his eyes. He’d known that his little trick, if it worked, would get them out of their predicament. It had worked—or he thought it had, but they were still lost.

“Here Perry!” Brendy crowed. “I do good?”

“Why you talking like that?” Perry asked, eyes still shut.

“What say?” Brendy asked. Then after a pause, “He wants to know why you sound so funny. He talk funny. He talk people. You talk all broke up like baby talk! Well, here Perry. Alive. I know he alive. Thank you. You live in my rock? Not understand. I told my rock to do something, then you came. You live in the rock…?”

She went on like that for a while.

Once Perry had recovered a bit, Brendy’s chattering began to grate on his nerves. “Stop!” he said. “Hey. Hey. You okay?”

“What say? I’m fine, Perry. How you is?”

“I’m okay, I think,” Perry said. “I’m alive. Where’s Peaches?”

“He talk funny make no— She right here, laying down.”

Perry sat up and opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by a golden fog. He could see no sign of water, but from where he sat in the coarse, scrubby grass, he could see his sister in her blue-and-white polka-dotted dress standing over Peaches. He had no idea what had become of her puffy winter jacket.

“Aw,” Perry said. “Aw, no.” His body failed him momentarily, but then he raised himself onto all fours and crawled over to gather Peaches into his arms.

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she’d been badly burned. Some of her skin had been charred by the blast, and her dress was in sooty tatters. It looked, in places, as if it had fused with her flesh. As he drew her to himself, the thought occurred to Perry, bright with panic, that he shouldn’t be touching her. She needed doctors. A hospital. But what doctors? What hospital? If the doctors had to shave her skin or cut her open, would their instruments be strong enough?

“Perry!”

Perry held his friend tighter and felt something constrict inside him. It was as if his heart were shrinking, collapsing on itself.

“Perry!”

He clenched his eyes shut and his teeth hard enough to make his forehead throb.

“Perry!” Brendy shouted. “Tell him down!”

“What?” Perry was stunned to hear Brendy continuing her ridiculous talking game. He thought she must be coming unglued, but some tiny doubt suggested he might be missing something, and it was that doubt that kept him from flying into a rage.

“You gotta put her down,” Brendy said. “You can’t be holding her like that when rock do rock thing, okay?”

“What?”

“You gotta put her down or the hoodoo get you, too,” Brendy said. “Hear me?”

“Of course I hear you,” Perry said.

“How hear? Put her down, then, okay?” Brendy said.

Perry stopped short again. Something wasn’t right, and it had begun to dawn on him what it was. Brendy’s voice had sounded twice, and in his mind he’d divided her words—one set sounded the way Brendy always sounded, if a little upset, and the other sounded strange. Babyish.

If she was playing a game, it was a strange one where she’d learned somehow to say two things at the exact same time—because the normal speech and the baby speech had overlapped more than once.

“Brendy,” Perry said. “Is someone else here with us?”

“… Yeah,” Brendy said. “Rock here with us.”

“Who…? Who is Rock?”

“My friend that live in the rock I got,” Brendy said. “It’s a haint.”

“What ‘haint’? What means?”

By now, still holding Peaches, Perry had turned to watch his sister. As soon as he saw what was going on, his mind rebelled, trying to edit his vision for sense: Two of Brendy stood side by side. Both were dressed exactly the same, even down to the patent-leather Mary Janes. First, Perry’s vision dimmed one figure, then the other. The more Perry looked, though, the more he picked out a subtle difference between the figures, not of form, but of attitude. The Brendy on the left stood with its arms hanging limp at its sides, and… and its feet didn’t quite touch the ground.

“It means a ghost. Like the spirit of somebody dead,” said the standing Brendy.

“No haint,” chirped the levitating Brendy. “No man woman child. Div.”

“What’s Div?” Brendy—the real Brendy—asked.

“Div Div.”

“Okay.” Brendy didn’t seem to understand any better than Perry did. “But you can help Peaches?”

“Brendy help help. Brendy tell.”

“That is the solidest haint I ever seen,” Perry said, amazed. “Your rock haunted as hell.”

“Well, duuuuuuh,” Brendy said. “Thass what I been tryna tell you!”

“No haint. Div.”

Very carefully, Perry lowered Peaches onto the grass. He backed away. “Okay,” he told the haint. “Do it. Fix her.”

“What say?” asked the floating Brendy.

Brendy shook her head. “It can’t understand you, Perry,” Brendy said. “I gots to tell it.”

She didn’t turn her head to speak to the spirit, and Perry wondered whether Brendy could see it at all.

“So tell it.”

“All right, then,” Brendy said. “Do your thang!”

“Tell,” said the ghost. “Tell name. Bilipit.”

“What?” Brendy said, and this time panic marbled her voice. Perry understood his sister’s untroubled attitude was a front, employed to keep Perry and Brendy herself from going to pieces.

“You have to—I think you have to command it,” Perry guessed. “Like on I Dream of Jeannie.”

“Like a wish?” Brendy said.

“No. Like a command,” Perry said, talking quickly. He let the words just pour out of him, speaking only slowly enough to order them. “Like when you told it to get me out of the water. Like that. You have to order it to do what you want.”

“Rock! Make Peaches not burned no more!”

Nothing happened.

“Tell name,” said the ghost. “Tell name Bilipit. Tell name!”

“You gotta command it by name,” Perry said. “Its name is Billy Pete.”

“Billy Pete!” Brendy barked, and her voice gained both volume and echo. “Heal Peaches Lavelle of all her wounds! This I command!”

He had just enough time to remember that final phrase from G.I. Joe, then that exploding-bird sound filled the air again. Perry jumped back with a startled cry as Peaches’s body burst into flame. His hands flew up to cover his face, but before he could shut out the sight, he realized the flames looked wrong, somehow, almost as if…

… As if they were burning backwards.

Perry’s hands fell to his sides, and his mouth drifted open.

When the last of the flame died away, Peaches was whole and sound. She lay sleeping on the grass, and not so much as a singe darkened her hair, her skin, or her dress. Perry had never seen anything so beautiful.

Perry knelt next to her and very slowly reached out to lay his left hand across her forehead.

“Peaches?” Brendy asked.

“Yeah?” Perry said. He’d felt his lips move, felt his vocal cords thrum, but it still took him a moment to realize he had spoken.

“Peaches?” Brendy said. “That you talking out of Perry?”

“Yeah,” Perry said.

A wave of panic swept across Perry’s chest. He began to sweat.

“Peaches, it’s time to wake up,” Brendy said. “We gotta figure out how to get back outta wherever this is.”

“… Naw,” Perry said. “Naw, I ain’t doing that right now. I’ma just lay right here, sleep.”