Irene had stopped crying. That was something, at least. She sat with a cup of tea, now cold, in Freddy’s apartment. The tea had helped. The splash of brandy had helped a bit more. But mostly it had been time. Fifteen minutes. An hour. She wasn’t sure. She only knew that the front of Pearl’s robe was wet, and Pearl’s eyes were red, and Pearl’s hair was in need of a good brushing.

“It’s the child,” Irene said. “I can’t help it. One minute I’m laughing, and the next I’m sobbing. I screamed poor Cian’s head off over a chicken sandwich last week. And he just . . .”

“Took it?” Pearl said.

“He laughed. And he made me laugh.”

“That’s all right, then.”

“I had a knife. I was so angry. I held that knife and I—well I don’t know. I suppose I do, but I don’t want to say it.”

“You’re exhausted. You should rest.”

Irene shook her head. Exhaustion was part of it. Fear was part of it. Pregnancy was part of it. But those were nickles and dimes. The big stuff was down deeper.

Francis Derby. Her parents.

She shut that door. She needed a sign. Something she could stick in the front window of her brain. No solicitors.

Not that it would make much of a difference.

“Do you want another drink?” Pearl asked. “More tea? Something stronger?”

“I want not to be pregnant.”

Pearl didn’t move. She was good at that. Watching, studying, thinking. A woman lost in her own thoughts.

Irene wanted to bite the words and chew them to pieces, but they had legs now.

“Never mind,” Irene said. “As you said, I’m tired.”

Pearl gave a slow nod. She had her hands between her knees. The knuckles were white. No brandy in the world was going to take that tension out of her. She shook her head. She was smiling, and breathing through that smile. The smile was something Pearl had kept pressed among keepsakes for a long time. Too long, Irene thought.

“I wanted children, you know,” Pearl said. “I think sometimes, when Harry looks at me, he doesn’t see that. Perhaps no one does. They see the shop, or the photography. Now, I suppose, mostly they just see this.” She gestured, and the gesture might have been at herself, or at the room, or at the universe in general. “Or they don’t see anything. Sometimes I don’t see anything. Sometimes I see a woman who is so old.”

“Pearl—”

“I know, I know. I’m not that old. I might even still have a child or two.” Her smile grew wicked, the kind of smile that danced on tables and kept bad company. “Although I think that if I did, it might put him in his grave.”

She didn’t say Sam. She just said him. The word was folded over. It had his name inside it.

“Are you happy?” Irene asked.

Pearl paused for a long time. She gathered up her teacup, the tray with a platter of untouched lemon cakes, the spoon still wearing a skin of cream. She settled the tray in her arms, looked down at it. “I thought I was. I thought it was enough. I knew about Harry, of course. I told myself I had no illusions, no expectations. I told myself so many things, Irene, and I think most of them were lies.”

She stood up. The only sound was the clink of the spoon against the china.

“If you don’t want the child,” Pearl said. And then she stopped. It wasn’t hesitation. There was no indecision in Pearl’s stance, in her grip, in her voice. It was weight. She was carrying something up a high mountain. She was doing it for Irene.

“If you don’t,” Pearl said again, “there are ways.”

Irene nodded. Her head was full of fireflies, bright and dying. At Pearl’s gesture, she passed her still-full teacup. Pearl left the room.

There are ways. Of course.

Of course there were.

When Pearl came back, she was wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, and her eyes were red again. She took Irene by the arm, helped her to her feet, kissed her cheek. Irene pressed her face into Pearl’s neck. She wanted to cry again. She didn’t have anything left. That well had run dry, and now there was only dust and an east wind to carry it.

“We’re both being fools tonight,” Pearl said. “Or at least I am. Come on. They’ll come back when they’ve found Freddy, but for now, you should rest.”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I always do.”

“You’ll see.”

“What will I see?” Irene asked as Pearl led her to the guest bedroom at the rear of the apartment. Irene stopped in the doorway. The room beyond was dark, and Irene didn’t bother with the lights she didn’t want lights. She wanted less light. Less light all over the world, until the darkness was thick enough to pull over her head. The room smelled of pressed linens and lemon and the chilliness of an unused space in winter. She liked all of those things. She liked the cold the best.

“I don’t know, my dear.” Pearl kissed her cheek again, held her hand—cold, almost too cold for life—against Irene’s face.

“He’d hate me.”

Pearl nodded.

“I suppose that’s my way of saying good night,” Irene said. Her face felt hot, hot against Pearl’s icy touch. It wasn’t a fever. This was something else. It was simply a flush, a dizzy heat that wrapped her brain in velveteen.

“Good night,” Pearl said.

“Yes. Good night.”

Irene stepped into the room. She shut the door. Then it was truly dark. With the curtains drawn, she felt the darkness under her shoes, felt it between her fingers, felt its porridge consistency in her mouth. She crossed to the bed, lay down, and kicked of her shoes. The sudden relief to her swollen feet made her eyes water. She gathered handfuls of the quilt. She heard her breath and wondered how it could sound so much like an echo.

She knew when she fell asleep. It wasn’t like other nights. Tonight, sleep waited for her, and she stepped through it like an open door. Beyond the door, she walked a long road. It was a road only in the way of dreams. It existed in scraps and fragments. To either side, blurs of sunrise and sunset, of wide empty fields, of earth dry and waiting. All of it was less than an impression, though, less than the barest brushstrokes. And this, too, was the way of dreams.

She did not look back. There was no back. There was only the road.

When she came to the henge, she knew that this had been meant. That the road, in a way quite unlike the ways of dreams, held a purpose and a purposer.

It was the first sign that something was wrong. Irene held onto it. She knew that this was a key.

No moon. No rush of the river. At its edges, the henge dropped off into darkness.

But stars. So many stars. Overhead. Underfoot. Not quite visible through the turf and grass, but they were there all the same. Irene felt them. She felt them spinning. Felt their pull.

Thirteen posts stood on the henge. On twelve, the dead men waited with clear eyes and hearts of lead and glass. Translucent skin captured starlight. They were polished quartz, these dead men.

Irene walked towards the center of the henge. This place was more solid than the rest of the dream. The grass bent, brushed her legs, left green stains on the soles of her feet. Under the weight of the dead men, the posts creaked. As she crossed the henge, the dead men followed her with their eyes. They did not move. They did not struggle. Unlike the ones that she had seen in the waking world, these were at peace. A terrible, stifling peace. The peace of a suffocated scream.

The stars turned faster. Overhead, the constellations held parley through the whirl of light. There was a pattern here. A pattern at the edge of Irene’s grasp.

But then she was at the thirteenth pole. It was empty. It was a waiting emptiness.

“He will raise the river throne here.”

There were no surprises in dreams. At least, not in this place. Irene turned. The stars turned. The henge turned. All things turned on a divine axis.

It was one of the dead, and there was something familiar about his face, something about his features. The smoky light that infused his skin made it hard to say what she saw. Not friendship. Perhaps not even recognition. A bond, of some sort, like hatred or love passed down at birth.

“Dagon,” she said. “You mean Dagon.”

“The one you call Dagon,” he said. “The stars know. The earth knows. He will wake, and he will raise the river throne, and then he will call his brothers and sisters. It is not the end, but it will be an ending.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the lock. I am the door.”

“We stopped him. We stopped Nassaan Nassaa.”

“The mask is a key. The crown is a key. There are many keys and many locks and many doors. You, too, are one.”

“What am I?”

“You are key and lock and door. You were prepared to be opened.”

Francis Derby. Her parents.

The child.

“I am not Dagon’s,” Irene said. “I am not his. I chose another.”

“The ghost.”

She nodded. The henge had grown cold. She had grown cold. The stars turned faster, dizzying. Against the black plate of sky, the frozen figures of the constellations turned too, caught in an endless revel.

“Listen carefully, Irene Lovell, you who were chosen, you who are key and lock and door. The stars know. The earth knows. He will wake, and he will raise the river throne, and then he will call his brothers and sisters. It is not the end, but it will be an ending.”

The stars turned faster. They were wild now. They had slipped their leash, and they had bared their teeth, and they were coming.

There was no road back. There was no back. There was only this place, this place and the feral stars.

“What do I do?” Irene asked.

“The child.”

The stars whirled. The sky was a glitter of diamond dust.

“What about the child? What do I have to do?”

“They will come for the child. The one you cannot trust will come for the child.”

And then there was no longer any henge. There was only the drifting black, and the whirlwind of the stars, and a presence that was ancient and terrible.

And then there was nothing.