“We don’t open until eight,” she said, “and I don’t think we could help you today in any case. The doctors are all off-I mean, Dr. Hamilton is technically covering, but I’m not even sure I could get to her. There’s a lot going on-this is a big day for us,”

“I know,” Lois said, and gave Ralph’s hand another squeeze before letting it go. He heard her voice in his mind for a moment, very faint-like a bad overseas telephone conversation-but audible: [“Stay where you are, Ralph. She’s got-“] Lois sent him a picture which was even fainter than the thought, and gone almost as soon as Ralph glimpsed it. This sort of communication was a lot easier on the upper levels, but what he got was enough. The hand with which Barbara Richards had pointed at the clock was now resting easily on top of the desk, but the other was underneath it, where a small white button was mounted on one side of the kneehole. If either of them showed the slightest sign of odd behavior, she would push the button, summoning first their friend with the clipboard who was posted outside, and then most of the private security cops in Derry.

And I’m the one she’s watchting most carefully, because I’m the man, Ralph thought.

As Lois approached the reception desk, Ralph had an unsettling thought: given the current atmosphere in Derry, that sort of sexdiscrimination-unconscious but very real-could get this pretty black-haired woman hurt… maybe even killed. He remembered Leydecker telling him that one of Ed’s small cadre of co-crazies was a woman. Pasty complexion, he’d said, lots Of acne, glasses so thick they make her eyes look like poached eggs. Sandra something, her name was. And if Sandra Something had approached His. Richards’s desk as Lois was approaching it now, first opening her purse and then reaching into it, would the woman dressed in the forest-green aura have pushed the hidden alarm button?

“You probably don’t remember me, Barbara,” Lois was saying, “because I haven’t seen you much since you were in college, when you were going with the Sparkmeyer boy-”

“Oh my God, Lennie Sparkmeyer, I haven’t thought of him in years,” Barbara Richards said, and gave an embarrassed little laugh.

“But I remember you. Lois Delancey. Aunt Simone’s poker-buddy.

Do you guys still play?”

“It’s Chasse, not Delancey, and we still do.” Lois sounded delighted that Barbara had remembered her, and Ralph hoped she wouldn’t lose track of what they were supposed to be doing here.

He needn’t have worried. “Anyway, Simone sent me with a message for Gretchen Tillbury.” She brought a piece of paper out of her purse.

“I wonder if you could give it to her?”

“I doubt very much if I’ll even talk to Gretchen on the phone today,” Richards said. “She’s as busy as the rest of us. Busier.”

“I’ll bet.” Lois tinkled an amazingly genuine little laugh. “I guess there’s no real hurry about this, though. Gretchen has got a niece who’s been granted a full scholarship at the University of New Hampshire. Have you ever noticed how much harder people try to get in touch when it’s bad news they have to pass on? Strange, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” Pichards said, reaching for the folded slip of paper. “Anyway, I’ll be happy to put this in Gretchen’s-” Lois seized her wrist, and a flash of gray light-so bright Ralph had to squint his eyes against it to keep from being dazzled-leaped up the woman’s arm, shoulder, and neck. It spun around her head in a brief halo, then disappeared.

No, it didn’t, Ralph thought. It didn’t disappear, it sank in.

“What was that?” the cleaning woman asked suspiciously. “What was that bang?”

“A car backfired,” Ralph said. “That’s all.”

“Huh,” she said. “Goshdarn men think they know everything. Did you hear that, Barbie?”

“Yes,” Richards said. She sounded entirely normal to Ralph, and he knew that the cleaning woman would not be able to see the pearl gray mist which had now filled her eyes. “I think he’s right, but would you check with Peter outside? We can’t be too careful.”

“You goshdarn bet,” the cleaning woman said. She set her Windex bottle down, crossed to the doors (sparing Ralph a final dark look which said You’re old but I just goshdarn bet you still have a penis down there somewhere), and went out.

As soon as she was gone, Lois leaned over the desk. “Barbara, my friend and I have to talk to Gretchen this morning,” she said.

“Face-to-face.”

“She’s not here. She’s at High Ridge.”

“Tell us how to get there.”

Richards’s gaze drifted to Ralph. He found her gray, pupilless eyesockets profoundly unsettling. It was like looking at a piece of classic statuary which had somehow come to life. Her dark-green aura had paled considerably as well. ht. It’s been temporarily overlaid by Lois’s gray, that’s all.

Lois glanced briefly around, followed Barbara Richards’s gaze to Ralph, then turned back to her again. “Yes, he’s a man, but this time it’s okay. I promise you that. Neither one of us means any harm to Gretchen Tillbury or any of the women at High Ridge, but we have to talk to her, so tell us how to get there.” She touched Richards’s hand again, and more gray flashed up Richards’s arm.

“Don’t hurt her,” Ralph said.

“I won’t, but she’s going to talk.” She bent closer to Richards.

“Where is it? Come on, Barbara.”

“You take Route 33 out of Derry,” she said. “The old Newport Road. After you’ve gone about ten miles, there’ll be a big red fart-nhouse on your left. There are two barns behind it. You take your first left after that-” The cleaning woman came back in. “Peter didn’t hear-” She stopped abruptly, perhaps not liking the way Lois was bent over her friend’s desk, perhaps not liking the blank look in her friend’s eyes.

“Barbara? Are you all ri-”

“Be quiet,” Ralph said in a low, friendly voice. “They’re talking.”

He took the cleaning woman’s arm just above the elbow, feeling a brief but powerful pulse of energy as he did so. For a moment all the colors in the world brightened further. The cleaning woman’s name was Rachel Anderson. She’d been married once, to a man who’d beaten her hard and often until he disappeared eight years ago. Now she had a dog and her friends at WomanCare, and that was enough.

“Oh sure,” Rachel Anderson said in a dreamy, thoughtful voice.

“They’re talking, and Peter says everything’s okay, so I guess I better just be quiet.”

“What a good idea,” Ralph said, still holding her upper arm lightly, Lois took a quick look around to confirm Ralph had the situation under control, then turned back to Barbara Richards once again.

“Take a left after the red farmhouse with the two barns. Okay, I’ve got that. What then?”

“You’ll be on a dirt road. It goes up a long hill-about a mile and a half-and then ends at a white farmhouse. That’s High Ridge.

It’s got the most lovely view-”

“I’ll bet,” Lois said. “Barbara, it was great to see you again. Now my friend and I-”

“Great to see you, too, Lois,” Richards said in a distant, uninterested voice.

“Now my friend and I are going to leave. Everything is all right.”

“Good.”

“You won’t need to remember any of this,” Lois said.

“Absolutely not.”

Lois started to turn away, then turned back and plucked up the piece of paper she had taken from her purse. It had fallen to the desk when Lois grabbed the woman’s wrist.

“Why don’t you go back to work, Rachel?” Ralph asked the cleaning lady. He let go of her arm carefully, ready to grab it again at once if she showed signs of needing reinforcement.

“Yes, I better go back to work,” she said, sounding much more friendly. “I want to be done here by noon, so I can go out to High Ridge and help make signs.”

Lois joined Ralph as Rachel Anderson drifted back to her cart of cleaning supplies. Lois looked both amazed and a little shaky.

“They’ll be okay, won’t they, Ralph?”