“So you would sell to him?” I asked.

“If no one else steps up with a better offer, I just might,” Buchold said. “Why? Do you think I should pass on the offer?”

“I would never tell you how to run your own business, Mr. Buchold.”

“What’s left of it anyway,” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Agent Shane. You find me a good reason to keep my options open, and maybe I’ll do just that.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I will see what I can do.”

*   *   *

Five o’clock, and I was in the liminal space of Cassandra Bell.

It was bare. And by bare, I mean that there was literally nothing in it.

This was not the vast expanse of endless space. It was the absolute opposite, a close, tight darkness. It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of black ink. For the first time I understood claustrophobia.

“Most people find my liminal space uncomfortable, Agent Shane,” Bell said. A voice that I could not see and which came from everywhere, although quietly. It was like being inside the head of a very private person. Which, I suppose, was exactly what this was.

“I can understand that,” I said.

“Does it bother you?”

“I’m trying not to let it.”

“I find it comforting,” Bell said. “It reminds me of the womb. They say we don’t remember what it is like to be there, but I don’t believe that. I think deep inside we always know. It’s why children burrow under blankets and cats push their heads into your elbow when they sit beside you. I’ve not had those experiences myself, but I know why they happen. I’ve been told my liminal space is like the dark of the grave. But I think of it as the dark from the other end of life entirely. The dark of everything ahead, not everything behind.”

“I like the way you put that,” I said. “I’m going to try to think of it that way.”

“That’s the way. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness, Agent Shane,” Bell said.

And then she was in front of me, close, a lit candle illuminating her face, the light throwing back the darkness to a breathable distance.

“Thank you,” I said, and felt a shudder of relief.

“You are welcome,” she said, and smiled, looking younger than twenty years old, although of course here she could appear to be any age she wished.

“And thank you for seeing me on short notice,” I said. “I know you are busy.”

“I am always busy,” she said. Not a brag, or a show of pride, just a fact. She smiled at me again. “But of course I know of you, Agent Shane. Chris Shane. The Haden Child. So strange, isn’t it, that we have not met before this.”

“I had that same thought the other day,” I said.

“And why do you suppose that is, that we have only now met.”

“We ran in different circles,” I said.

“Ran in different circles,” she said. “And now the image I have is of you and me moving in separate orbits, centered on different stars.”

“Same metaphor,” I said. “Different description.”

“Yes!” Bell said, and gave a small laugh. “And who was your star? Whom did you orbit?”

“My father, I suppose,” I said.

“He is a good man,” Bell said. Not a question.

“Yes,” I said, and thought of him this morning, in his bathrobe, scotch in his hand, grieving for Bruce Skow.

“I know what happened,” Bell said. “To and by your father. I am sorry for it.”

“Thank you,” I said, strangely touched by her manner of speaking. Formal and yet also intimate. “Who was your star, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t know,” Bell said. “I still don’t know. I am beginning to suspect it’s not a person but is an idea. And that’s why I’m strange, and also gives me my power.”

“Maybe,” I said, as diplomatically as possible.

She caught it, smiled, and laughed at me. “I don’t mean to be obtuse or intentionally bizarre, Agent Shane, honestly I don’t,” she said. “It’s just that I am terribly bad at small talk. The longer it goes on the more I sound like a refugee from a commune.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I live in an intentional community myself.”

“Kind of you to empathize with me,” Cassandra Bell said. “You are better at small talk than I am. That is not always a compliment. This time it is.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You did not come to make small talk with me,” she said. “As well as you make it.”

“No,” I said. “I came to talk to you about your brother.”

“Have you,” she said. “I would like to tell you a story of my brother, if you will hear it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“He was a little boy when I was born and he knew that I was held within myself,” she said. “And so he would come to me, and kiss me on my forehead, and sing to me for hours. Can you imagine. What other seven-year-old boy would do such a thing. You have no sisters or brothers.”

“No,” I said.

“Do you miss them?”

“I can’t miss what I never had,” I said.

“Which is not true at all,” Bell said. “But I have put it poorly. I mean do you feel that you have missed out by not having siblings.”

“I think it would have been interesting to have siblings,” I said.

“Your parents had no more after you.”

“I think they were worried that if they did, they would neglect one or the other of us to focus on the other,” I said. “And that the one who was neglected would have eventually become resentful. It’s hard to have one child be a Haden and one not. I would imagine.” I paused.

“You have a question about me and my brother,” Bell said.

“I wondered if you ever integrated with him,” I said.

“Oh, no,” Bell said. “Altogether too intimate, I should think. I love my brother and he me. But I have no desire to be inside of his head, and I don’t believe he wants me in his. Both of us in the same head at the same time! We would become our parents.”

“That’s an image,” I said.

“I have never integrated. I am enough in my own head. I don’t wish to be in someone else’s as well.”

I smiled at this. “You should meet my partner,” I said. “She was an Integrator who didn’t like people being in her head.”

“We would be like magnets,” Bell said. “Either rushing together or pushing apart.”

“Another interesting image,” I said.

“Tell me about my brother.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“That’s not telling me of my brother, but I’ll allow it,” Bell said. “We spoke the other day. He wishes to spend time with me Saturday afternoon.”

“And will you?”

“Wouldn’t you make time for your family?” Bell asked. “I know how you would answer so you don’t have to.”

“I would make time for them,” I said, answering anyway. “Will you meet him here?”

“Yes, and also he will be with my body,” Bell said. “He still likes to sing to me, to my ears.”

“Will anyone else be there?”

“He is family.”

“So, no.”

“Agent Shane, now is an excellent time to stop making small talk,” Bell said.

“We believe your brother has had his body taken over by a client,” I said. “This client has considerable technical skill and has been able to change the programming of your brother’s neural network in order to trap him and use the body for his own purposes. We believe he means to use your brother’s body to kill you and then kill your brother as well. It will look like a murder-suicide.”

“And you believe this why?”

“Because he’s taken over other bodies,” I said. “In the same way. He and an associate have both done it. The end result has been three dead Integrators.”

Cassandra Bell looked very solemn, the light from the candle suddenly guttering and flickering before resuming a steady glow. “You believe he is possessed already, then.”

“Possessed,” I said, and I realized that it simply hadn’t occurred to me to think of what happened to Johnny Sani or Bruce Skow or Brenda Kees in that way. “Yes. He is already possessed.”

“For how long?”

“We believe since last Tuesday morning at least.”

“Why has it taken you this long to tell me of it?”