Victor slipped on his coat and left.

Back at the hotel suite, Sydney and Mitch were sprawled on the sofa, watching an old movie, Dol stretched at their feet. Mitch met Victor’s gaze when he walked in, eyebrows raised in question, and Victor gave a small, almost imperceptible head shake.

Sydney rolled upright. “Where were you?”

“Stretching my legs,” said Victor.

Syd frowned. Over the last few weeks, the look in her eyes had shifted from pure worry to something more skeptical. “You’ve been gone for hours.”

“And I was trapped for years,” countered Victor, pouring himself a drink. “It makes a body restless.”

“I get restless too,” said Sydney. “That’s why Mitch came up with the card game.” She turned to Mitch. “Why doesn’t Victor have to play?”

Victor raised a brow and sipped his drink. “How does it work?”

Sydney took the deck up from the table. “If you draw a number card, you have to stay in and learn something, but if you draw a face card, you get to go out. Mostly just to parks or movies, but it’s still better than being cooped up.”

Victor cut a glance at Mitch, but the man only shrugged and rose, heading to the bathroom.

“You try it,” said Syd, holding out the deck. Victor considered her a moment, then lifted his hand. But instead of drawing a card, he brushed the deck from Syd’s palm, spilling cards across the floor.

“Hey,” said Syd as Victor knelt and considered his options. “That’s cheating.”

“You never said I had to play fair.” He plucked the king of spades from where it lay, upturned. “Here,” he said, offering her the card. “Keep it up your sleeve.”

Sydney considered the card for a long moment, and then palmed it right before Mitch returned. His eyes flicked between them. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” said Syd without a second’s hesitation. “Victor’s just teasing me.”

It was disconcerting how easily she lied.

Syd returned to the couch, Dol climbing up beside her, and Victor stepped out onto the balcony.

A few minutes later, the door slid open at his back, and Mitch joined him.

“Well?” asked Mitch. “What did Porter say?”

“He didn’t have answers,” said Victor.

“Then we find someone else,” said Mitch.

Victor nodded. “Tell Syd we’re leaving in the morning.” Mitch slipped back inside, and Victor set his drink on the railing. He drew the syringe from his pocket, reading the label. Lorazepam. An anti-seizure drug. He had been hoping for a diagnosis, a cure, but until then, he would find a way to treat the symptoms.

* * *

“I don’t normally meet with patients after hours.”

Victor sat across the table from the young doctor. She was slim, and dark, eyes keen behind her glasses. But no matter her interest, or suspicion, her practice was located in Capstone, a city with strong government ties, the kind of place where privacy was paramount, discretion mandatory. Where loose lips could end careers, even lives.

Victor slid the cash across the table. “Thank you for making an exception.”

She took the money and considered the few lines he’d filled out on his intake. “How can I help you, Mr. . . . Lassiter?”

Victor was trying to focus through the rising sound in his skull, as she asked all the same questions, and he gave all the same answers. He laid out the symptoms—the noise, the pain, the convulsions, the blackouts—omitting what he could, lying where he had to. The doctor listened, pen scratching across her notepad as she thought. “It could be epilepsy, myasthenia gravis, dystonia—neurological disorders are hard to diagnose sometimes, when they present overlapping symptoms. I’ll order some tests—”

“No,” said Victor.

She looked up from her notes. “Without knowing what exactly—”

“I’ve had tests,” he said. “They were . . . inconclusive. I’m here because I want to know what you would prescribe.”

Dr. Clayton straightened in her chair. “I don’t prescribe medications without a diagnosis, and I don’t diagnose without compelling evidence. No offense, Mr. Lassiter, but your word is not sufficient.”

Victor exhaled. He leaned forward. And as he did, he leaned on her, too. Not with his hands, but with his senses, a pressure just below pain. A subtle discomfort, the same kind that made strangers bend away, allowed Victor to pass unnoticed through a crowd. But Clayton couldn’t escape so easily, and so the discomfort registered for what it was—a threat. A fight-or-flight trigger, simple and animalistic, predator to prey.

“There are plenty of dirty doctors in this city,” said Victor. “But their willingness to prescribe is often inversely proportional to their skill as a physician. Which is why I’m here. With you.”

Clayton swallowed. “The wrong diagnosis,” she said steadily, “and the medication could do more harm than good.”

“That is a risk,” said Victor, “I’m willing to take.”

The doctor let out a short, shaky breath. She shook her head, as if clearing her mind. “I’ll prescribe you an anti-seizure medication and a beta blocker.” Her pen scratched across the page. “For anything stronger,” she said, tearing off the sheet, “you will have to admit yourself for observation.”

Victor took the slip and rose. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Two hours later, he tipped the pills into his palm and swallowed them dry.

Soon, he felt his heart slow, the buzzing quiet, and thought, perhaps, that he had found an answer. For two weeks, he felt better.

And then he died again.

VI

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

VICTOR was late, and he knew it.

Linden had taken longer than expected—he’d had to wait for the garage to clear, wait for them to be alone. And then, of course, wait for the death he knew was coming, see it through so it didn’t follow him back to the house where they’d been for the last nine days. It was a rental, another one of those short-stay places you could book for a day or a week or a month.

Sydney had chosen it, she said, because it looked like a home.

When Victor walked in, he was met by the smell of melted cheese and the crack of an explosion on the large TV. Sydney was perched on the arm of the couch, tossing Dol pieces of popcorn while Mitch stood at the kitchen counter, arranging candles on top of a chocolate cake.

The scene was so extraordinarily . . . normal.

The dog spotted him first, tail sliding back and forth across the hardwood floor.

Mitch met his gaze, forehead knotted in concern, but Victor waved him away.

Syd glanced over her shoulder. “Hey.”

Five years, and in most ways Sydney Clarke looked the same. She was still short and slight, as round-faced and wide-eyed as she’d been the day they’d met on the side of the road. Most of the differences were superficial—she’d traded the rainbow leggings for black ones with little white stars, and her usual blond bob was constantly hidden by a collection of wigs, her hair changing as often as her mood. Tonight, it was a pale blue, the same color as her eyes.

But in other ways, Sydney had changed as much as any of them. The tone of her voice, her unflinching gaze, the way she rolled her eyes—an affectation she’d clearly taken on in an effort to stress her age, since it wasn’t readily apparent. In body, she was still a child. In attitude, she was all teenager.

Now she took one look at Victor’s empty hands and he could see the question in her eyes, the suspicion that he’d forgotten.

“Happy birthday, Sydney,” he said.

It was a strange thing, the alignment of Syd’s birthday with her arrival in Victor’s life. Every year marked not only her age, but the time she’d been with him. With them.

“Ready for me to light the candles?” asked Mitch.

Victor shook his head. “Give me a few minutes to change,” he said, slipping down the hall.

He closed the door behind him, left the lights off as he crossed the bedroom. The furnishings really didn’t suit him—the blue and white cushions, the pastoral painting on one wall, the books on the shelf picked out for decoration instead of substance. The last, at least, he’d found a use for. An attractive history text sat open, a black felt-tip pen resting in the center. At this point, the left page had been entirely blacked out, the right down to the final line, as if Victor were searching for a word and hadn’t found it yet.

He shrugged out of his coat and went into the bathroom, rolling up his sleeves. He turned the faucet on and splashed water on his face, the white noise of the tap matching the static already starting again inside his skull. These days the quiet was measured in minutes instead of days.

Victor ran a hand through his short blond hair and considered his reflection, blue eyes wolfish in his gaunt face.

He’d lost weight.

He had always been slim, but now when he lifted his chin, the light glanced off his brow and cheekbone, made shadows along his jaw, in the hollow of his throat.

A short row of pill bottles sat lined up along the back of the sink. He reached for the nearest one, and tipped a Valium into his palm.

Victor had never been keen on drugs.