She remembered rain, battering down on the top of the old Ford truck she and Bill had owned when they’d first been married. They’d run out of gas in the middle of the rainstorm and Bill had gone off to fetch enough gas to get them running again, leaving her alone in the middle of the downpour that had come out of nowhere. Alone in the dark and the cold.

Well, no, that wasn’t altogether true. She hadn’t been completely alone. There’d been a baby in her belly. As Melissa had sat in that cold truck waiting for Bill to come back, Candy Francesca Quackenbush had been just an hour from being born. It was two in the morning and Melissa’s water had just broken, and so, it seemed, had the waters of heaven itself, because to this day she could not remember being in a rainstorm so sudden and so intense.

But it wasn’t the rain or the cold or the kicking of the unborn child in her womb that she was remembering now. Something else had happened; something that the smell of seawater now pricking her nostrils had brought back into her head. The trouble was, she couldn’t remember precisely what that something had been.

She stepped away from the barbecue—away from the smell of burned chicken and cleaning fluid—to get a breath of purer air.

And as she did so—as she inhaled the sea air that could not be sea air—another piece of the vision snapped into focus in her mind’s eye.

She’d been sitting there in the truck, with the rain beating a crazy tattoo on the roof, and suddenly, without warning, there had been light everywhere, flooding the old Ford’s interior.

Melissa didn’t know why, but this memory—the vehicle filling up with pure white light—was somehow connected to the smell in the air. It didn’t make any sense. Clearly her mind was playing tricks with her. Was she going crazy? Crazy with sadness and disappointment. Her eyes had started to sting, and tears now ran down her cheeks; ran and ran. She told herself not to be silly. What was she crying about?

“I’m not crazy,” she said to herself softly. Nevertheless, she felt suddenly lost, unanchorcd.

There was an explanation for this, somewhere in her memory. The trouble was that she couldn’t quite reach it.

“Come on…” she said to herself.

It was like having a name on the tip of her tongue, but not being able to bring it to mind.

Frustrated with herself, and more than a little unnerved (maybe there was something wrong with her, smelling the ocean in the middle of Minnesota; maybe her life was making her nuts), she turned her back on the open sky and returned rather deliberately to the cloud of sour but familiar smells that hung around the barbecue. They weren’t pleasant, but at least she understood them. Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, she told herself to forget what she thought she was smelling, because it was a trick her nose was playing on her, no more nor less than that.

Then she picked up the spatula and the can of cleaning fluid that she’d dropped, and she went back to her weary and unhappy work.

Candy heard a chorus of voices, all speaking the same word.

Lady, they were saying; lady, lady, lady…

It took her several moments to realize that these many voices were all addressing her.

It was the Johns speaking: Mischief, Fillet, Sallow, Moot, Drowze, Pluckitt, Serpent and Slop. They were all calling to her, trying to get her to wake up. She felt herself tentatively shaken. And—just as tentatively—she opened her eyes.

Eight concerned faces were looking down at her: one large one and seven smaller.

“Anything broken?” John Fillet said.

Candy made a very cautious attempt to sit up. The back of her neck hurt, but it was no worse than the ache she sometimes woke with when she’d been sleeping in an odd position. She moved her legs and her arms. She wriggled her fingers.

“No,” she said, somewhat surprised at her good fortune, given the distance she’d fallen. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Good,” said John Sallow. “Then we can get moving.”

“Wait!” said Mischief. “She’s only just—”

“Sallow’s right!” said John Fillet. “We haven’t got time to wait. That damnable creep Shape is going to be down here in a few seconds.”

Shape! The sound of his name was enough to make Candy seize Mischief’s arm and haul herself to her feet. The last thing she wanted was Mendelson Shape’s claws around her throat a second time.

“Where are we off to?” she wanted to know.

“We’re going home, lady,” Mischief said. “You’re going to yours. And we’re going to ours.” He put his hand into his inside pocket. “But before I go,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as he spoke, “I wonder if you could possibly do something for me—for us all—until we meet again?”

“What do you need?” Candy said.

“I just need you to carry something for us. Something very precious.”

From the interior of his jacket he brought an object wrapped up in a little piece of coarsely woven cloth and secured with a brown leather thong that had been wrapped around it several times.

“There’s no need for you to know what it is,” he said. “In fact, if you don’t mind, it’s better you don’t. Just take it and keep it safe for us, will you? We’ll be back, I promise you, when Carrion’s forgotten about us, and we can chance the return trip.”

“Carrion?”

“Christopher Carrion,” John Serpent said, his voice laden with anxiety. “The Lord of Midnight.”

“Will you take it for us?” said John Mischief, proffering the little parcel.

“I think if I’m going to carry something,” Candy said, “I should at least know what it is. Especially if it’s important.”

“What did I tell you?” Serpent said. “I knew she wouldn’t be content with that ‘It’s better if you don’t know’ line. She’s entirely too inquisitive, this one.”

“Well, if I’m going to be a messenger girl,” Candy said, addressing John Serpent, “I think I have a right—”

“Of course you do,” Mischief said. “Open it up. Go on. It’s all yours.”

Curiously enough the little parcel seemed to have almost no weight, except for that of the wrapping and the cord. Candy pulled at the large knot, which although it looked hard to undo seemed to solve itself the moment she began to pick at it. She felt something move in the parcel. The next moment there was a rush of light out of the bag, which momentarily filled her gaze. She saw several points of brightness appear before her, joined by darting lines of luminescence. They hovered for a moment, then the lights sank away into her unconscious and were gone.

The whole spectacle—which couldn’t have taken more than three seconds—left her speechless.

“You have the Key now,” John Mischief told her gravely. “I beg you to tell nobody you have it. Do you understand? Nobody.”

“Whatever you say,” she replied, looking at the empty bag, mystified. Then, after a moment: “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what door this key opens?”

“Truly, lady; better not.”

He kissed her hand, bowing as he did so, and began to retreat from her. “Good-bye, lady,” he said. “We have to go.”

Candy had been facing the tower throughout this conversation. Only now, as Mischief retreated from her, did she realize what a change had come over the world in the brief time in which she’d been unconscious.

A ramshackle jetty had appeared out of the ground, and at its far end large waves were breaking, their weight sufficient to make the structure creak and shake down its entire length. Beyond the breaking waves the Sea of Izabella stretched off toward a misty blue horizon. Minnesota—at least as Candy had known it—had apparently disappeared, overwhelmed by this great expanse of invading water.

“How…” Candy said, staring at the panorama slack-jawed with astonishment. “How is this possible?”