She closed a hand over Cleo’s. “This cost her, and there’s only a couple of days before Halloween.”

“No need to bait her into doing all this again. And let’s give thanks there.”

Trey came back with a small cardboard box. “Got your ball. Looks like it bounced and rolled nearly to the seawall. Nice arm you got there. It’s got a lot of black ooze drying on it. I’d take that for a blood substitute.”

“You didn’t touch it?”

“Got it with my shirt.” He held it up, showing some streaks of black on the cotton.

“Okay, good.” Cleo nodded. “Toss the shirt in there, too. No washing, no cleaning. More potential use for our side.”

“It was a pretty nice shirt.” But he tossed it in the box. “Odds of her causing more trouble today are pretty slim. Owen’s going to check in later.”

“Owen.”

“I let him know. I’m going to go grab a shower. I can reschedule things if you want me to stick around.”

“No.” Sonya shook her head. “You’re right, and we thought the same. She’s done for now. We’re good. We’re good until one second after midnight October thirty-first.”

The closer it came, the more brutal the wait.

Work only held her concentration an hour or two at a time. And even then, she made mistakes she had to go back and fix.

She took aimless walks, in the house and out.

And played endless games of what-if.

What if she couldn’t pull it off? What if the mirror wouldn’t let her and Owen through seven times in three hours?

Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds, she corrected.

Because every second counted.

What if, oh God! What if it wouldn’t or couldn’t let them back through every time?

Dobbs would continue her reign of blood and terror, and they’d be stuck in another century.

And even if they accomplished all that? What if Cleo’s plan to end it all failed?

Would it somehow start all over? How did it work?

And how the hell could she know?

With only hours left to wonder and worry, she paced her office while Clover played rah-rah songs.

She heard Imagine Dragons tell her she was “On Top of the World.” She wanted to tell Clover it wasn’t helping, but didn’t have the heart.

Downstairs, Jack bounced the ball for Yoda. Even the sound of the boy’s laugh, the dog’s happy yips didn’t cut through the anxiety.

She caught the scent—the familiar cologne—seconds before she heard the voice.

“You’ve got so much on your shoulders.”

She turned, thought: Collin, in paint-stained jeans, high-tops, hair tumbled. Then.

Everything leaped.

“Dad. Dad!”

As she rushed across the room, he held up both hands. “You can’t touch me. I wish, oh, baby, I wish I could hold you. I’m not altogether here. This isn’t my place. I’m just … a reflection.”

“I can see you. I can hear you. I miss you so much.”

“I’m sorry I had to go. Sorry I couldn’t be there with you, with your mom.

I’m sorry you’re going through all of this, but I need you to know, my strong, clever, beautiful girl, I believe in you.

I love you. My heart grew ten times bigger and richer the moment they put you in my arms. And every day I had you was a joy.

“I want you to do one thing for me.”

“Anything. I love you, Daddy. Anything.”

“Believe in yourself. Do that one thing for me, Sonya. Do you remember what I used to tell you about believing?”

“‘Believing is more than half the battle. You’ll never get there, you’ll never win, if you don’t believe you will.’”

He shot her the smile that made everything inside her light up.

“That’s my girl.”

She could see him fading, stepped closer. “Dad.”

“Part of me’s always with you. Remember that.”

When he was gone, his scent remained just a few seconds longer. While emotions swamped her, she breathed in that scent.

“That was a gift. An amazing gift. And I will remember.”

She heard the door open downstairs, and Mookie bark a greeting to Yoda.

She went out, started down. Trey glanced up, and his smile of greeting shifted into concern.

“Oh.” She patted her damp eyes. “No, gratitude tears. I saw my father. Or what he called a reflection. I talked to him.”

“Your dad, not Collin?”

“My dad. He gave me a kind of pep talk. It worked. It worked,” she repeated, and looked at Owen. “We’re going to do this.”

“Never doubted it. Cleo?”

“Still in the studio, I think. Or what I think of the last week or so as the demi-witch’s lair.”

“I’ll go get her.” He passed the pizza boxes he carried to Trey. As he came up the steps, he stopped beside her, gave her arm a light punch. “Never doubted it.”

“Now I don’t either.”

Trey waited until she’d walked down to him. “Neither do I. Cutie, you look ready for anything.”

“I’m ready for this.” They started back to the kitchen. “And not only because I have to be. I want to be. Just under six hours now.”

In the kitchen, he set down the pizza boxes, then laid his hands on her shoulders. “This isn’t how I figured this would go. No candlelight or romantic spot, but here in the kitchen, pizza waiting, and you ready for anything? It fits pretty well.”

He reached in his pocket, took out a small black box.

“Trey.”

“I was going to wait until after, then I realized, hell no.” He flipped open the box to a square-cut diamond on a band sparkling with brilliants.

Clover reached back and played Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”

“I believe in you, Sonya. I’m hoping you’ll take this, wear this, a symbol of that belief when you go through. You’ll come back at the end with seven more, but this one is yours if you’ll have it. And me.”

“And I’m crying again. Trey.” To steady herself, she took his face in her hands to kiss him. “Yes, I’ll wear it. Yes, yes, yes, I’ll take it and you.”

“I love you.” He slipped the ring on her finger. “Now and always.”

They heard the rumble from the third floor, a kind of stirring. Then a flash, but not of cold. Warmth spread like an embrace.

“She thinks this opens a door for her, but she’s wrong. It’s another closing. It’s beautiful.” In the warmth, she wrapped around him. “And it’s perfect. The perfect time, the perfect place.”

The kiss filled them both with love, with hope, with trust.

“You’ll be with me,” Sonya murmured. “When I need you most.”

She turned when she heard Cleo and Owen coming.

“I had to tell her to keep her up there long enough for you to do the thing. You’d better have done the thing,” Owen added.

“Let me see!” Cleo grabbed Sonya’s left hand. “All right, Trey! Good job. Damn good job.”

As Cleo embraced Sonya, then Trey, Clover went upbeat with Queen and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

“I’d say break out the champagne, but—”

“After,” Sonya finished.

“After. Now we do it with pizza and Cokes.”

Time ticked away. They spent the last of it outside, in the seats facing the sea. A three-quarter moon sailed the sky as they went over plans, steps, contingencies yet again.

“And still,” Sonya said, “we won’t know until we know. Each time, every time.”

“But we’re as ready as we can be,” Trey pointed out. “Cleo and I will deal with whatever she throws out on this side.”

“Counting on it. And Owen and I will do what we have to do on the other.”

Still she clung, one more minute, to the here and now. The four of them together, the brisk air, the sailing moon, the restless sea.

“We’ve got to start doing what we gotta.” Owen rose, reached for Cleo’s hand.

When they went in, the dogs followed them up the stairs. Pye ribboned her way through them.

“It may be easier on Owen and me to go through where it happened, each time. Johanna came up these steps so … this is the place.”

Nerves threatened again; Sonya fought them down.

“All right. I wish I could see her again, Johanna, on her wedding day, when she ran up these steps to change her shoes. We need to go there, Owen and I, to take her wedding ring so we can return it to her. We—”

The mirror was there, as if waiting.

“God, okay. Owen.”

“Yeah, I see it. Not really movement, but shapes. I hear music.”

Quickly, Sonya turned to Trey. “Look out for each other, and the dogs, Pye.”

“Count on it.”

“Cleo—”

“You don’t worry about us.” She shifted her gaze from Sonya to Owen. “You don’t worry.”

“Ten seconds until midnight.” Trey gripped Owen’s hand as he kissed Sonya.

Then he let go.

“Time.”

They went through. Trey clicked the stopwatch he held. Cleo touched a hand to the sheer glass, then dropped it.

“They’re going to do this. They’re meant to do this. And still.”

“Right there with you.”

On the other side, Sonya and Owen stood on the same spot in air scented with flowers.

The door burst open, and Johanna, radiant, ran in and started up the stairs. On a laugh, she stopped, and pulled off high, sparkling heels.

“She doesn’t see us,” Sonya murmured. “I’d half hoped she would.”

Laying a hand on her belly where the hope of a new life slept, she hurried up the rest of the stairs. She spun in a circle, her happiness like a wave that swept everything in its path.

“She’ll go to the main bedroom, put her wedding shoes away.”

“You have to move in.”

“In the bedroom, I will. When she’s there.”

They followed as Johanna all but danced down the hallway and through the doors of the bedroom.

She put her shoes away, stood smiling, glowing as she scanned her choices.

“Well, the hell with shoes,” she began.

And everything froze.

“Oh. That’s how it’ll be then.” Struck with sorrow, filled with purpose, Sonya stepped to her. “I’m sorry, so sorry I can’t do more. I’ll get it back to you. I swear.”

“Cleo said to put it on.”

Sonya slipped it on her middle finger where, for an instant, it glowed.

“Move.” Owen grabbed her arm, pulled her away. “Don’t think about it now.”

“In just a few minutes, she’ll—”

“We can’t stop that.”

“Dobbs is coming. Can you feel her?”

“Yeah, I can feel her.”

Owen all but tossed Sonya through the mirror, and leaped behind her.

Trey grabbed her. “Eleven minutes, forty-two seconds. You’re pale.”

“A little dizzy.” But she held up her hand, where Johanna’s ring sparkled beside hers.

“We weren’t over there more than three minutes,” Owen said. “Anything on this side?”