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But he never finished. Exhausted from grueling reading tours in the intervening years, Dickens keeled over from a stroke at his Gad’s Hill estate after a day’s work on
Drood
, and that was that.

She and Jasper used to try to work out the rest of the story, figure out whodunit, just for fun. So did a lot of people; several authors had taken stabs. Some literary groups and fan clubs still held
Drood
competitions as part of Dickens festivals.

And way, way back—early 1900s, she thought—there was even a mock trial, where a bunch of famous people, like George Bernard Shaw, got together and heard evidence about the character that Dickens hinted in a letter to his biographer, Forster, was the murderer.

She might be writing her life, yet one thing was now dead certain: if Jasper was a creation, he wasn’t hers. In fact, she now wondered why she’d never noticed this before.

Because Edwin Drood’s killer was John Jasper.

OKAY
.
HER HEART
was galloping in her chest.
Calm down. Think this through
.

Say, for argument’s sake, that Eric was right. In
this
universe, she was like Jasper, a character created under very special circumstances with weird tools and constructed of a bizarre sort of energy that had gotten loose to write her own life. She—and maybe Jasper, too—was unique because certain, very special machines recognized her: the cynosure, for
example, and whatever lurked in Jasper’s cellar. The Dickens Mirror might have responded to her as well, if Lizzie’s mom hadn’t destroyed it.

But
why
would it? Because she had too
much
of whatever McDermott had pulled from the Dark Passages? Meredith McDermott always sealed extra energy away in a Peculiar, a Bose-Einstein condensate that rendered the energy inert, unable to … well, get free, do damage, whatever. So the machines recognized her, one of their own, because she was unbound, unfinished, filled with just enough juice? And if the energy to make her came from the Dark Passages, did that mean these devices originally belonged to whatever lived there?

Lizzie says
tangled
a lot
. If she followed Rima’s reasoning—that the versions of Rima and Tony and Bode she was seeing now were set because they’d come from a book-world—then Lizzie’s finding and hanging on to
her
, a character who was unbound, ought to be a lot harder.
Unless this version of me, the one McDermott was writing, is tangled up with all the other book-worlds, as well as Lizzie, her dad, and the whisper-man
. Following Lizzie’s loopy logic, that meant
she
had McDermott in her, too.

Just as Jasper had some of Dickens in
him
?

What did that mean? Could McDermott have actually
known
Dickens in that other London? And what about the fact that there was no
KRAMER
on Lizzie’s quilt? She supposed not every single character in every single McDermott novel could be modeled on or incorporate bits of Lizzie. But if you believed the academics, writers always slotted in portions of their lives into their work, whether they knew it or not. So could Kramer be a piece of—or stand-in for—something
or someone else? McDermott, perhaps?
His first name was Frank … no, Franklin
. So that
would
work; all the letters you needed to make
KRAMER
were right there.

Following that reasoning,
she
ought to have pieces of
all
of them: Bode, Tony, Rima, Chad, and on and on. So would that same
tangled
-ness make it easier for the machines to recognize her? It might even explain these weird echoes—how they all tended to use the same phrases, for example.

Whoa, wait. What if
she
was the one making up all of them? What if
she
had dreamed up Lizzie? But why would she do that?

Well, Jesus, all she had to do was think about her so-called life. She’d taken that psych course. Why did any little kid dream up imaginary friends?
Because she’s lonely. No one wants her
. She fit the bill: cast-off, ugly, traumatized, all-around weird. Sure, Jasper pulled a save, got her fixed up, made her … well, into a normal-looking person, a girl someone might even think was halfway decent-looking. Maybe.

But had she made herself a protector—because she’d desperately needed one?
John Jasper was Edwin Drood’s uncle, and his guardian
. So had she heard or read the story and then somehow brought John Jasper, unbound and unfinished,
to
her? Conjured up
these
people and this situation because she wanted friends? It fit. Wasn’t she the one lusting after an imaginary guy whose story she couldn’t finish?

Wait, wait. Slow down
. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. Yes, Eric was nice; he was perfect, exactly what she’d always imagined. She felt the connection, this
pull
. Look how he’d risked his neck to come after her and Lily. The way he looked at her made her feel … special.

But there’s Casey; don’t forget that
. She gave herself a mental shake.
Eric knows him. Casey’s his brother. So that clinches it right there, you nut: you can’t possibly be causing this. Stop freaking yourself out. For God’s sake
, you
didn’t dream up Frank McDermott or purple panops or a cynosure or a Dickens Mirror
.

Had she?

“SEE?” LIZZIE SAID
to Bode. “That’s what I mean. You’re
all
me, some of you more and some of you less. It’s the way Dad wrote you. Emma’s just got more of me in her than the rest of you do.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bode said. “Putting aside the fact that, you know, I’m a
guy
and in the Army, and you’re just this little kid … so you filch a couple letters and spell my name. So what? Those are beads. They’re glass.”

“No. They’re Mom’s thought-magic.” Sniffing, Lizzie smoothed the quilt over the hardwood floor. “It’s like Daddy said: look hard enough and all the pieces of me—and all of you—are tangled up, right here, forever and ever.”

“No.” Bode folded his arms over his chest. “It’s bullshit. I don’t buy it. I don’t see that this proves anything. You could make my name out of … 
Beauregard
.”

“Sorry, dude,” Eric said. “No
O
.”

Bode flushed an angry plum. “You know what I’m saying. C’mon, Devil Dog, why are you so ready to believe all this?”

“Because.” Eric threw up his hands. “I want to move on already. Enough emo, guys, really. Fussing about this isn’t going to change the fact that we’re stuck here and have to
deal, period. The sooner we get past this, the sooner we can figure out
why
we’re here and then get out.”

“I can dig that,” Bode said. “But I don’t have to believe this to—”

No, I think, actually, you do
. The rules here were so different, they wouldn’t get far if they couldn’t start thinking outside the box. “Bode,” Emma said, “what’s your last name?”

“What? Well, it’s …” After another moment, Bode’s face darkened. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

“Stupid”—Eric hunched a shoulder in an apologetic shrug to Emma—“but she’s right, dude. Your name tape says
BODE
. Is that your last name, or first?”

“It’s my name,” Bode said.

“And you know that because …?”

“Because I know it, all right?” Bode touched the name tape with a finger. “Says so right there, and it’s … you know … in my head.”

Casey glanced at Rima. “Can you spell
tautology
?”

“Yes.” But she wasn’t smiling. Rima’s hand had crept to her lips, and she looked as if she might be sick. “It’s not funny, Casey.”

“Yeah,” Bode said, but without a lot of muscle behind it.

“Okay, so it’s on your uniform,” Eric said. “Then it has to be your last name, right? So, what’s your first name?”

“It’s … it’s …” Bode shot Eric a thunderous look. “All right, I don’t know. I don’t
know
. I’m
Bode
, okay? That’s who I am.”

“Oh God.” Rima’s skin was pale as porcelain. “You know, until Emma asked, I didn’t realize, but … I don’t remember my last name either. I’ll bet if Tony were here, it would be
the same for him, and Chad.” She looked at Eric and Casey. “What about you guys?”

Eric and Casey looked at each other, and then Casey’s mouth dropped open. “No,” he whispered. “Eric?”

“I’m sorry, Case,” Eric said, “but I don’t know either.”

Emma kept her mouth shut, grateful that no one asked her. After all, her last name, Lindsay, was right there in a scream of big block capitals.
My last name is her middle name. No wonder she says we’re the closest, that I have the most of her
. Come to think of it, she didn’t know Sal’s last name, or Mariane’s. Kramer was only Kramer.

Stop. Eric’s right. I could go around and around forever, but I’ve got to start with a given: I’m
real.
No matter what Lizzie says, I’m not words on a page. I like cherry sundaes in tulip glasses, and I save the whipped cream for last. I drink mocha Frappuccinos. I remember blue candles on birthday cakes and watching 9/11 in school and …

Her thoughts hitched up then, because she realized that she didn’t know something else very, very important. “Lizzie, when did your dad die? What year?”

“I …” Lizzie licked her lips. “I don’t remember.”

“How can you not know?” Bode asked.

Lizzie was very pale. “I just
don’t
, okay?”

“When’s your birthday?” Emma asked.

“That’s easy,” Lizzie said, with more than a little relief. “June ninth.”

“What?” Bode came out of his slouch.
“What?”

“That’s
my
birthday,” Rima said, faintly. “Bode?”

He looked away, but Emma saw the small muscles ripple along his jaw. “Same day,” he said.

“Mine too.” Eric paused, and then he looked at Casey. His
eyebrows folded in a slow frown. “But yours—”

“I don’t know.” Casey gave Eric a wild look. “I should
know
my own birthday, but I … I don’t remember!”

“What about you?” Bode said to Emma.

“Same.” Jasper and she shared the same birthday, which she’d once thought was just, well, coincidence. But now … 
Except for Casey, we’ve all got blue eyes, too. Lizzie’s and mine are
exact
matches. All of us are the same because we’re tangled up together, with Lizzie, and, through her, with her dad. All except …

“I don’t
know
when I was born,” Casey said again, and Rima reached for his hand. “I don’t even remember the
year
. But I know I’m sixteen. So what the hell, why can’t I remember?”

“What about you?” Emma said to Lizzie. “What year were you born?”

Lizzie opened her mouth, then closed it. A look of absolute bewilderment flooded into her face.

“You don’t remember,” Bode whispered. “Jesus, you don’t
know
.”

“Easy,” Eric said, though even he looked a little shaky. “She’s just a kid.”

“Yeah. Okay. Easy. Let’s … let’s take it …” Bode raked both hands through his dark, close-cropped hair. “Jesus, I can’t deal with this anymore, okay? What’s the bottom line? Why did you bring us here, and what the
hell
we got to do to get out?”

“It’s like I told Emma.” Lizzie’s cobalt eyes dropped to her hands. “I need you to get my dad. If we can, then I think he can help us.”

“What do you mean, help us?” Bode said. “We were fine
until
you
got it in your head to put us in this mess!”

“Oh yeah,” Eric said. “Shot at by Vietcong and crawling through tunnels full of booby traps. You were doing great.”

“How can we get your dad, Lizzie?” Casey said. “He’s dead.”

“No.” Lizzie shook her head. “Not really.”

“Dead is dead,” Bode said. “Gone is gone. You just
said …
”

“Like I don’t
know
that.” Lizzie’s expression darkened with anger, and her eyes deepened to that odd and smoky sapphire glimmer Emma had trouble reading. “He’s gone from that Wisconsin,” the little girl said, “but he was tangled up in the whisper-man, and the whisper-man’s in my special
Now
.”

As are you, and yet …
Putting aside how bizarre this all was, Emma felt this tickle of uneasiness along her neck. Lizzie could obviously leave this place long enough to grab them.
Yet if she and her dad and the whisper-man and the leftover energies from every Peculiar are tangled together …
She could feel her brain inching toward something else she could
sense
but didn’t quite know yet.

“So, your dad’s
here
?” When Lizzie nodded, Bode said,

“Where?”

“He’s the barn,” she said.

“The one outside?” Bode turned a frown to them before looking back at Lizzie. “So what’s the problem?”

“I can’t find him. Whenever it sees new people, it adds rooms and I get lost.”

“What? A barn can’t make more rooms.”

“Sure it can,” Lizzie said, “if it’s alive.”

“SO WHAT ABOUT
the snowmobile?” Yanking open another cupboard, Bode stared at the shelves crammed with Kraft macaroni and cheese. “Man, I see one more Blue Box, I’m gonna pound somebody.”

“There’s a loaf in the bread box,” Eric said. He was sitting on a kitchen chair, with his right leg propped on another. Emma had eased up his bloody jeans to the knee, exposing an ugly eight-inch rip in the calf he’d snagged on that ruined guardrail … God,
hours
ago, from the feel of it.
Days
. The deep gash was ragged and crusted with old blood. Emma had dug up both a first aid kit in a downstairs bathroom and a half-bottle of antibacterial soap under the kitchen sink, which was, Eric thought, a little odd.
Almost like the house knew we might need it
. “Couple jars of peanut butter in the pantry.”

“Christ no,” Bode said. “Only thing peanut butter’s good for in Charlie rats is stopping you up if you got the runs.”