Eddie had left him this, all of this, but keeping it—allowing its horror to continue to thrive for another generation—struck him to the core as wrong.

Head turned into the couch cushions, he wondered if Eddie had slept where he was sleeping, if he’d driven those same roads and drank that same cheap liquor and passed out here with Halse.

Andrew struggled to determine if he knew the house, but the pernicious doubling between himself and revenant and imagination and memory made it familiar.

He wasn’t cut out for the life he’d inherited.

He had gotten used to their curse and what it could do in the years since, and that had made him complacent, but now he was scared again.

Troth was after him to fill Eddie’s shoes for her, to complete his research with her, to dredge the accident up for her—she forced her way into things no one else understood, probing secrets he’d rather leave buried. But he had questions to ask, and he needed her answers for some of them.

It’s hard to believe I’m looking at the young man from the newspaper all

This was, in a sense, research—

The disembodiment of the department gathering, his pretense at scholar-gentleman, dropped away at Sam’s slur on the -drew.