She cleared her throat. “I’m looking for John Shaw.”

“Oh …him.”

“Is he here?”

“No.” The girl ran a hand through her hair. Long nails. Short hair.

“But he lives here?”

“Uh—sometimes. Are you a friend of his?”

Susan shook her head. “Not exactly … are you?”

Now there was the barest hint of a smile. “Not exactly.” The girl extended her hand. “I’m Amelie”

The hand was small and cool. Susan introduced herself; Amelie said, “He’s not here … but you can maybe find him at the 24-Hour on Wellesley. You know, the doughnut shop?”

Susan nodded. She would look for ” Wellesley ” on her map.

Amelie said, “Is it important? You look kind of, ah, worried.”

“It’s pretty important,” Susan said, thinking: Life or death. Dr. Kyriakides had told her that.

* * *

Susan saw him for the first time, her first real look at him, through the plate-glass window of the doughnut shop.

She allowed herself this moment, seeing him without being seen. She recognized him from the pictures Dr. Kyriakides had shown her. But Susan imagined that she might have guessed who he was, just from looking at him—that she would have known, at least, that he was not entirely normal.

To begin with, he was alone.

He sat at a small table in the long room, three steps down from the sidewalk. His face was angled up at the October sunlight, relishing it. There was a chessboard in front of him—the board built into the lacquered surface of the table and the pieces arranged in ready ranks.

She had dreamed about this, about meeting him, dreams that occasionally bordered on nightmares. In the dreams John Shaw was barely human, his head unnaturally enlarged, his eyes needle-sharp and unblinking. The real John Shaw was nothing like that, of course, in his photographs or here, in the flesh; his monstrosities, she thought, were buried—but she mustn’t think of him that way. He was in trouble and he needed her help.