“Rocket! You here?”

I took the flashlight out of my jacket pocket and shined it toward the stairs leading from the basement.

Nothing had changed in all the months I’d been away. The area was still strewn in trash and debris. A decrepit, three-wheeled gurney sat in one corner of the basement and an old rusted bathtub decorated another.

I loved this place. Creepy things gave me a sense of nostalgia. I blamed my upbringing. And my stepmother. She hadn’t been so much creepy as a bona fide creep, but still. It warmed the cockles of my heart. If I’d ever taken art, I would draw stuff like this. The stuff of my dreams. The stuff of others’ nightmares, if the plethora of horror movies set in abandoned asylums and hospitals was any indication.

Still receiving no answer from Rocket, I headed upstairs. I ran my fingers along the hundreds and hundreds of names he’d carved into the walls. What had Strawberry said? That the names were meant for Beep? How? What did she mean?

Maybe it was simply her nine-year-old imagination taking hold, but somehow I doubted it. Why would she come up with anything like that?

Just to test out a theory, I decided to see the names from a different vantage. I stopped in one particularly graphitized area and shifted. My celestial vision instantly picked up on things my human vision simply could not. The storms that plagued the intangible world raged around me, whipping my hair into a frenzy, scorching my skin.

The walls of this building were still there, but I was straddling both worlds. Both planes. I had yet to shift completely. Not consciously, anyway. I was terrified of getting lost in the other realm. Of being unable to find my way back to this one. So when I shifted, I did so hesitantly. Cautiously.

But it was enough to see something I’d never seen. The names Rocket carved fairly glowed in the burning edges of this world. As though they were on fire. As though his writing them set them on fire. Was he assigning the names? Or was he simply writing the names already destined to … what? What did the names mean? What did they have to do with my daughter?

The chicken-and-egg conundrum would get me nowhere. I needed to talk to Rocket. And I would just as soon as he stopped crushing me and put me down. One minute I’m standing there, minding my own business, and the next I’m being lifted off the ground by an ox. A strong one.

“Rocket,” I said through the sound of my ribs cracking. I’d snapped back to the tangible world the moment he picked me up, so the names had stopped glowing. But his bright, bald head hadn’t. It was as pale and shiny as ever.

I hugged his head and kissed it while he got the pleasantries out of his system.

“Miss Charlotte,” he said, his words muffled by my girls, Danger and Will Robinson. I had a feeling he was doing more than just greeting me.

“Rocket,” I said, kicking out to loosen his grip. “Are you molesting me?”

He still held me high, but he looked up, his eyes shimmering with elation. “I missed you, Miss Charlotte.”

I hugged him to me again. Thankfully, he didn’t need to breathe. “I missed you, too.”

We stood like that a long moment. Me with the hugging. Rocket with the accosting. At least he didn’t motorboat me. I didn’t know how Danger and Will would take to being manhandled in such a way.

Who was I kidding? They’d love it.

When he finally dropped me—literally—I peeled myself off the trash-strewn floor and gave him a loving punch on the arm. “How have you been, handsome?”

He still wore the hospital attire that he’d died in: dingy slippers and grayish-blue pajamas that resembled scrubs.

“Where have you been, Miss Charlotte? Everyone is very upset.”

“Really? Because I’ve been gone for so long?” That was so sweet.

“You’ve been gone?” he asked. He looked up in thought.

“Not that long,” I amended. “But if not for that, why is everyone upset?” I wondered who “everyone” was, but I didn’t want to stump him this early in the game.

“Everyone, everyone,” he said, throwing his arms up, utterly exasperated with me.

I had that effect on people.

Then he leaned in, his round face full of intrigue. “Can I see it?” he whispered.

“Of course,” I said, hoping he didn’t want to see anything X-rated. No way was I playing doctor with him. “What would you like to see?”

“It,” he said. “The gate.”

“Okay,” I said, looking around. The only gate I could think of was at the front entrance. “You mean the gate out front?”