“Lyra.” Caelum’s hand found her wrist. His fingers were cold. But at that moment she heard it too: footsteps outside, the muffled sound of voices. They had barely slipped into the living room before they heard the patio doors slide open and then close again. For a delirious second Lyra hoped that maybe Gemma had come for them, and thought about peeking into the kitchen to check, but when a woman spoke, her voice was unfamiliar.

“These cleanup jobs,” she said. “I feel like a goddamn housekeeper. What exactly are we supposed to do?”

“You’re looking at it. The first team left a mess. Livingston’s worried someone might get suspicious. Doesn’t say suicide. You’re supposed to get all your shit in order, not trash the fucking place.”

“Did they find anything?”

“Don’t know. The kid knew too much, though, otherwise he wouldn’t be swinging from a rope.”

Sweat gathered between Lyra’s breasts. She’d been right to worry that the people who killed Jake might come back. Could she and Caelum make it to the front door without being seen? They would have to pass in front of the kitchen. If the strangers were busy or had their backs turned, if they were over by the refrigerator without a clear view of the hallway, she and Caelum might manage it.

The sound of rustling papers. A chair scraping back from the table. How long would it take them to straighten up the kitchen? Not long. One of them was whistling. Lyra didn’t know that people could be so casual about killing other people as they were about killing replicas. She felt something hard and hot in her throat, as if she’d swallowed an explosive. She’d been angry before, and she’d been lonely and afraid. But she had never hated, not like this.

She hated the people in the next room. She hated Dr. Saperstein. She hated the people who had killed Jake Witz, and the people who’d filled her blood with disease. She wanted to see them die.

Caelum eased off the wall, nodding to the front door. Lyra nodded back to show she understood, although she didn’t really see how she would move. She was liquid fear and anger. She wanted to scream, and she could hardly stay on her feet.

Caelum moved. For a second that felt like forever, passing the entrance to the kitchen, he was exposed. It seemed to Lyra he was hanging there, hooked to the air the way Jake Witz had been hooked to the door. But then he was in the hall, and the sound of his footsteps was concealed by all the noise from the kitchen. He turned back to gesture to Lyra. Come.

She unstuck herself from the wall. She imagined if she turned around she would see her silhouette, all dark and sweat-discolored. On the desk Jake’s computer was still flashing the picture of a beach, and then, for reasons that Lyra didn’t totally understand, she was moving not toward the door but away from it. She picked up the computer, which was surprisingly light, and hugged it to her chest. She felt as if her body was making decisions and relaying them to her brain and not the other way around.

Caelum was white-faced, staring at her. She knew he wanted to scream at her to hurry up. She knew he wanted to yell What were you thinking? She could feel the charge of his fear in the silence.

She took a step toward the door.

The phone in her pocket, Jake’s phone, began to ring.

The whole world went silent and still. In Lyra’s head, a white burst of panic, a life at an end. The noise from the kitchen had completely stopped.

Then: “What the fuck is that?”

“It’s a phone.”

“No shit. Where’s it coming from?”

She had no time to think. Vaguely she saw Caelum disappear, retreating down the hall. She took the phone from her pocket and tossed it on the carpet, then shimmied behind the couch, still holding Caelum’s computer, as the man crossed heavily into the room. She got down on the floor, on her stomach, inhaling the smell of old upholstery and dust. When she breathed, dust stirred on the exhale. But she tried not to breathe.

She saw the man toe the cell phone with a boot. “Aw. Look at that. Aunt Kit’s calling.”

The woman’s voice was now distant. She must have gone into the bedroom, or maybe the bathroom at the end of the hall. “What’d they think, he was hiding state secrets in his porn collection? They really did a number on this place, huh?”

“You think I should snatch the phone?” The man bent down. She saw his fingers, long and a little fat. Stupidly, she felt like crying. She didn’t know why, exactly. They’d stolen the phone from Jake, but now it felt like a gift, like something they were meant to have. She didn’t like seeing the man’s fingers on it.

“Hell no. That’s the first thing the police are gonna look for. They’ll know someone was here if it’s gone. These kids nowadays . . .”

The man straightened up, leaving the phone, now silent again, where it was. She waited until she heard his footsteps go creaking down the hall before sliding out from behind the couch, nauseous now with fear and the nearness of her discovery. Her hand was shaking when she reached for Jake’s phone, and when she stood up again she fought against a wave of blackness that nearly toppled her. She couldn’t get sick now. She was almost out. Almost safe.

She took a step toward the door, and another step. She was dizzy. She reached out a hand to steady herself against the wall. The computer seemed heavier than it had only a minute ago. Her head was full of a strange buzzing, like the noise of bees.

“Aw, fuck. Now I left my phone—”

She barely registered the man talking again before he had stepped into the hallway and spotted her. He gave a shout—and that, his moment of surprise, of utter shock, was what saved her life. She tore her hand away from the wall and plunged across the living room, losing sight of him as she careened into the front hall.