himself and speaking to invisible people. Many times it seemed to be in a foreign language. Samantha did her best to ignore it, but as she readjusted her grip on him his head fell forward and she happened to catch a few rhymes of one of his little songs.
Her eyes shot wide and she dropped him. He fell in a heap in the alley, yet kept muttering. She stood over him, breathing hard. Then she stooped to listen again. She swallowed, terrified, and then shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No, I don’t believe it.”
“What?” said Hayes. He blinked and licked his lips. “Where are we? Are we nearly there?”
Samantha’s mouth compressed until it was a bloodless line. She swallowed again and said, “Yes. Nearly.”
She picked him back up and continued through the maze of back alleys, following his semi-lucid directions. Finally a set of warehouses loomed before them and Hayes gestured at the cracks between them and murmured, “There.”
They emerged onto a small abandoned cobblestone lane. “Now where?” she asked.
He pointed at one of the largest warehouses.
“You live there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Hayes, is this a joke?”
“No.”
She dragged him to the big wooden doors and Hayes slumped against them and fumbled through his pockets. Litter and empty cigarette tins rained onto the ground, small bits of loot stolen at impulse, pens and paperweights and cheap jewelry. Finally he rummaged up a massive iron key. He worked it into the lock and turned it and something clicked and clanked loudly inside the door. Then it swung open and they stumbled in.
Samantha’s mouth opened in shock as Hayes led her inside. The warehouse was enormous, nearly fifty feet high. Small rows of windows filled the upper portion of the room with the gray light of afternoon. Hundreds of stacks of books sat on the bare cement floor before them, anywhere from three to five feet tall, with oil lamps standing between them here and there. Chairs and beds and cabinets and tables were scattered throughout, most of them dusty from lack of use. At the far back was what had once been the manager’s office, although it seemed to have been renovated as a small home of some kind. Two mealy-looking ferns sat before the front door.
“What is this place?” asked Samantha.
Hayes walked forward and began staggering through the stacks, grabbing cabinets and ripping them open and digging through them. Finally he found a small green bottle, and he sat on the floor and opened it and drank. He sighed deeply and leaned back against the cabinet and shut his eyes.
Samantha walked forward and looked at the bottle. “Laudanum,” she read.
“My medicine,” he said.
“For what?”
“Attacks.”
“What kind of attacks?”
Hayes did not answer. He got to his feet and walked toward the office in the back. He dragged a small iron brazier out of the piles of junk and filled it with coal and stuffed paper in the cracks and lit it. Then he sat before the small fire, huddled in his coat and rubbing his hands.
Samantha found a chair and brought it up to sit beside him. “You live here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“For the quiet. Lots of room, lots of peace and quiet. I asked Brightly and Brightly delivered.” He stoked the coals with what looked like a conductor’s baton.
Samantha watched him for a long time, her face oddly frozen. “How do you know what you know about people, Mr. Hayes?” she eventually asked.
“What?”
“I’m curious. How do you know the things no one else knows?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just guesswork. That and I have my sources.”
“Are you lying to me, Mr. Hayes?”
“What? No.”
She looked closer at him. “Are you sure?”
“Why?”
“Do you… do you not remember what you said?”
“Said? When?”
“Just now, as we left the Nail. Do you remember what you started saying on the street?”
“I think I gave you directions,” he said slowly.
“Before that.”
“No. No, I don’t. Probably just crazed muttering.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then what was it?”
She was silent for a good while. Then she said, “It was a good-night rhyme my father used to sing to me when I was little. Then you started quoting Twain. My favorite Twain story. From Roughing It .”
Hayes stoked the fire again and did not look at her.
Samantha was breathing hard now. “Can you… can you read… minds, Mr. Hayes?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said. Then, “Yes. Sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Please try.”
Hayes took a deep breath and shook his head. “They just… Well. They leak in.”
“What do?”
“Thoughts. Things.”
“What do you mean?”
He screwed up his mouth. “Sometimes… sometimes if I am alone with a person for a very long time I can begin to act like them. And talk like them. And then eventually I know small things about them. Little things. Opinions. Feelings. Worries. They seem to come from nowhere.” He blinked and scratched his face, streaking it with soot. “That’s all.”
Samantha looked away. The silence marched on.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Hayes.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. Her voice quivered. “I’m angry.”
“What?”
“I’m angry you had… that you subjected me to… You know things!” she shouted, and she stood, fists shaking at her sides. “You know things about me and I don’t know how you know them and I don’t want you to know them!”
He nodded. “Yeah. Yes. You’re mad.”
“Of course I’m mad! I’ve never felt so violated in my life!”
“I don’t know any big things about you! Nothing private. It’s just a taste, a smell. A feeling. Like… like smelling something you haven’t smelled in a long time and remembering things and all the things associated with it.”
“Like spice from downstairs,” Samantha said.
Hayes did not meet her eyes. He played with the little baton in his hands. She walked away through the stacks of books and found another chair and sat in it, hidden from his view. “Damn you,” she whispered. “What are you?”
She heard him stoking the fire once more, maneuvering the brazier about. Then she heard him coughing. She leaned around to look and saw he had a hand placed at the side of his head again and he was bent over, knees touching his chest.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Hayes took another sip of laudanum. He shook himself and said, “I’ll be fine.”
