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the drawer and opened the bathroom door just as the seventh step from the bottom squeaked. She almost pulled back, but thought of Dr. Banning, of how he told her she wasn’t a coward, there was nothing real to fear, and made herself walk back into the living room, right toward the staircase.
    Something squeaked. The floorboards at the bottom of the stairs. There’s nothing there. Lara moved forward. Nothing there.
    The lights seemed to dim the slightest bit, letting a gloomy darkness seep in around her. Then the air changed, grew suffocatingly still despite the steady stirring of the ceiling fan in the center of the room, despite the early evening breeze coming in the front windows. She felt like she was in a vacuum.
    Or an airplane. Pressure grew on her eardrums until dizziness made her grab a sideboard to keep her balance. Her ears roared with the sound you heard when you put a big conch shell to your ear to hear the ocean, but despite that, she heard the floor squeak again, only a few feet away.
    Suddenly it hit in a rush, a roar. Physically hit. The invisible thing rushed her, pushing her back until she fell to the floor as the force of it swept through her body, like a freezing electrical shock. Behind her, another door slammed, then it was gone. All gone. Except for the faint cloying smell of her dead mother’s violet perfume.

7
    Sunset commenced with rare and brilliant fury and Will attempted to watch it while working, but soon found his eyes stolen by beauty, his mind adrift, his heart alone. The cats, sated, had deserted him to curl up and snooze together in his favorite chair. Or perhaps he had deserted them, since they always welcomed his attempts to retake the chair and watch television or read a book.
    By now, Kevin and Gabe would be celebrating, having dinner and then other pleasures. Thinking of their anniversary as he watched the late summer sun sink into the sea made him think of a very different kind of anniversary that was only days away. It would be twenty-six years ago Saturday that his oldest brother, his hero, Michael, had died. The accident itself was only a series of blurred images, but he clearly remembered sitting with Maggie on the rocky crescent shore after the funeral, numbly watching the sun set. They were only ten, he was still in shock, and Maggie took his hand and held it in both her own. After a while, her touch broke through his defenses and he finally cried for his brother. She never said a word, just held him until he was done. The next day, he was embarrassed and began avoiding her, but she acted as if nothing had happened, and except for an increased tendency in her to guard him—just as she did any wounded creature—everything went back the way it was. They remained best buddies.
    He swallowed hard, choking back the old sorrow, and thought of other things. Marcia Gauss, the patient he reluctantly saw after the bird invasion, was a neurotic control freak who had been showing signs of improvement until recently. A supremely annoying woman, today she did her level best to make him run screaming from the room by grilling him about her mental state, which was a source of endless pride and fascination to her. Marcia was probably torturing her husband or children now. He wondered if she sat them under a hot bright light while she pulled from them the details of their days.
    Daniel Hatch— poor Daniel! —was probably having dinner conversation with his precognitive genitals. The thought, meant to amuse, distressed him more, and he let himself think of Maggie instead. She would still be at the clinic, probably dissecting a dead crow.
    He wondered what she’d find, if anything. He wondered, suddenly hungry, if she’d eaten yet and started to reach for the phone, then stopped, knowing she’d call him when she was done with the autopsy. Unlike him, she was a prisoner of propriety when it came to ringing phones, and unless she was in surgery, she’d drop