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She sleeps for two hours. She wakes up and eats half a sandwich and stares out the kitchen window at my yard. Cass brings the count in at dusk: eleven wolves now, three more than this morning, which means someone's been talking and for once it went the right way.

Nothing comes at us all evening.

And I keep wondering about that. Six days of things showing up at windows and things on the grass and things burned into doors, and tonight the whole county is quiet.

It's because they don't need to come anymore. They've already got a time and a place, and so do we, and everyone knows it.

At eleven fifty-nine the stove clock stops.

I'm looking straight at it. It quits blinking and the numbers just sit there, and I stand in my kitchen looking at the clock.

I check my watch. Stopped.

The truck, through the window, dash lights on for no reason, holding at 11:59.

Maren comes down the stairs behind me in my shirt with her hair everywhere.

"Gage."

"I see it."

My phone goes. It's Cass, and behind her voice I can hear a lot of other voices, all of them talking at once.

"Boss," she says. "Every clock in town stopped."

40

MAREN

HALLOWEEN DAY

The clocks have been stopped since midnight, and the sun came up anyway.

Stove clock, eleven fifty-nine. Microwave, eleven fifty-nine. The wall clock over Gage's table has a second hand that twitches forward and slides back and twitches forward again, like something breathing in its sleep.

My phone says 7:42. It's the only one working that we know of.

"Cass says the bank sign's doing it," Gage says from the window. "The school. The church."

"The church has a bell."

"The bell's not ringing."

I put both hands flat on the counter because they need something to do.

"Gage. Look.”

"I see her."

There's a woman standing past the fire pit.

Housecoat. Slippers. Arms folded across her chest, frost all around her but nothing under her feet. She isn't looking at us. She's looking at the back of Gage's house like she's waiting for someone to come out and announce themselves.

"How long has she been there?"

"Since six."

I take a breath and it shakes on the way out. "There's a kid on the sidewalk."