“I think he wants us to.” He finger-combed his curls and gave the job a cursory mirror check. “Room’s been closed for twenty years. Time to make use of it. Open it up, clear out Malcolm’s shit, air out the…” He shrugged.

“Air out the ghosts?”

A light rap at the door. Clay opened it.

“Good morning, I see you’re-” Jeremy snatched the coffee from my hand. “That water hasn’t been boiled, has it?”

“Boiled?”

“There’s a problem with the drinking water. Likely the municipal supply.” He held out a newspaper. “Remember those nurses last night? Talking about an influx of stomach complaints?”

I glanced down at the headline. My gut went cold. “Contaminated city water? That can’t be. After Walkerton, Toronto ’s water supply is locked down tight.”

I’d done a series of articles on Walkerton, an Ontario town with a mismanaged water supply a few years ago. Seven people had died, and there’d been ongoing health problems. Since then, water safety had been a hot-button issue in the province.

“When they investigate, they’ll find it’s bottled water,” I said. “ Lot more Torontonians drink that anyway.”

“Perhaps,” Jeremy said. “But in the meantime-”

“We avoid all drinking water, tap or bottled. Got it. No big deal. We’re leaving this morning anyway.”

“Soon, but not just yet,” Jeremy said. “That woman who disappeared in Cabbagetown is still missing.”

“So?” Clay said. “Maybe she was disoriented after she came back, and wandered off. Or maybe she never went through the portal at all.”

“True, but a second resident has gone missing, in the same area. A man in his thirties, apparently out for a jog, which rules out dementia-induced wandering.”

“He disappeared this morning? After we supposedly closed the portal?”

“Still, it-” Clay began.

“Doesn’t mean he fell into the portal,” Jeremy cut in. “Or that it isn’t closed. True. But unless we coincidentally have a serial killer preying on residents in the same area where we opened that portal, I’d say it’s safer to assume we missed one.”

“A zombie, you mean,” I said.

He nodded. “I know you both want to go home, and now that we know Elena is a target, that might be wise. I can stay behind and scout today, and have Antonio here by nightfall to help me with the hunt.”

Clay flung his half-eaten apple onto the tray. It bounced off. We watched it roll across the floor.

“You stay,” I said to Clay. “If we call Nick now, he can probably make it to Stonehaven before I do.”

Clay scooped up the apple and put it back on the tray, his jaw set.

“Or I can stay,” I began.

“No.”

“I don’t see why not. Maybe I have some mark because my blood opened the portal, but does that really make me a target? What would they want with me? Probably just to tell them where to find the letter, right?”

Jeremy nodded. “That’s Robert’s theory. I called him this morning. He believes the zombies need the letter back-or think they do-and because your blood opened the portal, presumably you’d have the letter. As for this ‘mark,’ he’s surprised they were able to track you all the way to New York State with it, but obviously they did.”

“What about ditching the letter?” Clay said. “Send it back to Xavier. Make it his problem.”

“Make the portal Xavier’s problem?” I said. “I’m sure he’ll rush right over to fix it.”

Jeremy shook his head. “We caused the problem, we’ll fix it. Even if the letter’s gone, Elena would know where to find it, so they’d still come after her. And we don’t want to get rid of something we may need to close this thing.”

“Back to the question,” I said. “Do I stay or do I go?”

Jeremy looked from Clay to me, then murmured, “I’ll step outside.”

“I don’t want to fight about this,” I said when Jeremy was gone. “All I care about is getting the damage undone, which means closing that portal. I don’t care who does it.”

“If you’re in danger, I’m staying with you, here or at Stonehaven. My gut reaction? Stonehaven-even if we did miss a zombie and it can follow you that far, which I doubt.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “But that means leaving Jeremy behind, with some zombie who may have been following us and knows he’s connected to the letter.”

He went quiet for a moment, then said, voice soft, “I’m trying not to freak out, Elena. When that guy came after you in the truck stop, you know what I wanted to do?”

“Drag me back to Stonehaven?”

“Yeah.” A small, humorless laugh. “Big surprise, huh?”

His eyes turned to mine. Behind the anger, I saw frustration, fear and even an inkling of panic.

“Jeremy was right,” he said. “We needed to come back and make sure this was over. Only, it’s not over, is it? Now we’ve got these…zombies-” He yanked his hands from his pockets. “What the hell do I know about zombies? How can I-?” He bit off the sentence in a snarl.

“Protect me?”

“Yeah, I know, you can protect yourself. Any other time, I’d agree.”

“But right now I’m pregnant. Very pregnant. Big, awkward, slow…”