“Are you all right?” Ollie asked. “Was that your—?”

“Give me a second,” I said.

There is no wind, I told myself. No hole. No furious angel.

I sat back against the seat, eyes closed. The sound of the wind died down, became the hum of the tires. Bobby, still upset, kept asking me if he should pull over.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just stay on the road.”

After several minutes I said to Ollie, “So. This thing.”

She said, “What do you need me to do?”

While we rode into Toronto I told her about Fayza, the storefront church, the printer inside. How Fayza was waiting for me to test the communion wafers. Hootan had insisted on taking half the box to bring to Fayza, and if she decided to check them herself she’d find nothing but water and flour.

“I need that printer,” I said. “And the precursor packs.”

“That’s why you had me get out? To break into a strip mall?”

There was one other thing. But it depended on what happened with the printer.

“I can’t do it without you,” I said.

I wasn’t sure she heard the hesitation before I answered. The old Ollie certainly would have.

After a moment she took a deep breath. “I’m going to need my bag.”

Somewhere above us, an angel screamed.

*   *   *

Ollie gave Bobby an address on Danforth that turned out to be a two-story building: a Thai restaurant called Bangkok Chop on the first floor, apartments above. Ollie had to ask if this was the place; she still couldn’t recognize it. She said, “Tell whoever’s working that I sent you, and that you’re here to pick up the bag.”

“You can’t go in?”

She looked up at me. It took her a moment to find my eyes, and then she allowed her desperation to show. Whoever or whatever was inside the restaurant scared the shit out of her.

“Okay, no problem.” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

It was just after eleven in the morning. The place was open, but there was no one at the front counter, no one at the tables. The air was warm, and I could smell noodles cooking. I called out the standard sonar for empty buildings: “Hello,” “Excuse me,” etc. A dark-haired boy about five years old burst through the kitchen door, saw me, and ran back before I could stop him. A minute later a tiny middle-aged Asian woman came out wiping her hands with a dish towel. “How many?” she asked.

“Ollie sent me,” I said.

She frowned.

“Olivia Skarsten? She said to—”

“You know Olivia?” Her voice low and fast, the accent compacting the syllables. I couldn’t read her expression.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You have seen her lately? In the hospital? She is well?” Each question a jab.

“Uh…”

“She has visitors?” Now the anger was coming through.

I put up my hands. “Listen, I’m just here as a favor. She sent me to pick up her bag.”

“Oh, she wants her things.” The woman started shouting angrily in another language—I assumed Thai. A girl who could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five came running out of the kitchen, and yelled, “Ma! Ma! Settle down!”

The mother kept shouting. The girl’s eyes darted from her mother’s face to mine, her expression shifting in quantum jumps from confused to concerned to pissed off. Now I had both women to deal with. I said, “If she owes you money—”

The daughter pointed at me. “Stay the fuck there.” No trace of an Asian accent—she sounded like an angry Edmonton Oilers fan. I upped her minimum age to eighteen. She shouted something at her mother in Thai and then marched across the dining room, heading toward the restrooms. The mother glared at me, lips pursed, nostrils flaring. Genuine, high-quality seething.

A minute passed, two. I looked back toward the glass door glazed with condensation, hoping that the blurry shape beyond was Bobby’s car, ready for my getaway. I felt naked without Dr. Gloria at my back.

The kitchen door bumped open, and a man in an electric wheelchair rolled out. The father, evidently, or maybe the grandfather. He slumped in the chair at an odd angle. His right arm was dead in his lap, but his left hand gripped the armrest controller. The chair coasted to a stop, and his eyes drifted up to mine.

Everything clicked then. The wheelchair, the angry mother, the angrier daughter. Maybe if Dr. G had been there I wouldn’t have been so slow to understand.

The daughter reappeared, dragging behind her a wheeled black duffel as big as a body bag. She dropped it between us. The mother burst into tears and spun away from us, slammed her way into the kitchen.

Heat flushed my cheeks. I bent to pick up the duffel, and the daughter said, “Is she still claiming she’s insane?”

“I don’t think she’s claiming anything.” The bag was heavier than I expected.

I started toward the door, and the girl said, “Wait. You tell her.”

I stopped. “Look, I’m just—”

“Tell her when he was bleeding away on the stairs, waiting for the ambulance, he kept saying, I should have knocked, I should have knocked. He felt pity for her. That’s the kind of man he is.”

I looked at the old man. He said nothing. I said, “I’m sorry for—”

“No more sorry,” the daughter said. “All those letters she sent—I apologize, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I wasn’t myself. They mean nothing. Tell her that my mother wanted to burn that bag. The only reason she didn’t is because Dad wouldn’t allow it. And because, when that psycho came to pick it up, she’d finally have to face us in person—no hiding behind letters.” Her smile was a grimace. “I guess we were wrong about that.”

I pushed open the door. The girl said, “Tell her she’s a coward.”

I froze, one hand on the door, one hand on the bag. I turned on her, ready to cut her down: You fucking bitch, you have no idea how brave she is. But the old man was looking up at me out of that bent body.

I banged through the door without saying anything. Outside I smacked the trunk of the car, and Bobby popped the lid. I wrestled the duffel inside, then got into the backseat.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Ollie sat with her arms across her stomach, staring straight ahead. Bobby said, “Did they give you a hard time?”

“No, no. Charming people. I don’t think I’d order from there anytime soon, though.”

*   *   *

We carried the bag up to Bobby’s apartment and set Ollie up on the couch with the drapes closed and the lights off. She was corkscrewing deeper into the withdrawal, and the headaches and nausea were on their way. We scavenged Bobby’s bathroom and came up with some ibuprofen. The roommate’s door remained closed—I still hadn’t seen him.

I said, “I have to make a call. You two good?”

Ollie waved. Bobby said, “I’ll make tea.”

I said, “Give me your pen.”

Bobby looked hurt as he handed it over. “You should really buy your own.” He didn’t know about the phone Fayza had given me.

I walked down to the street before I unrolled the screen. I found Brandy’s name in the contact list and left the drug dealer a message: “This is Lyda. I’m looking for a custom. Immediately. I’ll pay for the rush.”

The message wouldn’t go directly to whatever burner phone Brandy was using, so it would probably take a while. I started walking. The pen chimed before I’d reached the corner.

The sender’s address was an obviously randomized mash of letters and numbers. “Have you found God yet?” Brandy asked, cheerful. The call was voice only; he hadn’t turned the video on.

“Still looking,” I said. “But thanks for the referral.”

A pause as he tried to figure out if I was being sarcastic.

“I warned you, you didn’t want to talk to my distributor,” he said.

“This isn’t about that,” I said. “I need something else. Ever hear of a drug called Clarity?”

“Of course. For a while very popular. I can print it up for you, no problem.”