30

In the master bathroom, when she heard the gunshot, Amity sprang to her feet, and a chill pierced her from head to foot. Her hands suddenly were so cold that, by contrast, little Snowball felt as though he'd just come out of an oven, as hot as a freshly baked muffin. She tucked him in a jacket pocket and snatched the key to everything from the counter beside the sink, careful not to touch the dark screen, because maybe the RETURN button would transport her back to dismal old Earth 1.13, where the über–bad guys were probably standing around with their stupid mouths hanging open, wondering how a man, a girl, and a monkey could disappear before their eyes.

Her feet felt as if they were frozen in blocks of ice, and her legs were stiff with cold, although shaky, as she approached the bathroom door and touched the thumb turn of the lock. Her hands had gone as pale as ectoplasm, the stuff ghosts were made of. She didn't dare look in the mirror, afraid that she might collapse at the sight of her bloodless death-mask face.

The shot had scared her, but what terrified her more was that there had been only one shot. Good Boy was crazy quick and crazy strong and just plain crazy, so it didn't seem possible that her father could have killed it with a single shot. Probably not with just two, either, maybe with three, almost surely with four, but never with just one bullet. So maybe the unthinkable had happened, and though it was unthinkable, she couldn't stop thinking it. The horror of it froze her. She was about to scream louder than Good Boy, and then her father said, "Amity, open the door."

Terror could make an idiot of you, especially when you thought you had lost everything. Instead of unlocking the door and throwing it open, Amity stupidly asked if Good Boy was dead, and when her father said that, yes, it was dead, she said, "Who are you?"

He said, "It's me."

Amity knew perfectly well—perfectly, perfectly—that Good Boy had a supercreepy voice and bad grammar and terrible syntax, knew that such a half-baked mutant couldn't convincingly imitate Daddy's voice, but she was cold and pale and scared, so she said, "How do I know it's you?"

After a hesitation, he said, "You want a dog, but you've got a mouse for practice, which was your idea, not mine. I'd have bought you a puppy."

She hesitated, but only maybe two seconds, to collect herself before she opened the door. She and her father were still in the soup, a real witch's brew, which meant she had to stay strong, not be a wuss like those fainthearted girls in fantasy stories who made her want to barf. She didn't dare cry, not even with relief, and she had to keep her spine stiff, stay brave, not only because that was necessary to survive, but also because she had a reputation to protect.

When she opened the door, Daddy said, "You okay, pumpkin?"

He hadn't called her "pumpkin" in maybe two years, since she had stopped being a full-on child, but she let that slide. She gave him two thumbs up. "You got it with just one shot. I knew you could get that crazy monkey piece of shit."

She startled herself by using the s word, but Daddy didn't call her on it. He looked kind of pale, too, and his eyes were strange, as if he was surprised that it was Good Boy who was dead.

With a nonchalance that astonished Amity, her hand not even trembling, she returned the key to everything, as if to say, You did right to trust me with it. Her father shrugged as if to say, I knew I could count on you, and he put the device in a jacket pocket.

She expected a police car to shrill in the distance. Continued silence suggested that no one had heard the glass break or seen the beast on the porch roof.

Nevertheless, her father grabbed her hand. "Let's get out of here."

Amity wanted to hold tight to his hand forever, but of course they had to eat and use the bathroom, so sooner or later she would have to let go of him. In fact, it happened as soon as they reached the head of the stairs.

A foul smell told her that she would see the remains of Good Boy in the hall if she glanced toward the back of the house. She held her breath, didn't look, and plunged down the stairs close behind her father.

She thought about their fingerprints, but there wasn't time to wipe down everything they had touched. Anyway, her prints had never been taken by anyone, and though Daddy's thumbprint was on file at the DMV, he hadn't killed a person, only a monster, so it was best just to take their chances.

Daddy turned away from the front door. "Out the back."

They hurried through the house, across the porch, and into the yard, which lacked the English garden and the birdbath so prominent on Earth 1.13. Neither was there an elderly couple bent on mayhem.

But there was sun, glorious sun, and no rain.

Beside the detached garage, a gate opened into an alley, where they didn't encounter a black van or creepy guys dressed like Nazi ninjas or any brainwashed young boys in Justice Wolves uniforms.

As they passed through town, they saw no stores that had gone out of business. The streets were busy with locals and tourists, and a general air of prosperity lay over Suavidad Beach.

They were home. They were safe.

"We have to stop at the library," her father said.

"What?" The suggestion alarmed her. "Why? That's where the creep said Snowball wasn't an appropriate animal."

"That wasn't in this world, remember. That was ... elsewhere."

"Oh. Yeah. That's right, huh?" She still felt uneasy.

"We need to check out Ed Harkenbach's book, Infinite Worlds."

"You had it already. What happened to it?"

"I dropped it somewhere, maybe scrambling up a garden wall or running from Good Boy. It's been a pretty physical day, in case you hadn't noticed. They'll probably have a copy in this library, too."

The woman with the Mrs. Frankenstein hair wasn't at the front desk. The librarian on duty, Mrs. Rockwell, was the wife of Vince Rockwell, who taught history and coached the high school football team.

No faintest scent of burning paper tainted the air. The aisles between the stacks were better lighted than those in the Library of the Weird. A copy of Infinite Worlds: Parallel Universes and Quantum Reality waited where she and her father had found it before.

This time they didn't informally borrow the book. They took it to the checkout desk, and Daddy presented his library card, and Mrs. Rockwell processed everything properly while chatting about the weather and the latest foolishness in Sacramento. She liked unique earrings, and today she wore a dangly pair of brightly colored enamel parrots.

Mrs. Rockwell seemed totally normal. Amity loved how normal the librarian seemed.

On this beautiful sunny afternoon, the twelfth of April, they had found again the world as it was supposed to be. They were home. They were safe.