Later

By the time Jamie is 14, Therriault has almost disappeared from his mind. He sees other dead people from time to time. He escorts a dead boy home and recognizes him as someone who was drowned in the park by some older boys. The boys all cried and claimed they’d only been messing around. Adult Jamie doesn’t know if they were telling the truth.

Time goes on, and Tia’s literary agency thrives; Jamie has a girlfriend. Jamie has just turned 15 when he learns from Tia that Liz lost her job; she was finally caught transporting heroin. Jamie feels sad for Liz, even after everything she did. At the moment, Liz is out on bail, but there’s a good chance she will end up in prison.

Two to three weeks later, Jamie is on his way home and walks past a scrawny woman with straw-colored hair and baggy clothes. She calls out, “Hey, Champ.” Jamie turns and doesn’t recognize the woman’s pale, bony face. Liz looks 20 years older than he remembers.

Jamie tries to walk away from Liz, but she grabs the strap of his tennis duffel and tells him that she needs his help again. He jerks back and inadvertently pulls her off her feet. A passerby chastises him for abusing a woman, and Jamie feels guilty for pulling so hard.

Liz threatens to expose Tia’s fraud regarding Regis Thomas’s final book. She made a recording of Jamie telling Thomas’s story to Tia. If the recording were revealed, Tia could lose her agency and possibly be convicted of fraud; Jamie would be exposed as a medium. Jamie doesn’t think he has a choice, so he asks where they’re going. Liz tells him it’s a secret.

Eventually, Liz tells Jamie that they’re going to the town of Renfield, which is three hours away. Jamie only recognizes the name as that of Count Dracula’s thrall. Liz takes a bottle of white powder from her pocket, and snorts some while driving. She tells Jamie that it’s her own mix of coke and heroin with fentanyl.

Liz tells Jamie that everything is Tia’s fault. After Tia kicked her out, Liz started abusing drugs to deal with her depression. Jamie asks if he can call Tia, but when he takes out his phone, Liz grabs it and chucks it out the window.

Adult Jamie says his younger self never considered summoning the deadlight, as he’d forgotten about it (and it was more of a threat than Liz). Liz takes another snort, and her driving becomes erratic. She remarks that Jamie would make a good detective with his ability. Jamie has toyed with the idea himself.

With nothing else to do on the long drive, Liz tells Jamie how she came to deal with drugs. She started carrying drugs when the economy crashed in 2008. She lost her stock portfolio and started working extra shifts to help her sister pay the mortgage on an overpriced house after her brother-in-law lost his job as an investment banker.

Liz couldn’t support herself and her sister on her salary and overtime; she got involved with drugs to make up the difference. However, internal affairs caught her with an unannounced drug test and tried to get her to turn on the people she worked for. She plans to use Jamie to her advantage.

Liz drives through Renfield and into the hills on the other side of the river. She finally explains why she brought Jamie. She promises that if Jamie does what she wants, she’ll let him go. Jamie believes Liz is going to kill him.

Liz explains that drug running has a hierarchy. The people at the bottom are users who only know dealers; dealers only know senior distributors. Liz is a transporter, so she operates outside the hierarchy. She explains that drug lord Donnie Marsden (Donnie Biggs) died of natural causes after receiving a shipment of OxyContin. Jamie realizes that Liz wants him to interrogate the dead drug lord to find out where his stash is hidden. Liz claims that she’ll use the money from the pills to buy a new identity, go to rehab, and atone for past sins. Jamie points out that Marsden might not be at his house, but Liz sounds certain that he is.

Liz asks Jamie if there are other people who can see the dead like him, but he doesn’t know. She asks if he inherited his ability from his father, but he doesn’t know. Tia has never spoken of Jamie’s father (Uncle Harry).

Liz suggests that Tia might not know Jamie’s father—that she might have been drunk or assaulted. Jamie rejects the suggestion in horror, as he doesn’t want to think of himself as the result of a nonconsensual relationship.

Liz turns onto a private drive. She tells Jamie that no one will be guarding the house, and the gate guard will be gone. Donnie Marsden’s wife is gone too, having disappeared five years ago. At the gate, Liz makes a show of looking for the gate guard, despite having already claimed they were gone. Finally, she opens the gate with a code, which she had the whole time.

Marsden’s house is a mansion. Jamie spots a man standing in front of the garage and realizes that Liz can’t see him. He understands why when he sees the red hole where the man’s mouth should be.

Liz opens the front door of the mansion. Jamie realizes that no one would have given her the code voluntarily and remembers the dead man by the garage. For the first time, he wonders if the deadlight would actually come if summoned. Even if it proves obedient, Jamie doesn’t want to call it except as a last resort.

Liz leads Jamie inside and up the stairs, and Jamie realizes she hasn’t asked him if Marsden is present. She takes him to the master bedroom, and Jamie realizes why she hadn’t asked: An enormous man is lying naked, tied to the bed. Jamie notices a sandwich on the night table, just out of Marsden’s reach. The man is covered with small wounds, some of which are still bleeding. Shocked, Jamie protests that he can’t interrogate Marsden because he isn’t dead. Liz shoots Marsden in the head.