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‘Sure about what?’ said the Doctor, examining another of the mushrooms.

‘Well.’ Ace chipped a bit of plaster off the wall with her thumbnail. ‘What’s in those things, anyway?’

‘4-Phosphoryloxy‐NN‐dimethyltryptamine.’

Ace put the structure together in her head. ‘Something like LSD.’

‘Psilocybin. Nothing I can’t handle.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Humans have very poor control over their biochemistry.’ He looked up at her. ‘There’s nothing this drug can do to me which I don’t want it to.’

‘And you reckon if you eat that, you’ll be able to see it?’

‘See what?’

‘The Blue. Our enemy. Whatever the hell it is that’s going on.’

The Doctor nodded.

‘The thing that drove Cristián out of his mind. The Hallowe’en Man, the thing that made him shoot all those people.’

The Doctor nodded.

‘Look,’ said Ace. ‘Are you sure you want to muck about with it?’

‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘this is the thing that drove Cristián out of his mind. This is the thing that made the Hallowe’en Man shoot all those people. We have to find out what it is. I have to know.’

Great, thought Ace. Wonderful. Shit. ‘Where does that leave Achtli?’

‘I want him as my co‐pilot.’

The Aztec said, ‘I’ll follow wherever the mushroom leads.’

‘Do I get some too?’

The Doctor raised his eyebrow at her. ‘I want you and Iccauhtli to keep an eye on things. Whether our “brigand” friends have reported in or not, someone’s bound to be curious.’

Unexpectedly, he held out his hand to her, and unexpectedly, she took it. ‘Don’t leave us, Ace,’ he said.

They gripped one another’s hands for a moment, and then she went outside the house with a sword, to join Iccauhtli in keeping guard.

It wasn’t until much later that she realized he had been saying goodbye.

* * *

Bernice screamed.

It was a wail of horror and outrage, the wordless sound a child makes when it’s really hurt itself. Her back arched and she came up from the gurney, clawing at the arms and hands that held her down and pushed needles into her skin. Someone was strapping her limbs to the metal trolley.

Cristián saw it all in slow motion, the way he’d seen the Hallowe’en Massacre, detail after detail stored away to be replayed at leisure. He stood several feet from the trolley, and he was the only thing in the room that wasn’t moving.

Bernice tore both arms out of the restraints, and now she was shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! We are the same underneath!’, and it didn’t mean anything, anything except that she was sick.

The pair of paramedics who had brought her in were standing around, looking like they wanted a smoke. Their faces were hostile blanks. They were used to collecting the victim, not the assailant. She had reversed the natural order of things.

Cristián had caught a glimpse of Fitzgerald’s face as they zipped up the black plastic shroud. She had smashed him apart, as though once she’d struck him she couldn’t stop, smacking the non‐stick frying pan into his face until there was no face at all.

Now they’d managed to tie her down, and she was still shouting. Half of it was Nahuatl, stuff he couldn’t understand. The other half was just gibberish.

‘Take the suit off,’ she gurgled. ‘You young idiot! Take it off, take it off!’

Ignored by everyone, Cristián quietly started to cry.

* * *

Achtli was shivering all over like a wet cat. He fidgeted and swayed.

The Doctor sat perfectly still, his left foot on his right calf, his back straight as a ruler. His eyes were barely open.

The initial effects of the drug were unpleasant, but they’d pass. His stomach hurt. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes. He was aware of the phosphoryl group being knocked off the psilocybin, converting it to psilocin, the psilocin’s false messages confusing the signals of his natural neurotransmitters.

Ace was right: normally neurotoxic substances inhibited telepathic efficiency, just as they interfered with all of the brain’s activities. But for some reason, the hallucinogen was increasing his perception of the Blue. It was something in the air he could taste,