Jack had listened to the phone message half a dozen times before he trusted he understood its meaning. He'd only met Laura once and spoken to her a handful of other times, but she'd been fantastic; it was obscene that she was dead.

And he felt guilty and stupid that he and Derek had wasted most of the last month on a fight. Maybe I could have helped, he thought, and kept along that path of thoughts through booking the portal and getting back to California.

He parked a rented car on the side of the road and picked his way through the woods to the address, then beyond it, until Derek's scent and the headlights pointed him to the clearing behind the wreck of a house.

(Derek and Laura, and the stink of decay, and something else he couldn't quite place.)

"I came," he said, once he finally spotted Derek. "I -- what happened?"