Caelum tested the door, but it was locked. “Come on,” he said. “There must be another way in.”
They went around the house to the back. Here there were no signs, and no grass, either: just a small cement patio and planters filled with dying brown things, plus an old sofa, puddled with rain and specked with mildew. Sliding doors opened onto the patio and these, Lyra was relieved to find, were unlocked. At least they could wait inside, where she didn’t feel so exposed.
The kitchen was a mess. There were papers scattered across the table. The drawers hung open. The refrigerator was pulled away from the wall, revealing plastic disks of insect poison behind it. Even the microwave was open. There was mail on the floor, and Lyra saw footprints where someone had walked.
“It’s wrong,” Lyra said immediately.
“What is?”
“All of it.” Lyra thought about how Jake had set a napkin on the coffee table before setting down a glass of water, how he had adjusted his computer so that it ran parallel to the table edge. “Someone else was here before us.”
Caelum looked at her. “Or he doesn’t like to pick up after himself,” he said.
“No.” Lyra shook her head. She was afraid. “Someone was here.”
They moved from the kitchen into a small living room. This, too, was a mess. It was as if a library had exploded. Papers, folders, books. A coffee mug, overturned, pooling onto the rug. Jake’s computer was on the couch, flashing a moving image—a picture of deep space, vivid with color. When Lyra touched it, the image dissolved, leaving in its place a small white box and the demand for a password. Inspired, she bent down and sought out the letters on the keyboard one by one. H-A-V-E-N. But the password was refused, and almost immediately she felt sorry. The help they needed wouldn’t be found there on the computer anyway.
Caelum went out of the living room. Lyra was about to follow him when she saw several photographs displayed on a wall-mounted shelf. One of them, a portrait of Jake from when he was a kid, was framed. The other two were just stacked there, and smudgy with fingerprints.
In one of them Jake was standing next to a man she originally confused for a much older replica—they had the same dark eyes and hair, the same well-cut chin and cheekbones—but she quickly realized the man must be his father. In another, a woman with white-blond hair and breasts coming out of a tank top was grimacing at the camera, holding tight to Jake’s shoulder, as if she was afraid he might run away. Was this aunt? It was family, she was sure of it. The woman also had Jake’s square chin.
For some reason, this made her sad. Replicas were singular events. They exploded into being and they died, leaving no one. But people were just one in an interlinking series of other people.
She made a sudden decision: she would ask Caelum to be her family. That way, when she died, she wouldn’t be completely alone.
In another room, Caelum shouted for her. She turned and saw him back into the hall. In the dim light, he looked pale.
“What?” she said. “What is it?” But she knew already.
He didn’t look at her. “Dead,” he said, with a single nod, and Lyra replaced the photographs, facedown, as if they might hear. “Jake’s dead.”
He was hanging from the closet door, just pinned there like an old suit. He’d written with black marker on one of the walls. I’m so lonely. I can’t take it anymore. This room, the bedroom, was equally as messy as the others. A second computer was open on the bed.
Lyra had seen countless dead bodies, but this one was the first that made her want to look away. Jake Witz was no longer nice to look at. His face was purpled with blood. His tongue was exposed, stiff and dark, like something foreign that had gotten lodged there. His fingernails were broken where he had tried to free the belt, which had been wedged between the door frame and hammered in place to the far side of the door. A thick film of blood and spit had dried on his lips.
“What do you think?” Caelum asked.
“Nurse Emily hung herself, too,” Lyra said, stepping out into the hallway. A wave of dizziness overtook her, and she reached out to steady herself on a wall. Caelum followed her, and briefly put a hand on her lower back. She wished herself back into the field last night, and their bodies silhouetted by all that darkness. “That’s what Sheri said.”
Caelum watched her. “You don’t believe it?”
She didn’t know what she believed. “Someone was here,” she repeated. She took a step toward the kitchen and stumbled. Caelum caught her elbow before she could fall. “I’m all right,” she said, gasping a little. “I just need to sit.”
But she felt no better sitting in Jake’s kitchen and drinking water from one of his water glasses, which tasted like soap from the dishwasher. Someone had been here. Someone from Haven? They couldn’t stay here. What if whoever had killed Jake came back to clean up? They needed to get to Gemma, but she had no idea how. She couldn’t keep her thoughts together. They kept scattering like points of light across her vision. An alarm was going off. A beeping. She stood up. Then she saw Jake rooting through the backpack and remembered: the phone. The phone was ringing.
The phone.
“I thought you turned it off,” Caelum said.
“It must have come on again,” Lyra said. “Here. Give it to me.” The number on the screen was labeled Aunt Kit and she waited, holding her breath, until the phone stopped ringing, her chest full of sharp pains. People called phones, phones called people. Would Gemma be stored in Jake’s phone? Maybe. But she had no idea how to look for Gemma, how to get to her.