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When Wayne looks back, he sees what he thinks is a broken bottle in the road, lying where he pushed his grandmother out. Manx looks younger. Wayne feels feverish and achy. When he asks if Manx is eating him, Manx says the car makes them both better, because “it runs on gasoline and bad intentions” (715). Wayne notices that an old scar on his thumb is gone. Manx explains that he can’t get to Christmasland alone, and that without a passenger, the Wraith is an ordinary car. He also says that no one would ever want to leave Christmasland, where there is no pain, but there is also no memory of pain. Wayne asks if he can have a last meal before they go. He wants an ear of corn and a real beer. He also wants sparklers and reminds Manx that he still owes him for killing Hooper.

Manx says he found Christmasland when he took his wife and daughters there. Nearly a century ago, he spent their money on the car to be a high-end chauffeur. They talk about Maggie. Wayne remembers that the newspaper articles talked about miracles that always seemed to surround her. Maggie had psychic hunches that saved many children from accidents and kidnappers. Her arrest record includes charges for drugs and solicitation. Manx gives Wayne his perspective on women. He never considered divorcing his wife because it wasn’t done back then.

Wayne pulls out another tooth. He feels a sharp, hooklike tooth growing beneath it. He has now lost five teeth in 36 hours. Manx says his wife told him he was a vampire like the one in the silent movie they saw on their first date. They pull into a diner so Manx can get Wayne’s food. Inside, Manx sees a news report on TV that shows Vic leaving the carriage house on the Triumph. Manx comes back out and drives away without speaking.

Vic hears a phone ringing. She can’t remember where she is and fades in and out of consciousness. Then, she sees Bing’s body, which has been split nearly in half, and she remembers everything. Her left leg hurts as she sees the debris left in the room, including a mound of plastic. When she opens it, it holds Nathan Demeter’s body. There is a note in his mouth, which she takes out and reads: It says he is Nathan Demeter and was kidnapped by Bing Partridge. It says good-bye to his daughter, Michelle, and prays for her to focus on the good things in her life, and never to give in to despair.

The phone rings. She makes it upstairs and answers it, only to hear Manx, who thinks she is Bing. Vic tells him what happened and says she painted the walls with Bing. Then, she says if he lets Wayne go, she’ll stop looking for him. When he questions her, she admits to finding the bridge and he says he’ll let her speak to Wayne.

Manx and Wayne stop at a fireworks store. Wayne’s visions continue. He decides that he wants to make a necklace of his old teeth. He imagines painting reindeer red, and wonders what a little girl in the store would look like if she were covered in blood. Manx gives him the phone and says it’s his mother. Vic tells Wayne that Manx is bad, that he is doing something to him, and that he killed Hooper. Wayne has the presence of mind to tell her that he feels sick and poisoned. He says he saw her mother and Vic says to do whatever Lindy says. Manx takes the phone from Wayne and slams the door. Soon, Wayne is smiling again. He can’t remember what worried him prior to the call with his mother. Miles later, the Wraith runs over a hedgehog, which raises Manx’s spirits.

Vic cries during the call. She thinks Wayne sounds drugged and begs Manx to trade her for him. They trade barbs and then Manx asks her to consider that, if she finds them, Wayne might not want to return with her. Then, he hangs up. She forces herself to think about her situation as a Search Engine puzzle. She realizes that getting to Christmasland won’t be the problem. Rather, she must figure out how to kill Manx, and how to deal with a potentially changed version of Wayne. Lou answers when she calls, and Hutter jumps on the line with him.

Vic tells Hutter she must find Michelle Demeter and tell her about her father. She also says she talked to Wayne. She tells Lou she has one stop to make, and then she is going to get enough ANFO to deal with Manx. Lou tells her to leave and do what she must do. He believes that she intended for Hutter to think she said “info,” and for him to know that she was talking about the explosives. Vic makes it to the Triumph and goes to the bridge.

Hutter watches Lou collapse after the call in the conference room where they took it. He holds Hutter’s hand and tells her that she is wrong about Vic.

When Vic arrives in Iowa, Maggie is dozing on a bench nearby. Her hair is now orange, and her arms are scarred with burns. She says the burns help her talk normally, without her stammer. However, she says the tiles don’t work as well anymore, as if they began to stammer, too. After Maggie tells Vic that the police were there recently, they go into the condemned library, which flooded years before.

Maggie’s office is still there, but her fish is gone. She thinks someone ate her koi. Vic tells Maggie about the previous two days, thanks her for what she has done, and apologizes for everything. Maggie says Manx gets the worst of the traveling—in terms of the consequences of using the inscapes—even more than she or Vic. To Vic’s horror, Maggie stabs a lit cigarette into her own thigh so she can talk without stammering, given the urgent nature of the conversation. She says Manx has been bled dry and that the Wraith drains his empathy in exchange for longevity. His humanity is gone. Manx no longer has anything resembling happiness, only amusement. He must take the kids with him because he has no suffering or empathy that the car can use for its fuel. The Wraith robs the children of their capacity for warmth.

Vic takes an Oxycontin table that Maggie offers her. Maggie says the car is the key to destroying Manx. As the drug takes effect, Vic asks if Maggie can ask the tiles how to cure Wayne, if he is, in fact, changed, but the tiles don’t cooperate. Vic and Maggie lie down on the couch to nap, and Vic holds her.

In recovery, the nametag of Lou’s nurse says Bilbo. They bond over the sci-fi show Firefly. A doctor tells him he’s had an “Ischemic attack,” or “mini-stroke” (796). Lou remembers his final call with Vic. He knew that she said ANFO on purpose and hoped the FBI would hear it as “info.” He knows Vic is going to see her father. When he gets the chance, he sneaks outside and asks a cab to take him to the train station. Bilbo immediately tells Detective Daltry that Lou left, and Daltry gives Bilbo a $10 bill.

Maggie wants to kiss Vic when she wakes up. As she waits, she burns herself with a cigarette, which gives herself a small window to use the tiles. She receives a message that she doesn’t understand, but she knows it is correct. Then Maggie sees a boy with a lit sparkler walking through the library. She kisses Vic on the temple, then follows the boy, hoping he isn’t a vandal. She hears him talking in reverse: “Myself stop can’t I” (807).

She smells beer on him and sees the light of a new flame. In reverse, he asks her not to follow him and says that he is fighting as hard as he can. A large rocket of a firecracker goes off, and she realizes he wants to burn the place down. She chases him outside to the parking lot and sees him next to a dumpster of books. With a sparkler, he traces the word “run” in the air.

Maggie realizes that the boy is Wayne. Then, she hears a man’s voice calling her full name, Margaret Leigh. She runs for Wayne, and the Wraith accelerates, allowing Manx to hit the back of her neck with a hammer as the car passes. Wayne tells her she looks funny as she lies on the ground, but he is crying as well. In reverse, he says he is sorry and that he couldn’t help it. When Maggie fell, she spilled her tiles. Now, from her vantage point, she sees what the spilled letters spell. She starts to laugh as Manx insults her. He kicks and scatters the letters, which spell TRIUMPH. Then, he gets back in the car, and she thinks Vic will win.

Vic returns to Terry’s Primo Subs, where Pete, the same man behind the counter where she found her mother’s bracelet so many years before, gives her a silver hammer with blood and hair on it. Pete then morphs into Charles Manx as she hears a police siren.

Vic wakes from the dream and sees a note that Maggie left for her. She hears men talking and sees their flashlights nearby. The note says, “WHEN THE ANGELS FALL, THE CHILDREN GO HOME” (825). She realizes the men in the building are cops. Their walkie talkies mention the code that signals that there is a dead victim at the scene. Vic takes the pistol paperweight from Maggie’s office and steps out. She asks them who is dead after they drop their guns. They describe Maggie’s orange hair. Then, Vic blows out the candle in the office and the room goes dark.

Vic throws the paperweight so the cops will follow the noise and go down the stairs in the other direction. She makes it outside, gets onto the Triumph, and finds the Shorter Way Bridge nearby. She looks back and sees one of the cops at the other side, about to step onto the bridge as it disappears. On the other side, she sees a small cabin. Although she has never been here, she knows it belongs to her father.

Hutter’s team is near the cabin. She had been listening to Lou talk with Chris—Vic’s father—but now the sound and visuals are down. She takes her headphones off as a noise like a thunderclap startles her from the earpieces. At the same moment, the second hand on Daltry’s watch starts moving backward. As Hutter’s confusion about the situation grows, she contemplates the path her life has taken. She always thought she would have more friends. Her last boyfriend left because she was in her head too much. She has “neuroses” that make her a perfect fit for her job but are not ideal for relationships. She thinks about how much she enjoys organizing. Now, information is overwhelming her with options, rather than leading to clarity. The bone mallet troubles her in its specificity. She disagrees with Daltry, who thinks unsavory business partners took Wayne to get back at Vic for something. He thinks she could be involved in trafficking.

Chitra shouts to Hutter from her surveillance post, telling her that their equipment has also failed.

Lou and Chris help Vic inside. Chris’s hair is white, and he is gaunt. When he sees her injuries, he starts to cry. She tells Lou that the bang they heard was the bridge delivering her. The ANFO is on the kitchen table, stacked in 20-kilo sacks. She says she is feverish because she made the bridge go away, and the travel is taking an increasing toll on her. Chris says she used to be like this after returning from finding something. He thought she had always used the bike like a dowsing rod, the stick used to find water. Now, he says he believes it all because she is his girl. Vic is furious that he is being kind now when she needed his love and attention as a child. Chris says he knows he made a mistake but says her mother wouldn’t take him back by the time he asked to return. Then, he was ashamed, and he let them drift apart.

He says he talks with her mother every day for the past six months. She forgave him, even though he never forgave himself. They both admit that they have done more harm than good. They start to talk about how to use the ANFO against Manx.

Hutter doesn’t believe that Lou could have anything to do with Wayne’s disappearance. She ponders the fact that, most of the time, she hates other cops. Then, she realizes that no one is watching the rear of the house. Why would the people inside by sitting in the dark? She tells the team to start moving forward.

Chris explains how the detonators work, then kisses Vic on the cheek when she rises to leave. Lou says he’s going with her. Vic thinks he is worried that she will use the rescue attempt as a means of suicide. When they are outside, the FBI agents yell for them to stop. Vic runs to the Triumph and sees Daltry and Chitra. She shouts that Manx just killed Maggie.

Vic asks Lou for the bag holding the ANFO. Hutter uses the walkie talkie to ask Cundy about Maggie. Cundy confirms that someone matching Maggie’s description was beaten to death an hour prior, and authorities saw Vic fleeing the scene on the motorcycle. Hutter asks Chitra to uncuff Lou, but Daltry orders Vic off the motorcycle and points his gun at her. Chris tosses his cigarette into Daltry’s face and hits him in the shoulder with a stick while he’s distracted. Daltry shoots him in the stomach and then in the throat as Vic and Lou make their escape.

Vic mentally tells her father that she is there as they enter the bridge. She wishes she could apologize for everything. Lou gasps as the bats that have Vic’s face swarm over them. Unexpectedly, she sees her Tuff Rider coming toward them from the other side of the bridge, crashes into it, and they tumble down an embankment as she glimpses angels and pine trees.

Lou is awake when Vic regains consciousness. Vic says her mother was there while she was unconscious. She told her that Wayne still has time because he is doing everything in reverse. It is snowing. Some of the bats followed them out, and Vic says they are part of her mind. She tells Lou that she loves him, that he is a good man, and that she has never regretted being with him.

Lou has been working on the detonators. He remembers that when he saw Vic for the first time, he’d been riding away from an argument with his father. His father had mocked Lou for asking for money to get his GED, so he could start a comic book company.

They see the Sleigh House where Vic almost burned, years earlier. A car approaches, and Lou realizes he wants a final chance to show his courage. However, Vic takes the handcuff that is not on Lou’s wrist and locks it around a tree.

Lou starts to cry. Vic points out the hospital bracelet on his wrist and says she can’t lose him and her father in the same night. She sees Manx get out of the Wraith and it disturbs her that he looks so much younger. Manx shouts for her to follow him to Christmasland. She obliges, following 50 feet behind the Wraith, until they reach a small stone tunnel: It is Manx’s bridge.