Jamie and Brianna begin a casual sexual relationship while continuing their research into Jacobs over the next year. They keep track of the people whom Pastor Jacobs healed, including Robert Rivard. Rivard is readmitted to the hospital after suffering a series of headaches. His parents refuse to admit the true reasons for his hospitalization. Soon, Rivard is transferred to a psychiatric hospital called Gad’s Ridge, where his behavior is described as “semi-catatonic.”

Jamie interviews another person cured by Jacobs: Ben Hicks, a history teacher who became religious after being cured of his injuries. Hicks claims that he hasn’t suffered any of the known aftereffects. Meanwhile, others have experienced violent episodes in the wake of their cures, most of them involving self-harm.

Jamie and Brianna also look up obituaries as part of their research. They learn that Cathy Morse died by suicide. Jamie is convinced that Cathy’s death is related to the aftereffects of Jacobs’s lightning portrait. He worries that something violent could happen to him and Hugh and resolves to find Jacobs to make him stop administering his electric cures. He prevents Brianna from accompanying him but asks her to help him locate Jacobs.

Brianna finds Jacobs’s address under the name Daniel Charles; he is living at an estate in upstate New York called The Latches.