TEXT: ™
  
  Screaming with Madness.
  Wandering the City.
  Searching for Protection.
  Something is out there, 
  getting closer, 
  moving in the darkness, 
  listening . . .
  By Dust Consumed
  An escaped mental patient stalks Chicago, claiming one vic-
  tim after another, leaving behind only a fine gray dust. The
  Hoffmann Institute is baffled, and it doesn’t help that two of
  their key people have gone off on a very secret, very personal
  mission of their own.
  TM
  
  (One)
  In Hollow Houses
  Gary A. Braunbeck
  (Two)
  If Whispers Call
  Don Bassingthwaite
  (Three)
  In Fluid Silence
  G.W. Tirpa
  (Four)
  Of Aged Angels
  Monte Cook
  (Five)
  By Dust Consumed
  Don Bassingthwaite
  TM
  BY DUST CONSUMED
  ®
  TM
  D ON
  BA S S I NG T H WA I TE
  
  Dark•Matter
  Michael McCain retrieves a jar containing fragments of
  the brain of John F. Kennedy from a secret vault under the
  National Archives in Washington, D.C., moments before the
  building explodes.
  Jeane Meara, an arson investigator for the Bureau of
  Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, is sent to determine the
  cause of the explosion, but finds her theories as unwelcome
  as they are impossible to believe.
  Watching all this is the quiet form of Ngan Song Kun’dren,
  an experienced agent of the shadowy Hoffmann Institute, a
  private organization founded to investigate and stop the rise
  of the Dark Tide.
  McCain, Jeane, and Ngan are brought together when a
  bizarre creature begins to prey on the homeless population of
  the nation’s capital. Now the Hoffmann Institute’s newest
  team of investigators, the three are sent to Chicago where
  they encounter the dangerous spirits of the city’s restless
  dead, break the back of a racist conspiracy that reaches to
  the highest offices of corporate and government power, and
  travel to Europe in search of an artifact that doesn’t want to
  be found.
  Back in Chicago, even Ngan begins to worry that the
  Hoffmann Institute itself may not be exactly what it seems
  to be.
  BY DUST CONSUMED
  Dark•Matter™
  ©2002 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is
  purely coincidental.
  This is a work of fiction. Actual names, places, and events are used only to enhance the
  fictional nature of this work, and are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their
  actual conduct.
  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any
  reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited
  without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  DARK MATTER is a trademark owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. The Wizards of the Coast
  logo is a registered trademark owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro,
  Inc.
  All characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned
  by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  Made in the U.S.A.
  Cover art by Ashley Wood
  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-191042
  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  ISBN: 0-7869-1908-6
  620-T21908
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  Visit our web site at www.wizards.com
  
  1
  ay 1, 1985. The last harsh words of the ritual
  faded slowly, as though the air dragged at their
  fleeting passage. Broken syllables hung like dis-
  tant echoes. The effect was disconcerting in the spa-
  cious living room of a Chicago townhouse, but no one
  stirred.
  Lisa Renfield lowered her arms and shrouded
  them within the voluminous folds of her robe. “I seek
  guidance,” she said. “I seek wisdom. I seek the
  knowledge of Those Beyond.”
  The rest of the circle echoed the words in a slow
  litany. Lisa almost bit her tongue. It was always this
  way, like trying to sing carols at the office Christ-
  mas party—everything came out with the weight
  and grace of a dirge. She ground her teeth and mus-
  tered on.
  “Answer me now, watching stranger! Responsum
  mihi da!”
  leaving elgin
  M
  For Ole
  
  Time stretched away forever and farther. She was a part
  of that rushing, infinite river. The demon rode her like a surf-
  board. It twisted her head up out of the current, letting her
  see what was ahead. Age. Death. Decay. Always and forever.
  Time was eating her alive, grinding dull teeth into her body
  and tearing off chunks of flesh. It left behind maggots that
  itched as they burrowed through her and mold that slid black
  threads into her and left her in an agony of numbness.
  The men and women of the circle were in the river with
  her, drowning in their own decay. The demon laughed, and
  they were swept away. Her clothes fell to shreds, her living
  room to ruins and to dust. Her house, the city, the world
  crumbled. The sun went out. The universe stopped.
  The demon let the last strands of her hair slip from its
  grasp, and she fell back into the rushing water. The horrid
  vision vanished. The tear closed. The demon retreated.
  Everything was silent except for her own screaming. She
  knew now. She knew what it felt like to rot.
  It would happen. It was happening now.
  It had been happening to her for every moment of her life
  since that terrible night so many years ago.
  It didn’t have to happen anymore, though. She knew
  the way to make it stop. The demon had ridden above the
  river. All she had to do was find someone else who could
  do that, too. They would be able to lift her out of the river
  as well. They would be able to stop the decay. They would
  protect her.
  Keeping her eyes shut while she waited was the hardest
  part. Keeping still as the rot consumed her was almost as
  hard.
  “Patience,” she murmured and hope shifted between her
  breasts.
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  In the center of the room, in the center of a circle drawn
  in blood and powdered iron, the air twisted as the membrane
  between worlds stretched thin. Something was there, a dark
  shape responding to the lure of the ritual. Lisa allowed her-
  self the narrow smile of triumph that had already become
  familiar around the law firm. Oh, if the partners knew how
  she got some of her best leads! She drew a new breath, ready-
  ing the first of three questions the circle would ask that night.
  Before she could speak, though, the air twisted further.
  The membrane tore like raw meat, and the slowly fading
  words of power vanished, pulled through the tear in an
  instant. The thing on the other side ate them.
  Someone screamed, and the thing ate the scream, too.
  Lisa couldn’t move. The thing—the creature, the being,
  the demon—on the other side of the tear shifted and looked
  at her. A vast, dark intelligence brushed against her mind.
  Its merest touch sucked the air from her lungs.
  No! This isn’t right! This isn’t what was supposed to
  happen!
  More than was wanted, yes? Small servants were wanted.
  The words came to her like her own thoughts, but they
  weren’t words at all, just horrid images that squirmed
  around in her mind. Small servants—Lisa understood and
  saw undulating creatures in impossible combinations of
  limbs and orifices—for small answers. Amusement like tor-
  ture buffeted her.
  Lisa tried to remember what she had learned. Stand up!
  Fight back! Use the words! Show strength! These beings
  respected strength.
  She struggled for breath and choked out again, “I seek
  the knowledge of Those Beyond—”
  The demon’s amusement redoubled, and Lisa recognized
  her mistake just before it granted her request. Just for a
  moment, it entered her completely. It gave her its knowl-
  edge. She knew what it knew.
  2
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  Lisa herself was sprawled on the narrow bed, lying face
  up on the stiff sheets and rough blankets. She looked, Alec
  thought, surprisingly peaceful, maybe even beatific. Her pale
  face was relaxed for a change. With her close-cropped chest-
  nut hair, she might have been some modern day Joan of
  Arc—if Joan of Arc had lived into her mid-thirties, found her
  way into a psychiatric hospital, and let her navel peek
  through between the buttons of her shirt. The woman who
  lay across Lisa Renfield’s bed looked almost saintly.
  Alec forced himself to remember who he was dealing
  with. Lisa Renfield might look peaceful and saintly, but she
  was far from either. They all had hopes for the eventual suc-
  cess of her therapy, but until that day, the Elgin Mental
  Health Center had a psychopath in its care.
  “Move her,” he said.
  Homer shoved the gurney up beside the bed and seized
  Lisa’s legs at the knees. That left Danny with her head and
  shoulders. Alec watched the orderly squeeze in by the head
  of the bed, squirming and turning as he tried to find a good
  position from which to pick up Lisa’s body. At least it looked
  that way for a moment before Alec realized what Danny was
  really doing. He cleared his throat sharply.
  “Danny?”
  The orderly started, then flushed. “Sorry, Dr. Wells. I was
  just . . .”
  Alec raised his eyebrows. “Looking to see if there was
  anything under the bed?”
  Danny flushed a deeper red and nodded. Homer sneered
  at him.
  Alec just sighed and asked, “Has everyone heard then?”
  “Someone spots a rat in a patient’s cell,” Homer said, “it’s
  going to be all over pretty fast.”
  Alec groaned. He should have expected this—news did
  travel fast in the hospital. It had only been a matter of hours
  since an orderly, changing the sheets on Lisa’s bed while she
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  When the orderly named Danny flipped open the little
  window in the door of Lisa Renfield’s room with a fast, fright-
  ened motion, Alec Wells was reminded of his own childhood
  encounter with a garter snake. Though his father had tried
  to convince him that the little serpent was harmless, Alec
  had insisted on grabbing the longest stick he could find and
  flicking the snake away into nearby bushes. He had been
  teased about it unmercifully, of course, and Alec doubted if
  Danny’s nervous ways earned him any greater respect from
  his fellow orderlies.
  Clearly he wasn’t the only one who thought that way.
  Homer elbowed Danny aside with a muttered “Wuss,” and
  peered through the window. He nodded and said, “I’d say
  she’s out, Dr. Wells.”
  Separated from the door by the length of a gurney, Alec
  nodded in turn. “Open it.”
  Danny fumbled with the keys. After a moment, the
  locked door swung open. The two orderlies stepped into the
  room—Homer first, of course. Alec followed behind with
  the gurney.
  The best feature of the room on the other side of the door
  was the window. The wire-laced security glass was dark with
  night, but during the day it offered a view of the Elgin Men-
  tal Health Center’s old gardens, very pleasant even with the
  leaves now blown from the trees and the first fitful snows of
  late November speckling the brown flowerbeds. The furnish-
  ings of the room were far less luxurious: bed, table, chair all
  bolted to the floor, small and sturdy sink, exposed toilet. The
  only decorations were the pages of soft paper taped to the
  wall, disturbing crayon scenes of Renfield’s obsession with
  death and decay. On the table was the scatter of notebooks
  she kept as a journal, filling page after page with her bizarre
  descriptions of some magic ritual gone horribly wrong. Poor
  woman still clinging to the same delusion even after more
  than fifteen years of therapy.
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  Though busy during the day, they were empty at night and
  sufficiently secure to hold a restrained, sedated patient, and
  they offered reasonably comfortable chairs where he and the
  orderlies could wait while the maintenance crew did its
  work.
  The elevator ride was short. At that time of night, almost
  no one else was using the elevators, so there was nothing to
  stop them on the way down—though a little company
  wouldn’t have been amiss as they rolled the gurney out into
  the gloom of the second floor. Largely consultation and treat-
  ment rooms, it became a shadowed and lonely place after
  hours, all empty halls and firmly closed doors. The only illu-
  mination came drifting down the long halls from the safety
  lights left on near the stairwells. The sounds of their foot-
  steps and the quiet rattle of the gurney’s wheels echoed
  weirdly, making the empty space seem even bigger and more
  empty. Walking along beside the gurney, Alec began to won-
  der if maybe he should have tried a little harder to find some-
  where else to keep Lisa while her room was inspected.
  Somewhere a little livelier. The doctor held his tongue
  though. The thought was just plain ridiculous. What was
  there to be nervous about anyway?
  Still, he stifled a sigh of relief as Danny walked ahead
  to the first observation room, unlocked it, and reached
  inside to flick a light switch. Light flooded the small room
  and spilled out into the hallway. Alec let Homer and the
  gurney enter the room first, then followed, shutting the
  door after himself. Echoes vanished just as the shadows
  had—the small room was carefully soundproofed. Alec
  gritted his teeth in frustration. Bad choice. In time, he
  was sure, the silence would make him as nervous as the
  echoes had.
  “Find a seat and make yourselves comfortable,” he told
  the orderlies, more to break the quiet than anything else.
  “We’ll likely be here for a while.”
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  was out of her room at a therapy session, had seen a big
  white rat scurrying along the wall. It was gone before he
  could do anything more than catch the briefest glimpse, and
  by the time he had reported it, Lisa was back in her room.
  Alec had his doubts as to whether the orderly had actually
  seen anything at all, but either way, it had to be looked into.
  There were issues of sanitation, of patient comfort, of public
  relations—not to mention of what might happen if Lisa
  caught the thing before they did. Alec had quickly authorized
  the addition of sedatives to her evening medication. Uncon-
  scious, she could be safely moved elsewhere while Mainte-
  nance hunted down the intruder and sealed up whatever hole
  it had used to get in.
  “Just get her onto the gurney,” he told the orderlies. “The
  sooner we’re out of here, the sooner Maintenance can get
  started. Maybe this will all be over before she even wakes
  up. Danny, if there is something under the bed, it’s not going
  to jump out and bite you.”
  Homer snickered nastily at that and Danny, flushing ever
  more red, finally stepped up and slid his hands under Lisa’s
  arms. At a nod from Homer, both of them lifted together,
  transferring her unconscious body smoothly from bed to gur-
  ney. The motion shifted Lisa’s shirt and exposed more of her
  belly—the T-shirt underneath was bunched up high on her
  body. Alec tugged her outer shirt back into a more modest
  position as Homer and Danny fastened the heavy leather
  straps of the gurney in place.
  The maintenance crew was waiting for them outside.
  “Want us to let you know when we’re finished?” one of them
  asked.
  Alec nodded. “We’ll be down in one of the observation
  rooms on the second floor, Terry.”
  Finding a place to hold Renfield had been a problem.
  Elgin was big, but the old hospital was also crowded. In the
  end, the observation rooms had seemed the best solution.
  6
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  no sign of a rat. Someone had been seeing things—like that
  was unusual around here.
  He turned a corner into the hall where the observation
  rooms were located. Only one room had lights on. He stepped
  up to the door and rapped on it.
  It swung open under his knock. The room beyond was
  empty, its chairs and table scattered. There were big dents in
  the walls. The gurney lay against one wall, overturned.
  There was no sign of Dr. Wells, the orderlies, or their
  charge.
  Terry swallowed hard and fumbled for the walkie-talkie
  at his belt. “Central,” he said into it urgently, “we have
  trouble.”
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  Homer parked the gurney and produced a deck of cards.
  “Game?” he asked.
  There was a table in one corner of the room. Danny was
  already pulling up a chair.
  “Sure.” Alec walked over to join them.
  The large, reflective expanse of a two-way mirror dom-
  inated the wall against which the gurney had been
  parked. Alec glanced into it reflexively as he passed.
  Lisa’s eyes were open, quite lucid, and staring straight at
  him. He froze.
  “You . . . you’re . . .” he stuttered.
  “I need to stop the decay, Doctor Alec,” Lisa said. “I need
  someone to protect me from it, and I’m not going to find any-
  one here. I’m leaving Elgin now.”
  Homer and Danny were scrambling up from the table, but
  they were too slow. Something was heaving between Lisa’s
  breasts, thrusting against the restraint of her shirt. The fab-
  ric was dark and damp. So was the leather strap across her
  upper body. Both appeared to be smoldering slightly. Alec
  stared.
  “You won’t feel the decay when you’re dead,” Lisa added.
  She strained against the strap and it tore apart like wet
  cardboard. Something came crawling up out of the collar of
  her shirt, launching itself at the orderlies as Lisa reached for
  the remaining straps.
  Surprisingly, Homer was the first of them to scream.
  Terry Baker stepped off the elevator and onto the second
  floor, whistling and spinning a ring of keys around his finger.
  He was pretty sure that after two hours of playing babysitter,
  Dr. Wells and the orderlies would be glad to hear that the
  maintenance crew had finished going over the cell. The doc-
  tor would probably be even happier to find out that there was
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  We therefore commit his body to the ground;
  earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
  in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.
  —from The Book of Common Prayer,
  Burial of the Dead, First Anthem
  Don’t you ever laugh as the hearse goes by,
  For you may be the next to die.
  They wrap you up in a big white sheet
  From your head down to your feet.
  They put you in a big black box
  And cover you up with dirt and rocks.
  All goes well for about a week,
  Then your coffin begins to leak.
  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
  The worms play pinochle on your snout . . .
  —from The Hearse Song
  
  13
  he steps that led down from the street were
  worn, crumbling from the combined effects of
  time, traffic, and weather. In most parts of
  Chicago, the light dusting of snow that had fallen
  overnight had already melted away. On the steps,
  though, it lingered. protected by the shadow of the
  building overhead. Combined with the worn steps, it
  made for slick passage down to the entrance to
  Devromme’s Used Books.
  Michael McCain took a final deep breath of the
  morning’s fresh air before adding his footprints to
  those already on the short flight of stairs. “I never get
  used to the smell of this place,” he commented. “I
  wonder if Ned would take it badly if I gave him an air
  freshener.”
  Behind him, Jeane Meara snorted as she made her
  own way down, burdened by a large box. “Fitz, an air
  freshener here would be a fart in a windstorm.”
  chapter
  1 n e
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  little shop was probably the best source in Chicago for infor-
  mation on the occult. The shop was quite a bit more than it
  seemed—much like Ned himself.
  At the back of the store, Jeane juggled her box into one
  hand so she could pound on a door set into the back wall
  with the other.
  “Hey Ned,” she yelled, then pulled the door open and
  shouted up the stairs on the other side. “You’ve got visitors.
  Put some pants on.”
  A reply drifted down from above. “And good morning to
  you, too, Jeane. Does the farm know you’re missing?”
  McCain held his tongue as he followed Jeane through the
  door and up the stairs. No sane person got in the way of the
  verbal sparring between Ned and Jeane. Fortunately, what
  had started out as an acidic duel of insults had acquired a
  nature more akin to a friendly bar brawl. He might even have
  ventured a guess that it masked a deep respect between two
  very sharp intellects—might have, that is, if he hadn’t
  thought Jeane would deck him for the very suggestion.
  It had been just a little more than a year since the two
  agents of the Hoffmann Institute had first met Ned Devromme
  in the course of their investigation into a series of events cen-
  tered around Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery in the Chicago suburb
  of Midlothian. At the time, he had been an intruder, a specialist
  brought in on their investigation. In spite of that, McCain had
  found himself liking the man. Ned had, it turned out, exactly
  the skills that the investigation needed: a prodigious knowl-
  edge of the occult, combined with certain other . . . abilities.
  As Ngan Song Kun’dren, the third member of their team,
  had put it at the time, Ned was “the best psychic working for
  the Hoffmann Institute in Chicago.”
  Ned was waiting for them at the top of the stairs. The
  psychic was a big man with a scruffy beard and bright, sharp
  eyes. He was of an age with Jeane, almost ten years older
  than McCain’s own thirty-one years. Where Jeane’s body,
  McCain opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and,
  with another deep breath, bared himself to the unique
  ambiance of Devromme’s. The store smelled stale, of linger-
  ing incense, crumbling books, and musty, damp concrete. A
  worn gray carpet covered the floor, running in narrow aisles
  between dangerously tall and fragile-looking bookshelves.
  Perched on a high stool behind the front counter and staring
  at a cheap portable television with unblinking intensity was
  the only clerk McCain had ever seen in the place. He didn’t
  look up as McCain and Jeane entered and barely even moved
  as McCain gave him a friendly “Morning, Kaz.” One hand
  moved in a gesture that might have been a wave. McCain
  caught a glimpse of an old movie with two men in drag and
  one very famous blond bombshell on the tiny TV screen.
  Jeane didn’t even break her stride, walking straight back
  through the store’s narrow aisles. His attempt at social
  interaction rebuffed, McCain followed her. 
  “Have you ever wondered if Kaz has some kind of problem?”
  “Kaz,” Jeane replied, squeezing between shelves, “has
  an obsession. You saw what he was watching?” McCain
  shrugged. “Some Like It Hot,” she supplied. “Every time I’m
  in here, he’s got something about or starring Marilyn Monroe
  going on that TV.”
  “Not everyone shares your dislike for Marilyn, Jeane.”
  “Not everyone works for Ned Devromme, either.”
  The shelves toward the back of the store were laden with
  occult books. McCain glanced at them as they went past.
  Some were old and worn, some were so new their spines
  were hardly cracked. Hermeticism, voodoo, spiritualism,
  Atlantis, Stonehenge, Cahokia, astral travel, reincarnation
  . . . and that was just this aisle. McCain let his eyes slide
  past a book on the mystical substance called vril and a whole
  shelf filled with books on the holy grail. He already knew
  more about those subjects than he cared to consider. A lot of
  people would be surprised to learn that Ned Devromme’s foul
  
  was that Van had the potential to develop psychic powers,
  and what spare time he had left over from his studies was
  spent under Ned’s tutelage.
  “Are we breaking up a training session?” McCain asked.
  “Naw. Just finishing.” Van picked up a heavy backpack.
  “I’ve got to head back to campus for class.”
  Jeane hefted her box, catching Van’s eye. “Don’t you want
  to see what we’ve brought Ned?”
  Van grimaced and shook his head. “I’d love to, but I can’t.
  Really.” He slung the backpack over his shoulder and headed
  for the stairs. “You’ll have to tell me about it later.”
  He was gone before Jeane could even respond, down the
  stairs and through the door with a slam and a swirl of noise
  from Kaz’s TV. Jeane blinked.
  “If he ever slows down, he’ll make the Hoffmann Insti-
  tute a fine agent someday.” She moved over to a battered din-
  ing table and set the box down. “How’s his training going?”
  Ned rocked his hand back forth. “So-so. He works hard,
  but we’re having trouble breaking through. None of the exer-
  cises I know have been able to tease out his gift enough to
  identify it.”
  “Can’t you just show him what to do?” McCain asked. He
  took a seat at the table and idly picked up a prism bound in
  brass filigree. Ned slapped it out of his hand without looking.
  “You don’t demonstrate ice-skating when you’re trying to
  teach someone basketball, Fitz,” the psychic pointed out.
  “Until we know the exact nature of Van’s gift, all I can do is
  teach him the most basic of skills: centering, focus, concen-
  tration, that sort of thing. We’ll get there eventually.” He sat
  down at the head of the table. “But enough about Van. What
  did you bring me?”
  McCain shoved the box over to him. Ned split the seal of
  packing tape and plunged his hands into the sea of foam
  chips inside. His eyes widened, then narrowed. His prize,
  carefully cradled in both hands, came out of the box in a
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  however, was so toned that the fortieth birthday she would
  celebrate next year seemed like an impossibility, Ned had
  the ample belly of someone who wasn’t afraid to indulge
  himself. He was also, contrary to Jeane’s suggestion, fully
  dressed. He glanced at the box in Jeane’s hands and raised
  his eyebrows.
  “Don’t you people ever just drop by for a cup of coffee?”
  “I wouldn’t say no to a cup if you’re offering,” McCain
  said, “but this is business.”
  McCain stepped up out of the stairwell. The apartment
  that Ned occupied above and behind his shop was only
  slightly less disreputable than the shop itself. Books, news-
  papers, dirty dishes, and bizarre knick-knacks covered virtu-
  ally every flat surface. Thankfully the stale reek of the shop
  downstairs didn’t penetrate up here.
  McCain gestured to Jeane’s box and added, “Another
  charming piece for your evaluation.”
  “Welcome to Antiques Roadshow,” grumbled Ned. “Today
  we’ll be looking at an absolutely fascinating artifact of pri-
  mal evil from before the dawn of time.”
  “Actually, it’s from a hunting camp in Wisconsin.”
  “Even better.”
  Ned led them through into the big main room of the
  apartment. The odor of beeswax candles hung in the air,
  and a young man with short blond hair and a matching
  patch of whiskers on his chin was just shrugging on his
  jacket. He smiled and dipped his head in greeting. “Hey,
  Fitz. Hey, Jeane.”
  “Hey, Van.”
  McCain hooked fingers and bumped fists with the young
  man in a complex handshake. Vanko Dimitriat was another
  friend from the Bachelor’s Grove investigation. A high school
  senior at the time, Van was now three months into his fresh-
  man year at the University of Chicago. One of the number of
  surprises that had come out of the Bachelor’s Grove case
  
  through the skull, apparently self-inflicted and consistent
  with the rifle that was also found by the fire pit. The blood
  on the skull belonged to the victim.”
  “The local police ruled it a suicide,” McCain said, leaning
  forward. He avoided looking at the skull. Ned had set it down
  so that the eye sockets were staring straight at him. “The
  skull, however, made its way into Ngan’s hands. He wants to
  be sure there were no . . . other influences involved.”
  “So how come the wrinkly old monk didn’t come him-
  self?”
  “The Powers That Be in the Institute still consider him
  their liaison with the team.” Jeane folded her notebook and
  put it away. “Ngan’s liaising with the Powers of Paperwork
  this morning. So what do you think?”
  Ned reached out and brushed the skull. “Did you know,”
  he said absently, “that bears are or have been venerated as
  powerful spirits by virtually every culture that shares terri-
  tory with them? Van told me something about it that he heard
  in one of his classes recently. Linguists think early northern
  Indo-European tribes may have considered the animal so
  sacred that they had taboos against naming it directly. Words
  like ‘bear’ and ‘bruin’ describe the animal’s color: brown.
  One I already knew was Russian, where the word is medved:
  honey-eater.” His hand paused over the inverted pentagram.
  “This is a nasty thing to do to a venerated animal. I haven’t
  seen anything like it since . . . well, for a long time.”
  For a moment, Ned fell silent. Jeane raised one eyebrow
  and glanced at McCain. He returned the glance evenly and
  shrugged in a silent lie. Actually, he had a pretty good idea
  why Ned seemed uncomfortable with the violated skull.
  During the Bachelor’s Grove investigation, the big man
  had shared a piece of his history with McCain. Before Ned
  had discovered his psychic gifts, he’d been a diabolist, a
  practitioner of black magic. He hadn’t elaborated on it much
  beyond saying he’d walked away from it, and McCain had the
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  shower of foam. It was an animal skull, and Ned turned it
  this way and that, studying it. McCain suppressed a shudder.
  On its own, the skull was hardly any different from the
  skulls of cows and sheep he had handled in high school biol-
  ogy. Small, bony eye sockets faced forward over a long muz-
  zle and jaw that still retained the varied teeth of an
  omnivore. The jaw itself articulated under heavy cheek-
  bones. A crest of bone flared at the back of the skull, support
  for a powerful neck.
  What made this skull disturbing however, were the words
  and symbols that had been drawn on it. They crowded in on
  each other with a obsessive precision, never overlapping,
  never touching, but never leaving more than hair’s breadth
  between them. Someone had spent a long, long time writing
  on the skull. Some of the symbols were easy to recognize. An
  inverted pentagram on the beast’s brow. Ankhs. The astro-
  logical symbols for the planets. Some of the words were
  familiar, too, written in English or Italian or German or
  Latin. Other words were written in different scripts, still
  recognizable, but foreign. There were a few words and sym-
  bols, however, that McCain hadn’t recognized at all. Jeane
  hadn’t known them either, nor had Ngan.
  All of the characters were written in a liquid that had
  dried rust brown. Ned traced one of the symbols with his fin-
  ger. “Blood,” he observed, then hefted the skull once more
  before setting it on the table and asked, “Bear?” Jeane nod-
  ded in response. Ned’s eyes narrowed even further. “You said
  it was found in a hunting camp in Wisconsin.”
  Jeane pulled out her notebook and flipped it open to read
  the details. “Northern Wisconsin, well out in the woods.
  Found at the beginning of the hunting season. The skull had
  been mounted on a pole to one side of a fire pit. A body was
  found on the opposite side of the fire pit. Male, white, sev-
  enteen years of age. Local, missing for several weeks prior.
  Cause of death was a gunshot wound from under the jaw
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  me walk you out. I know how easy it is for you to get lost.”
  Jeane and Ned traded insults all the way back down the
  stairs and most of the way through the shop below. McCain
  trailed in their wake, shaking his head. Even Kaz glanced up
  at the bickering pair. His movie must have been over—the
  television was tuned to the local news. The TV caught
  Jeane’s eye, and McCain couldn’t help but think that she had
  been proved wrong. Marilyn Monroe movies weren’t the only
  thing Kaz watched on the little television.
  Before he could make the observation out loud though,
  the cell phone in his jacket pocket rang quietly. McCain
  flipped it out.
  “Hello?”
  The voice on the other end was soft, but strong, touched
  with the lightest of accents. “Michael? It’s Ngan.”
  “Hi, Ngan.”
  McCain stopped walking and waved for Jeane, trying to
  get her stop for a moment. Somewhat to his surprise, she
  had already stopped and was staring at Kaz’s television as
  intently as the clerk himself and listening closely to some-
  thing on the news. McCain caught a brief glimpse of fire-
  fighters and a lot of smoke before he turned away and
  stepped into the relative cover of the bookshelves.
  “How’s the paperwork?” he asked Ngan. “Good news on
  the bear skull. Ned says there’s nothing—”
  “Michael,” interrupted Ngan, “Field Director Adler has
  called us in for a meeting.”
  The news of Ned’s findings died on McCain’s lips. “Lily
  wants us? Do you know why?”
  “All I know is that something has come up, and I imagine
  we’re being tapped to handle the case. She’s scheduled the
  meeting for one o’clock.”
  McCain glanced at his watch. The Chicago branch
  office of the Hoffmann Institute was located in the heart of
  the industrial suburb of Schiller Park, way out by O’Hare
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  distinct impression it wasn’t a period of his life Ned liked to
  talk about. It wasn’t something McCain liked knowing about
  either, and if Ned could put it behind him, the least McCain
  could do was let him.
  McCain gave Ned his moment of reverie, then cleared his
  throat and asked, “So is Ngan right? Is there something more
  going on here?”
  The psychic blinked and chuckled. “Let’s put it this way,
  Fitz: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” He passed the skull
  over to Jeane. “This thing looks nasty, but it has no more
  occult significance than a heavy metal album.”
  Jeane frowned. “But the skull of a bear, and all these sym-
  bols . . .”
  “Meaningless.” Ned spread his hands. “Magic is like a
  story. Everything fits together—the symbols involved should
  tell you what’s happening. This thing is the magical equiva-
  lent of a cat walking across a keyboard.”
  “Well, damn.” Jeane stared down at the skull. “What are
  we supposed to do with this then?”
  Ned pushed the box over to her. “Wash the blood off and
  bury the skull somewhere pretty. It never hurts to be nice.”
  He smiled nastily. “Well, except maybe in your case.”
  Jeane made a sour face and dug the skull back down into
  the foam chips in the box. “How about the body by the fire
  pit?”
  “I hate to say it, Jeane, but this time I think the local
  police are right. No mystery.” Ned quirked his lips and
  shrugged. “Anyone who would spend the time it took to dec-
  orate that skull—with his own blood—needed a shrink more
  than he needed the Hoffmann Institute.” He smiled at Jeane.
  “Sorry to disappoint you.”
  “Ned,” Jeane said, “my only disappointment was seeing
  you before lunch.”
  Ned grinned happily. “There you go—that’s the spirit!”
  He stood and swept his arm grandly toward the stairs. “Let
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  just under the listing for WCGO-TV, the same station Kaz’s
  television was tuned to.
  “Jeane,” he asked finally, “do you want to tell me why I
  just lied to Ngan for you?”
  Telephone receiver in one hand, she finally turned to look
  at him. Her face was as pale and concerned as McCain had
  ever seen it.
  “I just saw my mother on the news,” she said tightly.
  “Your mother?” The question came out as something of a
  startled gasp. “I thought she was dead.”
  “It wasn’t my mom,” Jeane corrected him, “it was my
  mother.” She looked at him as if that should have been sig-
  nificant. He shook his head. She gave him a little frown as
  she turned back to the telephone. “My birth mother, Fitz.
  Remember?”
  It came back to him, filtering up through all of the things
  that had happened to them in the past year. Relations within
  the team hadn’t been so good a year ago. Ngan had been
  adjusting poorly to a promotion that had put him in charge
  of the team, while McCain had been adjusting poorly to
  Ngan’s style of leadership—and going through some more
  personal adjustments as well thanks to a surprising revela-
  tion regarding the nature of his birth. After a nasty con-
  frontation with Ngan, the only other person aware of that
  nature, McCain had found himself trying to explain his
  behavior to Jeane and hinting at his secret in the process.
  Maybe it had been a subconscious desire to bring it all out
  into the open. Maybe not. Either way, Jeane had somehow
  guessed at half of the truth, that his parentage was not
  entirely typical. The other half, however, she had missed,
  assuming instead something far more innocent: that he was
  adopted. As she was herself.
  “Oh,” said McCain, and he remembered exactly what
  Jeane had told him about her one meeting with the woman.
  “Oh!”
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  Airport. There was time, though. “One o’clock at the office is
  no problem.”
  “Good,” said Ngan. “Is Jeane with you?”
  “Jeane—”
  Before he could say any more, a hand clamped down hard
  on his shoulder. Jeane stood almost right in his face. Her
  expression was hard and easily as urgent as Ngan’s voice.
  She shook her head sharply.
  “Jeane’s gone,” McCain said into the cell phone. “She was
  here, but she left.”
  “Do you know where she went?”
  He looked up for more instruction from Jeane, but she
  had already turned away, back to the television.
  “No,” McCain replied simply, and heard Ngan sigh.
  “I’ll try her cell phone then,” Ngan said. “You’ll be here
  for one o’clock?”
  “Absolutely. See you then.” He broke the connection and
  walked up to Jeane. “He’s going to call you on your phone.”
  Jeane reached to her hip as smoothly as if she were draw-
  ing a gun and clicked off the power on the cell phone that
  hung there.
  “Thanks, Fitz.”
  She had a phonebook out and was flipping rapidly
  through the pages. Ned was stooped behind the counter,
  pulling up a telephone from somewhere. Kaz was huddled as
  far from either of them as possible, looking longingly toward
  his television. McCain gave them all a puzzled look.
  “Ngan,” he said, fishing for information, “called to say
  that Lily Adler wants to meet with us.”
  “I guessed that,” Jeane said without looking up from the
  phonebook.
  He waited but no one said anything else. Jeane found the
  page she was looking for. Putting one finger on the book to
  mark her place, she reached for Ned’s telephone with the
  other. McCain peered over her shoulder. Her finger rested
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  “No,” Ngan said, letting the single word convey his under-
  standing that McCain was lying.
  McCain was too practiced a liar to blush at being caught,
  but Ngan saw in his eyes that he understood. Ngan tempered
  his gaze with a smile, however. If Jeane thought something
  sufficiently important to deliberately skip a meeting, he
  would trust her judgment.
  McCain nodded and touched the box, changing the subject.
  “I started to say on the phone that we have a resolution on the
  bear skull. Ned’s opinion is that there’s nothing paranormal
  involved. The decorations on the skull have no power and are
  likely the products of the victim’s own disturbed mind.”
  “Perhaps not an exciting conclusion, but a satisfactory
  one.” When McCain gave him a curious look, Ngan smiled.
  “There is no Institute regulation that requires every case to
  end in a potentially deadly encounter with the paranormal,
  Michael.”
  “But you have to admit, it is something of a first for us.”
  “Regrettably true.” Ngan rose, considered briefly whether
  it was appropriate to bring the tea with him to the meeting,
  and decided that it would be a worse crime to leave it behind.
  He gestured to the door. “Lily awaits.”
  Chicago Field Director of Observation Lily Adler’s office
  was upstairs from the office that Ngan shared with Jeane and
  McCain. It was about the same size as theirs, in spite of the
  fact that it was occupied by only one person. Then again,
  everything Lily did was calculated to impress. She was one
  of Ngan’s oldest friends in the Hoffmann Institute. He knew
  things about her that no one else did, like her fondness for
  cold pizza and professional wrestling. She still managed to
  impress him. He knocked on her door at precisely 1:00.
  “Come in,” Lily called. Her voice was flawless in its
  clipped, aristocratic tones, a perfect match for the persona
  she chose to project. She looked up as Ngan and McCain
  entered. “Only two of you?”
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  Ned had a surprised and intrigued look on his face.
  “You’re adopted?” he asked Jeane.
  “Say anything,” Jeane snapped, “and you eat this phone.”
  Ngan Song Kun’dren let loose a ferocious yawn that
  would, he thought, have done justice to one of the snow
  leopards of his native Tibet and rubbed his eyes. He opened
  them just in time to see a mug of tea placed on top of the
  paperwork on the desk in front of him. He looked up and
  smiled at the team’s secretary.
  “Thank you, Emma,” he said as he picked up the mug and
  inhaled the thick, slightly astringent aroma. “Assam?” She
  nodded and he sipped. The tea was, of course, perfectly
  brewed. “Emma, you never cease to amaze me.”
  “Hopefully I never will. A girl needs her secrets.” She
  winked at him and turned back to the door to the outer office,
  stepping lithely to the side as McCain came through from the
  other direction. “Hello, Fitz.”
  “Emma.” McCain shifted a box that Ngan knew contained
  the Wisconsin bear skull into his right hand and twisted his
  left around so that his partner could see the face of his wrist-
  watch. “Told you. 12:52. Plenty of time.”
  “Indeed.” Ngan sipped at more of Emma’s excellent tea.
  “Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Jeane. Have you
  heard from her since my call?”
  McCain set the box down on his own desk. “You couldn’t
  get in touch with her?”
  Ngan regarded McCain over the edge of the mug. The
  younger man had many talents, chief among them a preter-
  natural ability to inspire trust and confidence—a silver
  tongue that never tarnished. While Ngan did genuinely trust
  McCain, he liked to think that he knew enough to listen as
  well to what McCain did not say.
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  that she and a circle of eight friends were summoning a
  demon when the ritual went wrong. The demon took its
  revenge by showing her the true nature of time. Apparently
  it was too much for her. When Renfield attempted to kill the
  patients in the hospital, she felt she was doing them a favor
  by saving them from a living hell of slow decay.”
  McCain looked up. “A demon?” he asked in disbelief.
  “Call it an ‘ultraterrestrial entity’ if you wish, Agent
  McCain. Your opinion is a moot point—the case was thor-
  oughly investigated at the time.”
  “If it was investigated,” McCain said pointedly, “what
  happened to Renfield’s circle of friends?”
  “There was no sign of them when the police arrived. Ren-
  field claimed the demon swept them away in the river of
  time.”
  “Pull the other one,” the young man snorted. “Eight
  people vanish and a woman goes psycho? That’s a recipe for
  front page news, and I don’t remember hearing anything
  about it.”
  Lily looked down her nose at him disdainfully. “No one
  vanished, Agent McCain. The police determined that Lisa’s
  friends were entirely fictitious. Renfield was simply an over-
  worked, sadly disturbed young woman.”
  McCain blinked. “Really? But you just said the case was
  investigated.”
  “I suspect it was, Michael,” Ngan said. He turned to look
  at Lily. “Investigated and suppressed. Certain headlines
  were never meant to make it to the front page.”
  “Indeed,” confirmed Lily, sitting forward once more. “And
  therein lies the rub. Lisa’s condition has improved somewhat
  over time, but she still possesses occult knowledge and moti-
  vations that the Institute considers dangerous. The police
  see her as dangerous too, of course—her history at the hos-
  pital and in Elgin is quite clear. Only the Hoffmann Institute
  knows anything different.”
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  There were, of course, three chairs set out before her
  desk. Ngan seated himself in the farthest one. “I was unable
  to get in touch with Jeane on short notice.”
  Lily’s lips tightened slightly. “Unfortunate. You’ll have to
  fill her in later, though. We can’t wait.” She pushed a slim file
  folder across her desk. McCain took it as Lily steepled her
  fingers and said, “Last night, a patient named Lisa Renfield
  escaped from the Elgin County Mental Health Center.”
  “I’ve heard of it.” Ngan frowned. “Nothing especially
  good, I’m afraid.”
  “You won’t hear much good about Lisa Renfield either,”
  McCain added, glancing through the file folder. He removed
  a photograph and passed it over Ngan. The woman in the pic-
  ture had a pointed chin, light chestnut hair, and dark,
  haunted eyes. “It doesn’t look like she’ll be on Santa’s list of
  good little girls this year. “
  Ngan looked back to Lily. He would be able to read the
  file any time, but they would only get one briefing from Lily.
  “What has she done?”
  His old friend caught his look and nodded in response.
  “In 1985, Lisa Renfield was a rising young lawyer with a
  prestigious law firm here in Chicago. One night, however, her
  neighbors called the police to say there were screams com-
  ing from her house. They found Renfield lying in the middle
  of her living room, surrounded by smashed furniture, a litter
  of ritual paraphernalia, and a circle of iron and pig’s blood.
  She was the one screaming. The police took her into custody,
  of course. She was transported to the nearest hospital.” Lily
  sat back. “She got loose in the hospital. She left one orderly
  needing extensive oral surgery, another with brain damage,
  and three patients with internal injuries after she got into
  their room and started beating them in their beds.”
  “I see,” said Ngan. “Was there a reason for this?”
  Lily folded her hands again and said, as calmly as if she
  had been discussing stock market prices, “Renfield claims
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  he assured her. He stepped back and took the paper from her
  hand, glancing into her eyes as he drew it away.
  For the briefest of moments, there was fear and concern
  in Lily’s eyes. “Look after yourself, too, Ngan,” she breathed
  before she turned away.
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  “But if this whole demon summoning thing was an acci-
  dent,” protested McCain, “how dangerous can she be by
  herself?”
  Lily gave McCain a cool look. “At the time of Renfield’s
  escape last night, she was supposed to have been under
  the supervision of a doctor and two orderlies. All three are
  missing, gone without a trace. The doctor’s car was miss-
  ing. It was found a short time ago in a parking garage in
  downtown Chicago, but again with no trace of the men.
  The police believe Renfield has either killed them and hid-
  den the bodies or is holding them hostage.” Lily tapped her
  fingers together. “The Hoffmann Institute, on the other
  hand . . .”
  Ngan finished for her. “The Hoffmann Institute sees a dis-
  comforting similarity between three men missing now and
  eight people vanishing in 1985.” He frowned. “What’s our
  assignment?”
  “Find Renfield,” said Lily, “but also find out what’s going
  on—why people are missing and why Renfield escaped.” She
  stood up. “If there are no more questions, that will be every-
  thing. Keep me informed of your progress.”
  “Yes, ma’am.” McCain gave Lily a cocky little salute.
  Ngan’s own acknowledgement was more sober, a simple nod
  as he rose and turned for the doorway.
  Both agents were almost out of the room before Lily
  called after them. “One moment!”
  Ngan turned back. Lily was still standing behind her
  desk. She was holding out a piece of paper. “This may not be
  the best timing, but word has come down. You’re to take Van
  Dimitriat on your next investigation as a trial run.”
  “On this investigation?” Ngan asked. The idea was dis-
  turbing. “Lily, don’t you think this might be a bit dangerous?”
  “Yes,” Lily said, “but I also know you’ll look after him.”
  She smiled thinly. “Just like you did me.”
  Ngan couldn’t help smiling in return. “I’ll look after him,”
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  30
  ctober 12, 1980. The diner in Cleveland smelled
  of fried food and coffee. At this time in the after-
  noon, it was mostly empty. A couple of truckers,
  one thin and the other fat, sat at the counter and
  talked with the waitress. A family occupied one of the
  booths, weary parents struggling with three arguing
  children. An old couple sat in another, eating chicken
  salad sandwiches in silence. Jeane walked past all of
  them and headed straight for the booth at the end.
  The woman sitting there was alone. She looked up as
  soon as Jeane started down the long row of booths,
  watching her approach. Jeane couldn’t help staring
  back.
  The woman was probably a couple of years shy of
  forty. She was thin in a way that made Jeane think of
  coffee and cigarettes. Too much make-up empha-
  sized the lines that a hard life had started to leave on
  her face. Her hair had been streaked with blond, but
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  2 w o
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  in between the highlights it was the same red-brown as
  Jeane’s own.
  Jeane stopped beside the booth, started to speak,
  changed her mind, and sat, sliding into the booth to sit pre-
  cisely across from the other woman. Her mouth was unex-
  pectedly dry. She swallowed before she asked “Dale
  Churchill?”
  The woman nodded. “Jeane?” she asked in turn.
  The name seemed rusty, as if it was unfamiliar. Then
  again, it was. Stan and Rose Meara had named her. Jeane
  nodded back and silence stretched out before Dale said ten-
  tatively, “You’re bigger than last time I saw you.”
  “I turned eighteen last month.”
  “I know.” Dale looked away for a moment. “I figured it
  out the other week when the adoption agency called to set
  this up.”
  She hadn’t known how old Jeane was. Something slid
  inside Jeane’s stomach even as her logical side pointed out
  that there was no real reason to have expected anything
  more. Dale had given her up at birth. Why should she remem-
  ber the age of a daughter she never known? Jeane’s hands
  started to tremble. She laid them flat on the tabletop to keep
  them still.
  There was a coffee cup there. Empty. Jeane nodded at it.
  “Can I buy you another, Dale?” she asked.
  Dale shook her head. “No. No, I don’t think so.” She took
  a deep breath and very lightly covered Jeane’s hands with her
  own. “Jeane, this is a mistake. I’m a stranger to you and
  you’re a stranger to me. We’ve got nothing in common. The
  people who raised you are your parents, better ones than I
  could ever be. Stay with them.” Dale’s mouth twitched into a
  crooked smile. “I was your age when I got pregnant.”
  She took her hands away, gathered up a cheap fake
  leather purse, and stood. She left two crumpled dollar bills
  on the table beside the coffee cup.
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  “It was nice to meet you, Jeane.”
  When Dale walked away, Jeane couldn’t even turn around
  to look after her. She sat in the booth for five of the longest
  minutes of her life, just staring at the empty seat on the
  other side of the booth. When the waitress came over to take
  her order, Jeane just shook her head mutely and rose.
  She made it all the way over to the fast food joint next
  door and the table where Stan and Rose sat waiting for her
  before she started to cry. After a moment, her mom and dad
  started to cry, too.
  She probably shouldn’t have expected that McCain would
  immediately know what she was talking about. They’d only
  discussed the fact that she was adopted once. A lot had hap-
  pened since then. Still, Jeane would have thought that of
  everything they had learned about each other over that time,
  the fact that she was adopted would have been one of the
  easiest things for McCain to remember.
  Jeane leaned on the horn of her car as a shiny SUV cut
  her off, then she rather belatedly took a deep breath to try to
  calm herself. The drive from Ned’s shop to Cook County Hos-
  pital should have taken no time at all. Instead the traffic was
  heavy enough that walking seemed like it would have been a
  better alternative.
  There’s no hurry, Jeane told herself, Dale will still be at
  the hospital when I get there.
  She couldn’t quite make it sound convincing. She couldn’t
  shake the feeling that she would be too late.
  The timing of events at Ned’s had already been beyond
  belief. They had walked downstairs at exactly the right time
  to catch the news on Kaz’s television. Jeane, amazed that
  Kaz was watching something that did not involve Marilyn
  Monroe, had turned to the television at just the right moment
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  to catch the beginning of a story on an early morning fire in
  a small apartment building in the city’s west side. McCain’s
  cell phone had started ringing at precisely the right instant
  for Jeane to pause and pay attention to the story—and to see
  a woman, whose face she would never forget, being taken to
  the hospital for smoke inhalation.
  Cutting out on a meeting called by the field director of
  observation was probably not the fastest way to advance in
  the Hoffmann Institute. Fortunately, career advancement
  was not high on her list of priorities. She did feel bad about
  lying—through McCain—to Ngan, but she was also fairly
  certain that the old man would understand—really under-
  stand in a way that neither McCain nor Ned had. As she had
  waited on hold with WCGO, trying to find out where the vic-
  tims of the fire had been taken, both men had given her odd
  looks. Ned hadn’t really said anything, just looked at her
  strangely, but she had known what he was thinking. McCain,
  on the other hand, had been more vocal.
  “Jeane, you only met her once, and she told you that she
  didn’t belong in your life. What are you doing?”
  His birth parents, she knew, were long dead, but she had
  looked at him point blank and asked what he would do if they
  weren’t and he suddenly discovered that they were in
  trouble. The question had been cruel and she had regretted
  it almost instantly. It got the point across, though. McCain
  had given her a lonely, frustrated look but ultimately nodded
  and left for the meeting with Ngan and Lily. Jeane knew that
  Ngan wouldn’t have needed any additional explanation at all.
  Whatever else had passed between Jeane Meara and Dale
  Churchill—or rather, hadn’t passed—in the last thirty-nine
  years, they were still blood.
  Trying to find a spot in the hospital parking lot took
  almost as long as the drive from Ned’s shop had. Waiting in
  line at the overworked information desk inside the hospital
  took longer. Finally, though, she was the one standing beside
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  She glanced up. Jeane nodded.
  “That must be her.” Her heart was thundering now.
  “Please don’t tell me she’s been discharged already.”
  “No,” said the woman behind the counter. Jeane almost
  gasped with relief. The woman wrote something on a slip of
  paper. “You can go in and see her, but you might want to
  make sure she’s the right person before you do. The name I
  have down is not Dale Churchill.”
  Jeane glanced at the paper. W-23C. Shelley Brooks.
  “Thank you,” she told the woman. “Thank you very
  much.”
  Could she have seen the wrong face on Kaz’s little televi-
  sion? Was it possible that she had seen some other woman
  and mistaken her for Dale? It was, Jeane reflected, conceiv-
  able. It had been a long time, and their meeting had been very
  brief and extremely emotional, not the best of conditions for
  committing a face to memory. The urgency that had driven
  her to rush out of Ned’s shop faded, replaced by misgivings.
  Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe she had misremembered.
  Maybe she was about to burst in on a total stranger.
  As soon as she stepped through the doorway of W-23, the
  misgivings vanished.
  It was a large room with four beds separated by off-
  white curtains. All of the beds were full. At one, two burly
  men chatted with a haggard woman. At another, a father
  and three children surrounded a weary-looking mother. An
  old couple sat together on the edge of a third, talking qui-
  etly. Jeane walked past all of them to the bed in the far left
  corner.
  Dale was reading a magazine. Time had not been partic-
  ularly kind to her. The hair that had been streaked blond
  before was entirely blond now, a nasty, brassy color. The
  lines of her face were deep, and the leanness of coffee and
  cigarettes had given way to the heavy thickness of advanced
  middle-age.
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  the desk. She smiled at the tired woman in half-glasses on
  the other side.
  “I’m trying to find one of your patients—Dale Churchill.
  She would have been admitted this morning.”
  The woman checked something on a computer. “No one
  by that name,” she said wearily. “Are you sure she’s here?”
  “Yes.” Jeane frowned a little bit. It had been more than
  twenty years. Maybe Dale had gotten married. “Can you search
  by first name?” The woman’s eyebrows rose like incriminating
  testimony, and Jeane actually felt a flush of color her cheeks.
  “I’m . . . she’s an old friend. I saw her on the news—there was
  a fire at her apartment building this morning. She was brought
  here for treatment for smoke inhalation. I . . .”
  She was terrible at this and she knew it. She had never
  really been a people person. Certainly not the way McCain
  was. He had a style that made people trust him almost
  instantly. All he had to do was smile, and people would dance
  for him. Jeane didn’t have that style. She could bully, yes, but
  she didn’t think that was likely to get her very far. All she
  really had was her honesty.
  She looked directly at the woman behind the counter and
  said, “I need to see her. I need to make sure she’s all right.”
  The woman looked back at her for a heartbeat, then
  smiled. “I’ll see what I can do, sweetheart.” Her fingers flew
  across the computer keyboard. She frowned once. “Two
  Dales on record, but both men.” Her fingers moved again.
  “You said this morning? Smoke inhalation?”
  Jeane’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes.”
  “How old was she?”
  “Fifty-seven,” Jeane said without hesitation. Somewhere
  in the back of her mind, she always remembered Dale’s age.
  “Hmm . . .” The woman behind the counter looked at the
  computer screen through her half-glasses. “Brought into
  emergency this morning, admitted into the hospital for
  observation. Age . . . fifty-eight?”
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  way over, she had focused on what her birth mother might
  need from her. Now it appeared that everything had already
  been taken care of. What else was there? Except . . .
  Jeane looked down at her hand and Dale’s, squeezed
  together. “You know,” she said, “I’ve never forgotten what
  you told me, but I’m not eighteen anymore. I’d really like to
  get to know you better.”
  “Ah. Um . . . Jeane?” Dale’s voice was hesitant and she
  gently tugged her hand away.
  Jeane glanced up. The lost expression was gone from
  Dale’s face, replaced by one of genuine confusion. The older
  woman gave her an apologetic smile.
  “I’m sorry,” Dale said. “It’s always embarrassing to ask
  this, but I have to be honest—where exactly do I know you
  from?”
  Jeane froze. “Excuse me?”
  The woman in the bed gave her a very awkward look.
  “You know how it is. You run into somebody, and they know
  you, but you can’t remember them at all and it’s really, really
  embarrassing. I was hoping something you’d say would jog
  my memory, but . . .” She shrugged. “Sorry,” she said again.
  “Oh, God. Oh, dear God.” Jeane couldn’t move. Her spine,
  her hips, her knees—everything felt locked. Her face was
  burning with shame. She wanted to get out of the chair,
  wanted to flee the hospital room, but she just couldn’t move.
  She should have listened to the woman at the information
  desk. She should have listened to McCain. She shouldn’t
  have come to the hospital. She had never felt more deeply
  ashamed in her life, and she had never known less what to
  do next.
  It was the wrong woman.
  Shelley Brooks leaned forward and touched her arm.
  “Are you all right?”
  The touch broke Jeane out of her shook. “Yes,” she said,
  standing up. “I am so sorry. I thought you were someone else
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  At least she wasn’t wearing too much make-up this time.
  Jeane stopped by the foot of the bed.
  “Shelley Brooks?” she asked.
  If there was one thing her line of work had prepared her
  for, it was that if people changed their names, there was usu-
  ally a reason.
  Dale glanced up. Her face crinkled. “Yes?”
  She didn’t recognize Jeane. That shouldn’t have been
  entirely unexpected, Jeane supposed. It had been a long
  time, and as much as she took care of herself, she knew that
  wasn’t the same girl she had been when she was eighteen.
  “It’s Jeane,” she told Dale quietly. “Jeane Meara.”
  The older woman blinked once, then joy flooded her face,
  bringing it to life. “Jeane! Oh, my God. It’s been—how long?”
  “Twenty-two years.”
  Dale shook her head. “So long. But you’re looking good.
  How are you?”
  “The question should be how are you?” There was a chair
  standing against the wall. Jeane pulled it up closer to the bed
  and Dale and sat down. “I saw you on the news with the fire.”
  “Oh.”
  Dale’s face looked a little bit lost. It was an expression
  Jeane had seen before, back when she’d been doing arson
  investigations. No one ever knew what to do in the after-
  math of a fire. She reached out and took one of Dale’s hands
  in hers.
  Dale tensed a little, then relaxed and continued, “I’m
  fine, I suppose. I feel a little wheezy, and the police were by
  earlier. Apparently the only damage to my apartment is a lot
  of smoke. They said we should be able to go back in a couple
  of days. I’m insured, and I’ve already talked to my broker.
  The insurance will cover a hotel. Everything will be fine.”
  Jeane smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”
  She gave Dale’s hand a squeeze. It felt very odd to be
  meeting her again. Jeane wasn’t sure what to say. The whole
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  range where I could act young parts and not old enough to
  get the mature parts. I was living in LA, working a restau-
  rant job trying to make ends meet. One day, this guy comes
  up to me and asks me if I can do a job for him. One-time gig.
  The money he was offering was more than I’d get at the
  restaurant in six months. Nothing dirty, nothing illegal.”
  Shelley sighed again. “He’d even pay for the plane flight to
  Cleveland.”
  The wall beside the bed was blank. Jeane stared at it
  numbly. “He hired you to play the part of Dale Churchill.”
  “I only played it once, Jeane. For you. He gave me the
  whole role: what I needed to say, what the background was.
  All I had to do was make sure you stayed with your parents
  by turning you away from Dale Churchill.” Shelley looked
  down and rubbed Jeane’s hands. “When I saw you come into
  that diner, I almost lost it. You looked so nervous and hope-
  ful. Going through with it was probably the hardest thing I’ve
  ever done in my life. The whole way through I thought I was
  going to bomb.”
  “I believed you.”
  Shelley gave a bitter little laugh. “Best acting of my life,
  and the job I hated the most. I’m sorry, Jeane.”
  What the hell was she supposed to say? Jeane squeezed
  her hand back without saying anything. This time silence
  seemed proper—the right thing—instead of awkward. The
  tears in her eyes went away slowly. This wasn’t Shelley’s
  fault. She had just been doing a job. There was, however,
  someone else involved.
  Jeane broke the silence and asked, “Shelley, can you tell
  me anything about the man who hired you?”
  “God damn,” said Shelley. “You’re a cop.”
  Jeane had to smile. “Close enough.”
  She took a deep breath and reached into her pocket for
  her notebook. This felt good. This was familiar territory to
  her. The investigation. The hunt. Maybe this was the way she
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  and that maybe she had changed her name because I was
  just so certain you were her.”
  There were tears flooding her eyes and snot clogging her
  nose, and Jeane was absolutely sure that she didn’t have
  anything even remotely resembling a tissue. All she could
  think about was getting out. She managed a wet, wobbly grin
  as she stumbled back away from the bed.
  “You’ve probably never even been to Cleveland.”
  She spun around. The door seemed a mile away. She
  could hear Shelley as if in the distance, calling her name.
  And shouting out “Gail Churchill!”
  Jeane froze for a second time and turned around very
  slowly. The room was silent. All of the people in the other
  beds and all of their visitors were staring at her and at Shel-
  ley. Shelley kneeled on the end of her bed, sheets and blan-
  kets tangled around her legs. She was staring at Jeane.
  “Gail Churchill,” she said again. “Your mother’s name
  was Gail Churchill.”
  She slid back and sat again as Jeane returned to the bed-
  side. For long moments, neither of them said anything. The
  volume in the room swelled up around them once more.
  Finally, Jeane said, “Her name was Dale.”
  Shelley blinked and nodded. “Yes. That was it.”
  The silence became awkward again before Jeane took a
  long breath and asked, “What’s going on? Are you Shelley
  Brooks?” The woman in the bed nodded. “What do you know
  about Dale Churchill?”
  “I know that I did a very bad thing to a young woman
  twenty years ago.” She sighed and patted the bed. “Sit down,
  Jeane.”
  She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to give up the power
  of standing over this woman. She sat anyway. Shelley took
  her hands, folding them tightly in her own.
  “I’m an actress,” she said. “Was an actress. Twenty-two
  years ago was not the easiest time for me. I was out of the
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  for a moment, then added, “Did you have a contact in
  Cleveland?”
  Shelley shook her head. “No, only you.” She frowned and
  reached for a box of tissues. “Jeane, there’s ink leaking from
  your pen.”
  “I know,” Jeane said tightly.
  She accepted the tissues, yanking out handfuls of them to
  scrub the blue blotches on her hands before wadding them up
  around the pen. She stuffed the puffy ball back into the
  empty tissue box.
  “Shelley, one last question: did you ever find out anything
  about the real Dale Churchill?”
  “Oh.” Shelley blinked and looked honestly sad. “I’m
  sorry, Jeane, but I guess I didn’t make it clear. As far as I
  could tell, the man who hired me made everything up. I don’t
  think there ever was a Dale Churchill.”
  If there was a downside, Jeane decided, to having thrown
  herself into her work with the Hoffmann Institute, it was
  that she had very few close friends in Chicago—not that
  she’d had many close friends in Washington, D.C., either.
  She simply wasn’t the type of person to make friends easily.
  Most of the time, that didn’t bother her at all.
  Except that now she needed to talk.
  After a last, uncomfortable round of apologies and for-
  giveness, she had left Cook County Hospital in the kind of
  unstoppable, unrelenting fury that was more typical of natu-
  ral disasters. She needed to let it all out. To complain to
  someone who would, even if they didn’t understand, at least
  listen to her rants. And while she would not normally have
  hesitated before going to Ngan or McCain with those rants,
  they were more than likely still in the meeting that she had
  absented herself from.
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  should have approached the whole thing right from the
  beginning.
  She shifted around to face Shelley and asked, “What do
  you remember?”
  There wasn’t much in Shelley’s story that could help
  twenty years later. The name the man had given her had
  been fake—Shelley had sensed that immediately. The man
  had been old, probably in his early sixties. White. Balding
  badly, grey beard, great big hatchet of a nose. He had paid
  cash for everything. Educated, to judge from the way he
  talked.
  “Nice clothes, though,” Shelley added. “Nice car, too—
  Lincoln Continental Mark V, 1979 Collector’s Series in navy
  blue. They had Tom Selleck in the ads for them. You proba-
  bly wouldn’t remember that.”
  “You’d be surprised,” murmured Jeane, fighting to keep
  a growl of disappointed frustration out of her voice. “Shel-
  ley, if this guy gave you a fake name, why did you agree to
  do the gig?”
  “Money,” sighed Shelley. “Plus I had the license number
  of the car, and everybody around work had got a real good
  look at the guy, so I figured if there was any trouble, the
  police could track him down. But he sounded so sweet and
  desperate, I wasn’t really all that worried. He needed this
  done so bad it was touching. You could hear it in his voice.
  As soon as I said I’d do it, he was bouncing off the walls.
  First thing he did was use the payphone in the restaurant to
  make a long-distance call.” Her face shifted and her voice
  dropped in imitation of an exuberant old man. “ ‘I’ve found
  someone. She’s going to do it, Stan!’ ”
  The plastic of Jeane’s pen bent sharply and snapped.
  “Stan?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice level. “You’re
  sure he said ‘Stan’?”
  Shelley nodded emphatically.
  No. It was a coincidence. It had to be. Jeane strained
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  43
  an wasn’t in his University of Chicago residence
  room when Ngan called to tell him of Lily’s deci-
  sion. He left a message with Van’s roommate
  with instructions for Van to call him. The young man
  promised to pass the message on but Ngan had his
  doubts: the background noise of the dormitory
  seemed far too loud and rowdy to ensure the safe
  transmission of even the simplest message. Then
  again, when he had been Van’s age, he had been liv-
  ing in the ordered tranquility of the Monastery of
  Inner Light, surrounded by the stark perfection of the
  Himalayas. Most aspects of American life struck him
  as too loud and rowdy.
  Before he put the telephone down, he dialed
  Jeane’s cell phone number once more and her home
  phone number. In the first case, a pleasant, if artifi-
  cial voice, told him politely that the subscriber was
  unavailable. In the second, Jeane’s own voice told him
  chapter
  T h r 3 e
  V
  That really only left one other person, and as much as she
  found Ned Devromme odious on any number of levels, she
  could at least respect him and count him as a friend.
  She slammed through the door of his shop so fast that the
  normally laconic Kaz let out a frightened squawk and fell off
  his stool.
  “Where’s Ned?”
  Kaz pointed to the back of the store and Ned’s apartment
  with a trembling hand. Jeane went back. This time she didn’t
  even bother to knock. Ned was just getting up from a
  patched, overstuffed armchair.
  “Jeane—”
  There was a jacket lying nearby. Somewhere along the
  line, she realized, her plans had changed. She didn’t just
  need someone to talk to. She snatched up the jacket and
  flung it at Ned.
  “Get packed,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me to
  Ohio.”
  He caught the jacket. “Why?” he asked simply.
  “Because,” Jeane seethed, “I’m going to need someone
  there to restrain me when I try to kill my father.”
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  imagination back, and Ngan opened his eyes. “Taking a quick
  meditation break?” McCain asked, looking down on him.
  “Penny for your thoughts.”
  “Van’s not in,” Ngan told him quickly. “Nor can I reach
  Jeane.”
  Until he knew more about what was disturbing Lily,
  secrecy was the best policy. There was no need to worry
  McCain. His partner would be on his toes with or without
  additional warning.
  McCain’s nose crinkled up in disappointment. “I hate to
  say it, but maybe we should get started now. Renfield doesn’t
  sound like the kind of person I’d want running around my
  backyard any longer than necessary.” He perched himself on
  the edge of Ngan’s desk. “The logical place to start is the nut
  house she ran away from.”
  “I believe ‘mental health center’ is the preferred term,
  Michael,” Ngan pointed out. He flipped open the slim
  assignment file Lily had given them. “Elgin Mental Health
  Center, Elgin, Illinois. It’s a relatively short drive from
  here.” He looked up at McCain. “We may have trouble get-
  ting in though: the Hoffmann Institute has no contacts
  inside the center.”
  “Piece of cake.”
  Ngan gave him a doubtful look. “Michael, you are very
  good at talking your way into places, but this is an institu-
  tion that is used to keeping a secure facility, has just had an
  escape, and is likely to have a few police around looking into
  the matter. Simply walking in with a smile is not likely to be
  successful.”
  “Ah, but Ngan” replied McCain, reaching across the desk
  to his phone. “It’s not the guys you know, it’s the guys the
  guys you know know.” He set the telephone to speaker mode
  and punched in a number, then sat back. “And I happen to
  know someone who knows a surprising number of people in
  the medical community.”
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  much the same thing, only far less politely. Ngan stifled a
  sigh and returned the handset of his phone to its cradle
  before closing his eyes for a moment. He wasn’t worried
  about Jeane. He wasn’t worried about Van.
  He was worried about Lily Adler.
  He had known Lily for a long, long time. He had known
  her when they were both fresh-faced recruits, as young as
  Michael McCain was now. He had watched her grow into her
  place in the Hoffmann Institute and advance through its
  ranks. He was, Ngan thought, one of the very few people in
  the Institute or outside of it whom Lily trusted completely.
  He knew her inside and out.
  He didn’t think he’d ever seen her look quite so con-
  cerned before, not for him, not for any other agent.
  While there was certainly danger in their assignment,
  Ngan couldn’t see that it was any worse than some of the
  other missions they had faced. It certainly couldn’t be that
  dangerous if Lily wasn’t willing to keep Van off of it. Orders
  from her superiors or not, Lily didn’t send her agents—even
  the least of them—into situations she didn’t think they
  could handle.
  Or perhaps it wasn’t the assignment at all.
  Something stirred dark suspicions inside him. Not so
  long ago he had suggested to McCain and Jeane that there
  might be a leak in the security with which the Hoffmann
  Institute surrounded itself. Information that should have
  been secret was too often in the hands of those agencies to
  which the Hoffmann Institute considered itself opposed. Or
  at least to which Ngan considered it opposed.
  What if there was something more? What if his vague,
  disloyal suspicions were true? What if Lily knew something
  and was afraid for him because of it?
  What if he was simply slipping into the mad paranoia that
  the Institute itself so often investigated?
  A shadow loomed over his desk, bringing his wandering
  44
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  “Well, well,” murmured McCain. “Isn’t that convenient?
  So, Shani, think you could talk your old friend into speaking
  with a couple of fine gentlemen about one of her patients?”
  They were on the road to Elgin within two hours. Shani
  had managed to get hold of Olivia Marquez. They had spent,
  she had told McCain, a good while reminiscing and catching
  up, but Shani had eventually brought the conversation around
  to the reason she called. A friend of hers worked for the law
  firm of Bodi, Aaron, and Barry—the same law firm where
  Lisa Renfield had worked before her breakdown. The part-
  ners at the firm had heard of Renfield’s escape and were con-
  cerned that she might pose a danger to the company or, more
  importantly, to them. The police investigation, they felt,
  would move too slowly to protect them. Two investigators
  regularly employed by the firm were standing by. Could Olivia
  spare the time to talk to them and answer their questions?
  Olivia had bought the cover. Now the rest was up to him
  and Ngan.
  As they sped along US Route 20 toward Elgin, McCain
  listened while Ngan read the case file out loud once more.
  Much of the Institute’s information on Lisa Renfield was dis-
  appointingly thin for someone with such a checkered history.
  The most interesting part of the file was the report filed by
  the agents who had looked into the initial cause of Renfield’s
  insanity, classifying the event as a “class four manifestation
  of and communication with a xenoform of ultraterrestrial
  origin, uncontrolled.”
  “Class four?” he asked Ngan.
  The old man frowned into the folder. “The deliberate
  interaction with paranormal forces.” When McCain gave him
  a blank look, he added, “Renfield knew exactly what she was
  dealing with. Uncontrolled means—”
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  The phone rang twice before it was picked up on the
  other end. “Doctor Doyle,” said a woman’s voice, profes-
  sional and crisp.
  “Hi, kitten,” answered McCain. “Who’s your daddy?”
  “Fitz!” Shani Doyle managed to sound both scandalized
  and reprimanding at the same time. “I’m at work!”
  McCain rolled his eyes. No fun, he mouthed silently to
  Ngan, then said aloud, “So am I, Shani. Say hello to Ngan.”
  “Hello, Ngan,” said Shani. “Could you find a cold shower
  and throw Fitz in it for me, please?”
  Ngan leaned a little toward the phone. “I’m sorry,” he
  said with a smile, “but I wouldn’t want to step in the way of
  romance.”
  “Too bad. Where’s Jeane? I’m sure she’d be glad to do it.”
  “She’s not here,” McCain replied hastily, and Ngan’s smile
  grew wider.
  He was sure Jeane would have been only too glad to enact
  Shani’s vengeance for her. Shani Doyle was a friend to the
  entire team and an ally of the Hoffmann Institute—in fact,
  she had been the one who’d tipped the Institute off to the
  events centered around Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery.
  “We did call for a reason, Shani,” McCain continued. “We
  need your help.” Shani gave a noise of sarcastic disbelief
  and Fitz grimaced. “I’ve told Ngan you know people. Don’t
  disappoint me. We need a contact in the Elgin Mental Health
  Center.”
  “Is that all? Olivia Marquez.”
  Ngan started as soon as she said the name and reached
  for the folder Lily had given them. “Dr. Olivia Marquez?”
  “Yes,” Shani said with a hint of suspicion. “We went to
  med school together at UCLA. I went into neurology, Ollie
  went into psychiatry. Why?”
  Ngan found the page in the folder where he had seen the
  name and showed it to McCain. It was a recent psychiatric
  assessment of Lisa Renfield—signed by Dr. Olivia Marquez.
  46
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  the same.” Ngan reached into the backseat for McCain’s brief-
  case and slipped the file into it. “When you see Shani, please
  congratulate her for me on getting us into Elgin. She’s a
  resourceful woman.” He glanced over at McCain. “You two
  have been together for a year now, haven’t you?”
  “A year last week,” McCain confirmed. He couldn’t help
  laughing though. “Don’t go throwing rice, Ngan. It’s not like
  we’re married.”
  “Still, a year.” Ngan didn’t turn away. “I know there was
  a long period of your life where it didn’t seem like I was
  around, but I did hear all about you from your parents. This
  is the longest you’ve ever had a steady relationship, isn’t it?”
  McCain turned for a moment and looked back at him.
  They had known each other for a long time. Ngan was friends
  with McCain’s parents, both former Hoffmann agents, and
  had been a sufficiently frequent visitor to the McCain house-
  hold that he had acquired the nickname of “Uncle Again.”
  Knowing that Ngan and his parents had been keeping such
  close tabs on his romantic relationships over the years,
  though . . . McCain turned back to the road and commented,
  “I did play the field, didn’t I?”
  “Putting it mildly, yes.”
  “And that left you, Mom, and Dad a little worried,
  didn’t it?”
  Ngan didn’t answer. At least not right away. After a
  minute of silence, he looked down at his fingers. “There are
  aspects of behavior,” he said, “that are the product of
  nature—genetics—and there are aspects that are the prod-
  uct of nurture—upbringing. While you were growing up,
  everyone tried to ensure that nurture would have the upper
  hand, but when you began exhibiting certain tendencies and
  . . . well, appetites, we started to worry that . . .”
  “The clone of JFK was going to be as bad as the origi-
  nal?” McCain reached across the seat and punched Ngan in
  the shoulder. “You know, that was one of things that really
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  “I can guess.” McCain turned back to the road. “That
  would be the part where Renfield stopped knowing exactly
  what she was dealing with.”
  Jargon-filled descriptions aside, the investigators had
  turned up a blank on whatever it was that had attacked Ren-
  field and her circle. The occult paraphernalia left behind had
  pointed toward ritual dealings with minor beings who should
  not have had the power to break Renfield’s magic. The inves-
  tigators’ conclusion was that Renfield had unwittingly made
  contact with something stronger than she could handle.
  Beyond the effects of the entity on Renfield and her circle,
  the physical signs of its manifestation—furniture tumbled
  about, walls and surfaces blistered by some kind of acidic
  spray, a burning odor in the air—had been too generic to aid
  in identification. In the end, it had been the investigators
  who had recommended keeping a watch on the institutional-
  ized Renfield.
  McCain shuddered as Ngan closed the case file. “Xeno-
  forms, and demons, and ultraterrestrials, oh my!”
  “Not precisely a professional assessment, Michael,” said
  Ngan with a smile.
  “It’s hard enough keeping the terminology straight.”
  “We’ve encountered examples of two of the three,” Ngan
  pointed out. “Xenoforms are any creatures outside the range
  of normal human experience. The creature Ylem in Washing-
  ton, D.C., was a xenoform, as was the homunculus Nichts
  that you befriended in Camp Clarity. Ultraterrestrials are
  xenoforms with origins in dimensions of space-time parallel
  to our own—the entities we encountered while in the com-
  pany of Luther Blisset being a particularly exotic variety.
  Demons are commonly ultraterrestrials of an arcane and
  malevolent nature.”
  McCain made a face. “Somehow saying ‘malevolent ultra-
  terrestrial’ doesn’t sound as silly as saying ‘demon.’ ”
  “Use it if you prefer. The creature behind the label remains
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  the light faded. The glow vanished from the hospital and
  while it was still a vast, imposing structure, any elegance
  was gone. The building wore its years heavily. The yellow
  brick was old, stained dark in long patches by decades of
  water, dirt, cold, and heat. The peaked rooflines were sag-
  ging and crumbling around the edges. Some of the highest
  windows were boarded up, and the proud clock tower was
  frozen at two-thirty. The estate-like appearance of the
  grounds was an illusion as well. As they drove up to the
  guardhouse, McCain could see that the bushes were over-
  grown and skeletal, their leaves plucked by the season,
  while the landscaping was old, the product of work under-
  taken many, many years ago. The ornamental gates by the
  road were so new that the edges on the brick support pillars
  were sharp; the functional gates by the guardhouse hung
  from tall iron posts that, like the gates themselves, were
  harsh and rough.
  A guard emerged as they pulled up to the inner gates, and
  McCain stuck his head out the window. “Mark Lambe and
  Matthew Kwon to see Dr. Olivia Marquez. She’s expecting us.”
  The guard made a call from a phone inside his little
  booth, and a moment later the gates swung inward ahead of
  them.
  The guard stepped back out of his booth and said, “Dr.
  Marquez will meet you in the front lobby. Visitor parking is
  to the left. Make sure you lock your car.”
  Even the worst renovations of recent years couldn’t oblit-
  erate the noble sweep of columns and arches in the hospital
  lobby, though clearly the attempt had been made. The origi-
  nal doors had been carved out to make room for a set of ugly
  modern security doors, and nondescript, low-maintenance
  carpet hid whatever original floor had been laid down. The
  front desk was a hideous thing of plastic panels and brushed
  metal strips. Its unpleasant presence, however, was allevi-
  ated by the woman standing next to it.
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  worried me when I found out the truth. Here I was with a
  string of affairs like Christmas lights, not really thinking
  much of it, and suddenly I’m the twin of a man with
  enough of a reputation to decorate the tree on the White
  House lawn. And when you look at the rumors about
  Bobby, too . . .”
  “Michael,” Ngan said, “haven’t you understood when I’ve
  tried to reiterate that you are not John F. Kennedy?”
  McCain nodded as he changed lanes at the sign for Elgin
  Mental Health Center and turned off Route 20 for a smaller
  local road. “I understood, Ngan. I also know there’s no one
  in control of my hormones but me. You, Mom, and Dad can
  stop worrying now. Shani Doyle is going to be the only
  woman in my life from now on.”
  Ngan looked at him with a little surprise. “That’s a very
  admirable and mature position, Michael. I think your parents
  would be proud of you.”
  “I hope so!” McCain grinned. “Not that . . . Woah, Nelly!”
  McCain wasn’t exactly sure what he had been expecting
  of the Elgin Mental Health Center. Maybe a plain set of secu-
  rity gates by the road, with a chain link fence and a wide,
  featureless lawn surrounding a boxy institutional building.
  Instead, a lane curved away from the road and through
  a set of ornamental gates. More functional gates and a
  fence were set well back and screened by bushes so that
  they blended into the landscaping of what seemed more
  like an estate than an asylum. Over it all loomed the hospi-
  tal, an imposing nineteenth-century building of yellow brick
  that shone in a stray beam of late afternoon sunlight. A tall
  clock tower dominated a massive central block of three tall
  stories with a fourth tucked under the peaked, grey roof.
  From that central block, big wings swept back on both the
  left and right.
  The effect lasted only just long enough for McCain to
  take it all in. Somewhere in the west, the clouds shifted and
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  One point for Dr. Marquez, thought McCain as the psy-
  chiatrist turned to Ngan and asked lightly, “Would you care
  to try, Mr. Kwon?”
  Ngan shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Dr. Mar-
  quez.” He had a notepad and pen in his hand. “I’m here to
  record information. Mr. Lambe will direct the questions.”
  Olivia’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t realize I was on trial,”
  she commented, and Ngan looked down at his notepad coyly.
  “A poor choice of words. I beg your pardon.” The old man
  looked to McCain. “Mr. Lambe?”
  The ball was back in McCain’s court. He smiled at Olivia
  and asked, “Dr. Marquez, tell me about Lisa Renfield.”
  Olivia’s pretty smile was just as relentless. “You’ll have
  to be a little more specific, I’m afraid. What precisely did you
  want to know?”
  Behind his smile, McCain clenched his teeth. Olivia Mar-
  quez was a tough one. Maybe he had become complacent
  with the ease to which people accepted him and shared their
  confidence. It was, he supposed, a possibility, but there was
  also something about Dr. Marquez that put him on edge.
  He’d have to push a little harder.
  “We already know about her background,” McCain said.
  “I’d like to know more about her state of mind. What can you
  tell me about her insanity?”
  “Mental health, Mr. Lambe. Her mental health.” Olivia
  sat back in her chair, the smile fading into a cold line across
  her lips. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
  “Well,” he snapped, “can you at least tell us if you think
  she’s a danger to our clients?”
  He cursed himself as soon as the words were out of his
  mouth. That wasn’t the way to win someone over. Damn.
  What was it about her that was pushing his buttons?
  To his surprise, however, the question seemed to catch
  her as well. Dr. Marquez hesitated, her eyes blinking rapidly.
  After a moment, she looked away and said, “Yes. She is.”
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  She was petite, no taller than Ngan, but carried herself
  with an assurance that lent her significantly greater height.
  Her face was narrow, with high cheekbones and full lips.
  Dark hair fell in a no-nonsense bob that echoed her clothes—
  simple yet professional. Her eyes were dark, too. Recogni-
  tion flickered in them as she looked up and saw McCain and
  Ngan. McCain stepped forward before she could say any-
  thing, holding out his hand in greeting.
  “Dr. Olivia Marquez?”
  “Mark Lambe?” She shook his hand Ngan’s in turn. “Mr.
  Kwon. Welcome to Elgin Mental Health Center—or just
  Elgin if you get tired of wrapping your mouth around the
  whole thing. If you’ll sign in, we’ll get you visitor badges,
  then we can sit down in my office and discuss your . . .
  needs.” McCain smiled back at her as he signed his assumed
  name to the visitor’s list. Perfect.
  Olivia’s office was down a long, narrow corridor on the
  first floor. A corner of the office was clearly set up for con-
  sultations, with a big chair for Olivia and a comfortable
  couch for her visitors—or her patients, McCain realized as
  he sat at a gesture from her. Ngan took the other end of the
  couch. Olivia took the chair and considered them both for a
  moment.
  Finally she said, “You both know that I’m talking to you
  as a favor for a friend. I’d also like to make it clear that cer-
  tain things about Lisa Renfield are protected by doctor-
  patient confidentiality. I can’t and won’t answer certain
  questions.”
  McCain gave her the same smile he had before. “Natu-
  rally. Of course, you realize that we may still try to get that
  information out of you.”
  One corner of Olivia’s mouth twitched upward. “You’re
  welcome to try, Mr. Lambe.”
  “Call me Mark.”
  “I don’t think so.”
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  triumph as he returned to his seat. Olivia continued. “Lisa
  Renfield’s case is somewhat odd on a number of levels. You
  have a description of her initial arrest? Her obsession with
  death and decay and her delusion that eight people disap-
  peared the night she was found?” Olivia folded her arms as if
  she was cold. “After fifteen years of having her in our care,
  we’ve built up quite a history of that delusion. The detail is
  remarkable.”
  McCain nodded. “So the delusions make her dangerous?”
  He wondered what Olivia would say if she knew the truth.
  Olivia shook her head and uncrossed her arms. Her hands
  came up again, though this time they made a thoughtful
  steeple in front of her. Her voice shifted, too, becoming more
  confident.
  “To understand Renfield,” she said, “you have to go back
  to her initial belief that she was confronted by a demon, the
  one responsible for the disappearance of her eight non-exis-
  tent friends. During this encounter, Renfield claims that the
  demon showed her the full extent of time and its effects on the
  world. She describes it as like a river of decay. In her mind, she
  is the only one who understands the truth of the world and
  sees its future. Inevitably, that future is death and decay.”
  Ngan looked up from scribbling on his notepad. “In a
  sense, Dr. Marquez, she is correct. Don’t all people under-
  stand the same thing on some level?”
  “Unfortunately, Mr. Kwon, Renfield is consumed by it.”
  Olivia shifted uncomfortably. McCain gave her a curious
  glance, and she nodded. “Yes, Mr. Lambe, there’s more.” She
  sighed. “Some time ago, Renfield developed the belief that
  there was hope for her. That there was someone or some-
  thing who was immune to the ravages of time and could pro-
  tect her from the decay that was slowly reducing her to dust.
  In her own vision of the world, someone who stands outside
  of the river of decay. Whether this being could protect the
  rest of the world was moot—she was the one that mattered.”
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  McCain seized the opening. “Could you elaborate on that,
  Dr. Marquez?”
  Olivia bit her lip. “She’s a danger to everyone, Mr.
  Lambe.”
  Her shield was back up. “How?” McCain demanded,
  jumping to his feet in frustration. “How is she—?”
  As soon as Olivia looked up at him, dark eyes startled by
  his sudden movement, he knew what it was that was rub-
  bing him the wrong way—and he knew that it wasn’t her. It
  was him.
  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ngan giving him
  a quick, quizzical look. Probably wondering why he don’t
  move in for the kill, McCain knew. When was the last time
  he had tried to work information out of a beautiful woman?
  Out of any woman in fact. Not since a year ago. Not since
  he’d met Shani.
  He was holding back, plying her with nothing more than
  the ghost of his charm and persuasion. This was the right
  moment to press Dr. Marquez. He could feel it, but he also
  knew what getting the answers he needed would require and
  that felt dangerously close to betraying Shani, especially
  when Olivia Marquez was her friend.
  Come on, Fitz, he told himself, its okay. It doesn’t mean
  anything, it’s not like you’re actually going to do anything.
  It’s purely business. Shani will understand.
  He held up his hands in peace. “Sorry.” He crouched down
  in front of Olivia so that they were looking directly into each
  others’ eyes. “Dr. Marquez,” he said, “I know you can’t tell us
  everything about Renfield, but we need to know something.”
  He spoke gently, almost flirtatiously, putting everything into
  the persuasion. He let himself go. For a moment, Olivia was
  the center of his world. He needed her help. He needed her.
  The resolve in her eyes wavered. “Why is she dangerous?”
  “She’s . . .” Olivia threw up her hands. “Oh, sit down,
  Mark. You look ridiculous like that.” McCain stifled a grin of
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  McCain leaped into the silence brazenly, trying to head
  off whatever verbal outrage he could. “I’m sorry I even have
  to ask, Dr. Marquez, but there is a very good reason.”
  “I very much doubt,” she said, “if it is good enough. No
  one is simply given a copy of a patient’s file. Even the police
  had to get the proper court order. You aren’t the police.”
  “I know.”
  “Then why ask?”
  He looked up, catching her eyes. “Because one of our
  clients,” he improvised with absolute sincerity, “was having
  an affair with Renfield at the time of her breakdown. He’s
  afraid she’s going to come after him now that she’s escaped.”
  “Your client,” observed Olivia, “should go to the police.”
  “Which would mean revealing the affair. The scandal
  would destroy him.” Olivia began to comment on that, but
  McCain cut her off quickly. “It would destroy his family, too,
  and it’s them he’s most concerned about. Three young chil-
  dren and a psychopath stalking him?” He looked at Olivia
  soulfully. “He needs peace of mind, Dr. Marquez. If Renfield
  has forgotten him, he’s safe. If she’s been thinking about him
  all these years, he’ll go to the police for his family’s sake, but
  for his family’s sake he’d rather not. It all comes down to
  that file.”
  He paused, waiting for his words to sink in—and sink in
  they did. Slowly, some color came back to Olivia’s face, red
  flares of color high on her cheek. “Does Shani Doyle know
  about this?” she demanded.
  “No,” said Ngan from the far side of the couch. He had put
  away his notepad and was sitting with the rapt attention of
  a hunting bird. “She couldn’t be told.”
  McCain would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could.
  Of course, Shani didn’t know about this particular aspect of
  their cover, but then until moments ago, neither had he. He
  was glad Ngan had picked up on the improvisation so swiftly
  as well.
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  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” McCain observed. “It’s
  almost like she’s taken religion.”
  “Aside from the fact that she doesn’t couch it in religious
  terms, yes.” Olivia grimaced again. “Unfortunately, that
  belief has taken a turn for the worse. Renfield has been talk-
  ing about seeking out her protector. Because she doesn’t
  know what form that protector will take, however, she also
  talks about the need to test potential candidates.”
  Silence dropped over the room. “That,” McCain said
  finally, “sounds bad.”
  “That, Mr. Lambe, is why she’s dangerous.” Olivia let her
  hands fall. “It’s also, I think, why she escaped.”
  “Has there been any sign of what form this testing might
  take?” McCain asked with a certain dread.
  Olivia shook her head. “Renfield never talked about it
  directly. I’m not even sure she knows.” She crinkled her
  nose. “I hope that answers your questions, gentlemen. I have
  the feeling I’ve already told you more than I should have.”
  McCain cleared his throat. They weren’t quite finished
  yet. “Actually, Dr. Marquez, there were a couple of other
  things. We were hoping that you could show us the escape
  scene.”
  One of Olivia’s eyebrows went up. If she was surprised at
  that, though, he couldn’t wait to see her reaction to the sec-
  ond request. It was time to pour on the Michael McCain
  charm.
  He gave Olivia his best bashful, hang-dog look and
  said, “And we were wondering if you could give us a copy
  of her file.”
  Olivia Marquez went rage pale. The color even bled out of
  her lips, so tightly were they pressed together. She stared at
  McCain, and that look and her silence were more eloquent
  than words could ever have been. The response didn’t really
  surprise him at all—he might as well have asked her to take
  Renfield’s place in one of Elgin’s cells.
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  burning bright. “Dr. Wells—one of the missing men—had
  Renfield brought down here while her room was inspected
  for vermin.”
  McCain looked at the doors they were passing. Nothing
  there seemed to have been designed with much security in
  mind. “Why here?”
  Olivia shrugged. “There was nowhere else. We’re full,
  Mr. Lambe. Almost overcrowded. I suppose that Dr. Wells
  thought this would be as good a place as any. According
  to the maintenance crew who saw Renfield taken out of
  her cell, she was fully sedated and strapped securely to a
  gurney.”
  “If she was sedated and restrained, how did she get
  free?”
  “That’s the million dollar question, Mr. Lambe.” She
  stopped in front of the brightly lit room, its door crisscrossed
  with yellow police investigation tape. “This is it.”
  McCain peered inside. Though a police team had already
  swept through the room and added their own peculiar
  orderly chaos to the scene, it was clear that some kind of
  struggle had taken place. The walls were bashed and dented
  by the impact of something large—something the size of a
  human body, perhaps. Sparse furnishings had been tossed
  around. A gurney still lay against the wall fairly close to the
  door. The metal legs were crumpled and twisted.
  “That’s what she was strapped to?” McCain asked and
  Olivia nodded. He stood back and looked up and down the
  hallway outside. They were alone. “Tell me if anyone is
  coming.”
  Before she could protest, he slipped under the police tape
  and into the room, scanning it for anything the police might
  have missed, especially anything that might have had para-
  normal significance. As far as he could tell, however, there
  was nothing. If there had been anything, it had probably been
  found. There weren’t even marks on the floor to tell where
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  McCain turned back to Olivia and said, “It’s important,
  Dr. Marquez. We wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
  “I . . .” Olivia began, then stopped. The color had spread
  on her cheeks. She rose, turning around her chair so that it
  was between her and the two agents. She looked at both of
  them again, then said firmly. “No. No, I can’t give you Ren-
  field’s file.”
  “Dr. Marquez, please!” McCain appealed. What other
  angle was there that he could play? His mind raced—but
  only for a moment as Olivia held up a hand.
  “I can’t give you the file,” she said. “I simply can’t.” As
  she spoke, however, she crossed the room to a filing cabinet
  and unlocked a drawer, pulling it out halfway. She turned
  back to McCain. Her eyes were hard with the frustration of
  someone who knew she was doing the wrong thing for the
  right reason. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Lambe, I can show
  you the scene of Renfield’s escape, though perhaps Mr. Kwon
  would prefer to wait for us here. I must insist, however, that
  he stay away from the photocopier in the office next door.”
  She turned sharply and walked out. McCain shot Ngan a
  sharp glance of triumph, then dashed after Olivia. “Thank
  you,” he murmured as he caught up to her.
  “For what, Mr. Lambe?” She didn’t look at him.
  “For showing me the scene of the escape,” said McCain.
  Olivia turned her head just enough to look at him out of
  the corner of her eye. He gave her a warm smile that was as
  much flirtation as it was gratitude. When she turned away
  again, she was blushing.
  She led him up an old stairwell smelling of wood polish
  and disinfectant to a heavy wood door that opened onto
  Elgin’s second floor. The hallway beyond was cast in the
  shadows of after-hours. It was dead quiet.
  “What part of the hospital is this?” McCain asked.
  “Consultation and observation rooms, mostly.” Olivia led
  him down the hall toward a room where a light was still
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  61
  houldn’t we call first?” asked Ned.
  “No,” said Jeane.
  “He might not be home.”
  “Then we wait for him,” Jeane said.
  She tightened her hands on the wheel of the
  rental car and took the last turn on the road from
  Cleveland to the suburb of Parma, Ohio. Her fingers
  ached. They had spent so much time clenched tight
  over the last several hours that it hurt to spread them
  wide.
  She had given Ned only enough time to pack a few
  clothes before dashing over to her apartment to do
  the same thing. Then it had been a fast run out to
  O’Hare for tickets on the first available flight to
  Cleveland. They’d been forced to wait for almost an
  hour. It had nearly killed her. It had nearly killed Ned.
  She hadn’t so much talked as snapped and had spent
  all of the waiting time pacing back and forth in the
  chapter
  4 o u r
  S
  people might have scuffled. McCain frowned as he consid-
  ered the floor, however, then knelt down and brushed his
  hand along the baseboard of one wall. It came away dusted
  with a light grey powder.
  He held his hand out to Olivia and asked, “What’s this?”
  “I don’t know. Fingerprint dust?”
  “Not in just one place like this. And you don’t use pale
  dust on a pale surface.” He sniffed his hand. It smelled . . .
  dusty. Big surprise. He wiped his hand against an overturned
  chair and stepped back over to the door, pausing to examine
  the gurney. The thick old leather strap that would have fas-
  tened across a patient’s chest had been burst right at the
  midpoint—not cut or torn, but burst. The ragged edge was
  discolored, and he touched it gingerly. Fragments of the
  leather crumbled in his fingers. When he brought them close
  to his nose, a lingering smell of vinegar assaulted his nos-
  trils. Acid. Someone had weakened the strap with acid.
  The description of the scene of Renfield’s initial arrest
  fifteen years before echoed back to him. A description that
  included walls blistered by some kind of acidic spray. He
  looked from his fingers to the crumbling leather strap in
  disbelief.
  “Damn,” he whispered to himself.
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  the curtains of the living room. In spite of Ned’s fears, her
  father was home.
  For a moment, her anger slipped away. Was this the right
  way to do this? Her parents had always been so up front with
  her. Maybe Shelley had been wrong. Maybe . . .
  Who was she fooling?
  Jaws clenched like death, Ned hurrying after her, Jeane
  stalked up the cracked concrete front walk. She mounted the
  steps of the porch, and jammed her finger sharply against
  the door bell, then stepped back and waited. After a few
  moments, she caught the sound of movement in the hallway
  on the other side of the door, followed by the sharp click of
  locks opening. Then the door itself opened a crack. An eye
  peered out and blinked.
  “Jeane!” The door opened all the way, and Stan Meara
  fumbled with the latch on the storm door. “What are you
  doing . . .”
  His voice trailed away as he got a second look at the
  expression on her face and at Ned on the steps behind her.
  He swung the storm door wide so that they could come in but
  didn’t say anything else.
  The inside of the house was also much the same as Jeane
  remembered, maybe a little less neat without Rose to look
  after things. There was a stale old man smell in the air, and
  a small pile of shoes pouring out of the hall closet. The
  sounds of a basketball game drifted in from the living room.
  Jeane brushed past her father and went straight into the liv-
  ing room. She heard Ned murmur an introduction, but he
  received only a mild grunt of acknowledgment from her
  father as Stan turned after her.
  “What’s wrong, angel?” he asked from behind her back.
  Jeane didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t want to face
  him. Fear fought anger in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t
  wait to see which won. She forced herself to turn around and
  look at Stan. Her father was seventy-two years old. His hair
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  departure lounge. The short plane ride hadn’t been any bet-
  ter. Jeane was fairly certain she’d frightened the pale young
  flight attendant rather badly. The clerk at the car rental
  booth in the Cleveland airport had survived with just a minor
  shaking. Thank God they’d reached Cleveland after the
  evening rush hour was over or there might have been burn-
  ing car wrecks littering the road all the way to Parma.
  Ned had heard the story now. Jeane had shot it at him in
  sharp bursts of anger. Wisely, he had said nothing and she
  was grateful for that. The last thing she wanted to hear was
  some tired platitude of sympathy.
  The neighborhoods they drove through started to take on
  an old familiarity. A lot had changed in Parma since she’d
  left, but a lot was still the same. She recognized streets and
  churches, parks and houses. They drove past the house
  where one of her childhood friends had lived. A big extension
  had been tacked onto the side. Half of the big trees that had
  shaded another street were gone, as was an old corner store
  on another street, replaced by a big chain video store.
  Ned was looking around with interest. “Nice place to
  grow up,” he commented. “Was there a factory outlet for
  white picket fences in town?”
  “Shut up, Ned.”
  Virtually all of the trees on her old street were still there.
  None of the houses seemed to have changed. It looked just
  the same as it always did on her infrequent visits, except
  that this time, somehow, it felt like driving through a movie
  set. Fake.
  She pulled over and parked in front of her parents’
  house. Her father’s house, she corrected herself. She was
  never going to get used that. In a way, though, she was glad
  her mother wasn’t there. Confronting her father alone was
  going to be hard enough. Jeane looked up at the little two-
  story house with its creamy-beige siding. The lights were
  on, and she could see the flicker of a television set through
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  shoulders, dragging him to his feet. “Did she?” she de-
  manded, giving him a hard shake.
  “Jeane!” Ned thrust himself between them and forced
  them apart. Stan fell back in his chair.
  There were tears in his eyes. Jeane gulped air. “Why,
  Dad? Why?”
  “I . . .” He shook his head and looked away. “I can’t tell
  you, Jeane.” When she looked at him speechlessly, he only
  shook his head again. “I can’t!”
  Jeane stayed frozen for just a heartbeat, then spun
  sharply and walked out of the living room. Out of her father’s
  house. Down the walk. She didn’t look back.
  “Jeane!” called Ned. She could hear his heavy footsteps
  as he ran to catch up with her. “Jeane, listen—”
  “Shut up, Ned.” She wrenched open the car door and
  climbed in. Ned scrambled for the passenger door, just barely
  making it in before she started the engine and pulled out into
  the street. He started to turn toward her, and she shot him a
  seething glare. “Don’t say anything. I mean it.”
  There was a big hotel on the Cleveland side of town, and
  she drove there. The clerk at the desk gave her a knowing
  glance when she asked for two rooms. He blanched at the
  look she gave him in return and quickly handed over the
  room keys. Jeane led the way to the elevators. They waited
  in silence and rode up to their floor in silence as well. All the
  while, Jeane was aware of Ned beside her, just waiting to say
  something.
  “What is it?” she asked finally as they stepped off the
  elevator.
  “Your dad feels like shit.”
  “And I just feel like a bowl of cherries,” Jeane snapped
  back. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
  “No,” Ned insisted, “I mean he really feels terrible. He
  loves you, Jeane, but he can’t tell you what he knows. That’s
  the truth.”
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  had gone grey years ago. His height had turned into a
  slight stoop, his broad shoulders had rounded, and his trim
  waist had expanded. She could still picture him as he had
  been on that awful day in Cleveland twenty years before.
  She had loved him so much that day. She hated him so
  much right now.
  “I ran into Dale Churchill today, Dad. You remember her.”
  If it had taken Shelley Brooks several minutes to remem-
  ber the name, it took Stan Meara no time at all. He sucked
  in a short, sharp breath of surprise and for just a moment his
  eyes went very, very wide. His struggle to recover was visi-
  ble. He covered it—badly—by turning and searching for the
  nearest chair. Jeane remained standing. Ned stood by the
  door, barely inside. In the background, the home team scored
  a basket and the crowd went wild. Stan grabbed for the
  remote control and switched the television off. The silence
  was overwhelming.
  “Yes,” Stan said finally. “I remember her. How could I
  forget?”
  “That’s funny. She almost did.” Jeane stepped closer to
  her father. “I had a talk with her, Dad. Her name’s not Dale
  Churchill. Someone hired her to play the role for a day. She’s
  not my mother.”
  The room lapsed back into silence for a long minute
  before Stan looked up at her again. “I don’t know what
  you’re talking about.”
  His gaze and expression were steady—too steady. His
  eyes were fixed on her. There was a thin line of white around
  his lips where tension held the muscles tight. His voice was
  perfectly controlled. If there had been any doubt in Jeane’s
  mind, Stan’s lie killed it.
  She could hear herself breathing, hard and fast. “No,”
  she said thickly. “You do know. You do know!” She
  screamed the words. “What about Mom? Did Mom know,
  too?” Jeane reached down and grabbed her father by his
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  The old man came through for her. “Of course.” He
  paused. “Where are you? Is there anything I can do to
  help?”
  “No,” Jeane said again, “I can look after it. I have my cell
  phone. Call if there’s an emergency.” The unspoken message
  was, of course, don’t call. Fortunately, Ngan picked up on
  that, too.
  “All right,” he replied, then added, “I hope everything
  works out for you, Jeane.”
  “So do I, Ngan.” Jeane hung up the phone and stared out
  the hotel window at the lights of her old hometown.
  Early dawn. Renfield stood in the shadows of a narrow
  alley between two quiet houses. A garbage truck was mak-
  ing its way up the street toward her, jerking and pausing as
  the crew tossed bags and emptied trash cans into the jaws of
  the compactor—like the hungry jaws of decay that were
  waiting for her.
  No. The years of torment might be over soon. After an
  eternity of wandering Chicago’s streets, she had finally found
  someone with the potential to protect her.
  She hadn’t thought it would be this difficult. It would
  have been ridiculous to think that all she had to do was walk
  out of Elgin and her protector would be there, but in a city as
  big as Chicago . . . somehow it felt like there should have
  been more people with the potential, a veritable infestation
  of them, like maggots. After she had abandoned Doctor
  Alec’s car, she’d wandered the Magnificent Mile and the
  Loop for hours.
  No one. No potential protectors. It made her want to
  scream, but no, she couldn’t do that. She had to be quiet
  and careful if she didn’t want to be found and taken back
  to Elgin.
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  Jeane paused outside the door to her room. “And how
  would you know?” she asked. Ned tapped his forehead. Jeane
  ground her teeth. “You used your ‘gifts’ on him?”
  “You don’t have to be a bloodhound to smell burnt toast.
  I couldn’t help it—the emotions in the room were running a
  little high.”
  “So you couldn’t just read his mind and find out what I
  wanted to know?”
  “I can’t do that. My gifts don’t work that way.” Ned looked
  back at her. “But I can tell you this: your father wants to tell
  you what he knows, but he feels honor-bound to keep quiet.”
  Jeane snarled. “Good for him.” She slid the card-key into
  the lock and pushed the door of her hotel room open. “I’m
  not waiting for his honor to bend. Get some sleep. Tomorrow
  we’re going to start hitting every record office in Parma and
  Cleveland until we find out who I really am.”
  She let the door fall closed before Ned could respond. For
  a moment she just stood, drinking in the ordered quiet of the
  hotel room, then tossed her bag on the bed and went around
  to the plain beige phone on the bedside table. There was a
  call she had to make, and it wasn’t one she was looking for-
  ward to.
  As she expected, Ngan was still at his desk in the Hoff-
  mann Institute branch office in spite of the hour. His voice,
  when he answered, was as calm and orderly as the hotel
  room. “Ngan Song Kun’dren.”
  “Ngan, it’s Jeane. I’m sorry I missed the meeting with Lily
  this afternoon.”
  She fought to keep her voice calm, but something must
  have slipped through because concern crept into Ngan’s
  voice. “Are you well? Is everything all right?”
  “No,” she told him bluntly. “Something has come up.
  Something personal. I’m going to need a few days off.” She
  crossed her fingers, hoping she knew Ngan well enough to
  anticipate his response.
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  and street. The creature was already thrashing. She released
  it near the truck’s front fender, then sprinted around the
  front of the truck to its far side, even faster. The testing was
  for no eyes except hers. She had a good length of scrap wood
  ready. She raised it.
  On the far side of the truck, the driver choked in sudden
  shock. His partner, to the truck’s rear, looked up just in time
  to present her with a perfect target. The length of wood fell,
  driving him down. Renfield tossed it into the back of the
  truck and stepped around the side.
  The creature lay on the ground, wriggling obscenely on
  the pavement, cold and waiting for the warmth of her body.
  It mewled pitifully, but Renfield didn’t move.
  The garbage truck driver was gone. Renfield could have
  cried.
  He had failed the test. He hadn’t been her protector
  after all.
  The certainty of death and the memory of rotting alive
  rocked through her in a wave and left her gasping. There
  was no time for disappointment. She scooped up the crea-
  ture, tucked it into her coat once more, and put the truck
  behind her. She had to find her protector.
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  She went looking for a man she had known before the
  institution, someone whose filthy secrets she could use to
  force him to hide her. He was gone, unfortunately, probably
  rotting in a shallow grave somewhere. Even the place where
  he had worked was succumbing to decay. It would do for a
  hiding place, though. She had slept for an hour or two, but
  memories forced her awake and back into the streets to con-
  tinue her search. Her protector was out there somewhere,
  just waiting for the test.
  She followed the garbage truck for almost an hour before
  she realized why. The driver.
  A shifting inside her coat brought her attention back.
  “Soon,” she whispered, slipping a hand inside to stroke the
  creature until it purred. It could sense her need just as she
  could sense the garbage man’s potential. Both of them were
  eager.
  The truck drew closer, and she caught another look at her
  possible protector through the windshield. Earlier glimpses
  had shown him to be a stocky man, slightly younger than her
  but looking older. Now, in spite of the morning’s chill, he
  pulled off his cap and wiped sweat from his greasy brow.
  The man who clung to the back of the truck gave a word-
  less shout as the vehicle pulled up beside an especially large
  pile of garbage bags—more than one man could handle eas-
  ily. Of course. Renfield had run ahead of the truck and
  pushed several smaller piles together for just that purpose.
  Just as she had hoped, the driver opened the door and swung
  down from the cab to give his partner a hand.
  “Now,” she said. She pulled the length of the creature out
  of her jacket, holding its fat, hairless body up so that she
  stared into the bright black pits of its eyes. “Test him. I’ll
  take care of the other one.”
  The creature purred again, eager.
  Renfield burst from the shadows while both men were
  bent over the garbage, dashing across lawn and sidewalk
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  70
  cCain lay still, watching Shani sleep in the morn-
  ing sun that filtered through her bedroom win-
  dow. Her face was at ease, surrounded by a few
  stray wisps of the long, thick hair she pulled back
  every night. She had, as usual, stolen the majority of
  the deep purple sheets during the night. They were
  bundled tightly around her, one corner clutched in the
  hand she held close to her mouth and nose. It was the
  sweetest, most innocent of poses, and he felt some-
  times that he could just watch her sleep for hours.
  Not today.
  He slid out of the bed without waking her and
  crossed into the bathroom. He showered with the
  soft, silky soap that she preferred and the special
  shampoo that smelled vaguely of apples. The same
  soap and shampoo resided in his shower as well. He
  had a comb and a razor in her medicine cabinet, and
  when he dried off, he used the towel from the rack
  chapter
  5 i v e
  M
  that he’d come to consider “his.” Back out in the bedroom,
  he dressed from the drawer that held a selection of his
  clothes, pulling a suit from the corner of the closet that
  Shani had allotted to him.
  When he turned back to the bed, she had her eyes open.
  McCain knelt down beside the bed and kissed her forehead.
  She slipped an arm out from under the sheets and around his
  neck, drawing him down for a longer kiss.
  “Can’t you stay for a while longer?” she murmured.
  “Duty calls, ma’am.” He stood. “Of course, I don’t have a
  late shift to work at a hospital tonight.”
  She groaned and pulled the sheets over her head. “Get
  out!”
  He laughed, blew her a kiss, and got.
  Inside the elevator on the way to the ground floor he
  finally allowed himself to relax. For the first time in his life,
  McCain blessed an early morning meeting—he didn’t think
  he could have stayed around Shani for even ten minutes
  more, not without suffering from massive attacks of guilt.
  He couldn’t get Olivia out of his head.
  McCain slumped back against the mirrored wall of the
  elevator. It was as though forcing himself to really work at
  charming Dr. Marquez yesterday had opened a floodgate.
  Ever since he and Ngan had left Elgin—the old man with a
  bundle of papers still warm from the photocopier under his
  arm—Olivia had been with him. His mind kept drifting
  back to her, to the flirtations that had teased information
  out of her.
  It hadn’t helped that when he arrived at Shani’s, he had
  found her in the mood for nostalgia. Her conversation with
  Olivia had roused a desire for the good old days and she had
  pulled out yearbooks, pointing out photographs of old
  friends from high school, college, and medical school. Unfor-
  tunately, Olivia seemed to feature heavily in that nostalgia.
  Even worse, the yearbooks had reminded him too much of
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  knew it were being directed at me and not the coffee.”
  “It is,” McCain assured him before drinking deep. “Ahhhh
  . . .” He pulled back out into traffic, angling for Lake Michi-
  gan and southbound Lake Shore Drive.
  Ngan gave him a warm smile as he sipped at his own cup.
  “Are you ready for an exciting day of reading over medical
  records?” he asked, tapping his free hand against the heavy
  bag he carried slung over one shoulder.
  “I think the question should be ‘is Van ready,’ ” McCain
  laughed. They had gotten in touch with him the night before.
  As McCain had expected, Van had been overwhelmingly
  excited by the prospect of doing actual work for the Hoff-
  mann Institute, even if it was something as unglamorous as
  sifting through Renfield’s long medical file. Better three of
  them reading the long reports than just two, though.
  The young man, dressed in a suit and tie almost as sharp
  as McCain’s own, was waiting for them when they pulled up
  outside his dorm on the University of Chicago campus.
  “Good taste in clothes,” McCain complimented him as he
  climbed into the back seat.
  “Everybody kept asking if I was going to a funeral. I told
  them it was an interview for a part-time job.” Van leaned for-
  ward, resting his arms on the front seats and poking his
  head between them. “Hey, have you guys seen the news this
  morning?”
  Ngan shook his head, as did McCain. Between rushing
  out of Shani’s apartment and talking with Ngan on the drive,
  he hadn’t so much as turned on the radio or glanced at a
  newspaper box. “What happened?” he asked, almost dread-
  ing the answer.
  “Big weirdness on the west side. Some kind of attack on
  a garbage truck around dawn this morning. Police are
  investigating. There’s not much information, but it looks
  like there’s something getting covered up.” Ngan raised his
  eyebrows questioningly and Van grinned as he settled back
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  his own school days—and the girls he had known then and
  after. To his deep shame, they had come back, too, and if he
  couldn’t recall all of their names, their faces and bodies
  haunted him. Even with Shani cuddled up against him in the
  dark, he found himself remembering one of the cheerleaders
  from when he had been on the high school football team.
  And a girl from his freshman year at Harvard. And a long,
  exhausting weekend in upstate New York after he’d passed
  the bar.
  The elevator jerked and slowed to a stop. The doors
  opened on the ground floor, and McCain took a deep breath,
  nodding nonchalantly to the security guard in the lobby as he
  strolled out toward the visitor parking and his car. Nothing
  is wrong, he told himself. Shani is still the one. Everything is
  perfectly normal. Remembering old flings is natural. This
  happens to lots of guys . . .
  Lots of guys who weren’t cloned from genetic stock notorious
  for its sexual appetites.
  McCain clenched his teeth. Enough! He took another
  deep breath, forced all possible thoughts of women and sex
  out of his head, and got into his car.
  The drive from Shani’s apartment to the multicultural
  neighborhood of Devon Avenue where Ngan lived was a short
  one. The old man was waiting in the usual spot on a street
  corner. McCain had never actually seen Ngan’s home, and he
  had a sneaking suspicion that his partner preferred it that
  way. That was good enough for McCain—especially when
  Ngan’s waiting place was just outside an incredible little cof-
  fee shop, and Ngan was always waiting with two steaming
  cups in his hands. McCain reached across the seat and
  popped the passenger door open for him.
  “Gooood morning,” he said with the first real cheer he
  had felt since waking up.
  “I’d find that more sincere, Michael,” Ngan observed as
  he passed one cup to McCain and climbed in himself, “if I
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  realized that somewhere his worries about Shani had melted
  away. The quick intensity of an active investigation—not
  just paper-pushing—had already taken over, and it felt good.
  McCain flipped his cell phone out of his pocket and
  passed it back to Van. “Time to start working, then. Let’s dial
  up the central office and see if Emma happens to have more
  information for us. . . .”
  After a brief consultation with the Institute’s computer
  network, Emma was able to report its media monitors had
  begun tracking the incident when it appeared on the news—
  the presence of the Elgin van had, in fact, already been noted
  and logged. If the team had made it into the office, they
  would have found a message regarding the link to their case
  waiting for them. Beyond that, however, there was nothing to
  report. The agents’ involvement would shift monitoring to
  active and begin the skimming of information from a variety
  of sources including police communications, but until some-
  thing showed up there, McCain and Ngan were the primary
  sources on the scene. McCain was left staring at the cell
  phone in his hand and feeling as though he been handed a
  plastic cup and instructed to fill it.
  The street on which the attack had occurred had been
  closed to traffic, but that hadn’t stopped a murmuring crowd
  of spectators from gathering. There were three police cruis-
  ers on the scene, and McCain was willing to bet that there
  was at least one unmarked car. The van from Elgin was still
  present as well, two drivers in warm jackets over hospital
  whites standing around idly. The focus of the crowd’s atten-
  tion, however, was the garbage truck pulled over to one side
  of the street, cordoned off by bright yellow swatches of crime
  scene tape.
  “There was an ambulance here earlier,” whispered Van,
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  into the seat. “Hey, I’ve spent enough time around you
  people now to know when there’s more going on than meets
  the eye.”
  “Jeane always did say you were perceptive,” McCain
  grumbled, heading back out onto the road. “Unfortunately,
  we’ve got an active assignment—we can’t go chasing every
  bit of weirdness.”
  “Even if the weirdness is related?”
  Ngan twisted around in his seat to look at the young man,
  while McCain had to content himself with a startled glance
  in the rearview mirror.
  “Why do you think the incident is related to our assign-
  ment, Van?” Ngan asked.
  Van’s grin grew wider. “First off, one of the crew on the
  garbage truck is missing. The police are saying kidnapped,
  but the news kept saying ‘vanished into thin air.’ Between
  him and your guys out at the mental hospital, there’s an
  awful lot of that going on suddenly. Second, there was a van
  there with Elgin Mental Health Center on the side. Third . . .”
  His grin shifted a bit, and McCain caught the signs of a fal-
  tering confidence. “Well, I just have this feeling. Ned’s been
  telling me to listen to those feelings, and this time I am.”
  “Good advice,” said Ngan, “though it takes long practice
  to distinguish a true premonition from the rationalizing of a
  decision already made.” Van’s face fell completely at the old
  man’s words but Ngan smiled reassuringly. “Don’t be disap-
  pointed, Van. Doubt must temper every talent. And I think
  your first two observations are reason enough for us to
  investigate. Do you know where this attack took place?”
  Van brightened considerably and pulled a slip of paper
  from his pocket. He passed it forward to McCain.
  “Good kid.” McCain glanced back and nodded at Van in
  the rearview mirror. “Don’t worry. It takes a while to get
  used to Ngan.”
  The frosty look from Ngan made McCain laugh, and he
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  down and took a somewhat closer look. The dust was very
  fine—and distinctly grey. Just like the dust he’d seen in the
  observation room at Elgin.
  McCain stood up and said, “Good eye, Van.”
  Ngan was looking at the dust, too. “What is it?”
  “I don’t know.” McCain brushed his hands off. “But
  there’s a lot more of it than there was at Elgin, and it looks
  like it was at least initially all in one spot. I—hey!”
  His words were cut off as a large man in a leather coat
  pushed his way through the crowd. He was tall, with broad
  shoulders and short black hair, and he shoved right in
  between McCain and Ngan without even glancing at them.
  McCain glared after him and snapped, “Watch it!
  He might have added more, but the man ducked under
  the yellow police line, then looked behind him as if searching
  for a gnat in the air. His eyes flickered across McCain for a
  moment before he simply turned away and headed over to
  one of the police cruisers. McCain ground his teeth together
  in annoyance.
  “Asshole, isn’t he?”
  It was a woman’s voice, just behind him and on his
  right, the other side from Ngan and Van. The words came
  out deep and rich, like a radio voice. Reporter, McCain
  thought immediately.
  “I’d say so,” he said lightly, and turned around.
  Radio? Television! The woman smiled at him and light
  could have flashed off her teeth. She was tall, easily as tall
  as the pushy cop, and trim like an athlete. Her face was full,
  but not too round, lightly colored by time spent outdoors in
  the wind and sun. Her hair, also touched by the sun, was
  golden-brown and shoulder length. If she wasn’t in television
  news, she should have been.
  She blew Olivia Marquez and every other woman he had
  known straight out of his head, leaving only thoughts of
  Shani struggling weakly for attention. With a conscious
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  “and more police. I saw it on TV. They were trying to keep
  the TV reporters from asking people too many questions.”
  “Interesting,” Ngan murmured.
  He moved into the crowd, slipping through the press of
  bodies with an ease that left McCain and Van shoving along
  behind him. When they caught up to him, he was standing at
  the leading edge of the crowd, only a few feet from a fresh-
  faced young officer doing his best to keep the crowd well
  back from the yellow tape.
  Ngan made a small, concealed gesture and said, “Look at
  the side of the truck.”
  McCain stared and, after a moment looking at the grubby
  metal, spotted what Ngan was pointing at: something had
  spattered the truck, leaving the paint discolored and blis-
  tered. McCain had mentioned the apparent use of acid in
  Renfield’s escape to Ngan, and the old man had, like him,
  immediately made the connection to the acidic spray
  described in the old report on Renfield. Was this more acid?
  McCain gave Ngan a skeptical look. “It’s a garbage
  truck,” he said. “That could be anything.”
  “What about that then?” Van asked, grabbing McCain’s
  sleeve and pointing. The motion was obvious, and more than
  a few people besides McCain and Ngan turned to look.
  McCain brushed Van’s hand down gently.
  “Easy,” McCain said. “Remember, we’re just regular
  people having a look-see.”
  He followed Van’s briefly outstretched arm and saw that
  the black asphalt under the side of the truck was pale with
  what looked like ashes, maybe something the garbage men
  had spilled. It might have been concentrated once, but a light
  breeze had shifted it and people had been walking through it
  all morning. It was all over the street, a fine film punctuated
  by heavier footprints. The crowd-control officer near them
  had some clinging to his shoes and to the hem of his pants.
  Under the guise of adjusting his own shoes, McCain knelt
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  him. “Apparently, the other man on the truck got a glimpse
  of something before someone clocked him from behind. He
  described a dark shape, big as a football player.” She leaned
  a little bit closer. “What do you think?”
  McCain struggled to keep a straight face. Calamity was
  trying to pump him for information? There was something
  disturbing in the way she phrased her information, though.
  “A dark shape as big as a man?” he asked casually. “Why not
  just say it was a man?” If the attack was Renfield’s doing,
  she had someone working with her. Or something.
  “His words, not mine,” Calamity replied. She stepped
  back a bit, and McCain was suddenly aware of how close
  they had been. Calamity didn’t appear to notice, or if she
  did, it didn’t bother her. “Maybe a big woman. What else
  could it be?”
  You’d be surprised, McCain thought to himself. Out loud,
  he said, “Listen, could you do me a favor?” He reached into
  his suit pocket and produced one of his cards, anonymous
  little things that carried no name but only his phone number.
  It didn’t seem like Calamity knew any more, but if she kept
  digging, there was always later. A contact in the media was
  always good to have. “I’m under contract to the union that
  represents the city’s sanitation workers,” he improvised.
  “I’m checking into how things are being handled here. If you
  happen to find out anything else, I’d really appreciate it if
  you let me know.”
  A shout from the far side of the police tape broke the con-
  versation before she could reply. “Hey, Calamity!” It was the
  big cop in the leather coat. “Save the flirting for off duty!”
  Off duty? McCain almost choked. Suddenly he had the
  feeling he had made a big mistake. “You know him?”
  There was a cunning glint in Calamity’s eye. “He’s my
  partner. Detective Rebecca James, at your service, Fitz.” She
  flashed the card at him as she tucked it into her pocket, then
  pulled out one of her own and flipped it to him. “I probably
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  effort, McCain focused back on the investigation. There was
  no camera crew with the woman, though, nor did she appear
  to have a tape recorder with her—maybe she was a print
  journalist. In any case, she might have some useful informa-
  tion. He let his face settle into an expression of mild concern
  with just the hint of a friendly smile.
  “You’d think the police would try to be a little more per-
  sonable. Especially,” he added with a wave that encom-
  passed the scene, “when it looks like they’re running on
  empty and need witnesses.” He turned the wattage of his
  smile up a bit. “Any idea what’s going on?”
  She smiled back. “A bit.”
  As she recapped the same basic information Van had
  heard on the news, McCain saw Ngan draw the young man
  a discrete distance away. Good man, McCain thought, give
  me some room to work. He focused his gaze on the
  woman’s face, listening intently and nodding at all the right
  places. Her manner was easy and open—information
  poured from her like she had written the news herself. He
  had her hooked, McCain knew. When she had finished, he
  drew breath to make a more formal introduction. She beat
  him to it.
  “By the way,” she said, sticking out her hand, “I’m
  Rebecca.” Her grip was warm. Her smile was warmer. This
  was going well.
  “Robert Blair, but you can call me ‘Fitz,’ ” said McCain.
  When she raised an eyebrow, he said, “It’s an old family nick-
  name.”
  She laughed and winked. “Mine’s ‘Calamity.’ ” She nod-
  ded toward the garbage truck. “So what do you think. Weird,
  huh?”
  “I’ll say,” McCain said as smoothly as he could manage.
  He glanced at Calamity closely and asked, “Who’d want to
  kidnap a garbage man?”
  She shrugged, then cocked her head and looked back at
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  the garbage trucks, the police cruisers, the police, and the
  milling crowd.
  After a moment, the young man asked, “How insignifi-
  cant?”
  “What are you thinking?”
  “The dust.”
  Ngan looked at him curiously, then at the grey film that
  lay across the pavement. “What about it?”
  Van clicked his teeth together again as he found his
  words. “Renfield is obsessed with death and decay, right?”
  When Ngan nodded, he went on, building up his argument.
  “In old science fiction movies, people are always getting
  zapped with rays or whatever that make them age super-fast.
  Inevitably, they crumble away into dust. What if Renfield is
  doing the same thing? What if the dust here and at Elgin is
  what’s left of the missing people?”
  Ngan drew in a sharp breath and stared at the dust being
  tracked so carelessly and walked through like common dirt.
  The suggestion was far fetched, yes, but Ngan had seen
  too much in his time to dismiss an idea simply because a sci-
  ence fiction writer had thought of it first. It explained why
  the police had yet to find any trace of the men who had dis-
  appeared from Elgin. It also fit with Renfield’s obsession
  with decay and with her rather prosaic description of what
  had happened to her circle of friends.
  “Swept away by the river of time,” Ngan murmured. That
  could be a description of someone aged to oblivion.
  Three instances of people vanishing. Three sets of cir-
  cumstances involving acid. At least two cases where the fine
  dust was present. Fifteen years before, Institute investiga-
  tors had determined that Renfield had been in contact, how-
  ever unwillingly, with an ultraterrestrial entity. Now . . .
  McCain caught up to them, intruding on his thoughts.
  “There is one sneaky detective working on this case,” he
  complained, flashing a business card at them.
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  won’t be calling you with information, but hey, if you find
  anything out, give me a call.” She winked at him again,
  then ducked under the police tape and trotted toward her
  partner with a yell of “Keep your pants on, Gibson, I’m
  coming!”
  McCain stared down at the card in his hands and mut-
  tered a quiet curse.
  Ngan saw the shift in McCain’s face as he turned to talk
  to the lovely, brown-haired woman on his other side and
  knew what his partner was about. Perhaps, he reflected
  silently, I am beginning to understand Michael too well.
  Still, he tugged on Van’s arm and murmured up into his
  ear, “We should move away now. If Michael wants to include
  us in this conversation, he’ll let us know.”
  Van spared one quick glance at McCain, then followed
  Ngan a short distance through the crowd. “Damn,” he mut-
  tered, “that’s how you work an investigation?”
  “That’s how Michael works an investigation,” Ngan cor-
  rected him. “Personally, I prefer simple observation—
  patience reveals much. Everyone develops his own method of
  investigation, however, and very seldom consciously.” He
  gave Van a gentle smile. “Much the same as the development
  of psychic ability.”
  “Hopefully not everything goes as slow as that,” Van
  replied with a frustrated grunt.
  “Patience and confidence, Van,” Ngan said. “Your powers
  will be there when you need them. In the meantime—obser-
  vation. Look around this scene.” He made a small gesture.
  “Try to take as much of it in as you can, using all of your
  senses. Consider everything. The smallest detail, the most
  apparently insignificant connection may be relevant.”
  He heard Van click his teeth together as he looked over
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  warning is appreciated, Lily, but too late. We already
  know.”
  “That’s not why I’m calling,” Lily said. “Observation divi-
  sion isn’t the only one that follows those reports. Archival
  monitors for any mention of potentially unusual life forms.”
  She hesitated, then added, “I just got a memo from the CSC.
  They’re putting a team in the field and they’re throwing their
  weight around.”
  Ngan stifled a groan. The Hoffmann Institute maintained
  two branches in Chicago, the cramped Branch Office from
  which the team and a number of other agents operated—and
  the Chicago Specimen Collection, a state-of-the-art facility
  for the preservation and analysis of organic samples col-
  lected by Hoffmann Institute agents from around the world.
  While the two branches might have been part of the same
  tree, however, they grew in opposite directions. The CSC
  stole the show in Chicago. They took the lion’s share of any
  resources allocated to the city, and they guarded the investi-
  gations they saw as falling within their very particular
  domain with a single-minded jealousy.
  “Are we off the case?” he asked.
  “No.” Lily’s answer was emphatic. “I can throw some
  weight around, too, but you will have to work with them.”
  “Do you know who they’ve assigned?” Ngan twisted
  around to look across the crowd.
  He didn’t have to look far. Squirming through the crowd
  was a short man in a tweed jacket. Half-moon glasses slid on
  his nose, and long strands of hair had been combed carefully
  across a nearly bald head that seemed too big for his body.
  The man had seen them and was heading directly to them.
  The CSC had sent its big gun—or more likely the big gun had
  sent himself.
  “Monty Desmond,” Ngan whispered.
  Lily sighed. “He’s there already, then?”
  “I’m afraid so.” Ngan turned away from the approaching
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  He tucked it into his pocket, then bent down to brush
  away a patch of dust on his pants. Ngan hissed involuntarily.
  McCain looked up.
  “What?”
  Ngan told him. McCain twitched, then shook his head
  slowly. “More bad news, then. There was a dark shape
  glimpsed during the attack. I was really hoping it was just
  another person working with Renfield.”
  “Maybe it was,” Van pointed out.
  “I’ll be happy if it turns out that way.” McCain frowned.
  “There is one major problem with this theory, Ngan. I hardly
  found any dust at Elgin. If one person left all the dust here,
  you’d think three people would leave a lot more. All I found
  was residue.”
  Suspicion hit Ngan in the pit of the stomach like an echo
  of Lily’s look of concern. “Maybe that’s exactly what it was.”
  McCain glanced at him, then narrowed his eyes.
  “The floor,” he said. “There were no scuff marks on it.”
  Van looked from Ngan to McCain and back. “Spell it out
  for the new guy?”
  “Someone cleaned up the scene at Elgin,” said Ngan.
  “Someone hid the dust.”
  His cell phone chose that precise moment to ring. Ngan
  answered with a calm that belied the turmoil he fought.
  “Ngan,” said a crisp, aristocratic voice. “It’s Lily. I have
  a heads up on the garbage truck assault. Are you still on the
  scene?”
  Ngan almost laughed in spite of himself. Lily always
  had the most flawless timing. “Yes,” he answered. “Lily, I
  need to ask—”
  She cut him off. “Since the Institute started monitoring
  police reports on your scene, we’ve picked up mention of an
  unidentified presence involved in the assault, possibly non-
  human.”
  This time, Ngan did permit himself a thin smile. “The
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  85
  onty was on top of them before Ngan could do
  anything else. He was a sour piece of work,
  especially next to the tall, handsome young man
  carrying a large gym bag who followed him like a
  shadow. Monty’s skin was pale and sagged in jowls
  that gave him a permanent frown of disapproval. Or
  perhaps, Ngan thought, that was simply Monty’s
  natural disposition. The short man clicked his
  tongue as soon as he was close and glared at the
  cell phone in Ngan’s hand as though it were some
  piece of filth.
  “No cell phones,” he said sharply. “They interfere
  with my equipment.”
  McCain blinked. “Excuse me?” he asked in what a
  stranger might have mistaken for polite tones.
  Van clearly knew better and shrank into the back-
  ground. Ngan knew better, too. He stepped quickly
  between Monty and McCain.
  chapter
  6 i x
  M
  CSC man and said quickly, “There’s something else though,
  Lily. We may have found something odd at El—”
  “Not on the cell phone, Ngan,” Lily said sharply. She hung
  up, leaving Ngan staring at the phone.
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  him. “My assistant, Liam Crogher.” Liam nodded soberly to
  them. Monty frowned at McCain. “You seem familiar. Have
  we met before?”
  “I have that kind of face,” McCain commented. A touch of
  frost had crept back into his voice, and Ngan groaned
  silently. This wasn’t going to be easy.
  “Monty,” he intruded quickly, “Lily said the CSC’s deci-
  sion to become involved in the case was based on the uniden-
  tified figure observed at the scene. Why not assume as the
  police have that it was just a large man?”
  “Which police have you been talking to?” Monty asked.
  The perpetual frown of his mouth turned into a gloating
  sneer. “They might be telling people that, but the earliest
  witness statements that were being bandied about were con-
  siderably different. The second garbage man was quite
  adamant in his statements that while he didn’t know what it
  was he saw, it was not a human being. Hence my involve-
  ment. The CSC wants to make a conclusive identification and
  collect tissue samples.” He looked down his nose at both
  Ngan and McCain. “Something your team, I’ve noticed, is
  remarkably lax about. What is it now? Four investigations?
  An extraterrestrial in Washington, a spectral manifestation
  here in Illinois, and unidentified ultraterrestrials on your
  recently globetrotting jaunt. I won’t even mention the matter
  of this vril substance.” He snorted. “I mean, do you even try
  to collect samples?”
  McCain’s mouth opened and closed once. It was a
  moment before even Ngan could respond. When he did, he
  studiously avoided Monty’s question. “Are you aware of our
  current investigation, Monty?”
  “The escaped mental patient and her possible occult
  involvement? Of course.” Monty said it as though his knowl-
  edge should have been obvious. “Her claim of contact with an
  ultraterrestrial makes this especially interesting.” He
  cocked his head at Ngan like a bird attracted by a shiny
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  “Michael, allow me introduce Montgomery Desmond,
  senior researcher with the Chicago Specimen Collection.” He
  caught McCain’s eye and put a special emphasis on Monty’s
  title. “That call was from Lily, apprising us of a change in the
  investigation.” He tried to find words that would convey
  Lily’s instructions without adding to McCain’s frustration—
  or his own. “The CSC has stepped in to contribute their
  expertise to the case.”
  McCain’s face shifted from polite caution to dead neu-
  trality.
  That didn’t faze Monty at all. “What a charming way of
  putting it, Ngan. Now if you’ll follow me, we’ll find some-
  where to talk, and I’ll tell you how this investigation will be
  handled.”
  Monty turned briskly and began forcing his way across
  the front of the crowd of spectators to its nearest edge. The
  young man with the bag followed him as if used to sudden
  changes in direction.
  Ngan grabbed McCain’s arm as soon as their backs were
  turned. His partner was turning a harsh red. “Easy, Michael.”
  McCain just made an angry growl.
  “Jeez,” breathed Van. “What the heck’s going on?”
  “Politics,” Ngan said succinctly, drawing them after
  Monty. He described Lily’s call and the interest of the CSC in
  the dark shape described by Calamity, then gave McCain a
  direct look of warning. “And I know politics is a game at
  which you excel, Michael.”
  McCain grumbled something under his breath, then
  relented. “Well,” he sighed, “he can’t be all that bad.”
  He put a gratifyingly friendly smile on his face as they
  caught up to Monty in the quiet shadow of a building.
  “Monty,” McCain said, sticking out his hand, “sorry we
  got off on the wrong foot. I’m Michael—”
  “Don’t patronize me, Mr. McCain. I know who you are.”
  He gestured at the still silent young man who accompanied
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  It was a great effort to nod pleasantly, but Ngan managed
  it. Monty’s request wasn’t so unreasonable nor was it bad
  judgment. He was more than capable of doing just what
  Monty asked, slipping up to people, listening in on their con-
  versations, then moving on, all completely unnoticed. No, the
  insult was in the way Monty gave the instructions, as if
  silent observation and the invisibility of the inconsequential
  was Ngan’s only role. Ngan could more than understand
  McCain’s barely concealed hostility. He drew a slow breath.
  No. They were only words, and Monty, Ngan’s own suspi-
  cions aside, was only a small-minded bureaucrat with a lab-
  oratory job. They had their orders. An unthinking insult from
  Monty Desmond was nothing.
  “Of course,” he said calmly.
  “Good. Now, as for you . . .” Monty turned to Van—and
  frowned, as if really looking at the young man for the first
  time. Van seemed ready to shrink from him. “Who are you?”
  Monty looked back to Ngan. “Where’s Jeane Meara?”
  “Jeane’s away on personal business,” Ngan told him.
  What possible problem could Monty have with Van? “This is
  Van Dimitriat, an associate. He is accompanying us on our
  assignment.”
  Monty stared at Van as though the young man’s creden-
  tials were more akin to makes coffee at the office and we
  thought it would be a lark to bring him along, then sniffed dis-
  approvingly and shook his head. “No.”
  “No.”
  That one little word sank a fist into Van’s stomach and
  left him gasping for breath. “What?” he choked.
  “I said, ‘no.’ ” Monty looked down his fat, droopy nose—
  or would have if he hadn’t had to look up at Van’s height. “I
  want trained agents working for me, not teenagers who need
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  object. “Why?” he asked. “Have you uncovered something?”
  “No,” said Ngan.
  The smooth flow of the lie startled him. He knew he
  should tell Monty about the dust and their horrid suspicions.
  It might help the researcher identify whatever Renfield had
  summoned out of the void. He didn’t. Part of his silence was
  petty—the thought of aiding Monty more than he had to
  repulsed him. The other part, however, was more serious and
  it crept up on him like a fever. Monty’s sudden involvement
  was just too convenient. Had Lily been trying to warn him
  about more than just his presence with her phone call?
  Ngan looked at Monty and said simply, “We haven’t found
  anything yet. We’re only here today because the Elgin Men-
  tal Health Center van was here. You know more than we do,
  it seems.”
  Monty preened with the compliment, smiling tri-
  umphantly—a horrendous sight, but one that almost made
  Ngan smile. Flattery, it seemed was the way to close Monty’s
  mouth. Now if only he could stomach it himself!
  “What would you like us to do, Monty?” Ngan asked.
  “Ah.” Monty clasped his arms behind his back like a
  schoolmaster. “I’m a firm believer in following strengths.
  Liam and I are familiar with our equipment, of course, so
  we’ll take care of the metrical analysis of the scene.” He
  looked to McCain. “I understand that you have a way with
  people, Mr. McCain. I want you to canvass the crowd and
  determine if any of them have seen anything unusual in the
  neighborhood.”
  McCain looked doubtful. “Isn’t that going to attract atten-
  tion from the police? “
  “Then make it look like you’re gossiping, Mr. McCain.
  This is your forte—work with it.” He turned to Ngan. “While
  Mr. McCain is talking to people, I’d like you to listen to them.
  Blend into the background. Eavesdrop. Just hang around—I
  doubt if anyone will notice you.”
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  received a certain amount of interest from the highest levels
  of the Hoffmann Institute.” Ngan tilted his head slightly to
  the side but did not relinquish his grasp on Monty’s gaze. “No
  doubt our report will go to their desks as well.”
  “Oh, all right!” Monty snapped. “He can stay. Liam could
  use a hand carrying our equipment.” Monty spun around and
  jabbed a finger at Van. “You’ll be with us. Happy?”
  He would rather have been working with Ngan and
  McCain, but even Monty and the silent Liam were better than
  nothing. “Yes,” he said, then added for good measure, “sir.”
  “Don’t be obsequious,” said Monty. He waved Ngan and
  McCain toward the crowd. “You two get to work. Liam, I’ll
  start with the video surveillance, while you check for back-
  ground radiation. . . .”
  Van leaned over and caught Ngan’s arm. “What did you do
  to him to make him change his mind?” he whispered with a
  nod toward Monty.
  “Do to him?” Ngan smiled. “Nothing—except remind him
  that he was not the most powerful person with an interest in
  this case. His own fears and doubts did the rest. Nothing else
  was necessary. It’s almost always easier to work with a per-
  son’s worst qualities than against them.” He clapped Van on
  the shoulder. “Look on this as an opportunity to see how
  another part of the Hoffmann Institute works.”
  Van sighed and turned back to Monty. Liam had set his
  gym bag down on the ground, and he and Monty were rum-
  maging through it. Van tried to get a peek inside, but Monty
  quickly flipped up the bag’s soft sides and gave him a nasty
  stare.
  Van held back another sigh and asked instead, “So just
  how do you intend to do your ‘metrical analysis’ in the mid-
  dle of a crowd with a police investigation going on? Isn’t it
  going to be a little obvious that you’re up to something?”
  Monty’s glare turned from nasty to withering. “We have
  done this before, Mr. Dimitriat.” He managed to twist the
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  to have their hands held. If you would be so good as to wait
  somewhere while we attend to business, I’m sure Mr.
  McCain and Mr. Kun’dren will be able to describe events to
  you after we’re finished.”
  Van could only look at him in numb, helpless shock.
  When he had got Ngan’s message yesterday, it had seemed
  like the greatest thing that could possibly have happened to
  him. Even the prospect that they might be facing someone or
  something that could age people to dust in moments had
  excited rather than frightened him. To be so arbitrarily dis-
  missed . . . it made him feel sick with frustration. Monty had
  the power to do it, too. Ngan had said so, had said the pudgy
  researcher had rank.
  “But . . .” he began to protest.
  “But?” asked Monty, raising his eyebrows so high they
  almost disappeared into the baggy wrinkles of his forehead.
  “But what? But that’s not fair? But if I don’t give you the
  chance, how will you ever learn?” He dismissed the concerns
  with a flick of his hand. “Learning is what training courses
  are for. In the meantime—” He flicked his hand again, this
  time dismissing Van himself. “You go.”
  “No,” said Ngan quietly, “he stays.”
  Monty rounded on the old man sharply. If Van hadn’t been
  so frustrated, he might almost have found it comical. Ngan
  was short but he still stood a good few inches over Monty.
  His face was calm, though his eyes were flashing and angry.
  Monty’s face was slowly burning red. He opened his mouth,
  but Ngan spoke first.
  “Van is participating in this investigation at the direction
  of our superiors.” Ngan caught and held Monty’s eyes. There
  was a terrible intensity to his gaze. “We have been told to
  cooperate with you, but we were not told to bow to you. You
  can be assured that every instruction you give us will make
  its way into our final report. That report will go to Lily
  Adler’s desk. And as you might be aware, our team has
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  “Oh, right,” muttered Van. I get the grunt work. “What do
  I do with it?” he asked Monty. “Just carry it around behind
  you?”
  “No, I don’t think so.” Monty looked thoughtful. “The
  camera takes patient and delicate handling to capture all the
  information with the necessary precision, so I’ll be using it
  for some time. Liam will need to swap instruments more fre-
  quently. You’ll stick with him.”
  Van glanced down. Liam was still squatting beside the
  bag, adjusting what looked like a portable compact disc
  player, complete with headphones. At Monty’s words,
  though, he glanced up at Van and an interested, almost
  friendly expression flickered across his face. It was only
  present for a moment, but in that moment, Van realized with
  a start that Monty’s assistant wasn’t much older than he was
  himself, twenty-three or twenty-four at the most. Maybe this
  wouldn’t be so bad after all. Even as he bent down and
  scooped up the bag though, Liam turned to lead the way back
  toward the taped-off police investigation—still silent.
  Monty stuck close to the crowd, using it as cover for his
  surreptitious videotaping. Liam, on the other hand, worked
  his way around the scene to the far side of the taped-off area.
  The crowd was thinner there but Liam, dressed in plain
  khakis and an ordinary sweater, blended right in. Van,
  dressed in his best suit for a day at the Institute offices and
  now carting a large and fairly heavy gym bag, felt much more
  conspicuous.
  He tried to ignore the feeling, concentrating instead on
  observing the scene as Ngan had suggested. More frequently,
  however, he found his attention wandering to Liam. There
  was something familiar about him, though Van couldn’t quite
  place it. His face, broad and rough, with brown, slightly curly
  hair and muddy green eyes, was good-looking but not so
  stunning that it was distinct. His movements were careful
  and deliberate, like the motions of a scientist in a lab. Every
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  formality of ‘mister’ into an insult. Van clenched his teeth
  and ignored it. “Sometimes we’ve had to collect data
  under conditions that are even more public—or even more
  paranoid. Unlike a recognized agency, we can’t just walk
  into a scene and expect cooperation. So we’ve had to be
  creative.”
  One of Monty’s hands had lingered inside the gym bag.
  He pulled it out, along with a small camcorder. Van didn’t
  know a tremendous amount about the things, but it looked
  like an expensive, high-end device. He also suspected that
  the thin cable that trailed from it and back into the bag was
  not factory-standard.
  Monty showed off the camcorder proudly. “Innocuous.
  Almost ubiquitous these days. Digital, of course.” He passed
  the camcorder to Liam while he fished the other end of the
  cable out of the bag. It was attached to a dark plastic case
  about the size of Van’s hand and maybe twice as thick. Monty
  slipped it into the pocket of his jacket, then took the cam-
  corder back. “This particular model, however, has been mod-
  ified. In addition to capturing a visual record of the scene, it
  also contains infrared capability for rough thermal imaging
  and a range-finder that can be used to construct a reasonably
  accurate three-dimensional model.” He tapped the plastic
  case in his pocket. “Extended storage.”
  “Wow.” Van blinked, genuinely impressed. “Can I take a
  look?”
  “Don’t be absurd,” Monty said and clasped the device pro-
  tectively. “This is sensitive equipment.”
  Van bit his tongue in frustration. Sure, equipment so sen-
  sitive just a look could damage it, but that could still be car-
  ried around in a gym bag like old socks.
  When he felt reasonably confident that he could say
  something civil again, he asked, “So what do you want me
  to do?”
  Monty pointed at the bag without a word.
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  doctorate in zoology. The CSC is sponsoring me—under the
  table, of course.”
  Van gave a short chuckle. “Me, too! Well, the Institute
  anyway. Intelligence division, I suppose.” He considered
  Liam’s suddenly open, smiling face, trying to figure out a
  way to ask his next question without totally choking what
  might be a new friendship. “So, uh . . . what’s the deal with
  Monty?”
  Liam’s laugh was a healthy, rolling thing. “Monty is an
  unmitigated, constipated arse. That’s what the deal is.” He
  gasped for breath and shook his head. “God, Van, I’m sorry
  you guys got saddled with us. Well, with him anyway.”
  “How come he doesn’t seem to razz you about being a stu-
  dent, then?”
  “I guess because I am actually a full agent,” Liam said
  with a shrug. “That didn’t stop him from commenting on it
  constantly at first, but I’m the only one who’ll stand for
  being his assistant, so he doesn’t have a lot of choice. I keep
  my mouth shut and do whatever he says and he’s got noth-
  ing to complain about. Speaking of which . . .” He waved the
  CD player and headphones.
  “Oh, right.”
  Van swung the bag around and held it out. Liam unzipped
  it part way, putting the CD player inside carefully. This time,
  Van got a look into the bag. Most of the interior was taken
  up by foam padding with deep pockets. Tucked into the pock-
  ets were a variety of electronic gadgets, some that looked
  like ordinary home electronics, others that were clearly more
  scientific in nature.
  “What was that CD player really?” asked Van.
  “Geiger counter,” Liam told him. “When we’re hunting for
  evidence of a xenoform presence, it’s standard practice to
  check for local anomalies like increases in radiation. One of
  the things Monty is doing with his camera is checking for
  unusual thermal activity. Cold spots, hot spots . . .”
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  few moments, he paused and scanned the scene, apparently
  listening with great intensity to his headphones, then moved
  on. Once or twice, he made a few strange but casual gestures
  with his right arm, and Van could see he was wearing an
  oddly large and chunky wristwatch. A very fine cable ran
  from the watch up the sleeve of his sweater. Van guessed
  that the other end plugged into the CD player that Liam now
  wore on his belt.
  It took them quite a while to move around the taped-off
  area, though by the time they had come back to the far side
  of the crowd, Van was gratified to find that Monty had cov-
  ered even less ground. Searching the crowd for his friends,
  he found McCain fairly easily, flirting with a pretty woman at
  the back of the crowd. He had a more difficult time spotting
  Ngan, but finally located him—he was only a few yards away,
  standing in the shadow of a pair of big construction workers.
  The old man gave him a quiet nod of encouragement.
  “Excuse me,” said a new voice, “I’ll be needing into my
  bag now.”
  The voice was deep and thick with a heavy Irish accent,
  and that Van remembered. A few weeks before, doing
  research for an assignment, he had stood in line at the ref-
  erence desk in the university’s science library, and made
  small talk with the people around him. The owner of that
  voice had been exactly three people ahead of him. Van turned
  to Liam in astonishment. “You go to U. of C.!”
  Liam stepped back, startled. “What?”
  “You go to the University of Chicago. I saw you in line at
  the science library.”
  “You must be mistaken.”
  “I don’t think so.” Van smiled at him. “Hey, relax. It’s not
  like I’ve blown your cover—I go there, too. I’m a freshman,
  archaeology major.”
  Tentatively, then in a rush, a smile grew on Liam’s face,
  transforming it from rough to gruff and majestic. “Starting a
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  driver started toward the truck. McCain was approaching the
  truck driver, talking to him and slowing him down.
  Ngan appeared abruptly at Monty’s side. “Michael will
  buy you some time, Monty.”
  The researcher grunted and gestured to Liam. His assis-
  tant had two devices out of the bag—one of them resembling
  a slightly over-sized cellular phone, and the other a palm
  computer. He kept the first for himself and passed the sec-
  ond to Monty as they trotted toward the garbage truck. Van
  followed without hesitating.
  “What are those?” he asked quickly.
  Monty, his eyes focused on the tiny computer’s screen,
  ignored him. Liam had the cell phone held to his ear, but he
  glanced back.
  “For magnetic anomalies,” he whispered, tapping his fin-
  gers against the cell phone. “Monty’s is designed to pick up
  any irregularities in time flow.”
  He turned away. Van drew a sharp breath and hurried to
  catch up with Monty. If the missing garbage man had been
  supernaturally aged into the dust that filmed the street,
  would Monty’s device detect anything? Grotesquely, Van
  found himself almost hoping for some positive result that
  might suggest his theory was correct.
  It didn’t happen. Monty walked alongside the truck once,
  looped back, and paused—right over what must have been
  the original concentration of the dust, though he didn’t even
  glance down at the ground. His eyes were still on his device.
  “Nothing,” he reported and looked at Liam.
  His assistant shook his head as well. Monty growled in
  frustration. Back along the street, McCain and the garbage
  man parted company.
  “Time’s up,” Van said.
  Scowling, Monty led them away from the garbage truck
  and back to the quiet corner where they had gathered before.
  When McCain and Ngan had joined them, he shook his head
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  Van felt a shiver pass up his spine. “Like hunting for
  ghosts?” he asked with a sense of horrid familiarity.
  “Exactly,” confirmed Liam. “Your friends are the team
  that tangled with the Madonna of Bachelor’s Grove, aren’t
  they?”
  “In Midlothian, yeah.” Van shook himself as though he
  could shake off the frightening memories of that encounter.
  “That’s us . . . er, them.” Liam looked up from the bag in sur-
  prise, and Van hastily amended, “Us, I suppose. I was there.”
  Liam let out a whistle. “So you’ve actually encountered a
  ghost? Your name wasn’t in the reports.”
  “My being there was kind of unofficial. The whole thing
  was pretty damn scary actually.”
  “You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.” His eyes nar-
  rowed suddenly. “Someplace where Monty isn’t likely to
  come bumbling over,” he murmured.
  Van twisted his head around to look back over his shoul-
  der. Sure enough, Monty was coming straight for them, mov-
  ing like an old, wrinkled bull through a crowd that was
  starting to break up.
  “The police are moving out,” he huffed. “We need to get
  in close and take our readings quickly. The Sanitation De-
  partment has sent someone to take the garbage truck away.”
  Liam nodded and began digging through the bag. Van
  glanced over beyond the police tape. There were fewer offi-
  cers around already, and those who were left were beginning
  to climb into their cruisers or take down the lines of tape.
  Most of the curious on-lookers had disappeared, too.
  Calamity James was over having a last few words with the
  men from the Elgin Mental Health Center van. Meanwhile,
  the big man that McCain had identified as her partner was
  standing off with an official-looking man in a suit and a third
  man in worker’s overalls—the new driver from the Sanita-
  tion Department. Even as he watched, the trio broke up, the
  big man and the man in the suit going to their cars while the
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  The old man cleared his throat. “This time I have to agree
  with Monty, Van. If the . . . xenoform is in the area, the hunt
  will be dangerous. I don’t want to see you hurt.” He looked
  apologetic. “Stay home. We’ll fill you in on everything in the
  morning.”
  Van looked from Ngan to McCain, but the younger
  agent’s face was set as well. He gave a little shake of his
  head. Sorry. Liam wouldn’t meet his eyes. Van suppressed a
  groan of resignation.
  “Fine.” He forced a smile onto his face. “I guess there’s
  always school assignments to work on.”
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  and reported, “Inconclusive. The results may need further
  processing, but there was no obvious unusual thermal activ-
  ity and no chronological distortions.”
  “No abnormal radiation,” reported Liam. “No electromag-
  netic anomalies.”
  McCain and Ngan glanced at each other. Ngan shook his
  head, and McCain shrugged. “It looks like we drew a blank,
  too. No one I talked to has seen anything strange in the
  neighborhood, though the new man from Sanitation said
  rumors are flying between the other garbage men—nothing
  substantial that we didn’t already know, though.”
  “Damn,” said Monty.
  He rapped the fake palm computer against the knuckles
  of his other hand and sucked on his teeth as he thought.
  There was a muted grinding, and the garbage truck roared
  into life. As it swung past them, the driver waved to McCain.
  McCain waved back. Monty’s eyes followed both actions.
  “You shouldn’t be fraternizing with the general populace,”
  he commented distantly.
  Van saw McCain’s jaw strain with the effort of holding
  back some acid comment. It took McCain a moment, but he
  finally managed to muster up some strained good will and
  ask instead, “If we don’t fraternize and your instruments
  come up blank, just how are we supposed to find this thing?”
  Monty grunted. “The old-fashioned way. We hunt for it.”
  He reached out and pulled Van closer to him so that he could
  stuff the palm computer back in the bag. “We’ll reconvene
  here at dusk. A creature of the size reported can’t move
  unnoticed through the city very easily, especially by daylight.
  I’m willing to guess that it—and your Renfield—are still in
  the area.” McCain looked doubtful, but Monty ignored him
  and instead frowned at Van. “This operation will not be a
  place for amateurs. You may stay home tonight.”
  “Oh, give me a break!” Van yelped. “We’ve been through
  this.” He looked to Ngan beseechingly.
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  100
  ed was already in the hotel’s restaurant when
  Jeane came down for breakfast the next morn-
  ing. He waved her over to join him.
  “You’re looking more . . . optimistic today,” he
  said.
  “Don’t mistake resolution for optimism, Ned. I’m
  still a very long way from being a happy camper.”
  She glanced briefly over the menu the waitress
  handed her, then handed it back.
  “Coffee,” she said, “orange juice, a toasted bagel,
  and light cream cheese.”
  The waitress nodded and went away, and Jeane
  looked back to Ned. “I don’t like being lied to,” she
  said. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Ned
  reminded her, “unless my function here has been
  reduced to the purely ornamental.”
  “Ornamental like a gargoyle,” Jean said. She
  chapter
  7 e v e n
  N
  couldn’t help smiling a little bit, though. “In case I didn’t say
  it yesterday, thanks for coming. I needed someone with me.”
  “You could have fooled me. And you didn’t say it.”
  Jeane growled at the big man. “Well, I am now, so enjoy
  it while you have the chance.” She glanced at the table in
  front of him. Except for a coffee cup, it was still empty.
  “What are you having?”
  “My own special: Eggs Devromme. It takes a little longer
  to make.”
  “What would that be? Eggs over easy on a bed of lard?”
  “Ha-ha.” Ned slurped at his coffee. “You’ll see. This will
  take off the way ‘shaken, not stirred’ did for James Bond.”
  “You’re no James Bond, Ned.”
  He smiled kindly. “That’s all right, Jeane. You’re no
  Bond girl.”
  Jeane snorted. “Oh, ouch. I’m not a useless bimbo. I’ll
  take that as a compliment, thank you.”
  “Well, it’s nice to see Marilyn Monroe isn’t the only
  actress you despise,” observed Ned. “Have you considered
  seeing a specialist about this?”
  “I don’t like seeing women dumbed down in films, Ned.
  It’s insulting. Marilyn . . .” Jeane shuddered. “I don’t know.
  It’s like she was just the pinnacle of everything. Dumbed
  down, screwed up, manipulated, and turned into the play-
  thing of popular culture until you can’t tell the real person
  from the roles she played. I’ve instinctively loathed her from
  the first time I saw a picture of her. And her voice just drives
  me crazy.”
  “Ah,” Ned said and sipped at his coffee again. “So other
  than the bashing of movie stars, what’s on the agenda? How
  are we going to go about finding out what’s really up with
  your adoption?”
  Jeane produced a list carefully copied out from the yellow
  pages in her hotel room. “We start with a visit to an adoption
  agency—I’m figuring they get requests for people wanting to
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  “Ned,” she said, plucking the melon off the end of his
  knife, “the only way I will eat that mess is if I’m beyond
  maudlin and considering suicide by heart attack.”
  “There, you see,” replied Ned with a grin, “I am more
  than ornamental. Dr. Kevorkian, eat your heart out.”
  Her plan was, as it turned out, a good one. They waited
  until the first agency on Jeane’s list opened and went in. The
  receptionist listened to Jeane’s request without batting an eye-
  lash and handed her a glossy, four-color brochure entitled Find-
  ing Your Birth Family in Ohio. It shouldn’t have been surprising,
  Jeane realized. Her need to find her real birth mother wasn’t all
  that different from the need of any other adopted child.
  And the news got better, it seemed. According to the
  brochure, how you went about getting your birth information
  in Ohio basically depended on when you were adopted. For
  adoptions before 1964—and her adoption in 1962 would
  qualify—copies of adoption files and original birth certifi-
  cates were available simply by requesting them from the
  Ohio Department of Health.
  “That’s too easy,” Ned said, reading over her shoulder.
  “There’s got to be a catch.”
  There was. The brochure had the phone number for the
  Ohio Department of Health on it, and Jeane called it from her
  room back at the hotel. After transferring through more
  departments than she cared to count and waiting on hold
  longer than she wanted to consider, she had her answer.
  “Four to six weeks waiting time,” she said in frustration
  as she hung up. “I need to fill out an affidavit, get it nota-
  rized, provide two pieces of identification, and pay a twenty
  dollar fee.”
  “Bugger,” muttered Ned. He sat down on the edge of the
  bed beside her. “You know,” he said, “You could just wait the
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  find their birth information all the time. They should know
  the process for getting it.”
  Ned frowned. “You don’t already know? Didn’t you do
  some of this as a teenager when you first found out you were
  adopted?”
  “Not . . . as such.” Jeane looked down at the table. This
  was what really hurt. “I didn’t have to. When I turned eight-
  een and told Stan and Rose I wanted to meet my birth
  mother, they looked after everything.” She smiled bitterly.
  “I just didn’t realize how much they really had to look
  after.”
  Suddenly, her eyes felt wet. Jeane blinked hard, trying to
  fight back tears. She wasn’t going to cry. She wouldn’t. Ned
  shifted uncomfortably, then cleared his throat as if preparing
  to say something. She silenced him with a quick, harsh glare,
  then shifted her gaze to the kitchen.
  “Damn it,” she grumbled, “how long does it take to toast
  a bagel?”
  As if on cue, the kitchen door swung open and their wait-
  ress appeared with a tray. Bagel, orange juice, and coffee
  went down in front of Jeane. Ned got a platter heaped with . . .
  “Dear God,” Jeane gasped through her angry self-
  loathing. “What is that?”
  Ned spread a napkin across his lap and picked up his fork
  and knife. “Eggs Devromme. Poached eggs on a breakfast
  steak on top of toasted English muffins, with Swiss cheese,
  mushrooms, and hollandaise sauce.” He clinked the plate
  with his knife. “And in this case, home fries, an extra side of
  hollandaise, and a little slice of melon that has absolutely no
  business being there.” He speared the fruit and offered it to
  her. “Want it? If you promise not to go all maudlin again, you
  can even try some of the main dish.”
  Jeane couldn’t help the laughter that came bubbling up
  out of her belly and—just for a moment—overwhelmed her
  more bitter emotions.
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  Before the woman on the other side of the counter could
  even respond, there was a booming laugh from deeper inside
  the station.
  “Is that little Jeannie Meara?” A broad red face appeared
  from an office door, and soft blue eyes sparkled. “Do you
  have any more high school seniors to turn in for sneaking a
  beer into the football game?”
  “Just remember that I caught them and you didn’t, Miles.”
  Jeane reached a hand across the desk. “How are you doing?”
  The man who emerged from the office was thick and
  stout in the way of someone who had once been muscular but
  couldn’t be bothered anymore. Miles Barlough had cut a
  sharp figure twenty years before. At the time, he had been
  one of the youngest members of Parma’s police force and
  only about ten years older than Jeane herself. Now he was
  probably the most senior, if not the highest ranking. He
  grabbed Jeane’s hand and pulled her into a rough hug.
  “It’s good to see you again, Jeane.”
  “You ratted on beer at a high school football game?” Ned
  asked dryly.
  “I like to think of it as a practice run for the ATF,” Jeane
  said. She slapped Miles’s ample belly. “Miles was something
  of a mentor for me when I first decided I wanted to go into
  law enforcement. Miles, Ned. Ned, Miles.”
  The two men shook hands, and Miles’s face broke out into
  a wide grin once more. “Jeane, don’t tell me you’ve finally—”
  “No!” said Jeane sharply while Ned glowered. “Ned’s just
  a friend.”
  “Mm-hmm . . .” Miles nodded and Jeane turned her slap
  against his belly into a light punch that made him gasp.
  “Ow. Nice to know you haven’t lost your touch.” He rubbed
  his stomach. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this
  visit then?”
  Jeane inclined her head slightly in the direction of his
  office. Miles might not have been the quickest at letting a
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  four to six weeks. Is it really so urgent that you know right
  now?”
  Jeane shrugged. Four weeks wasn’t that long, she told
  herself. Six weeks wasn’t much worse. It was possible. She
  could wait.
  Bull.
  One of the foundation blocks of her life had just been
  knocked out from under her. Twenty years of a lie designed
  to make her trust the people who had lied to her . . . she
  wasn’t about to take that sitting down. But what could she
  do? She groaned out loud and put her hands over her face.
  Damn it, this was McCain’s area. He could probably sweet
  talk a clerk into giving them the run of the entire depart-
  ment of health. For the first time, she began to regret run-
  ning out of Chicago. As much as she hated to admit it, the
  Hoffmann Institute’s resources would have been very wel-
  come at the moment. Maybe the Institute wasn’t the ATF,
  but it had its ways of getting fast information when it
  needed . . .
  Her eyes popped open, and for a second she stared at the
  hotel room and Ned from between her fingers. “Damn.” She
  dropped her hands and reached for her purse and jacket.
  “Get your coat, Ned. We’re going to the police.”
  “Hold on there.” He jumped to his feet. “Isn’t that just a
  bit drastic?”
  “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Trust me—I have an idea
  that would make Fitz jealous.”
  The Parma Police Department was housed in a low, red-
  brick building just off one of the city’s main streets. Jeane
  parked across the street and led Ned up the concrete steps
  to the door. She took a deep breath, then pushed open the
  door and walked up to the front desk and the young officer
  sitting behind it.
  “Is Lieutenant Barlough around?” she asked with a wide,
  friendly smile.
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  come back and see what I could find out. It turns out that
  getting a copy of the adoption file is pretty easy—if I want to
  wait on the bureaucrats in Columbus to get around to it.
  What I was hoping was that maybe you could make the
  request a little more . . . official.”
  The old boy was quick, there was no denying it. Miles’s
  brow furrowed, and he looked at her as if she had just asked
  him to shoot her in the foot. “You want me to ask for your
  record through police channels?”
  “Pretty much, yes.” Jeane smiled at him. “I’ve gotten
  used to having the inside track, I guess. Make it sound like
  part of an investigation, and the paper-pushers will hop right
  to it. You could probably get from them in a day what would
  take a civilian weeks. How about it, Miles? Please?”
  Miles just folded his arms on his desk and looked at her.
  Jeane found herself holding her breath as his silence
  stretched out. Finally though, he shook his head wearily.
  “Patience never was your strong suit, was it?”
  “You’ll do it?”
  He wrinkled up his nose. “Do I have a choice? But just so
  you know, this may not work. I’ll have to get a court order,
  and frankly, I don’t think the department of health gets that
  many requests from the police for thirty-nine-year-old adop-
  tion records.” Miles shoved a pad of paper and a pen across
  the desk. “Give me what you’ve got, then go away and let me
  work my magic. Check back in a couple of hours. That should
  give me enough time to find out whether this is doable.”
  Jeane grabbed the pad and scribbled down all of the
  basic information that seemed relevant. “Thanks, Miles.
  You’re the best.”
  “Yeah, yeah.” He took the pad back and waved them to
  the door. “Hey, Jammie’s is still open across the street. Why
  don’t you stop in and grab some lunch?”
  “Maybe we will.” Jeane ushered Ned out, then leaned
  back into the office. “Really, Miles—thanks. I appreciate it.”
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  subject drop, but he was no slouch when it came to taking a
  hint. He led the way back to his office, gestured for them to
  sit down, and closed the door behind them.
  “Is everything okay, Jeane?” he asked, sliding in behind
  his desk. “I heard you weren’t with the ATF anymore.”
  His tone and expression said more than his words. Jeane
  wondered what he had heard. All parties involved in her
  rather abrupt “resignation” from the Bureau of Alcohol,
  Tobacco, and Firearms had done their best to keep the cir-
  cumstance of that departure quiet, but Jeane knew better
  than most the way gossip tended to spread through law
  enforcement circles. Stan had, of course, known that she’d
  taken a new job as well, and gossip spread even faster
  through a small place like Parma. Whatever Miles might
  have heard, though, his expression was sympathetic rather
  than suspicious, and Jeane smiled.
  “Everything is fine,” she lied. “I’m working for a private
  company in Chicago now.”
  “So what brings you back to Parma?” Miles sat back in
  his chair. “This can’t be a social call.”
  “I . . .” Jeane clenched her teeth. Did McCain always feel
  this awkward when he tried to talk someone into doing
  something for him? Probably not. McCain was too smooth.
  She, on the other hand . . . Aw, hell, Jeane thought, and went
  with the blunt, straight-forward approach. “I need a little
  favor, Miles.”
  Miles sat up. “I get really nervous whenever I hear those
  words, Jeane. You should know that.”
  “I do, but this is different.”
  “How?”
  Now came the tricky part. She had known Miles would
  listen to her, but convincing him to do what she needed was
  something else again.
  “You know I’m adopted, right?” Miles nodded and Jeane
  pressed on. “Well, I wanted to know more, so I decided to
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  dropped menus on the table. “Thanks, Marilee.” The waitress
  smiled back with a look of vague recognition before moving on.
  “Do you know everyone in Parma?” griped Ned.
  “I used to baby-sit her, Ned. It’s not that big a city—at
  least it wasn’t twenty years ago.” Jeane flipped through the
  stained menu. “I presume you didn’t grow up in a small town,
  then.”
  “There wasn’t much small about Toronto, even in the
  seventies.”
  Jeane let him have a moment before glancing up inquir-
  ingly. “That’s it? No reminiscences of high school?”
  Ned kept his eyes on the menu. “I loathed high school,
  thank you. I wrote my last exam, then skipped town. Cheese-
  burger with bacon and a side of fries with gravy, please,” he
  told the waitress as she returned to the table. “And a vanilla
  milkshake.”
  “You’re not still full from your Eggs Devromme?” Jeane
  groaned. “Toasted western on whole wheat. Iced tea.” The
  waitress went away and Jeane turned back to Ned. “Where did
  you go after you left Toronto?” she asked. She had done
  enough talking about herself in the last two days to keep her
  set for years. It was time for a change of subject—anything to
  get her mind onto another track. Ned, however, just shrugged.
  “Chicago for a few years,” he said simply. “I knew people
  there. Then my gifts manifested, and I spent a few more
  years wandering around, figuring things out and practicing.”
  “Around?”
  “The world.”
  Jeane nodded. “I didn’t really get the whole Grand Tour
  experience—for me it was straight into college, then law
  enforcement.”
  “My Grand Tour wasn’t exactly the standard post-high
  school trip to Europe, Jeane.”
  “I suppose not.” Jeane leaned forward a bit. “So what
  exactly is it like?” she asked quietly, hiding her words under
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  He shooed her away. “Just get out.” She laughed and
  closed the door.
  Ned was waiting for her on the steps outside. “That was
  clever,” he said approvingly.
  “Fitz would have had Miles eating out of his hand with
  two words.”
  Still, Jeane was quite pleased with herself. She glanced
  at her watch. 12:30. If Miles actually managed to get a court
  order during lunch hour, she’d eat out of his hand.
  She grinned at Ned. “So how about some lunch?”
  “Absolutely.” Ned rubbed his stomach. “I’m eager to try
  this shrine of culinary delight called Jammie’s.”
  “You’ll like it, Ned.” Jeane checked the traffic and crossed
  the street, angling a bit toward a white clapboard restaurant
  with big windows and a sign advertising the best milkshakes
  in Ohio. “They fry everything.”
  With the exception of new upholstery on the chairs, Jam-
  mie’s Grill hardly seemed to have changed a bit. The floor
  was still tile linoleum, faded advertisements for jumbo burg-
  ers and sides of coleslaw still decorated the walls behind
  the counter, and the same greasy swinging saloon doors
  masked the entrance to the kitchen. The smells of fried
  meat and boiled coffee hung in the air together with the clat-
  ter of thick, institutional tableware. Jeane turned instinc-
  tively toward the window that looked back onto the
  street—even her old favorite table was still there. She
  headed for it while Ned trailed behind her, peering at every-
  thing curiously.
  “I’ll be damned,” he murmured as they sat down. “It’s
  like walking into a time warp.”
  Jeane smiled. “Try the milkshakes. If they haven’t
  changed, they really are good.”
  Ned raised his eyebrows. “Careful, Jeane—I think you’re
  dangerously close to actually having a good time.”
  “It’s just nostalgia.” She nodded at a waitress as she
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  Ned grimaced. “Van’s ready, I think. It’s really more of a
  case that we just haven’t found the key. Ngan is a better
  example.” Jeane raised an eyebrow, and Ned nodded. “He
  has the gift—don’t tell me you haven’t seen him do some
  weird stuff.”
  “I thought it was some kind of martial arts training
  thing.”
  “That’s pretty much how Ngan views it, too. Ultimately,
  it’s the same gift, but he’s limited by the color he’s chosen to
  paint it. Of course, there are always a few people who
  develop on their own and would probably never consider
  themselves psychic unless it was pointed out to them. Like
  Fitz.”
  “Fitz is psychic?” Jeane asked.
  “You didn’t think that silver tongue of his was entirely
  natural, did you?” Ned grinned. “It’s a very focused talent,
  and he’ll probably never be able to do anything else, but he
  is very—” He glanced out the window and froze. “Jeane,” he
  hissed, “your father is out in the street.”
  Jeane twisted around in her chair. Stan Meara was lop-
  ing along the sidewalk across the street, straightening a
  coat that looked like it had been pulled on in haste. In one
  hand, he held a thin brown envelope. If he had looked at the
  restaurant, he would surely have seen them in the window,
  but his attention was fixed on his destination. As they
  watched, he trotted up the steps of the Parma Police
  Department.
  Jeane sucked in a shallow breath. There was something
  about the envelope that Stan carried that set her teeth on
  edge. Something suspiciously anonymous and yet exactly
  the right size for what she imagined an adoption file might
  look like.
  “What the hell is going on here?” she muttered. She
  glanced at Ned. “I don’t suppose you could sense his emo-
  tions, could you?”
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  the general noise of the restaurant. “Being psychic, I mean.
  What’s it like to know what other people are feeling or move
  things telekinetically?”
  Ned shook his head. “It’s a little like having a second
  sense of smell. Some odors you can block out, some you can
  focus on, but you can never ignore them completely. They’re
  just there, waiting for your nose. Moving things telekineti-
  cally, on the other hand, is a totally different matter. It’s not
  like having an extra arm. It’s all focus. There’s no bone or
  muscles to give it direction.”
  Jeane thought back to what she had seen Ned do in Bach-
  elor’s Grove Cemetery. He had stopped a possessed man in
  his tracks. He had rolled a bank of ghostly mist away from
  himself in a billowing white wave. She had a sneaking sus-
  picion he might even have deflected two of her own bullets
  shot wildly into the mist, but she couldn’t be sure. Then
  again, not much more than a year ago she would never have
  considered such a thing even to be possible.
  “How do you got about learning how to control a power
  like that?”
  “Part of it’s instinct,” Ned answered. “Usually that’s
  what surfaces first in response to initial manifestations. If
  you want to go further, though, it takes practice and train-
  ing. There have been groups that have tried to develop psy-
  chic abilities in subjects by force, but even if they
  succeeded in creating the ability, they almost always fell
  down on the training.” Ned closed his eyes, exhaled softly,
  and brought his hands in to touch his chest. “It may sound
  corny, but a psychic who can’t incorporate his gift into his
  world view and his self-image is never going to master it.
  What you’re capable of depends largely on how you see
  yourself.”
  “You’re right,” Jeane said, “it does sound corny. So is that
  why Van’s abilities haven’t broken out yet? He doesn’t see
  himself in the right way?”
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  gone, completely replaced by seething anger. Miles. Miles had
  suggested Jammie’s. He had known where they would be.
  “Drop the burger, Ned. We’re leaving.”
  Ned followed her gaze, his eyes darting to take in the
  cook. His face shifted minutely for a second, and Jeane
  caught sudden movement as the telephone’s cradle pressed
  down of its own accord. The cook stared at the dead receiver
  in his hand in surprise.
  “He’ll have to dial again before he can tell the people on
  the other end that we’re leaving,” Ned muttered, standing
  up. Burger still in hand, he followed Jeane’s brisk stride from
  the restaurant. “That’ll buy us a few seconds. Are we going
  to the station?”
  “No.”
  Jeane broke into a dash for the car. A portion of her
  anger wanted to run, as Ned had suggested, into the police
  station, to confront Stan and Miles and demand to know
  what game they were playing. That anger was mingled,
  however, with a little fear, and all she could think of was old
  advice from her ATF training. Never hesitate in the crunch. If
  you don’t like what’s in front of you, fall back. And she didn’t
  like this at all.
  Out of the corner of her eye, Jeane caught a glimpse of
  movement at the door of the police department even as she
  was climbing into the car. Two figures, one big and broad,
  one tall and lean, were coming out. She jammed her key into
  the ignition and glanced at Ned buckling in beside her. “Got
  any other tricks for buying time?”
  The psychic twisted around in his seat, popped the door
  open, and flicked the remains of his bacon cheeseburger out
  of the car. Jeane watched in amazement as the arc of the
  burger changed and it hurtled back down the street like a
  greasy missile. A quarter pound of beef, gooey cheese,
  bacon, ketchup, and mustard slapped Miles in the face hard
  enough to send him staggering.
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  He shook his head. “No.” He met her gaze. “What do you
  want to do?”
  Temper and patience fought briefly. Patience won. “Wait,”
  she said. “We’ll see if he comes back out again—and if he
  has that envelope when he does.” She drummed her fingers
  across the tabletop. What was going on inside the police
  department? Could it be a coincidence that Stan had shown
  up there now? It didn’t seem likely. There was no reason for
  him to go to the police . . . unless Miles had called and told
  him they had been there.
  And why would her old mentor betray her like that?
  “Here you go,” said the waitress brightly, breaking into
  Jeane’s dour thoughts. She started sliding plates and glasses
  onto the table. “Toasted western on brown. Cheeseburger
  with bacon, fries, and gravy. Vanilla milkshake.”
  “Iced tea,” Jeane reminded her.
  “Coming in a second.”
  The waitress ducked back around the counter. As Jeane
  started on her sandwich, she watched the waitress slide a
  glass into the soda dispenser. On the wall behind the soda
  dispenser, a phone rang. The waitress picked up it with her
  spare hand.
  “Jammie’s,” she answered. She listened for a second,
  then cushioned the receiver against her chest and yelled
  back into the kitchen, “Dick, phone for you.”
  The cook, a beefy man of advanced middle-age who Jeane
  recognized vaguely, emerged from the kitchen  to take the
  call. She didn’t quite catch what he said, but she did catch
  his eyes as they scanned the room. They flickered briefly
  over her, and the cook nodded.
  At the very same moment, Ned stiffened abruptly. “Inter-
  est,” he mumbled around a thick mouthful of beef and
  cheese. “Someone is very interested in us.”
  Jeane was already standing up and pulling a couple of
  bills from her purse to leave on the table. Her nostalgia was
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  It was Stan’s voice. Jeane slammed the receiver down.
  She grabbed her bag and ran for the door. “Ned! I’m check-
  ing out. Meet me downstairs at the counter.”
  She took the stairs without even waiting for the eleva-
  tor. Thankfully, the clerk was already standing at the desk
  with no one else in line. Jeane slapped her room key on the
  desk.
  “Checking out,” she said. “The other key will be down in
  a minute. I’m getting both rooms. You have a credit card
  impression from last night. Bill it to that.”
  The clerk nodded and flipped through a file of slips, but
  clicked his tongue in disappointment as he pulled hers. “It’s
  a bad impression. Can I have your card again?”
  “Make it quick,” she snapped, digging the card out and
  passing it to him. He nodded and disappeared into a side
  room just as the elevator doors opened on the other side of
  the lobby and Ned came hustling out.
  “Jeane,” he said urgently, “there was a message on the
  phone in my room.”
  She hissed. “From my father?”
  Ned nodded. “He wants to talk to you. He seemed very
  sincere about it.”
  “Maybe later.” She craned her neck to see into the side
  room. “What the hell is taking so . . .”
  Her eyes fell on the black and grey box of a credit card
  machine sitting right behind the front desk.
  “Damn!”
  Her bag hit the floor and she was vaulting the desk
  before Ned could even ask what was wrong. In the corner of
  the side room, the clerk was on the telephone. Jeane
  grabbed his hand, twisting it sharply and ripping the phone
  out of it.
  “Card!” she demanded and gave his hand another twist so
  that he gasped in pain. His free hand scrabbled on the table
  in front of him.
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  “Go!” Ned shouted. “Stop staring and go!”
  Jeane slammed down on the accelerator, and the car
  leaped out into the street, tires squealing as it sped away
  from the police station. She didn’t try to turn or even slow
  down until they were a good five blocks away from the sta-
  tion. Finally, she spared a glance for Ned.
  “Your cheeseburger?”
  “I was under pressure,” he snapped, “and it was the first
  non-damaging thing I could think of. I presumed you didn’t
  want to hurt them.”
  “I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
  She turned the car in the direction of their hotel. That
  should still be safe. She hadn’t mentioned to anyone where
  they were staying. If Miles wanted to, he would probably be
  able to find out, but by then they would be out of Parma. She
  needed time to think. Just what the hell was going on that
  her adoption could need such secrecy and her search for
  answers provoke such a response?
  They left the car parked close to the front door of the
  hotel and ran upstairs to their rooms. “Grab your stuff fast,”
  Jeane told Ned, “I’ll meet you back out here.”
  All of her own things were clustered together for a fast
  departure, a habit picked up in years of investigations for the
  ATF. In the bathroom, she shoved her toothbrush into a toi-
  letry bag, then took that out and shoved it into the overnight
  bag she had brought from Chicago. Under thirty seconds and
  she was ready to go. She made a last visual sweep of the
  hotel room.
  The message light was blinking on her phone.
  She stared at it for a second. A message from who? Maybe
  Ngan or Fitz—no, they would have called her cell phone. She
  snatched up the phone and dialed the messaging system.
  “You have one message,” said an impersonal female
  voice. “First message.” There was a moment’s pause, and . . .
  “Jeane? Jeane, we need to—”
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  The first cruiser was parked badly. There was a huge gap by
  its tail, easily wide enough to drive through.
  “Buckle up, Ned!” she snapped, and gunned the motor.
  She was bearing down on the gap, just seconds away
  from breaking through, when a tall, lean, grey-haired figure
  stepped around the cruiser to stand directly in her path.
  Stan.
  Never hesitate in the crunch. If you don’t like what’s in front
  of you, fall back.
  Jeane’s foot jumped from the accelerator to the brake
  and slammed down hard. Tires and brake shoes squealed in
  protest. She and Ned were thrown hard against the
  restraints of their seatbelts.
  The car came to a stop only about ten feet from Stan. For
  a moment, nobody moved—not Jeane, not Ned, not Stan in
  the street, not Miles beside the cruiser. Then Stan began to
  walk slowly toward the car. Jeane unbuckled her seat belt
  and got out to meet him. She had never seen him look more
  pale or more troubled.
  “You’re a hard person to talk to, Jeane,” he said tenta-
  tively.
  “Being lied to doesn’t make it easier.”
  Stan nodded. “I know. That’s why I need to talk to you
  now.” He met her eyes. “I can give you the answers you want.”
  They got a police escort back to the Meara house. Miles,
  his face and uniform still greasy and stained from Ned’s
  cheeseburger, whispered an apology to Jeane as he walked
  them to the door. She didn’t say anything back, and he didn’t
  wait for a reply, just clapped his hat on his head and went
  back down the walk to his car. Stan ushered Jeane and Ned
  inside, and it was just the three of them in her parents’ old
  living room.
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  Damn it, what the hell was going on? How many people
  were in on this?
  She had her answer when the clerk held up her card and
  she snatched it out of his shaking hand. There was a ring on
  one of his fingers, a simple silver band inset with two black
  strips framing a tiny symbol of an interlocking triangle and
  geometry compass.
  “Damn!” she spat again, this time almost in disbelief.
  She shoved the clerk to the ground and sprinted back out to
  Ned. “Get in the car!” she ordered, scooping up her bag on
  the way past.
  “What is it?” Ned asked, following her through the
  doors.
  “Masons,” Jeane growled. She hurled her bag into the
  back seat, then pounded a fist on the car roof. “They’re all
  bloody Masons!”
  “You’re kidding.”
  “No.” Her recent brush, in the course of the case of
  Luther Blisset, with the strange forces that swirled around
  Freemasonry had left her with very little doubt that there
  was much more to the Masonic orders than charitable
  groups of middle-aged men conducting funny ceremonies.
  “Dad was . . . is a Mason. I knew he was important some-
  how, but maybe he’s more important than I thought.”
  “So what exactly does that mean?”
  “Damned if I know, and damned if I’m going to stand
  here and wait for the answer to find me.”
  She climbed into the car and started it, pulling away
  before Ned even had his door closed. The freeway wasn’t far.
  As she made a sharp turn out of the hotel driveway, how-
  ever, a police cruiser slid across the intersection at the end
  of the block, closing it off.
  Jeane cursed and glanced over her shoulder. The other
  end of the block headed back into Parma—but it too was
  now sealed by a second cruiser. Jeane turned forward again.
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  However, Sam Hollister was also not your father. Rose and
  I suspected the same thing, but Sam swore that the young
  woman really was his patient and nothing more. We believed
  him.”
  “So why the big secret, then?” demanded Jeane. “Why
  the lie?”
  “Because she was from a good family,” Stan explained.
  “A very good family and very prominent locally. Sam said
  she had initially been pressured to have an abortion but had
  run away in hopes of keeping the baby. Eventually she real-
  ized that would be impossible. She was going to have to go
  back to her family eventually. She asked for Sam’s help to
  find someone who would adopt her baby, raise it well, and,
  most importantly, keep it away from her family.” He looked
  down at his hands. “Rose and I talked it over. Even back
  then there was a waiting list for adoptions, so we agreed.
  Sam even paid for our plane tickets out to LA. In return, all
  we had to do was stay quiet about the arrangement and just
  treat it like a private adoption.
  “On August twenty-eighth, 1962, Rose and I told every-
  one we were going to Cleveland to adopt. Instead we flew to
  Los Angeles. On September fourth—the same day you were
  born—we adopted you. We never met your mother, and Sam
  told us later he never saw or communicated with her again
  after you were delivered. Sam must have had some connec-
  tions because he had the whole identity of Dale Churchill in
  Cleveland set up as a cover story. He even got your birth
  officially registered in Ohio.”
  Stan reached down beside his chair and produced the
  plain brown envelope Jeane had seen him carrying into the
  police department. He offered it to her.
  “This is a copy of what you would find in your adoption
  file, including a birth certificate for Jeane Churchill. When
  Miles called to say you were at the station, I came over to
  give it to you and explain everything.” There were big
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  Stan and Ned sat. Jeane remained standing. “So what
  brought about the sudden change of heart?” she asked.
  Stan sighed. He sat in his favorite armchair with his
  shoulders hunched and his back bent, really showing his
  age for the first time Jeane could remember. “I made a few
  phone calls last night and this morning.”
  “I’ll say,” Jeane snorted. “Rallying the Masonic troops?
  Sworn to mutual aid and support and all that stuff.”
  “Jeane,” Stan said, “they’re my friends. I needed to find
  you, and they helped me out. I’m sorry if it looked like some-
  thing else.” He looked up. “But this did all start with the
  Masons.”
  Stan shifted in his chair and continued, “You know that
  your mother and I tried to have children for years after we
  were married. Your mother miscarried five times. It was
  hard on us—especially on her. We had a lot of friends
  through the Masons, all over the country, and I guess word
  got around. One day I got a call from a friend in St. Louis
  asking if Rose and I would like to have dinner with him and
  some other Masons. I don’t really remember everyone who
  was at that dinner, but one of them was a doctor from Los
  Angeles named Samuel Hollister.” He sighed. “In hindsight,
  that dinner was more like an interview, because a couple
  days later, I heard from Sam Hollister again.
  “It turns out Sam had somehow heard about our difficul-
  ties having children. At the same time, he had a problem of
  his own. He knew a young, unmarried woman—one of his
  patients—who was pregnant and needed to find a home for
  her baby.”
  “That’s sounding pretty familiar,” Jeane pointed out,
  “and really, really sordid. It sounds like your Dr. Hollister
  knocked this girl up himself.”
  “Jeane,” said Stan, “that girl was your mother.”
  “But not Dale Churchill.”
  Stan sighed again. “No,” he confessed, “not Dale Churchill.
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  hard, then spun him bodily around so that she could look at
  Ned over his shoulder. “How about it, Ned? Fancy a quick
  trip to LA?”
  The big man groaned and threw up his hands. “Why not?
  I’m sure Chicago is doing well enough without us.”
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  tears in his eyes. “And that’s the truth, angel.”
  Jeane felt a certain moisture in her own eyes, too, but
  after so many years of a lie . . . She glanced at Ned, his face
  fixed on Stan in concentration.
  “Is it the truth?” she asked. Ned nodded solemnly, and
  Jeane turned back to Stan. “So when I told you I wanted to
  meet Dale when I was eighteen . . .”
  Stan nodded. “It was Sam’s idea to hire someone to
  reject you so that you wouldn’t look any further. He decided
  to hire someone from Los Angeles, figuring it was far
  enough away that you’d never meet her again.”
  “Except that I did.”
  Jeane closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened
  them again, she took the envelope that Stan still held out—
  and passed it to Ned so that she had both hands free to draw
  her father out of his chair and hug him.
  “Oh, Dad.”
  “Jeane, I’m sorry. Your mother was always sorry, too.”
  Jeane drew back a bit so that she could look him in the
  eyes. “So why are you telling me this now, Dad? Last night
  you said you couldn’t.”
  Stan wiped away tears. “Those calls I made. I hadn’t
  heard from Sam Hollister in a while, so I tried to get in
  touch with him again. It turns out he died seven years
  ago.”
  A weight settled back into Jeane’s stomach. “But if he
  was the only one who knew who my real birth mother
  was . . .”
  Stan flicked her under the chin. “No, angel. Sam had a
  son, and he was one of the people I talked to this morning.
  He was the one who said to go ahead and tell you the whole
  story—and to encourage you to get in touch with him. It
  seems Sam left something for you.”
  The weight in Jeane’s belly turned to an electric excite-
  ment. She threw her arms around her father and hugged him
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  122
  ight fell over Chicago. Somewhere out in the
  darkness, McCain and Ngan searched for some
  supernatural creature that might already have
  killed four people.
  Perversely, Van wished he were with them. He
  turned back to his anthropology text book and tried,
  for the ninth or tenth time, to apply himself to the
  details of the Neolithic period in Anatolia and the
  Levant. For the ninth or tenth time, they slipped away
  with astonishing rapidity, and he found himself think-
  ing about McCain and Ngan again.
  The rest of the afternoon after leaving Monty and
  Liam had been spent in the team’s office. He,
  McCain, and Ngan had split Lisa Renfield’s file from
  Elgin between them and sifted through the photo-
  copied pages for any clue that might help them
  locate her, determine her agenda in the city, or figure
  out a little more information about the mysterious
  chapter
  8 i g h t
  N
  creature from the morning’s attack. The two agents treated
  him as an equal, and when Emma had brought coffee, she
  had brought a third mug for Van without even asking. It was
  a good feeling.
  Unfortunately, they hadn’t uncovered anything new. Fif-
  teen years of being a patient at Elgin had produced a lot of
  notes on Lisa Renfield, but much of what the agents and Van
  read was information they already knew or had inferred. Spe-
  cific diagnoses of Renfield’s illness had varied over the years
  as doctors came and went. Only Olivia Marquez’s notes
  appeared to indicate any real improvement—right alongside
  mention of Renfield’s emerging belief in a protector who
  could fend off the decay that obsessed her. All they could
  glean from the information was that they were dealing with
  a very intelligent, very clever woman. That wasn’t at all
  encouraging.
  At the end of a long, frustrating day, McCain and Ngan
  had sent Van back home in a cab while they tried to prepare
  for what was likely to be a long, frustrating night. Neither of
  them was confident in Monty’s plan for locating the creature,
  though Ngan had admitted that they had no better plan to
  propose.
  Van realized he was staring out the window again.
  Damn it, it wasn’t fair! Monty had made that argument
  sound petulant this morning, but it was true. Van wanted to
  be out there with the other Institute agents instead of stuck
  safely away in a dorm room. He knew what sort of things
  lurked in the world and yet he wasn’t permitted to do any-
  thing about it. How fair was that? The creature didn’t scare
  him—much.
  His bitter fretting was interrupted as the door of the room
  flew open and his roommate tore in. “Hey, man, a bunch of
  us are going to a kegger.” He spared a glance for Van as he
  whirled around the room—pulling off the grungy sweatpants
  he had been wearing, pulling on a slightly less grungy pair of
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  had had no luck before with the exercises in clairvoyance
  Ned taught him, but maybe this time . . .
  He lay down on his bed and took three slow, deep
  breaths, trying to let the tension flow from his body with
  each breath. On the third, he let his mind go blank and con-
  centrated—really concentrated—on Michael McCain and
  Ngan Song Kun’dren. Their images came to his mind easily
  enough, the essence of what he knew of them a little more
  slowly. He kept at it, holding them in his mind’s eye until his
  sense of them was almost real. Then he took a fourth deep
  breath and reached deep inside himself for the still, quiet
  place from which Ned said a psychic’s power flowed.
  And reached. And reached.
  He had the power. He knew he did. Somehow, though, it
  always eluded him. He could feel it, but he just couldn’t find
  it. Confidence, he reminded himself. He would reach his
  power. He would bring the images of McCain and Ngan to life
  and he would see them as they walked the dark streets of
  Chicago’s west side. He would—
  He would fail again, just as he had so many times before.
  He wouldn’t find the power.
  The moment broke.
  “Damn,” Van murmured to himself as he swam back into
  a sort of warm, relaxed semi-consciousness.
  He let himself float in that state, not quite awake, not
  quite asleep, but definitely not psychically active. Maybe he
  didn’t have the gift of clairvoyance but what the hell was
  holding back whatever gift he did have? It was as frustrating
  as . . . well, as searching Renfield’s file and finding nothing
  new, nothing suspicious.
  No, that wasn’t quite true, he realized. There had been
  one thing that had nagged at him. Among the papers Van had
  skimmed had been a record of the fourteen visits Renfield
  had received in 1987, the first year she had been deemed suf-
  ficiently fit to talk to visitors. Twelve of the visits, once a
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  jeans, jamming his feet into a pair of shoes, and snatching up
  a jacket and his wallet. “You coming?”
  Van shook his head. “Can’t tonight, Dillon.” He flapped
  his text book in the air. “Too much work.”
  “Dude, a kegger!
  “Dude,” Van shot back, “no time!”
  Dillon shrugged. “Your loss, my gain.” He paused halfway
  out the door with his hand on the knob. “Hey, how did your
  job interview go?”
  It took Van a moment to remember his excuse for dress-
  ing up that morning. “Okay,” he said noncommittally. “We’ll
  see if they call back.”
  “What was the job again?”
  “Just office work for a charity. Nothing big—just a little
  extra cash.”
  “Well, when you got some, you’re going to have to come
  out and buy a round. See you later.” Dillon pulled the door
  closed. Van kept his eye on it and started counting slowly. At
  ten, Dillon stuck his head back in. “You’re sure? You look
  like you need a break.”
  “Next time,” Van promised and sighed as Dillon closed
  the door.
  Dillon was a good roommate, but he never took “no” for
  an answer. Van looked down at his textbook again. Dillon
  was right about one thing, though. He did need a break. He
  wasn’t getting any work done. Not this kind of work, anyway.
  He closed the textbook, stood up from his desk, and
  stretched.
  One of the good things that had come out of his experi-
  ences in Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery was the revelation of his
  psychic potential. Under Ned’s tutelage, Van had been trying
  to draw out his gifts. He hadn’t had any luck so far, but Ned
  had urged him to keep trying and to listen to his instincts.
  Well, if his instincts were dragging his thoughts to McCain
  and Ngan maybe he should be trying to help them along. Van
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  “There are more than just ghosts out there, you know. Oh,
  yes. There was a group right here in Chicago that managed to
  summon up something much worse than a ghost. No one knows
  what they summoned because only one person survived. All the
  rest were just . . . gone. And the person who survived, the leader,
  she had her mind totally burned away . . .”
  Ned knew about Renfield. Ned knew Renfield.
  Van reached for the telephone, then paused. Who was he
  going to call? McCain and Ngan? He had no way of reaching
  them thanks to Monty’s insistence on no cell phones. Should
  he call Ned directly? That just didn’t seem like the right way
  to go about confronting his mentor. If he’d known how to get
  in touch with Jeane, he would have, but not even her partners
  knew where she was. The only person left working on the
  investigation was . . .
  Him.
  Van couldn’t help grinning as he pulled on a jacket and
  shoes, checked his transit pass, and ran out the door.
  “What do you mean Ned’s not here?” Van demanded.
  “Where is he?”
  “Don’t know,” mumbled Kaz without looking directly at
  him.
  Perched, as always, behind the counter in Ned’s shop, the
  skinny clerk was trying his best to simultaneously speak
  with Van and watch an old episode of Star Trek. Van had the
  distinct impression that Star Trek was beating him out. Just
  as the captain of the Enterprise and his crew were stepping
  into the transporter, Van reached out and clicked off the set.
  Kaz whined in protest, but at least Van had his full attention.
  “If you don’t know where Ned is,” he said firmly, “do you
  know when he’ll be back?”
  Kaz shrugged. “Couple of days.”
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  month like clockwork, were her parents, both now dead. The
  remaining visits had been from a Norm Medvede claiming to
  be a friend of Renfield’s. His first visit had ended with Ren-
  field breaking down in a fit of violence. Medvede’s second
  appearance was a visit in name only: her doctors had
  rejected his request on the grounds of protecting their
  patient.
  Van had shown the sheet to McCain, who had nodded. He
  had seen it, too, and had found Renfield’s reaction strange as
  well. He had also, however, taken a few moments to use the
  Institute’s resources to try to find out something about Mr.
  Medvede—without success. In all likelihood, the name was
  fake, and as suspicious as that visit was, it had taken place
  almost fifteen years ago. There wasn’t much they could do to
  follow up on it.
  “Medvede,” Van whispered aloud in his half-dreaming
  state.
  Except for being spelled with an “e” on the end, it was the
  Russian word for bear. “Honey-eater.” Ned had told him that.
  Van had been a little disappointed—he had wanted to sur-
  prise his mentor with what he had learned about taboo
  words, but Ned had already known it. Ned knew medved.
  Ned Medvede.
  Norm Devromme.
  Van’s eyes snapped open. He rolled off the bed and scram-
  bled for a piece of paper and a pen, hurriedly writing out Ned
  Devromme, then scratching off the letters to spell out . . .
  Norm Medvede. An anagram.
  “Holy crap,” he choked. “God damn.”
  Something else came back to him as well. The first time
  he had met Ned, Van had confessed to holding a séance in
  Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. Ned turned on him, describing
  some of the horrendous things that could have gone wrong.
  If Van closed his eyes, he could still see the psychic standing
  over him and hissing a menacing warning.
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  behind Monty. McCain would likely be complaining about
  sore feet. Ngan wouldn’t be saying anything at all, just fol-
  lowing along in that stoic, inscrutable way of his. Liam . . .
  Van supposed that Liam would be silent, too, though he had
  been talkative enough once he was away from Monty and out
  of his shell. As for Monty, Van had a sudden vision of the
  tubby little researcher in an absurdly outsized pith helmet,
  leading the party like some Victorian adventurer, and it made
  him laugh out loud. Damn, that was better!
  Van was still chuckling when the train pulled into the
  Washington station. He glanced at his watch as he passed
  from the Blue Line platform to the Red Line on his way
  down to State Street and the Jeffrey Express bus that would
  take him back to the university campus. It was going to be
  late by the time he got home. It had been a long day, and the
  temptation of Dillon’s keg party aside, he was looking for-
  ward to—
  He froze.
  There was a southbound train just coming to a stop along
  the Red Line. Even at this hour the platform was busy,
  though it was still open enough that he had a pretty good
  view of everyone climbing aboard. Including a pale woman
  with a pointed chin and light chestnut hair.
  Renfield. There was absolutely no doubt in Van’s mind.
  The woman wore a threadbare winter coat, and her arm was
  weighed with blandly normal grocery bags, but it was defi-
  nitely Renfield. She was nowhere near the west side where
  Monty and the others were searching. She didn’t look to be
  going that way at all.
  The first chime of the train’s doors rang.
  Van didn’t really even stop to think about what he was
  doing, just sprinted for the Red Line train and jumped onto
  the car behind the one Renfield had entered. He made it just
  as the doors shivered and slid shut, earning a disapproving
  look from a portly older woman. Van smiled slightly,
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  Van grimaced and drummed his fingers against the
  counter. The bus and L train ride from the University of
  Chicago campus to Ned’s shop in Wicker Park was just long
  enough that going back empty-handed was going to be com-
  pletely frustrating. So much for his excitement at the dis-
  covery of Ned’s connection to the case.
  “When did Ned leave, Kaz?”
  The clerk twisted around and peered intently at an old
  electric clock that hung on the wall before turning back
  around.
  “Yesterday,” he said. “With Jeane. They had bags.” He
  wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
  “Get out.”
  Ngan said Jeane had taken time off on a personal matter,
  but Van found the possibility of Jeane and Ned running away
  for a romantic interlude together as likely as the possibility
  of Kaz getting a haircut. Then again, the idea of Jeane and
  Ned going anywhere together was a little difficult to believe.
  He looked at Kaz doubtfully. The clerk just nodded with
  greater vigor and a wider, more leering grin.
  Van shook his head. “Thanks, Kaz.”
  He flicked the television back on and left the shop.
  It was only a short walk to the Damen station and the
  Blue Line L train that would take him back downtown. Van
  spent most of the walk and his wait for the train in a sullen
  mood. He had news, sure, but it wasn’t the great news that
  he had wanted to present to McCain and Ngan. They didn’t
  have Ned to answer their questions. In fact, they had a new
  little puzzle—where had Jeane and Ned gone together?
  A train pulled into the station, and Van stepped aboard.
  He found a window seat and stared out at the lights of the
  city flickering past. At least he had something interesting to
  report tomorrow, and at least his curiosity about what
  Monty’s hunting party was up to had left him. Ngan and
  McCain—and Liam—were probably still stalking the streets
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  reluctant to talk about his past. Van had always found that a
  little strange before. Now he found it downright disturbing.
  The train slowed for its approach to Sox-35th. Van
  glanced ahead to check on Renfield.
  She had turned away from the window. She had turned to
  stare at him.
  Any doubt about her identity vanished as he met, for a
  second, those haunted eyes. A shudder ran down his back,
  crawling along his skin and radiating out from his spine. It
  was all he could do not to jerk his head down and away from
  Renfield’s gaze. He forced himself to keep his face neutral,
  to shift his glance casually past, as if he were just looking
  around, focussing on nothing in particular. He knew that she
  was staring at him—there was no one in either car between
  them, and there was no one immediately behind him in his
  car. There no one else she could be looking at. Renfield was
  staring at him and him alone.
  The train squealed to a halt at the Sox-35th station. A few
  people got off. Fewer people got on. Renfield didn’t move. Out
  of the corner of his eye, Van could see the open doors of his
  car. He could get off. He should get off. There would be no
  shame in it, he knew. Neither McCain nor Ngan would blame
  him. But there were too many stops to the south still. Ren-
  field could get off at any of them, and they would lose her
  completely.
  The train made his decision for him. The doors chimed
  and closed on Sox-35th. The car jerked and swayed and
  began moving again. Renfield continued to stare. In spite of
  the distance between them, Van could see that her eyes were
  deep and intense, like holes punched into her face.
  He was, he realized a little belatedly, staring back at her
  now. This time he did jerk his gaze away—there didn’t seem
  to be any point in hiding it. How had she picked him out? Had
  he been looking at her too openly or too frequently before? Did
  Renfield somehow know he was with the Hoffmann Institute?
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  shrugged his shoulders, and headed up toward the front of
  the car, swaying slightly with the movement of the train. He
  took a seat a little distance back, one from which he could
  see through the windows that looked between the cars.
  Renfield was clearly visible. She sat about halfway along
  the length of her car—facing back toward him. For a
  moment, Van wanted to crouch down and hide, but he fought
  the urge and took another discrete glance. Renfield wasn’t
  even looking in his direction at all, just staring out the side
  windows like so many of the other passengers. There was no
  sign of any shadowy figure or ultraterrestrial monster. She
  was completely alone. Van took a longer glance, then
  another. Renfield looked so very normal, just another poor
  woman taking the late night train home from a menial job.
  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t Renfield at all.
  Maybe.
  Van’s doubts grew as the train made its short, jerky trips
  between the downtown stations of Washington, Monroe, and
  Jackson and Renfield made no move to get off. They breezed
  through the Harrison station, closed for the night. They were
  getting into residential areas now, and with her grocery
  bags, Renfield certainly did look like any other woman on
  her way home. At Roosevelt station, he watched her care-
  fully, alert for any sign that she might be preparing to get off,
  but the train pulled out of Roosevelt, made the long roll to
  Cermak-Chinatown, and left that station for Sox-35th with-
  out any move on Renfield’s part. Van began to wonder just
  how far south she was going.
  He also began to wonder about Ned’s connection to her.
  The Hoffmann Institute files said that Renfield had been
  involved with black magic before her breakdown. He believed
  the Institute files. Ned had described her as the leader of a
  group. Van believed Ned, too, but just how did Ned know she
  was the leader? His mentor certainly knew as much about
  magic as he did about psychic gifts, and he had always been
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  There were a couple of people getting off from Van’s car
  as well. He darted out in their wake, using them as cover.
  The train doors closed after him, and the train rumbled as it
  began to move. No turning back.
  The scant handful of people on the platform were funnel-
  ing toward the stairs that led to the rest of the station and
  its various exits. Renfield was already on the stairs, her bags
  like white plastic beacons. The other people gave her a wide
  berth, perhaps out of instinct, and she moved quickly. She
  didn’t look back. She hadn’t seen Van get off the train—he
  hoped. He hung back, waiting until he thought that she had
  reached the other end of the stairs, then took them himself
  with the last of the passengers from the platform.
  In the station itself, however, his cover dispersed. Van
  slid in behind a pillar, scanning the open areas for signs of
  Renfield. There were a number of bus bays at this level: 47,
  43, 51 west and east, 24 north and south. Renfield stood in
  none of them. There were street exits, too, short dim walk-
  ways from the station. He could see straight down the pas-
  sage to 47th Street east at South LaSalle Street. It was
  empty. But the passage to 47th Street west at South Wells
  Street was around a corner, and at that corner—
  A flicker of white plastic. Quickly, but carefully Van went
  that way. He was alone. None of the other passengers had
  come in this direction. Taking a deep breath, he ducked
  around the corner.
  The passage was long and disquietingly dim, with a dark-
  ened ticket collector’s booth at the far end. It was also quite
  empty, though the door at its far end was just clicking
  closed. Van took a step into the passage—and stopped.
  Renfield should still have been in sight. The passage was
  just too long for her to have gotten all the way to the doors
  so fast.
  How many times have I seen this in a movie? he asked
  himself. His heart was beating so fast it hurt. His whole body
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  No. How could she? How could she even know about the
  Hoffmann Institute? Van was just a stranger on the train. He
  could be anybody. He had simply had the misfortune of catch-
  ing Renfield’s attention.
  Like the garbage truck driver this morning?
  The crawling of his skin had turned to a cold, light sweat.
  A fast glance from under his brows showed Renfield still
  staring. This time when he looked away, he could still feel
  that gaze on him. His heart was racing suddenly, his breath
  coming quick and sharp. He ground his teeth together. No, he
  told himself, get a grip. She was in another car with people
  around her. There were at least a dozen people more in his
  own car. Even if she tried anything there would be warning.
  It was okay. He seized on another one of Ned’s exercises, a
  calming exercise that had always come easily to him. It
  didn’t come easily this time though, and even when it did
  come, it didn’t help. Time stretched out. He could still feel
  Renfield’s stare.
  The train began to slow again. 47th Street. He risked
  raising his head a little.
  Renfield wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead she was
  gathering her grocery bags and rising. She spared one last
  glance for him, then turned to sway toward the door as the
  lights of the station rushed up on them.
  Her stop. He was safe. Except . . .
  Van swallowed again, trying to draw moisture through a
  mouth that was suddenly very, very dry. Except that there
  was still a lot of territory around the 47th Street station.
  Renfield could get a bus from there. She could walk back to
  the north—or further south, or east or west. Knowing only
  that Renfield got off the train at 47th Street was hardly of
  greater use to McCain and Ngan than Monty’s insistence on
  searching the west side. They needed more.
  The doors of the train opened. Renfield stepped out of
  her car.
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  135
  cCain sipped at his second coffee of the morning.
  The bitter brew was black and as strong as he
  could get it.
  Monty’s monster hunt had, as expected, been a
  wash. For a little more than eight hours they had
  blundered around the dark streets and alleys of
  Chicago’s west side. They had started at the site of
  the attack on the garbage man and worked their way
  outward in ever increasing spirals, all of them
  searching for some sign of their ill-defined quarry.
  Monty had sent them peering into every corner,
  behind every trash bin, and into every door that
  didn’t seem properly secured. McCain had spent
  most of the night on edge in case someone should
  notice their suspicious quartet and call the cops.
  There were many things that Monty’s techniques
  were not and one of them was subtle.
  They had, of course, found nothing at all related
  chapter
  9 i n e
  M
  was shaking with the effort of breathing. How many times
  have I yelled at the characters not to go in there?
  And yet it took effort to step back away from the pas-
  sage—to step well back, not turning around until he was a
  good twenty feet back inside the well lit, open area of the
  station. He could feel the rumble and wind of another train
  approaching the station. Northbound, this time. Back to
  safety. He turned and ran—ran—to catch it.
  In the shadows beyond the collector’s booth, Renfield
  watched the young man flee.
  “Too bad,” she whispered to the worm curled inside her
  jacket. “He had potential.”
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  Two cups of coffee and a little more than an hour later,
  McCain looked at Van over the rim of his cup and across the
  meeting table in the team’s office, cursing himself for not
  calling back the night before—and cursing Van for putting
  himself in such danger. When the young man finished his
  story, McCain grimaced.
  “Getting on that train was probably the stupidest, most
  dangerous thing you could have done.” He sighed. “I proba-
  bly would have done exactly the same thing.”
  “Except that you probably wouldn’t have turned around,
  Michael,” commented Ngan. He nodded to Van. “I think you
  made the right choice.”
  “Thanks.” Van took a deep swallow of coffee. “I just can’t
  believe that this whole time, we might have been able to get
  answers just by going to Ned.”
  “If he did leave town with Jeane the day before yesterday,
  it’s a moot point—he wouldn’t have been around anyway.”
  McCain turned to Ngan and said, “There’s actually more to
  that story of Ned’s. I should have remembered it, too,
  because he told me the whole thing. I just kept my mouth
  closed because I wasn’t sure how much he wanted spilled to
  the public. Eventually it was buried deep enough that I just
  didn’t make the connection.”
  Ngan leaned forward. “I think it may be time to ‘spill.’ ”
  McCain took a deep breath and mentally apologized to
  Ned. “You know part of this, I think,” he told Ngan, then
  glanced at Van. “You don’t. Ned used to be a diabolist before
  he discovered he was psychic. After he tried to scare you
  straight with that story, I asked him if it was true. Ned said
  it was—that the group that disappeared was actually his old
  circle of diabolists. He’d left them and diabolism behind
  shortly before they had their little accident.”
  Van looked startled. Ngan just sat back again and said,
  “Ah.” He put his fingertips together and contemplated the
  ceiling for a moment before adding, “I had known about
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  to their case, although they had made some interesting dis-
  coveries. For instance, McCain had never fully appreciated
  just how many raccoons there were in Chicago. Nor had he
  known about Ngan’s apparently unerring ability to locate dog
  shit by stepping in it. He had also discovered that the little
  thermographic camera Monty had walked around staring
  into all night could register sufficient heat inside a bin of rot-
  ting garbage to send them digging into it, yet it could not
  warn Monty of any number of rocks or other debris in his
  path that might trip him. As long as the researcher had
  insisted on relying on the device, however, neither McCain
  nor Ngan—nor, surprisingly, Liam—had found it necessary
  to point the obstacles out to him. And Monty, stubbornly, had
  refused to give it up.
  The hunt had finally broken off around two a.m. when
  even Monty had been forced to admit that there was nothing
  to find. They had all gone their separate ways, McCain driv-
  ing Ngan home to Devon Avenue before himself retiring to
  his loft in the downtown River North neighborhood. Unfortu-
  nately, that hadn’t quite been the end of the night for him.
  There had been two messages on his answering machine—
  true to his warning of the morning before, Monty had made
  McCain leave his cell phone behind in the car. The first mes-
  sage had been from Jeane, finally calling in to let them know
  where she was: en route to Los Angeles. She didn’t say why.
  McCain hoped she was all right.
  The second message was from Van. There had been
  urgency in his voice and frustration at getting a machine
  rather than McCain directly. “Call me,” the message said, “as
  soon as you get in.” To his regret, McCain hadn’t, opting
  instead for immediate, deep, and dreamless sleep.
  Precisely at nine o’clock, his phone had begun ringing
  with tremendous insistence until he finally answered it. It
  was Van. All he had to say to bring McCain fully awake were
  three words: “I’ve seen Renfield.”
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  “Five minutes, Emma. Impress that upon Monty if you
  have to.” Ngan hung up the phone with a stab of his finger
  and sat up straight. “Why did it take us so long,” he re-
  peated, “to discover Ned’s connection to Renfield—his being
  out of Chicago aside?”
  “There was nothing about Ned in the file,” Van pointed
  out. “Maybe no one knew about him and Renfield.”
  “Exactly.”
  “What are you getting at Ngan?” asked McCain. “We
  know Ned doesn’t like to talk about his past. It’s not a
  stretch to assume he worked at keeping it out of Institute
  files.”
  Ngan nodded. “Which means that no one else knows we
  have inside information on Renfield.” He sat back again.
  “Renfield is slippery. She always seems to be one step ahead
  of us. Our brushes with her, all of our leads, have turned up
  by accident. The information we have been given is very little
  use at all.” Ngan folded his hands on the table. “I think that
  perhaps we have been lazy in simply accepting only the infor-
  mation that was presented to us.”
  If that wasn’t a loaded statement, then McCain had never
  heard one in his life and he looked at Ngan again, trying to
  guess at exactly what he meant. On one level, the old man’s
  meaning was clear. They really hadn’t dug into the Hoffmann
  Institute’s resources, but had worked only from the thin
  folder that Lily had handed to them.
  On another level though, Ngan’s statement had a more
  sinister significance. If their information on Renfield was so
  useless, why hadn’t they been warned when it was given to
  them? A resounding impact that shook the office doors inter-
  rupted his thoughts, though. Ngan frowned. “I don’t think
  that was five minutes, but perhaps we should take up this
  line of inquiry another time.” He glanced at McCain and Van.
  “Your discretion on this, please?”
  McCain nodded without hesitation, but Van looked
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  Ned’s experience with the occult. I didn’t realize he had such
  a close connection to Renfield, however. No wonder he tried
  to visit her at Elgin.”
  “No wonder she had fits,” Van said. He looked from Ngan
  to McCain and back. “So without Ned around, does knowing
  this do us any good? Are we any further ahead?”
  McCain wrinkled up his nose and thought about it. The
  connection was interesting but, like Ned’s alias of Norm
  Medvede, it was also fifteen years old. If they could get in
  touch with him, Ned might be able to give them some general
  answers, but beyond that . . .
  “Frankly,” McCain said with another grimace, “I think
  Renfield’s getting off at 47th Street is a better lead, though
  if there was anything else, I’d take it. My feet are still sore
  from last night, and I’m not looking forward to another back-
  alley search.”
  “Actually, I wonder if we are perhaps farther ahead than
  we should be,” said Ngan in a cautious tone that made
  McCain swing around in his chair to look at his partner. The
  old man still had his fingertips together and his face tilted up
  to the ceiling. He brought it down again and looked at both
  of them. There was a shadow in his eyes. “Why did it take us
  so long—”
  Before he could complete that thought, however,
  McCain’s desk phone rang, the little intercom light flashing
  to show it was a call from the outer office. McCain reached
  over and hit the speakerphone button. “Hello, Emma.”
  “Monty Desmond and Liam Crogher to see you, Fitz.”
  McCain made a face. So did Van. And while Ngan’s face
  did not shift from its usual placid inscrutability, he certainly
  didn’t look pleased.
  “Tell Monty we’ll see him in five minutes,” the old man
  said.
  “He’d like to see you now, Ngan.” Their secretary sounded
  rather irritated. McCain couldn’t say he blamed her.
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  Monty just shook his head and held up a computer disk.
  “We’ve already been there. This is from my digital camera. If
  you can manage to plug it into a computer, you can see the
  pictures.”
  McCain snatched the disk away from him with a growl
  and jammed it into the computer on his desk. While the
  machine opened the images on the disk, he swiveled around
  to face Monty again. “So if you’ve already been there, why
  come back to us?”
  Monty sniffed. “In spite of your attitude, Mr. McCain, we
  are supposed to be working together.”
  “Files are open,” said Van before McCain could get a ver-
  bal shot back at Monty. He turned back to the computer in
  silence. Everyone crowded around to peer over his shoulder.
  The photographs showed a fairly typical crime scene of
  police officers, a couple of cars, and a small crowd hanging
  around—much like the day before, in fact. Strip out all of
  those things, though, and there was only an expensive, late
  model car sitting in the middle of a parking lot. A late-model
  car with a strange pale streak across the ground just beside
  the trunk. McCain magnified the picture as much as he could
  without reducing it to a pixilated blur.
  “Monty, what’s that?” McCain asked.
  The researcher shrugged. “Dirt on the ground. The wind
  was blowing it around.”
  Maybe it was just dirt, but McCain didn’t think so. A dis-
  appearance on the city’s north side—and Van had seen Ren-
  field on the train coming from the north. McCain brought the
  picture back to normal size and looked at the background
  behind the car. The parking lot belonged to a medium-sized
  mall. There were a number of stores visible, including a large
  supermarket. Renfield had been carrying bags of groceries.
  Waste not, want not, he supposed.
  “The victim was grocery shopping before she disap-
  peared, wasn’t she?” asked McCain.
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  frightened. “Wondering what you’ve got yourself into now,
  Van?” McCain asked.
  “Just a little.”
  “Don’t worry. We’ll steer through it and come up smelling
  like roses.” McCain gave the young man a reassuring smile
  and Van looked relieved. Now if only, McCain thought to him-
  self, someone could do that for me. He stood, walked over to
  the office doors, and pulled them open.
  Emma was holding Monty in a painful-looking joint lock
  just on the other side of the doors. The researcher might
  have been angry a moment before, but now he just seemed
  dazed. Liam was very wisely waiting in the background.
  When Ngan looked at Emma questioningly, she smiled
  and said, “You said to impress five minutes upon him if nec-
  essary.” She released her hold on Monty. “Ngan and Fitz will
  see you now, Mr. Desmond.”
  McCain took Monty’s arm and helped him to a chair.
  “Sorry about that, Monty,” he apologized. “Emma takes her
  work very seriously.”
  “Bull.” Monty touched his face gently. “She enjoyed that.”
  I’m sure she did, thought McCain, and I envy her the
  chance. “What brings you out to the wastelands of Schiller
  Park, Monty?”
  The researcher sat back in his chair. “The police are
  investigating another missing person report this morning.
  North side. The victim went out on an errand last night and
  never came back. Her car was found near her destination,
  the store clerk confirmed that she had been in, but there’s no
  sign of her.”
  “You think it could be Renfield,” McCain guessed.
  “And/or the creature seen at the garbage truck attack,”
  corrected Monty. “There were no witnesses this time.”
  “Now you want to go investigate the scene yourself.” It
  could have been a question but Ngan made it more of a state-
  ment. The old man looked at Monty expectantly.
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  daylight. The chances of running into Renfield or the sup-
  posedly nocturnal beast might have been lower, but at least
  they would be able to see what they were doing. Somewhat
  to their surprise, Monty had agreed readily. McCain had
  decided to press their luck, and while the demand that Van
  come along this time brought three shades of purple to
  Monty’s face, the researcher eventually, and with bad grace,
  agreed to that as well.
  The region west and north of the 47th Street L station
  was an old working-class neighborhood. Most of the houses
  were weathered brick rowhouses, probably dating to the
  twenties and set close to the street with no front lawns to
  speak of. The alleys that ran behind them were, by contrast,
  quite wide and lined with a motley variety of garages.
  Glimpsed over fences, the backyards of the houses were a
  fair size, many of them dense with flower and vegetable gar-
  dens. There were the usual urban eyesores of graffiti and
  garbage, but the houses were generally in good repair. It had
  the feel of a place that had been born in hard times, seen
  harder, and was now slowly recovering.
  More than a few people paused and watched them from
  porches and lawns. Most were older, retired people, though
  some were younger—parents with small children, perhaps,
  or on shift work, or without a job altogether. McCain went to
  work without prompting, approaching the people they
  encountered with a smile and a handshake. Even if the
  people wore dour expressions on his approach, a few words
  and a pleasant comment was usually all it took to get them
  smiling. Once he had their interest, McCain would show
  them the picture of Renfield from their file and ask if they’d
  seen her. Unfortunately, no one had.
  “Maybe you’re just not asking the right questions,”
  sneered Monty. “Let me try.”
  There was a jogger coming up behind them, a young
  black woman with a fresh, healthy beauty that made McCain
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  “Yes,” said Monty slowly and with some suspicion. “How
  did you know that?”
  McCain glanced at Van and Ngan. Ngan gave him a slight
  nod. “Hold onto your chair, Monty,” McCain said gleefully.
  “We’re already way ahead of you.”
  All things considered, Monty took the news of Van’s
  encounter the previous night rather well. He ranted, of
  course, complaining about Van’s lack of respect for orders
  and Ngan and McCain’s irresponsibility in not informing
  him of this immediately. In the end, though, and with a few
  whispered words from Liam, he settled down. Even he had
  to admit that the encounter with Renfield gave them a valu-
  able lead. He was also quick to re-exert control over the
  case. Rather than returning to the scene of the latest dis-
  appearance, he decreed, they would investigate the area
  west of the 47th Street station and try to pick up Renfield’s
  trail there.
  As if there was any other real choice. McCain felt like he
  had held back so many choice words in the past twenty-four
  hours that they would cramp him up like a bad case of gas.
  He had also held back the matter of Ned’s connection to Ren-
  field. There seemed to be no point in sharing with Monty the
  psychic’s past. After a silent exchange of glances with Ngan,
  though, he had told Monty their theory about the gruesome
  origins of the dust at the disappearances. Monty had glow-
  ered and berated Liam for not thinking to collect specimens
  of the dust for analysis.
  They drove down to the area in two separate cars and
  parked a short ways from the station. The wind off of Lake
  Michigan was cold as he got out of the car, but McCain
  savored the feel of the early afternoon sun on his face. He
  and Ngan had insisted on conducting this new search by
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  “The area beside the old Union Stockyards.” Van waved
  around them. “They used to be right up ahead on the far side
  of Halsted Street—blocks and blocks of feed pens, slaugh-
  terhouses, and railway facilities to ship meat across the
  country. They closed in 1971.” He made a face. “We had to
  study them in school for local history. Gross. It turned half
  the class vegetarian for a few weeks.”
  “Interesting. About the stockyards, that is.” Ngan looked
  speculative. “What’s there now?”
  “Industrial park. Just about everything from the old
  stockyards is totally gone.” Van was staring after Liam. “Lis-
  ten guys,” he added suddenly, “I’m going to go hang with
  Liam for a bit while Monty’s off sulking, okay?”
  Ngan nodded and Van took off after Monty’s assistant. As
  soon as he was out of earshot, McCain glanced at his part-
  ner. “You’re thinking about something,” he said quietly.
  “I had been thinking that the old stockyards would be
  an excellent hiding place for someone obsessed with death.
  An industrial park doesn’t have the same grim atmosphere,
  but I imagine it would offer a number of good hiding places
  as well.”
  “That’s not what I mean, Ngan.” They kept walking,
  slowly pacing off the length of the block. “What were you
  getting on about back at the office this morning?” McCain
  jammed his hands down into the pockets of his coat.
  “What’s up?”
  Ngan was silent for several moments before replying. “I
  think we’re being played, Michael.”
  McCain blinked. “Why? Who?”
  Ngan shook his head very slightly.
  “Why, I don’t know. Who . . .” Ngan hesitated, then said,
  “I told you once I thought there was a mole inside the Insti-
  tute. I haven’t changed my mind, but in addition to that, I
  have seen something in Lily’s manner since we were as-
  signed to this investigation. Something about it has her
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  think guiltily of Shani again. Monty plucked the photograph
  from McCain’s fingers and, holding it up, stepped directly
  into the jogger’s path. “Have you seen this . . . ?”
  The young woman went right around him without even
  blinking or breaking stride. Monty glared after her in flab-
  bergasted silence. Everyone else was silent, too, though
  McCain was simply trying his hardest not to laugh and sus-
  pected that the others were doing the same.
  “Sorry, Monty,” he managed finally, taking back the
  photo. “It looked like she was in a runner’s trance. You know
  how joggers are when they really find their focus.”
  “Of course,” said Monty. His face was red. He peered
  along a side street to the mouth of a back alley with a sud-
  den, exaggerated intensity. “Hmmm . . . I think this might
  bear investigation. No, no—I can check it alone.” He waved
  as if keeping them back, though no one had actually moved
  to accompany him. “Liam, perhaps you could meet me at the
  other end of the block?”
  “Of course, Monty.”
  Liam sprinted ahead while Monty ducked down the side
  street and up the alley. McCain looked after him and mur-
  mured, “What a boob.”
  “Michael . . .” warned Ngan sternly, but his eyes were
  wrinkled with glee.
  McCain shook his head. “I mean it. The man is a total
  boob. How does someone like that get the rank of Senior
  Researcher?” He sighed, then looked around them as they
  followed the jogger west along the street. The houses on this
  block were rougher than the ones they passed so far, a grad-
  ual shift toward decay, weeds, and more litter. “So what
  neighborhood would this be exactly anyway? It’s too far
  south to be Bridgeport, right?”
  “It’s kind of on the border,” Van said. “Bridgeport’s north,
  and Back of the Yards is south and west.”
  “Back of the Yards?” asked Ngan.
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  Liam was waiting for him at the corner. “Thought I could
  use a little company?” he asked with a smile.
  Van returned the grin. “Fitz and Ngan are cool, but I’ve
  been with them all morning. It seemed like a good time for a
  break.”
  “You’re lucky there’s someone young on your team.” Liam
  shook his head as they walked up Halsted to the end of the
  alley. Monty was still perhaps two-thirds of the way back
  down the alley and taking his sweet time. Liam jerked his
  thumb discretely toward the researcher. “I’ve got him. At least
  your Mr. McCain looks like he doesn’t take things too seri-
  ously.” His face twisted into a grimace. “Crap. Monty’s got me
  doing all this ‘Mister’ talk now. What is it you call McCain?”
  “Fitz. I don’t think he’d mind at all if you called him
  that—sometimes I think he’s more comfortable with it than
  his real name.” Van shrugged casually. “Ngan’s okay too. You
  haven’t met Jeane or Ned. Jeane’s a former ATF agent, so she
  can be pretty intense, and she’s tough. Ned’s cool to hang
  around, but he can be pretty intense, too. They’re both fairly
  old. Almost forty.”
  Liam snickered. “If you cringe when you say ‘twenty,’ you
  get a swift smack upside the head.”
  “Geezer,” taunted Van and danced back from Liam’s play-
  ful punch. “What about you? Aren’t there any younger people
  at the CSC?”
  Liam shook his head. “There are younger agents
  assigned to the CSC’s parent division, but they’re almost
  always out in the field or working in smaller offices. I guess
  working with the CSC at my age is a coup. It’s deadly dull,
  though, and I can’t talk about my work there to anyone.” He
  looked at Van. “How do you handle the secrecy?”
  “I guess I hang with Ned enough that I can talk about
  everything I need to. He’s really my mentor more than Fitz or
  Ngan or Jeane.” To Liam’s quizzical expression, he coughed
  and said, “Apparently I’m a latent psychic.”
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  spooked, but she can’t or won’t tell me what. In addition to
  any irregularities with the information we’ve been able to
  obtain concerning Renfield, there’s the matter of the dust
  at the scene of her escape. That’s a vital clue and yet it was
  cleaned away. I can’t help wondering if we’re being set up
  to fail.”
  “What about Jeane’s running off right now?” McCain
  asked. “And with Ned yet. Do you think there’s a connec-
  tion?”
  “No,” answered Ngan. “I think Jeane’s going away is
  indeed personal and simply a matter of very bad timing. I
  believe she would recognize if she were being manipulated.
  Ned’s accompanying her is probably just a coincidence as
  well, though a very unfortunate one from our standpoint.” He
  looked reflective for a moment. “I think,” he said, “it may be
  time to interrupt them, however. We need to get in touch
  with Ned.”
  “We can try Jeane’s cell phone as soon as we can get
  some privacy.” McCain hesitated, then added, “Lily did call to
  warn you about Monty. Is he . . . ?”
  Ngan shook his head more emphatically. “I wondered at
  first, but I don’t think Monty is any more than he seems: a
  scientist who is completely focused on his work.” He gave a
  little smile. “And who has very poor social skills.”
  “Liam?”
  “I hope not.” His smile twitched a little. “For Van’s sake.”
  The cross-street at the end of the block was broad and
  busy Halsted—closer than Van had thought it was—and the
  industrial park that had once been the stockyards started on
  its other side. The jogger who had passed them had crossed
  the intersection and was just disappearing among the park’s
  squat buildings.
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  into the street. In one hand, he had the rectangular wallet
  containing his Hoffmann Institute ID. He brandished the
  open wallet at the oncoming traffic like a police badge. “Offi-
  cial business!” he shouted as he ran, “Official business!”
  “He’s insane!” Monty gasped.
  “Then you can stay on this side,” said Ngan and followed
  McCain, his own ID wallet held high.
  Cars slammed on their brakes and honked their horns in
  a cacophony of frustration, but both of them made it across
  with Van and Liam in their wake, and Monty bringing up the
  rear, both arms wrapped protectively over his head.
  “That was the most irresponsible—” he began.
  Ngan cut him off before he could utter another word of
  complaint. “Did anyone see which way the jogger went?” he
  demanded. “Can anyone tell where the scream came from?”
  “This way!” said Van, pointing.
  The road was narrow, the buildings on either side just old
  enough to be abandoned. There would be no one else to
  respond to the jogger’s scream. Her cry had been one of
  shock and surprise, not pain or death. She was, he was cer-
  tain, still alive, and while Monty was right to question
  whether it was Renfield that had made her scream, Ngan had
  a horrible feeling the question was unnecessary.
  A fluttering cloth, snagged on a chain-link gate that
  stood half open in the fence surrounding a vast lot of truck
  trailers caught Ngan’s eye. A tear of yellow nylon, the
  color of the runner’s shorts. There were marks in the dirt
  below. Someone had come to a sharp stop there, then run
  into the lot.
  “There!” he told the others.
  Even as he squeezed through the gates, though, there
  was another scream, this time of fear. And this time it cut off
  so abruptly they were all left in silence.
  “Damn,” hissed McCain.
  “We keep going,” whispered Ngan.
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  It felt weird to actually discuss his ability out loud. He’d
  never spoken about it to anyone except Ned and the team
  before, and he half expected Liam to shy away from him
  because of it. Liam didn’t even blink though. He actually
  seemed impressed. “That’s wild.” He glanced down the alley
  to where Monty was still slowly picking his way along, then
  turned back. “Van, would you like to go out for coffee some-
  time?”
  Van’s heart swapped places with his stomach for one
  sweet, thundering moment. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “That
  would be gr—”
  A short, sharp scream broke his words. Liam spun
  instantly to check on Monty, but the portly researcher was
  staring up at them. Van twisted around the other way. The
  scream had come from across the street, from somewhere
  just inside the industrial park.
  The jogger, Ngan realized, it was the jogger who had
  passed them. He had seen her cross the street.
  Without saying a word, he broke into a sprint. He didn’t
  really have to say anything—McCain raced along behind him
  without needing instruction or explanation. He’d probably
  guessed exactly the same thing.
  Van and Liam met them at the corner, with Monty huffing
  his way up out of the alley behind them. Van jammed his
  thumb against the crosswalk button but the lights resolutely
  ignored him.
  “Turn, damn it,” he snarled, “Turn!”
  “Do you think it’s Renfield?” panted Monty. “Do you think
  it’s the creature?”
  Ngan gave him a harsh glare and said, “Does it matter if
  it is?” The light was taking too long. “We need to cross now!”
  “Watch your asses and follow me!” McCain dodged out
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  The short trail of blood ended in a drift of pale grey dust.
  Renfield had been there. All of them stood frozen for a
  moment, then Monty swooped down on the dust with a
  muted exclamation of glee. He pulled a small plastic bag
  from a pocket, slipped it over his hand inside out, and dug
  into the drift, flipping the bag rightside out again around his
  specimen. Liam took a step forward as well, a digital camera
  at the ready. Van just looked away, his face pale. McCain
  stepped out into the middle of the open space, turning to look
  all around them and cursing.
  Ngan didn’t move, but instead swept his gaze around the
  open space. Everything seemed all right, and yet the inner
  voice that sometimes woke him from even the most profound
  sleep was stirring now.
  “Stop,” he said. “We’re being watched.”
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  He touched a finger to the cloth. There was blood on it,
  and blood tipped the stiff, sharp wire that had snagged it.
  More blood made oblong drops on the cold ground. He slid
  forward, all senses alert. The only sounds were the nearby
  traffic and their own footsteps. The trail of blood was clear,
  leading back in among the trailers. They had not been well
  parked and, as a result, turned the lot into a narrow, twisted,
  shadowy maze. The jogger had tried to hide back there, Ngan
  guessed, perhaps startled into seeking refuge in the yard. It
  was not the best of choices—retreating back to the busy
  street would have been better—but it had long been his
  experience that people very seldom made the best decisions
  when they were scared.
  After a few turns, the drops of blood became more fre-
  quent. The jogger had slowed down, perhaps thinking she
  had shaken off her pursuer. She hadn’t. One of the drops was
  smeared across the pavement in a footprint. More footprints
  followed it, stamped out in blood.
  “I heard something!” Monty gasped.
  “No, you didn’t,” Ngan told him firmly.
  The end of the trail lay around one more turn, ironically
  just a few trailers over from where they had entered the
  maze. This final space was larger than the other metal-sided
  canyons and two or three other deeply shadowed passages
  fed into it. There were some garbage cans and a few old
  wooden skids leaned against one of the trailers. In a patch of
  sunlight, blood made a concentrated little pattern. The jog-
  ger must have stopped, maybe to gather her strength. More
  drops, however, had fallen in rapid succession to make a
  short trail away from that pattern. Some of them had again
  been smeared by a footprint, but this time the footprint
  pointed backward. The jogger had been surprised as she
  rested. She had taken a few steps back away from her pur-
  suer. There had been time to scream once more, but not to
  run again.
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  152
  he afternoon found Jeane and Ned driving slowly
  through the streets of West Hollywood. An early
  flight out of Cleveland through Denver had put
  them into the busy terminal at LAX just after lunch.
  They had called ahead from Stan’s the night before,
  and Dr. Sam Hollister’s son had given them directions
  to his apartment. Unfortunately, the directions lacked
  some of the precision Jeane would have liked. She
  stared out the window of their rental car as she
  drove, searching for Holyoake Avenue. Ned, on the
  other hand, leaned back in his seat with his window
  rolled all the way down and basked in the California
  sunshine.
  “Why not just stick your head out all the way so
  your tongue and ears can flap in the wind, Ned?”
  Jeane said finally. “It’s not that warm out.”
  “It’s better than late November in Chicago.” Ned
  cracked his eyes open to peer at her. “You know, you
  chapter
  1 0 e n
  T
  choose some great spots to have crises. Invite me along any-
  time.” He glanced out the windshield and added, “Holyoake
  next intersection.”
  Jeane cursed as she looked up to see the intersection
  almost upon them. Amid a flurry of blaring horns and
  screeching tires, she made a hard turn and squealed around
  the corner. She shot a quick glance at Ned. The psychic was
  sitting all the way upright now, his eyes wide open.
  “What?” she asked with a smile. “Not quite as relaxing as
  you thought?”
  “Please try to remember that the car is rented in my
  name.”
  “Don’t worry,. I won’t let anything happen to it.” She bent
  down to look out the window at street numbers. “1204 . . .
  1202 . . . 1200 . . . We need 992.”
  She pushed down on the accelerator and they roared for-
  ward to the accompaniment of Ned’s small gasps of protest.
  992 Holyoake Avenue turned out to be an old four-story
  apartment building from the 1930’s. The edges of the build-
  ing’s deep yellow bricks were beginning to crumble, and the
  windows were dull with accumulated dirt. Two stubby wings
  of apartments swept forward to embrace a small courtyard.
  Apparently all attempts at gardening had been abandoned
  some years before. The courtyard had been paved over
  except for a few scraggly shrubs that collected litter at their
  bases. There was a strange smell in the cramped little
  vestibule just inside the door. Jeane held her breath as she
  buzzed apartment 3-F.
  The voice that answered was distorted by the cheap
  intercom. “Hello?”
  “Keith Hollister? It’s Jeane Meara.”
  “Jeane! Come on up!”
  The inner door of the vestibule clicked open. The halls
  and stairway on the other side smelled better, though the
  odors of cooking and stale smoke were still noticeable.
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  “My big project.” The man stood and carefully reset the
  tripod. It wobbled slightly. He muttered a curse. “It’s on a
  motion sensor with a two second delay. It takes a picture of
  everyone who walks through my door. Most people are sur-
  prised,” he added with a nasty glance at her, “but they don’t
  try to take out the camera.”
  Jeane bit back a vicious retort. If this man was who she
  thought he was, she didn’t want to antagonize him. Fortu-
  nately, Ned saved the conversation—in his own dubious fash-
  ion. “Well, our Jeane isn’t what you might call photogenic.”
  She elbowed him sharply in the stomach and smiled at
  the man. “I’m sorry about your tripod,” she apologized, “I’m
  just a little high strung right now.” She extended her hand.
  “I’m Jeane Meara. This is Ned Devromme. You must be Keith
  Hollister. I didn’t realize you were a photographer.”
  “An artist,” Keith corrected her. “Instant photographs are
  my medium.”
  Reaching behind himself, he plucked the little photograph
  from the camera and flashed it at her. The picture was pale,
  its colors still developing, but it was a near perfect shot of her
  face captured as she opened the door. Ironically, it was one of
  the better pictures of herself that Jeane could remember.
  “Lovely,” she said.
  “It did turn out well, didn’t it?” Keith looked over the pic-
  ture himself, eyes bright. “It caught the shape and structure
  of your face perfectly, and the light completely washes out
  any imperfections in your skin. This is screen goddess mate-
  rial!” He tucked the picture into his shirt pocket, turned and
  waved them after him as went farther into the apartment.
  “Come on in.”
  Dark doorways and halls hinted at other rooms beyond
  the cramped living room to which Keith led them. The living
  room itself was cluttered with crooked shelves, a worn cof-
  fee table, and a sofa that had been covered with a cheap red
  and orange throw. Jeane didn’t want to speculate about what
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  Worse, the stink of the vestibule clung to them. Ned beat at
  his clothes as they climbed.
  “Not exactly the sort of place I’d expect to find a doctor’s
  son,” he commented, eyeing a long crack in the plaster of
  the wall.
  “Yet strangely you seem perfectly content with your
  place,” Jeane replied dryly. “At least we don’t have to walk
  through a used bookstore to get to his apartment.”
  Ned scowled at her.
  The light in the hallway outside apartment 3-F was
  burned out, casting the hall into shadow. Jeane stepped up to
  the door and knocked sharply.
  “It’s open!” Keith called from inside.
  “In a building like this?” muttered Ned.
  Jeane shrugged, opened the door, and stepped—
  A sudden, blinding flash caught her full in the face.
  Instinct drove a warning yell from her lungs as she dived to
  the floor and rolled, reaching for her gun—or at least the
  empty place where she normally would have carried one. It
  was at home, she remembered belatedly. Instead, she thrust
  her legs out in a low, sharp kick toward the source of the
  light. If it had been held by a person, that kick would have
  taken him in the knees. Instead, her foot hit what felt like a
  thin tube of light metal. Through a haze of bright afterim-
  ages, she saw something start to topple. A figure jumped to
  grab it.
  “Hey! That’s my camera!”
  Jeane blinked the afterimages away as she rose into a
  cautious crouch. A man in his mid-thirties, with black hair
  and a big, blunt nose—a hatchet nose—cradled an instant
  camera mounted atop a cheap aluminum tripod with a bad
  dent in one of its legs. The camera had been modified with
  some sort of device replacing the more standard flash bulb.
  “What the hell was that?” Jeane demanded, straightening
  up warily.
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  light to reveal a cubby-hole of a kitchen. As soon as he was
  out of the room, Ned leaned over to Jeane.
  “You’re up to something,” he whispered.
  “Have you . . .” Jeane tapped her forehead, “ . . . him?”
  “I try not to eavesdrop constantly, thank you,” Ned mur-
  mured in wounded tones.
  “Well, could you check?” She gave him a quick glance. “I
  guess after Parma, I’m a little bit paranoid.”
  “I don’t blame you at all.” Ned’s eyes glazed for a mo-
  ment, then he blinked. “Nervous, like he said,” he reported.
  “A little excited. Pretty normal under the circumstances, I
  think.”
  “Why should he be nervous?” Jeane muttered, annoyed.
  “I’m the one who—”
  “Beg pardon?” asked Keith, coming out of the kitchen. In
  one hand he had a tall glass of water, in the other a glass of
  bourbon that was easily two shots if it was one. He handed
  the water to Jeane. “Did you say something to me?”
  Jeane found herself blushing. “Not to you as such,” she
  confessed. “I guess I was wondering why you should be nerv-
  ous—I mean, considering I’m the one with the mysterious
  something left for me.”
  “Ah,” said Keith and sipped at his bourbon as he sat down
  in the chair. Jeane and Ned took the couch. If Keith was
  upset that they had been talking about him behind his back,
  he didn’t show it. “Well, I suppose I’m nervous because I’m
  the one giving away the mysterious something.”
  Keith set his drink down on the coffee table, then stood
  and went to a small chest of drawers in a corner of the room.
  He opened one of the drawers and took out a plain white
  envelope.
  “My father gave this to me on his deathbed seven years
  ago. Very melodramatic. Very mysterious. He told me to keep
  it—and keep it a secret—because one day a woman might
  contact me looking for her mother.”
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  the throw might hide. A matching throw served as drapes
  over the room’s window—it had been partly pulled back to
  allow a little daylight in. Every horizontal surface was piled
  with art books or magazines or kitschy little knickknacks
  that looked like they had been collected in the vain hope that
  they might one day become valuable. Keith’s apartment was
  certainly no less messy than Ned’s, though it had a ragged
  Bohemian air that was totally lacking in Ned’s pigsty. Dry-
  mounted prints of famous photographs hung on two walls,
  but the third was dominated by an enormous board that had
  been marked off into a series of large grids. A calendar.
  Eleven months were filled with instant photographs stuck
  into the various days, sometimes more than one on a day but
  just as frequently none at all.
  “Your project?” asked Ned. Keith nodded, and the big man
  added, “It’s . . . interesting.”
  “Thanks.” Keith stepped forward, sweeping an arm
  across the giant calendar. “This isn’t all the photographs, of
  course, only the best ones as a representative sample. The
  whole installation would be too big for my apartment. In its
  full form, it will be a triptych representing the solitude and
  struggle of an artist’s—”
  Jeane coughed. “Uh, Keith? I’m sorry to interrupt, but we
  did just fly in from Ohio. If you don’t mind, I’m kind of anx-
  ious to get to the reason we came here.”
  The artist let his hands drop. “I’m sorry. Of course, you
  are. Please, sit down anywhere.” He dragged a chair closer to
  the couch. “Would either of you like something to drink first?”
  “Water would be great,” said Jeane.
  “I have stronger stuff,” Keith offered. “I’m having a shot
  of bourbon myself.” He gave them a half grin. “I’m sort of
  nervous, too.”
  “Water,” Jeane reiterated. Keith shrugged and glanced at
  Ned. The psychic shook his head. Keith shrugged again and
  went into one of the rooms of the living room, turning on a
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  “Not a medical doctor.” Keith shook his head. “He was a
  scientist. For most of my life he was with the UCLA depart-
  ment of neurobiology.”
  Jeane hissed through her teeth. “Why would he lie about
  something like that?”
  “I don’t know,” Keith said, “but it sounds like you’re
  right. The only answers might be in here.”
  He held out the envelope. For a moment, Jeane just
  stared at it. It was creased and worn, as any envelope that
  had been around for seven years might have been. It was
  thin, too, surprisingly thin for something on which so many
  unanswered questions rested. She took it from Keith, held it
  for a second—there was something small and heavy inside—
  then she slid one finger under a corner of the flap and
  quickly ripped it the length of the envelope. Keith and Ned
  leaned forward as she pulled out two carefully-folded pieces
  of paper.
  The first piece was blank and wrapped around the other.
  Protection, Jeane guessed, against people trying to hold the
  envelope up to a light and read through it. The second page,
  however, was almost filled with typing. Taped to the bottom
  of it was a small, silver key.
  “What is it for?” Keith asked.
  Ned shushed him. Jeane sat back and read.
  Jeane,
  If you’re reading this, you know who I am, so intro-
  ductions are unnecessary, although I think an apology is
  certainly in order. I’m sorry that we all had to lie to you,
  and I’m sorry that I had to lie to your adopted parents.
  They’re wonderful people and I know they raised you
  well. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive them
  and me—and your mother.
  You may be wondering why I am writing this after so
  many years of secrecy. For one thing, I am dying. I know
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  Jeane almost spilled her water. “What?”
  “That’s all he said.” Keith came back and sat down. The
  envelope, however, stayed in his hands. “For seven years I’ve
  wondered what was in this envelope and who this woman
  was. When your father called last night, he mentioned that
  my father had helped them adopt a daughter a long time ago.
  I put two and two together. This,” he said, holding up the
  envelope, “is for you. But in return, I want to know some-
  thing.”
  “What’s that?” Jeane asked carefully.
  “What the hell is all this about?”
  And that was probably the last thing she had expected
  him to ask. It certainly made sense though. If Sam Hollister
  had kept this secret the way Stan and Rose had, Keith was
  probably even more in the dark than she was. Jeane consid-
  ered his request for a minute. What would it hurt if he knew,
  too? He didn’t need to know all of the details, but the basic
  story was easy enough. He had kept the envelope for her and
  as Hollister’s son, he probably had as much right to know
  what his father had been up to as anyone.
  She sat back. “I don’t have all the answers right now,
  Keith—I’m hoping the rest are in that envelope.” She gave
  him the most basic details of her discoveries over the last
  two days. “Apparently the only person who knew the identity
  of my real birth parents—or my birth mother anyway—was
  your father.” She caught Keith’s scandalized expression and
  added quickly, “Your father swore that I wasn’t his. All my
  parents knew about my birth mother was that she was from
  a very prominent local family and that she was one of your
  father’s patients.”
  Keith’s face shifted from scandalized to deeply puzzled
  almost instantly. “That can’t be right,” he said with a frown.
  “My father didn’t have patients.”
  “Why not?” Ned asked suspiciously. “He was a doctor,
  wasn’t he?”
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  old man makes his confession. I will not lead you any far-
  ther. The key that is attached to this letter opens a safe
  deposit box held in your name by the Union Bank of Cal-
  ifornia at its Los Angeles Main branch (445 South
  Figueroa St.). The box number, however, corresponds to a
  number only you will know: the date of the most impor-
  tant event of your life. I think I’ve been involved in your
  life enough to be certain of what that date is. In the box
  are all of the answers you are looking for. I will warn you
  now that they are not likely to be what you expect. They
  will shock even a seasoned investigator such as yourself.
  I won’t, however, warn you to turn back because I know
  that you won’t.
  I realize that yet another delay in search will be frus-
  trating, so let me pass along two final pieces of informa-
  tion to try to ease some of that frustration until you can
  retrieve the safe deposit box.
  First, I am sad to say that both your mother and your
  father are dead and have been for a long time. I am sorry
  that there can be no joyous reunion. That statement may
  seem cruel now, but I hope that it gives you a sense of
  closure.
  The second piece of information is, I hope, happier.
  Jeane is your true name and always has been. Your mother
  chose it for you before you were born—if you had been a
  boy, you would have been Francis.
  If it counts for anything, I think she would have been
  proud of you.
  —Dr. Samuel Hollister
  “Well?” asked Ned.
  Jeane tore the key off the second page, then thrust the
  letter at him. Keith hopped up and around to try to peer over
  Ned’s shoulder, but Jeane grabbed him before he could.
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  that sounds like a line from a soap opera, so I encourage
  you to accept it as a simple statement of truth from an old
  man of science. I am dying and I commit my secrets to
  paper because your mother made me promise to tell you
  the truth if you ever asked. This letter, entrusted to my son
  Keith, seems like the best way to keep that promise. How-
  ever, I am also writing this because I have watched you
  grow up. I have watched you mature into a brilliant and
  inquisitive woman, and I have followed your progress as
  an investigator, so I know full well what you are capable
  of. I know that if you turn your mind to learning the true
  secret of your birth, you will find it. I suspect that one
  whiff of the lies you have been told over the years will be
  enough to set you on this course, and that once set you
  will—one way or another—find either me or Keith, and
  from there the truth of your birth. As I gave your adopted
  parents to believe, that truth is messy and my promise to
  your mother aside, it is far better that I make it relatively
  easy for you rather than have you come upon it in some
  more public way.
  You may very well already know the part that your
  adopted parents have played in all of this—they swore to
  keep the truth that I gave them a secret, but I know that
  no oath in the world can truly stand up to their love for
  you. Most of what they will have told you is the truth.
  Your mother did come to me and ask for my help to con-
  ceal her pregnancy and your birth. It would indeed have
  caused a scandal if it had been publicly known, and the
  man who fathered you did indeed demand that your
  mother seek an abortion. What lies I did tell to them are
  relatively small: your mother was prominent, but not from
  any local family, nor was she my patient as such.
  The truths that those lies conceal, however, are too
  dark and deep to commit to a simple letter and once again
  I must apologize—this time for leading you on while an
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  It was the truth. She was trying very hard not to think
  about the mysterious parents of Sam Hollister’s letter. Unfor-
  tunately, it wasn’t working.
  So many questions whirled through her head, it was like
  struggling with a slippery armful of live fish. Who were her
  parents? Who was this mother who had loved her so much,
  yet had given her up? Who was the father her mother had
  defied by carrying her? Why had she gone to a scientist for
  help? In a way she was grateful to Sam Hollister for telling
  her about their deaths—she wasn’t fantasizing about finding
  her mother now. Of course, she was instead wondering how
  her mother and father had died and when. Had they been
  close after her birth? Had they kept in touch? What was it
  about them that would prompt Hollister to warn her that
  what she would find would shock her? Just who were they?
  The cycle started all over again.
  And there was the other question. The box number
  would correspond to the date of the most important event
  of her life. What event was that? Her birthday? Too obvious.
  Other important events . . . Graduating high school? Grad-
  uating university? Acceptance into the ATF? Her first solo
  investigation? Any of her promotions within the ATF? Her
  disgraced dismissal from the ATF and her entrance into the
  Hoffmann Institute? No, that was out—Hollister had
  already been dead by that time. She tried to think of
  other—
  The sign on the counter beeped. Now serving 169. Jeane
  climbed to her feet and approached the counter, Ned and
  Keith at her heels. The woman standing on the other side
  was young, blond and unbearably perky.
  “How can I help you today?” she asked as Jeane slid her
  ticket across the counter.
  “I need to access a safe deposit box, please.”
  The young woman’s smile seemed to get even bigger and
  brighter. “Certainly.” She reached down to a computer set
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  “Do you know how to get to South Figueroa Street?” she
  asked.
  He nodded. “Anywhere in particular?”
  “The Los Angeles main branch of the Union Bank of Cal-
  ifornia.”
  Keith’s eyes went wide. “Oh, my God, I know exactly
  where that is! What’s there?”
  “Answers.” Jeane held up the key. “I hope.”
  They passed through the steel and glass doors of the
  bank in a kind of solemn silence. In fact, the whole of the
  drive over had been largely silent except for terse directions
  from Keith and a few quickly stifled gasps of amazement as
  he read his father’s letter. For their own parts, neither Jeane
  nor Ned had said anything at all.
  The bank was busy. People crowded the broad, cool gran-
  ite floor. They stood in long lines between brushed metal
  rails. They sat in ranks of well-used, grey-upholstered chairs
  like the waiting lounge at an airport. They came, they went,
  and the buzz of their conversation and transactions filled the
  bank all the way up to its cavernously high ceiling. At the
  personal service counter, Ned and Keith sat down among the
  ubiquitous grey chairs while Jeane went up and took a num-
  ber from a little red machine. Her ticket said 169. An elec-
  tronic sign on the counter read “Serving 160.” Jeane went
  back and sat down.
  “We’ll be a little while, I think,” she said and lapsed back
  into silence.
  It lasted about five minutes before Keith whispered,
  “Who do you think they are?”
  She didn’t have to ask who he meant. “I’m trying not to
  think about it,” she murmured back. Ned glanced at her and
  she added, “Honestly.”
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  blonde, as the first—appeared and led them back to a small,
  brightly light room with a long table and four chairs. The
  chairs were upholstered in dark green leather. The table was
  covered in thick baize the same color. Jeane almost felt as
  though she were sitting down at billiard table. Keith took the
  seat across from hers eagerly. Ned, after a moment of hesi-
  tation, took the one beside Keith rather than the one beside
  her to give her space.
  Silence settled in once more as they waited. Eventually,
  the young woman came back again, this time with the safe
  deposit box. She set it on the table in front of Jeane, smiled,
  and left, closing the door behind herself.
  Ned looked over at Jeane and asked, “Are you sure you’re
  ready for this?”
  She snorted. “I am trained as an ATF investigator. I have
  been shot at, burned, dropped, beaten, and damn near blown
  up several times. I have been to crime scenes that would make
  most people vomit. I have seen . . . things . . . that would make
  you wet yourself, Ned.” She took a deep breath and produced
  the key that Sam Hollister had left for her. “No, I’m not ready.”
  The box was larger than she had expected, maybe sixteen
  inches long, ten inches wide, and half as many deep. The top
  clicked open when she turned the key in the lock. She took
  another deep breath before lifting it any farther. Inside, two
  envelopes rested atop a plain beige file folder. A yellowed
  newspaper clipping had slipped partway out of the folder,
  exposing the date it had run: August 6, 1962. Just slightly
  less than a month before her birth, the trained investigator
  in her noted. All of the rest of her, though, was focused on
  the smaller of the two envelopes and the words that had
  been written on it in a light, open hand thirty-nine years ago.
  For Jeane.
  She lifted it out carefully. Reverently. The writing on the
  envelope was a woman’s. She swallowed hard. Her mother’s
  handwriting? A letter from her mother?
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  below the counter, hands poised over the keyboard. “Box
  number, please?”
  Jeane tried to stretch her memory. Important events . . .
  important events . . . Hollister had said in his letter that he
  had watched her grow up. Stan had likewise said that Hol-
  lister had checked in on her over the years. Something from
  her childhood, maybe, or her teen years? She dredged over
  the events of those times once more. It had to be something
  obvious, but not too obvious. Jeane groped for the dates of
  her high school or university graduation. No, she realized,
  that was too obscure. She didn’t remember those dates, so
  why should Hollister? It had to be a date they would both
  have recalled easily.
  “Ma’am?” prompted the young woman, her smile waver-
  ing just a bit.
  I think I’ve been involved in your life enough to be certain of
  what that date is. The key phrase. Jeane looked up sharply.
  “Box 101280.”
  October 12, 1980. The date of her meeting with “Dale
  Churchill” and probably Hollister’s last direct involvement in
  her life.
  She held her breath as the young woman checked the
  number against her computer—and let it out as her smile
  returned to full strength.
  “I’ll need to see two pieces of identification, please, and
  I’m afraid we don’t have your signature on file.”
  “No,” said Jeane, “I don’t expect you would.”
  She dug out her driver’s license and a credit card, then
  signed the little card the woman passed her. The young
  woman nodded in approval. “If you’ll wait a moment, some-
  one will be out to escort you into a security room. Thank you
  for banking with us.”
  She pressed a button on the counter and the now serving
  sign clicked over to 170. Jeane shuffled off to the side.
  A few minutes later, another woman—as young and
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  Keith leaned forward, partly standing up to look across
  the table and peer at the photographs. Ned hauled him back
  down into his seat.
  “Sit!” he ordered sharply. “Jeane, are you all right?”
  “No,” Jeane whispered back.
  What were these photographs doing here? A year and a
  half ago, her first thought might have been that they were
  something of Hollister’s, some souvenir of a project, placed
  in the box for safekeeping and forgotten. A year and a half
  ago, though, she hadn’t been working for the Hoffmann Insti-
  tute.
  Eerie shivers crawled up her spine and wrapped around
  her brain. Her head was throbbing. Her stomach churned and
  clenched. She wanted to vomit. Hollister had said she would
  be shocked. She was, but not for the reasons she had imag-
  ined. Not because of who her parents were, but . . .
  Could you fit a baby in one of those beehives?
  Jeane dropped the pictures on the table and pulled the file
  folder out of the box. August 6, 1962. The date tickled her
  memory. It was something important, something she had
  found out long ago and filed away because of the proximity
  to her birthday. What was it? She flipped open the folder.
  It was full of newspaper clippings. The top one, the one
  that had been sticking out, was from the Los Angeles Times.
  Three words ran across it in big, bold letters.
  MARILYN IS DEAD.
  Jeane’s breath caught in her throat. The file folder slipped
  from her fingers, spilling clippings across the green fabric of
  the table. All of them carried the same headline.
  “No,” Jeane gasped.
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  The investigator stirred again and Jeane frowned. No,
  that couldn’t be right. Something Stan had said the night
  before came back to her. We never met your mother, and Sam
  told us later he never saw or communicated with her again after
  you were delivered. Jeane stared at the envelope. If Hollister
  had never communicated with her birth mother again, how
  could she have left a letter for Jeane? There had been no way
  of determining a baby’s sex before birth in 1962. Why not
  “For Jeane or Francis?”
  “Jeane?” asked Ned. There was concern in his voice.
  “I don’t like this,” she breathed. “Something doesn’t feel
  right.”
  “Open the letter,” Keith urged. “It will have the answers,
  won’t it?”
  “Maybe,” Jeane said, but she set the small envelope aside
  and reached back into the box for the larger envelope. This
  one was thick and heavy and there was no writing on it. It
  was sealed with an old-fashioned string and button type clo-
  sure that had gone stiff with time and shed short red fibers
  as she unwound it.
  Inside was a small stack of photographs, all black and
  white. They showed a laboratory. There were people in some
  of them, most prominently a man with the same black hair
  and big nose as Keith. Sam Hollister, Jeane guessed. It
  wasn’t hard to see in him the balding man who had hired
  Shelley Brooks in 1980. By the hair and clothes in the pho-
  tographs, though, she would place them as taken in the very
  early sixties. The lab equipment seemed to fit the time
  period, too, though some pieces seemed strangely advanced.
  sixties high tech? One piece in particular stuck out—a dark-
  colored thing that looked like a large, old-fashioned beehive.
  There were several of them in the lab. All of them were
  rounded and ridged, with a number of tubes feeding in at the
  top and bottom. Several pictures showed Sam Hollister
  standing proudly beside them.
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  168
  une 2, 1962.
  Dearest Jeane,
  I’ve started this letter five times already, just
  trying to get the beginning right. I hope I’ve done
  it this time. How do you start a letter to a daugh-
  ter you’ve never met?
  Sam Hollister tells me you’re a girl, that he
  can open up a little window and watch you grow-
  ing. He offered to bring me a picture, but I said
  no. Seeing you now would break my heart and I
  couldn’t take that, not with everything else. But I
  don’t need a picture anyway. I knew you were a
  girl all along. I don’t know how. Maybe it’s some-
  thing mothers just know.
  I wish I could hold you, Jeane. I wish I could
  watch you grow up. I’ve always had a dream of
  playing tea with my own little girl, just the two of
  us dressed up like proper ladies, with all of our
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  e 1 1 e v e n
  J
  dolls as guests—I wish I was going to be able to do that
  with you. I saw the most darling tiny tea set in a shop
  window three days ago and it almost made me cry. I’m
  not going to be able to play tea with you, Jeane, and I’m
  so sorry. I thought that with Sam’s help maybe someday
  I would. I know that’s not going to happen. Sam still
  thinks it will, but he’s wrong. I have a horrible feeling I’m
  never going to see you, Jeane. Maybe that’s something
  else mothers just know.
  I want you to know everything, just in case I’m right.
  When I finish this letter, I’m going to give it to Sam and
  make him promise to give it to you if you ever ask about me
  when you’re older. What I’m going to tell you is top secret
  classified. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but it must.
  Your father is the Attorney General of the United
  States of America, Robert Francis Kennedy.
  I tried, but I couldn’t think of a way to say that gen-
  tly, so I decided to do it fast, like pulling off a bandage.
  Bobby Kennedy is your father. The President is your
  uncle. They’re both such strong, handsome men. I’m sure
  you’ll have seen them both on television and in the news-
  papers by the time you’re reading this. Maybe Bobby will
  even have been President, too. I think he could do it—the
  Kennedy brothers, back to back terms in the White House.
  I love them both, Jeane, so I don’t want you to be think-
  ing any bad thoughts about either of them for this. It’s all
  my fault. I guess I’m just weak. Please don’t be shocked.
  I knew both Bobby and Jack, but Bobby was the one I
  loved. I think that he loved me, too.
  We saw each other for maybe seven months. I met him
  through Jack and their brother-in-law Peter, of course. It
  was wonderful. We saw each other whenever he was on
  the west coast and could slip away for a visit—I don’t
  know how he managed to do it, he had such a busy sched-
  ule. We had to be careful, of course, but there was still so
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  told me I had a month to have the abortion on my own
  because in March he would have a doctor look at me to
  make sure.
  I went home and I cried for two days. Somewhere in
  there, I made up my mind. I was going to keep you no
  matter what. I knew how to do it, too. Both Jack and
  Bobby liked to talk after we made love. There are so many
  secrets I know, Jeane, but Jack and Bobby told them to me
  in confidence, so I can’t repeat them, not even to you.
  Except for one, because you’re part of it.
  While I was still seeing him, Jack told me about a
  project the government was working on, a way to grow
  babies in a scientific womb. I remember because I asked
  him if it was for women like me who couldn’t carry a baby
  to term. He laughed and tickled me and said “Sure, baby
  doll.” Maybe he thought I forgot after that, but I didn’t. I
  knew the name of the man who was in charge of the proj-
  ect and he was right here in Los Angeles. After I decided
  that I was going to keep you, I knew he was the only per-
  son who could help me, so I went to see him.
  It was Sam Hollister, of course, and he agreed to talk
  to me. I guess if there’s one thing this movie star business
  is good for, it’s getting people to want to talk to you!
  Unfortunately, when I told Sam why I needed his help, he
  said no. He said it couldn’t be done, that the artificial
  wombs in his lab were part of a bigger project. I knew
  what he really meant: he was afraid of Jack and Bobby
  finding out. I can’t say I blame him—I was afraid, too!
  So I tried everything I could to get him to help me. I
  offered him cars. I offered him money. I even offered to
  make love to him if that’s what he wanted.
  I think it was seeing how desperate I was that finally
  touched him. He said yes and we started to make plans.
  In the middle of February, I went down to Florida for a
  little rest. I saw Joe there and had dinner with Arthur’s
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  much we could do. Once me and a friend—another
  Jeanne!—dressed him up in a beard and cap and sun-
  glasses and took him to a nude beach! Bobby was so
  much fun, I wanted to keep him forever.
  It all started to fall apart last December. Bobby sur-
  prised me with a private Christmas party. I don’t think
  anyone knew he was even in Los Angeles—well, nobody
  public anyway. There was always somebody who knew
  where he was. We made love, of course. The whole
  evening was wonderful. Bobby left at midnight. I’ll never
  forget the way he kissed me at the door. I didn’t see him
  for two months after that, but on February 1, I had din-
  ner with him at Peter’s house. I met his wife for the first
  time that night. I don’t think that could have been worse
  timing, because after dinner I got Bobby alone for an hour
  and told him I was two months pregnant.
  I don’t know what I thought, Jeane. Maybe I thought
  he would be happy. Maybe I thought he would leave Ethel
  for me. That was all silly, of course. He was the Attorney
  General. What was he supposed to do? An affair he could
  hide, but not a child. He told me to get an abortion.
  I’m sorry that I have to keep giving one shock after
  another, Jeane, but they aren’t over yet. I’d had abortions
  before. I don’t think there’s a single girl in Hollywood who
  hasn’t. But they’d done something to me—I tried to have
  children when I was married, but I always miscarried. It’s a
  terrible thing and I hope it never happens to you (maybe
  you’re old enough when you’re reading this that you have
  children of your own—I could be a grandmother! Isn’t that
  a kicker?). This time it was different though. I could feel that
  already. I could carry this child all the way, I knew it. And it
  might be my last chance. I told Bobby that. I told him that I
  wanted to keep the baby and I didn’t care what he said.
  I’m so ashamed that I made him mad. He didn’t hit
  me, of course, but what he called me hurt worse. Then he
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  actress pretending to be me flew back from Mexico, I
  swapped places with her at the airport and picked up
  right where she left off. It worked like a charm.
  A week later, I went and saw Bobby’s doctor. He told
  Bobby I’d had the abortion and no one was the wiser. I
  started making plans with Sam. I was going to retire after
  you were born and we’d go away and live somewhere
  quiet. Or maybe I’d adopt you and we’d live together in
  Hollywood with no one knowing that you really were my
  own little girl.
  All that’s falling apart now.
  I don’t know how, but I think Bobby knows about
  you, or at least suspects something. Sam swears that he
  couldn’t, but I know he does. We don’t see each other any-
  more. Until recently we talked. Now he won’t take my
  calls. I sang Happy Birthday to Jack at his birthday party
  at Madison Square Garden in May and that’s the last time
  I saw either of them. I don’t think even Peter wants to see
  me anymore. Dr. Greenson gives me new prescriptions,
  but I don’t think they’re helping. He’s out of the country,
  so I can’t get more. It feels like everyone is leaving me.
  I’m so scared, Jeane. I’m scared of Jack and Bobby.
  I’ve heard they have connections. I know lots of people
  with connections, but not like these. I’m scared Bobby
  will take you away from me. I was scared when I got up
  on Sam’s operating table, but now that I have you wait-
  ing for me, I’m even more scared. I’m scared that I’m
  going to die alone, with nothing but my little bottles of
  pills for company. They’re sitting on the table beside my
  bed now. I can see them. I’m scared that someday I’m
  going to open one of them up and I won’t be able to close
  it again.
  I turned 36 yesterday, Jeane. They had a party for me
  on the set and I took Dino’s boy to Dodger Stadium—I
  threw out the first ball. I had dinner and I came home and
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  father—Isadore is such a dear sweet man and I think he
  would have been like a grandfather to you, Jeane. Then,
  once everybody knew I was in Florida, I got on a plane
  and flew to Mexico for a very quiet, private vacation. Of
  course, that got leaked and the vacation turned out not so
  quiet or private after all. Reporters mobbed me as I was
  coming off the airplane and insisted on following me
  around the whole time. The whole vacation was one big
  party. Except, of course, that it wasn’t me.
  Just in case you don’t already know, Jeane, Sam is
  brilliant! He hired an actress who looked almost exactly
  like me and I spent a lot of my time in Florida coaching
  her to act like me, too. While Joe and Isadore could vouch
  for the fact that I had been in Florida, she was the one
  who went to Mexico and kept everyone’s attention down
  there (the big ham!). In the meantime, Sam spirited me
  away to his lab. If I hadn’t been so scared, I’m sure it
  would have been quite the adventure, just like being in a
  spy movie. Everything was bright white and so clean I
  was afraid to walk. It was all very technical with more
  gadgets than I’ve ever seen. I had no idea what most of
  them did, and I was afraid to ask.
  Sam brought me into an operating room and put me up
  on the table. I can’t tell you exactly what he did because
  he put a screen up across my middle, but it felt an awful
  lot like an abortion, only worse. It seemed to take forever.
  When Sam was done, though, he showed me the womb. It
  was a big black plastic dome. He said you were inside it
  now, suspended in liquid that was just like a real womb
  and that you’d grow just like any other baby. He even told
  me when your birthday would be: September 4. I told him
  that would make you a Virgo and we both laughed.
  I stayed in a little hotel in Las Vegas for a while after
  that, having a real quiet vacation. Sam called every few
  days to let me know how you were doing. When the
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  McCain stepped forward, his hand outstretched. Gibson
  looked at it as though McCain were offering him a slice of
  cold pizza that had been sitting in the refrigerator far too
  long.
  “What are you doing here?” he asked bluntly.
  McCain drew a breath, and Ngan could almost hear a
  cover story spinning out in his partner’s mind. They might
  yet be able to extract themselves from this.
  Before McCain could say anything, though, Monty piped
  up, “We heard screams for help and came to investigate.”
  Ngan found his heart sinking. The friendly smile that had
  spread itself across McCain’s face became a little bit more
  brittle.
  “In a nutshell,” the younger agent agreed rather sharply.
  “Well, aren’t you the little troop of boy scouts?” com-
  mented Rebecca. She and Gibson came a little farther into
  the space between the trailers, though they still remained
  well back from the Institute agents. “We heard the screams,
  too, though from where we were, they sounded more like
  plain old fear than a call for help.” Rebecca nodded to the
  blood that dotted the ground. “We saw the blood outside. We
  were going to follow it the long way around, but it looks like
  you’ve already found the end of the trail.” She looked at
  McCain. “Find anything you want to tell us about?”
  “Whoever was screaming, there’s no sign of her now,” he
  said sincerely. “We got here too late. There’s some footprints
  in the blood trail, though.”
  “Sure they’re not yours?” Gibson grunted.
  Monty looked insulted. “As if we would walk through
  evidence!”
  “You’re all doing it right now!”
  “As I said,” Monty snapped crossly, “we came here in
  response to screams. If that makes us—”
  The researcher was going to get them all in trouble. Ngan
  stepped up behind Monty quickly. “Monty,” he whispered,
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  drank champagne with Dr. Greenson’s son and his wife.
  Always someone else’s children.
  I’m writing you this because I want someone to
  remember me, Jeane. Maybe even remember me fondly, not
  just as some crazy, sad, old whore. I’ve had my time.
  Bobby and Jack, they’ll go on to big things. By the time
  you read this, I’ll bet everyone will have forgotten me.
  I love you, Jeane.
  —Mama
  “Watched?” McCain was at his side in a moment. “Where,
  Ngan?”
  Ngan frowned, trying to draw some greater sense out of
  what he was feeling, but there was nothing else. Danger.
  Waiting. These things he knew, but no more, like the aware-
  ness of a storm brewing in the mountains of his childhood.
  He drew a breath and looked around the space among the
  truck trailers. Monty was sealing his bag of dust and pass-
  ing it to Liam to tuck away somewhere. Van had followed
  McCain and stood with his back against the rusting side of
  one of the trailers, looking frightened and confused.
  “We should go now,” said Ngan. “Quickly.”
  “So soon? We just got here.” Rebecca James stepped into
  the gap that led out into the open part of the trailer lot. A big
  man in a leather coat moved in after her. “Fitz, I don’t think
  you got an introduction to my partner yesterday. Robert
  Blair, Detective Anthony Gibson. Tony, Robert.”
  “Fitz,” said McCain politely. He shot a very fast glance at
  his partner but there was nothing Ngan could do except
  shrug.
  The whispers of that inner voice had drawn away, but
  they were still there. Ngan held himself ready for action as
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  well placed to respond to the trouble here as well.”
  Rebecca smiled, a dazzling sight. “Funny you should
  ask.” She turned back to McCain. “The local precinct got a
  call a little while ago from a gentleman resident of the neigh-
  borhood. It seems there’s a group of men wandering around
  looking for a woman. One of the men asked this resident
  about her, and while he said the man he talked to was very
  respectful and polite, he didn’t identify himself as a police
  officer. The resident thought this was rather odd. So he
  called the precinct to check on it.”
  “It’s nice to know that there are still socially concerned
  citizens out there,” McCain observed.
  “Isn’t it?” Rebecca paced back to stand beside Monty. The
  researcher looked like he wanted to say something very
  badly, but couldn’t. Rebecca just lifted a thin eyebrow at him,
  then looked over to McCain again. “The local precinct recog-
  nized the woman in question as someone we’ve been looking
  for as well. They called us and we came down. We’ve been
  looking for this group of men, Fitz. We’re thinking they
  might want to talk to us, especially as they might be in very
  suspicious circumstances at the moment.” She smiled again
  like a happy fox. “Know where we might find them?”
  Ngan found himself holding his breath, waiting for
  McCain’s response. The Hoffmann Institute had ways of
  smoothing over trouble with the police—he himself had
  favors he could call in if need be—but the best policy was to
  avoid trouble in the first place. That was looking increas-
  ingly less likely. His inner voice was wailing danger again. If
  anyone could pull them out now, though, it was his partner.
  McCain looked up and matched Rebecca’s smile, fox to
  fox. “Not a clue,” he said smoothly, “but it just so happens
  we’re looking for a woman ourselves. Does the name Lisa
  Renfield ring any bells?”
  Rebecca started to reply. Ngan didn’t hear what she said.
  Danger! Danger! Danger! He turned sharply.
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  “maybe you should let Michael do all the talking for a little
  while?”
  There had been a great many teachers in Ngan’s life, and
  he had learned a great many things over the years, some of
  them more . . . esoteric than others. Ned Devromme might
  have called those things psychic gifts, but Ngan preferred to
  think of them more as the products of hard-earned knowl-
  edge, there to be developed by anyone who followed the cor-
  rect paths. They were subtle things, mostly matters of
  internal discipline and physical training, but there were a
  few that could be somewhat more dramatic, though they
  always had their consequences. Techniques of suggestion,
  for example, always left Ngan feeling unpleasantly invasive.
  Sometimes, however, unpleasant tools were necessary.
  Monty fell obediently silent. Ngan smiled at Gibson and
  stepped back again. McCain blinked once, then picked up the
  conversation with renewed vigor.
  “My apologies. Sometimes my associate gets carried
  away. But he does have a point.” McCain glanced at both
  Rebecca and Gibson in turn. “Are you asking if we had some-
  thing to do with those screams?”
  “In a nutshell,” replied Gibson, “yes.”
  “Well, we didn’t. We only got here a few moments before
  you did.”
  “Then it’s a damned good thing you were so close,”
  Rebecca said. Her voice was even and silky, but Ngan could
  see a fire in her eyes when she looked at McCain. “Still on
  that contract for the sanitation workers union, Fitz?”
  McCain’s voice was just as even. “Working on a differ-
  ent contract, Calamity. You know how these freelancing
  things are.”
  “Business must be good.”
  “It is.”
  “If I might ask,” Ngan said mildly, “what brings you down
  to this neighborhood, detectives? You seem to have been very
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  Powerful muscles surged under slick skin, and the crea-
  ture all but leaped away from her.
  The attack came from the side.
  McCain caught the motion out of the corner of his eye:
  a pale streak thrusting itself from the shadows, lunging
  directly at Ngan. It was a worm, a fat worm, sickly grey
  with tiny black eyes far back on its head. It was as long
  and thick as his forearm, but moving with the speed of a
  striking snake. And growing! By the midpoint of its lunge
  it was the size of a big dog. By the time it was descend-
  ing, it was as tall as a man and just as broad. Just as
  McCain grasped that impossibility, the worm’s belly split
  open along almost its entire length, exposing a gigantic
  mouth ringed with thousands of tiny teeth. He heard
  Calamity let out a gasp. It was the only reaction any of
  them could manage.
  Any of them except Ngan. The old man’s head turned as
  the worm moved, a natural motion of surprise—except that
  it didn’t stop. Ngan’s entire body followed the turn. From a
  standing start, Ngan whirled aside in a leaping spin that
  would have done a champion figure skater proud. The worm
  smashed into the space he had occupied less than a heart-
  beat before. The thing’s enormous mouth bit down on a
  garbage can instead of Ngan. When the worm reared back,
  blindly seeking its prey, three-quarters of the can was sim-
  ply gone. The ground where it had stood was covered in
  powdery grey dust.
  Not the can’s lid though. Ngan had that—McCain wasn’t
  sure exactly how he’d managed to snatch it up in his
  whirling escape, but he had. He spun around once, heaving
  the lid into the side of the worm with the force of a heavy
  discus. That much force would have put a serious dent in a
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  It was like a gift.
  Renfield clung to the shadows, peering out from the nar-
  row passage between the trailers at the group gathered
  beyond. She wanted to laugh but held it back. The creature
  felt her joy, however, and stirred eagerly in her hands.
  Almost twenty-four hours between the garbage man at
  dawn and the woman in the parking lot at night. So long.
  Renfield knew that her protector would be a rare person, but
  when even the people in whom she could sense the potential
  were rare, how long would it take to find one who could pass
  the test?
  She had all but stumbled over the young woman that
  morning. For all that the woman’s potential had shone out
  like a beacon, though, she had failed the test as well. But
  this . . . oh, this made up for it all!
  Three. Three individuals with the potential to pass the
  test and protect her from the ravages of decay. Hope made
  her almost giddy. Surely one of them had to be her protector.
  There were the others, of course. The range of vision that
  her hiding place permitted was limited, but between what she
  could see and what she could hear, there were seven people
  out there. Four of them should not witness the testing. If she
  waited for them to leave, though, she would certainly lose the
  three she so desperately wanted. The choice was aching.
  In the end, it was no choice at all. She had to find her pro-
  tector.
  Of the three, two flickered with dim potential. The third,
  however, shone even brighter than the woman had. She
  would test him first. If he was the one, it wouldn’t matter
  what the others saw.
  Renfield squatted slowly in the shadows and placed the
  creature on the ground, then bent close to it and whispered,
  “The old man.”
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  “We may not have that long.” Ngan scrambled to his feet,
  dragging Van with him.
  Under McCain, Monty was struggling with something in
  the pocket of his tweed jacket. McCain rolled off him and
  Monty pressed a heavy little device into his hand.
  “Taser,” the researcher wheezed. “Use it.”
  It was worth a try. McCain jumped forward, toward the
  worm, trying to get a good shot at its flank. The thing
  seemed so totally focussed on going after Ngan that getting
  the right angle wasn’t at all hard. He aimed the taser’s blunt
  head carefully and squeezed the first trigger. Two darts, thin
  wires trailing behind, leaped from the weapon to bury them-
  selves in the worm’s side. The beast whirled toward him like
  an avalanche switching direction in mid-fall.
  “Shit!” gasped McCain.
  His fingers spasmed on the second trigger just as the
  worm made a nasty gurgling noise. Thick bluish slime arced
  out of the creature’s mouth at the same moment the taser’s
  powerful electric charge raced along the wire. The worm
  stiffened but the slime sprayed across the ground and trailer
  wall to McCain’s right. A bit spattered against his arm—the
  sleeve of his jacket, the taser, and a single drop on the back
  of his hand. Cloth smoked. Plastic and painted metal bubbled
  and blistered. Skin burned. Acid!
  McCain cursed in pain, stripped off his jacket, and hurled
  the taser away. It had done its job. The only movements the
  worm was making were a lot of twitches and shudders.
  Then, while McCain watched, the beast shrank down until it
  was the size of his forearm again, squirming and mewling
  like a weak kitten. He stared down at it in amazement.
  Calamity and Gibson stepped forward and stared, too. Gibson
  brought up his gun.
  “No!”
  Snarling like a wildcat, Renfield leaped out of the same
  shadows from which the worm had emerged and stood over
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  car door. It would have knocked a strong man off his feet
  and maybe broken a couple of ribs.
  It bounced off the worm’s hide like a brick off a trampo-
  line.
  Van found his voice first, screaming and slamming back
  against the trailer behind him.
  Calamity was a little more articulate. “What the fuck is
  that thing?”
  She and Gibson both had guns out. So, surprisingly, did
  Liam—an odd-looking little pistol pulled from under his
  jacket. Monty’s eyes went wide, not at the worm, but at the
  detectives’ firearms.
  “No!” he finally managed to choke, flailing his arms
  around madly. “Alive!”
  McCain threw himself at the researcher and brought him
  crashing to the ground a heartbeat before the detectives
  filled the small space with the crack and roar of gunfire. The
  worm thrashed as the bullets hit it, puncturing the thick grey
  skin in ragged holes.
  It did no more good than pushing a needle through a brick
  of lard. The blubbery skin squeezed itself shut. The worm
  swung toward them for a moment, a low, rumbling growl
  shaking the air like a warning, then twisted back to Ngan.
  Once more he threw himself aside, rolling low to avoid the
  strike. The worm didn’t bite down on anything this time, but
  its bulk slammed into a trailer, setting the massive metal box
  rocking. Ngan came up beside Van. Thrusting the speechless
  young man ahead of him, they darted toward the others.
  “Down!” shouted Liam, and Ngan pulled Van to the
  ground.
  Liam sighted the odd pistol and squeezed the trigger. A
  red-fletched dart—a tranquilizer—blossomed in the worm’s
  side as it came around for another lunge and the creature
  shuddered though it didn’t slow down.
  “Give it a minute!” Liam said.
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  183
  hat was a brilliantly unorthodox strategy, Mr.
  McCain,” Monty observed sourly as Ngan and
  McCain climbed out of their car. “Deflecting
  attention from our activities by confessing to them.
  I’d never have thought of that!”
  McCain gave the researcher a tight glare. He was
  almost disappointed now that the shortness of breath
  and alarming grey pallor Monty had developed on the
  long run from the crime scene back to their cars
  hadn’t been something more permanent. Apparently
  CSC senior researchers didn’t get a lot of exercise.
  McCain could imagine Monty sitting in the CSC car
  and stewing in his own frustration as they drove
  away from the scene to go to ground.
  “I wasn’t confessing,” McCain shot back, “I was
  sparring. Calamity knew something was up. There
  was squat I could do about that. What I was trying to
  do was talk her into helping us.” He turned his back
  chapter
  2 w e l v e
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  the defeated beast. McCain and Calamity flinched back, but
  the only part of Gibson that twitched was his arm. He
  brought the gun up to cover Renfield’s chest.
  Faster than McCain could follow, she grabbed Gibson’s
  arm, shoved it up into the air, stepped in against his chest,
  and heaved. Gibson flew over her shoulder to slam hard into
  the side of the trailer and slide to the ground in a heap. Ren-
  field snatched up the worm, cradling it in her arms like a
  child. Sparing them all one vicious, hate-filled look, she
  whirled and sprinted back into the shadows between the
  truck trailers.
  “Gibson!” Calamity gasped. Gun still covering the shad-
  ows, she crouched down beside her partner.
  That left the Hoffmann Institute team standing free with
  open space and an exit from the lot ahead of them. McCain
  knew an out when he saw one. With a sharp gesture, he
  waved the others to go. With the exception of Monty, they
  didn’t need much encouragement, and even the senior
  researcher was no match for Liam and Ngan combined.
  McCain paused just long enough to scoop up a fistful of the
  dust that had been a trash can and ran after them.
  “Hold it!” shouted Calamity from behind. “We need to
  talk!”
  McCain twisted his head around just enough to see her
  rising, torn between pursuing them, pursuing Renfield, and
  staying with her badly dazed partner.
  “Another time!” he called back.
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  white. The big meeting table was all glass and metal, the
  chairs metal and slick white fabric. A computer stood on a
  matching workstation in one corner of the room, and McCain
  had the feeling that more electronic gadgets were waiting
  behind concealed panels in the pristine walls. If the branch
  office had anything this extravagant, he hadn’t seen it.
  Naturally, Monty took a seat at the head of the table. He
  waited until everyone else had seated themselves as well,
  then folded his hands on the tabletop. “Well,” he said, “that
  was an unmitigated disaster. We completely failed to recover
  the specimen.”
  McCain could only stare at the researcher. It was, for a
  moment, all any of them could do. Finally, Ngan added coldly,
  “Monty, Renfield has claimed another victim.”
  “That hasn’t escaped me.” Monty’s glare was vicious.
  “But have you considered that our failure to capture the crea-
  ture means that she can now go on to claim more? Our objec-
  tives may vary, Mr. Kun’dren, but our ultimate goals are the
  same.”
  For a moment, the silence around the table was complete,
  then Ngan nodded. “I cede the point.” The look he shared
  with Monty was challenging, though. “However, I think we
  did learn from this encounter. We have faced the enemy and
  know what it is capable of. Guns do little damage, and tran-
  quilizers have an unproven effectiveness.”
  “The creature has amazing abilities,” Monty agreed. “I’d
  like the chance to study it further, but that will have to wait.
  At least we have this.”
  He pulled the sealed bag of pale dust from his pocket and
  laid it on the table. “Analysis may give us some insight into
  exactly how the creature is able to reduce its victims to this
  state.” Monty glanced at Van. “Accelerated aging is an
  intriguing possibility, but unlikely given the role of insect
  scavengers in decomposition.”
  Van shook his head. “Come again?”
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  on Monty sharply to stare up at the backside of the old, brick
  building behind which they had parked: the Chicago Speci-
  men Collection facility itself.
  The arch-rival of the Chicago branch office didn’t look any
  more remarkable than the branch office itself. It was a bland
  square of bricks, with vertical strips of tinted glass and black
  metal marking tall, narrow windows. At one time, it might
  have been mistaken for a respectable, if anonymous, medical
  building, just one of the dozens of such buildings that clut-
  tered the area around the University of Illinois Circle Cam-
  pus. Now the brick work was dull, the reflective film on the
  windows was peeling away in patches, and the style of the
  building dated it badly. Shabby and decaying, it barely even
  looked occupied.
  The interior of the building was another matter
  entirely. Monty guided them in through a back door that
  itself led to a double set of security doors before finally
  opening into the CSC facilities proper. The walls and floors
  here were gleaming white. Every fixture was stainless
  steel. The halls were luxuriously wide. The air was cool—
  almost cold—and carried a sharp, chemical tang that made
  McCain’s nose itch.
  Ngan’s face had collapsed into an impassive mask of sup-
  pressed discomfort. McCain leaned over to his partner and
  said, “I can see why you don’t like hospitals.”
  “This isn’t a hospital,” Ngan whispered back. “This is a
  tomb.”
  “What was that?” snapped Monty.
  “He said you have a lot of room.” McCain gestured around
  them. “This is a lot bigger than the branch office.”
  “Of course it is,” Monty said smugly. “It’s a much more
  important facility.”
  McCain restrained the urge to sucker punch him.
  Monty led the way down several of the wide, white corri-
  dors and into a conference room that was also wide and
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  The door closed behind him. McCain immediately tucked
  his neck down in imitation of Monty’s jowly face. “Well done,
  Mr. McCain,” he whined. “Too bad you didn’t catch the worm.
  Maybe next time you could just let it eat you and while it was
  busy digesting, the rest of us could beat it with sticks.” He
  snorted and stretched his neck back out. “Why exactly did I
  pull him out of the line of fire again?”
  “Because you have a sharper sense of the value of a team,
  I suspect,” Ngan said. “I think I would take Monty’s thanks
  at face value, though.  Taking a second sample was quick
  thinking. As was your word play with Detectives James and
  Gibson, and your use of the taser.”
  “Well, that was Monty’s idea,” McCain admitted grudg-
  ingly. “Maybe the old guy knows something about his end of
  the business after all.”
  Van waved his hand like a kid in class. “I have a question.
  Does this mean that Renfield isn’t holed up somewhere
  around the 47th Street L station? Up till now, she’s been all
  over the city, so why would she risk taking someone right in
  her own backyard?”
  Ngan shook his head. “I don’t know, Van. Serial killers
  sometimes strike close to home, too. I don’t think we’ll be
  able to know for sure until we’ve established a pattern in the
  people she’s been attacking and her motivation in doing so.”
  “Her belief that there’s a protector who can ward off
  death and decay,” McCain pointed out. “Olivia Marquez said
  Renfield kept hinting at testing people. It strikes me that
  pointing a monster worm at someone and seeing if they
  crumble into dust is a pretty good test.”
  “You have a point, Michael.” Ngan put his elbow on the
  tabletop and rested his chin on his fist as he thought. “But
  still, why the people she has attacked?” He counted off fin-
  gers on his free hand. “The doctor and orderlies at Elgin
  were likely simply in her way when she need to escape, but
  then there’s the garbage man, the woman at the grocery
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  “When a body decays, a lot of the decomposition is actu-
  ally a function of insect activity,” explained Liam. “Various
  flies lay eggs in the dead flesh, and the maggots eat it when
  they hatch. Other insects consume the flesh directly. The
  process is precise enough that it can be used to establish
  time of death, but those insects need time to reach the body.
  Any other improbabilities aside, a person might die of sudden
  old age, but they wouldn’t decompose instantly.”
  “Exactly,” agreed Monty. “As well, I presume you all
  noted the effect of the creature’s strike upon the trash can.
  Metal isn’t subject to decay in the same way as a human
  body, of course, and yet the can collapsed into what was
  apparently the same dust.” He frowned. “It’s unfortunate
  that I wasn’t able to collect a sample of that for comparison.”
  McCain cleared his throat and smiled. “If you’ve got
  another plastic bag, I might be able to help you out with that.”
  He set his jacket on the table in front of him. The worm’s
  acid had eaten brittle-edged holes in the fine fabric—the tiny
  amount that had struck his hand still stung. The jacket was
  basically ruined beyond repair anyway, so McCain had felt no
  guilt in dirtying it further. He unfolded the cloth to reveal a
  scant handful of grey dust, scooped up at the last minute
  from the remains of the garbage can.
  He slid the jacket across the table to Monty and said,
  “Hopefully it’s not too contaminated or anything.”
  “It . . . should be sufficient.” Monty had the look of a
  hyena circling a rotting carcass. He stood and carefully
  folded the jacket around the sample again. “I can run a pre-
  liminary analysis on this now. Liam, I’ll need your help. The
  rest of you can work on writing up our report.” He nodded
  toward the computer in the corner. With Liam holding the
  door open for him, Monty carried his two prizes—bag and
  folded jacket—to the door with the same care someone else
  might have given priceless works of art. At the last moment,
  he paused and looked back. “Well done, Mr. McCain.”
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  “Let me do the talking,” McCain suggested. “Lily and I
  speak the same language.”
  Ngan nodded and dialed the telephone, switching it over
  to speaker phone mode so they could all hear. “Lily Adler,”
  came the voice from the other end of the line.
  “Lily,” said McCain, “it’s Fitz and Ngan. We’ve got some-
  thing that we thought we should report in.”
  He spilled out the details of their morning encounter,
  keeping the report short and concise because that’s how Lily
  liked it. He added their current whereabouts but kept quiet
  about the analysis Monty was working on. He did mention
  their need for background information on the victims. When
  he was finished, he sat back and waited, letting Lily mull
  over the story at her own pace in her office across the city.
  Finally, she said, “That’s everything? No injuries?”
  “No, ma’am.”
  “Right.” Lily’s voice was firm and confident. “Good work
  so far, gentlemen. Keep it up. I’ll see what I can get for you
  on the backgrounds of the victims. I’ll have any information
  sent to Emma to hold for you.”
  “Thank you, ma’am,” McCain replied, then added casu-
  ally, “By the way, I hope you’re feeling better. Ngan was
  telling me that you weren’t looking one hundred percent the
  last time he saw you.”
  “I have felt better, Agent McCain,” Lily said smoothly.
  “It’s the change in the weather.”
  “I had an aunt with a similar problem. It took her a while
  to figure out there was something wrong. By the time she
  did, it was almost too late.” He leaned closer to the phone.
  “What are your symptoms, Lily?”
  For the first time, Lily hesitated. “Short term failure,” she
  replied after a moment, “though I understand that in severe
  cases it can lead to more permanent conditions.”
  “That sounds nasty,” said McCain. “Has anyone been able
  to diagnose a cause?”
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  store, and the jogger. Different ages, different races, differ-
  ent backgrounds. Why them?”
  “You forgot someone,” Van said suddenly. When McCain
  and Ngan glanced at him, the young man pointed at Ngan.
  “You.”
  Ngan blinked. “I believe that falls into the same category
  as the attack at Elgin—I was merely in Renfield’s way.”
  “I don’t know about that, Ngan.” McCain thought through
  the shocking, rapid moments of the fight in the truck lot.
  “The worm went for you first, and it kept going for you. Even
  when Calamity and Gibson hit it, even after Liam stuck it
  with his tranquilizer, it kept turning back to you.”
  “Perhaps.” Ngan sounded doubtful, but not entirely unbe-
  lieving. “Even so, what do I have in common with the other
  victims?”
  “Who knows? We’ve been moving so quickly after Ren-
  field that we haven’t stopped to look at the big picture, have
  we? Maybe the victims have been related to Renfield’s old
  diabolist circle. Maybe she’s just trying to match the old cir-
  cle’s composition.”
  “But I’m not related to Renfield’s old circle, and if she
  was trying to recreate her old circle’s composition, it strikes
  me that she could do it much more quickly than this.” Ngan
  frowned. “But you are right. We haven’t been looking at the
  big picture, have we?” He unfolded his arm. There was a
  telephone near the head of the table and he reached for it.
  “Perhaps Emma can get us the information.”
  “Actually,” said McCain, “I was thinking more of Lily. She
  might want to know about our encounter, we’ve just had a
  run-in with the police, and there’s that . . . other matter.” He
  gave Ngan a significant glance. They had more information.
  Perhaps now was the time to try approaching the field direc-
  tor again.
  The old man raised his eyebrows. “Lily seems reluctant
  to discuss that, Michael.”
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  He looked up. “Could someone be putting pressure on Lily?
  It would explain why she’s been reluctant to say anything
  directly.”
  “It would,” Ngan admitted. “But there’s something else
  as well.” He looked up at Van. “Lily also said the request that
  you join our next investigation came from higher up in the
  Institute as well.”
  Van blanched. “That’s not good!” he squeaked, but
  McCain shook his head.
  “Easy. There are a lot of people above us in the Institute,
  and any invitation to join an investigation would have to
  come from one of them.”
  “I still don’t like it.”
  “You can walk away, Van,” Ngan pointed out. “Michael
  and I don’t have that option, but you do. If you’re con-
  cerned, go home. I don’t believe anyone would think badly
  of you.”
  The young man looked genuinely torn. McCain could
  sympathize. After a minute though, Van shook his head. “I’m
  staying,” he said flatly. “I want to help.”
  “That’s the fighting spirit,” McCain grinned. “So what do
  we do now?”
  Ngan folded his hands. “Stay alert. Watch for anything
  suspicious. This is largely conjecture at the moment. We
  need more substantial evidence before we can do anything.”
  “And while we’re busy staying alert?”
  “We have an investigation to look after.” Ngan gestured
  toward the computer in the corner. “Monty needs a report
  now, and we’ll need to make a written report at some point
  as well.”
  McCain pushed his chair over to the computer. “Ah,” he
  sighed, “bureaucracy. What would we do without you?”
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  “They’ve run tests, but nothing has come back positive.
  It’s an odd thing The higher up you are, the more likely you
  are to get it, but the lower down, the worse you suffer. I
  understand research is continuing, but in the meantime, I’d
  watch myself if I were you, Agent McCain. I’d rather no one
  on your team came down with it.”
  “Thanks, Lily. Good-bye.”
  “Good-bye, Agent McCain.”
  McCain hung up the phone and looked at Ngan. “Crap,”
  he cursed quietly. Ngan nodded.
  Van looked from one of them to the other. “So what did
  Lily really say?”
  “Nothing good. It looks like you were right, Ngan. We’re
  being set up.” McCain grimaced.
  It broke down too perfectly. Short term failure matched
  Ngan’s own concerns. More permanent conditions—death?
  Maybe dismissal from the Institute. He didn’t really like the
  way either sounded, nor did he like the hint that no one had
  been able to diagnose the cause. Lily had no more answers
  than they did.
  No, that wasn’t right. She did know something more: her
  whole comment about being more likely to get it if you were
  higher up, but more likely to suffer if you were lower down.
  What did that mean? He asked it out loud, and Ngan shook
  his head.
  “I think it means exactly what it sounds like, Michael,
  except that ‘higher up’ doesn’t refer to altitude.” He held his
  hand one above the other. “It’s rank.”
  Of course. When someone higher up in an organization
  had a problem, it was the people lower down who suffered
  the consequences. McCain narrowed his eyes and flicked his
  thumbnail against his teeth as he thought.
  “When Lily called us into her office,” he said, “I don’t
  think she once said ‘I’m giving you this assignment.’ It was
  more like ‘the Institute has taken an interest in Renfield.’ ”
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  “Mad as a cop with a headache. Nothing that won’t go
  away.”
  McCain nodded to himself. “Good. Sorry to run away like
  that, by the way.”
  “There is a law against that you know, Fitz—and I hope
  you don’t mind if I call you that, since there are exactly six
  Robert Blairs in Chicago, and I’m quite sure you’re not one
  of them.”
  “As long as I can still call you ‘Calamity.’ ”
  “Absolutely.” She took a deep breath. “Fitz, we need to
  talk. I don’t know exactly what happened out there today,
  but I think you and your friends do.”
  “I’d beg to differ.”
  “Then you at least have a better idea than Gibson and I
  do. We’ve got another missing person, and I don’t even know
  how the hell to file a report on it. I think we’re both trying to
  stop Renfield. I’m willing to work together.”
  McCain sighed. “Calamity,” he said sincerely, “I wish I
  could talk to you, but—”
  “I’ve got information I’m pretty sure you don’t have.”
  McCain froze. “What kind of information?”
  He could hear the grin that must have been plastered
  across the detective’s face. “Something that I think you’ll
  be able to use, but in return I want the straight goods
  from you.”
  Ngan was still shaking his head emphatically. McCain
  clenched his teeth. Take an ally in the hunt for Renfield and
  risk the secrecy under which the Hoffmann Institute oper-
  ated? Or maybe not. He made his choice.
  “Done,” he said, and looked away from Ngan, “but it has
  to be face to face.”
  “All right. Dinner?”
  McCain glanced at his watch. Time had flown by—it
  was almost seven o’clock and they hadn’t eaten yet. “All
  right.”
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  They were about halfway through the report when Van
  pointed out the one question none of them had asked. “So
  how exactly does a psycho wind up with a monster worm for
  a pet anyway?” he asked, leaning over McCain’s shoulder.
  McCain’s fingers hesitated on the keyboard. “Damn.”
  They had been so busy worrying about the ‘why’ of Renfield’s
  attacks they hadn’t stopped to think about the ‘how.’
  “We still have the possibility that the worm is related to
  whatever force Renfield’s diabolists summoned up fifteen
  years ago,” Ngan pointed out. “It has many of the same char-
  acteristics.”
  McCain screwed up his face. “The worm didn’t exactly
  look demonic.”
  “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
  than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” quoted Van.
  “Please, no Shakespeare right now.” McCain held his
  head. “I don’t think I could take it.”
  His cell phone chose that moment to ring. Ngan gave him
  a little smile. “No cell phones around Monty’s equipment,” he
  reminded him.
  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” McCain pressed the tiny receive
  button and held the phone up to his ear. “Hello?” he asked.
  “So warm and cheerful,” said a woman’s rich voice. “Tell
  me the truth—you moonlight for a phone sex line, don’t you,
  Fitz?”
  McCain sat bolt upright. “Calamity!” He glanced at Ngan
  and Van—both of them looked startled as well—then stood
  and walked down to the far end of the room. “How did you
  get this number?”
  She laughed. “I’m a detective. Finding things out is what
  I do. And, if you’ll recall, you gave it to me yesterday.”
  McCain heard the flick of a card tapped against the receiver
  and almost cursed himself.
  “Right,” he said with what grace he could muster. “So
  how’s Gibson?”
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  195
  ed and Keith got her out of the bank as quickly as
  possible. They left the safe deposit box on the
  table, locked again but empty. Ned carried the
  folder of newspaper clippings and the envelope of pho-
  tographs tucked tight under one arm. The letter, how-
  ever, Jeane carried herself, her grasp crinkling the
  almost forty-year-old paper.
  Walking through the cavern of the bank was hell.
  Jeane could imagine everyone there staring at her,
  whispering about her. That was just paranoia, of
  course, but the feeling stuck with her. She kept her
  attention on the ground and focused on putting one foot
  in front of the other, taking one shaky step at a time.
  “Easy, Jeane,” Ned whispered in her ear. “Just a
  little farther.”
  And mercifully they were at the car and Ned was help-
  ing her into the passenger seat. “We need to go some-
  where,” she heard Ned tell Keith. “Somewhere quiet.”
  chapter
  t h 1 r t 3 e n
  N
  “There’s a Thai restaurant on Carroll a couple of blocks
  east of the Merchandise Mart. I can get us a table. Half an
  hour?”
  “Forty-five minutes and alone,” McCain specified, “and
  you’ve got a deal.”
  He hung up and turned to face Ngan. His partner’s ex-
  pression was not happy. “Michael . . .”
  McCain just shook his head. “Ngan, we need a lead. Don’t
  worry, I’m not going to give anything away. And don’t think
  this isn’t going to cost me—I was supposed to be spending
  time with Shani tonight.”
  “It’s also possible that this could be some kind of trap.”
  “Call me in a few hours.” McCain wagged his cell phone.
  “If I don’t answer, I’m in trouble. If Monty asks, tell him—”
  “Tell me what?” Monty paused in the doorway, dressed in
  a lab coat with a clipboard in his hands.
  “That I have personal business I have to take care of.”
  McCain tucked his cell phone away in his pocket. “I can’t
  stick around.”
  Monty shrugged. “There’s probably no need for any of you
  to stay any longer tonight. I have the preliminary analysis.”
  McCain paused. “And?”
  “The dust is organic—both samples. The trash can was
  not simply crumbled into dust. At the same time, however,
  neither sample contains obvious human genetic material.”
  He shook his head. “We’ll keep working, but at the moment
  we don’t know what it is. Only what it isn’t.”
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  Jeane’s stomach clenched again. She wasn’t sure what
  bothered her more: the manner of her birth or the identity of
  her parents. To have been born from a tank like some cheesy
  B-movie was bad enough, but to discover that her mother
  was . . . Oh, God, she didn’t even want to think it. And she
  had told Stan the thought that Sam Hollister might have
  been her father was sordid?
  What was worse was that it all made a horrible kind of
  sense. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, she also
  couldn’t deny it. Near impossible technology aside—and she
  had seen enough with the Hoffmann Institute to doubt that
  such technology was truly as impossible as it seemed—the
  story hung together. In fact, the very preposterousness of it
  was probably the strongest argument for its reality. Why
  make up a story like that? Why conceal it so carefully for
  thirty-nine years? Why so many details, themselves with the
  ring of truth?
  She glanced up at Ned and asked, “What do you know about
  Marilyn Monroe’s life? Do you think this could be a hoax?”
  “If it is, I’d say it’s one of the most elaborate going.” He
  pushed the letter back to her. “But I don’t know that much
  about her.”
  “I do,” Keith added, and both Jeane and Ned turned to
  him. He shifted nervously. “Some stuff anyway.”
  “How about the details in the letter?” asked Jeane. “Could
  some of them be accurate?”
  Keith nodded. “Sure. The trip to Mexico made headlines.
  The first meeting with Bobby is well documented. The abor-
  tions and her later desire for children are well documented—
  but on the other hand, they wouldn’t have been public
  knowledge back then.” He rocked his hands back and forth.
  “There’s a lot of stuff in there that we know now but that
  would have been very private in 1962. There’s other stuff
  that’s so personal and private, there’s no way of being sure
  whether it’s true or not.”
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  “My place?”
  Jeane stirred herself to look up. “No,” she said. She didn’t
  think she could stomach Keith’s wretched, artsy apartment
  again. “I need a drink.”
  “No, you don’t,” Ned said. He looked back to Keith. “How
  about a coffee shop? Something nice and quiet.”
  The artist nodded.
  A short while later, they were ensconced in the tranquil-
  ity of a corner table in a dim, hushed coffee shop in West Hol-
  lywood. Jeane wasn’t exactly sure where they were—she had
  let Ned drive and hadn’t really paid any attention to the pass-
  ing city. The coffee shop was pleasant enough though, with
  decently large tables and old wooden railback chairs. The
  tables were a good distance apart too. She liked that. The
  last thing she wanted was the sense that someone was lis-
  tening in on their conversation.
  Ned and Keith sat across the table from her, sipping occa-
  sionally from large mugs. A similar mug sat at her elbow.
  She ignored it, and flipped through the clippings and photos
  and read through the letter once more. And again. And yet
  again, pouring over every shocking detail.
  At some point, she registered movement as Ned sent
  Keith up to the counter for refills of their coffee and a re-
  placement for Jeane’s untouched cup. She didn’t look up,
  though she did finally slide the letter over for them to read.
  The throbbing headache that had settled over her in the bank
  wouldn’t go away. Her skull seemed to pound with every
  word that she read and every glossy photo she scanned.
  Little details she had missed before crept into her aware-
  ness, like the man with a military uniform half-hidden in the
  background of one photo. Like the names in the letter—Joe
  would be Joe diMaggio, of course, and Arthur, Arthur Miller.
  Like the fatalism that the letter implied, as if . . .
  Marilyn . . .
  Her mother . . .
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  “No,” Jeane said flatly. Keith groaned in protest. Jeane
  glared at him. “Keith, I hate this. I am not interested in mak-
  ing money off it. I loathe Marilyn Monroe, and right now I’m
  not thinking too highly of Robert Kennedy.”
  “It doesn’t matter how you feel about them, Jeane! Hating
  them works just fine. It’s all how other people feel. Think
  how many people there are out there who worship Marilyn.
  They’ll come to see you! Write a book and even people who
  don’t care about Marilyn will buy it.” Keith was almost drool-
  ing. “Hell, you could probably get movie deals. Or modeling
  deals. You look a whole lot like her already, but different hair
  and a little make-up and no one would doubt it!”
  Jeane’s breath hissed through her teeth. “Let me spell it
  out, Keith. N-O. No. I don’t want write a book, I don’t want to
  be in a movie, I don’t want to be a model, and I really don’t
  want to look like . . .” She almost choked. “. . . her. End of
  story. Got it?” Keith started to protest again and Jeane glow-
  ered at him. “Got it?”
  “Yeah,” said Keith. He shoved his chair away from the
  table. “You want to throw this away, be my guest.”
  “My life, my business, Keith.”
  “Hey, whatever.” He gestured vaguely toward the other
  side of the coffee shop. “Why don’t I give you some time
  alone? You want me, I’ll be over at the counter drowning my
  sorrows in a latte.” He stomped away.
  “Someone,” Ned observed, “has been hanging around the
  Hollywood gossip crowd too much.” He turned back to her.
  “Keith’s right about one thing though, there is a certain fam-
  ily resemblance.”
  “Piss off, Ned. I don’t need that.”
  “Sorry.” Ned reached across the table and patted her
  hand. “Are you okay?”
  Jeane sighed, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened
  them again and shook her head. “Not really,” she said.
  “Can you blame me? Three days ago, I was happily living a
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  “Let me phrase it another way, then,” Jeane said with a
  grimace. “Are any of the details blatantly wrong?”
  “No. Not that I can see.” Keith drummed his fingers
  against the tabletop. “God, this explains so much about my
  father, too. He used to go off on projects, and we wouldn’t
  see him for days and weeks at a time. He was always dodgy
  about what he was working on. If he was doing work for the
  government—”
  “Keith,” Jeane growled, “I don’t care.” She folded her
  arms on the table and brought her head down on top of them.
  “I don’t care if your father was actually secretly boffing his
  lab assistant. No.” She glanced up. “I’d love to know that
  your father was boffing his lab assistant because that would
  mean he wasn’t sneaking around working for the govern-
  ment and making babies in plastic pods and that this whole
  goddamn thing really is just a big hoax!”
  “She doesn’t mean that literally,” Ned murmured to Keith.
  “Like hell I don’t.” Jeane slammed her head down again.
  “How am I going to explain this back in Chicago?”
  Ned didn’t have anything to say to that, but after a
  moment, Keith cleared his throat with all the subtlety of a
  used car salesman his first day on the job. “You know,” he
  said, “I think you’re coming at this all the wrong way.”
  “There’s a right way?” Jeane asked without looking up.
  “You’re the secret daughter of Marilyn Monroe and Bobby
  Kennedy, and you have enough proof to make it stick. How
  much do you think that story is worth?”
  Jeane snapped upright. “No!”
  “Jeane, think about it!” Keith’s eyes were wide. If he had
  been a cartoon, there would have been big green dollar signs
  painted in them. “Someone puts out a tell-all book on a
  celebrity and they can live high off the talk show circuit.
  We’re talking two of the ultimate celebrities here and the
  tell-all to top all tell-alls. There’s a bundle of money just
  waiting for—”
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  This was insane. Approached from the point of view of a
  proper investigation, the evidence was almost entirely cir-
  cumstantial. It all hinged on the letter. Jeane didn’t doubt
  that Stan and Rose had indeed adopted her through Sam
  Hollister, nor did she really doubt that Hollister had made
  the arrangements on behalf of some pitiable young woman.
  But beyond that, the evidence consisted entirely of a folder
  of clippings that anybody could have put together, a series
  of photographs that could have been staged or even faked
  outright, and a letter that could all too easily have been a
  forgery.
  In spite of that, it all came back to the same thought she
  had earlier: it was all just too preposterous not to be true.
  She clenched her jaw. What kind of answer was that?
  Hadn’t she pointed out to Ned that she was a trained inves-
  tigator? What kind of investigator accepted “too preposter-
  ous not to be true” as an answer?
  An investigator who wanted the situation to be true and
  needed an excuse to make it that way. Or maybe an investi-
  gator who was afraid of the truth and wanted an easy way
  out of accepting it.
  Her hands started to shake, though whether it was from
  fear or from anger, she couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure it really
  mattered. It shouldn’t have been this way. All she had
  wanted to do was find her mother, the woman who had given
  birth to her. Instead it was like walking into one of the Hoff-
  mann Institute’s cases. Jeane reached numbly for the letter
  once more, staring at the written words. Why? Why her?
  There were tests, of course. A simple blood test for
  starters. She was quite sure that she could get a record of
  Marilyn’s blood type somewhere, and Bobby’s, and of course
  she knew her own. That might be enough to establish that
  she could not be their child.
  Of course, it could also provide another piece of evidence
  that she was.
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  comfortable lie. Then everything drops out from under me
  and I end up travelling most of the way across the country,
  only to find out that my mother was someone I’ve detested
  for practically my entire life and that I wasn’t so much born
  as decanted.”
  Ned swirled the last of the coffee in his cup. “You men-
  tioned yesterday that the first thing you hated about Marilyn
  was her voice. Babies hear sounds. Do you think . . . ?”
  “No psychoanalysis, please. I’m not in the mood.” She
  rubbed her forehead. “Seriously, Ned—what the hell am I
  going to do? What am I going to tell my dad? What am I
  going to tell Fitz and Ngan?”
  “Personally, I’d go with sparing Stan the whole truth. I
  think he’s had enough of it already. As for Fitz and Ngan . . .”
  He shrugged. “You’ve got one thing going for you there,
  Jeane. They’re both already used to weird.”
  “Hey, it doesn’t get much weirder than this,” Jeane
  groaned. “God, they’re going to think I’m a freak!”
  “You’re not a freak, Jeane. Well, not much of a freak, any-
  way.” Ned gave her a wink and an evil smile.
  Jeane couldn’t help returning the smile. “Freak yourself,”
  she said fondly, swatting at him. “Didn’t I tell you to piss
  off?”
  “So you did.” Ned stood up. “And I believe I will accept
  the invitation. Two cups of coffee and a long wait will do that
  to you. I’ll be back in a minute, and we can talk about what
  you want to do next.” He smiled again, reassuringly this
  time, and walked away.
  For a moment, Jeane’s eyes stayed fixed on the chairs
  where Ned and Keith had sat and on the empty coffee cups
  they had left behind. Then she forced her gaze down to stare
  once more at the photographs and newspaper clippings and
  that miserable letter.
  “Well, Jeane,” she murmured to herself, “this is another
  fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
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  like she was a pork belly! She took a step forward, but Ned
  caught her and held her back.
  “Not yet,” he murmured.
  Ngan was always counseling her to wait, too. Maybe
  some of his wisdom was finally wearing off, because she did
  hold back. For a moment, anyway.
  Keith scratched his head, still facing the dead-end of the
  hallway. “I know that wasn’t the deal, Roger, but the deal
  just isn’t going to work. So what we do is I swipe the proof,
  you confront her, and between your footage and my story,
  you’ve got yourself the biggest scoop this town has ever
  see—” He frowned into the telephone. “Sure it’s messier, but
  like I said, she’s not going to walk into your newsroom on
  her own. Are you going to walk away from this now just
  because you’re afraid someone is going to throw a hissy fit
  when you try to catch her on camera? You want this story,
  Roger. I know it. You’ve kept me hanging on since I came to
  you with this. You could have cut me loose like some crank,
  but you didn’t. Now the proof we’ve been waiting for has
  dropped right into—”
  Jeane’s vision seemed to go dim. The throbbing over her
  head broke into a steady roar. Keith knew. Keith had
  known—or had at least suspected. Keith had been planning
  to sell her out all along.
  He didn’t even have time to squeak as she stormed along
  the short hallway, tore him away from the phone, and
  slammed him face first into the wall. The telephone receiver
  dropped out of his hand and swung down like a pendulum, a
  tiny, tinny voice calling out from it, “Keith? Keith, what’s
  going on?”
  Ned, trailing along in Jeane’s wake, caught the receiver
  neatly and hung it up.
  “You piece of shit,” Jeane snarled in Keith’s ear. She
  wrenched him around roughly so that she could see his
  dazed, startled face, then thrust him backward through the
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  “Jeane!” called Ned softly.
  She blinked and looked up. The big man was hustling
  over to the table as quickly as he could, an expression of
  urgency on his face. He hadn’t been gone long enough to take
  care of his business in the washroom.
  “What?” she asked.
  “Come with me. There’s something you need to see.”
  She stood without hesitation, scooping the papers and
  photos into the folder of clippings as she followed him. Ned
  led her back across the coffee shop to a hallway labeled with
  the sign “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He jerked a thumb around
  the corner.
  “Down at the end. He was there when I came over.”
  Jeane passed the folder to Ned, slid up to the corner, then
  glanced quickly around. The hallway was short and even
  more dim than the coffee shop. The floor was worn tile,
  scratched wainscoting crept up the walls, and down near the
  end of the hallway, just beside the door marked “Gentleman,”
  was a pay phone. Standing at the pay phone, his back to the
  open end of the hall, was Keith.
  She ducked back around the corner and looked at Ned.
  He held a finger to his lips, then touched his ear and pointed
  down the hall. Listen. Jeane did, easing her head around the
  corner and concentrating hard on catching Keith’s words.
  “ . . . tried, Roger, I really did,” the artist was saying. He
  shook his head and shifted position, leaning up against the
  wall. “I mean, Christ, man—she’s scary!” Keith paused, lis-
  tening. “Yeah, she does look like Marilyn, but the resem-
  blance ends there. You put her in a cage with two rabid pit
  bulls and I’d bet on her. She’s as tough as a whole bag of
  nails. There’s no way she’s going to sell the story voluntar-
  ily. We’re going to have to set her up.”
  Jeane froze. Her hands ground themselves up into fists,
  and she felt the throbbing in her head build in speed and
  harsh percussion. The dirt-bag weasel was trying to deal her
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  to pit bulls that you bet against.” She looked him straight in
  the eyes. “Understand?”
  It only took a couple of seconds under her stare for him
  to crack. “I steamed open Dad’s letter!” he blubbered. There
  was blood trickling from his nose and his lip was starting to
  swell already. “I wanted to know why it was so important, so
  I steamed it open and read it. I figured it out from the
  names—Jeane and Francis. Jeane for Norma Jeane, Marilyn’s
  real name, and Francis for Robert Francis Kennedy. Dad
  never had anything good to say about the Kennedys, but he
  always had this thing for Marilyn. Mom used to say that
  when Marilyn died, Dad was really upset. She didn’t think
  too much of it then because everybody was stunned, but I
  remember him always having a scrapbook of clippings about
  her death—until one day they all just disappeared.”
  “The folder in the safe deposit box,” spat Jeane. “So you
  put it all together and took the story to the richest bidder you
  could find. Except they wouldn’t believe you without solid
  proof, and you couldn’t guess the number of the safe deposit
  box.” She looked at Keith in disgust. “No wonder you knew
  exactly where to find the bank!”
  “Hey,” Keith shot back, “I need that money. I bet you
  could use some, too. Aside from leaving you in a lab, what
  did Marilyn ever do for you?”
  “Nothing, and I’d like to keep it that way.” She gave him
  a hard, narrow glare. “We’ll be taking that folder, those
  photos, and the letter with us. Both letters, in fact. You’re
  ending the day with no more hard evidence than you started
  with. The way I understand it, that doesn’t give you a leg
  to stand on with your tabloid buddies, but on the bright side
  you’re alive. As my friends will tell you, I’m not known for
  my restraint or my charming personality.” Jeane set her
  mouth in a thin line and took a step back. “Try this again
  and I’ll show you my bad side. Hope you never see me
  again, Keith.”
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  door into the men’s room. The cramped space smelled of
  urine. Jeane forced Keith all the way back until he was
  pinned against the tile wall between a paper towel dispenser
  and a urinal. “What is this is? What kind of game do you
  think you’re playing?”
  Keith looked at her with wild, frightened eyes, then
  sucked in air and opened his mouth. Jeane closed it for him
  with a slam of her forearm under his chin. She left it there,
  leaning on his throat. Her other fist dug into his belly at his
  diaphragm. “I said, what kind of game do you think you’re play-
  ing?” She narrowed her eyes. “No, I think I know that answer
  already. Who were you talking, too?”
  She eased up just enough to let him gulp some air. “A
  friend,” he croaked desperately. “Just a friend.”
  “A friend who works for the Weekly Global Inquiry,” said
  Ned. He stood by the door, peering through a narrow crack
  and keeping watch on the hallway outside. “I heard him say
  the name earlier. A vicious little cable TV scandal show, but
  one of the richest.”
  “Is he right?” Jeane demanded.
  She twisted her fist in Keith’s gut until he squealed out,
  “Yes!” He looked at her pleadingly. “Look, they’re giving me
  a lot of money for this. We can split it!”
  Jeane pulled her arm away and slapped him hard, so hard
  it made the paper towel dispenser rattle. Keith sagged down
  a bit. “I told you no before. I’m not for sale. And from what I
  heard, they’re not giving you any money you didn’t ask for.”
  She grabbed his shirt and shoved him back up against the
  wall again. “What do you know?”
  “Nothing!” Keith gasped. “Nothing that you don’t already
  know!” Jeane raised her hand and hit him again.
  “You knew enough to set me up, asshole.” She leaned in
  close. “Listen to me and listen good, Keith. You are screwing
  with the wrong woman. You tell me how you knew about
  Marilyn before I did or you’re going to find out what happens
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  clawing his way up the urinal. He peered at himself in the
  bathroom mirror and grimaced, then reached for a paper
  towel to clean away the blood that was dribbling down from
  his nose.
  Fortunately, he had another quarter in his pocket. He
  went back out to the pay phone, flipping the quarter between
  his thumb and forefinger before dropping it in the slot and
  dialing.
  “Weekly Global Inquiry,” answered a perky voice. Keith
  asked for Roger. A minute later, he got him. “Jesus, Keith—
  what happened? It sounded like you got slugged and cut off.”
  “Good guess.” His nose was starting to bleed again. He
  wiped the blood away and wished he’d thought to bring an
  extra paper towel to the phone. “Marilyn’s daughter found
  out what I was up to and took objection to it. She’s flown the
  coop with all my proof. I think I know where she’s going,
  though. How do you and one of your video boys feel about a
  fast trip to Chicago?”
  On the other end of the phone, Roger hesitated. “I can’t
  stick my neck out on this without some kind of proof, Keith.
  What makes you think she won’t destroy the evidence? And
  why should I believe this bit about getting hit and losing the
  evidence anyway? You’re going to have to throw me a bone
  here, Keith.”
  “Don’t you worry, Roger. I’ve still got something I think
  will convince you to take the risk.” Keith reached into his shirt
  pocket. The instant picture inside was slightly crumpled, but
  it was still perfectly clear. The captured image of a woman
  walking into his apartment, a woman who was undeniably the
  perfect, natural likeness of Marilyn Monroe. “Better start
  making plans for a trip for three to Chicago. Tonight.”
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  She kicked out and swept Keith’s wobbly legs out from
  under him. He dropped hard, back skidding down the wall,
  rump slamming into the cold floor. His head bounced side-
  ways off the porcelain basin of the urinal. Jeane turned away.
  She opened the door and stalked out of the men’s room. Ned
  fell into step beside her, but didn’t say anything. The coffee
  shop fell silent as they emerged from the washroom hallway.
  Eyes stared and heads turned to watch their progress toward
  the door. Jeane didn’t look sideways once.
  Ned didn’t say anything until they were outside and head-
  ing for the car. “How are you feeling?”
  She glanced at him. “You tell me.” She went around to the
  driver’s side of the car. “We’re going to the airport,” she said.
  “I’ve had enough of this. I want to go home.”
  “I have a better idea.” Ned regarded her across the car’s
  roof. “We find a hotel, and you chill out a bit before you kill
  something. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
  “Like a night’s attempt at sleep is going to make this
  go away.”
  Ned shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”
  Jeane closed her eyes for a moment. Her head throbbed
  so badly her teeth ached. Her arms and legs were trembling
  so fast they almost vibrated. As much as she wanted to get
  the hell out of LA, she didn’t think that sitting still for the
  long flight back to Chicago was really a possibility right now.
  “Fine,” she said in resignation. “First flight tomorrow
  morning. I’ll book the tickets from the hotel.” She would, she
  was sure, have plenty of time for that. Sleep was likely going
  to be a stranger that night. Maybe for longer than that.
  Keith had to blink a few times before his vision resolved
  all the way. He faltered when he tried to stand the first time.
  Eventually he had to resort to pulling himself to his feet by
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  208
  emember, Fitz,” McCain said to himself as he
  pushed through the door of the Royal Thai
  restaurant and into its warm, fragrant atmos-
  phere, “this is business.”
  Calamity gestured to him from the back. He took
  a deep breath and went to her table. Just business.
  Shani had taken his sudden change of plans and
  the need to have dinner with an informant without
  question. She knew him. She understood what he had
  to do.
  “Hey, Fitz.” Calamity reached out a hand in greet-
  ing. She pushed out the chair at her side.
  McCain shrugged off his coat and sat. “Been wait-
  ing long?” he asked.
  She gestured at the table. There was a basket of
  puffy shrimp chips already on it and a pitcher of beer,
  too. Two glasses stood beside it, one mostly full, the
  other still empty.
  chapter
  4 t e e n
  R
  Calamity filled it for him then clinked her glass against
  his and said, “Bottoms up.”
  “Cheers.”
  McCain glanced around the restaurant as he took a long
  drink of beer. The place was maybe three-quarters full. No
  one had the look of a cop. Maybe Calamity really had come
  alone. He turned back to her just in time to catch her eyes
  flicking down to the basket of chips. She had been watching
  him.
  McCain grinned and asked, “What does Gibson think of
  this little meeting?”
  “At the moment, nothing. He’s home in bed, recovering
  from his head-on collision with the trailer this morning. This
  is just you and me—like we agreed.” Calamity’s eyes flick-
  ered across him again. “Nice sweater, by the way.”
  “Thanks.”
  His apartment was nearby, and he’d stopped to change on
  the way—into the clothes laid out for his date with Shani. He
  was sure she would have understood that, too.
  Calamity’s compliment drew his eyes to her as well. Her
  shirt was deep blue, made out of some soft material that
  draped and clung to the curves of her body. There was a gold
  chain around her neck but the only other ornament she wore
  was the sun-touched gold-brown of her hair. There was an air
  of restless activity about her, as if at any moment she might
  jump up in response to a police call or whip out her gun and
  put him under arrest. Damn. The muscles of his stomach
  tensed in instinctive arousal.
  McCain forced them to relax and fought against his ani-
  mal instincts. This was worse than his meeting with Olivia
  Marquez. There were menus already on the table. He picked
  one up and flipped through it to cover his discomfort.
  “Anything you recommend?” he asked.
  “You can’t go wrong with the basil beef, but if you like it
  hotter, try something in the red curry sauce.” She sipped at
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  “Playing it safe?” asked Calamity with another smile.
  “Kang ped talay,” she told the waiter without looking at the
  menu, then nudged the now mostly empty pitcher of beer,
  “and another of these.”
  They managed to avoid discussing anything of signifi-
  cance until the food came. By the time the waiter did return
  with it, however, McCain had learned too much about
  Calamity’s personal interests, she had learned too much
  about his, and they had both had too much of the second
  pitcher. Worse, McCain found himself thinking less and less
  about Shani. When his plate was in front of him, he attacked
  it with a voraciousness that had less to with physical hunger
  than simply a need for diversion.
  It was something of a mistake. He’d swallowed two
  mouthfuls before the deceptive flavor turned into searing
  heat that left him groping for his beer and Calamity shaking
  with laughter.
  “You,” he gasped, “are an evil, evil woman.”
  “Without a doubt,” agreed Calamity. She took a deep
  breath and got her laughter back under control. “Enough
  small talk. The waiter won’t be back for a while. What have
  you got on Renfield?”
  McCain considered arguing who should go first, but
  decided it wasn’t worth another bout of flirtation. He took a
  sip of beer to cool the last flames in his mouth. “First, you
  have to understand that there’s some things I can’t tell you.”
  Calamity nodded. “You started to say something like that
  this morning. I’m going to guess that one of those things is
  exactly who you work for.” She tilted her head and looked at
  him. “Not police, not military, not government, though there
  is something familiar about you . . .”
  “I have that kind of face,” McCain said quickly. “The sec-
  ond thing you have to understand though, is that you are not
  going to believe some of what I tell you.”
  “Try me.”
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  her beer again. “And there’s always the honest truth.”
  “I don’t see that on the menu,” McCain said, tilting the
  menu on its side and giving it a puzzled look. “Is it an appe-
  tizer?”
  Calamity burst out with a loud, genuine laugh. “You’re a
  clever one, Fitz. Good looks, a silver tongue . . .”
  He flashed her a grin and resisted the urge to point out
  that he wasn’t the only one. “So,” he said, picking up the
  pitcher and topping up the detective’s beer, “what kind of a
  nickname is Calamity?”
  She shrugged and drank some of her beer. “I got it as a
  little girl—my parents thought ‘Calamity James’ was cute.
  Then I grew and you know how tall kids are. I broke some-
  thing just turning around. I was a Calamity again. I hit col-
  lege and turned into the wild child.” She shrugged again. “It
  stuck.”
  “The nickname?”
  She looked at him. “That too.” One perfect eyebrow
  twitched suggestively.
  McCain took a casual gulp of beer. At least he hoped it
  looked casual. Think of Shani! Shani was gorgeous. Shani
  was smart. Calamity was . . . Gorgeous. Smart. But Shani
  was sophisticated. Shani was always carefully dressed, and
  she always smelled like that fruity soap. Calamity was rough
  and reckless—McCain could see her as a living, breathing
  part of the Wild West.
  I wonder what she smells like. The casual gulp turned into
  a sudden sputter.
  “You okay?” Calamity asked.
  “Yeah, fine.” McCain wiped beer from his face. “Some-
  thing just went down the wrong way.”
  Fortunately, the waiter appeared at the table to take their
  order at just the right moment. McCain reminded himself to
  give the man a big tip at the end of the meal.
  “Basil beef,” he said quickly.
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  sort of.” Calamity reached down beside her chair and pro-
  duced a battered leather folder. She passed it to McCain.
  “This is the information I have to trade. I have to take the
  originals back, but there are photocopies for you.”
  The folder was zippered around the outside. McCain
  unzipped it and folded back the cover. Inside were several
  pieces of paper torn out of a journal or notebook. They had
  been written on with crayon. Strange symbols. Words that
  might have been Latin. Other scribbles that might have been
  words if the scribbles had been letters. It put him in mind of
  the bear skull he and Jeane had shown to Ned only two days
  before—except that while the words and symbols on the
  skull had clearly been random, the words and symbols on the
  paper were too neat, too orderly. He flipped through the
  pages, absorbing what he saw and not liking it at all.
  On the last two pages were sketches of the worm.
  The grey of its smooth hide had been rendered in black
  and cornflower blue, but there was no mistaking the crea-
  ture. It had been drawn small, cradled in disembodied arms
  like a cat. It had been drawn large, enormous mouth gaping
  wide. All of the pictures were ringed by symbols and arcane
  phrases. Across the top of one picture, though, were three
  English words. I summon thee. McCain gave a low whistle of
  amazement. “Where did these come from?”
  “Renfield’s room at Elgin. They were hidden under her
  mattress.” Calamity reached around the case to tap the
  papers. “Her therapists encouraged her to start keeping a
  journal. These pages match her journal books, but we fig-
  ured all this stuff was just more of her insanity.”
  “Until you saw the worm.”
  “And you told me the other half of Renfield’s story. Put it
  all together and . . .”
  “I know.” McCain leafed back through the pages. The file
  mentioned nothing like this, nor had Olivia. Renfield must
  have been very careful with what she drew under the watchful
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  McCain shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
  He kept the story simple. No mention of the Hoffmann
  Institute or the Chicago Specimen Collection by name, of
  course. No names for Ngan, Monty, Van, or Liam, either—
  they were simply his “associates.” No mention of the Dark
  Tide or Greys or ghosts or vril, definitely nothing about
  clones and the Holy Grail, or any of the other things he had
  seen in his time with the Hoffmann Institute. Just their cur-
  rent assignment, the need to put Renfield back in Elgin, and
  their concern for the occult side of Renfield’s history that the
  police might have overlooked. Somewhat to his surprise,
  Calamity showed no great surprise or disbelief.
  When their food came, she ate calmly while he continued
  to talk. McCain decided to take a risk and told her a little bit
  more about what they had begun to suspect: the origin of the
  dust at the scenes, the similarities between the worm and
  Renfield’s misguided summoning fifteen years before, and
  their fears over Renfield’s search for a protector. When he
  was finished he watched her as she took a few more bites of
  food, then put her chopsticks down at the side of her plate.
  She reached for the pitcher and split the last mouthfuls of
  beer between her glass and his. He picked up his glass and
  drained it.
  When he looked up again, Calamity was watching him. “If
  I hadn’t seen that worm today,” she said quietly, “I wouldn’t
  have believed a word of all that and there’s a good chance
  you’d be on your way to Elgin yourself.”
  “But you did see it. What do you think?”
  “I think that no matter what I saw, none of that is going
  to go over big in a police report.” Calamity squeezed her eyes
  closed and rubbed her forehead. “This is insane.”
  McCain gave her an ironic smile. “After the worm, what
  did you expect?”
  “I was hoping for something that would make sense out of
  it.” She sighed. “Although I suppose that does make sense—
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  that. I just want Renfield and that worm off the streets, no
  matter who takes them away.” Calamity reached around the
  folder again, this time to offer him an open hand. “Deal?”
  “Deal.”
  McCain shook her hand. Her grip was strong—he had
  noticed that before. What he hadn’t noticed, though, was the
  warm softness of her skin, the delicate length of her fingers
  as they brushed his. Some of that must have shown in his
  eyes, because Calamity gave him a gentle, naughty smile.
  She bent her middle and ring fingers in so that they tickled
  across his palm as their hands parted. McCain fought down
  another flush and forced back the tension that pulled his
  muscles into knots. Business relationship, he reminded him-
  self desperately, this a business relationship.
  “Dessert?” asked the waiter suddenly from right beside
  him.
  The shame of his arousal made McCain jump and snatch
  his hand away. The instinctive secrecy that came with work-
  ing for the Hoffmann Institute made him snap the leather
  folder closed around Renfield’s drawings. Unfortunately,
  Calamity tried to do exactly the same thing. Caught between
  them, the folder slipped sideways sharply, sending cutlery
  flying and striking Calamity’s beer glass. The glass—still
  half full—spun around, tilted, started to fall . . .
  Only Calamity’s reflexes saved her from a lapful of cold
  beer. She caught the glass before more than a little beer had
  slopped onto the tablecloth. As the waiter soared into a
  flurry of apologies, she wiggled an eyebrow at McCain—then
  quite deliberately tipped the glass in close and dribbled a
  thin stream of beer onto her blouse. “Oops.”
  McCain stared at the dark spot on her shirt. He was,
  abruptly, very much aware of his breathing.
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  eyes of her therapists. This stuff would have made them sus-
  picious—though probably not for the same reason it sent
  shivers up McCain’s back.
  They had wondered where the creature had come from. I
  summon thee. Could Renfield have used magic to summon the
  worm to aid her? Ned said that magic told a story. If they
  could work backward from these symbols and Renfield’s
  summoning, they might be able to figure out more about the
  nature of the worm. Hopefully that knowledge would also
  give them a way to stop it.
  McCain looked up at Calamity. “I feel like I got more out
  of this than you did.”
  She grinned shamelessly. “If you’re feeling guilty, I can
  think of a way you can make up the difference.” McCain felt
  a hot flush creep across his face and the grin turned into a
  laugh. “Something besides that!” She leaned forward, her
  face serious for a change. “The Chicago PD may not be up to
  tackling supernatural worms, but when it comes to tracking
  people down, we know what we’re doing. The leads you’ve
  given me are going to be a big help—we hadn’t dug all the
  way back into Renfield’s record yet. We can do that.”
  “In other words, you want us to deal with the worm while
  you tackle Renfield,” McCain said.
  Calamity nodded, and McCain’s face wrinkled up as he
  considered the proposal. It certainly seemed like a good
  solution. The Hoffmann Institute had the resources and
  knowledge to look into the worm and any other occult angle,
  while the police could conduct a far more thorough official
  search than the Institute ever could . . . and he was certain
  that Monty would hate the idea.
  “Done,” he said, “though I’m not going to envy you trying
  to write a report on this.”
  She shook her head. “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to
  it. You know how TV and movie cops are always pissing
  about jurisdiction and who gets the collar? I don’t care about
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  morning, but we shouldn’t waste what time we have. Tomor-
  row we can start going through Ned’s books ourselves. We
  need to start finding answers.”
  “I’ll meet you at his shop.” McCain rubbed his eyes. “Not
  too early though, please. Is eleven okay?”
  “It should be fine. I’ll get Van there as well.” Ngan
  paused, then asked with concern. “Are you all right,
  Michael? You sound disturbed.”
  “Me? No, I’m fine. Just tired. You caught me lying down.”
  “Ah. I’m sorry,” apologized Ngan. “I’ll see you tomorrow
  at eleven.”
  “Right. Bye.” McCain hit the disconnect button. The soft
  rustle of cloth behind him brought his head up and made him
  turn around.
  Calamity stood in the doorway of his bedroom, a sheet
  wrapped around her. “I couldn’t help overhearing. One of
  your associates?”
  “Checking in on me,” McCain confessed. “In case your
  meeting was a set-up.”
  “Well, it was, wasn’t it?” she asked with a lusty smile.
  The sheet slid to the ground with a whisper and Calamity
  walked across the room to twine her arms around his body.
  McCain returned the embrace hungrily, but somewhere
  inside him, a little voice was still crying uselessly, No! No!
  No!
  A night’s sleep did not make Jeane feel better. Or rather
  a night spent turning over and over between the crinkly
  sheets of a hotel bed did not make her feel better. Images
  kept floating to the surface of her mind. Marilyn, of course.
  Bobby Kennedy. Jack Kennedy, apparently thrown in by her
  unconscious just for good measure. Sam Hollister as he
  appeared in the old lab photos, then as an old man, then
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  The ring of the telephone was startlingly loud and shrill.
  McCain sat bolt upright instantly and grabbed for it, snatch-
  ing up the receiver on the second ring. “Hello?”
  “Michael.” It was Ngan’s voice, as cool and calm as
  always. “This is your check-in call. Did the meeting with
  Detective James go all right?”
  McCain swallowed and tried to slow his racing heart by
  force of will alone. “Yes,” he said. He swung his legs around
  and stood up, walking with the phone out into the living
  room of his loft. The night lights of Chicago’s downtown
  shone through the multi-paned factory windows. “We’ve got
  trouble, though. It looks like Renfield summoned the worm.”
  He described the journal pages, as well as his clandestine
  deal with Calamity to divide the work of the case.
  “I’m not sure I like involving the police, Michael,” Ngan
  said.
  “They were already involved, Ngan. This way we won’t be
  duplicating efforts. We may be able to get Renfield back in
  custody faster—that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”
  Ngan sighed. “I think Monty said something similar to us
  earlier today.”
  “And you agreed with him then.” McCain realized that he
  was pacing back and forth along the length of the living room.
  He forced himself to stop. “I think we’ve really got something
  here, Ngan. There’s got to be something in these pages that
  will help us. Even so, I don’t think we can figure it out alone.
  We need Ned for more than just his contact with Renfield—we
  need what he knows about demon summoning.” He rubbed a
  hand across his forehead. “I know I mentioned calling Jeane. I
  didn’t get a chance to. Do you think you could . . . ?”
  “I’ve tried already. She’s not answering her phone.”
  The muscles of McCain’s jaw tightened involuntarily.
  “That doesn’t sound good.”
  “No,” Ngan agreed, “but I’m afraid we have more impor-
  tant things to worry about right now. I’ll try again in the
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  219
  t had snowed overnight once again. The morning
  was the coldest yet that month. Ngan sat on a
  bench outside Ned Devromme’s book shop.
  McCain was late. Not suspiciously so, though his tar-
  diness was unusual. Van was already there, skim-
  ming through the extensive collection of occult books
  in Ned’s shop. Ngan should have been inside helping
  him. He had excused himself, however, and come out-
  side to enjoy the cold of the morning. The air in
  Chicago was not the crisp, clean, thin air of his home-
  land, but on a November morning, it was enough to
  bring back fond memories. And it helped him think.
  Who within the Institute could want them to fail?
  Who within the Institute might want them dead?
  Who within the Institute could possibly force Lily
  Adler to do something against her will?
  Unfortunately, his last question did leave another
  possibility open, one that he was loathe to consider.
  chapter
  f 1 5 t e e n
  I
  morphing into Keith begging for her to reconsider and pose
  for just one instant photograph. He carried a wig with him,
  platinum blonde, and a white dress that billowed up of its
  own accord. Jeane protested strenuously, but somehow found
  herself wearing both dress and wig anyway and staring at
  herself in a mirror that was also a window into a liquid-filled
  pod. Somewhere a phone kept ringing and ringing and she
  knew that on the other end of the line was a tabloid reporter
  waiting to question her. Then suddenly she was inside the
  pod, floating in the liquid, and it was utterly silent. There
  was no phone, but there was also no one’s heartbeat to com-
  fort her. No one’s breathing. No gentle sounds from outside
  the womb. Jeane struggled, trying to reach the surface, but
  of course there was no surface to reach.
  Marilyn, Bobby, and Sam Hollister were back, hanging
  onto her legs and dragging her down. Stan and Rose stood
  above, hazy images on the other side of a surface that hadn’t
  been there a moment before, but all they could do was watch
  sadly. They had made a promise, hadn’t they? Jeane fought to
  reach them again, but it was no use. The truth was uncov-
  ered, the genie out of the bottle.
  She gave up and sank down until the shrill buzz of an
  alarm clock woke her up for a six a.m. flight from LAX to
  O’Hare.
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  Van hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.” He led them to the
  back of the store and a section of shelves draped with a pur-
  ple curtain. “Ned keeps his best books here. Jeane has one of
  them. Ned says it was what helped crack the case of Bache-
  lor’s Grove.”
  “I’m sure he does.” McCain reached to brush aside the
  curtain, but Van caught his hand.
  “Ned’s very protective of these. I’m not sure we should
  mess around with them.”
  “I’m not sure we have a choice,” said Ngan. “I think Ned
  will understand.”
  He drew back the curtain. The shelves behind it were
  packed with an array of volumes, large and small, new and
  very old. Ngan glanced over them, then bent to peer across
  the top of one shelf. There were more books packed in
  behind the first row. He reverently ran a hand across the
  books. Van was right. These were the best books in Ned’s
  shop. He could sense the power in them, like the sacredness
  of a temple. If there were answers in the shop, they would be
  here.
  McCain groaned quietly. “This is going to take a long
  time.”
  “If you have an alternative, Michael,” Ngan replied, “I
  would welcome it. The faster we can learn more about Ren-
  field and the worm, the better. Until Ned reappears and can
  give us direction . . .” He slid the first book off the shelf. “. . .
  we catch up on our reading.”
  Perversely, the closer Jeane got to home, the more fright-
  ened she felt. Surrounded by strangers on the flight back to
  Chicago, it had been easy to pretend that there was nothing
  wrong, that the day before simply hadn’t happened. As he
  had on the flight to Cleveland, Ned said next to nothing,
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  Perhaps Lily wasn’t being coerced at all. He grimaced. No.
  He knew Lily. She could as much turn on him as he could
  turn on her.
  Just as with Renfield, they needed more answers. He
  didn’t have the feeling they would be forthcoming.
  It was noon before McCain’s car appeared on the street
  and pulled in by the shop. McCain jumped out hastily, then did
  a double take on seeing Ngan waiting for him. Ngan raised an
  eyebrow as he looked his partner over. McCain was normally
  immaculate in his appearance with perfectly groomed hair
  and sharp, impeccable suits. Today he had an air of dishevel-
  ment about him. His hair was neat, but not perfect. He hadn’t
  shaved. Instead of a suit, he wore simply dark pants and a
  deep blue shirt. There were dark rings under his eyes.
  McCain caught his glance and dodged the unvoiced ques-
  tion. “Any luck getting in touch with Jeane?”
  “Her phone was turned off this morning.”
  Something was wrong. Ngan could feel it. If McCain
  didn’t feel like discussing it, though, he wouldn’t push. There
  were much larger problems at hand. McCain handed him an
  envelope as they went inside. Ngan opened the envelope and
  shook out the photocopied pages of Renfield’s notes. As
  McCain had described, the sketches and symbols certainly
  seemed occult in nature, pointing firmly toward Renfield’s
  having summoned the worm.
  Van was at the back of the shop, stacks of books piled
  around him. Ngan passed the pages to him. The young man
  looked at them and gave a low whistle. “Nasty.”
  “Indeed.” Ngan looked around them, considering the wide
  range of occult and paranormal books Ned had amassed in
  his shop. Their search was not going to be simple. Even
  going through the books Van had already selected was
  daunting. “Van,” he said, “you probably know Ned’s shop the
  best of any of us. Is there any particular section we should
  start with?”
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  and frowned as he looked ahead down the street. “You might
  have to face up to Ngan and Fitz sooner than you think
  though. That’s Fitz’s car parked outside my shop.”
  Jeane frowned, too. “Picking up some books?”
  “Somehow I doubt it.” Ned was out of the car almost
  before Jeane had pulled in behind Fitz’s car. He leaned back
  in. “Do you want to come in?” he asked gently.
  It sounded like a cheap come-on, but she knew what Ned
  was really asking, and she wasn’t ready for it yet. She didn’t
  know what to say. She didn’t know how to explain all of this.
  She wasn’t . . .
  Jeane clenched her teeth and forced back her panic. “I
  guess I’d better,” she said.
  She turned off the ignition, got out of the car, and walked
  after Ned down to his shop door. He gave her a final glance,
  then opened the door, standing aside to allow her to walk
  through first.
  The sound of Kaz’s television was the first thing to greet
  her and her heart skipped a beat. No! A Marilyn documentary
  or movie was the last thing she wanted to see right now, and
  if Kaz was—
  Her eyes focused on a rather startled looking Kaz and
  beyond him his little television. Not a Marilyn movie, but an
  episode of The Brady Bunch. Jeane could have hugged the
  lanky clerk in relief.
  Ned, however, was already sweeping past her and march-
  ing straight down one of the aisles, bellowing as he went.
  “Would you people care to explain why you’re tearing apart
  my store?”
  Jeane went after him. McCain, Ngan, and Van were all
  clustered at the back of the store. Stacks of books were
  spread out around them, all of them taken from Ned’s mys-
  terious curtained-off stash. The three men leaped to their
  feet, though only Van had the decency to look embarrassed
  by their ransacking of the bookshelves.
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  allowing her the isolation she wanted. For a little while, she
  could be just another anonymous traveler.
  The minute they touched down at O’Hare that changed.
  She was heading back to the life she had dropped so abruptly
  three days before. She was back to being Jeane Meara, once
  of Parma, Ohio, daughter of Stan and Rose Meara, now of a
  Los Angeles laboratory, secret daughter of dead celebrities.
  It felt like that secret was just shining out of her. The feel-
  ing only grew as they walked out of the airport and caught
  the shuttle bus back to the parking lot where she had left her
  car. Jeane Meara’s car. It continued to grow as she headed
  for downtown and Jeane Meara’s apartment—along the John
  F. Kennedy Expressway, of course. Dear old Uncle Jack. She
  bit her tongue angrily at the thought.
  By the time she turned onto North Avenue, her fingers
  were clenched white around the steering wheel. She knew
  the neighborhoods now, and people there knew her. How
  many of them had secretly wondered about her resemblance
  to Marilyn Monroe?
  “No,” she growled to herself, “I do not look like her.”
  “Jeane,” murmured Ned, “that was out loud. You might
  want to watch that.”
  “Shut up, Ned,” she snapped reflexively—and realized he
  had been sincere. “God, Ned. I’m sorry.”
  “It’s okay, Jeane.” He looked over at her again. “I feel like
  I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but are you going to be all
  right?”
  “Probably not. What the hell am I going to tell Ngan and
  Fitz?” She pulled off North, down into Wicker Park, then
  onto the street where Ned’s shop and apartment were. “How
  am I going to live with this?”
  “You’ll find a way. Knowing you, I’m sure of it. You’re
  strong. You’re smart. I know you’re tough. If you ever do
  need help, though, you can always come to me. I know some-
  thing about living with secrets.” He sat forward suddenly
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  Ned looked terrible, ashen-faced and bent. He nodded in
  response to Ngan’s question. “I always hoped that Lisa
  would get better someday, but I guess not.” He glanced up
  and spread his hands. “Well, everybody knows the nasty
  secret of my past now, so there you go. Norm Medvede was
  me, of course—good guess, Van. I tried looking in on Lisa a
  couple of times, but seeing me only made things worse. Prob-
  ably because I was the only person left who knew about the
  circle.”
  “Do you know anything about the ritual the circle was
  trying to enact that last night?” Ngan asked.
  “It was probably the same ritual they—we—always per-
  formed: communicating with a power from beyond in order to
  ask it questions. Stupid questions.” Ned looked up to the ceil-
  ing. “How can I get rich? Will I get a promotion? Like a demon
  is some kind of ultraterrestrial psychic hotline. The last time
  I was part of it someone wanted to know whether she should
  take a job that would mean a move to Seattle.” He smiled in
  bitter reminiscence. “The answer was yes, but she turned the
  job down anyway. The stock options would have made her a
  billionaire. I understand she was there that last night.”
  “If Lisa had conducted the ritual before, what went
  wrong? What happened that night?”
  Ned shrugged. “As far as I’ve been able to piece together
  over the years: exactly what everyone thinks. Lisa made con-
  tact with the wrong entity, one way more powerful than she
  could control. I’d take a stab that she asked it a question and
  it gave her a bigger answer than she bargained for. That’s
  what drove her mad. There really are some things humanity
  was not meant to know. But as for this bit about a protector
  and a test, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It sounds like
  your psychiatrist friend was right. It’s just an extension of
  her obsession.”
  “How about the worm, then?” asked McCain. “What
  about her strength and being able to throw cops around?”
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  “Ned! Jeane!” McCain stepped carefully over a stack of
  books and came bounding along the aisle to meet them. “Are
  we glad to see you!”
  “We’ll see whether you’re glad or not when I make you
  put those books back on the shelf in precisely the order you
  took them off!” Ned roared. “What are you doing?” He glared
  at Van. “You know no one is supposed to touch these!”
  “He told us, Ned,” Ngan said, “but it was imperative that
  we go through them.” His voice was as even as Jeane had
  ever heard it, but there was also a thin edge of urgency to it
  as well. Ned’s gaze flicked to him immediately. “We need
  information on a possible demonic entity, Ned. And on some-
  one you once knew—Lisa Renfield.”
  Ned froze, then spun on his heel and stalked back toward
  the door. Jeane stepped hastily out of his way. Ngan and
  McCain looked at each other, then hastened after him.
  “Ned!” called McCain. “Wait! We need—”
  At the door, Ned clicked the deadbolt closed, flipped the
  OPEN sign around to CLOSED, then turned back to them. His
  face was deadly serious. “What’s going on?” he demanded in
  a low, dangerous voice.
  McCain told him—told both of them. By the time he was
  done, Ned was leaning against the counter, his eyes closed,
  his serious expression turned to one of pain. Everyone was
  quiet. Kaz had even turned off his television. Jeane stood
  back against one wall, stunned.
  “My God . . . Fitz, Ngan,” Jeane said, “I had no idea this
  was happening. I would have come back.”
  Ngan nodded. “I know, Jeane. The important thing is that
  you’ve come back now.”
  Jeane nodded and braced herself for the inevitable questions.
  Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell us? What did you find out?
  To her surprise, however, Ngan turned back to Ned. “I’m
  sorry we have to bring all of this out into the open, Ned, but
  you understand, don’t you?”
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  Ngan, and Van in a decidedly unfriendly fashion. “We’re look-
  ing for Ned Devromme.”
  “Well, congratulations, you’ve found him.” Ned swung the
  door wide to let the police in. “And just so we can get most
  of the details out of the way right now: yes, I do know Lisa
  Renfield; no, I have not seen or had contact with her for
  about fifteen years; and no, I don’t know what’s she’s doing
  now or her motivations for doing it.”
  “Oh,” said Gibson sarcastically. “Psychic, are we?” He
  brushed past Ned without waiting for an answer and
  regarded the others. “Well, well. Fancy finding you here.”
  “Or you,” McCain said, and Jeane caught the look he gave
  Calamity James. What had happened between them? “How
  exactly did you happen to find us?”
  Calamity, however, let the look pass as Gibson shot back
  at McCain. “We’re following up on old police records from
  Renfield’s original arrest,” he said. “I understand we have
  you to thank for the idea. Ned Devromme is referred to as an
  associate shortly before her hospitalization. We found an
  address in the phone book, so we came to check on the lead.”
  Gibson glowered at McCain, an expression made even uglier
  by his bruise. “I’m also led to understand that there’s been
  some secret deal-making going on behind my back. If you
  people are supposed to be investigating this worm thing
  while we look for the woman, would you like to explain what
  you’re doing here now?”
  “Ned happens to be a friend of ours,” McCain replied
  coolly, “and an expert on worm things.”
  “And standing right here, so I’d appreciate being
  addressed in this conversation.” Ned stepped between Gib-
  son and McCain. “If you two are finished with your little piss-
  ing match, I think there’s enough of me to answer everyone’s
  questions.” He pointed to McCain first. “You were going to
  show me something.”
  McCain coughed suddenly and stepped back. “Uh, no.
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  “There’s too many possible explanations for the strength,”
  Ned pointed out. “I’d just remember that she’s got it and
  keep my distance. The worm is another story.” He stood
  upright, put his fingertips together, and took a couple of
  paces across the width of the shop as he thought. “There are
  legends of monstrous worms all over the world, though usu-
  ally they’re more like snakes than actual worms. Of course
  there are more kinds of ultraterrestrials than you can shake
  a stick at, so it’s conceivable that it’s some species that has
  simply never been recorded before. It’s also conceivable that
  it is indeed somehow related to whatever drove Lisa mad.
  But there’s a problem with that.” He paused. “How could
  Lisa know what to summon when the initial contact was a
  random accident? In fact, how could she manage a summon-
  ing in a hospital room anyway?”
  “I don’t know, but it looks like she did,” McCain said. He
  disappeared down the aisles for a moment and returned
  with a small sheaf of photocopied pages. “We have her
  notes.”
  “Notes do not a ritual make.” A knock at the door inter-
  rupted him. “Go away,” he yelled without turning around.
  “There’s a closed sign on the window. Can’t you read?”
  From where she stood, however, Jeane could see who was
  at the door. A big, big man in a leather coat with a nasty
  bruise across much of his face. A tall woman with golden-
  brown hair.
  She grimaced. “I think we’d better let them in, Ned. They
  look like the cops.”
  Everyone turned at once, Ngan with his inevitable calm,
  Ned with a grumbled curse, Van with a start, and McCain
  with a jump and yelp of surprise. Ned went over and un-
  locked the door
  “Yes?” he asked, annoyed.
  “Detectives Gibson and James, Chicago Police Department,”
  answered the man with the bruise. His gaze took in McCain,
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  already know—less even. There’s no mention of it turning
  people into dust. Lisa didn’t write these notes.”
  “But we found them in her room,” Calamity pointed out.
  Ned shrugged. “Maybe, but she didn’t write them.”
  “Could they have been planted?” asked Jeane with a
  frown. Everyone looked at her. “Think about it,” she said.
  “What if we had found them first instead of the police? We
  would have started looking for the worm immediately.
  Instead we had to stumble across its existence.”
  “That doesn’t make sense.”
  “No,” said Ngan. “It does.” He brought his hands up in
  front of his face and closed his eyes for a second, then
  opened them again. “We thought we’d discovered everything
  about the worm by accident, but at least some of what we
  know was no accident. It was placed for us to find. The
  worm’s existence—though not its most dangerous ability.
  Renfield’s connection to the disappearance of the garbage
  truck driver. We found out about that because of the Elgin
  van on the scene, but clues picked up from monitoring police
  communications would have drawn us there eventually any-
  way.” He looked at Gibson and Calamity. “How exactly did
  the police make the link between that disappearance and
  Renfield?”
  The two detectives glanced at each other. “We got a tip,”
  Gibson confessed. “We’re being set up?”
  “We’re being set up, Detective Gibson.” Ngan glanced
  around at the other Hoffmann Institute agents. “Someone
  wanted us to know about the worm, but not about what it
  could do. By selectively planting information, they could
  misdirect our investigation. We would fail and be dis-
  graced, or possibly even bumble into an encounter with
  Renfield and the worm and be caught by its unexpected
  power.”
  Van nodded. “Except that Monty got involved, I ran into
  Renfield on the train, and no one knew Ned had an old part
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  Nothing important that is,” he mumbled.
  Jeane cursed quietly to herself. The papers he had must
  have been the copies of Renfield’s notes, and he had said
  James had not told her partner about the planned trade of
  information. If Calamity had told Gibson about her deal with
  McCain, maybe she had told him about that trade as well, but
  if she hadn’t and McCain whipped out the copies now . . .
  Fortunately, Calamity herself moved smoothly into the
  gap. “If Fitz doesn’t have something to show you, Mr.
  Devromme, then I do. These were hidden in Renfield’s room
  at Elgin Mental Health Center.” She produced a flat leather
  case, unzipped it, and extracted several sheets of paper.
  Ned’s eyebrows rose as she handed them to him.
  “Thank you, Detective James.” He scanned the pages,
  then cast a glance to McCain. “Notes,” he said, “for sum-
  moning a demon.”
  Jeane saw Gibson shudder at the words and felt sympa-
  thy for him. Her own disbelief in this sort of thing wasn’t that
  far behind her.
  McCain, however, gave Ned the slightest nod of confir-
  mation. The psychic wandered over to the counter and
  spread the pages out, overlapping some of them to form a
  larger pattern. After a few minutes, though, he shook his
  head.
  “No,” he said. “This isn’t right.”
  “What?” asked McCain and Gibson in unison. The two
  immediately gave each other nasty looks. Ned ignored them.
  “Lisa knows what she’s doing when it comes to working
  a summoning.” He held up two pages of Renfield’s notes.
  “Whoever wrote these does not. The symbols and incanta-
  tions are basically right, but they’re all jumbled up. It’s like
  having perfect spelling but really abysmal grammar.” He
  dropped the pages back onto the counter. “These are notes
  for a summoning, but it’s a summoning that would never
  work. They don’t tell us anything about the worm we don’t
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  this is our territory. We have greater experience in this area
  than you do.”
  Gibson looked ready to protest again but his partner
  cleared her throat. “Remember who gave you that full-face
  shiner.” The big detective turned his glower on her. She
  smiled at him, and said sideways to Ngan, “What if we came
  with you? Unless you people have the power to make arrests,
  we’re going to have to be the ones to take Renfield in.”
  “That seems acceptable. On condition of your silence
  afterward, of course.”
  Detective James shrugged. “Who’s going to believe us?”
  She looked at Gibson, and after a moment, he nodded.
  “Fine,” he grumbled, “but how exactly do you intend to
  put Renfield and her wormy buddy away? Guns didn’t seem
  to do a whole lot of good.”
  “But that taser did,” McCain pointed out. He turned to
  Ngan. “I’ll bet Monty has more where it came from.”
  “Call him,” said Ngan, “and arrange for him to meet us as
  soon as he can.” His face was grim. “We need to stop Ren-
  field today.”
  As everyone began to move and get organized, Jeane took
  a step back and sagged against a wall. It was like getting a
  reprieve. No one was paying any attention to her. She didn’t
  have to say anything—for now, anyway. She clenched her
  fists and fought back the anger and dread.
  It all came together with a speed that left Van awe-
  struck. A call to Monty brought a flood of complaints at the
  involvement of Gibson and Calamity but also a disturbing
  glee at the prospect of capturing the worm. The CSC would
  provide the necessary weapons. The truck lot where they
  had encountered Renfield before was chosen as a conven-
  ient rendezvous. Monty and Liam would meet them all there
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  in this at all. But none of that puts us any closer to actually
  finding Renfield, does it?”
  Ned, however, shook his head. “Not necessarily.” He
  picked one paper off the counter. “This is a list of what would
  be needed for the summoning ritual.”
  “You said the ritual was fake.”
  “It doesn’t matter.” He tapped his finger beside one item.
  Everyone leaned closer for a better look. Jeane stepped for-
  ward and read blood. She looked at Ned. “Whoever wrote
  this knew a bit about ritual magic, so naturally they put
  blood on the list,” he explained. “On its own, it’s meaning-
  less—except to me and only because of where everyone
  encountered Renfield. I’d forgotten about it until now, but
  Renfield had a contact for fresh pig’s blood—what must
  have been the last slaughterhouse still operating in the old
  stockyards in 1985. I was there with her once. I remember
  the place. I heard it closed down not long after.” He handed
  the paper to Ngan. “You’ve run into Renfield near the Stock-
  yards twice. If that building is still standing, I’ll bet you’ve
  found her hideout.”
  Jeane and the others just looked at him in amazement.
  Finally Van gasped out, “That’s it? We run around after her
  for two days, you come back, find a . . . a grocery list, and fig-
  ure out where she is?”
  “Where she might be,” Ned corrected him. “Basically, it
  all comes down to having the right person in the right place
  to put everything together.”
  Ngan nodded sagely, a distant, speculative look in his
  eyes. “Indeed it does,” he murmured, then glanced down at
  the paper and back up. “Thank you, Ned,” he said, his voice
  crisp again. “You’ll show us the slaughterhouse?”
  Ned bobbed his head in agreement, but Gibson howled in
  protest. “Woah! Police business! You can’t go charging in
  there—this is our territory now.”
  “I beg your pardon, detective,” Ngan corrected him, “but
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  shrugged. “Jeane’s place is on the way,” the big man an-
  nounced to no one in particular. “We’ll stop there for a
  minute, then continue on to the stockyards.”
  Van felt Jeane twitch a bit at Ned’s words. He looked over
  at her as the car pulled out onto the road and for the short
  ride to Jeane’s apartment. Jeane was just staring out the win-
  dow, but her right hand, resting in her lap, was opening and
  closing as though waiting for something to squeeze.
  “Is something bothering you, Jeane?” Van asked cau-
  tiously after a few moments.
  “No,” she said without looking away from the window.
  “I’m fine.”
  “How was LA?”
  “I don’t know. I didn’t see all that much of it. We didn’t
  really . . .” She sighed and turned her head a little to give him
  a thin smile. “I’ll tell you about it later, if you don’t mind.”
  “I understand,” Van lied.
  Jeane’s smile got a bit brighter and she turned back to the
  window as Ned pulled around a corner and onto her block.
  Suddenly, she stiffened. Pressed against her, Van felt the ten-
  sion shoot through her and twisted reflexively to look out the
  window as well. They were passing a minivan parked at the
  side of the street. Three men sat in it. One of them stared at
  them just as Jeane stared at him, then he was waving excit-
  edly to the other men and pointing at them.
  Jeane dropped down. “Don’t stop!” she told Ned sharply.
  “That was Keith!”
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  and Ned would guide them to the old slaughterhouse.
  Gibson and Calamity would meet the team there as
  well—the detectives departed in their own car. After they
  had left, Ned slipped back into his apartment and reappeared
  with a handful of strange necklaces.
  “Amulets,” he said, passing them around. “They’re sup-
  posed to repel demonic forces. I can’t totally vouch for that,
  but they’re better than nothing.”
  Van’s amulet was a lump of yellow quartz carved into a
  crude ring. “I thought you said you didn’t know what the
  worm was?”
  “I don’t,” confessed Ned, “but demon is as good a guess
  as any, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.” He rattled his
  keys. “We’ll take my car. It’s the biggest.”
  As they trooped out of the shop and around to the back
  where Ned’s car was parked, Ngan stepped up to walk
  beside Van. “This is going to be dangerous,” he cautioned.
  “Much more dangerous than facing the Madonna of Bache-
  lor’s Grove.”
  Van nodded. “I thought about that.” He glanced at Ngan.
  “But I notice you’re not telling me to stay behind.”
  “Every agent needs a trial by fire, Van, and a coddled
  agent is not a good agent. I just wanted to be sure you were
  aware of the danger.” The old man patted him on the shoul-
  ders. “I want you to be careful. You’re not fully trained. Stay
  out of the way. We’ll split up once we’re there—you’ll go
  with Jeane and Ned. Between them, they should be able to
  handle anything that comes up.”
  “Right.” He smiled. “Thanks, Ngan.”
  In the car, he found himself wedged into the middle of
  the backseat with Jeane on his left and McCain on his right.
  Both of them were strangely silent. Van glanced from one
  to the other, then finally settled for staring forward in awk-
  ward silence.
  Ned caught his eyes in the rearview mirror, smiled, and
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  234
  he sudden acceleration of the car as Ned
  responded to Jeane’s command smacked
  McCain’s head against the window. “Ow! Hey!”
  He twisted around in his seat. “What gives? Who’s
  Keith?”
  In answer, Jeane, tucked down low in her seat,
  jerked her thumb at the back window. Van was
  already staring out that way. McCain followed his
  gaze and caught sight of a minivan pulling out from
  the curb right behind them. He stared at the two men
  in its front seat. Both of them were pushing middle
  age. One of them was balding. The other had a big
  nose and a look of artistic pretension. Neither of them
  looked particularly dangerous. Then a third man
  leaned forward between the two front seats and
  pointed something at them. A video camera.
  “Media?” McCain sputtered. He looked down at
  Jeane. “Who are these guys?”
  chapter
  6 t e e n
  T
  “Weekly Global something or other, I think.”
  “Inquiry,” Ned supplied from the front seat. “Apparently
  our little talk with Keith wasn’t persuasion enough, Jeane.
  How did he find us?”
  Jeane swore. “He knew our names and I’m pretty sure I
  mentioned Chicago. I imagine he figured it out from there.”
  “Jeane,” Ngan said politely, “this is really a very bad time
  for us to receive media coverage. Is there something we
  should know?”
  “No,” replied Jeane instantly. She gave a terrible, bleak
  grimace, then added, “Yes. Just not right now, okay?” She sat
  up a little bit. “Can you lose them, Ned?”
  “I can try. Hold on!”
  He spun the wheel sharply and took a sudden turn at an
  intersection. McCain’s head smacked against the window
  again. He stifled a curse and looked back for the minivan
  again. It was still on their tail.
  Ned grunted. “How long until we’re supposed to meet
  everybody?”
  “Not long enough for a detour,” Jeane said. “Can you do
  something to whammy them?”
  “Fresh out of cheeseburgers, and not while I’m driving.”
  For a moment there was silence in the car as everyone
  looked at him. Ned shook his head. “Long story.”
  “Just do your best to lose them, Ned,” advised Ngan. “We
  can hear the story later.”
  Unfortunately, the mysterious minivan was nothing if not
  tenacious. Ned tore south through Chicago as fast as he
  dared, but the daytime streets were busy. Some heart-stop-
  pingly aggressive driving—pulling sharply around turning
  traffic, making a couple of illegal turns, and burning through
  amber lights—put several cars between them and the mini-
  van. It seemed like luck was against them though. For every
  amber light they ran, a red light stopped them completely.
  For every turning car that they pulled around, another would
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  He started the car forward, creeping along the lane until
  they reached a wider street that in turn spat them out on
  Halsted Street near Comiskey Park. There was still no sign
  of the minivan. Ned turned south for the Old Union Stock-
  yards and their truck lot rendezvous.
  McCain looked over at Jeane, still crouched down below
  the window and asked, “So do you want to tell us what that
  was about now?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. He
  stared at her in disbelief. “After all that?”
  “Fitz,” said Ned sharply. McCain glanced up. The big man
  was watching him in the rearview mirror. “Leave her alone.”
  McCain almost snapped back at him, then caught his
  tongue and flushed.
  “I’m sorry, Jeane,” he apologized. “I’m kind of tense
  today.”
  “I know what that feels like.” Jeane sighed and sat
  upright. “I’ll tell you what’s going on when I can.”
  “That will be fine, Jeane,” said Ngan. “In the meantime,
  do you feel up to confronting Renfield? If you don’t—”
  Jeane cut him off. “I’m up to it.”
  “And your friends from the Weekly Global Inquiry?” asked
  McCain.
  “They’re interested in me. That’s it. They don’t know
  about anything else. Kind of like your detectives.”
  “Kind of,” McCain replied, trying to keep the bitterness
  out of his voice.
  Facing himself—and the shame of having given in to the
  temptation offered by Calamity—had been bad enough. To
  have her show up on Ned’s doorstep was worse. He didn’t
  believe her story about old records for a second. Having to
  face off against Renfield and the worm with her there as well
  was just the icing on the cake. He almost wished Ned and
  Jeane hadn’t come back. It would have given him the time he
  needed to confront Calamity in private, maybe work things
  out with her.
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  suddenly change its mind, forcing Ned to slam on the breaks.
  And of course every illegal turn they made took them farther
  from their destination. Jeane stayed low the whole time. Much
  to McCain’s surprise, she also wore an expression he didn’t
  think he had ever seen on her before: real, helpless fear.
  A bridge across the Chicago River put them into the nar-
  row streets of the Bridgeport neighborhood with the minivan
  about half a block behind. Ned glanced in the rearview mir-
  ror and set his lips in a tight line.
  “All right, people,” he said. “This is it.”
  He spun the steering wheel hard and sent them skidding
  around a corner to the right—then immediately reversed the
  wheel to bring them left around an unexpected dogleg in the
  road and onto another new street. A dead-end.
  “Good going, Ned!” McCain snapped.
  “I know what I’m doing,” Ned said grimly. “Just watch for
  that minivan.” He drove down to the end of the block where
  a tall chain-link fence ran across the back of some parking
  lot. Old houses and tall shade trees ran the entire length of
  the block, right up to the fence. Almost.
  On the left side of the street, a narrow lane opened up
  like magic. McCain blinked and looked again. The last house
  on the left and a cluster of tall bushes on the edge of its prop-
  erty combined to hide the lane until they were almost on top
  of it. Ned pulled in carefully and the street disappeared
  behind them.
  He stopped the car and asked, “Any sign of the minivan
  before we pulled in here?”
  “No,” Van said. He turned forward from the window.
  “Jeez, Ned. How did you know this was here?”
  Ned pointed to a big brick building across the parking lot
  beyond the fence. “Community center. Believe it or not, Kaz
  belongs to a science fiction club that meets here. I give him
  a ride sometimes. Keep an eye open for the minivan. They
  could still find us again.”
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  “You’re kidding,” growled Gibson. Monty, pale-faced,
  shook his head. Gibson groaned. “Damn.”
  “With all of us working together, it may not be that diffi-
  cult, Detective Gibson,” Ngan reassured him. He raised his
  voice, addressing them all. “We’re not sure if the slaughter-
  house is still there, but if it is, we want to surprise Renfield,
  so we’re going to organize ourselves now. There will be three
  teams: Myself, Monty, and Liam. Jeane, Ned, and Van.
  Michael, and Detectives James and Gibson.”
  “What?” croaked McCain, but Ngan ignored him.
  “Ned will lead us in the cars to the slaughterhouse. Obvi-
  ously, if it’s not there, nothing happens. If it is there, we will
  be going in.” Ngan held up a radio headset. “Monty brought
  three of these, one for each team. We’ll use them to stay in
  touch as we sweep the building. If any team encounters Ren-
  field or the worm, we’ll all converge on their location. Any
  questions?”
  “Yes,” McCain started to say, but Jeane beat him out.
  “If this place is still there,” Jeane said, “we don’t have any
  idea of what the layout inside is, do we?”
  Ngan looked to Ned, who shook his head. “I didn’t see
  that much of it when I was there. All I remember is big,
  smelly, nasty, and noisy. I doubt if it will be noisy anymore.”
  “Thank heaven for small mercies,” muttered Jeane.
  Ngan nodded. “If that’s everything, let’s go.”
  Everyone split up and went for their respective cars.
  McCain lunged forward and grabbed Ngan’s arm before he
  could climb into Monty’s. “Ngan, can we swap teams? I don’t
  want to work with . . .” He caught himself before he said
  Calamity’s name. “. . . the detectives.”
  “Why not?” Ngan raised an eyebrow. “You’d rather work
  with Monty?”
  McCain took a deep breath. “Yes.” Ngan looked at him
  quizzically. “I’d rather not go into it, but I have issues with
  them.”
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  God knows I don’t want to be angry with her, he thought.
  He bit down hard. No, he didn’t want to be angry with her,
  but that was because he didn’t want to have anything to do
  with her. It all started with Olivia Marquez and had just got-
  ten worse from there.
  Too bad Ngan wasn’t about to offer him the same out he
  had given Jeane. McCain didn’t think he would have turned it
  down.
  “Fitz?” said Van, nudging him. “You still with us?”
  McCain looked up. Truck trailers filled a familiar fenced-off
  lot. Calamity and Gibson’s car was parked just ahead, Monty’s
  car just beyond that. They had reached the rendezvous. He
  opened his door and got out with a sense of dread.
  “You’re late,” said Monty. He stood beside his car along
  with Liam. Calamity and Gibson had remained with their own
  car, keeping themselves apart from the Hoffmann Institute
  agents.
  “We ran into some trouble,” said Ngan. He introduced
  Ned and Jeane to Liam and Monty. “Have you brought
  weapons?”
  Monty sniffed in disdain. “Of course.”
  He nodded to Liam. His assistant opened the trunk of
  their car and drew back a thick piece of felt to reveal several
  carefully arranged trays. Everyone, even Gibson and
  Calamity, crowded around to look as Monty began discretely
  passing the weapons around.
  “Tasers,” he said. “Bear in mind they are good for one
  shot each. There are stun prods for close-up work if you need
  them. Hopefully you won’t.”
  Gibson glared at the taser in his hand. “This is ridiculous.
  I’ve got a shotgun in the car. I’m bringing that with me. I’d
  like to see the monster shrug that off.”
  Monty looked aghast.
  “Alive, Detective Gibson,” he choked. “We want the worm
  alive.”
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  Somewhere inside, a part of him prodded. There was some-
  thing else he needed to deal with. “Calamity,” he said slowly.
  “I’m sorry, but I—”
  The honk of a horn interrupted him. Gibson leaned out
  his car window. “Will you two hurry up?”
  Calamity cheerfully gave her partner the finger and
  smiled at McCain.
  “Sorry’s good enough, Fitz. I probably would have
  thought the same thing.” She gave him a push toward the
  car, winking as she did. “You can show me how sorry you
  are later.”
  That’s not what I was trying to say! McCain wanted to
  shout. Shameful anticipation kept him quiet. He followed
  Calamity to her car and climbed into the back seat.
  Gibson glanced back at him. “Amateurs,” he muttered.
  “Stick it, bub,” McCain grumbled at him as he slipped on
  the headset and adjusted it.
  Ned’s car pulled up past them, taking the lead through
  the stockyards. Monty followed, with Gibson bringing up
  the rear. Their little caravan felt more than bizarre to
  McCain. Armed to the teeth, primed for fighting, ready for
  a confrontation with a monster worm . . . and driving with
  slow deliberation through the heart of a thriving industrial
  park. Warehouse workers, office managers, secretaries,
  executives all buzzing around, working hard, coming back
  from a late lunch, slipping away early on a Friday after-
  noon. Chatting, McCain imagined, about the Bulls’ win the
  night before, or some movie they just saw, or the cold of the
  day and whether the heavy grey clouds that had swept in
  since the morning would bring another dusting of snow. All
  totally oblivious to the secret hunters moving along the
  street outside.
  Then the bright, well-cared for engines of industry
  slipped away behind them as they followed Ned into an older
  part of the yards. The buildings here were worn. Many
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  “Michael,” Ngan said, “this will hopefully be a very short
  operation. It is also a very important operation. There is no
  room for issues. The team assignments were not arbitrary.
  Detectives Gibson and James are professionals. I believe you
  will be most effective with them. Monty, on the other hand is
  not the field operative he would like to pretend he is. I can
  best control his excesses.” He put one of the headsets in
  McCain’s hand. “You can deal with your issues afterward if
  it’s necessary.”
  He climbed into Monty’s car, leaving McCain standing
  alone, staring at the headset. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
  “Fitz . . .”
  McCain spun around. Calamity stood behind him.
  “Speaking of bitches,” he said darkly, “you’ve been pretty
  damn quiet today.”
  Calamity gave him a hard look. “If I didn’t know you had
  the wrong idea, you’d be walking away with your balls
  knocked up into your ribcage for that. I wanted to set things
  straight.” She nodded toward Ngan in Monty’s car. “I heard
  what you said to him. I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve
  been waiting to get a chance alone with you to talk about it.”
  He spread his hands wide. “Hey, you’ve got it.”
  “Gibson was telling the truth earlier,” she said bluntly.
  “We really were looking for Ned because of a police record. I
  didn’t put your phone call last night and the name together
  until we got up to the door of the store and I saw you stand-
  ing inside. I felt like dirt, and I couldn’t say anything about
  it because as far as Gibson knows all we did last night was
  have dinner.” Calamity crossed her arms. “Is that enough to
  make you stop sulking? If you want me to, I can stab you in
  the back for real.”
  McCain just stared at her, letting his hands drop down to
  his sides. What did you say when your anger had just had a
  big hole punched in it? He swallowed.
  “That . . . I guess that pretty much covers it,” he confessed.
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  Monty hesitated again before responding, though McCain
  suspected the hesitation was not the researcher’s idea. Faint
  as a ghost signal on a radio, he could hear Ngan in the back-
  ground. His partner didn’t sound impressed.
  “Right, then,” Monty said finally. “We’re set. On my mark,
  we’ll move. My team and Mr. McCain’s will take the door on
  the stairs—bring your flashlights for distribution, please.
  Ms. Meara’s team will take the door at the loading dock. Is
  that clear?”
  McCain passed along the information, then whispered,
  “Clear.”
  “Clear,” said Jeane.
  “Right,” said Monty, “let’s go.”
  “Go,” McCain repeated out loud, “go!”
  Car doors opened. They all got out in unison and dashed
  across the road, scrambling through gaps in the old fence.
  For the first time, McCain realized what a motley crew they
  really were. Monty in his tweed jacket, Jeane in the same
  clothes she had worn on the airplane. Ngan gliding grace-
  fully through the fence, Ned lumbering. Van almost tripped
  over some stray fencing. Liam caught him, steadied him,
  then moved on in a low scuttling crouch. Maybe Gibson was
  right. Maybe in some ways they were amateurs.
  But they were also all there was.
  His team and Ngan’s were pounding up the shuddering
  stairs, and Jeane’s was almost at the loading dock when the
  minivan came around the corner and squealed to a stop right
  behind their cars. The three men inside jumped out instantly,
  the cameraman with his camera already playing across them.
  “Damn!” snarled Jeane loudly across the headsets, at the
  same moment Monty squeaked, “Who are they?”
  “Old friends,” Ngan said. He pushed Monty up toward the
  door and threw a glance back at McCain. “Michael?”
  “I’m on it.” He turned and started back down the
  stairs. “Jeane,” he said into the microphone, “I’m going to
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  looked to have been given up on—faded “For Lease” signs
  lurked behind filthy, sometimes broken windows. Here and
  there, some small plants and warehouses still operated. A
  graffiti-smeared cube van pulled out of a driveway, lurching
  across potholes that could have swallowed a small child. The
  driver didn’t even seem to notice.
  Ahead of them, Ned took another corner. Gibson turned
  after him—and stopped. “Damn,” he murmured.
  McCain leaned forward against the front seat and stared.
  The slaughterhouse was still standing. Behind a rusting,
  half-collapsed fence, it lurked against the leaden sky like a
  notched and blunted cleaver blade. The exterior, probably
  once proudly whitewashed, was faded and peeling, streaked
  with dirt and rust stains from protruding pipes and vents.
  The roof was oddly angled. Perhaps something inside was in
  the process of slowly collapsing. Perhaps the building had
  been constructed that way. At one end of it, the remains of a
  stout, fenced ramp formed the stump of the cleaver’s haft. A
  swinging arm equipped with block and tackle stuck out high
  above like a wicked splinter. McCain could see doors and the
  odd window, but most of them were boarded over. A small
  access door beside a loading dock looked open though, as did
  a door high at the top of an exterior flight of badly weathered
  wooden steps. The only clear windows were in a narrow line
  way up in the roof.
  McCain’s headset crackled. “Flashlights?” asked Jeane in
  his ear.
  There was a moment’s hesitation, then Monty’s voice
  replied. “Uh . . . no.”
  Jeane cursed as McCain repeated her request to Gib-
  son and Calamity. Gibson grumbled again, but held up two
  fingers.
  “We have two,” McCain whispered into the headset’s tiny
  microphone.
  “Ned has one, too,” said Jeane.
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  The bottom of the stairwell was a litter of old papers and
  bits of crumbled masonry. Paint had peeled from the walls in
  great, irregular patches. In the beam of the flashlight, the
  exposed concrete shone slick with moisture. Something
  rustled, and Monty immediately twitched the flashlight down
  to the litter-strewn floor.
  “Mice?” he asked hopefully.
  “I don’t think so.” Ngan took the researcher’s arm and
  steered the light up on to the walls and ceiling. A patchwork
  of furry bodies hung there, leathery wings folded to make
  them look like dry leaves. “Bats.”
  Monty shuddered, then tried to cover it up by pulling his
  arm away. “I’ll thank you to remember who is in charge
  here!”
  “Of course, Monty,” Ngan said as blandly as he could
  manage. He fashioned his frustration into an imaginary bat
  and allowed it to flap away into the darkness. It did very
  little good.
  He had hoped that perhaps this expedition into the
  slaughterhouse might encourage Monty to recognize his
  weaknesses and stop trying to organize every aspect of their
  activities. He had clearly been wrong. Monty had blamed him
  for not anticipating that the slaughterhouse would be dark.
  Fair enough—none of them had, of course. But Monty had
  also begun to seethe the moment that Jeane had taken
  charge of dealing with their pursuers in the minivan. He had
  burned when a few words between Ngan and McCain had
  decided which party would go down on the stairs and which
  up. He had appropriated both the headset and the flashlight,
  and now insisted on splashing the light everywhere but
  where it was needed. Liam had almost fallen from stepping
  on the crumbling edge of a badly worn step.
  Ngan prayed that Ned was right and they would find
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  run interference with these guys. You keep . . .”
  “No,” Jeane responded firmly. “I’ll take care of them. I’m
  the one they want—they’ll follow me. You keep going.”
  McCain stopped. “You’re sure?”
  “Positive.”
  Her voice was grim, and McCain felt suddenly sorry for
  the men from the minivan. “All right. Good luck.” He turned
  again, sprinting up after the others and through into the
  shadows of the slaughterhouse. Gibson was passing a flash-
  light over to Monty. Calamity was already playing the other
  about.
  They stood in a room that might once have been an office.
  An old bulletin board was still fixed to one wall, faded
  notices stirring limply upon it. There were doorways leading
  from the room to either side, but the obvious exit was
  straight ahead: a heavy door had been jammed open with a
  concrete block. McCain stepped up to it and peered through.
  There was a stairwell beyond with flights both up and down.
  Stale air stank of mold, mouse and bird droppings, wood
  smoke—and an old pervasive smell of blood and raw meat.
  Even after so many years of abandonment, a charnel stench
  still clung to the slaughterhouse. McCain almost choked,
  then clamped down on his rising stomach.
  “The smoke smells fresh at least,” he told the others. “I’d
  say someone’s been trying to stay warm.”
  “Up or down?” asked Ngan.
  “Can’t tell.”
  “You go up then. We’ll take down.”
  McCain nodded and the teams split up. Monty, Ngan, and
  Liam carefully started down, while he, Gibson, and Calamity
  began climbing. McCain tried to take the lead, but Gibson cut
  him off and went first, taser at the ready. Calamity slipped in
  behind her partner, flashlight shining over his shoulder. That
  left McCain in the rear, staring up at Calamity’s . . . He
  ground his teeth together and tore his gaze away.
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  away. Maybe the room had been a cafeteria or lunch room of
  some kind. Now it appeared to be someone’s crude living
  quarters. There was more litter there, mostly up against the
  walls. The center of the room was dominated by a big metal
  drum. The dim red of a dying fire shone through holes in its
  sides, but not from the top—the drum’s cover had been set
  across its mouth. There was a nest of blankets close to it,
  and a small pile of groceries, as well. Ngan remembered the
  bags Van had seen Renfield carrying.
  Behind him, Monty and Liam entered. Monty’s flashlight
  swept the room. “She’s not here.”
  “But she was,” Ngan said softly. “She capped the fire to
  dim the light.”
  “Anyone could have done that. We could be chasing
  frightened squatters.”
  “If there were squatters here,” murmured Liam, “they’re
  gone. Look.” The flashlight swung around. It caught the
  young man in stark relief against the wall. It also caught
  what he was pointing at: a pile of powdery grey dust.
  “I didn’t think Renfield would be the type to share quar-
  ters,” observed Ngan.
  He moved across the room to the broken windows and an
  open doorway that stood beside them. Renfield hadn’t passed
  them coming up the stairs. If she had just left this room, the
  space beyond the windows was the only other place she
  could have gone.
  “Monty, you’d best warn Jeane and Michael,” Ngan said.
  “Renfield is out there somewhere.”
  “Keith,” Roger said, “I don’t like this. Something is going
  on here. That Jeane woman has friends. Whoever was driv-
  ing that car was good—it’s sheer luck we spotted them
  again.”
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  Renfield. They needed to stop her—and he, selfishly, needed
  to end this assignment to get away from Monty.
  Liam, it seemed, was also losing patience with his supe-
  rior. He caught the arm Monty had just freed and steadied it
  so that the light shone down onto the floor once more.
  “Someone has been through here,” Liam said.
  Ngan inspected the litter. Liam was correct. The papers
  and masonry were disturbed, some knocked aside, others
  flattened as if someone walked upon them frequently. A sort
  of trail curved from the bottom of the stairs and around the
  hall at their side. At the end of the hall was a doorway.
  “That way,” Ngan said quietly.
  “Hold on,” Monty protested. “I say where we—”
  Ngan turned a weary, frustrated eye on the researcher.
  “You say what, Monty? Is there somewhere else?”
  “I . . .” Monty straightened himself, trying to recover his
  dignity. “I say we go through there,” he ordered.
  “Excellent thinking,” Ngan muttered.
  The litter on the floor was not conducive to moving in
  total silence, but then neither was Monty’s presence. They
  slipped up the hallway as best they could and stopped by the
  edge of the doorway. Ngan’s nose twitched. The smell of
  wood smoke was stronger there, almost covering up the old
  stench of the slaughterhouse. Ngan frowned and readied
  both his stun prod and his taser, then glanced back at Monty
  and Liam. He held up three fingers, then flipped down the
  first. One . . .
  Monty shook his head immediately and tapped a fist
  against his own chest. Him first. Ngan furrowed his brow in
  frustration and dropped a second finger. Two . . .
  Monty glared. Ngan ignored him, flipped down his third
  finger, and stepped around the corner of the doorway.
  The room on the other side was large. Big windows had
  once looked from it out onto some other dark space beyond,
  but the glass had long since been smashed and knocked
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  Quick as a thought, Jeane whipped up the stun prod and
  thrust it precisely through the holes in the gate. The end of
  it caught Keith just above his left hip. The impact alone
  would have hurt, but there was also an audible crack as the
  prod’s shock hit him. Keith staggered and fell, the muscles
  of his leg and side jerking. Seeing it made Jeane feel a little
  better. The throbbing that had first developed in LA had
  returned to her head with a vengeance.
  She turned her glare on the cameraman. “Give me the
  camera.” she ordered. He hugged it possessively. The throb-
  bing increased. “I don’t have time for this. Ned?”
  Ned stepped out of the alcove where they had all hidden
  and glanced into the elevator. The camera flew from its
  owner’s arms. In mid-air, it flipped onto its side and slid
  smoothly through a narrow gap at the top of the elevator
  gate. Ned caught it, then glanced again. Keith ducked as the
  coat from the back of the elevator whipped past his head. It
  too squeezed over the top of the gate and into the big man’s
  arms.
  He offered it to Jeane and asked, “What do you want me
  to do with the camera?”
  “Leave it here for now.”
  Jeane threw the coat over her shoulder and regarded her
  prisoners coldly. The cameraman and the balding man Keith
  had called Roger were both pale. Keith was climbing awk-
  wardly to his feet again, his face red with anger.
  She jabbed a finger at him and said, “Didn’t I say you’d
  regret seeing me?”
  She raised the stun prod again and brought it down hard,
  jamming it sideways between the folding frame of the gate
  and the latch. Sparks arced for a moment, then died.
  “When I get back,” she warned the men in the elevator,
  “we’re going to have a talk.”
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  “And it looked like they were coming in here armed,”
  chimed in the cameraman. “This might be some kind of
  undercover raid.”
  “What kind of undercover raid hits a place like this?”
  Keith asked.
  He looked around. They stood in a narrow aisle of dim
  daylight, just inside the loading dock door. The space beyond
  was big and, from what he could make out of it, empty. Jeane
  had come this way, though, he was sure of it. He wasn’t
  going to let her get away now.
  He looked back at Roger and asked, “You’re not going to
  let this story go just because you’re a little worried, are you?”
  “The risk is getting bigger all the time, Keith.”
  “So are the stakes, Rog. What do you think is going on
  here? Maybe this is some kind of cover-up to keep her hid-
  den. You could bust it wide open.” Keith glanced at the cam-
  eraman. “You got a light on your camera?”
  The man nodded. A small but intense light flashed on.
  Keith gestured and the cameraman began panning the light
  around the room.
  At the mouth of a hallway, there was a flicker of move-
  ment as someone ducked back. Keith pointed and said,
  “There!”
  They all ran. From the mouth of the hallway, the light
  caught more of the figure turning another corner. Keith felt
  a surge of triumph. He sprinted down the hall, Roger and the
  cameraman hot on his heels, and swung around the corner.
  It was a big, old-fashioned freight elevator. At the back of
  it, hanging on empty air, was a long coat. Even as he stared
  at it, the coat crumpled to the floor. There were quick foot-
  steps behind them and a loud rattle as the elevator gate was
  drawn shut. Keith spun around to see Jeane latching the gate
  securely. She was glaring at him.
  “What did I tell you in LA, Keith?” she snarled.
  “You . . .” He charged the gate.
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  Sure enough, a beam of light briefly stabbed the shadows
  far below. “Okay,” McCain said, “we’re on a catwalk way up
  above you. We’re coming down.”
  “Wait!” Monty urged. “You can be our spotters. Look
  around from up there. Can you see Renfield anywhere?”
  McCain gritted his teeth and started to lean a little far-
  ther, then thought better of it. He dropped to his belly on the
  catwalk and stuck his head out over the edge to scan the
  room below.
  “Nothing,” he said. “I can’t—”
  If he hadn’t been lying belly down against the catwalk, he
  probably never would have caught the slight vibration of
  footsteps against it. He turned his head and looked up.
  Renfield was about a third of the way along the catwalk
  from its other end and coming closer. She held the worm, in
  its shrunken form, in her hands. Behind her was an open
  door identical to the one he had just come through himself—
  a second stairway up to the catwalk.
  “Gibson!” he shouted in warning, then into his micro-
  phone, “She’s up here! She’s up here!”
  He started to scramble to his feet.
  “No!” yelled Gibson. “Stay down, Fitz!”
  McCain twisted around. Gibson was running—running—
  out onto the catwalk and every step was shaking the fragile
  structure.
  “No!” McCain gasped, but Gibson was already on him.
  McCain dropped back down onto the catwalk and felt
  rather than saw Gibson take a careful running jump over
  him. The entire catwalk shuddered as he landed, but mirac-
  ulously it held. McCain twisted back around the other way to
  watch. Gibson was pulling his taser out. He stopped, aimed,
  and fired at Renfield—
  —who was tumbling back with unbelievable speed. The
  fine needles and wires of the taser passed over her com-
  pletely, sparkling in the dim light from the windows. Renfield
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  She turned on her heel and walked away. The throbbing
  in her head, her mingled anger and fear, was white hot.
  At her side, Ned gave a look of concern. “Jeane . . .”
  “Don’t say anything, Ned,” she said.
  “Jeane!” Van darted out of the alcove with the headset
  pressed over his ears. He tore it off and shoved it at her.
  “Monty and Ngan have found Renfield’s hideout. She’s in
  here somewhere.”
  “Good,” Jeane muttered. She pulled the headset on. “The
  media is secure,” she reported. “Where are you, Monty?”
  “In a big room,” Monty said quickly. “There’s an even big-
  ger room beyond it.”
  “That’s helpful,” she spat, but Ned was tugging on her arm
  and pointing toward an immense set of partly open double-
  doors just down the hall. “Never mind. I think we may be
  close.”
  “We’re close, too,” McCain whispered into his micro-
  phone. “I think.”
  The stairs had led up and up until they ended in a small land-
  ing with one door. That door had opened onto a long catwalk
  suspended across the width of the building just under its roof.
  Up that high, they were close to the narrow windows that had
  been visible from outside. Dull light filtered through the dirty
  glass, making a haze of illumination that fell down into the open
  space beneath—at least three full stories’ worth of open space.
  Time and neglect had turned the walk into little more than rusty
  planks with fragile hand rails and only a little more substance
  than a spider’s web. McCain stepped cautiously past Gibson and
  Calamity and out onto it. He looked very carefully over the edge
  and through the gloom toward the floor.
  “Can you shine your flashlight out into the bigger room,
  Monty?” he asked.
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  253
  ust inside the tall double-doors, Jeane froze. For
  a moment, everyone seemed to freeze: Van at her
  side, Monty and Liam in a doorway further up
  one side of the room, Ngan caught in the act of run-
  ning out of the same doorway. Even the collapsing
  catwalk with McCain and Gibson aboard seemed to
  pause for a split second. Small chunks of the roof
  were coming down with it and streams of outdoor
  light were stabbing down into the dark chamber.
  Everyone, everything, was frozen.
  Except for Ned. He was shoving past her, planting
  his feet and thrusting out his hands. The plunging cat-
  walk shook—and slowed. Ned gasped and groaned in
  agony.
  The catwalk still hit the floor hard enough to raise
  a cloud of dust. It didn’t, however, hit with the bone-
  shattering, flesh-rending crash that Jeane had
  dreaded. She started at Ned in awe. The psychic was
  chapter
  7 t e e n
  J
  came back to her knees and held out the worm. She squeezed
  it hard and the thing made a horrible mewling noise, then
  vomited an unbelievable torrent of sticky blue acid.
  Gibson yelped and scrambled back, but he wasn’t her
  target.
  The spray splashed all across the catwalk. It splashed
  two of the rusty old pipes that suspended the walk from the
  ceiling and the sockets that anchored them. Wood and metal
  smoked. The suspensions groaned. Renfield shrieked with
  laughter as she stepped carefully back from the spreading,
  dripping acid.
  “Dead!” she screamed. “You’re all dead!”
  “God damn!” howled Gibson. He turned and sprinted back
  along the catwalk.
  “Stop!” McCain shouted “You’re going to—”
  Too late. Eaten away by the worm’s acid, the suspension
  pipes squealed and parted. Corroded, crumbling wood,
  shaken by Gibson’s heavy footfalls, broke, and two-thirds of
  the catwalk was swinging free. The added weight set the
  other suspensions trembling. It was too much for the old
  structure. Four more suspensions tore free or broke, and a
  scant heartbeat later, all of them let go. The planks ripped
  away from their anchors on the wall. McCain caught one
  brief glimpse of Gibson grabbing uselessly at the hand rails
  and another of Calamity staring in shock from the safety of
  the stairwell doorway. Then he and Gibson and the catwalk
  were plunging down to the floor.
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  “We don’t have a minute,” she said. “We don’t know what
  other parts of the building those stairs connect to. I don’t
  want to lose her.”
  She gave Ngan a sharp glance. He hesitated for a
  moment, then stepped out of her way. McCain didn’t even try
  to stop her. Someone had set down their flashlight. She
  snatched it up and strode through the open doorway.
  As she had guessed, it was the stairwell. It had been an
  emergency exit at some point, too, but that doorway had
  been filled in with cement blocks. Jeane paused on the bot-
  tom stair, listening intently. The stairwell was silent. The
  only sounds filtered in from the big room outside. Jeane
  pressed the head of the flashlight against her leg, smother-
  ing the light as she looked up into the darkness, searching
  for any sign of movement. After a long moment, she raised
  the flashlight and directed its beam up the well.
  A pale, wild-eyed face stared at her from a second floor
  landing not twenty-five feet away. Something made a mewl-
  ing sound like a tortured animal.
  Jeane pushed herself backward, throwing up her coat to
  protect her face. She slammed up hard against a wall, but a
  spattering sound on the concrete where she had been stand-
  ing and the nose-burning smell of acid made her glad of the
  pain.
  No, damn it, she was glad of the pain anyway. It was
  sharp. It was real. There was no uncertainty about it. Jeane
  sucked it in and opened her eyes. Renfield was coming down
  the stairs toward her. Jeane brought up the taser. Renfield
  spat when she saw it.
  “I’m not going to let you stop me,” she hissed. “There’s
  too much at stake. You don’t know what it’s like to die.”
  “Maybe not,” Jeane snarled back, “but you don’t know
  what it’s like never to have been born.”
  She squeezed the trigger on the taser.
  Renfield hurled the worm at her.
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  drenched in sweat and panting like he’d just run a marathon.
  She took a step toward him, but he shook his head and waved
  weakly at the fallen catwalk.
  “Fitz,” he gasped.
  She nodded and ran, leaving Van to help him.
  McCain was already sitting up atop the broken remains of
  the catwalk and staring about in stunned amazement when
  she reached him. A little blood and a lot of dust made a
  sticky mess across his face.
  “What the hell . . . ?” he choked.
  “Ned caught you,” she said tersely. Between the con-
  frontation with Keith and McCain’s close call, the churning
  tension in her head was beginning to spread through her
  entire body. She was trembling with fury and hatred and
  near-panic. She needed this to be over. She needed time to
  stop before she blew apart.
  McCain, of course, didn’t catch any of that. “Gibson?”
  “Not as lucky as you.” Ngan hurried over. “He slipped
  under. He’s pinned and I think his leg is broken—if nothing
  else. Where’s Detective James?”
  “She was still on the stairs. She’s fine.” McCain stood up,
  grabbing at Jeane’s arm for support. She almost threw him
  aside out of sheer reflex. That McCain caught. He snatched
  his hand away. “Jeane, are you okay?”
  “No.” She pulled her taser from its holster. “Where did
  Renfield go? You said she was up there with you.”
  “Jeane . . .” said Ngan gently.
  “Renfield!” she snapped back. “Where is she?”
  “There was another door at the other end of the catwalk.”
  Ngan gestured at the wall opposite them. “There must be
  another stairwell, too.”
  Jeane scanned the wall. There were several doors on it.
  Only one stood open. She tightened her grip on her taser.
  “I’m going in.”
  “We need a plan,” Ngan said. “We need a minute to reorganize.”
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  Roger ran for the loading dock. The cameraman hesitated
  a moment, staring at the camera in Keith’s hands, then
  shook his head and followed his boss.
  “Not even worth fighting you for that, man,” he called
  back. “Good luck!”
  “Cowards!” Keith spat after them. “This is going to be
  big!”
  He checked the camera and raced in the direction Jeane
  and Ned had gone, the direction from which he could still
  hear voices.
  He stepped through the tall double-doors just in time to
  catch Jeane rolling out of a doorway. Then he saw what fol-
  lowed her. His heart almost stopped in excitement.
  Big? He raised the camera and zoomed in. This was going
  to be enormous!
  “Worm! Get your tasers out!”
  Ngan spun around on Jeane’s cry, his hand already grab-
  bing for his weapon. The others barely had time to look up.
  Liam and Van were heaving at the collapsed catwalk while
  Monty and McCain tried to slide a barely conscious Gibson
  free. Ned, badly winded, was only just reaching them. They
  made a nice compact group—an easy target for the worm.
  “Scatter!” Ngan ordered.
  He brought his taser up just as Jeane cleared the door-
  way, dropped, and rolled.
  The worm was right behind her. Thick grey hide rippling
  obscenely, it charged the door. For a moment, Ngan won-
  dered if it would get through. The doorway was smaller than
  it was. That didn’t stop the worm, though. It simply rammed
  straight into the doorway, scattering bricks and dust and
  splinters of old wood everywhere. Its bulk hurtled on, barely
  slowed at all by the impact.
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  It started growing in mid-air, swelling up just as McCain
  had described. Its expanding bulk intercepted the taser
  darts. Jeane didn’t stand still to see if anything happened to
  the creature, just squeezed the second trigger and got the
  hell out of the way. She caught a brief whiff of burned meat
  and a screech of pain behind her—but that was it. The worm
  hit the wall and twisted around, its terrifying slit of a mouth
  gnashing relentlessly. Jeane turned and sprinted for the big
  room.
  “Worm!” she shouted. “Get your tasers out!”
  She threw herself to the ground as she came through the
  doorway and rolled clear. The worm came surging through
  almost on her heels.
  Keith hurled himself against the elevator gate again, and
  finally the stun prod popped free, dropping to the ground
  with a clatter.
  “Yes!” he crowed, and reached through the gate to
  unlatch it. He glanced back over his shoulder to Roger and
  the cameraman huddled at the back of the elevator. “We’re
  out!”
  “Oh, thank God!” Roger shook himself free of the cam-
  eraman and helped Keith push back the gate. “I think we can
  get out of here before they come back.”
  “No way.” Keith darted out of the elevator and snatched
  up the abandoned camera.
  Roger stared at him with bulging eyes. “Are you insane?
  You heard that crash—it sounds like the whole place is
  falling apart. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I
  don’t want any part of it!”
  “You run now and I’m taking the story somewhere else.”
  “Be my guest! I’m getting on the next plane back to LA
  and pretending this never happened.”
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  The end of the catwalk jerked out of Van and Liam’s
  hands, rising up by a foot. McCain fell back in surprise, but
  his final haul on Gibson’s body brought the detective slither-
  ing free just before the broken walkway fell back to the
  ground. Renfield gasped and swung around. Her finger
  pointed straight at Ned. The psychic’s face was pale with
  exertion and he looked ready to teeter over.
  “Hello, Lisa,” he said weakly. “Long time.”
  Renfield’s face went as pale as his. “You!” she howled.
  “You . . .” Color flooded back into her face like a spreading
  fire. “Test him!” she screamed at the worm. Spittle flew from
  her mouth. “Test him!”
  The worm turned, keening as if delighted at the orders.
  Beside the ruined catwalk, McCain, Liam, and Van had
  Gibson between them, trying to drag him away. Liam twisted
  around, then released the detective and took three long,
  quick steps back and away from the others. On the first he
  pulled out his taser. On the second he raised it and wrapped
  both hands around the grip. On the third, he dropped to one
  knee, aimed, and fired.
  The darts struck the worm high on its back. A split sec-
  ond later, the worm thrashed sharply, its keen turning into
  another dreadful screech of pain—followed by a roar of
  anger. Maybe Liam’s shot had found some especially sensi-
  tive spot. Ngan couldn’t guess. He didn’t have time.
  The worm turned. No, it rolled, spinning down around its
  length and coming up again faster than Ngan would have
  thought possible. The motion wrapped the wires of the taser
  around its body, yanking them taut. With both hands holding
  tight to the taser, Liam was jerked forward and flat onto his
  chest as the worm reared back.
  “Liam!” yelled Van.
  He dropped Gibson, sending McCain staggering, and threw
  himself back to grab for Liam—who was already thrusting
  himself aside and rolling to safety. Van went sprawling where
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  The darts of Ngan’s taser met it and sank into its flesh.
  Ngan squeezed the charge trigger and hit the worm with all
  of the taser’s power.
  It might as well have been a beaded curtain hung across
  the now demolished doorway for all the good it did. The
  worm squealed and darted directly toward him, it’s mouth
  gaping wide in frenzy.
  Ngan almost choked. A taser had stopped the creature
  before!
  Hardly thinking, he hurled the spent taser at the worm.
  In the moment that it took for the beast to snap at it, he gath-
  ered himself, found his balance, and threw himself to the
  side. His head and torso snapped down as he leaped, his legs
  and hips pushing up and tumbling over in a natural windmill
  of momentum. The worm passed so close he could smell its
  dry, dusty odor. As soon as his feet touched the ground again,
  he jumped forward in a long, smooth, liquid dive that brought
  him into a crouch beside Jeane.
  “My taser didn’t work.”
  “Mine neither,” Jeane said.
  “Of course not!” Renfield stood in the ruined doorway like
  a queen or some unholy mystic, eyes wide and bright. “It’s
  the power of decay! It’s entropy! Everything dies! Everything
  ends!”
  “Shut up!” snapped Jeane, lashing out at the mad woman.
  Renfield just danced away.
  The worm, meanwhile, had recovered and come back
  around. Its hideous head and tiny, eerie eyes swung between
  Ngan—and the knot of men still clustered around the cat-
  walk. Monty had obeyed Ngan’s order to scatter, but Van,
  Liam, and McCain still remained, struggling to pull Gibson
  from harm’s way.
  “No!” Ngan shouted.
  “Yes!” laughed Renfield. “Test them! That one, and that
  one.” Her finger jabbed at Van and McCain. “And—”
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  find—the far end of the catwalk, buckled up on its side in the
  fall. Monty already cowered there.
  “Why aren’t the tasers working?” McCain snapped. He
  helped Calamity lower Gibson to the ground, then tugged his
  stun prod free.
  Monty shook his head. “I don’t know. I must have set the
  charges too low.”
  “You must have what?” McCain rounded on him.
  “It seemed like the shock yesterday was almost too
  much,” Monty squeaked. “With everyone having tasers now,
  we might have overdone it and electrocuted the worm. I
  adjusted the taser charges so they wouldn’t—”
  McCain jabbed his stun prod into Monty’s fat, tweed-
  shrouded side. Monty gasped, stiffened, and started to
  shake. McCain bent down and pulled the trembling research-
  er’s taser from its holster, dropping his stun prod to take his
  own taser in his other hand. He glanced at Calamity. She
  already had her taser ready
  She met his gaze with a vicious smile. “Bet you fried
  worm tastes like chicken.”
  McCain leaned over and kissed her savagely. “Let’s do
  this,” he snarled.
  Renfield’s mocking laugh was the final straw. Jeane’s life
  was in shreds. Everything she had believed about who she
  was and where she came from had been blown away. Com-
  fortable lies had been replaced by secrets sharp like a whole
  forest of thorn bushes. No nice, normal parents—not even a
  normal mother forced to give her up. Not even a mother at
  all, just a piece of lab equipment! Tabloids and TV shows
  waiting to hound her. She was a living conspiracy. She was
  a freak!
  And now Van was dead. More than dead.
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  Monty’s assistant had been. The worm, still roaring, snapped
  its body forward.
  The underside of its bulk hit the floor with a sound some-
  where between a thunderous slap and a colossal rasp. The
  worm reared back again with another roar.
  There was nothing under it but pale, grey dust.
  Ngan’s breath fled from his body. No one moved.
  Then Renfield laughed again. Jeane gave a feral, word-
  less shriek of fury and leaped at her.
  McCain’s stomach rose in shock, but his chest clamped
  tight and refused to let anything out. His throat burned with
  bile. His tongue felt like sandpaper had been rubbed across
  it. Gibson hung off of him, groaning with his own pain, but all
  McCain could do was stare at the dust that had been Van.
  When Jeane shrieked and hurled herself at Renfield, he
  almost joined her. His grasp on Gibson weakened and the
  detective started to slip.
  Suddenly, though, Calamity was there. “Oh God, Fitz!”
  she gasped. Her eyes were wide with horror, but she got one
  shoulder under Gibson’s arm and helped prop him up.
  “What—”
  “Help me get Gibson clear,” McCain told her thickly.
  The worm was still roaring, but now that roar was punc-
  tuated with short squeals as Liam and Ngan moved in on the
  creature in deadly silence. Both men wore pale, determined
  looks, and both had their stun prods out now. With unspoken
  coordination, they took turns lunging in and thrusting, then
  dodging back again as the worm twisted this way and that.
  It looked like they were trying to prick it to death for all the
  good they were doing. McCain’s own stun prod still hung at
  his side, along with his taser. Fat lot of good those had done!
  They dragged Gibson to the nearest shelter they could
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  felt when she talked about giving in, the fear that would
  finally drive her to open the bottles of little pills one last time.
  Maybe it had been that same kind of fear that had left
  Marilyn the hollow image that so many men desired and that
  Jeane had shunned her whole life. She had worked hard to be
  everything the immortal, untouchable Marilyn was not.
  Strong where Marilyn was weak. Smart where Marilyn
  played dumb. Brave where Marilyn was scared. Jeane was
  everything Marilyn could never . . . would never be. Marilyn
  had been afraid. Marilyn had given up.
  Jeane wasn’t afraid. Jeane didn’t give up. Jeane didn’t lose
  fights.
  She blocked Renfield’s next punch. It hurt, but not as
  much as it might have. She blocked the punch after that and
  it hurt, too. She twisted around a brutal kick. Marilyn, she
  was sure, had never learned how to fight like this. Jeane
  started studying Renfield’s movements, watching for a weak-
  ness. It took only one more exchange of blows. The woman
  was fantastically strong and fast, but she didn’t really know
  what she was doing. She didn’t have training. Jeane did.
  Jeane started fighting for real.
  Now it was Renfield who was forced back, giving way
  before precise, disciplined strikes. When she overextended
  herself, Jeane stepped in, twisted sharply, and put her down
  on the ground.
  Renfield still somehow managed to fetch her a blow to
  the head that made Jeane’s ears ring and gave the mad
  woman a chance to squirm back to her feet. Jeane clenched
  her aching jaw and lunged again. What the hell was it going
  to take to put Renfield down for good?
  “Ngan!” shouted McCain, “Liam! Get clear! Now!”
  Ngan struck once more, thrusting his stun prod into the
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  The pressure that had throbbed in Jeane’s head for two
  days—sometimes ebbing for a while, but always coming
  back worse than ever—exploded. Fury. Hate. Hate for Ren-
  field. Hate for Marilyn. Hate for Bobby. Hate for Keith Hol-
  lister, hate for Sam Hollister, hate for Stan Meara, hate for
  Dale or Shelley or whatever her name was. Hate for herself.
  Jeane screamed her hate, and the fear that grew with it and
  threw herself at Renfield, punching and kicking and tearing
  and raking.
  Renfield laughed again and stepped aside with unbeliev-
  able speed. “It’s the end,” she babbled. “It’s waiting for you,
  too. You can’t stop it!” She dropped under another wild
  swing, then punched forward herself. Her fist took Jeane
  hard in the stomach.
  The pain only drove Jeane harder. The pain was real.
  There was no mystery to it. It was honest. Jeane swallowed
  it and caught Renfield with a hard punch to the jaw that
  twisted her whole head around.
  Renfield’s laugh turned into a shocked, indignant howl
  and she hurled herself all the way into the fight.
  God, she was strong! Jeane just took the first few blows,
  standing up to them in her rage and spending all of her time
  pummeling back. Renfield was as fast as she was strong,
  though. She twisted away from Jeane’s punches, then struck
  herself, slamming a fist or the edge of her hand into the
  underside of Jeane’s arms or legs. The pain wasn’t just real
  and honest—it was real and it hurt, penetrating all the way
  through her hate. There was blood in her mouth, Jeane real-
  ized, and a sharp pain in her side. She took a step back. Then
  another. And another.
  The hate that had driven her so far was finally beginning
  to fade out. Underneath, there was nothing left. Nothing but
  the thin water of fear. Maybe the same kind of fear that Mar-
  ilyn had felt when she had put her feet up in the stirrups on
  Sam Hollister’s surgical table. Or the same fear that she had
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  bigger now, the size of a dog rather than a cat. He drew a
  long, deep breath, settling his body back into a careful, per-
  fect martial posture . . .
  . . . and his mind into the higher state of awareness that
  he had learned so long ago. He almost went too far, freeing
  his mind entirely. The walls of the ancient cavern that was
  his special place of refuge wavered around him, threatening
  to overwhelm the physical world. Ngan stepped away from
  them regretfully. They promised a place of safety and healing,
  and he badly wanted both, but not while the worm still lived.
  In his mind, Ngan turned, bringing his spirit into synchro-
  nization with his body.
  He didn’t enjoy fighting like this. It was a desecration of
  the peace of his cavern. Sometimes, though, it was neces-
  sary. He focused himself. He could sense the worm, a
  strange split presence that was both small and large at the
  same time.
  Spirit and body acting as one, Ngan brought his right
  hand around, then thrust it forward in a sharp, controlled
  blow.
  Fifteen feet away, the worm shook and collapsed. Its
  presence faded a little in his mind, but it was still struggling.
  Ngan slashed with his left arm, striking out again. The worm
  rolled over and mewled in pain. Its presence was fading fast.
  Ngan took a step forward, balancing himself again, and
  raised his hands high, ready for the final blow.
  He froze at the same moment as Ned gasped loudly.
  There was another presence overlapping with the worm. It
  was a bright presence, and strong, and for a scant heartbeat
  filled with such power that it shattered Ngan’s tranquility,
  snapped him back into the physical world, and left him gasp-
  ing alongside Ned.
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  worm with cold fury, then spared a glance over his shoulder
  as he danced backward. McCain and Calamity stood about
  thirty feet away. Calamity had her taser out while McCain
  held one in each hand, aimed and ready to fire. Liam was
  already sprinting away from the worm. Ngan flung his stung
  prod at the thing for one last jolt, then jumped clear as well.
  He spun around just in time to glimpse the silver flicker of
  darts and wires as McCain and Calamity fired in tandem.
  The worm screeched, like steel drawn across concrete,
  and convulsed. Once. Ngan froze, ready to leap farther away,
  but the worm started thrashing madly. A terrible stench of
  burned flesh filled the air. Suddenly the worm was shrinking
  again, collapsing in on itself as it wriggled.
  Unbelievably, though, it kept squirming! Not merely quiv-
  ering from the combined shock of the tasers, but actually
  moving and trying to crawl away.
  “Holy shit,” snarled Liam. “How do we kill it?”
  He raised his foot and stomped on it, but the creature’s
  rubbery body just compressed under his boot and sprang
  back. The worm squealed and hissed, whipping around
  angrily. Liam jumped back. The worm shuddered and Ngan
  could have sworn it was bigger again than it had been a
  moment before.
  Someone grabbed him. Ngan lashed out—then pulled his
  blow back as he realized it was Ned. The psychic was almost
  staggering. Ngan grabbed him and held him up. Ned shook
  him away weakly.
  “It’s not a demon,” he gasped. “It’s not magic. It’s
  psychic.”
  Ngan blinked. “What?”
  “When it took Van, I felt it.” Ned touched his head.
  “We’ve been wrong all along. It’s a psychic creature.”
  And if it was psychic, then the power of whatever passed
  for its mind might have been what was keeping the worm
  alive. Ngan turned away from Ned, back to the worm. It was
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  laughing his head off as everyone stared at him. Including
  Renfield.
  “He survived!” she gasped. “He passed the test!” Renfield
  thrust Jeane away as if she were nothing more than a rag doll
  and dashed over to kneel beside the young man. “Save me!”
  she begged him. “Make it stop! You can protect me. You can
  pull me out of the river!” She held out her hands.
  Still alternating between laughing and choking, Van
  reached up and took them.
  “Yes!” screamed Renfield. She leaped to her feet. “I’m
  free!”
  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” snarled Jeane.
  A long, thick chunk of wood had broken away from the
  catwalk when it fell. Jeane snatched it up and swung it with
  all her strength, slamming it into Renfield’s gut hard enough
  to fold her up around it, lift her off her feet, and send her fly-
  ing backward.
  And this time, Renfield stayed down. Jeane leaned on the
  long chunk of wood, her head aching, but clear. Thank you,
  Marilyn.
  “Happy birthday, Mr. President,” she slurred, and spat a
  mouthful of blood onto the dusty ground.
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  The world was grey, yet somehow there was light. Van
  hung in space. There was no ground, but stuff floated all
  around him. Clouds of grey dust—familiar grey dust. And
  corpses with terrified expressions. He recognized the jogger
  from the day before. Another woman. A garbage man. Men
  dressed in medical uniforms. A young homeless man. The
  worm’s victims.
  Him.
  Van opened his mouth to scream, but there was no air,
  just that awful dust, boiling in from God knew where like a
  tremendous grey storm. It washed over the corpses, hiding
  them, but that was the farthest thing from Van’s mind. He
  was drowning in the dust. He choked, spewing it out of his
  lungs, then desperately clamped his mouth shut before he
  could inhale more.
  Where was he? What was this place? Out—he needed to
  get out! He kicked and struggled, but there was no way to
  move and nowhere to go. His vision was filling up with dark,
  hazy spots. There was nothing left to do but reach out and—
  —he was in that still, quiet place he had sought for so
  long in his training sessions with Ned. Out, he realized, I
  needed to focus out all along, not in.
  If there had been any air in his lungs, Van would have
  laughed as his power finally manifested. He burst out of the
  grey space and through his still place in a single, glorious
  heartbeat.
  The worm blew apart in a shower of grey hide, dark guts,
  and dust.
  Jeane had Renfield in a completely ineffective chokehold
  and saw it happen over her shoulder. One moment the worm
  was there and the next it was simply gone. In its place was
  Van, sprawled on the floor, choking, sucking in air—and
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  268
  eane ached all over. Twenty-four hours after
  the confrontation with Renfield, her body was
  one enormous bruise, but she knew from expe-
  rience that meant the worst of the pain would soon
  be over.
  The worst of another kind of pain, however, was
  already past and the wound was healing.
  She stood tall and proud at the end of the confer-
  ence table in the Hoffmann Institute branch office.
  The whole team, official and unofficial, sat around
  her: Ngan, McCain, Van, and Ned. Aside from a big
  bandage on McCain’s forehead and Ned’s lingering
  exhaustion, they had come through the fight okay.
  The same couldn’t be said for Gibson—the big detec-
  tive was in the hospital. At least he wasn’t in a
  funeral home.
  Renfield was back in Elgin, this time in a maxi-
  mum security ward. Calamity had taken her in, spin-
  coming home
  J
  ning a simple story of the capture that put herself and Gib-
  son in the roles of heroes surprised by Renfield as they
  investigated reports of a sighting. The collapsing catwalk
  had been a trap rigged up by Renfield, but even with her
  partner incapacitated, Calamity had managed to take Ren-
  field down.
  There was no mention of the worm, of course, or the Hoff-
  mann Institute agents—which unfortunately also meant that
  while the police had Renfield, there was no information con-
  cerning what had really happened to her victims. In the end,
  Jeane suspected, answers would appear, if only to stop
  people from looking further. There was already a report that
  morning that badly burned remains had been located not far
  from Elgin and identified using dental records as the missing
  doctor and orderlies. Jeane didn’t believe that was true. Ngan
  and McCain had told her of the Hoffmann Institute’s hand in
  the suppression of Renfield’s initial breakdown. It wasn’t
  hard to guess where the Institute had its hand now. Jeane
  didn’t really like the thought of that, but she’d had more than
  enough of cover-ups for the time being.
  The first thing she had done that morning as the team
  gathered around the conference table had been stand and tell
  everyone what had happened to her over the past three days.
  All of it. Every last speck of the truth.
  It felt good. Unbelievably weird, but good. And whatever
  she had thought in the depths of her despair, Jeane knew
  there was no way she could not have done it. It didn’t matter
  what everyone else thought of her story. She had accepted it
  and she was the one who mattered.
  Ned had been right: if there was one thing her friends
  knew, it was weird.
  Van gaped at her, then broke out into a huge smile.
  “You’re kidding!”
  Jeane shook her head. “Nope,” she said with a smile her-
  self. “Real deal.”
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  Teleportation is an aspect of psychoportation. Based on
  what Van says he saw when he was ‘inside’ the worm,
  though, I’d say we’re looking at a different aspect, one that’s
  even more rare—an ability to move sideways through space
  and enter other dimensions. The most common name I’ve
  heard for it is ‘dimension walking.’ ”
  Ngan’s eyebrows rose. “Like a diabolist summoning a
  demon, but in reverse?”
  “That’s a reasonable analogy,” agreed Ned. “Not totally
  accurate, but good enough.” He folded his hands across his
  belly and regarded Van. “I’d say the worm possessed a vari-
  ant of the same power. Anything it ‘ate’ was transported to
  some kind of extra-dimensional space. During the transport,
  some of that dust you saw slipped the other way. Since
  Monty’s tests showed the dust was organic, my guess would
  be that it’s not unlike a lot of the dust in a human house—
  mostly dead skin particles.”
  Van gagged and coughed suddenly. “I was breathing dead
  worm skin? You didn’t tell me that!”
  Ned shrugged. “I didn’t want to freak you out.” He turned
  back to the others. “There isn’t a lot known about dimension
  walking, but it is thought that the psychic does have a slight
  instinct for how to get home. When Van’s ability kicked in
  under stress, so did that instinct. He reappeared right where
  he left from.”
  “Inside the worm’s mouth,” said Ngan, nodding. “And
  since Michael and Calamity had forced it back to its smaller
  size and I had kept it there . . .”
  “Splat!” grinned Van.
  “Incredible.”
  “And handy when I want to go somewhere on spring
  break!”
  Ned leaned forward and swatted Van sharply. “Don’t even
  think that. Rare talents are usually rare because they have a
  tendency to get stupid psychics killed. You’re lucky you
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  She dropped the photographs of Hollister’s lab on the
  table and sat down as she pushed them over to the young
  man. Down at the end of the table, McCain and Ngan were
  exchanging startled looks.
  “Well?” she asked them.
  “It’s incredible,” McCain confessed, then he smiled as
  well. “Congratulations on finding your birth mother—again.
  I can see why you wanted to take care of Keith on your own
  at the slaughterhouse.”
  “Don’t remind me,” Jeane said with a grimace. After
  everything was over with Renfield, they had gone back to the
  freight elevator only to find Keith and his friends long gone.
  “I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about him.”
  “We’ll help, Jeane,” Ngan reassured her. “The Hoffmann
  Institute has a certain amount of experience in this area, and
  I have favors I can call in.”
  “Why don’t I doubt that?” asked Jeane. “And why does it
  sound vaguely disturbing?”
  Ngan shook his head. “There’s nothing drastic involved.
  In order for a story to be taken seriously, it has to be backed
  up by a certain reliability. You would be surprised at how eas-
  ily reliability can be compromised.” He accepted the photo-
  graphs from Van and glanced at them briefly. “Before we
  contemplate that, however, there is another assignment to
  finish.” He turned to Ned. “How was Van able to survive the
  worm’s attack?”
  “It’s called psychoportation,” Ned explained, “the ability
  to move instantly between points in space.” He smiled at
  Van rather proudly. “It’s one of the rarest psychic talents. I
  have no experience with it at all. That’s why it took so long
  to draw out. Apparently I was teaching Van all the wrong
  things.”
  “Is it the same thing as teleportation?” McCain asked.
  “Like a transporter on Star Trek?”
  Ned rocked his head back and forth. “Yes and no.
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  “What about the worm then?” asked Jeane. “Was it a
  demon summoned by Renfield?”
  This time, Ned hesitated. “I don’t think so,” he said
  finally. “Its abilities fit Lisa’s madness perfectly, but I still
  say there’s no way she could have summoned a demon her-
  self. I don’t know where the worm came from. I don’t know
  what it was.”
  “You might be about to find out,” Emma cut in. She was
  just opening the office door. “Monty’s here from the CSC. Lily
  wants to see you all in her office on the double.”
  McCain caught Ngan’s arm and held him back as the
  others dashed off for Lily’s office.
  “Michael?”
  There were too many questions. McCain led with the eas-
  iest: “Do you think Monty’s told Lily about the incident with
  the stun prod?”
  “I doubt it.” Ngan drew McCain after the others. “I had a
  brief conversation with Monty before we left the scene yes-
  terday. I told him that if he didn’t report your accidental
  fumble with the stun prod, I wouldn’t report his endangering
  the lives of the team by secretly reducing the power of the
  tasers.” He smiled. “Monty was not impressed, but he did
  agree.”
  “Good.” McCain grimaced. “Now what about this thing
  with Jeane?”
  Ngan’s smile faded. “Say nothing, Michael.”
  “Ngan, she’s like my niece now!”
  “Only in genetic terms.” Ngan fell silent for a moment,
  then said, “You saw Jeane yesterday. She seems to have
  reached an acceptance with herself today. How do you think
  she would react to discovering that not only are you a clone,
  but a clone of her biological uncle?”
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  made it back here at all. Remember that the next time you
  start daydreaming about Florida.”
  “You know,” Jeane pointed out, “this might also answer
  the question of what connected Renfield’s victims—the ones
  she went after deliberately anyway. Only a psychic with this
  dimension walking talent could have survived the worm and
  passed her ‘test.’ And look at who she told the worm to
  attack at the end.”
  “Me,” said McCain. “Van. Ned.” He narrowed his eyes.
  “The first time we ran into her, the worm went after Ngan.”
  Ned sucked air through his teeth. “Do you have that infor-
  mation on her other victims?”
  McCain passed a file to him and he flipped through it. Ned
  paused on the picture of the middle-aged woman Renfield
  had attacked on the north side. His eyes went hard. “I knew
  her. She was a customer in my shop, always buying books on
  clairvoyance. I always wondered if she might be a latent psy-
  chic.” He clapped the file shut and looked up. “I’ll bet the
  other two victims were, too.”
  “So Renfield was attacking people with psychic ability,”
  Ngan said quietly. He steepled his fingers together and
  frowned over the top of them. “That would explain why the
  attacks were so irregular. Until she got us all in one place
  she would have had to hunt the city for potential victims.” He
  glanced at Ned. “Could she have an ability to sense the pres-
  ence of psychics as you do? Could she have been specifically
  hunting for someone who could dimension walk?”
  “The last time I saw her,” Ned said slowly, “I wouldn’t
  have said she had any psychic potential at all.”
  “And now?”
  Ned shrugged. “I don’t know. And even so, the worm
  seems like a pretty lethal way to find someone with a tal-
  ent as rare as dimension walking. It’s like trying to find
  someone with an immunity to arsenic by poisoning every-
  one you meet.”
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  twitched. Ngan could guess at the kind of control she was
  exerting. He had been forced to exert it as well the first time
  Jeane had mentioned Sam Hollister. The comment in Mari-
  lyn’s letter that Hollister described the artificial womb as
  only part of a bigger project was an understatement. The
  womb, eventually abandoned in favor of live surrogate moth-
  ers, had been only a small aspect of Hollister’s true area of
  research—cloning.
  And the government wasn’t the only agency Hollister had
  done work for. Posed beside Hollister in the purloined pho-
  tograph was a pretty young Hoffmann Institute agent named
  Betty West, the Institute’s first contact with Hollister. Seven
  years after that photograph was taken, Hollister would be
  working with Betty again, this time on a secret project for
  the Institute. Betty herself would be the proud bride of
  another Hoffmann Institute agent—Richard McCain. In a
  way, Michael McCain and Jeane Meara had closer connec-
  tions than either of them knew.
  “I see,” said Lily.
  “I’d also like to talk about McCain’s aunt and her prob-
  lem with changing weather again sometime. I believe I have
  an idea what’s bothering her,” Ngan whispered. Lily glanced
  at him again. “Ned gave me a clue. So did Van.” He reached
  up and tapped his temple.
  The answer had hit him as soon as they made the con-
  nection between Renfield’s targets—all of Renfield’s tar-
  gets—and the irregularity of her attacks. Until she got us all
  in one place, he had said himself, she would have had to hunt
  the city for potential victims.
  He knew of no other team of agents in Chicago that
  boasted two members with psychic ability of whatever form
  and that could be relied on in cases involving the supernatu-
  ral to approach a third, full-fledged psychic. And that had a
  fourth, if latent, psychic waiting in the wings, ready to be
  summoned onto the stage.
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  McCain sighed. He knew how he had taken the first part
  of that discovery himself, and even with a year to get used to
  that, Jeane’s news was still a shocker.
  “ ‘Not well’ would be an understatement,” said McCain.
  “Exactly. Tell Jeane when she needs to know. I think it
  will be easier on both of you.” He paused outside the door of
  Lily’s office and looked at him. “Was there something else?”
  McCain blinked. “No. Should there be?”
  “You seem . . . distracted.”
  “Just tired,” McCain lied and walked into Lily’s office.
  Sure. Tired because part of the previous evening had
  been spent with Shani—beautiful, intelligent Shani—before
  she had to go to work at the hospital. Tired because the rest
  of the night had been spent with Calamity—wild, unpre-
  dictable Calamity.
  McCain hated himself.
  You seem distracted. Ngan was amazed by his own gall in
  suggesting that McCain should be distracted when his own
  thoughts were leaping like fleas on a drowning rat. He barely
  managed to follow McCain into Lily’s office. Ignoring
  Monty’s cold glare, Ngan took a seat beside Lily.
  “Good morning,” he murmured.
  “Good morning, Ngan,” she replied just as quietly, then
  gave him a quick glance. “I’m glad the assignment was a
  success.”
  Her voice was warm, her concern for the team abated
  now that the danger of the assignment was past.
  Ngan returned her glance. “As am I,” he replied. “Though
  I’ve had news of an old friend.”
  He slid one of Jeane’s photographs, surreptitiously re-
  moved from the stack, out of his jacket and passed it to her
  under the table. Lily glanced down at it. One of her eyebrows
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  on the screen. The third creature stood erect on two legs and
  had two long, delicate arms. Its hairless skull was broad and
  entirely dominated by two dark, oval eyes.
  A Grey.
  The room was silent.
  Renfield opened her eyes. The room was new, but the
  place was familiar. She was back at Elgin, strapped down to
  a bed. The woman hovering over her was familiar, too. Ren-
  field smiled.
  “Hello, Doctor Olivia.”
  “Hello, Lisa.”
  “I’m safe now. He passed the test. He protected me.”
  “That’s good, Lisa.”
  Doctor Olivia was poking and prodding at her. Even the
  most gentle touch hurt her bruised body. Renfield yelped at
  a particularly sharp pain. Olivia stepped back.
  “Sorry,” she apologized. “That must have been quite a
  fight. How did you do?”
  Renfield laughed. “Great! I almost beat her.”
  “Why didn’t you?”
  She blinked. “Because he passed the test.”
  “Ah,” said Olivia.
  Renfield grinned. She liked Olivia, partly because the
  doctor understood everything so clearly. She had understood
  the river of decay more easily than anyone else, understood
  that it had all really happened. Finding a protector had been
  Olivia’s idea, too. It had been a great idea. Renfield’s smile
  faltered.
  “Olivia,” she said hesitantly, “I have some bad news.”
  “The worm?” Olivia patted her shoulder. “I already
  know.”
  “Can I have another one?”
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  Ngan watched his old friend’s eyes narrow and the set of
  her mouth turn grim as she put the clues together, too. “Lis-
  ten to Monty, Ngan,” she said after a moment. “I think you’ll
  find this interesting.” She nodded to Monty. “Go ahead.”
  “Thank you,” said the researcher. “This won’t take long.
  Essentially, the news is that Liam and I have finished an
  analysis of samples taken from the worm.” He glanced
  around the table. “It’s not a creature of terrestrial origin.”
  “Wow,” commented McCain, “I’m completely floored.”
  Monty gave him a harsh look. “Do you know what
  teroic pseudonucleic acid is, Mr. McCain? It’s analogous
  to deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA. TPA is an alternative car-
  rier of genetic information, one that lends itself especially
  well to genetic manipulation and bioengineering. All TPA-
  based creatures we know of come from one source—
  almost literally.”
  He hit a button on a laptop computer by his side. A mon-
  itor on Lily’s wall flashed to life with a sketch of the worm.
  “All TPA-based creatures so far encountered tend to have
  a similar appearance: grey, hairless, smooth, and with large,
  dark, oval eyes.” Monty stood to gesture at the sketch of the
  worm. “As we saw, the eyes on the worm were vestigial.
  This, however, is another TPA-based creature encountered
  by the CSC.”
  He reached back and hit another button. The sketch of
  the worm was joined by a photograph of another slick, grey
  creature, though this one had four strong legs with claws
  and a distinct, if alien, head.
  Alien . . .
  Ngan caught the motion as McCain sat forward sharply.
  So did Monty.
  “Ah!” he said. “I see the sarcastic Mr. McCain has figured
  it out. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a being known for its
  mastery of both genetic manipulation and psychic abilities.”
  Monty hit a key and a third creature joined the two already
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  more staying in dumps like this. No more living in a roach
  motel like his apartment.
  All he had to do was convince someone to buy the tape.
  If he could convince someone to look at it first.
  Five calls to Roger hadn’t brought any results. Of course
  he had no idea where Roger was at the moment. By the time
  Jeane and her friends—what the hell were they, some kind of
  secret paramilitary group?—had taken down the monster
  worm and he had fled, Roger and the rented minivan were
  long gone. Keith had been forced to hike out of the industrial
  park, always watching over his shoulder for Jeane coming
  after him.
  He might have called Roger a coward for not holding on
  to the story, but that didn’t mean Keith wanted to face off
  with Jeane again any time soon. By the time he did see her
  again, her story—worm, Marilyn, and all—was going to be
  headline news. And not necessarily just on Weekly Global
  Inquiry. Roger still had a stab at the story, but he didn’t
  have an exclusive anymore. Keith had lines out to the big
  boys. CNN had promised to call back. MSNBC had taken his
  message. ABC, CBS, NBC, somebody at the Chicago Tri-
  bune even. The follow-up calls should start rolling in any
  time now.
  He stared at the telephone. It didn’t ring.
  This would be so much easier if he was back in LA He
  knew people there. Unfortunately, the return tickets had
  been in the minivan. Where the hell was Roger?
  Keith grabbed the silent telephone and dialed once more
  the number of the place where they had rented the minivan.
  When the clerk answered, he cut off the friendly greeting.
  “Hi, this is Keith Hollister again. I’m trying to find some
  friends of mine who rented a minivan from you. Can you tell
  me if they’ve returned it yet?”
  “A green minivan, rented to Weekly Global Media, Inc.,
  right?”
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  Olivia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Lisa. There was only
  one.”
  “Damn.”
  “You shouldn’t have left Elgin.” Olivia looked at her seri-
  ously. “You know that was a bad thing. We would have taken
  you out if you had only waited.”
  “I know. I’m sorry. But I had to find him. I just couldn’t
  wait anymore.” Renfield turned her head away and found
  herself looking at the little cart that Doctor Olivia sometimes
  brought with her. “Is it time for more pills?”
  “Just something for the bruises tonight, Lisa. I don’t
  think you need anything else. Your fight proved that.”
  Olivia opened a drawer of her cart and took out a little
  vial of white and red capsules, then helped Renfield hold up
  her head so that she could swallow two of the pills.
  “Thanks, Olivia.”
  “You’re welcome.” Olivia smiled. “Now get yourself some
  rest. You’ll have a long day tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of
  questions to ask you about your time away.”
  The drugs were already taking effect as Olivia took her
  little cart out of the room, but Renfield could still hear her
  talking into the tiny black recorder she always carried
  with her.
  “Subject expresses remorse for loss of companion beast
  and initial conversations indicate an adequate level of
  heightened physical ability. Although unscheduled, I think
  this escape will provide important field test information on
  the progress of the project . . .”
  Keith Hollister paced across the wretched little hotel
  room, paused at the window, and paced back to stare at the
  videotape lying on the rumpled bedspread. All the money he
  could ever want, locked up in that black plastic shell. No
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  the room and down the closest set of service stairs.
  They didn’t see anybody on the way. At the bottom of the
  stairs, an emergency door opened into the parking lot behind
  the hotel. A vintage navy blue Lincoln Continental Mark V
  was parked there. One of the men opened the rear door. The
  other ripped the rag out of his mouth and stuffed him onto
  the back seat.
  A third man sat inside. The interior of the car was dim
  and for a moment Keith couldn’t see very well, though he
  could tell the third man was younger than the other two and
  slighter. He was smoking.
  “I understand,” he said, “that you have a videotape for
  sale.”
  The third man turned to look directly at him. He had a
  thin face, a goatee, and a distinctive hatchet nose.
  Keith shrieked in shock.
  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the third man said. He rolled his
  eyes, leaned over, and shoved Keith back out of the car door.
  “Knock him out and put him in the trunk,” he ordered, “then
  get us back to Elgin.”
  “Yes sir, Dr. Hollister.”
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  Keith started. “That’s the one. Have they returned it?”
  “Not as such.” The clerk’s voice was consoling. “It just
  got taken off our system. They had an accident or something.
  It’s totaled. They’re dead.”
  Jeane, Keith thought immediately. Jeane got to them.
  “When?” he asked the clerk.
  “Sometime last night, I think. It happened on the—”
  Keith hung up and started pacing again. “Oh, shit,” he
  babbled to himself, “Oh, shit.”
  There was a knock on the door. “Housekeeping!”
  “Go away!” Keith screamed. “I’m busy!”
  The knock came again. “Housekeeping!”
  He froze. It was a woman’s voice and accented, but it
  could be Jeane. And now she knew he was in the room.
  Damn! He might have to make a break for it. He tucked the
  video tape into his waistband and looked around for some-
  thing heavy. The best thing he could find was the stolen
  video camera. He picked it up.
  “Come back later. I don’t need housekeeping,” he yelled
  from across the room, then slunk up close to the door.
  “Please sir,” said a plaintive voice from the other side. “I
  have to make up room now.”
  Naturally there was no peephole. Cheap ass hotel. Keith
  braced the door with one foot, quietly slid off the chain and
  deadbolt, then carefully turned the knob.
  The door slammed open under a massive kick, throwing
  him halfway across the room. The video camera flew out of
  his hand and went crashing into the TV set.
  Two men in sunglasses and dark suits stood over him.
  One sneered and said in a woman’s accented voice, “What a
  mess! You better tip good.”
  Keith tried to scream, but the second man jammed a
  rag in his mouth, then lifted him casually up from the floor.
  The first one snatched up the video camera and ripped the
  tape out of his waistband. Together they hustled him out of
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  FORGOTTEN REALMS is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  ©2001 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  Venture into the 
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  The Shattered Mask
  Richard Lee Byers
  Shamur Uskevren is duped into making an assassination attempt on her husband
  Thamalon. Soon, however, the dame of House Uskevren realizes that all is not 
  as it seems and that her family is in grave danger.
  June 2001
  Black Wolf 
  Dave Gross
  The young Talbot Uskevren was the only one to survive a horrible  
  "hunting accident." Now, infected with lycanthropy, the second son 
  of the Uskevren clan must learn to control  what he has become.
  November 2001
  The Cities
  A new series of stand-alone novels, 
  each set in one of the mighty cities of Faerûn.
  The City of Ravens
  Richard Baker
  Raven’s Bluff – a viper pit of schemes, swindles, wizardry, and 
  fools masquerading as heroes.
  Temple Hill
  Drew Karpyshyn
  Elversult – fashionable and comfortable, this shining city of the heartlands 
  harbors an unknown evil beneath its streets.
  September 2001
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Deduped  Shit/Novels/Bassingthwaite, Don - Alternity - Dark Matter - By Dust Consumed.pdf