“I’ve got to be going,” she called over her shoulder to Bennett as she finished putting together her cookie offering. “Don’t worry about the phone; the answer machine will pick up. And don’t wait up. You need to get some sleep.”
She went out into the hall to pull on her parka, scarf, and gloves, then came back for the cookies and whisked them out the back door.
The cold was hard and brittle against her skin as she tromped down the porch steps, and she shivered in spite of herself. The clouds were breaking up, and moonlight illuminated the stark, skeletal limbs of the trees, giving them a slightly silver sheen. All about her, the darkness was hushed and still. She blew out a breath of white vapor, tucked her chin into her chest, and hurried across the backyard toward her neighbors’ home.
She had gone only a few steps when she saw the feeders. They were gathered at the lower end of her yard, tucked up against the hedgerow in formless clumps, their yellow eyes blinking in the night like fireflies. She slowed and looked at them. She hadn’t seen any feeders this close to her home in months. She glanced in either direction from the hedgerow and found others at the edges of the house and garage, shadowy forms creeping stealthily, silently through the cold night.
“Get out of here!” she hissed in a low voice.
A few disappeared. Most simply moved off a bit or shifted position. She glanced around uneasily. There were too many for coincidence. She wondered suddenly if they knew about John Ross, if the prospect of his coming was drawing them.
More likely it was just the stink of the demon who had visited her earlier that was attracting them.
She brushed the matter aside and hurried on across the frosted carpet of the lawn.
She saw nothing of the figure who stood at the top of her walk in the deep shadow of the cedars.
CHAPTER 7
Findo Cask waited for Nest to cross the lawn to the Peter-sons’, then for her to come out again when the big Suburban pulled into her driveway. He stood without moving in the darkness, virtually invisible in his black frock coat and black flat-brimmed hat, his leather-bound book held close against his chest. The night was bitter cold, the damp warmth of the sunny day crystallized to a fine crust that covered the landscape in a silvery sheen and crunched like tiny shells when walked on. Even the blacktop in front of the Freemark house glimmered in the streetlight.
When Nest Freemark climbed inside the Suburban and it backed out of her driveway and disappeared down the street, Findo Gask waited some more. He was patient and careful. He watched his breath cloud the air as it escaped his mouth. A human would have been freezing by now, standing out there for better than an hour. But demons felt little of temperature changes, their bodies shells and not real homes. Most of Findo Cask’s human responses had been shed so long ago that he no longer could recall how they made him feel. Heat or cold, pain or pleasure, it was all the same to him.
So he waited, unperturbed by the delay, cocooned within the dark husk to which he had reduced himself years ago, biding his time. It had taken a bit of effort to find out Nest would be gone this evening. He didn’t want that effort to be wasted.
He passed the time keeping watch on the house, intrigued by the shadowy movements inside. There were lights on in a few of the rooms, and they revealed an unexpected presence. Nest had left someone at home. The wrinkled old face creased suddenly with smile lines. Who might that someone be?
When everything was silent with the cold and the dark and there was no longer any reasonable possibility that Nest Freemark might be returning for something she had forgotten, Findo Gask left his hiding place and walked up onto the front porch and knocked softly.
The door opened to reveal a young woman wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe. She was rather small and slender, with lank hair and dark eyes. It was the eyes that caught his attention, filled with pain and disappointment and betrayal, rife with barely concealed anger and unmistakable need. He knew her instantly for what she was, for the life she had led, and for the ways in which he might use her.