castle, as nurturingly serene as any meditation point in a Zen
garden.
She never sleeps fitfully but always as deep and still as a stone at
the bottom of the sea, so You find yourself reaching out to touch her,
to feel the warmth of her skin or the throb of her pulse, to quiet the
sudden fear for her that grips You from time to time. As with so many
things, she has a passion for sleep. She has a passion for passion,
too, and when she makes love to You, the room ceases to exist, and
You’re in a timeless time and a placeless place, where there’s only
Sasha, only the light and the heat of her, the glorious light of her
that blazes but doesn’t burn.
As I passed the foot of the bed, heading toward the first of three
windows to close the blinds, I saw an object on the chenille spread.
It was small, irregular, and highly polished: a fragment of
handpainted, glazed china. Half a smiling mouth, a curve of cheek, one
blue eye. A shard from the face of the Christopher Snow doll that had
shattered against the wall in Angela Ferryman’s house just before the
lights had gone out and the smoke had poured into the stairwell from
above and below.
At least one of the troop had been here during the night.
Shaking again but with fury rather than fear this time, I ripped the
pistol out of my jacket and set out to search the house, from the attic
down, every room, every closet, every cupboard, every smallest space in
which one of these hateful creatures might be able to conceal itself.
I wasn’t stealthy or cautious. Cursing, making threats that I had
every intention of fulfilling, I tore open doors, slammed drawers shut,
poked under furniture with a broom handle. In general I created such a
racket that Orson sprinted to my side with the expectation of finding
me in a battle for my life-then followed me at a cautious distance, as
if he feared that, in my current state of agitation, I might shoot
myself in the foot and him in the paw if he stayed too close.
None of the troop was in the house.
When I concluded the search, I had the urge to fill a pail with strong
ammonia water and sponge off every surface that the intruder-or
intruders-might have touched: walls, floor, stair treads and railings,
furniture. Not because I believed that they’d left behind any
microorganisms that could infect us. Rather, because I found them to
be unclean in a profoundly spiritual sense, as though they had come not
out of laboratories at Wyvern but out of a vent in the earth from which
also rose sulfur fumes, a terrible light, and the distant cries of the
damned.
Instead of going for the ammonia, I used the kitchen phone to call the
direct booth line at KBAY. Before I entered the last number, I
realized that Sasha was off the air and already on her way home. I
hung up and keyed in her mobile number.
“Hey, Snowman,” she said.
“Where are You?”
“Five minutes away.”
“Are your doors locked?”
“What?”
“For Christ’s sake, are your doors locked?”
She hesitated. Then: “They are now.”
“Don’t stop for anyone. Not anyone. Not for a friend, not even for a
cop. Especially not for a cop.”
“What if I accidentally run down a little old lady?”
“She won’t be a little old lady. She’ll only look like one.”
“You’ve suddenly gotten spooky, Snowman.”
“Not me. The rest of the world. Listen, I want You to stay on the
phone until You’re in the driveway.”
“Explorer to control tower: The fog’s pulling back already. You don’t
need to talk me in.”
“I’m not talking You in. You’re talking me down. I’m in a state
here.
sorta noticed.”
“I need to hear your voice. All the way. All the way home, your
voice.”
Smooth as the bay,” she said, trying to get me to lighten up.
I kept her on the phone until she drove her truck into the carport and
switched off the engine.
Sun or no sun, I wanted to go outside and meet her as she opened the