Firefly.

"She doesn"t care what I do, as long as I hang on to my job. In my work I get calls from all types."

"Very well." She tucked herself together, getting ready to return to her own car. "One other thing. When I talked to Jade Brown earlier today, I could tell that she was concealing something. She was shaken. I think the monster has struck again, perhaps closer. I have no pretext to go there again; do you?"

"I can make one. I can go there tomorrow. You think another racc.o.o.n?"

"Larger, I think. She had buried something in her flower garden. Why would she call the sheriffs office the first time, and conceal the evidence the second time?"

"Good question. I"ll see what I can do."

"My interest, of course, is in protecting the privacy of my employer. But until I know exactly what is threatening it, I am not free to depart. I must also make a full report to Mid. I don"t believe that violates the spirit of our understanding."

Frank laughed, a bit hollowly. "Tell him if this gets me fired, I"ll need a job."

"I will do that," she replied seriously.

Taken aback, he did not answer. She climbed out and went to her car. He waited while she started it, turned it around, and drove back down toward the house. Then he turned his own around and headed toward the gate.

This had been some session! No, he wasn"t going to report any of this, yet. He"d follow up with the Brown woman, whom he remembered as a mousy type, then with the search at the end of Turner Camp Road. It would be better if someone else actually found the body. He should be able to arrange that.

But that would have to wait until tomorrow. He had routine business today. Already his radio had a Signal 46, which meant a sick or injured person, and it was in his territory. "Ten twenty-six," he acknowledged, and headed for the address. He didn"t care what kind of minor junk they put him on now; he was on to something that could be truly significant, and that gave his dull life meaning.

Next morning he drove to the home of Jade Brown. She came out to stand by her door as he parked. She was every bit as nondescript as he recalled. Her hair was lank and drab; it might once have been auburn, but now was closer to mop color, and not a new mop either. Her eyes were the washed-out green of the polluted sea on a cloudy day. If she had a figure, she concealed it under a baggy, pocketed work dress. Yet there was an odd intensity to her, as if some live-wire spirit were prisoned within the dull housing.

He eased out of the car and approached her. "Hi there. Remember me? That racc.o.o.n two, three days ago."

"Yes, officer," she said nervously. "Do you know what made it die?"

"Lab report not back yet; takes forever when it"s not a hot case. But there"ve been other recent reports, with larger victims." He stared her in the face and put it to her directly: "Do you have anything more to tell me?"

She squirmed like a truant child, and that trapped spirit fought to burst out, but could not.

"What did you bury there?" He pointed to the disturbed site in her garden. "That wasn"t there last time."

She was caught, unable to evade so direct a challenge. "My dog, Donjon. He died."

"I wouldn"t figure him to be alive under there," he said cruelly. "Like the racc.o.o.n?"

Again it paid off. "Yes," she said, flinching. Now host and spirit were one: afraid.

"And you figured no sense in bothering me again?" He was giving her an out, knowing that he would get the story now.

"Yes."

"He was outside?"

"No, inside. I-found him there in the morning. Just skin and bones. It was awful!"

"Inside?" That startled him. "Where were you?"

"In the bedroom. The door was closed. I-it doesn"t go after people, does it?"

How much should he tell her? "You never can tell with something like this. Best not to gamble. How"d it get in?"

Her mouth opened in retrospective horror. "I don"t know! The windows and doors were closed. I didn"t think of that before!"

"Closed? You sure?" Now Frank himself was getting nervous. He knew, as she did not, that the thing had sucked out a man, but that had been outside, in the forest. Was it now coming inside? "Ma"am, if you don"t mind, I think I should take a look at your house, find out just how it got in, and close it up."

"Yes!" she agreed, frightened.

They checked the house, outside and in. The house was in good repair; he remembered now that her husband was a carpenter. But it was a mess inside; she was no housekeeper. Yet it was tight; there was no obvious entry other than the doors or windows.

Frank scratched his head. "Lady, I can"t figure it. How big was your dog?"

"About thirty pounds, maybe forty. He was fair-sized."

So it would take a predator of perhaps twice that ma.s.s to make a good meal of him, maybe more. A man didn"t eat half or even a quarter of his weight at one sitting, and neither did a tiger. Call it a hundred pounds. How could something that size get into a closed house without doing damage?

"You don"t have a chimney?" he asked.

"No."

"Were the doors locked?"

"No, I was expecting my husband to return."

"How alert was your dog?"

"Not very. But he would bark at strangers."

"So if a strange man opened that door, the dog wouldn"t just lie there?"

"That"s right. Only if my husband-"

"How did he get along with that dog?"

She shook her head as if shaking off something unpleasant. "My husband has his failings, but he liked that dog. He wouldn"t do-that. And if he did, how could he have left just the skin and bones? And why would he go away and leave the dog like that?"

"Ms. Brown, I don"t like this much better than you do, but I think I"d better ask. Do you get along with your husband okay?"

"He"s not here much," she said tightly. That spirit was back, twitching at minor muscles of her face, wanting to say a whole lot more. She had a marriage problem, sure enough.

"I mean, would he do something like this to spite you?"

"Oh. No, never. He"d-take another woman."

So that was it the man was two-timing her, and she knew it. "So it must have been someone else-or something else." He decided that in fairness he should tell her something. "Look, ma"am, there"s a suggestion in the other cases that s.e.x appeal may be involved. I mean, if your dog was male, something with the scent of a female dog in heat-so he wouldn"t bark. But it wasn"t a dog, but something else."

She stared at him, not a whit rea.s.sured. "Something like a dog?"

"Maybe not like a dog at all," he said quickly. "We don"t know what it"s like. Only that it kills. And it maybe can attract anything by-well, by making a s.e.xy smell. I don"t want to alarm you, but if it can get in your house-"

She was already thoroughly alarmed. "You mean it could come after me?"

"Well, I didn"t say that, exactly. But look, do you have somewhere else you can go, maybe for a few days? Till we run this thing down?"

She shook her head no, pale and drawn. She had not been exactly pretty to begin with, and was less so now. "Anyway, I couldn"t leave my husband and son here."

He was getting to feel guilty. "Do you have a gun?"

"No. They hurt more friends than foes."

"Right. But maybe if you take a knife with you tonight-I don"t want to upset you, but if that thing came into your house-at least lock the doors. Maybe the dog knocked the door open, and the thing came in and got the dog, and then it left and pushed the door closed. The point is, your bedroom door stayed closed, and you were okay."

"Yes." Volumes unspoken.

"Do you want me to check on you tomorrow? I can swing by."

She seemed tempted, but demurred.

"We"ll be all right."

"Sure you will," he said with false a.s.surance. He tipped his hat, feeling guilty, and headed back to his car. Maybe the monster wouldn"t strike twice in the same place.

* 7 - NONE WATCHED HIM go. She was terrified, but knew there was really nothing the deputy could do. What good would it be if he checked back by day when the monster came at night? But he had given her good advice: to arm herself, and keep her door locked. She hoped the officer caught up with whatever it was soon so that she could relax. Her life had been dreary and pointless; now it was worse.

Her son came home on the school bus. She was both relieved and worried. She needed company, and he was that, but she didn"t want him put in danger. She would have to warn him.

"Jame," she said as he barged in the door.

"Can"t stop now, ma," he said over his shoulder. "Got a load of homework."

But what could she warn him about? He already knew the dog had died; he just didn"t know how. Did she really want to make him feel as uneasy as she felt, when there was so little she could do about it? She was torn, and the default decision was silence.

Paris was out again, as usual. Jame didn"t comment; he just bolted down his supper and headed back to his room. At least he wasn"t worrying!

After Jame was asleep, she checked the house thoroughly, making sure all the doors and windows were firmly closed. Then she retreated to her bedroom, surrept.i.tiously clutching the large bread knife. She felt foolish, but also afraid; she did need this bit of rea.s.surance.

She lay on the bed, dressed, the light on, the knife on the table beside her. What kind of a thing could come into a closed house? For she knew that Donjon hadn"t pushed open the door; the dog had been so satisfied to be inside that he wouldn"t have stirred short of an earthquake. The wind hadn"t blown it open; it had not been locked, but it had been latched. Something had come in, somehow, silent, deadly. It could come again. Did it have hands to turn k.n.o.bs?

She tried to relax, but could not. She tried to summon her eager young men, the ones who found her so compulsively s.e.xy that they simply could not restrain themselves, but on this night they had evidently discovered Helen instead.

Helen-d.a.m.n that woman! Paris might not be much, but she certainly could use him at home tonight! Helen was making a widow of her, without any of the compensations, such as being free to go somewhere else. Whatever could she see in the man? Paris was short, balding, going to pot, and generally inattentive. He was just about the worst a beautiful young woman could do.

Could it be that Helen wasn"t beautiful or young? That would be even worse! It was understandable to lose a man to a s.e.xy temptress, but humiliating to lose him to the opposite. No, she had to picture Helen as lovely. Maybe she wasn"t just young, but childlike. A nymphet. Out for the thrill of it, seducing an older man. That type existed-oh, didn"t she know it! But what an irony to do it with Paris.

none pictured herself as the nymphet. She wore a gauzy nightie, and her legs were well fleshed but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s remained relatively slight, in the manner of the maturing but not yet quite nubile girl. As the man appeared, she turned over on the bed, negligently letting her nightie fall askew, so that one leg showed up to the b.u.t.tock. Oh, what firm young flesh! What a tight round bottom! The man wasn"t supposed to notice; he was just pa.s.sing (a bedroom? That couldn"t be!) by. She must be working in a store window, putting up a bedroom display, checking the draperies beyond the bed, but they were hard to reach, so she sort of stretched out on the bed and rolled over, careless about her dress, which somehow remained the nightie, and achieved the same effect. The man was outside the store, pa.s.sing by on the street, but he paused, looking in the huge storefront display window, peering at her slender yet nicely formed legs, seeing right up to the crease of her full b.u.t.tock. That excited him. She somehow couldn"t get the drapery right, so kept squirming on the bed, unconscious of the way her nightie rode up farther, baring the other leg past the calf, the knee, the expanding thigh, right up to the shadowed cleft between the rounded mounds of her innocent clean b.u.t.t. The man didn"t want to be obvious, but he just couldn"t leave the vision of that delightful posterior. So he pretended to be checking his timepiece or looking for a paper in his pocket, but he kept watching. She made one more stretch for the curtain, the hem of her nightie drawing up completely over her bottom, showing her panties, which were stretched so tight they were translucent. (But how had he seen the halves of bifurcate derriere, then? Well, the panties were almost invisible from this angle.) Then at last she completed her business with the drapery, and was ready to get off the bed, but she had to wriggle backward to get off it, and her nightie dragged on up across her back. Realizing her dishabille, she rolled over and sat up, in the process baring her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which in this position weren"t really that small, and were finely formed. Then she saw the man. Oh! Her hand came up to her mouth. What had he seen?

He"d seen too much. His face was now twisted with l.u.s.t. He simply had to have her! He tried to come right through the sheet-gla.s.s window, but could not, so he slid along it, his crotch bulging, finding his way to the store door, his eyes fastened on her body. Those pet.i.te b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which had seemed unformed only because she had been mostly supine, those round b.u.t.tocks-he had never seen anything that delicious before, and never would again, and so now was the moment. She, perceiving his excitement, marveled. If she had been able to rouse a man to such a pitch by accident, what might she do when she tried? Well, she would find out! She hauled her nightie up over her head and off, and scooped off her panties, heedless of others pa.s.sing by the store outside who were now pausing to watch. Let them see how it should be done! She flung back her l.u.s.trous tresses and faced the side where the man was lunging through the door, fumbling with his belt, trying to get his pants off or open or something, heedless of the growing audience outside. The very smell of him was s.e.xy. Her legs were lifted on the bed, her knees bent and slightly separated, so that a stray shaft of light struck down between them and- Then she remembered something. The deputy had said that the monster might attract prey by making a s.e.xy smell. She woke, abruptly chilled.

She was on her bed, in her clothing, her knees lifted and her legs parted, with the lights on and the knife within reach. All was quiet.

She had exited a perfect dream on a false alarm. Furious, she tried to return to it, but it was no good; the mood was gone, the man was gone, the store window was gone. She had to drift back to sleep alone, no teenage temptress, just in her desultory mid-thirties. Any man who saw her in a store window would yawn and keep walking.

She woke again in the wee hours. All was as before, but something bothered her. There was a bit of a noise, or a smell, or something, fading but eerie. A presence, not malign, just there-when it shouldn"t be. Was she imagining it? She had a good imagination, too good at times. How could she be sure?

Well, she could just check. If the monster were in the vicinity, she would catch it. She picked up the knife, oddly unafraid, even experiencing an almost s.e.xual t.i.tillation, and went to the door.

She turned on the light in the main room. There was nothing there; it remained exactly as crowded and messy as ever. She wasn"t much of a housekeeper, she knew; she ought to do something about that. But somehow something else always seemed to be more urgent at the moment-as was the case now.

She checked the kitchen, just in case she had left something on. All was in order-or at least proper disorder. Paris obviously had not returned, again; he would have been here for a snack before plumping down on the bed.

That left Jame"s room. He normally slept soundly until the crack of dawn, and then exploded into activity.

She went there and put her hand on the doork.n.o.b. She opened the door a crack and peered into the darkness.

The smell was stronger here, though still faint. She remembered her vision/dream of the night, cut off at the point it had been about to explode gloriously into s.e.x. What a feeling!

Now she remembered: Donjon had had an odor like that when he-the deputy had said something about s.e.x appeal being involved. This smell made her feel s.e.xy-yet it could also mean that- Abruptly appalled, she threw open the door and turned on the light. She blinked at its sudden brightness, then looked at the bed.

A small skeleton in pajamas lay there.

none screamed, backed out, and slammed the door. She charged back into her room, slammed the door, and leaped onto the bed. The kitchen knife she still held stabbed into the mattress. She grabbed the sheet and hauled it over her, hunching down to hide her head. She willed herself to the safety of sleep. That usually didn"t work, but this time it did.

She woke after dawn, tangled in the sheet, in her clothing, the knife still embedded in the mattress beside her. What a nightmare she had had!

But why was the house quiet? Jame should be banging around, and would soon be demanding breakfast.

Suppose-? But no, that could not be! She would dispel that notion right now. She threw the sheet off, put her feet down, and stood. Then, reconsidering, she leaned down to recover the knife. Armed, she went out.

The lights remained on, as they had been all night. If she had dreamed it, who would have turned them on? She went to Jame"s room.

She knocked, "Jame! You overslept!"

There was no answer. Fear rose in her, to the level of her heart, which began to beat so hard that her shirt quivered in front. It couldn"t be!

She held her breath and opened the door. She looked in.

The skeleton was there.

She had tried to deny it, to make it into a dream, but now she knew it was not. When fantasy came up against reality, reality generally prevailed. The monster had come and taken her son.

Her gaze drifted to the window. It was open.