The Haunted Air

The Haunted Air

F. Paul Wilson

for two MIAs

Poul Anderson Richard Laymon

Acknowledgements

I owe a debt to works by James Randi (An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, The Psychic Healers, and Flim-Flam!) and M. Lamar Keene (The Psychic Mafia). These acted as invaluable guidebooks on what to look for on my visits to Spiritualist churches and psychic mediums.

Thanks to the usual crew for their editorial help on the manuscript: my wife Mary; my editor David Hartwell; his assistant Moshe Feder; Elizabeth Monteleone; Steven Spruill; and my agent Albert Zuckerman. And thanks to Blake Dollens, typo master, for his help with this edition.

FRIDAY

1

The bride wore white.

Only she wasn't a bride and the dress—two sizes too small at least—had faded to beige.

"Can I ask again," Jack said, leaning toward Gia, "why our hostess is wearing her wedding dress?"

Gia, seated next to him on the tattered, thirdhand-store sofa, sipped from her plastic cup of white wine. "You may."

A casual little get-together, Gia had told him. Some of her artist friends were going to gather at a loft in a converted warehouse on the fringe of the old Brooklyn Army Terminal, throw a little party for one of their clan who'd started to make it big. Come on, she'd said. It'll be fun.

Jack wasn't in a fun mood. Hadn't been for some time now. But he'd agreed to go. For Gia.

Maybe twenty people wandering about the space while Pavement's last album pounded from a boom box, echoing off the high ceilings, huge windows, and stripped-to-the-brick walls. The occupants sported hair colors that spanned the visible spectrum, skin that was either pierced or tattooed or both, and clothes that redlined the garishometer.

And Halloween was better than two months away.

Jack took a pull from his bottle of beer. He'd brought his own, opting to forego his usual Rolling Rock long necks for a six-pack of Harp. Good thing, too. The bridal-bedecked hostess had stocked Bud Light. He'd never tasted watered-down cow pee, but he imagined it tasted better than Bud Light.

"All right. Why is our hostess wearing her wedding dress?"

"Gilda's never been married. She's an artist, Jack. She's making a statement."

"What statement? I mean, besides Look at me?"

"I'm sure she'd tell you that it's up to the individual to decide."

"Okay. I've decided she just wants attention."

"Is that so bad? Just because you're frightened to death of attention doesn't make it wrong for other people to court it."

"Not frightened to death of it," Jack grumbled, not wanting to concede the point.

A tall, slim woman passed by then, a dead-white streak running along the side of her frizzy black swept-back hair.

He cocked his head toward her. "I know her statement: her husband's a monster."

"Karyn's not married."

A guy with gelled neon yellow hair slid by, each eyebrow pierced by at least a dozen gold rings.

"Hi, Gia," he said with a wave and kept moving.

"Hi, Nick."

"Let me guess," Jack muttered. "As a child Nick was frightened by a curtain rod."

"My, aren't we the cranky one tonight," Gia said, giving him a look.

Cranky barely touched it. He'd been alternating between bouts of rage and the way-down dumps for a couple of months now. Ever since Kate's death. Couldn't seem to pull himself out. He'd been finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning, and once he was up, there didn't seem to be anything he wanted to do. So he'd drag himself to Abe's or Julio's or Gia's and pretend he was fine. Same old Jack, just not working on anything at the moment.

The angry voice mail messages from his father, ragging on him for not showing up at Kate's wake or funeral, hadn't helped. "Don't tell me you had something more important to do. She was your sister, damn it!"

Jack knew that. After fifteen years of separation, Kate had come back into his life for one week during which he'd gotten to know her again, love her again, and now she was gone. Forever.

The facts said it wasn't Jack's fault, but the facts didn't keep Jack from blaming himself. And one other person…

He'd searched for the man he'd suspected of being in some way responsible, a man whose real name he didn't know but who'd called himself Sal Roma once, and maybe Ms. Aralo too. He'd put the word out but no one knew anything. Never heard of him. Jack wound up with a taste of his own medicine—Sal Roma didn't seem to exist.

Kate… she might still be alive if only he'd done things his way instead of listening to…

Stop. No point in traveling that well-worn trail again. He hadn't returned his father's calls. After a while they stopped.

He forced a smile for Gia. "Sorry. Pseudo-weirdos crank me off."

"Can't be much weirder than the people you spend most of your day with."

"Those are different. They're real. Their weirdness comes from inside. They wake up weird. They dress weird because they reach out a hand and whatever it touches first is what they wear that day. These people here spend hours in front of a mirror making themselves look weird. My weirdos have hair that spikes out in twenty directions because that's the way it was when they rolled out of bed this morning; these folks use herbal shampoo, half a gallon of gel, and a special comb to achieve their unwashed bed-head look. My weirdos don't belong; these people seem to want desperately to belong, but don't want anyone to know, so they try to outdo each other to look like outsiders."

Gia's lips twisted. "And the biggest outsider of them all is sitting right here in a short-sleeve plaid shirt, jeans, and work boots."

"And spending the evening watching pretensions collide with affectations. Present company excluded, of course."

One of the many things he loved about Gia was her lack of affectation. Her hair was blond by nature and short for convenience. Tonight she was wearing beige slacks and a sleeveless turquoise top that heightened the blue of her eyes. Her makeup consisted of a touch of lipstick. She didn't need anything more. She looked clean and healthy, a very untrendy look in this subculture.

But the subculture had percolated into the overculture, the fringe had become mainstreamed. Years ago construction workers threw bricks at longhairs and called them faggots, now the building trades were packed with ponytails and earrings.

"Maybe it's time I got myself adorned," Jack said.

Gia's eyebrows shot up. "You mean pierced? You?"

"Well, yeah. Sometimes I feel like I stand out because I'm not bejeweled and be-inked."

"Be-inked?"

"You know—tattooed."

Everyone seemed into it, and if he wanted to remain invisible, he'd have to follow the crowd.

"But nothing permanent," he added. Didn't want to lose his chameleon capabilities. "Maybe a clip-on earring and one or two of those temporary tattoos."

"Didn't you do something like that to your fingers once?"

"You remember those?" Phony prison tats. With indelible ink. A one-time thing for a hairy job that left a couple of toughs from a Brighton Beach gang blazing mad and combing the five boroughs for a guy with hell bent tats on his knuckles. He hadn't been able to wash those off soon enough. "No, I think I need something big and colorful."

"How about a heart encircled with rose vines and gia in its center?"

"I was thinking more on the order of a green skull with orange flames roaring out of its eye sockets."

"Oh, how cool," Gia said, and sipped her wine.

"Yeah. Slap that on one deltoid, maybe get a bright red Hot Stuff devil for the other, put on a tank top, and I'll be set."

"Don't forget the earring."

"Right. One of those dangly ones, maybe with the Metallica logo."

"That's you, Jack. A speedmetal dude."

Jack sighed. "Adorned… accessorized… I was brought up thinking that real men didn't bother with fashion."

"So was I," Gia said. "But I have an excuse: I grew up in semi-rural Iowa. You… you're a northeasterner."

"True, but all the adult males I knew as a kid—my father and the men he knew—were plain dressers. Most had fought in Korea. They dressed up for things like weddings and funerals, but mostly they wore functional clothes. Nobody accessorized. You stayed in front of the mirror long enough to shave and comb the hair out of your eyes. Anything more and you were some sort of peacock."

"Welcome to twenty-first-century Peacockville," Gia said.

Nick drifted by again.

"What's Nick paint?" Jack asked.

"He doesn't paint. He's a performance artist. His stage name is Harry Adamski."

"Swell." Jack hated performance art. "What's his performance?"

Gia bit her upper lip. "He calls it stool art. Let's just say it's a very personal form of sculpture and, um, let it go at that."

Jack stared at her. What was Gia—?

"Oh, jeez. Really…?"

She nodded.

"Christ," he said, letting loose, "is there anything out there that can't claim it's an art? There's the art of war, the art of the deal, the art of the shoe shine, the Artist Formerly Known As Prince—"

"I think he's back to calling himself Prince now."

"—the art of motorcycle maintenance. Smearing yourself with chocolate is art, hanging a toilet on a wall is art—"

"Come on, Jack. Lighten up. I was hoping a night out would lift your spirits. You've got to rejoin the living. Lately your life's consisted of eating, sleeping, and watching movies. You haven't worked out or taken a job or even returned calls. I'm sure Kate wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life moping around."

Jack knew Gia was right and looked away. He saw a willowy blonde in her mid twenties swaying in their direction. She carried a martini glass filled with reddish fluid, probably a cosmo. The bottom of her short, zebra-striped blouse did not meet the top of her low riding, skintight leopard miniskirt; in the interval a large diamond stud gleamed from her navel.

"Maybe I should pierce my navel," Jack said.

"Fine, but don't show me until you've shaved your belly."

"How about a pierced tongue?"

Gia gave him a sidelong glance and a sultry smile. "Now that could be interesting." She looked up and saw the blonde. "Oh, here comes Junie Moon, the guest of honor."

"That her real name?"

"Not sure. But that's the one she's used since I've known her. She was struggling along just like the rest of us until Nathan Lane bought one of her abstracts last year and started talking her up. Now she's about as hot as you can get."

"What's a Junie Moon original go for?"

"Twenty and up."

Jack blinked. "Twenty thou? She's that good?"

"Big difference between hot and good, but I like Junie's work. She creates this unique mix of hot and cold. Sort of a cross between De Kooning and Mondrian, if you can imagine such a thing."

Jack couldn't, because he couldn't recall any works by either.

"You sound happy for her."

"I am. She's a good kid. I've got almost ten years on her and she sort of adopted me as a surrogate mother over the past few years. Phones me a couple of times a week to chat, asks advice."

"And no hard feelings that she hit it and you haven't?"

"Not a bit. I won't say I don't wish it were me instead, but if it had to happen to someone else, I'm glad it was Junie. She's ditzy but she's got talent, and I like her."

That was Gia. The nurturer without a jealous bone in her body. Another of the many reasons he loved her. But even if it didn't bother her, it rankled Jack to see the crap that hung in the galleries and exhibits she was always dragging him to, while her own canvases remained stacked in her studio.

"Bet her stuff's not half as good as yours."

"Mine are different."

Gia made her living in commercial art. She did a lot of advertising work, but over the years she'd developed a reputation among the art directors at the city's publishing houses as a talented and reliable artist. She'd walked Jack through a Barnes and Noble last week, pointing out her work on half a dozen hardcovers and trade paperbacks.

Nice stuff, but nothing like the paintings Gia did for herself. Jack loved those. He didn't know a lot about art, but he'd picked up a little following Gia around, and her urban roofscapes reminded him of Edward Hopper, one of the few artists he'd pay to see.

Junie dropped into the narrow space next to Gia on the couch, spilling a few drops of her drink. Her blue-shadowed lids drooped slightly. He wondered how many she'd had.

"Hey," she said, and kissed Gia on the cheek.

Gia introduced her to Jack and they shook hands across Gia. She looked about as down in the dumps as Jack felt.

Gia nudged her. "Why so glum? This party's for you."

"Yeah, I'd better enjoy it now." She took a gulp of her cosmopolitan. "My fifteen minutes are so over."

"What are you talking about?"

"My lucky bracelet. It's gone. It's the whole reason for my success."

"You think it was stolen?" Jack said, glancing at her bare wrists and then at the partygoers. No shortage of jealousy here, he'd bet. "When did you last see it?"

"Tuesday. I remember taking it off after finishing a painting. I took a shower, then went out shopping. Next morning I went to put it on before starting a new work, and it was gone."

"Anything else missing?" Jack said.

"Not a thing." She tossed back the rest of her drink. "And it's not valuable. It's an old piece of junk jewelry I picked up at a secondhand store. It looks homemade—I mean, it's set with a cat's eye marble, of all things—but I liked it. And as soon as I started wearing it, my paintings began to sell. The bracelet made it happen."

"Is that so?" Jack said. He felt Gia's hand grip the top of his thigh and begin to squeeze, trying to head off what she knew he was going to say, but he spoke anyway. "So it's got nothing to do with talent."

Junie shook her head and shrugged. "I never changed my style, but I started wearing the bracelet while I worked, and the first painting I finished with it was the one Nathan Lane bought. After that, everything started happening for me. It changed my luck. I've so got to find it."

"You've looked for it, I presume," Gia said.

"Turned my place upside down. But tomorrow I'm getting professional help."

"A bloodhound?" Jack offered, which earned him another squeeze.

"No. I've got an appointment with my psycho." She giggled. "I mean my psychic."

Gia's fingers became a vise, so Jack decided to heed her. "I'm sure he'll be a big help."

"Oh, I know he will! He's wonderful! I left my old seer for Ifasen a couple of months ago and am I ever glad. The man's absolutely incredible."

"Ifasen?" Jack knew most of the major players in the local psychic racket, if not personally, at least by rep, and the name Ifasen didn't ring a bell.

"He's new. Just moved into Astoria and—oh, my God! I just realized! That's just up the road from here! Maybe I can see him tonight!"

"It's pretty late, Junie. Will he—?"

"This is an emergency! He's got to see me!"

She pulled out her cell phone and speed-dialed a number, listened for a moment, then snapped it closed.

"Damn! His answering service! So what. I'm going up there anyway." She pushed herself up from the couch and staggered a step. "Gotta find a cab."

Gia glanced at Jack, concern in her eyes, then back to Junie. "You'll never get one around here."

She grinned and hiked her miniskirt from mid-thigh to her hip. "Sure I will. Just like what's-her-name in that movie."

"Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night," Jack said automatically as he wondered when the last time was a cab had cruised the Brooklyn Army Terminal area at this hour. "And someone'll think you're looking for more than a ride if you do that. We'll call you a cab."

"They never come," she said, heading for the door.

Again that concerned look from Gia. "Jack, we can't let her go. She's in no condition—"

"She's a grown-up."

"Only nominally. Jack?"

She cocked her head and looked at him with big, Girl Scout cookie-selling eyes. Refusing Gia anything was difficult, but when she did that…

"Oh, all right." Donning a put-upon expression, he rose and offered a hand to help Gia to her feet; in truth he was delighted for an excuse to bail this party. "I'll give her a ride. But it's not 'just up the road.' It's on the upper end of Queens."

Gia smiled, and it touched Jack right down to the base of his spine.

Somehow, between saying good-bye to the hostess bride and reaching the sidewalk, they picked up two extra passengers: Karyn—the Bride of Frankenstein—and her friend Claude, an anorexic-looking six footer with a flattop haircut that jutted out over his forehead, making his head look like an anvil from the side. They both thought a jaunt to a psychic's house would be moby cool.

Plenty of room in Jack's Crown Vic. If he'd come alone, he probably would have traveled by subway. But Gia's presence demanded the security of a car. With Gia in the passenger seat, and the other three in the back, Jack wheeled the big black Ford up a ramp onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and headed north along the elevated roadway. He said he hoped no one minded but he was opening all the windows, and he did, without waiting for answers. His car; they didn't like it, they could walk.

This kind of summer night, not too humid, not terribly hot, brought him back to his teens when he drove a beat-up old Corvair convertible that he got for a song because too many people had listened to Ralph Nader and dumped one of the best cars ever made. On nights like this he'd drive with no destination, always with the top down, letting the wind swirl around him.

Not much swirling tonight. Even at this hour the BQE was crowded, but Junie made the creeping traffic seem even slower by rattling on and on about her psychic guru: Ifasen talked to the dead, and Ifasen let the dead talk to you, and Ifasen knew your deepest, darkest secrets and could do the most amazing, impossible, incredible things.

Not amazing or impossible to Jack. He was familiar with all the amazing, impossible, incredible things Ifasen did, and even had a pretty good idea how the man was going to get back Junie's bracelet for her.

Yeah, Junie was a ditz, but a lovable ditz.

Maybe some music would slow her Ifasen chatter. He stuck one of his homemade CDs in the player. John Lennon's voice filled the car.

"This happened once before…"

"The Beatles?" Claude said from the back. "I didn't think anyone listened to them anymore."

"Think again," Jack said. He turned up the volume. "Listen to that harmony."

"… I saw the light!…"

"Lennon and McCartney were born to sing together."

"You have to realize," Gia said, "that Jack doesn't like anything modern."

"How can you say that?"

"How?" She was smiling. "Look at your apartment, your favorite buildings"—she pointed to the CD player—"the music you listen to. You don't own a song recorded after the eighties."

"Not true."

Karyn piped up. "What's a current group or singer you listen to?"

Jack didn't want to tell her that he had Tenacious D's last disc in the glove compartment. Time for some fun.

"I like Britney Spears a lot."

"I'm sure you like to look at her at lot," Gia said, "but name one of her songs. Just one."

"Well…"

"Got him!" Karyn laughed.

"I like some of Eminem's stuff."

"Never," Gia said.

"It's true. I liked that conscience song he did, you know where he's got a good voice talking in one ear and a bad voice in the other. That was neat."

"Enough to buy it?"

"Well, no…"

"Got him again," Karyn said. "You want to try the nineties? Can you name one song from the nineties you listened to?"

"Hey, maybe I wasn't exactly a Spice Girls fan, but I was one hell of a nineties kinda guy."

"Prove it. One nineties group—name one you bought and listened to."

"Easy. The Traveling Willburys."

Claude burst out laughing as Karyn groaned. "I give up!"

"Hey, the Willburys formed in the nineties, so that makes them a nineties group. I also liked World Party's 'Goodbye Jumbo.'"

"Retro!"

"And hey, Counting Crows. I liked that 'Mr. Jones' song they did."

"That's because it sounded like Van Morrison!"

"That's not my fault. And you can't say Counting Crows weren't nineties. So there. A nineties guy, that was I."

"I'm getting a headache."

"Some Beatles will fix that," Jack said. "This disc is all pre-Pepper, before they got self-conscious. Good stuff."

The double-tracked guitar intro from "And Your Bird Can Sing" filled the car as Jack followed the BQE's meandering course along the Brooklyn waterfront, running either two or three stories above or one or two stories below street level. A bumpy ride over pavement with terminal acne. As they ran under the Brooklyn Heights overhang a magnificent vista of lower Manhattan, all lights ablaze, slid into view.

"I feel like I'm in Moonstruck," Karyn said.

"Except in Moonstruck the Trade Towers were there," Claude added.

The car fell silent as they passed under the neighboring on-ramps of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

Jack had never liked the Trade Towers, had never thought he'd miss those soulless silver-plated Twix bars. But he did, and still felt a stab of fury when he noticed the hole in his sky where they'd been. The terrorists, like most outsiders to the city, probably had viewed the twins as some sort of crown on the skyline, so they'd aimed for the head. But Jack wondered how the city would have reacted if the Empire State and the Chrysler Buildings had been targeted instead. They were more part of the city's heart and soul and history. King Kong—the real King Kong—had climbed the Empire State Building.

Brooklyn turned into Queens at the Kosciusko Bridge and the highway wandered past Long Island City, then the equally unspectacular Jackson Heights.

Astoria sits on the northwest shoulder of Queens along the East River. Jack visited frequently, but rarely by car. One of his mail drops was on Steinway Street. As he drove he debated a side trip to pick up his mail, but canned the idea. His passengers might start asking questions. He'd subway back next week.

Following Junie's somewhat disjointed directions—she usually cabbed here so she wasn't exactly sure of all her landmarks—he jumped off the BQE onto Astoria Boulevard and turned north, running a seamless gauntlet of row houses.

"If this Ifasen's so good," Jack said, "what's he doing out here in the sticks?"

Junie said, "Queens isn't the sticks!"

"Is to me. Too open. Too much sky. Makes me nervous. Like I'm going to have a panic attack or something." He swerved the car. "Whoa!"

"What's wrong?" Junie cried.

"Just saw a herd of buffalo. Thought they were going to stampede in front of the car. Told you this was the sticks."

As the back seat laughed, Gia gave his thigh one of those squeezes.

They passed a massive Greek Orthodox church but the people passing along the sidewalk out front were dressed in billowy pantaloons and skull caps and saris. Astoria used to be almost exclusively Greek; now it housed sizable Indian, Korean, and Bangladeshi populations. A polyglotopolis.

They cruised into the commercial district along Ditmars Boulevard where they passed the usual boutiques, nail salons, travel agencies, pet shops, and pharmacies, plus the ubiquitous KFCs, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald's, interspersed with gyro, souvlaki, and kabab houses. They passed a Pakistani-Bangladeshi restaurant; its front, like a fair number of others, sported signs written not just in foreign languages but foreign script. The Greek influence was still strong, though—Greek coffee shops, Greek bakeries, even the pizzerias sported the Acropolis or one of the Greek gods on their awnings.

"There!" Junie cried, leaning forward and pointing through the windshield at a produce shop with a yellow awning inscribed with English and what looked like Sanskrit. "I recognize that place! Make a right at the corner here."

Jack complied and turned into a quiet residential neighborhood. This street was lined with duplexes, a relief from the row houses. A train rumbled along a trestle looming above them.

"He's number 735," Junie said. "You can't miss it. It's the only detached single-family home on the block."

"Might be the only one in Astoria," Jack said.

"Should be on the right somewhere along—" Her arm lanced ahead again. "Here! Here it is! Awriiight!" Jack heard the slap of a high five somewhere behind him. "Told you I'd get us here!"

Jack found an empty spot and pulled into the curb.

Junie was out the door before he'd put the car in park. "Come on, guys! Let's go talk to dead folks!"

Karyn and Claude piled out, but Jack stayed put. "I think we'll pass."

"Aw, no," Junie said, leaning toward the passenger window. "Gia, you've got to come meet him. You've got to see what he can do!"

Gia looked at him. "What do you say?"

Jack lowered his voice. "I know this game. It's not—"

"You were a psychic?"

"No. I just helped one once."

"Great! Then you can explain it all afterwards." She smiled and tugged on his arm. "Come on. This could be fun."

"Fun like that party?" Gia gave him a look so Jack shrugged his acquiescence. "All right. Let's see if this guy lives up to Junie's press release."

Junie cheered and led Karyn and Claude toward the house while Jack closed up the car. He joined Gia at the curb. He started toward the house but stopped when he saw it.

"What's wrong?" Gia said.

He stared at the house. "Look at this place."

Jack couldn't say why, but he immediately disliked the house. It was colonial in shape, with an attached garage, but made of some sort of dark brown stone. It probably looked better during the day. Jack could make out a well-trimmed lawn and impatiens and marigolds in bloom among the foundation plantings along the front porch. But here in the dark it seemed to squat on its double-size lot like some huge, glowering toad edging hungrily toward the sidewalk. He could imagine a snakelike tongue uncoiling through the front door and snagging some unwary passerby.

"Definitely creepy looking," Gia said. "Probably by design."

"Don't go in there," said an accented voice from his left.

Jack turned and saw a slim, dark Indian woman in a royal blue sari, strolling her way along the sidewalk, being led by a big German shepherd on a leash.

"Excuse me?" Jack said.

"Very bad place," the woman said, closer now. Her dark hair was knitted into a long thick braid that trailed over her right shoulder; a fine golden ring pierced her right nostril. "Bad past. Worse future. Stay away." She didn't slow her pace as she came abreast of them. Her black eyes flashed at Jack—"Stay away"—then at Gia—"especially you."

Then she walked on. The dog looked back over his shoulder, but the woman did not.

"Now that's creepy," Gia said as an uncertain smile wavered across her lips.

Jack had always believed that in confronting a fear and facing it down, you weakened it. Recent events had given him second thoughts about the wisdom of that belief. And with Gia along…

"Maybe we should listen to her."

Gia laughed. "Oh, come on! She probably works for this guy; he sends her out to get us in the mood. Or maybe she's just a local wacko. You're not taking her seriously, are you?"

Jack looked after the retreating saried figure, now barely visible in the shadows. After what he'd been through lately, he was taking a lot more things seriously, things he'd laughed at before.

"I don't know."

"Oh, let's go," she said, tugging him up the front walk. "Junie's been seeing him for a couple of months and nothing bad's happened to her."

Jack put an arm around Gia's back and together they approached the house. They joined the others on the front porch where Junie had been jabbing at the bell button with no results.

She jabbed it again. "Where is he?"

"Maybe he's not home," Jack said.

"He's got to be! I can't—"

Just then the front door eased open a crack. Jack saw an eye and a sliver of dark cheek.

"Ifasen! It's me! Junie! Thank God you're here!"

The door opened wider, revealing a tall, lean black man, maybe thirty. He wore a white T-shirt and gray slacks; his hair was woven into neat, tight dreads that brushed his wide shoulders. Ifasen reminded Jack of Lenny Kravitz in his dreadlock days.

"Ms. Moon," he said with an unplaceable accent. "It's late."

Jack hid a smile at the obvious statement. This guy was experienced. The normal response would be, What are you doing here at this hour? But if you're supposed to be someone who knows all—or maybe not all, but a helluva lot more than ordinary people—you don't ask questions. You make statements.

But he wondered at the man's expression when he'd opened the door. He'd looked… relieved. Who had he been expecting?

"I know. And I know my appointment's tomorrow, but I had to come."

"You couldn't wait," he said, his tone calm, exuding confidence and assurance.

"Yes! Right! I need your help! I lost my good luck bracelet! You've got to find it for me!"

As he considered her plea, his gaze roamed among Jack and Gia and the others on the porch.

"I see you've brought company."

"I told them all about you and they're dying to meet you. Can we come in? Please?"

"Very well," Ifasen said. He stepped back and opened the door the rest of the way. "But only for a few minutes. I have to be rested for my early clients tomorrow."

That's right, Jack remembered. Weekends are busy times for psychics.

Junie led the way, followed by Karyn and Claude. Jack and Gia were just stepping over the threshold when a deep rumble filled the air, vibrating through their bones and shaking the house.

"Bomb!" Ifasen yelled. "Out! Everybody out!"

Then another sound, a deafening, high-pitched, echoing scream—whether of pain, fear, or joy, Jack couldn't say—filled the air.

Didn't sound like a bomb to Jack but he wasn't taking any chances. He grabbed Gia and hauled her back across the porch and onto the lawn. Junie, Claude, and a shrieking Karyn scurried behind them.

Ifasen was still at the front door, calling for someone named Charlie.

Jack kept moving, pushing Gia ahead of him up the walk toward the car. Then he noticed something.

He stopped. "Wait. Feel that?"

Gia looked into his eyes, and then at her feet. "The ground…"

"Right. It's shaking."

"Oh, my God!" Junie cried. "It's an earthquake!"

Just as suddenly as the tremors had started, they stopped.

Jack looked around. Across the street, up and down the block, lights were on and people were spilling out into their yards, standing around in all states of dress and undress, some crying, some looking simply bewildered.

Gia was staring at him. "Jack. An earthquake? In New York?"

"Don't you remember that one on the Upper East Side back in '01?"

"I read about it, but I never felt it. I felt this. And I didn't like it!"

Neither had Jack. Maybe people in places like LA got used to something like this, but feeling the solid granite bedrock of good old New York City rolling and trembling under his feet… pretty damn unsettling.

"What about that other sound? Like a scream? Did you hear that?"

Gia nodded as she moved closer and clutched his arm. "Like a damned soul."

"Probably just some old nails tearing free in the quake."

"If you say so. Sure sounded like a voice though."

Sure did, Jack thought. But he didn't want to add to her unease.

He looked around and saw Ifasen approaching with another, younger black man who bore a family resemblance. Both had similar builds and features, but instead of dreads the newcomer's hair was cut in a neat fade. He wore black slacks, black sneakers, and a lightweight long-sleeve turtle-neck, also black.

"An earthquake, Ifasen!" Junie said. "Can you believe it?"

"I knew something was going to happen," Ifasen said. "But impending seismic activity interferes with psychic transmission, so I couldn't get a clear message."

Jack nodded approval. The guy ad-libbed well.

Close up now, Jack noticed a horizontal scar along Ifasen's left cheek; his milk chocolate skin was otherwise flawless except for the stipple of whiskers shadowing his jaw.

"Can we go back inside now?" Junie said.

Ifasen shook his head. "I don't know…"

"Please?"

He sighed. "Very well. But only briefly." He put a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "This, by the way, is my brother Kehinde. He lives in Menelaus Manor with me."

Menelaus Manor? Jack thought, staring at the old house. This place has a name?

Kehinde led the way back to the house. Jack hung back with Gia so he could talk to Ifasen.

"Why'd you think it was a bomb?"

Ifasen blinked but his onyx eyes remained unreadable. "What gives you that idea?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that you yelled 'Bomb!' when the house started to shake."

"I'm not sure. Perhaps I was startled and it was the first thought that came to mind. The pre-seismic vibrations—"

Jack held up a hand. "Yeah. You told us."

Jack sensed Ifasen was telling the truth, and that bothered him. When your house starts to shake, rattle, and roll, it could be a lot of things, but bomb should not be first on your guess list.

Unless you were expecting one.

"And where's Charlie?"

Ifasen stiffened. "Who?"

"I heard you calling for someone named Charlie while we were evacuating."

"You must have misheard me, sir. I was calling for my brother Kehinde."

Jack turned to Gia. "Let's split. I don't think this is a good idea."

Before Gia could answer, Ifasen said, "Please. There's nothing to fear. Really."

"Let's do it, Jack." She glanced at Ifasen. "It'll take us, what—half an hour?"

"At most." Ifasen smiled. "As I said, I need my rest."

Half an hour, Jack thought. Okay. What could happen in half an hour?

2

"This is my channeling room," Ifasen said with a sweeping gesture.

Impressive, Jack thought as he looked around.

Ifasen had decked out the high-ceilinged first-floor room with a wide array of spiritualist and New Age paraphernalia along with some unique touches. Most striking were the host of statues—some looked like the real deal—from churches and Indian temples and Mayan pyramids: Mary, Saint Joseph, Kali, Shiva, a totem pole, a snake-headed god, cathedral gargoyles, and a ten-foot stone Ganesha holding a gold scepter in his coiled elephant trunk. Drapes covered the windows. The oak-paneled walls were festooned with paintings of spiritualist icons. Jack recognized Madame Blatavsky, the Mona Lisa of this Louvre of phonies.

At the far end of the room sat a round table surrounded by chairs; an ornate, pulpitlike podium upon a two-foot dais dominated the near end; Ifasen took his place behind it while Jack, Gia, Junie, Karyn, and Claude seated themselves among the chairs clustered before it.

"I am Ifasen," he said, "and I have been blessed with a gift that allows me to communicate with the spirit world. I cannot speak directly with the dead, but with the aid of Ogunfiditimi, an ancient Nigerian wise man who has been my spirit guide since I was a child, I can bring revelations and messages of peace and hope to our world from the place beyond."

"Ms. Moon's sitting with me was scheduled for tomorrow, but due to her dire need, I have moved it up to tonight. In gratitude, she has made a generous donation to the Menelaus Manor Foundation on behalf of you, her friends, to allow you to become part of her sitting."

Karyn and Claude clapped; Junie, alone in the front row, turned and waved.

"I will answer her question and yours in the form of a billet reading," Ifasen said. "My brother Kehinde is passing among you with billets, envelopes, and pens."

The billets turned out to be index cards. Jack took a couple from Kehinde for Gia and himself. He knew this game but decided to play along.

Ifasen said, "Please write your question on the billet, sign it, fold it, and seal it in the envelope. I will then contact Ogunfiditimi and ask him if he can find the answers in the spirit world. This is not a time for prank questions, or schemes to test the spirit world. Do not waste Ogunfiditimi's time by asking a question to which you already know the answer. And realize this: the mere fact that you have asked a question does not obligate the spirits to answer. They pick and choose. The worthier the question, the more likely it will be answered."

Great hedge, Jack thought. The perfect out.

"May I ask a question?" Gia said, raising her hand like a schoolgirl.

"Of course."

"Why do we have to seal the question in an envelope? Why can't we simply hand you the card and get the answer?"

Ifasen smiled. "Excellent question. Communication with the spirit world is not like a long-distance call. Words sometimes filter through, but often the communication is in the form of hints and feelings. To open the clearest channel, I need to empty my mind. If I'm thinking about the question, I'll muddy the waters with my own opinions and prejudices. But if I don't know the question, then my own thoughts can't get in the way. What comes through then is pure Spirit Truth."

"Smooth," Jack whispered. "Silky smooth."

Jack scribbled How is my sister? on his card and showed it to Gia.

"Is that fair?" she said.

"It's something I'd like to know."

Before he folded the card he tore a piece off the top left corner. As he slipped it inside the envelope he glanced at Gia and saw her sealing hers.

"What did you ask?"

She smiled. "That's between me and Ogunfiditimi."

He was about to press her when a soft musical chime filtered through the room. He looked up and saw Ifasen holding what appeared to be a large bowl of beaten brass on the tips of his fingers.

"This is a ceremonial bell from a temple deep in the jungles of Thailand. It is said that if properly mounted it will ring an entire day from a single stroke." He flicked a fingernail against the shiny surface and again the soft chime sounded. "But tonight we will be using it as a bowl to collect your billets."

He handed the bell to Kehinde who passed among them, collecting the envelopes. Jack kept an eye on him, watching closely as the younger brother placed the bell behind the base of the podium. He fiddled with something out of sight, then shook out a white cloth. The bell reappeared, covered with the cloth, and was handed up to Ifasen.

Jack leaned back, nodding. Gotcha.

Kehinde walked off and the lighting changed, the room growing dark while an overhead spot brightened, leaving Ifasen towering above them, bathed in a glow from heaven. He whipped off the white cloth and stared down into the bowl. After a moment he reached in and removed an envelope. He held it before him.

"I have the first question," he intoned. He lowered his head and raised the envelope on high where it gleamed like a star in the brilliant light. "Ogunfiditimi, hear me. These supplicants come before me, seeking knowledge, knowledge that only you can provide. Heed their requests and furnish the answers they seek."

He shuddered once, twice, then spoke in a flat, sepulchral tone.

"You are not yet ready. You must work harder, hone your craft, and above all, be patient. It will come."

Ifasen looked up and blinked. He lowered the envelope and picked up a slim gold-plated letter opener. He slit the top of the envelope and pulled the card from within. He unfolded it and, to Jack's chagrin, held it by the upper left corner. After reading it he smiled down at Karyn. "Does that answer your question, Karyn?"

She nodded enthusiastically.

Clause said, "What did you ask?"

"I wanted to know when I'll be as successful as Junie."

Junie turned to her. "Didn't I tell you? Isn't he just so amazing?"

"How does he do that?" Gia whispered.

"Later."

Knowing pretty much how the rest of the act would go, Jack pulled out a folded pamphlet he'd picked up downstairs. The cover read THE MENELAUS MANOR RESTORATION FOUNDATION over a grainy picture of this old stone house. So that was where the donations went.

He opened the yellow tri-fold brochure and out fell another, smaller pamphlet, almost the size of the three-by-five billet he'd just filled out. The cover showed a crude illustration of a human silhouette falling into a pit next to the title, "The Trap." He flipped it over and almost laughed aloud when he saw the words "Chick Publications." A Born Again mini-comic. The. opening pages showed a Christian character debunking a self-described channeler.

Some prankster was slipping Jack Chick's fundamentalist tracts into Ifasen's brochures. How rich.

Jack checked Ifasen, who had a fresh envelope held on high, but this time he skipped the incantation. Maybe he was in a hurry. He shook his head as if trying to clear it, scrinched up his eyes, then shook his head again. Finally he lowered the envelope and cast a disapproving look at Claude.

"The spirits refuse to answer this. They want me to tell you to buy a calculator."

He slit the envelope and unfolded the card—again holding it by the upper left corner. He read: " 'What is the square root of 2,762?' " He frowned at Claude, his disdain palpable. "What did I say about frivolous questions that waste the spirits' time?"

Claude grinned. "It's a question that's plagued me for years."

Junie gave him a fierce look and slapped him on the knee. Jack decided he liked Claude.

He put aside the Chick pamphlet and was starting to read Ifasen's propaganda on this house and its history when Gia nudged him.

"Pay attention. You might be next."

Jack refolded the brochure and trained his attention on Ifasen who had raised another envelope. He gave a couple of shudders, then, "Your sister sends you her love from the Other Side. She says she is well and to get on with your life."

Jack couldn't help feeling a chill. He knew the game, knew Ifasen was winging it here, but this was exactly what Kate would say.

Ifasen was unfolding a card, holding it as usual by the upper left corner. "Does that answer your question, Jack?"

"Completely," Jack said softly.

Gia looked at him with wide eyes and grabbed his arm. "Jack! How could he—?"

He cocked his head toward her and whispered, "An educated guess. He's very good."

"How can you write that off as a guess?"

"Easy. Of course, if he'd said, 'Kate sends her love,' that'd be a whole other ballgame. Big problem writing that off."

Another envelope had been thrust into the light, and now Ifasen was frowning again.

"I'm having trouble with this. I sense a number trying to come through, but the seismic static has increased. I'm not sure, but I believe the number is two." He opened his eyes. "And that's all."

Ifasen wore a puzzled frown as he slit this envelope, but when he read the message, he smiled. "Two." He looked up. "Does that satisfy you, Gia?"

"I… I think so," Gia said.

Jack glanced at her and thought she looked a little pale. "What did you ask?"

"Tell you later," she said.

"Now."

"Later. I want to see if he knows where Junie's bracelet is."

"The last envelope," Ifasen said, thrusting it up into the light. He closed his eyes, went through the shuddering deal, then said, "It is not stolen. You will find it in the large blue vase." He looked at Junie who was on her feet. "Do you have a large blue vase?"

"Yes! Yes!" She had her hands pressed against her mouth, muffling her words. "Right next to the door! But that can't be! How could it possibly get in there?"

"The spirits didn't say how, Ms. Moon," Ifasen told her. "They simply said where."

"I've gotta go! I've so gotta get home and check that vase!" She ran up to the podium and threw her arms around her psychic. "Ifasen, you're the best, the greatest!" She turned to Jack and Gia and Karyn and Claude. "Isn't he fantastic! Isn't he just so incredible!"

Jack joined the applause. Nothing incredible about Ifasen, but he was good. He was very good.

3

"Sweet Jesus!" Lyle Kenton said when their uninvited guests were finally gone. He'd already dropped his Ifasen persona; now he dropped into the recliner in the upstairs sitting room and rubbed his eyes. "What happened here tonight?"

His brother Charlie, no longer the subservient Kehinde, gave him a reproachful look from where he leaned against the couch, taking tiny sips from a Diet Pepsi. That was the way he drank: no gulps, just lots of quick, tiny sips.

"Ay, yo, Lyle. I thought you was eighty-sixin' it with taking the Lord's name in vain."

Lyle waved an apology with one hand and twisted one of his dreads in the other as he reran the past hour through his brain. Not the laid-back Friday night he'd planned. He and Charlie had been sitting in the living room, channel surfing in. search of something watchable on the tube when Junie Moon had come a-knockin'.

"I tell you, Charlie, when I saw Moonie standing there on the front porch with that crowd behind her, I thought we were cooked. I mean, I figured she'd tumbled to your little visit and brought down the heat."

Of course, on further reflection, he'd realized that if it really had been the heat, Junie Moon wouldn't have been with them.

"Coulda been worse," Charlie said, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, a deep purple velvet affair that had come with the house. Everything in the room—the furniture, the upright piano, the murky landscapes in gilded frames on the walls—had been here when they'd bought it ten months ago. "Coulda been the banger who done the drive-by."

Lyle nodded, feeling his neck tighten. Just last Tuesday night he'd been standing by the picture window in the waiting room downstairs when a bullet whizzed right by his head. It had punctured the pane without shattering it, leaving a hole surrounded by a small spiderweb of cracks. He'd dug it out of the wall, but since guns weren't his thing, he couldn't tell what" caliber it was. All he could be sure of was that it had been meant for him. The incident had left him shaken and more than a little paranoid. He'd kept the curtains pulled ever since.

The reason, he knew, was that a lot of well-heeled clients had started migrating from the Manhattan psychics to Astoria since Lyle had joined the game. None of those players was happy about it. A slew of angry, threatening, anonymous phone calls over the past few weeks had made that clear. But one of them—hell, maybe a group of them—had figured that phone calls wouldn't cut it and decided to play rough.

But Lyle hadn't called the police. They say the only bad publicity is no publicity, but this was an exception. A sensational story about his being shot at could be pure poison. People might stay away for fear of being caught in the middle of a shoot-out between warring psychics. He could imagine the quips: A trip to this psychic might put you a lot closer to the dearly departed than you intended.

Oh, yes. That would be a real boon to business.

But worse was the gut-clawing realization that someone wanted him dead.

Maybe not dead, he kept telling himself. Maybe the shot had been a warning, an attempt to scare him off.

He'd find that easier to believe if he'd been in another room at the time.

Nothing else had happened since. Things would settle out. He just had to keep his head down and give it time.

"But it wasn't," Lyle said. "It was just Junie Moonie and friends. So there I was, just starting to relax after finding out she's here because she can't wait till tomorrow for her session. I open the door, and what happens? Bam! The world starts to shake. I gotta tell you, bro, I almost lost it."

Charlie's grin had a sour twist. "I know you lost that busta accent."

"Did I?" Lyle had to smile. He'd been affecting a mild East African accent for so long now—used it twenty-four/seven—that he'd thought his Detroit ghetto voice dead and buried. Guess not. "Shows how much I was worried about you, man. You're my blood. I didn't want this whole house comin' down on your head."

"I 'predate that, Lyle, but Jesus was with me. I wasn't afraid."

"Well, you should have been. An earthquake in New York. Whoever heard of such a thing?"

"Maybe it's a warning, Lyle," Charlie said, still pacing and sipping. "You know, the Lord's way of telling us to get tight."

Lyle closed his eyes. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. You were so much more fun before you got religion.

My fault, he supposed. My bad.

A few years ago, when they'd been working a low-budget spiritualist storefront in Dearborn, a faith healer came to town and he and Charlie had gone to see how the guy worked his game, Lyle had kept his eye on all the wheelchairs the healer had brought along, and how his assistants would graciously offer them to unsteady looking old folks who tottered in—the same folks who'd "miraculously" be able to walk again after the healer prayed over them. While he was doing that, his younger brother had been listening to the sermon.

Lyle had gone home and written up notes for the future when he opened his own church.

Charlie had bought a Bible at the tent show, brought it home, and started reading it.

Now he was a Born Again. A True Believer. A Big Bore.

They used to make the bars together, pick up women together, do everything together. Now the only things that seemed to interest Charlie were reading his Bible and "witnessing."

Yet no matter what he did or didn't do, Charlie was still his brother and Lyle loved him. But he'd liked the old Charlie better.

"If that earthquake was the Lord's work and aimed at us, Charlie, he sure shook up a lot of people besides us."

"Maybe lots of people besides us need shaking up, yo."

"Amen to that. But what was with that scream? You've got to let me know when you're going to pull a new gag. The house shaking and the ground rumbling were bad enough, but then you throw in the scream from hell and everyone was ready to run for the river."

"Didn't have nothing to do with no scream," Charlie said. "That was the fo' reals, bro."

"Real?" In his heart Lyle had known that, but he'd been hoping Charlie would tell him different. "Real what?"

"Real as in not something I cooked up. That sound didn't come from no speakers, Lyle. It come from the house."

"I know. A bunch of these old beams shifting in the quake, right?"

Charlie stopped his pacing and stared at him. "You connin' me? You really gonna sit there and tell me that sounded like wood creaks to you? Betta recognize that was a scream, man. A human scream."

That was what it had sounded like to Lyle too, but it couldn't have been.

"Not human, Charlie, because the only humans here besides you and me were our uninvited guests, and they didn't do it. So it just sounded human, but wasn't."

"Was." Charlie's pacing picked up speed. "Come from the basement."

"How do you know that?"

"I standin' by the door when it went down."

"The basement?" Lyle felt a chill ripple along his spine. He hated the basement. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't 'xactly have time. We had guests, remember?"

"They've been gone for a while now."

Charlie looked away. "I knew you'd wanna go check it out."

"Damn right, I do." He didn't, not really, but no way he was going to sleep tonight if he didn't. "And would you sit down or something? You're making me nervous."

"Can't. I'm too jumpy. Don't you feel it, Lyle? The house has changed, yo. Noticed it soon as we come back inside after the quake. I can't explain it, but it feels different… strange."

Lyle felt it too, but wouldn't say so. That would be akin to buying into the same sort of supernatural mumbo jumbo they sold to the fish. Which he refused to do. But he had to admit that the room lights didn't seem quite as bright as before the quake. Or was it that the shadows in the corners seemed a little deeper?

"We've had a nerve-jangling week and you're feeling the effects."

"No, Lyle. It's like it ain't just us in this house no more. Like something else moved in."

"Who? Beelzebub?"

"Don't you go crackin' on me. You know you feel it, dawg, don't tell me you don't!"

"I don't feel nothin'!"

Lyle stopped and shook his head at the double negative. He'd spent years erasing the street from his vocabulary, but every once in a while, like a weed, it popped through the Third World turf he'd been cultivating. Ifasen's accent said old Third World, his dreads said new Third World; Ifasen was an international man who recognized no barriers—not between races, not between nations, not even between life and death.

But Third World was key. The affluent, white, New Age yo-yos who made up the demographic Lyle was chasing believed that only primitive and ancient civilizations retained access to the eternal truths obscured by the technophilia of western post-industrial civilization. They'd accept just about anything an East African named Ifasen told them, but would brush off the same if it came from Lyle Kenton of Detroit's Westwood Park slums.

Lyle didn't mind the act; kind of liked it, in fact. But Charlie wouldn't make the effort, declining to become what he called an "oreo." So he became the silent partner in the act. At least he agreed to dress the part of Kehinde. Left on his own he'd be baggied out with a dukey rope, floppy fat sneaks, and a backward Tigers cap. A hip-hop Born-Again.

Lyle jumped and spilled some beer on his pants as the phone rang. Man, his nerves were jangled. He looked at the caller ID: Michigan. He picked up.

"Hey, sugar. I thought you'd be on the plane by now."

Kareena Hawkins's velvet voice slunk from the receiver. The sound gave Lyle a rush of lust. "I wish I were. But tonight's promotion ran way over and the last plane out is gone."

He missed Kareena. She ran the PR department of a Dearborn rap station. At twenty-eight she was two years younger than Lyle. They'd been just about inseparable before he moved east, and had been carrying on a longdistance relationship the last ten months, the plan being for Kareena to move east and get a job with a New York station.

"So take a morning flight."

He heard her yawn. "I'm beat, Lyle. I think I'll just sleep in."

Lyle couldn't hide his disappointment. "Come on, Kareena. It's been three weeks."

"Next weekend'll be better. I'll call you tomorrow."

Lyle pressed his case awhile longer but to no avail. Finally they ended the call. He sat there a moment, staring at one of the crummy pictures on the wall and feeling morose.

Charlie said, "Kareena ain't gonna make it, I take it?"

"Nah. Too tired. That job of hers is—"

"Hate to say it, bro, but she playin' on you."

"No way. Don't talk like that."

Charlie shrugged and mimed zipping his lip.

Lyle didn't want to admit it but he'd begun suspecting the same thing. He'd gotten the growing impression that despite all her early enthusiasm for a career move, Kareena had cooled to the idea of leaving her comfy niche in Dearborn and challenging the New York market. And now she was cooling on him.

Only one thing to do: Take some time off next week and head west. Sit her down, talk to her, show her how important she was to him and how he couldn't lose her.

He looked at Charlie and said, "Let's go check the cellar."

Charlie only nodded.

Lyle led the way down to the first level, through the old-fashioned linoleum-floored kitchen, and down the cellar steps. He flipped the light on and stopped, staring.

"Jeees—" Realizing Charlie was right behind him, he stopped himself, then added, "—and crackers."

According to the real estate agent who'd sold them the place, the cellar had been finished by a previous owner, two prior to Lyle. Whoever he was, he'd had no taste. He'd put in a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights, tacky fake wood paneling in some blah shade of pecan on the walls, and painted the concrete floor orange. Orange! It looked like a rec room out of a bad movie from the sixties, or maybe the fifties. Whatever, it did not belong in Menelaus Manor.

But now a huge crack split its orange floor.

"Peep this!" Charlie said as he brushed past Lyle and approached it.

The jagged crack ran the entire width of the floor, wall to wall, east to west, widening to a couple of inches near the center. Crack was an understatement. The concrete slab of the floor had been broken in half.

His brother was already crouched by the opening when Lyle arrived.

"Looks deep," Charlie said.

Lyle's heart stumbled over a beat as he saw his brother start to wriggle his fingers into the crack. He grabbed Charlie's wrist and snatched it back.

"What kind of fool are you?" he shouted, angry and frightened. "What if that floor decides to shift back? What are you going to do with a right hand that's got no fingers?"

"Oh, right," Charlie said, cradling his fingers as if they'd been hurt. "Good point."

Lyle shook his head. Charlie was so bright in so many ways, but sometimes, when it came to common sense…

Lyle studied the crack, wondering how deep the ground was split beneath it. He leaned over and squinted into the opening. Nothing but featureless darkness beyond.

Wait… was that—?

Lyle snapped his head up, momentarily dizzy. For a moment there he thought he'd seen stars… as if he'd been looking at a night sky, but someone else's sky, like no night sky ever seen from earth… a yawning well of stars that threatened to drag him down through the opening.

He backed away, afraid to look again, and as he moved he thought he felt a puff of air against his face. He placed his hand over the opening. A feather-light breeze wafted against his palm.

Damn! Where was that coming from?

"Charlie, look in there and tell me what you see."

"Why?"

"Make like a Nike and just do it."

Charlie put his eye to the crack. "Nathan. Just black."

Lyle looked again and this time saw no stars, no strange sky. But what about a moment ago?

He straightened. "Bring me the toolbox, will you?"

"What wrong?"

"I'm not sure."

Charlie returned in less than a minute. Lyle opened the toolbox and found some two-inch nails. He pressed his ear to the crack and dropped one through. He listened for the clink of it hitting bottom, but it never came.

Lyle motioned his brother closer. "Get your ear down here and see if you hear anything."

A second try yielded the same nonresult for Lyle. He straightened and looked at Charlie. "Well?"

Charlie shook his head. "Could be soft dirt down there. Like sand."

"Maybe. But you'd think we'd hear something."

"Got an idea!"

Charlie jumped up and ran back upstairs. He returned with a pitcher of water.

"This gotta work."

Lyle fitted his ear against the crack; Charlie did the same and then began to pour. The faint trickle of the water through the crack was all Lyle heard. No splash, not even a hint of one, from below.

Lyle straightened to sitting. "Just what we need: a bottomless pit under our house."

"What we do?" Charlie stared at him, obviously expecting an answer from big brother.

Lyle didn't have one. He definitely didn't want the city to know about this. They might condemn the place and boot him out. He hadn't come all the way from Michigan to get kicked out of the first home he'd ever owned.

No, he needed someone discreet who knew his way around construction and could tell him what was wrong and how to fix it. But he'd only been in town ten months and—

"Dear Lord!" Charlie cried, jamming a hand over his nose and mouth. "What that!"

Lyle didn't have to ask. He gagged as the odor hit him. It lifted him to his feet and sent him staggering toward the stairs. Charlie was right behind him as he pelted up to the first floor and shut the door.

Lyle stood in the kitchen, gasping as he stared at his brother. "We must be sitting over a sewer line or something."

Charlie stared back. "One that run through a graveyard. You ever smell anything stink so bad? Even close?"

Lyle shook his head. "Never." He'd never imagined anything could smell that foul. "What next? A meteor through the roof?"

"Tellin' you, Lyle, the Lord's puttin' us on notice."

"With a stink bomb? I don't think so."

Although the odor hadn't reached the kitchen, Lyle didn't want to take any chances. He and Charlie stuffed wet paper towels into the spaces between the door and its molding.

When they'd finished, Lyle went to the fridge and pulled out a Heinie keg can. He could have done with a double deuce of Schlitz M-L right now, but that was way too street.

"You not gettin' bent, are you?" Charlie said.

He handed Charlie another Pepsi. "When was the last time I got bent?"

"When was the last time you had an earthquake open a bottomless pit under your house?"

"Good point." He took a long cold gulp from the can and changed the subject. "By the way, one of the guys with Moonie tried to pull a fast one tonight, and I don't mean Mr. Square Root."

"The bama-looking Joe?" Charlie said, resuming his pacing.

"Bama-looking Jack, if we're to believe the name he wrote. I knew he was trouble right from the start. Heard me calling you by your real name when we were evacuating and wanted to know why I yelled 'bomb' when the quake hit. I kept an eye on him after that. He didn't miss a trick. He watched your every move, then mine. Good thing I was onto him, otherwise I might have missed seeing him tear a corner off his billet."

"So that's why you was holding them by the top corner. You always hold them bottom center." Charlie frowned. "You think he here to make trouble?"

Lyle shook his head. "No. I got the impression he didn't even want to be here. I think he was bored and having a little fun with me. He knew exactly what I was doing but he was cool with it. Just sat there and let the show roll."

Lyle wandered into the waiting room; Charlie followed, saying, "Maybe he in the game."

"Not ours. Another game, but don't ask me what." Lyle had sensed something going on behind that white guy's mild brown eyes; something that said, Don't mess. "Some game of his own."

Lyle prided himself on his ability to read people. Nothing psychic about it, no spirits involved, just something he'd been able to do as long as he could remember. A talent he'd honed to a fine edge.

That talent had found the visitor named Jack a hard read. Bland-looking guy: nothing-special clothes, brown hair, mild brown eyes, not handsome, not ugly, just… there. But he'd moved with a secret grace inside a damn near impenetrable shield. The only thing Lyle had sensed about him besides the steer-clear warning was a deep melancholy. So when he'd seen his question—"How is my sister?"—Lyle's instincts shouted, Recently deceased!

If the reaction of the woman with him was any indicator, Lyle had scored a bull's-eye.

"But we came out okay," Lyle said. "We may have hooked a future fish or two, and after Moonie finds her long lost bracelet right where I told her it would be, she'll be singing my praises to anyone who'll listen."

Charlie sat down at the upright piano that had come with the house, and pounded the keys. "Wish I could play."

"Take lessons," Lyle said as he drifted to the front picture window.

He pulled back the curtain just enough to reveal the bullet hole at the center of its crack web. Before filling it with translucent rubber cement, he'd run a pencil through the hole with ease. So small, and yet so deadly. For the thousandth time he wondered—

Movement to his right caught his eye. What? God damn! Someone was out there!

"Hey!" he shouted as a burst of rage drove him toward the front door.

"Whassup?" Charlie said.

"Company!" Lyle yanked open the door and leaped.onto the front porch. "Hey!" he shouted again as he spotted a dark figure racing away across the lawn.

Lyle sprinted after him. Somewhere in his brain he heard faint cries of Danger! and Bullets! but he ignored them. His blood was up. Good chance this was the banger wannabe who'd done the drive-by, but he wasn't driving now, and he wasn't shooting, he was running, and Lyle wanted a piece of him.

The guy was carrying something. Looked like a big can of some sort. He glanced over his shoulder. Lyle caught a flash of pale skin, then the guy was tossing the can Lyle's way. It didn't go far—sailed maybe half a dozen feet then hit the ground with a metallic sound and rolled. Unburdened, the guy picked up speed and beat Lyle to the curb where he hopped into a car that was already moving before the door closed.

Lyle pulled up at the sidewalk, gasping for air. Out of shape. Charlie came up beside him, breathing hard, but not as hard as big brother.

"See his face?"

"Not enough to recognize. But he's white."

"Figured that."

Lyle turned and headed back. "Let's go see what he dropped."

He squatted by the object and turned it over. A gasoline can.

"Shit!"

"What he gonna do? Burn a cross?"

"Doubt it." Whites were in the minority on these streets. Another dark face moving in was a nonevent. "This is business. He was looking to burn us out."

He rose and kicked the can, sending it rolling across the grass. The New York psychic game had only so many players. One of them had done this. He just had to find out who.

But how?

4

"All right," Gia said. "We're finally alone. Tell me how Ifasen did what he did."

She'd been dying to know ever since they'd left the psychic's house, but they'd been stuck driving Junie home. Since Karyn and Claude lived on the Lower East Side as well, they'd tagged along. Jack had dropped all three outside Junie's apartment building and now he was ferrying Gia uptown on First Avenue.

Despite the late hour, progress was slow. Gia didn't mind. Time with Jack was never wasted.

"First let's decide where we're going," Jack said. "Your place or mine?"

Gia glanced at her watch. "Mine, I'm afraid. We're getting to the end of the sitter's time frame."

Vicky, her eight-year-old, still would be up. She rarely failed to cadge extra hours of TV out of her sitters.

Jack sighed dramatically. "Another celibate night."

Gia leaned close and nuzzled his ear. "But it's the last one for the next week. Did you forget that Vicky leaves for camp tomorrow morning?"

Gia had been trying to forget it. She'd hated the week Vicky had been gone last summer—the seven loneliest days of the year—and was dreading her departure tomorrow.

"I did. Forgot completely. I realize you'll miss her terribly, as will I, but I know just the thing to ease the pain of separation."

Gia smiled and twirled a lock of Jack's hair. "And whatever would that be?"

"That's my secret until tomorrow night."

"I can't wait. And speaking of secrets, what's Ifasen's?"

"No-no," Jack said. "First you tell me the question you asked. If 'two' was the answer, what was the question?"

She shook her head. She now found herself a little embarrassed by her question. If she could get away without revealing it…

"You first. Tell me how that man can give answers when he doesn't know the question."

"You're sure you want to know?" Jack said, turning his head to give her a smile.

A smile from Jack… so few of those since Kate's death. She missed them.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Might spoil the fun."

"I can handle the truth. How does he do it?"

"Pretty much the same way Johnny Carson did when he pulled his Karnak the Magnificent shtick."

"But he was reading off cue cards."

"Exactly. And in effect, so is Ifasen."

Gia shook her head, baffled. "I don't get it. We sealed those envelopes. We heard him give the answer, we watched him open the envelope and read the question."

"Things aren't always as they appear."

"I know that only I knew what was written on my card."

"Not after his brother Kehinde did his work."

"Kehinde? But he just—"

"Appears to be a gofer? That's what you're supposed to think. But Kehinde is key. Ifasen put on the show, but he couldn't have done it without his brother's help. The method is called 'one ahead.' If you remember, right after Kehinde collected the sealed envelopes he took the bowl around to the rear of the podium and made a show of covering it with the cloth. That's the key moment. Because while you think he's fiddling with the cloth, he's really slitting open one of the envelopes and removing its card—or billet as the psychics like to call them. He was also tossing in a marked envelope containing a blank card."

"Why?"

"Think about it. When Ifasen—and by the way, if that's his real name, mine is Richard Nixon—when he removes the white cloth on the bowl, he looks down and reads the question on the card Kehinde opened for him. Then he picks up one of the sealed envelopes and raises it above his head. But he doesn't answer the question in the raised envelope; he answers the question on the card in the bowl."

"I get it!" Gia said, feeling a burst of pleasure as all the pieces fell into place. "After he answers the question in the bowl, he tears open the envelope and pretends to read the question he just answered, but actually he's seeing the next question."

"Exactly. And for the rest of the show, he stays one envelope ahead—which is how the method got its name."

"And the blank card in the extra marked envelope is so Ifasen won't wind up one short." She shook her head. "It's so simple."

"The best tricks are."

Gia couldn't hide her chagrin at being so easily fooled. "Am I so gullible?"

"Don't feel bad. You've got plenty of company. Millions, I'll bet. That trick's been conning people since the eighteen hundreds. Probably started as a sideshow mentalist gag, then the spiritualists picked it up and they've been milking it ever since."

"So Ifasen's a fake psychic."

"That's redundant."

"How do you know so much about it?"

Jack shrugged, but didn't look her way. "You pick things up here and there."

"You told me earlier you once helped a psychic. One of your customers?"

"No. I worked for one, as a helper, playing the gofer like Kehinde, plus doing behind-the-scenes stuff."

"No!" She'd never imagined. "When?"

"Long time ago, when I first came to the city."

"You never told me."

"Not necessarily something I'm proud of."

Gia laughed. "Jack, I can't believe this. After all the things you've done…"

She saw him glance at her, then train his eyes back on the traffic again. He said nothing, but that look said it all: You don't know all the things I've done. Not even close.

How true. And Gia preferred it that way. The Jack she saw on almost a daily basis was even tempered and good-natured, gentle and considerate in bed, and treated Vicky like his own daughter. But she knew he had another side. She'd seen it only once. That had been when—

Had it been almost a year already? Yes. It was last August when that filthy creature abducted Vicky. She still remembered Jack's face when he heard about it, how it had changed, how he'd bared his teeth, how his normally mild brown eyes had become flat and hard. She'd looked then into the cold harsh face of murder, a face she never wanted to see again.

Kusum Bahkti, the man Jack had gone after that night… he disappeared from the face of the earth, as if he'd never been.

Jack killed him. Gia knew that and, God help her, she'd been glad. She was still glad. Anyone who wanted to harm her little girl deserved to die.

Kusum wasn't the only man Jack had killed. Gia knew of one other for sure: the mass murderer he'd stopped in mid-slaughter on a subway car back in June. For a while the mystery "Savior" had been all the media talked about, but the furor had pretty much died down now.

Gia was sure there had been others. She didn't know this for a fact, but it was a reasonable conclusion. After all, Jack made his living fixing situations for people who'd run out of aboveground options. When that happened, some of them went underground in search of a solution. A few of those wound up with Jack.

So Jack's clientele—he insisted on calling them customers instead of clients—was hardly the cream of society. And to solve their problems he sometimes had to mix it up with some abominable lowlifes, people ready to kill to prevent Jack from doing his job. Since Jack was still alive, she had to assume that some of those others were not.

None of these were happy thoughts, and Gia preferred to tuck them out of sight where she didn't have to deal with them. She loved Jack, but hated what he did. When she'd stepped off the bus from Iowa to pursue her dream of being an artist, she'd never known a man like Jack could exist, let alone that she'd wind up with him. She was a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen; he was not.

She'd finally forced herself to face the truth: she loved a criminal. He wasn't on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, or on anyone else's wanted list, for that matter—because none of the list makers knew he even existed—but he definitely lived outside the law. She couldn't imagine how many laws he'd broken and continued to break every day.

But strangely he was the most moral man—her father aside—that she'd ever met. He was like an elemental force. She knew he would never break faith with her, never leave her in the lurch, never allow her to come to harm. She knew that if it ever came down to it, he'd give his life for her. She felt safe with Jack, as if surrounded by an impenetrable shield.

No one else could give her that feeling. Last year at this time, they'd been split. Jack had told her when they first met that he was a "security consultant." When Gia had learned how he really made his living, she'd walked out. She'd dated other men during the hiatus, but they all seemed so insubstantial after Jack. Like wraiths.

And then, despite all the hurt and invective she'd heaped on him, when she and Vicky had needed him most, he'd been there.

"I mean," she said, rephrasing, "with all the scams you've pulled through the years—"

"Scamming a scammer is different. The fish these psychics hook don't know any better. I think people should get something real for their money, not just smoke and mirrors."

"Maybe smoke and mirrors is what they're looking for. Everybody's got to believe in something. And after all, it's their money."

Jack glanced at her. "Am I hearing right? Is this the Gia I know?"

"Seriously, Jack, where's the harm? Probably better than throwing it away at Foxwoods or Atlantic City. At least they can get some comfort out of it."

"You can lose the ranch in a casino and, trust me, you can lose just as much to a psychic. The bitch I worked for…" He shook his head. "Bitch is not a term I use lightly. It took me a while to realize what a foul, vindictive, small person she was, and when I did—"

"Did she cheat you?"

"Not me. I was already disillusioned with her and her crummy little game, but the icing came when she scammed some little old lady into signing over a valuable piece of property to her; convinced her it was what her dead husband wanted her to do."

"Oh, no." The image twisted inside Gia.

"That was when I walked."

"But they're not all like that."

"The open ones are."

"Open?"

"There's two kinds of mediums. The closed mediums really believe in the spirit world and what they're doing; they've bought the whole package. As a rule they limit themselves to readings—tarot cards, palms, tea leaves, that sort of thing. They don't put on a show. Open mediums, on the other hand, are all show. They're con men who know it's a scam, who trade background information on their suckers, and are always looking for bigger and better ways to hoodwink them. They knowingly sell lies. They promise a peek into the afterlife, but they use special effects like ectoplasm and voices and spirit writing to fool people into believing they've delivered."

"But Jack, I'll bet a fair number of people derive some comfort from them. Look at you tonight. If you didn't know what you do, and let's say you maybe half-believed, wouldn't you have found comfort in that message from Kate?"

"Sure. But here's my point: it wasn't from Kate. It was from Ifasen. He told a lie. If I'd come to him as a private client, all I would have got for my money was a lie."

"And peace of mind which, in a way, is priceless."

"Even if it's built on a lie?"

Gia nodded. "If a placebo cures your headache, you're rid of your pain, aren't you?" Jack sighed. "I suppose so." He shook his head. "The really sad thing about so many of these open psychics is that they're truly talented. They possess amazing insight into people, an instinct for reading body language and picking up on every nuance of speech and dress. They know people. They could be ace psychologists. They could make a great living in the straight world—you know, doing well while doing good. But they'd rather stay on the fringe, playing their games."

"Hmmm," Gia said. "Sounds like someone I know but I can't quite place the name. I think it begins with a J…"

"Very funny. Except I don't play games. I deliver. And if I don't, it's not for lack of trying." He shot her a rueful smile. "But you know, I do believe old Ifasen did something for me tonight. I know he just rattled off a stock message from the 'Other Side,' but to tell the truth, he happened to hit on exactly what Kate would have said."

"You mean about getting on with your life?"

"Yeah."

"How many times have I told you that Kate wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life moping around? And when was the last time I mentioned that very thing? How many hours ago? Two? Three maybe?"

He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, I know. But sometimes you have to hear it from a stranger. Anyway, I think it's time for me to get back in the saddle again. I've got a couple of calls in my voice mail right now. I'll check them out tomorrow, and if one of them is right for me, I'll be back to work."

"That's wonderful."

What am I saying? Gia thought.

She hated Jack's work. It was usually dangerous. Every time he hired on to "fix" a situation, he ran the risk of being hurt. But worse, because the police were as much a threat as any hoodlum he took on, he couldn't count on them for help if he got in over his head. When Jack went off to work, he went alone.

How many times had she pleaded with him to find something less dangerous to do? He'd compromised by promising to restrict his fix-it work to situations he could repair at arm's length, where he didn't have to show his face or get personally involved. Gia believed he tried his best to keep that promise, but too often the jobs didn't go as planned.

But his interest in returning to work meant he was pulling out of his funk. That, at least, was good.

"Maybe you should go back for a private session," she said. "Maybe he'll tell you to get into a safer line of work. And maybe you'll listen when he tells you. Heaven knows you don't listen when I do."

"I think we should stay away from Ifasen, but not for that reason."

"Meaning?"

"I think he's got trouble."

"You mean because he yelled 'bomb'?"

"That… and other things."

"Like what?"

"A patched bullet hole in his front window, for instance."

"You're sure?"

He nodded. "It could have been there when he bought the house, but he's obviously renovated the place, so… someone's giving him a hard time."

"But who—?"

"Other psychics. The lady—I use the term loosely—that I once worked for used to go berserk when she lost a sitter to another psychic. She called herself Madame Ouskaya but her real name was Bertha Cantore. I used to think she'd seen The Wolfman too many times and ripped off the name of that old actress Maria Ouspenskaya who played the gypsy, but that was giving her too much credit. I can't imagine her ever sitting though the credits of a movie. Finally one night, when she'd had a few too many gins and was sailing a few too many sheets to the wind, she told me that she'd cadged it off an ancient Russian neighbor who'd died when Bertha was ten. But you know how they talk about a leopard never changing its spots? That was Bertha. She may have called herself Ouskaya, but that didn't hide her true nature. Her father was Sicilian and she had a hitman's temper. She'd send me out to slash tires and break windows and—"

"Did you?"

Jack didn't look at her. "Most of the time I just told her I did, but sometimes… sometimes, yeah, I did."

"Jack…" She couldn't keep the dismay out of her voice.

"Hey, I was hungry, stupid, and a lot younger. I thought what was bad for her was bad for me. I hadn't figured out yet that she was bad for me. Hell, if she knew how to make bombs, she'd probably've wanted me to plant them, or wire ignitions to blow the competition away." He shook his head. "What a nutcase."

"Could she be the one Ifasen's afraid of?"

"Nah. Couple of years ago I heard that she'd, as they say in the trade, migrated to the Other Side." A quick glance Gia's way, embarrassment in his eyes. "Let's not talk about her, okay? Makes my teeth hurt just to think about her."

Gia knew getting off the topic of this Madame Ouskaya would probably turn the conversation to her question to Ifasen. She cast about for a diversion and spotted the pamphlet Jack had brought from the psychic's house. She snatched it up.

"'The Menelaus Manor Restoration Foundation.' What's this?"

"Sounds like a scam. Take donations to renovate the house you're living and working in. A win-win proposition for Ifasen if I ever heard one."

"Is all this true?" Gia said, gathering flashes of the house's history of mayhem by the light of street lamps they passed.

"I never got a chance to get into it. What's it say?"

She turned on the console lamp and held the brochure under the glow. "It says the place was built in 1952 by Kastor Menelaus. He died of cancer, and was the last owner to 'pass on to the Other Side' due to natural causes."

Jack grinned. "This sounds like it's gonna be good!"

"His son Dmitri, who inherited the house, committed suicide in the early nineties. The next owners, a Doctor Singh and his wife, had the place for a few years, did some renovations, and then someone cut their throats while they were sleeping." She looked up at Jack. "This is awful! I hope it's fiction."

"Read on."

Gia was liking this less and less. "The previous owners, the ones before Ifasen, were Herbert Lom and his wife—"

"Not the actor—the guy who played in the Hammer Phantom of the Opera?"

"It doesn't say. He and his wife Sara disappeared after—oh, God." Something about a mutilated child. Her stomach turned and she closed the brochure.

"After what?"

"Never mind. Jack, this is sick! It's like the place is cursed. He has to be making this stuff up."

Jack was shaking his head. "Doubt it. Too easy to get caught. My guess is he's taken a few facts and embellished them to within an inch of their collective lives. Read on."

"I'd rather not."

"Just skip to some part that's not gory."

Reluctantly she reopened the brochure and skipped down a paragraph from where she'd left off. "Ifasen quotes himself here: 'I chose Menelaus Manor because the violent deaths have left behind strong psychic vibrations. The souls of those who died here do not rest easy, and their ongoing presence weakens the divide between our world and the Other Side, making Menelaus Manor the perfect site for the church I will establish here.'" Gia looked at Jack. "Church?"

Jack smiled. "The ultimate scam. Tax-free heaven, and completely legal. Like minting money. How do you think the Scientologists can afford to sue anyone who says a discouraging word about their racket?"

"He says here donations will go toward 'putting the Manor at peace with this world and in harmony with the next.' What does that mean?"

"It means renovations will probably go on forever. Or at least until Ifasen crosses over to the Other Side himself."

"Careful, Jack," she told him. "Keep talking like that and I'll start suspecting you're a cynic."

"Me?"

Jack pulled into Sutton Square and stopped before Gia's door. He pulled her close and kissed her.

"Thanks for dragging me out tonight. Earthquakes and psychics in cursed manors… you sure know how to show a guy a good time."

She returned the kiss. "Anytime. And tomorrow night I'll show you an even better time."

"Hot-cha!"

Laughing, they got out of the car. Jack put an arm around her shoulders; he started to walk her the short distance to her door, but stopped halfway there.

"Hey. Wait a sec. You never told me your question. What was it?"

"It was nothing. Just some silliness I was playing around with. Don't—"

"Who loves silly more than me? Tell, Gia. I won't go home until you do."

"All right." She could see no way out of it. "I asked, 'How many children will I have?'"

"And he told you two." Jack grinned. "I wish I believed in this stuff. That would mean I'd be the father of number two. At least I assume I'd be."

"He said it with such assurance."

"That's because he's a pro. And because he figured it was a safe number. Consider it from his angle: You look younger than your years; Ifasen figures you've got one child, maybe two. So even if you have no kids, if he answers two or three, he's golden. Three would be the safer number, but I've got a feeling this guy likes to play close to the edge. He took a chance and said two."

"But if I never have another child, he'll be proven wrong."

"By the time you know that for sure, you'll have forgotten about Ifasen. Or he can deny that's what he said. He can't lose. So don't waste brain time thinking about it."

But that wasn't so easy for Gia. She remembered feeling a little queasy this morning. But she couldn't be pregnant. She was on the pill, and she was faithful about taking it every morning…

Except back in June when she and Vicky had flown out to Iowa to visit the family. She'd forgotten to pack her pills. Unusual for her because she never forgot her pills. But it hadn't mattered because Jack wasn't with her. And as soon as she returned she'd immediately started back on them.

But right after she returned she and Jack had…

Gia felt a twinge of nausea. She could think of worse things that could happen, but she didn't want this, not now…

It wasn't possible…

Maybe not. But first thing tomorrow, as soon as Vicky was on that bus to camp, she was picking up a home pregnancy test kit.

IN THE IN-BETWEEN

For a long time it was not. But now it is.

For a long time it was not aware. But now it is.

Barely aware. It does not know what or who it is or was. But it knows that at some time past it existed, and then that existence was ended. But now it exists again.

Why?

It does not know where it is. It reaches out as far as it can and vaguely senses other presences, some like itself, and many, many more unlike it, but can identify none of them.

The disorientation makes it afraid, but another emotion pushes through the fear: rage. It does not know the source of the rage but clings to the feeling. Acceptance makes the rage grow. It nestles in the rage and waits for a direction in which to unleash it…

IN THE WEE HOURS

Lyle awoke shivering.

What was wrong with that damn air conditioner? It was barely cooling the room when he'd gone to bed, now it was freezing him out. He opened his eyes. His first-floor bedroom faced the street, so he kept the blinds pulled at night; the light seeping between the slats now was the yellow glow of the street lamps, not the pale gray of dawn. He blinked the glowing clock display into focus: 2:32.

He groaned softly. He couldn't find the energy to get up, so he pulled his sheet closer around his neck and tried to fall back into sleep. But thoughts of fires and attempts on his life wouldn't allow it.

Someone wanted him dead…

That had kept him up for a while. After a few more beers to take the edge off, he'd hit the rack; but sleep had played coy while he lay awake here in the dark listening for any unusual noises. Finally he'd drifted off.

The room grew colder still, its chill seeping through the sheet to wrap him in an icy embrace. He kicked his leg out over the edge of the bed. Damn it all, he'd have to get up and—

Wait. The air conditioner wasn't running. No mistake about that. This old place didn't have central air so he'd had to buy window units, and they were anything but quiet.

Lyle froze. Not from the cold but from another sensation: he was not alone in the room. He could feel a presence somewhere in the darkness at the end of the bed.

"Charlie?"

No response from the shadows, no rustle of clothing, no whisper of breathing, but the stiff hairs on his arms and the tight skin along the back of his neck told him that someone else was here. He knew it wasn't his brother—Charlie would never play with his head like this—but he had to ask again.

"Charlie, damn it, is that you?" He heard a tremor in his voice, in sync with his quivering heart.

As the cold became more intense, Lyle slid back against the headboard. He wormed his hand between the mattress and box spring and came up with the carving knife he'd placed there earlier. With its handle in a sweaty death grip, he fumbled his free hand toward the bedside lamp, and clicked it on.

Nothing happened. He clicked once, twice, half a dozen times more. Still no light. What was going on? It had worked just fine a few hours ago. Was the power out?

No. The clock display was still—

Then the clock blacked out, just for a second, as if a dark shape had passed in front of it.

Lyle's heart was pounding madly now. He sensed whoever it was coming closer, moving toward him around the side of the bed.

"I've got a knife, damn it!" His hoarse, dry voice cracked in the middle. "Stay back!"

But whoever it was moved relentlessly forward until he hovered over Lyle, leaning closer…

"Fuck you!" Lyle screamed and rammed the knife straight ahead.

Whatever the blade sliced into, it wasn't clothing or flesh; more like powdery snow, and cold—Lyle had never felt such cold. He drew back his hand and tried to drop the knife but his numb fingers wouldn't respond.

And then the lamp came on. Lyle jumped, gasped, and thrust out the knife again—to attack, defend, he didn't know, the blade seemed to move of its own will—but he saw no one.

Gone! But that couldn't be. And the cold—gone too, leaving cloying, humid air in its wake. He looked at the knife and cried out when he saw the thick red fluid oozing down the blade. He hurled it to the floor… and saw what else lay there.

"Charlie!"

Oh God oh Christ it was Charlie on his back, legs and arms splayed, his chest a bloody ruin, and his glazed eyes staring at Lyle in shocked surprise.

Lyle felt as if his bones had dissolved. He slid off the bed and crumpled to his knees beside his dead brother.

"Charlie, Charlie," he mumbled through a sob as he bent over him. "Why'd you do it? Why'd you do something so stupid! You knew—"

"Lyle?"

Charlie's voice. Lyle snapped upright.

"Lyle, what do you want?"

Behind him. He turned and there, across the room, in the doorway on the far side of the bed, stood Charlie. Lyle opened his mouth but couldn't speak. It couldn't be. It…

He turned back to the floor and found it empty except for the knife. No Charlie, no blood on the rug or the blade.

Am I losing it?

"What's going on, man?" Charlie said, yawning. "Why you callin' me this hour?"

Lyle looked at him again. "Charlie, I…" His voice choked off.

"Hey, you all right?" Charlie said, his expression concerned instead of annoyed as he stepped forward. "You look bust, bro."

Finally he could speak. "I just had the worst nightmare of my life. It seemed so real and yet… it couldn't have been."

"What happened? I mean, what it about?"

"Someone here, in the room, coming for me…" He decided not to tell Charlie how the dream had ended.

Charlie nodded. "Well, no mystery where that come from, yo."

Right. No stretch to interpret this dream, but Lyle couldn't shake its remnants… the cold… and the presence.

"But I was so sure someone was here." He pointed at the knife on the floor. "I even tried to cut him."

Charlie's eyes widened as they fixed on the blade. "Sweet Lord, I can see I better start locking my door at night case you start sleepwalking."

He grinned to show he was only kidding. Lyle tried to return the smile, and hoped it didn't look as sick as he felt. If Charlie only knew…

Lyle picked up the knife and turned it over and back, shuddering at the memory of the blood he'd seen coating it. He examined his worn reflection in the surface of the blade, as pristine as when he'd taken it from the cutlery drawer earlier tonight.

Okay, so he hadn't stabbed Charlie. Thank God for that. But against all reason he couldn't shake the feeling that someone else had been here in this room tonight.

Maybe he should go out and find himself a gun.

IN THE IN-BETWEEN

It still does not know who or what or where it is, but memory fragments flash like meteorites through its consciousness, frightening glimpses of sharp objects and gushing red liquid. It must leave here, must get out, OUT!

SATURDAY

1

"I'll be fine, Mom," Vicky said as Gia gave her one last great big hug before releasing her to the camp-bound bus. "You're just having separation anxiety."

Gia had to laugh as she pushed her daughter back to arm's length. "I'm having what?"

"Separation anxiety. I read about it in the camp brochure."

"But you're supposed to have it, not me."

"I am. I'm worried you're going to cry when I leave."

"I won't. I promise."

Another kiss and a long hug—how she loved this little eight-year-old who sometimes acted forty—and then Gia backed up to stand with the other parents.

No tears, she told herself as she watched Vicky step up into the maw of the idling bus. It will only upset her.

She and Vicky had cabbed down to the pick-up spot by the UN Plaza, with Vicky doing most of the talking. A good thing, because Gia wasn't feeling so hot this morning. Her stomach felt queasy. Nerves because Vicky was leaving her, or something else?

Nerves, she'd told herself. Has to be.

Whatever the cause, the bumpy cab ride hadn't helped matters. She'd been very happy to listen to Vicky rattle on about how she couldn't wait to work with clay on the lathe at art camp this year, because she'd been too young last time.

Gia kept her emotions pretty well in hand until Vicky took a seat by a window and waved to her. Gia saw the dark hair she'd braided into a French twist this morning, saw that big smile and those sparkling blue eyes, and almost lost it. But she gamely forced a tremulous smile and blinked to keep the tears at bay.

What kind of a mother am I? She's only eight and I'm sending her off to stay with strangers for a week. I must be crazy!

But Vicky so loved art camp. She'd tried it for a few days last year and this time pleaded to stay for a week. Gia knew she had talent and wanted to give her every opportunity to nurture it.

But a whole week away in the Catskills… that was forever.

The door closed, the engine gunned, and the bus moved off. Gia waved till it was out of sight, then allowed herself the luxury of a few tears and sniffles. She looked around and noticed she wasn't the only one with moist eyes on this sultry summer morning.

She decided to walk back. It wasn't far and the exercise would do her good.

Besides… she had a stop to make along the way.

Half an hour later Gia stood at the antique white porcelain sink in the upstairs bathroom and stared at her third pregnancy test in fifteen minutes.

Negative. Just like the other two.

But she felt pregnant. That was why she'd stopped and picked up three different brands of home test kits, just to be sure.

They all told her the same thing, but that didn't change how she felt.

The phone rang. Thoughts of a bus accident, Vicky hurt, flashed through her mind and she snatched it up.

"Gia!" said a familiar woman's voice. "It's me, Junie!" She sounded excited, all but burbling.

"Oh, hi. Did you find—?"

"That's why I'm calling! When I got in last night I went straight to the big blue vase by the door and turned it upside down. Want to guess what dropped out?"

"Don't tell me—your bracelet?"

"Yes!" She laughed. "Right where Ifasen said it would be! I couldn't believe it! I hardly go near that vase. I don't know how it got in there but I was so happy I cried. Isn't he just so amazing?"

Gia didn't respond, thinking about what Jack had said last night, how he'd explained Ifasen's billet-reading trick. All fine and good, but how could he explain this? Gia wouldn't buy that it was an educated guess like when Ifasen told her she'd have…

Oh, God! He'd said she'd have two children… and here she was, feeling pregnant.

"Hey, Gia," Junie said. "You still there?"

"What? Oh, yes. Still here. I'm just wondering how this can be possible. How could he have known something like that?"

"He didn't. The spirits did. They told him, and then he passed it on to me. Pretty simple, don'tcha think?"

"Hmmm," Gia said. She felt a crawly sensation in her stomach that had nothing to do with morning sickness. "Right. Simple."

She ended the call as quickly as possible without being rude, then wandered to a front window and stared out. Her eyes fixed on the townhouses across the square from hers without really seeing them.

Maybe that was all this was… the power of suggestion. She'd screwed up her pills, a psychic said she'll have two children, and then her subconscious went to work, making her feel pregnant.

The tests—three of them, no less—said otherwise.

But home kits weren't all that accurate in the very early stages of a pregnancy. The labels did warn about false negatives.

A blood test… that was supposed to be extremely accurate, positive within days of conception.

She found her Daytimer and looked up her gynecologist's number. No way Gia expected Dr. Eagleton to see her on a Saturday, but no reason she couldn't order the test for her, maybe at someplace like Beth Israel, and Gia could run up there, have her blood drawn, and wait for the results.

Yes, she thought, punching in the number. Let's get this settled once and for all.

As much as Gia loved Jack, she did not want to be pregnant.

2

Lyle awoke hot and sweaty. He could hear the air conditioner in the window running like a bandit, yet the room felt like a steam bath. Damn thing was only a month old. Couldn't be going south already.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. Someone had pulled up the blinds and opened all his bedroom windows.

Lyle rolled out of bed. What was going on here? Had Charlie done this?

He had no intention of cooling the rest of Astoria so he slammed his windows shut and stalked down the hall to the rear bedroom. He barged in and found Charlie sprawled on his sheets, both windows wide open, and his AC going full blast.

"Damn it, Charlie, what are you up to?"

Charlie lifted his head and blinked at him. "Whassup, bro?"

"The windows, for one thing! What's with opening the windows? It's gonna be ninety today."

"Didn't open no windows."

"Yeah? Well then who did? Ice-T?"

He slammed them closed, then stepped back into the hall. He was headed for his room when he felt a warm breeze flowing up the stairwell. He ran downstairs and found all the waiting room windows and the front door wide open.

"Charlie!" he shouted. "Charlie get down here!"

When Charlie stumbled in he gaped at the open windows and door. "Dawg, what you doing?"

"Me? I locked that door last night myself, chain lock and all. I didn't get up and open it. And since there's only two people in this house, that leaves you."

He shut and relocked the door as he was speaking.

"Don't look at me, yo," Charlie said, closing the windows. "I been racked out."

Lyle stared at his brother. Charlie used to be a def joker who could spin out a line like no one else. But ever since he'd been born again, he told the truth—about everything, even if it hurt.

"Then who…? Shit! Someone got in!"

Lyle raced to the channeling room. If they'd wrecked the equipment…

But no, the room looked fine. No obvious damage. A quick survey by Charlie and him revealed it to be just as they'd left it. Except for the windows. During the remodeling he'd painted the panes black and draped them with heavy curtains to block the tiniest ray of light. Now the drapes were pulled back and the windows thrown open, allowing sunlight to flood the room. It changed the look entirely, making all his carefully arranged mystical touches look… tacky.

Relieved that nothing had been damaged, Lyle closed the windows, pulled the drapes, and headed back toward the kitchen.

"We're running late, Charlie. We've got a noon sitting, so—"

Lyle almost tripped when he came back through the waiting room: the windows and the front door were open again.

Charlie stumbled to a stop behind him. "What in the name of the Lord—"

"The Lord's got nothing to do with this, Charlie. They're still here!"

Lyle darted into the kitchen—where the windows and back door all stood open—and grabbed two knives. He handed one to his brother.

"All right. We know he's not down here. So you plant yourself by the stairs to make sure no one sneaks down, while I sweep upstairs."

Lyle's heart was already running in high gear as he took the steps up two at a time; it further picked up its tempo as he moved down the hall, knife held before him. He'd grown up in a tough neighborhood, but he'd stayed away from the crazies, the crackheads, and the bangers. He'd had fights along the way, mostly shoving matches, one that got his face cut when someone pulled a boxcutter, but that was it. So he wasn't exactly practiced in knife fighting. He didn't even know if he could stab somebody, but he was mad enough now to find out.

He checked the hall closet—empty. Moved on to his bedroom. Shit! The windows were open again. How the hell? But the screens weren't pushed out so no one had gone out that way. He checked his closet, then closed the windows.

Same with Charlie's room: open windows, empty closet. Who was opening these things? After closing them he moved to their sitting room—actually a converted bedroom; what had been the living room and dining room downstairs was now the Channeling Room.

All clear here.

Downstairs he rechecked the kitchen and pantry, going so far as to look behind and under the sofa in the waiting room.

"Okay. Both floors clear. That leaves the cellar."

First he and Charlie locked up, front and back, then stood in the center hall before the cellar door.

"If he's still in the house, that's where he'll be."

Charlie shook his head. "The paper towels still there, yo."

Right, Lyle thought. To keep the stink in the cellar. Forgot about that.

"We'll look anyway."

He pressed his hand ever his nose and mouth as he pulled open the door. He started down the stairs and risked a sniff half way down. No stench, just the typical musty basement odor.

"It's okay," he told Charlie, close behind him. "The stink's gone."

Searching the basement was a snap: no closets, no heavy furniture, nobody hiding. The crack was still there, though, big as ever.

Relieved, Lyle let out a long, slow breath. Whoever had been in the house was gone.

But when they got back up to the main floor, Lyle felt a warm, humid breeze. Uneasy, he approached the waiting room.

Someone had opened the windows again.

"How're they doing this, Charlie? Did they rig our house while we were sleeping?"

Charlie was the mechanic half of their partnership. He made the otherworldly illusions happen. He hadn't done well in school—more for lack of interest than lack of ability—but he knew how things worked. He could break down any piece of machinery and put it back together. If anyone could explain this, it would be Charlie.

"Don't see nathan," Charlie said as he inspected one of the windows. "Even if I did, you know what it take to whip up this sorta rig overnight? Gotta have a whole crew with drills and pry bars and hammers."

"Okay, then maybe they did it some day when we were out for a while."

"Still don't see nothin' gonna open no window. I mean, it gotta be pushed or pulled, and ain't nothing here gonna do that."

"Take the windows apart if you have to. There's got to be some sort of servomechanism in there that's doing it."

He wasn't quite sure what a servomechanism was, but it sounded good.

"Maybe we got ourselfs a demon."

"Not funny, Charlie."

"Ain't kidding, bro. Nothin' in or on this window to make it move."

"Got to be. We both know that the only demons and ghosts in this world are the ones manufactured by the likes of you and me. Someone's trying to gaslight us, Charlie. Scare us off. Only we don't scare, right?"

Before Charlie could answer, Lyle heard the click of the front door latch, the door he'd locked just minutes ago. With his mouth going as dry as leather, he watched it swing open with a soft, high-pitched creak.

Lyle leaped through the opening onto the front porch. No one. Empty. He turned in a quick circle, looking for someone, something, anything to explain this. He stopped when he saw the plants.

"Charlie, come here."

Charlie had been inspecting the front door. He straightened and stepped up beside Lyle. "I can't find no—dear Lord!"

All the foundation plantings—the rhodos, azaleas, and andromedas—were dead. Lyle hadn't noticed anything wrong with them last night, but now they weren't simply wilted, they were brown and dried up as if they'd been dead for a month or more… as if something had sucked the juice of life out of them.

"Someone must've sprayed them with weed killer."

"When this gonna stop, Lyle?"

He heard the fear in his brother's voice and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"We'll be all right, Charlie. Things have never come easy for us, and I guess this is no exception. But we always come through, don't we. Somehow the Kenton brothers always manage to come through. We stick together and we'll be okay, Charlie."

Charlie smiled at him and held out his hand for a low five. Lyle gave him a dap.

But when he turned back to the yard he felt a deep rage begin to bubble through his blood.

Whoever you are, he thought, you go ahead and try whatever you can against me, but don't you hurt or frighten my little brother. You do and I'll hunt you down and squash you like the bug you are.

He stared at the dead plants. The sitters for the first session would be arriving in less than an hour and the place looked like hell. No time to spruce it up.

Shit. He'd hardly expected to be welcomed with open arms by the local competition when he moved here from Dearborn, but he never anticipated anything like this. Someone was using every dirty trick under the moon to run them out.

Well, they weren't budging. Do your damnedest, whoever you are. The Kenton boys are here to stay.

3

"You didn't feel a thing?" Jack said.

Abe shook his head. "Not even a wiggle. Some earthquake. A quakeleh, you should call it."

Abe Grossman, dressed as always in a half-sleeve white shirt and crumb-speckled black pants, sat perched on his stool, legs akimbo, one hand resting on his ample belly while the other guided a large piece of crumb cake into his mouth.

Jack leaned on the customer side of the scarred counter at the rear of Abe's store, the Isher Sports Shop. The morning papers lay scattered between them. It had become an irregular tradition of sorts, now and then during the week, but almost always on Saturday and Sunday mornings: Abe bought the papers, Jack brought breakfast.

Jack ran his finger down a column of type on page three of the Post and stopped when he found what he wanted.

"Says here the epicenter was located in Astoria. How about that? Gia and I were at ground zero."

"Ground less than zero, maybe," Abe said with a dismissive shrug. "No fires, no injuries, no tumel. This is a quake?"

"They clocked it at two-point-five Richter—about the same as the one that hit the East Eighty-fifth Street area in early '01."

"Another nonevent, as I remember." He pointed to the crumb cake. "You're not having?"

"I, uh, brought something different."

Jack pulled a sausage McMuffin from the sack; his mouth watered as he unwrapped it. He waited for the reaction. Took about two nanoseconds.

"What's this? Meat? Juicy meat for you and for your old friend Abe a fat-free coffee cake?"

"You don't need the meat. I do."

"Says who?"

"I do. And I thought you were trying to lower your cholesterol."

"You're trying to lower my cholesterol."

True enough, Jack admitted. But only because the guy was riding the heart attack express, and Jack wanted him around for a lot more years—as many as possible.

"And even if I was," Abe said, "I should get a second-class breakfast on a Saturday morning?" He stuck out a hand. "Give. Just a bisel. A biseleh."

"Once you get into shape, I'll go out and buy you a whole—"

"What?" He patted his belly. "A sphere is not a shape?"

"Okay then, how about I buy you a sausage McMuffin when you can touch your toes?"

"If God wanted us to touch our toes he'd have put them on our knees."

There was no reasoning with this man. "Forget exercise. Forget cholesterol. I get the sausage because I have a special need."

"And that would be?"

"Last night we went to a party. But before the party we went out to eat, so to speak, at Zen Palate."

Abe made a face. "Nebach! Where they serve tofu in the shape of a turkey?"

"I don't remember seeing that."

"Stop by on Thanksgiving. Gia's idea, I assume."

"Yeah, well, she's off meat, you know."

"Still?"

"Yeah, and she wanted to try it."

"Nu? What kind of tofu did you have?"

"Fried."

"Fried is best. At least you're sure it's dead."

"Even worse: they don't serve alcohol. Had to pop out to the deli on the corner to get some beer."

"Should have grabbed a pastrami on rye while you were there."

Jack remembered the dirty looks he'd gotten from the couple at the next table when he'd popped the top on a forty of Schlitz. Imagine if he'd unwrapped a pastrami, or a cheesesteak. The horror.

"Tell me about it. I've been obsessing on meat ever since. So when I passed McDonald's this morning I couldn't resist."

"In that case I won't insist on a share. Eat. You deserve it after suffering through Zen Palate."

Jack wolfed down the sandwich without looking at Abe. Out of consideration he should have finished it before stepping through the door. Next time…

"Look at this," he said around a mouthful as he tried to move the conversation away from food. "A major fault runs right up the East River."

"So? There are a number of major faults on the local school board."

"No, seriously." Jack traced the fault line with his fingertip. "Says here it's called Cameron's Line. Supposedly it's where the continental plate of Africa bumped the North American plate."

"Nobody tells me anything. When did this happen?"

"About 320 million years ago. You were just a kid then. Says the fault line runs from Staten Island up into Connecticut and Massachusetts. But look here." He angled the page so Abe could see. "It makes a detour from the East River right through the heart of Astoria, then loops back to the river." Wonder filled him. "I'll be damned. That psychic's house sits right atop Cameron's Line."

"Psychic's house?" Abe said. "You're not—"

"Not a chance," Jack sad. "It was a lark of sorts."

He recounted Junie Moon's quest for her lost bracelet.

Abe shook his head. "The dumbing of America: government-accredited schools of astrology, school boards deciding to teach creationism in science, classes people paying hundreds of dollars for vials of water because someone labeled it 'Vitamin O,' the return of homeopathic cures—most of which are no more than Vitamin O—magic crystals, feng shui… Oy Jack, I'm losing hope."

"Well, you were never exactly Little Mary Sunshine to begin with."

Abe had been predicting—and was well prepared for—a civil and economic holocaust since Jack had known him.

"But one should be able to hope. I'd always thought that as the breadth and depth of human knowledge increased, people would gradually emerge from the darkness into the light. A lot of us prefer the shadows, it seems."

Jack said, "It's the whole New Age thing. Somehow it got mainstreamed. A bonanza for the bunko artists. But what I want to know is, why now? We were climbing out of all that mystical crap, but ever since the seventies it seems we've been sliding back. What turned us around?"

Abe shrugged. "Maybe science is the cause."

"I'd think science would be the solution."

"Maybe I should say it's a reaction to science. We're all looking for transcendence—"

"Transcendence."

"A life beyond this one. A noncorporeal existence. In other words, we want we should go on. You believe in transcendence, Jack?"

"Wish I could. I mean, I'd love to think that some spark in me was going to go on and on, but…"

"What? You don't have enough ego to believe you're eternal?"

"To tell the truth, I don't think about it much. Either way, I can't see how it would change my day-to-day life. I know only one way to live. But what's this got to do with science?"

"Tons. The more science pushes back the unknown, the more uncertain transcendence seems. So people overreact. The rational gives them no comfort, so they toss it out and cling to the irrational, no matter how potty."

Jack looked at Abe. "We both know there are things in this world that don't have an easy explanation."

"You mean like the rakoshi."

"Right. They didn't exactly yield to the scientific method."

"But they were real. Don't forget, I was down there at the Battery when that one came out of the harbor. I saw it with my own eyes, saw it slice up your chest. You go through something like that, who needs belief? And you, you still have the scars. You know."

Jack's hand instinctively moved to his chest and fingered the rubbery ridges through the fabric of his T-shirt.

"But a rakosh doesn't fit with what we know of the world."

"True. But the key word there is 'know.' I can't explain it, but maybe someone else can. A maven with special knowledge perhaps. I contend that everything is explicable—everything, that is, except human behavior—if you have sufficient knowledge. The knowledge part is critical. You and I both have some of that knowledge—you more than I because you've seen more of it. We know there's a dark force at work in this world—"

"The Otherness," Jack said, thinking about how it had intruded on his life over the past year. "But that's just a name somebody gave it."

"From what you've told me, it's not a thing; more like a state of being. The word 'Otherness' doesn't tell us much about it. Whatever it is, at this point it's unknowable. We do know that it can't be warded off by crystals and charms and it won't be summoned by incantations and sacrifices. So all the mumbo-jumbo these New Agers and the End of Days folk and the UFO cultists and all their fellow travelers immerse themselves in is useless. The real darkness in this world doesn't reveal itself; it abides by its own laws and follows its own agenda."

Jack found himself thinking about his sister. He blamed her death on the Otherness.

"I never told you what Kate said to me just before she died. Something about 'the dark' coming. She said the virus in her head was letting her see it. She said the 'dark is waiting but it will be coming soon.' Said it was going to roll over everything."

"With all due respect to your sister—and I should maybe never forgive you for not bringing that fine woman to meet me—she was in extremis. She probably didn't know what she was saying."

"I think she did, Abe. I think she was talking about the Otherness getting the upper hand here. It sort of fits with scraps I've been picking up since the spring. The events after that conspiracy convention, hints from the guy running the freak show, and what that crazy Russian lady said to me at Kate's graveside, they all hint at the same thing: a bad time coming, one that'll make all other bad times look like a picnic. The worst time ever for the human race, worse than all the plagues and world wars rolled into one."

Abe stared at him, his expression grim. This fit in with the civil holocaust he'd been predicting forever. "Did she say what we could do about it?"

"No."

Kate had also told Jack that only a handful of people were going to stand in the way of the darkness, and that he was one of them. But he didn't mention that.

Abe shrugged again. "Well, then?"

"That's not why I brought it up. I'm wondering if maybe people sense this darkness approaching. Not consciously, but on a primitive, subconscious level. Maybe that explains why so many people are turning to fundamentalist and orthodox religions—ones that offer a clear and simple answer for everything. Maybe that's why conspiracy theories are so popular. These people sense something awful coming but can't put their finger on what it is, so they look for a belief system that will give them an answer and a solution."

"What about us poor schmucks who don't have a belief system to lean on?"

Jack sighed. "We'll probably be the ones stuck in the trenches dealing with the real thing when it comes along."

"You think this earthquake had something to do with it?"

"I can't see how, but that doesn't mean anything. Lately I've seen too many innocent-seeming situations take a sharp turn and head into the can at ninety miles an hour."

He thought about last night… and how that quake seemed to hit just as he and Gia stepped over the threshold of Menelaus Manor. He wanted to think that was coincidence, but it was not comforting to know that the house sat on a crack in the earth's crust, a direct channel down to a lode of ancient rock that was not resting easy.

He wondered if Ifasen was feeling any aftershocks.

4

"Now, if we will all place our hands on the table, palms flat down… that's it… when we're all relaxed, we shall begin."

Lyle looked at his three sitters arrayed around the round oak pawfoot table. The two middle-aged women, Anya Spiegelman and Evelyn Jusko, had been here before, and he knew all about them. Vincent McCarthy was new. A blank. All Lyle had known about him until his arrival a few moments ago was his name.

But now he knew a fair bit about him. And he'd learn much more in the next few minutes. Lyle loved the challenge of a cold reading.

"I want everyone to close their eyes for a moment and breathe deeply… just a few breaths to calm you. Turmoil interferes with spirit contact. We must be at peace…"

Peace… Lyle needed to be relaxed to do this right. At least the house was at peace. The windows and doors had stopped opening shortly before the sitters arrived. Now… if only he could be at peace.

Not easy after calling Kareena's apartment this morning and having a man answer, hearing him say Kareena was in the shower and ask if he was from the radio station.

He had to put his anger and his hurt on hold. He'd let Kareena screw with his emotions, he wasn't about to let her screw up his livelihood. Put aside the negative feelings and be positive… at least for now. Concentrate on Vincent McCarthy.

Lyle opened his eyes and studied him. He guessed his age in the neighborhood of forty, and knew he had a few bucks. His Brooks Brothers golf shirt and expensive lightweight summer slacks said so; so did the shiny new Lexus SC 430 hardtop convertible he'd parked in the driveway. No tattoos on his tanned forearms; no earring; just a simple gold band on the ring finger. And check out those fingers: clean, no calluses, manicured nails.

So we're dealing with a married, well-heeled white dude in his forties. He's come to Astoria to sit in a darkened room on a perfect Saturday for golf. That can only mean he's big-time worried about something.

Money? Not likely.

Business. Also unlikely. If Vincent is in business he either owns it or he's a high-up executive. He knows his way around a spreadsheet and a boardroom; he's not going to consult the spirit world about a territory where he considers himself an alpha male.

Marriage? Possibly. The skills that make him successful in the money end of his life do not necessarily transfer to the emotional side. He could be a klutz in the relationship arena.

Health? He looks well himself, but he could be worried about someone else's health. Wife, parent, or child.

Lyle closed his eyes and decided to go with health. Nudge around the perimeter witfi a series of try-ons and see what the man would reveal. If that didn't pan out, he could backtrack to the marriage, but he doubted that would be necessary.

"Since the spirits shun the light, we will make the room more inviting to them."

Back in Charlie's command post, a little room behind the south wall that he'd packed with all his electronic gizmos, his brother would pick up Lyle's words through the tiny microphone hidden in the chandelier directly above, and act accordingly. Sure enough, the overhead bulbs dimmed until only the faint glow of a single red bulb lit the table area.

"I feel it," Lyle said. "I feel the gates opening…" Charlie's cue to direct a little cold air at the table. "… to allow us contact with the Other Side." He let his head fall back, opened his mouth, and let out a long, soft, "Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh."

The sound wasn't all show. A good deal of it was real, a pliant ecstasy easing from his soul, like leisurely sex—

That he wasn't having.

Stop! Don't blow this because of a cheating…

Easy… easy… he reminded himself that this was when he felt most alive, this was when he was in control, when he ruled this, his little corner of the world. The rest of his life might be in chaos right now, but in this time, in this place, he called the shots. He was the master…

Master of illusion… that was his self-declared moniker in his teens. And he hadn't been stroking himself. That was exactly what he'd become after Momma died. Or rather, was killed. She'd been carrying a sack of groceries through Westwood Park on her way back from the market, crossing the street with the walking green, when two cars out of nowhere, one chasing the other, trading 9mm slugs, ran the red and knocked her forty feet through the air. The hit-and-run bastards were never found.

To the rest of the city she'd been just another noncombatant fatality in Detroit's crack wars. But to Lyle and Charlie she'd been the world. Their father was a shadow in Lyle's memory and didn't exist at all in Charlie's. Dad's brother, Uncle Bill, used to stop by now and again, but nobody had heard from him since he left for the West Coast.

So there they were, the Kenton brothers, Lyle sixteen, Charlie twelve, all alone, existing on the help of the neighbors, but all too soon the Child Welfare folks came sniffing. He and Charlie could pretend no one was home for only so long before they missed one too many rent payments and wound up on the street or, worse, were split up and placed in foster care.

So Lyle decided to become his Uncle Bill. He'd been tall for his age then, and with the help of a fake beard and some make-up, he fooled the social worker. He still remembered Maria Reyes, MSW, a good woman with a sincere desire to help. She believed that Lyle was Bill Kenton; she believed that Saleem Fredericks—a friend from downstairs in the project he borrowed for the home inspection visits—was Lyle.

And Lyle learned something then: the power of belief, and the even greater power of the desire to believe, the need to believe. Ms. Reyes believed because she wanted to believe. She didn't want to split up the brothers; she'd wanted a blood relative as legal guardian, and so she'd believed everything Lyle tossed her way.

Or had she? Years later Lyle began to wonder if Ms. Reyes had seen through him all along. Wondered if she'd been taken in not by his performance but by his determination to hold together the remnants of his tattered family, and that was why she'd allowed him to become his own legal guardian. Someday he'd have to track her down and ask.

Whatever the truth, sixteen-year-old Lyle Kenton had found his calling: the scam. If he could scam the city, he could scam anyone. His first paying gig was as a slider for a downtown monte game, watching the street for the heat, ready to make the call that would fold the game. He quickly learned the shaker's verbal codes and moved up to the stick position where he'd stand around the table and shill the marks into the game, but all his off hours he spent practicing the moves so he could become a shaker and start his own game.

But after a particularly close call when he'd barely outrun one of the plainclothes D's who'd broken up their game, he cast about for something equally profitable but a little less risky. He found it: a psychic hotline. An audition with a phony Jamaican accent got him hired. After a few hours of practice with a list of cold-reading questions, he joined the crew of men and women—mostly women—in a loft filled with phones and baffle boxes.

Everything he was taught had been geared to keeping the mark on the line as long as possible. First, get the name and address so the mark can be put on a mailing list as a customer for everything from tarot decks to fortune-telling eight balls. Next, convince them you've got a direct line to the Afterlife and the wells of Ancient Knowledge, tell them what they want to hear, make them beg for more-more-more, say anything you want but keep them on the fucking line. After all, they were paying five or six dollars a minute to hear psychic wisdom, and Lyle was getting a piece of the action. In no time he was bringing down a grand or better a week without breaking a sweat.

He—as Uncle Bill—and Charlie moved out of the projects and into a garden apartment in the suburbs. It wasn't much, but after Westwood Park, it was like Beverly Hills.

That was when he'd begun calling himself Ifasen—he'd found it in a list of Yoruba names—and developing a West African accent. Soon hotline callers were asking for Ifasen.

No one else would do. This did not endear him to his bosses, who were in the business of selling a service, not creating star players.

So in his off hours he started looking for something new. On a sunny Sunday morning in Ann Arbor he stumbled across the Eternal Life Spiritualist Church. He sat in on a healing session. The needle on his bullshit meter immediately jumped into the red zone but he stayed for the worship and messages meeting. At the end, as he watched one person after another write "love offering" checks to the church, he knew this was his next step.

He joined the Eternal Life Church, signed up for medium development workshops, and hit it off with the pastor, James Gray. Soon he was serving the church as a student medium, which meant he became privy to and a participant in all the chicanery. After a year or so of this, the Reverend Doctor Gray, a big, burly white guy who thought having a young African-sounding black man as an assistant added to the mystical ambiance of his church, took him aside and gave him some invaluable advice.

"Get yourself educated, son," he told Lyle. "I don't mean a degree, I mean learning. You're gonna be dealing with all sorts of people from all walks of life with many different levels of education. You want to be a success in this you've got to have a wide range of knowledge on a lot of subjects. You don't need to be an expert in any of them, but you need a nodding acquaintance."

Lyle took that advice, sneaking into classrooms and auditing courses at U of M, Wayne State, and the University of Detroit Mercy, everything from philosophy to economics to western literature. That was where he began scouring the street from his speech. Didn't earn a single credit, but a whole world had opened up to him, a world he took with him when he and Charlie left Ann Arbor for Dearborn to strike out on their own.

There Lyle set himself up in a storefront as a psychic advisor. They worked their asses off to perfect their techniques. The money was good, but Lyle knew he could do better. So they moved on.

And landed here, in an upper corner of Queens, New York.

Do it before you're thirty, they said. Well, Lyle had turned thirty last month, and he'd done it.

And now, sitting in the first real estate he'd ever owned, Lyle Kenton slipped his hands forward along the polished oak surface of the table, allowing the ends of the metal bars strapped to his forearms within the sleeves of his coat to slip under the edge of the tabletop. He raised those forearms and his end of the table followed.

"There it goes!" Evelyn whispered as the table tipped toward her. "The spirits are here!"

Lyle eased back on his arms and worked one of the levers Charlie had built into the legs of the pawfoot table to raise its far side, right under Vincent McCarthy's hands. Lyle peeked and saw McCarthy's eyebrows arch, but he gave no sign that he was overly impressed.

"Whoops!" Anya giggled as her chair tilted in response to an electronic signal from Charlie's command post. "There it goes again! Happens every time!"

Then Evelyn's tilted, then McCarthy's. This time he looked perplexed. Table tipping he might be able to write off, but his chair…?

Time to make him a believer.

"Something is coming through," Lyle said, squeezing his eyes shut. "I believe it concerns our new guest. Yes, you, Vincent. The spirits detect turmoil within you. They sense you are concerned about something."

"Aren't we all?" McCarthy said.

Lyle kept his eyes closed but he could hear the smirk. Vincent wanted to believe—that was why he was here—but he felt a little silly too. He was nobody's fool and wasn't about to let anyone pull a fast one on him.

"But this is a deep concern, Vincent, and not about anything so crass as money." Lyle opened his eyes. He needed to start picking up on the nonverbal cues. "This wrenches at your heart, doesn't it."

McCarthy blinked but said nothing. He didn't have to; his expression spoke volumes.

"I sense a great deal of confusion along with this concern."

Again, he nodded. But Lyle had expected that. If McCarthy wasn't confused, he wouldn't be here.

Lyle half-closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples, assuming his Deep Concentration pose. "I sense someone from the Other Side trying to contact you. Your mother perhaps? Is she still alive?"

"Yes. She's not well, but she's still with us."

That could be it. But now to salvage the remark about the mother.

"Then why do I have this sense of a definite maternal presence? Very loving. A grandmother, perhaps? Have your grandmothers crossed over?"

"Yes. Both."

"Ah, perhaps that's who it is then. One of your grandmothers… although I'm not sure which side yet. But it will come, it will come… it's getting clearer…"

McCarthy, Lyle thought. Irish. Would Grandma McCarthy have been over here or back in Ireland? Didn't matter that much. Lyle knew a surefire Irish grabber. Never failed.

"I'm sensing a great love for an American president in this person… can that be right? Yes, this woman had a special place in her heart for President Kennedy."

Vincent McCarthy's eyes damn near bugged out of his head. "Gram Elizabeth! She loved Kennedy! She was never the same after he was shot. This is incredible! How can you know that?"

What Irish grandmother didn't love Kennedy? Lyle wondered.

"Oh, you wouldn't believe what he knows," Anya whispered.

"Ifasen's amazing," Evelyn added. "Knows everything, just everything."

"I know nothing," Lyle intoned. "It's the spirits who know. I am but a channel to and from their wisdom."

Lyle could see the hunger in McCarthy's eyes. He wanted more. He was knee deep in belief and wanted to take the plunge, but his Irish Catholic upbringing was holding him back. He needed a push, wanted a push. And Lyle would give it to him, but not quite yet.

Better to let him dangle for a while.

Lyle turned to Evelyn.

"But something else is coming through, a stronger signal, directed, I believe, at Ms. Jusko."

Evelyn's hands flew to her mouth. "Me? Who is it? Is it Oscar? Is he calling me?"

Yes, it was going to be Oscar, but Lyle intended to draw this out a bit. Oscar was her dear departed dog. Two months ago she'd come to Lyle wanting to know if he could contact her pet on the Other Side. Of course he could. Trouble was, she hadn't told him what breed Oscar was or what he looked like, and Lyle hadn't been about to ask.

He didn't have to.

During the first sitting—private at Lyle's insistence, because animals were so hard to track down on the Other Side—Charlie had sneaked in while the lights were out and borrowed Evelyn's handbag. Back in his control room he'd rifled through it and found a stack of pictures of a mahogany Vizsla. He'd relayed a description to Lyle's ear piece. Before returning the bag he appropriated a dog whistle he'd found lodged in the bottom of the bag.

Lyle had amazed Evelyn by describing Oscar to her, right down to his jeweled collar. The woman had been so grateful to learn that he was happy chasing rabbits through the Elysian Fields of the Afterlife that she'd left a $2,500 love donation on her way out the door.

"Yes," Lyle said now. "I believe it's Oscar. And he seems a little upset."

"Oh, no!" Evelyn said. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. It seems you misplaced something of his and he wonders if you still care about him."

"Misplaced? What could I have misplaced?"

In a few moments, Evelyn was going to receive her first apport—an object magically transported by the spirit world from one place to another. Following Lyle's cues, Charlie—dressed all in black—would approach when the time was right and drop Oscar's old dog whistle onto the table.

"I'm not sure. Oscar's not telling me. No, wait, he's got something with him, holding it in his jaws. I'm not sure what it is or what he intends to do with it. He's coming closer… closer…"

Charlie too should be coming closer—

"Why is it so cold?" Anya said.

"Yes," Evelyn agreed, rubbing her upper arms. "It's freezing in here."

Lyle felt it too. A blanket of dank, frigid air had settled over the table. He rubbed his hands together. His fingers were going numb. But he sensed more than just a drop in temperature. A change in mood seemed to have moved in with the cold air. Anger… no, more than anger… a bitter, metallic rage…

Lyle jumped as Anya screamed. He saw her and her chair fly backward and crash against the wall. McCarthy's chair tipped back, dumping him onto the floor. Lyle felt himself pushed forward, as if by a hurricane-force wind, jamming his abdomen against the table, and then the table itself tipped, precipitating him onto Evelyn. As they tumbled to the floor, Lyle heard glass breaking all around him. He rolled over and saw the drapes flying back as the blackened window panes shattered, imploding one after the other and littering the floor with glittering shards of glass. Stark yellow sunlight poured in. The statues he'd arranged around the room were tumbling over, some of them cracking on the hardwood floor.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tumult ceased. Dazed, Lyle struggled to his feet and helped Evelyn to hers. McCarthy was helping Anya up. No one looked seriously injured by the incident, but the Channeling Room… it was a shambles. Lyle did a slow turn and saw that every piece of glass in sight—the windows, even the two mirrors on the walls—had been smashed.

"It's your fault!" Anya screamed, pointing a trembling finger at Evelyn. "You angered your dog's spirit, and now look what happened!"

Evelyn began to cry. "I don't know what I did! I can't imagine what the poor dear could be upset about!"

"Let's stay calm, everybody," Lyle said. "I don't think Oscar was responsible for this."

He goddamn well knew no fucking dead dog had anything to do with it, but who was responsible? And how had they done it?

"This is incredible!" Vincent McCarthy was saying. "I never believed… thought this was all bullshit… but now…"

"I think it was the earthquake last night," Lyle said, trying to salvage the situation. "Seismic waves radiate into the spirit world and cause…"

What was the word he was looking for? He shoved his shaking hands into his pockets. His heart was pounding and his brain had been scrambled by this cataclysm. Think, damn it! Disruption—that was the word.

"… and cause disruptions in the transmission of information. Maybe it would be better if we rescheduled this for another time. Next Saturday, perhaps?"

"Oh dear, I don't think I can wait that long!" Evelyn said. "If poor Oscar is upset—"

"Maybe a private session tomorrow night, then," Lyle said. "The seismic disturbances will have faded by then. I believe I can squeeze you in. As a matter of fact, I'll make it a point to squeeze you in."

"Oh thank you, Ifasen! Thank you!"

Got to salvage something from this debacle, he thought.

"I want to come back too," Vincent McCarthy said.

"Me too!" Anya cried.

Lyle held up his hands. "I'll see that you're all taken care of. Let's just move into the waiting room so I can find places where I can schedule you."

5

"Tell me that was you, Charlie," Lyle said after he'd ushered the three sitters out the door. "Tell me that was some new gag that went wrong."

Charlie shook his head. "Nuh-uh. I was crawlin' my way to the table with the dog whistle when the spirits started wrecking things."

"The spirits'! Charlie, boy, have you lost your mind?"

"Forgive me, Lord, I know it's a sin to believe in such things, but how else you gonna explain what happened here?"

"Last night you said it was God sending us a warning, now it's spirits? Make up your mind, Charlie."

"Making up my mind ain't the point, yo. I don't know what's happenin', but you gotta be blind or stupid or both not to know something's happenin'!"

"Yeah. We're being gaslighted. You saw that guy running last night. You saw the gas can. You going to tell me now that was a spirit?"

"No. Course not. But that different. That—"

"No different. They couldn't burn us out, so they're trying to scare us out. First the doors and windows, now this. Same people behind everything."

"Yeah?" Charlie said. "Then we up against some real geniuses. Anybody who can open and close windows and doors and mess up a room like they did today should be workin' for the CIA."

"Maybe they once did. CIA's into everything." He gestured at the shattered windows. "Sound shatters glass, right? How about ultra-high frequency sound waves that…"

Charlie was shaking his head. "No way. We got company, man. Told you that last night. The earthquake opened a gate and shook somethin' loose. This house possessed, yo."

"And I told you I'm not going there! Some very human assholes tried to scare us and scare off our sitters. That's it, pure and simple. But guess what? It backfired. The fish thought they witnessed a bona fide, super-duper supernatural event and they're totally sold. They think Ifasen's the realest of the real deals and they want more-more-more!"

He started when the phone rang. Without thinking—normally he'd check the ID or let the voice mail pick it up—he snatched it off the cradle.

"Yeah, what?" he snapped.

6

"H-hello?" Gia said. She hadn't been prepared for such a gruff reception. "Is… is this Ifasen?"

A brief pause, the sound of a throat being cleared, then a more cultured voice. "Pardon me. Yes, this is he. Who is calling, please?"

Gia almost gave in to an urge to hang up. She had no clear idea why she had called in the first place. This was so unlike her…

She'd gone to the Beth Israel outpatient lab this morning where they drew her blood for the pregnancy test. Dr. Eagleton's service had said she'd requested stat results, but when 2 p.m. rolled around and Gia hadn't heard, she called in and learned that Dr. Eagleton was off call. The covering doctor did not return her calls. He left a message via the service that he knew nothing about Gia's lab test and saw no reason why it couldn't wait until Monday.

So she'd called the Beth Israel lab but they'd stonewalled her, saying they couldn't release results to patients, only the ordering doctor.

Burning with frustration, she'd paced the house. Normally she would have talked it over with Jack, but this was not a normal situation. And she didn't know how Jack would take all this. So out of sheer desperation she'd looked up Ifasen's number in his brochure and called him.

Crazy, she knew, but she could be pregnant… with her second child… and Ifasen had told her she'd have two. Jack's rational explanations from last night faded into background noise; he hadn't heard about Junie's bracelet then, how Ifasen had known exactly where it would be.

What else did Ifasen know? She had to ask. She could imagine Jack's expression when he learned that she'd called a psychic. But what could it hurt?

Besides, feeling crummy and worrying about being pregnant had thrown her off balance. The medical profession was doing its best to make her psycho, so she figured she'd give this a shot. Call it alternative medicine.

She swallowed and said, "I was there at your place last night. At the billet reading with Junie Moon. I was the one who asked how many children I'd have."

"Yes. I remember. What can I do for you?" His words came quickly, sounding clipped, impatient.

"I was wondering if I could ask you about your answer."

"My answer?"

"Yes. You told me I'd have two children, and I was wondering how you knew that. I don't mean to insult you, but I need to know if you were guessing or—"

"I am sorry Miss, Mrs…"

"DiLauro. Gia DiLauro."

"Well, Gia DiLauro, I am afraid that now is not exactly a good time to discuss this. Perhaps later in the week, when things have settled down a little."

Settled down? Something in his voice…

"Has something happened?"

"Happened?" Abruptly his tone sharpened. "Why do you think something has happened?"

She remembered Jack's impression that Ifasen was afraid of something, and his theory of what and why.

"Did someone make more trouble for you last night after we left?"

"What?" The voice jumped a register. "What are you talking about?"

"One of your competitors, isn't it. Jealous because you're stealing their clients, am I right?"

The silence on the other end was answer enough.

Gia said, "You're probably thinking, 'Hey, I'm the psychic here,' right? But it's nothing like that."

"If you have anything to do with—"

"Oh, no. Please don't think that. I never heard of you before last night. But maybe I can help."

"This is not your concern. And even if it were, I do not see how you—"

"Oh, no. Not me." She laughed; it sounded high and nervous just like she felt. "I'd be no help at all. But I know someone who's very good at this sort of thing. I'll have him give you a call."

Ifasen hemmed and hawed, obviously not wanting to admit that someone with his connections to the Other Side needed help, but once he learned that the matter would be handled with the utmost discretion with no connection to the police, he relented. But he wanted to make the call, so Gia gave him Jack's voice mail number.

What did I just do? Gia thought after she hung up. Me, the one who keeps wanting Jack to find another line of work, I just got him a job. Maybe.

What on earth had possessed her to do such a thing?

Because as much as she hated Jack's work, she wanted to see him back to his old self. That meant getting off his butt and taking on fix-it jobs again. And this one sounded kind of safe. A couple of competing psychics duking it out over clients. Jack could handle them with his eyes closed.

But then, Ifasen had been worried about a bomb last night, hadn't he. She'd forgot about that. How could she be so stupid?

Call him back. Right. Tell him to forget the number she'd given him. Lose it. But why would he listen to her? If he was going to call, he'd call. But maybe he wouldn't call. Maybe he'd figure he could handle this on his own.

She could only hope.

7

Wondering at the damn funky turns life can take, Jack strolled through the dusk up the front walk of Menelaus Manor for the second time in twenty-four hours.

The first shock was hearing a message from Ifasen on his voice mail. The second was learning that Gia had given him the number. She'd explained the how and why of it between bouts of lovemaking late this afternoon and into the evening. He still didn't quite understand it. She seemed fixated on the two-children bit. Why? He sensed she wasn't telling him everything, but that was unlike her. Usually he was the one with the secrets.

Like the bullet hole in Ifasen's picture window, for instance. He'd spotted it on their way out last night. If he'd seen it going in he'd have turned her around and headed home immediately. Didn't want Gia anywhere near a house someone was using for target practice.

Ifasen's voice mail message had played it coy, saying he was being harassed but giving no specifics. When Jack had called him back the man had said he wanted to try to handle the matter without the police because of the risk of adverse publicity. Did Jack think he could help?

The idea of doing a fix-it job for Ifasen appealed to Jack. Psychics operated in the sort of quasi-legal demimonde he was comfortable in. Plus it offered the possibility of running a con on some scammers, and that was always fun.

So now he was back. A lot more lights on tonight—the front porch and most of the windows were aglow. As Jack stepped up on the porch he noticed that the windows running off to his right were covered in heavy black cloth. The "channeling room," if he remembered, and they hadn't been like that last night. Something must have happened since then. Something bad enough to prompt a call for help.

Jack reached for the bell, but the door opened before he rang.

Ifasen—or the guy who called himself Ifasen—stood in the doorway, staring at him. "You?"

"Hello, Lyle."

The dark eyes widened in the dark face. "Lyle? I don't know who—?"

"You're Lyle Kenton, and I'm the one you called."

"But… you were here…"

"Last night. I know. Can I come in?"

Lyle stepped aside and Jack slipped past him into the waiting room. His brother stood inside, a few feet behind.

Jack extended his hand. "I'm Jack. You must be Charles."

Charles shook his hand, but his eyes were on his older brother. "How…?"

"Simple, really. All you need is a computer. It's a matter of public record that Lyle and Charles Kenton own this house."

Jack made it sound as if he'd done the search. But Abe had been the one. He was better at that sort of thing.

Jack wandered over to the picture window and examined the bullet hole, noticed how it had been plugged with some sort of glue.

"Looks like a .32." He turned to Lyle. "You have the slug?"

Lyle nodded. "Want to see it?"

"Maybe later."

"Did some checking up on you too," Lyle said. "Or tried to."

"Really." Jack would have been surprised if he hadn't. "Find my website?"

Another nod. "Charlie did."

"Repairmanjack.com," Charlie said with a hint of disdain. "Pretty beat site. Nothin' but a box to send you email."

"Serves my purposes."

Lyle fingered the end of one of his dreadlocks, twisting it back and forth. "I asked around some. Found someone who's heard of you, but he didn't think you were real. He heard you mentioned by someone who knows somebody whose sister's uncle hired you once. Something along those lines. Like you're some kind of urban legend."

"That's me. Urban legend." Jack hoped to keep it that way. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the pierced window. "Just one shot?"

"One's enough, don't you think? Tried to burn us out last night but I chased them off before they could get the fire started."

"Guns, fire…heavy stuff. You've really pissed someone off."

"I guess so."

"Makes the Chick pamphlets look like a joke."

Lyle frowned. "Chick? What're you…?"

Jack picked up one of the Menelaus Manor brochures and shook out another of the Christian fundamentalist tracts he'd found last night.

He saw Charlie grimace and gaze at the ceiling, so he handed it to Lyle, saying, "Got to be careful who you let into your waiting room."

Lyle frowned as he flipped through the pamphlet. "Yeah, I do." Then he flung it against his brother's chest. "How many times have I—?" He cut himself off and glared. "Later, bro."

Jack took a mental step back and watched the pair, trying to get an angle on what was going on. A little tension between the Kenton brothers. Then he noticed the WWJD pin on Charlie's shirt.

A Born Again? Part of a spiritualist con? Crazy. It explained the Chick pamphlets, but nothing else.

He wondered how or if that played into why he was here.

Jack cleared his throat. "Any idea which of your competitors might be behind your troubles?"

Lyle shook his head, setting his dreads in motion. "I don't recall saying it was a competitor."

Is this the way we're going to play it? Jack thought as he glanced around. He needed to break through the My-name-is-Ifasen-and-I-am-a-true-psychic facade if this was going to work.

"Okay, then… what else have these mysterious bad guys hit you with?"

"Tried to spook us out this morning by playing games with the doors and windows, then they wrecked the Channeling Room."

"That's why the windows are draped outside?"

Lyle nodded. "They're trying to scare off my clients."

"Clients?" Here was a chance to see if he could get a rise out of Ifasen. "That's probably how they think of themselves. But let's call them what you call them: sitters… marks… fish." As Lyle stared at him, Jack smiled and shrugged. "I used to be in the game."

"Game?" Lyle said, his expression going stony. "This is no game. This is my life."

"And your livelihood—a good one, most likely. But you probably already knew I was onto you. I figure you saw me notch my billet last night."

No reaction. The Kenton brothers might as well have been statues.

Time to push a little harder.

"By the way, which one of you sneaked into Junie Moon's apartment and hid her bracelet?" Jack pointed to the younger brother. "I'm betting it was Charlie here. Am I right?"

Charlie's gaze flicked to his brother and back, telling Jack he'd scored a bull's-eye.

"You're accusing us of a crime," Lyle said. His lips had thinned, eyes had narrowed to slits.

"One I've committed myself. The medium I worked for used to send me on errands like that." It was SOP: rifle the sitter's purse while the lights are out, cut a duplicate house key, then pay a visit when nobody's home. "When it works, it's a beaut, isn't it."

"I wouldn't know," Lyle said, still not giving an inch.

Jack tried again. He stepped back and checked out the overhead light fixture.

"That where you stashed the bug? Lady I worked for bugged her waiting room and listened to the sitters as they hung out. Pulled all sorts of inside info from their chatter."

The brothers went into statue mode again.

"Look, guys," Jack said, "if we're going to be working together, we've got to be straight with each other."

"We're not working together yet."

"Fair enough. How about I take a look at what they did to your Channeling Room?"

Lyle stared at him, obviously wary.

"Maybe this is a bad idea," Jack said, only partially faking annoyance as he turned toward the door. "You've already wasted some of my time. Don't see much point in letting you waste more."

"Wait," Lyle said. He hesitated again, then sighed. "Okay, but nothing you see here goes past these walls, agreed?"

"Consider me a priest. With Alzheimer's."

This pulled a grin from Charlie, which he hid behind a cough. Even Lyle's lips twisted a little.

"All right." He moved toward the door to the Channeling Room. "Take a look."

Jack stepped through ahead of the brothers and strode to the middle of the room. He could see that some of the statues had been damaged, and spotted a couple of gaps where mirrors had hung, but on the whole the room didn't look so bad.

"You have to understand that we spent the whole afternoon cleaning up," Lyle said. "Every piece of glass in this room was shattered."

"A bazillion pieces," Charlie said.

"How? Shotgun?"

Lyle shook his head. "We haven't figured that out yet."

"Mind if I take a look around?"

"Be our guest. You get any ideas, we'd love to hear them."

Jack wandered to the oak séance table. He bent and examined the thick legs and paw feet.

"That area fine," Charlie said. "You wanna check out the windows and mirrors that—"

"I'll get to them."

He found the levers in one of the legs. He seated himself and worked them with his feet, tilting the table this way and that. He nodded his appreciation.

"Smooth."

He checked the chairs and found the tip of a steel rod in one leg of each.

"How's this work? A little motor in the seat that pushes the rod down, right? Activate it with a remote and it tilts the sitter's chair. Sweet. You guys design this stuff yourself?"

Charlie glanced at Lyle, who sighed again. "Charlie's the mechanical guru."

Well, well, well, Jack thought. They've finally opened up. Let's hope it's smoother going from here on in.

"How do you handle vibrations from the motor?" he asked Charlie.

"Padding," he said. "Loads of it."

"Nice work," he said, giving him a sincere thumbs up. "Very nice."

Charlie's grin told Jack he'd made a friend.

He moved to the windows, pulled the drapes aside. Every pane was broken, blown into the room, not out. But the old-fashioned wooden mullions that had held them in place remained untouched.

He went from one window to the next; whether facing front, side or rear, the story was the same.

How the hell…?

He turned to the brothers and shrugged. "I've got no answer for you."

"You can't help us?" Charlie said.

"Didn't say that. Can't tell you how this was done, but I can help see it doesn't happen again."

"How?" Lyle said.

"Keep an eye on the place. I'm a one-man operation. I'll put in some personal watch time outside when I can, and set up some motion-triggered cameras for when I can't."

"Why not motion-triggered alarms?" Charlie said.

Lyle grunted. "How about motion-triggered machine guns?"

"Scaring them off isn't as important as finding out who they are. Once we know that, I track them down, and then you tell them to lay off."

"Oh, that'll work," Charlie said with a derisive snort. "Suppose they don't wanna lay off?"

"Then I convince them."

"How?" Lyle asked.

"That's my department. That's why you'll be paying me the big bucks. I can make life miserable for them. When I'm through they'll wish they'd never messed with, or even heard of the Kenton brothers."

Charlie grinned. "I'm down with that."

Lyle frowned, then turned to Jack. "Let's talk about these 'big bucks' you mentioned."

8

After they'd adjourned to the kitchen, where Lyle and Jack drank beers and Charlie sipped a Pepsi, Lyle tried to angle for a low-ball price, pleading financial straits after the major renovations to the old place, and now the repairs they'd need. Jack wasn't buying, but he did allow for three payments instead of the usual two: he'd take half down, a quarter when he identified the culprits, and the final quarter when he got them to stop.

Lyle still held out, saying he and Charlie would have to discuss it, go over the books, blah-blah-blah before making a final decision. But Jack sensed the decision had been made. He was on.

Damn, it felt good to be working again.

"Let's talk about possible bad guys," Jack said as Lyle handed him a fresh Heineken. "Could anyone local be behind this?"

Lyle shook his head. "There's an old gypsy on Steinway who reads palms and such, and that's about it. Astoria's got a lot of Muslims, you know, and if you believe in Islam, you can't believe in spiritualism."

Jack was thinking things must have been pretty tense around here after the World Trade disaster, but all that had gone down before the Kentons' arrival.

Which brought Jack to a question that had been niggling him since last night. "Then why Astoria?"

"Manhattan's too expensive. All the real estate agents told me rents had dropped after the Trade Center attack, but even so, they were still too high for the amount of space we need."

"For your eventual church."

From Charlie's uneasy expression and the way he started fingering his wwjd pin, Jack figured he'd hit a sore spot.

"When do you figure you'll get yours going?"

"Never, I hope," Charlie said, glaring at Lyle. "Because that's the day I walk out."

"Let's not get into that now, okay?"

Jack tried to break the sudden tension by gesturing at this house around them. "So you went out and found this place in the wilds of Queens."

"Yes. I wanted it because of its history. And because of its history, the price was right."

"All those murders in your brochure are for real?"

Charlie nodded. "Absolutely. This place got some evil history."

"Fine. But the real money's either in Manhattan or in Nassau County, and you're in the great nowhere between. How do you get the money people to make the trip?"

Jack sensed a combination of pride and pleasure in Lyle's grin.

"First off, it's not such a trip. We're handy to the Triboro Bridge, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, the 59th Street Bridge, the BQE, and the LIE. But the main spur to get them coming here was by having someone tell them to stay away."

"Enlighten me," Jack said.

"My previous mediumship," Lyle said, leaning back, "was in a town—don't ask which because I won't say—that was also home to a fair-size population of Seventh Day Adventists."

"Who've got to believe that spiritualism is a sin."

"Worse. It's the work of Satan, a direct link to the Horned One. They'd post signs around town warning people away, even went so far as to picket my storefront one Sunday. I was pretty scared and worried at first—"

"For about ten minutes," Charlie said.

"Right. Until I realized this could be the best thing that ever happened to me. I called the local papers and TV stations—at the time I wished they'd chosen a Saturday for their protest, but Saturday is their Sabbath—but the media showed up anyway and the result was amazing publicity. People started asking, 'What is it about this Ifasen that has the Adventists so worked up? He must really be onto something.' Let me tell you: business boomed."

Jack nodded. "So, in a sense, you were banned in Boston. Works almost every time."

"Not Boston," Charlie said. "Dearborn." He looked at Lyle and found his brother glaring at him. "What?"

Jack leaned back, hiding a smile. So the Kenton brothers were from Michigan. In the psychic trade you tried to hide as much of your past as possible, especially if you were operating under a phony name. But also because lots of mediums had an arrest history—usually for other bunko scams—and a fair number had had careers as magicians and mentalists before discovering that, unless you were a superstar like Copperfield or Henning, conjuring tricks paid off far better in the séance room than in cocktail lounges and at kids' birthday parties.

He wondered what the Kentons' histories might be.

"Okay that's all fine for Dearborn," Jack said, "but I don't remember any stories about Astoria Adventists acting up."

"Because there aren't any," Lyle said, turning away from his brother, "or at least no group big enough to suit my needs. But I'd planned for that. Before leaving Dearborn"—another scathing look at Charlie—"I laid some groundwork by taking out an ad in the News-Herald to announce my departure. I said I was leaving because the local Adventists had turned so many people against me that I could no longer continue my mediumship in such an atmosphere. I was beaten. They'd won. They wouldn't have Ifasen to kick around anymore. Or words to that effect."

"But I thought you said business was booming."

"It was. Especially 1999. Man, the six months leading up to the millennium had been incredibly good. Best ever." Lyle's voice softened to a reminiscing tone. "I wish '99 could've gone on forever."

Jack knew a couple of grifters who'd told him the same thing. From palm reading to tarot to astrology and beyond, the millennium had proved an across-the-board bonanza for the hocus-pocus trade.

"But it was time to move on," Lyle said.

He rose and leaned against the counter. The more he talked, the more his detached Ifasen pose melted away. The guy probably had no one but Charlie to open up to, and he plainly longed to talk about this stuff. It came spilling out in a rush. Jack doubted he could have stopped him if he wanted to.

"So Charlie and I packed up our show and took it on the road. We bought this place ten months ago and spent most of our savings renovating it. Once we had things set up the way we wanted, I called up the Adventists who'd harassed me before. I told them—using another name, of course—that I was a fellow Adventist who wanted to let them know that the devil Ifasen they'd driven out of Dearborn had resettled in my neighborhood and was starting up his evil schemes to threaten the unwary souls of Astoria. They'd closed him down before. Couldn't they do it again?"

"Don't tell me they bussed in a crew of protesters?"

"That would have been okay, but I had a better idea. I'd already started advertising in the Village Voice and the Observer. I sent the Adventists copies of my ads and suggested they take out space on the same pages to tell folks God's truth."

"You didn't need the Adventists for that," Jack said. "You could have run your own counter ads."

"I could have. But I wanted them to be legit if the papers ever checked them out. Plus, those big display ads aren't cheap. I figured if I could get someone else to foot most of the bill, why not?"

"And did they go for it?"

"All the way. I sent them a hundred-dollar money order to get the ball rolling and they took off from there. Big weekly ads for a month."

Jack laughed. "I love it!"

Lyle grinned, the first real break in his studied cool, and it made him look like a kid. Jack found he liked the guy behind the mask.

"Serves them right," Lyle said, his smile fading. "Tried to ruin my game because it interfered with theirs."

"Difference is," Charlie said, frowning, "that they believe in what they're doing. You don't."

"Still a game," Lyle said, his mouth twisting as if tasting something bitter. "Just because we know it's a game and they don't doesn't change things. A game's a game. End of the day we both deliver the same bill of goods."

Tight, tense silence descended as neither of the brothers would look at each other.

"Speaking of delivering," Jack said, "I gather the ads served their purpose?"

"Oh, yeah," Lyle said. "The phone rang off the hook. The ones who made that first trip out here have mostly all come back. And they've been bringing others with them when they do."

"Mostly from the city?"

A nod. "Like ninety percent."

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that most of these people were going to other mediums before you came along. And if they're your regulars now, that means they've left somebody else. I'll be very disappointed if you don't have a list somewhere of who they were seeing before you."

"I do."

"Good. I'll be equally disappointed if you haven't run financials on every sitter who's walked through that door as well."

Lyle's expression calcified; he said nothing.

Come on, Jack thought. This guy was an overwound clock. Jack didn't know a player in the spiritualist trade who didn't use names, licenses, credit cards, bank accounts, and Social Security numbers if they could get them, to peek at their sitters' financials.

Finally Lyle's lips twisted into a tight approximation of a reluctant smile. "I can predict no disappointment on that score."

"Excellent. Then here's what you do. Divide your sitters up by their previous gurus; then list them in order of their net worth and/or generosity. Identify the psychics who've lost the most high rollers to you and we'll make that our short list of suspects."

Lyle and Charlie glanced at each other as if to say, Why didn't we think of that?

Jack tossed off the rest of his beer and rose. "Getting late, guys. One of you call me tomorrow about whether or not we're in business."

"Will do," Lyle said. "If we decide yes, when will you want the down payment?"

"Since tomorrow's Sunday, I can pick it up Monday. Cash only, remember. That's when I'll start."

On the way out, even though it was dark and he wasn't officially hired, Jack had Lyle give him a tour of the yard. As he stepped off the front porch he noticed that all the foundation plantings were dead.

"Hey, if you're into this look, I know a bar in the city you'll just love."

"Forgot to mention that. Happened overnight. They must have been poisoned."

"Nasty," Jack said, fingering a stiff, brown rhodo leaf. Felt as if it had died last month and spent the time since in the Mojave Desert. "And petty. I don't like petty people."

Something about the dead plants bothered him. He'd done some landscaping work as a teen. Remembered using defoliants now and again. Didn't remember anything that killed so quickly and thoroughly. Almost as if they'd had all their juices sucked out overnight.

The dead foundation plants aside, the rest of the shrubbery scattered about Menelaus Manor's double lot offered a number of good surveillance points at ground level, but he'd need a high perch. The pitch of the house roof was too steep; the garage roof looked better but was only one story high.

"That garage looks like an afterthought."

Worse than an afterthought. More like a one-car tumor off the right flank of the original structure, destroying its symmetry.

"According to the real estate agent," Lyle said, "that's exactly what it was. Built in the eighties by the original owner's son after he inherited the place—"

"And before he offed himself."

"Obviously. If I ever find a reason to buy a car, I'm sure it'll come in very handy after I've been shopping. Opens right into the kitchen area. Great for when it's raining."

"Or when you don't want anyone to see what you're unloading."

Lyle frowned at him. "Yeah, I guess so. Why'd you say that?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "It just came to me." And that was true. The idea had leaped into his head. He shook it off. "Let's check out that big maple," he said, pointing toward the street.

"Maple," Lyle said as they walked through the dark toward the street. "I'll have to remember that."

"Didn't have many trees where you grew up, I take it."

He sensed Lyle stiffen. "What makes you say that?"

"Your accent's good, but Charlie…"

"Yeah, Charlie," Lyle said through a sigh. "I couldn't do this without him, but I can't let him speak when a sitter's around. He just doesn't get it."

They arrived at the maple that hugged the curb and spread over the sidewalk and the street. It looked good and sturdy but the branches had been trimmed far up the trunk. The lowest hung about ten feet off the ground.

"Give me a boost," Jack said.

Lyle gave him a dubious look.

"Come on," Jack said, laughing. "I know how it's a matter of pride with you scammers about getting your hands dirty, but a little alley oop is all I need and I'll take it from there."

Shaking his head, Lyle laced his fingers together and boosted Jack up to where he could grab the limb. As Jack clambered onto the branch, he noticed Lyle stepping back between two parked cars and into the street.

"Where you going?"

"No offense, but I figured I'd get out of the way in case you and/or that branch come down."

"Aw, and I was counting on you catching me if—"

Jack heard an engine rev. He looked down the street and saw a car with its lights out racing Lyle's way.

"Incoming!"

Lyle looked around but didn't react immediately. Maybe he didn't see the car right away because its lights were out. When he finally did move, jumping back toward the curb, the car swerved toward him, missing him by a thin breeze as it creased the fender of the parked car to his right.

"That them?" Jack shouted as he swung down from the tree.

The car didn't stop, didn't even slow. Jack glanced at Lyle, who looked shaken but otherwise unscathed.

"I-I don't know."

Jack took off. I'm not even hired yet, he thought as he sprinted along the sidewalk.

He'd started running by reflex but didn't stop. Starting a job without a down payment was against Jack's rules, but after this, Lyle was a pretty sure bet to come across. And a look at the mystery car's license plate tonight might save Jack days of surveillance next week.

He kept to the sidewalk, hoping the driver wouldn't spot him. As the car passed under a street light he saw that it was either yellow or white, but he couldn't identify the make or model. Couldn't be something distinctive like a PT Cruiser, could it; no, had to be one of those generic-looking mid-size sedans that could be a Camry, a Corolla, a Sentra, or any of half a dozen other models. With its lights still off, the Camrollentra's license plate remained hidden in the shadow of the bumper.

Ditmars Boulevard lay maybe a hundred yards ahead. The traffic light showed red. Would the car stop?

Fat chance. Jack saw its brake lights glow as it slowed, but that was it. The Camrollentra cruised the red and turned right.

Jack kept moving, putting a little more juice into his stride. Probably a waste of energy, but who knew? Might get lucky and find that the mystery car had plowed into a cab and locked bumpers. Stranger things had happened.

He rounded the corner and skidded to a stop… just like the traffic. People out on the town for Saturday night had done what the red light hadn't.

Jack started moving again, at a more relaxed pace this time, sorting through the cars in the jam as he strolled past the brightly lit store fronts. Within the first twenty-five yards he found two Camrollentras, one white, one pale yellow. Swell.

But the yellow one had a dented front fender and its headlights were out. The woman in the passenger seat kept looking over her shoulder. Her gaze swept right past him. Looking for someone with lots darker skin, no doubt.

Gotcha.

She faced front again, banging on the dashboard and pointing ahead, obviously telling her driver to get moving. But cars were lined up ahead and behind, and the opposite lane was no better. They'd move when everyone else moved.

Coming almost parallel, Jack ducked out of her line of sight and squatted, pretending to tie his shoe. After checking to make sure no one was paying attention, he crab-walked between two parked cars. This placed him two feet from the target car's right rear tire. He was close enough now to see that he was dealing with an aging Corolla. He wormed the black-handled Spyderco Endura Lightweight out of his back pocket, did a one-hand flick-out of the four-inch serrated blade, and jabbed it through the sidewall of the tire. Then he slunk back to the sidewalk, made a show of tying his other shoe, and rose again to his feet.

Without a glance back, he checked out the store signs and found a Duane Reade. He'd go with that. Hoped it had what he wanted.

It did. Gotta love these Duane Reades. Called themselves pharmacies but carried so much more. Just about everything anyone could need.

Like duct tape.

And pantyhose.

Jack walked along, noting that traffic had thinned. He paused by a trash receptacle to open the pantyhose package; he cut off one of the legs and threw the rest away. Then he moved on, searching for the yellow Corolla. He went three blocks without seeing it. Had they decided to keep driving, flat tire or no? He hadn't figured on that because it was sure to draw attention, maybe even a police stop, and they'd want to avoid something like that.

As he was crossing a side street, heading into block four, he heard a clank of metal off to his right. Stopped, listened, heard a man's voice cursing in English. Peered up the block and saw a man and a woman by the curb just past a streetlight. The man knelt by the wheel of a pale Corolla that had pulled in next to a fire hydrant, the woman stood, as if on guard.

"Come on, come on!" said the woman. "Can't you do this any faster?"

"Fucking lugs are rusted. I—" Another clank. "Shit!"

Jack stepped off Ditmars and crept up the other side of the street, keeping low behind the parked cars. When he came even with the Corolla he found a pool of shadow and watched from there.

The man was average height, maybe forty, with receding hair and a medium-size gut; she was pint-size, five-one, tops, and built like a fire plug. The mouth on her would make Eminem blush.

Obviously the guy hadn't changed too many tires, and his companion's constant bitching didn't help, but finally he got the spare onto the wheel. When the car was off the jack, the woman got back into the front seat.

As the man gathered up his tools, Jack pulled the pantyhose leg over his head; slipped his left wrist through the roll of duct tape and ripped off a six-inch length; stuck this to his left forearm and waited for the man to lift the flat tire.

When he did, Jack dashed across the street, straight at him. He didn't see Jack until he was in his face. Guy's mouth dropped open into a terrified O as he looked up but both his hands were burdened with tire, making him a sitting duck for the fist that rammed into his nose. Dropped the tire as his head snapped back. Jack grabbed his shirt, hauled him forward, and flung him into the trunk. Guy was dazed, didn't struggle as Jack pushed his legs over the rim and slammed the lid closed.

Without slowing Jack slipped around to the passenger side, pulling his knife and flicking out the blade as he moved. The raised trunk lid had hidden him from the passenger. Now he yanked open the door and slapped a hand over her unsuspecting yap.

He wiggled the knife blade before her terrified eyes and spoke, raising his pitch in a bad German accent, one that wouldn't have made the cut even on Hogan's Heroes.

"Vun peep unt you ah dead!"

She glanced at his stocking-distorted face, made a soft noise that sounded like, "Gak," then shut her mouth.

"Dat's da spirit."

Jack replaced the hand over her mouth with the length of duct tape. Then he pulled her out of the front and pushed her face down on the back seat where he taped her hands behind her back and wrapped up her ankles.

Final touch: flipped her face up and taped over her eyes—a vertical strip on each, then twice around the head. Rolled her onto the floor, then got her buddy out of the trunk and went through the same procedure on him.

All told, a two-minute process. Maybe less.

Jumped into the driver's seat, hit the ignition, and they were rolling. Pulled off the stocking and rubbed his itching face. Then he addressed his whimpering, struggling audience of two.

"You ah probably vondering vhy I haff brought us togezzer like zis. It iss a mattah of money. I need, you gots. So vee ah all going zumplace nize unt private vhere vee can make zee exchange. Nuzzing perzonal. Opportunity has knocked unt I haf anzzered. Do not giff me troubles unt you vill valk avay in vun piece. Zat iss clear, yah?"

He didn't care if they bought the accent; he simply didn't want them to recognize his normal speaking voice when they heard it. Because if his plans worked out, they'd be hearing it fairly soon.

9

After driving aimlessly for twenty minutes, making a succession of unnecessary lefts and rights, bogus three-point turns, Jack was fairly lost. He figured if he was confused, his passengers had to be completely disoriented.

He found Ditmars Boulevard again, reoriented himself, then meandered back to the Kentons' house. When he pulled into the driveway, Lyle and Charlie hurried out onto the front lawn. Jack jumped out and motioned them to be quiet. He led them to the car and pointed through the rear window. The brothers started when they saw the two bound forms on the back seat and turned to him with wide eyes. Jack motioned them to open the garage door.

When the car had been moved inside and the door closed behind it, Jack motioned them into the house.

"They're the ones?" Lyle said, his voice barely above a whisper even though the car was far out of earshot.

Jack nodded.

"The ones who tried to run me down?"

"The same."

"But how did they wind up…?"

"Part of the service."

"Who are they?"

"We'll find that out in a couple of minutes. By the way, I hope I'm hired. Otherwise I'll have to throw them back."

"Don't worry," Lyle said. "You're hired. You're so very hired. Do we sign a contract or something?"

"Yeah," Jack said, and stuck out his hand. "Here it is."

Lyle shook it, then Charlie.

"That's it?" Lyle said.

"That's it."

"Ay, yo, you kidnapped them!" Charlie said.

"Technically, yes. Does that bother you?"

"No, but the cops, the FBI—"

"Won't ever hear about this. Those people never saw me, and they don't know their car is parked in your garage." Jack rubbed his hands together. Time to learn a little about the Kenton brothers. "So, the question now is, what do you want to do to them? We can break their arms, break their legs, break their heads…"

He watched their expressions, was glad for the revulsion reflected there.

"Oh, man," Lyle said. "This afternoon I wanted blood. I wanted to kill them. Now…"

"Yeah," Jack said. "They are kind of pathetic looking. Personally I prefer messing with heads to breaking them."

"Mess with their heads," Charlie said, looking relieved. "Yeah, I'm down with that. Sound like the way to go."

Lyle nodded. "Fine with me. How?"

"First off, some rules. Only I speak in their presence, and I'll sound like Colonel Klink. Not a word out of you two because they might know your voices. We don't want them connecting you with this, right?"

They both nodded.

"Good. That settled, the first thing we'll do is take them out of the car, lay them on the floor, strip search them—"

"Yo. Rewind there. Strip 'em?"

"Right. I think a little humiliation will be good for the souls of a couple of attempted murderers, don't you? Plus, it'll keep them cowed; nothing makes you feel more vulnerable and helpless than being without your clothes. On top of all that, it'll scare the hell out of them, wondering if we've got some twisted sexual plans for them."

"But we don't, right?" Charlie said with a pleading look.

"You kidding?" Jack said. "You got a look at them. Having them lying around naked will be lots tougher on us than them."

"And after that?" Lyle said.

"We comb through their clothes, their wallets and pocketbooks, the glove compartment, learn everything we can about them, then decide how you guys get even."

Jack noticed their reluctant expressions. Like true scam artists, they didn't like getting physical.

"If it makes you too uncomfortable, I can do it alone. But things'll move much faster if I have some help."

Lyle glanced at Charlie, then sighed. "Lead the way."

10

Twenty minutes later they were back in the kitchen.

Jack dumped the man's wallet, the woman's pocketbook, and the contents of the glove compartment onto the table, then began sorting through them.

Lyle had this dazed expression. He'd looked that way since they found a .32 caliber pistol in the trunk's now-empty spare tire well.

"Those two people," he muttered. "They want me dead."

"What gives you that idea?" Jack said. "Just because they shot at you, tried to burn down your house, and run you down with their car?"

"This isn't funny."

Jack looked up from the car registration and driver licenses he'd collected. He had to lighten this guy up.

"Damn right it's not funny. Especially cutting their clothes off." He cringed at the memory of the woman's pale, squat, flabby body. "I had to keep mentally dressing her."

Finally a smile from Lyle. This was one major stiff.

"Okay," Jack said. "From what I can gather here, we're dealing with a married couple, Carl and Elizabeth Foster."

Lyle pulled a stack of business cards from the purse and shuffled through them. "I'll be damned!"

"Not if I can help it," Charlie said.

If Lyle heard, he didn't acknowledge the remark. "She's Madame Pomerol! I've heard of her. She was on Letterman."

Jack rarely watched talk shows. "She's big time?"

"Pretty much. Upper East Side. I hear she's been hot the past few years. Her name's popped up quite a bit from my sitters—a lot of them used to be Pomerol regulars."

"There you go," Jack said. "You know who, and now you know why."

"They Upper East Side?" Charlie said. "How come they got such a hooptie ride?"

Jack was about to explain that it was a city thing, but Lyle cut him off.

"The bitch!" he muttered, still staring at Madame Pomerol's business card. "She tried to kill me!"

"The husband was driving the car that just missed you, don't forget," Jack told him. "Looks like a joint effort to me."

"Yeah, but I bet she's been running the show."

Charlie said, "Yeah, well, don't really matter who was the shot calla. The right-now real is that our garage is holdin' two butt-naked honkies tied up like calves ready for slaughter. What we gonna do with them?"

"Not sure yet," Jack said. He was winging it here; usually he went into a job with at least half a plan, but events tonight had moved too swiftly. "The more immediate question is, What are we gonna do to them?"

Charlie was watching Jack. "What you mean, 'to'? I know they tried to hurt us—"

"They tried to kill us, Charlie," Lyle said. "Not hurt us, kill us! Don't you forget that!"

"A'ight. So they tried to off us. But that don't give us no right to off them." He was fingering his WWJD button again. "We gotta turn the other cheek and hand them over to the police."

Jack didn't like the way this was going. "Do that and you leave yourself open for charges like assault and battery, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, and who knows what else," he said. "You want that?"

"No way," Charlie said.

"And who said anything about killing them?"

"Well, the way Lyle talkin'—"

Lyle said, "I didn't mean we should kill them, Charlie. For Christ sake, you know me better than that! It's just that I don't know what we've accomplished here besides figuring out who they are. We let them go and they're right back on our asses tomorrow, trying to off us or run us out of town. I don't want to keep looking over my shoulder, man. I want this done with!"

"That's where I come in," Jack said. He felt the adrenaline start to flow, singing along his nerves as the beginnings of a plan took shape. He took one of the Madame Pomerol business cards from Lyle and waved it in the air. "We've got their address. We've got a set of their keys. Let's see if we can rig some surprises for them."

Charlie nodded. "I'm down with that. What you got in mind?"

"Still working on it, but I think I can find a few ways to keep Madame Pomerol too distracted to worry about bothering you. At least in the short run. We can worry about the long run later. But if I'm gonna make a move it's got to be tonight, and that means I'll need some help." He turned to Charlie. "Where's your key cutter?"

Charlie blinked and looked at Lyle. "Key cutter?"

"I know you've got one. Take me to it. We're wasting time."

"Do it," Lyle said.

Charlie shrugged. "Okay. We doin' copies of their crib keys?"

"You got it. And while we're at it, what do you keep in the way of spare parts for your magic tricks?"

Charlie grinned. "Got boxes and boxes."

"Swell. Show me your stock and let's see if you've got anything we can put to use."

Jack didn't know how the night would turn out, but he knew he'd be a lot later getting to Gia's than he'd planned. Had to give her a call soon. But not now. His blood was tingling and he felt more alive than he had in months.

11

Lyle ground his teeth as he wandered into the garage for another check on Madame Pomerol and her husband. Jack and Charlie had raced off to the city almost two hours ago, leaving him in charge of the… what? Prisoners? Hostages? Human garbage?

Whatever they were they were back in their car—the husband on the rear floor, Madame Pomerol on the back seat, both face down. Lyle had taken the tattered remnants of the clothes they'd cut off them earlier and tossed them over their naked bodies. But that hadn't been enough, so he'd found an old blanket to cover them. He didn't want to have to see their puckered, hairy asses every time he checked on them.

His fury frightened him.

Mainly because the windows and doors had started opening themselves again. Taking a shot at him, trying to run him down, he could handle that. Where he came from, you understood that. But sneaking into his house, changing it, wiring it to do strange things…

His house, goddammit! The first home he'd ever truly been able to call his own, and these pathetic lowlifes had invaded it, defiled it, made parts of it theirs instead of his.

It made him crazy, made him look long and hard at the carving knives in the kitchen, made him open their car trunk and stare at the nickel-plated pistol they'd fired at him.

But as much as he could think of murder, he knew he couldn't do it. No killer in his heart.

Yet God, how he'd love to scare the shit out of these two. Grab them by their scrawny necks and drag them through the rooms, holding their own piece to their heads, threatening to start busting caps on them if they didn't tell him what they'd done to his house, then stand over them and make them undo it, jab and poke them with the barrel when they didn't move as fast as he wanted.

But Jack had said the Fosters mustn't know where they were, mustn't connect their abduction to Lyle and Charlie Kenton. Lyle had never been one to take orders blindly, but this Jack guy… Lyle had to make an exception for him. You pay a man that kind of bread, you'd better listen to him. Besides, the man got things done.

The phone rang. Lyle checked the caller ID and picked up when he recognized Charlie's cell number.

"We through, bro," Charlie said. "We done our business and we headin' home."

"What'd you do?"

"Tell you when I get there, but lemme tell you, dawg, it fine! This Jack is righteous! Now, we took care of our end, you take care of yours. See ya."

Lyle hung up and took a deep breath. My end… Jack had laid it out before leaving with Charlie. Sounded easy then, but seemed risky now.

He took a deep breath and headed for the garage.

12

Lyle stopped the Fosters' car in the shadow of a construction Dumpster. With all the rebuilding still going on in the financial district, these things were on every other block; this one seemed particularly large and isolated. He killed the lights and checked the street: nothing moving. This part of Manhattan was just about the quietest spot in town on a Saturday night.