Hornets and Others

'You'll tell him that?' she repeated.

The old anger tried to boil up in him—all the feelings of inadequacy, of helplessness, of everything that was mixed in with it, of him hitting middle age, getting older, afraid of losing his talent, afraid of losing her —

With a huge effort, he brought himself under control and said, 'If it doesn't work in the next day or so, I'll toss it.'

'You mean it?' Her huge beautiful eyes were searching his own, studying him, begging him—

Again he had to control himself, and knew she sensed it. She was waiting for him—

'Yes.'

She hugged him tighter. 'I can't tell you how happy I am. I didn't want to leave. I was going to go to my sister's, and you know I can't stand her—'

'Neither can I,' Kerlan said dryly, and Ginny laughed.

'I love you more than anything in the world, Peter,' she said, kissing him. 'Don't ever doubt that.'

She kissed him again, and Peter said, 'I love you, too. More than you'll ever know.'

She pulled away from him, smiling, and said, 'I'll put everything away in the morning. It's Monday, and I want to get the rest of my gardening done early, before I go to work. I'll put my stuff away after I get home tomorrow night, all right?'

'All right,' he answered, smiling back at her.

'You coming to bed?'

He almost said yes, sensing from the look in her eyes that she might want more than sleep, but instead he said, 'I'm going to spend a little time in my office.'

Her face darkened slightly. 'You're not going to—'

'If it doesn't work immediately, I'm giving it up. Let's call this a last stand.'

He could tell she was thinking of arguing, but instead she nodded.

'All right, Peter. Give it one more try.'

'I'll be up later.'

She stopped, looked back at him. 'I'll wait up for you, if I can keep my eyes open.'

'See you later.'

She went down the hail to the bedroom. Kerlan, grunting with the continuance of a well deserved hangover, made his way downstairs.

At three in the morning, he was finally ready to give up. The piece, no matter how he came at it, was just much too dark. The more he delved into the character of Samhain, the more frightening the Celtic Lord of Death became. There were hints of human sacrifice as tribute for good crops and prosperity. There were various dark tales of horrible deaths and evil perpetuated in his name. There was just no way to lighten him up. Peter tried making him into a character with a black cloak and pumpkin for a head—but when he read over what little he had written, the Lord of the Dead was just too scary for children. It just seemed that no matter what he tried to make the Samhain character do, he always ended up surrounded by death.

The real stuff.

And if little kids didn't like one thing, it was the real stuff.

He stared at a sketch he'd made of Samhain to help him, with the folds of his bright pumpkin head set back into the dark shadows of his cowl, a horrid sickle grin on his cut-out face, a spark of terrifying fire deep in the ebony eye sockets, stark white bone hands reaching from beneath the folds of the cloak, and shivered.

'Hell,' he muttered to the picture, at the end of his rope, realizing that it just wasn't going to work, 'I'd even pay tribute to you, Sam, if you'd help me finish this damn story.'

Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, it came to him.

Sam.

That was it!

Call him Sam.

Almost before he knew it, he was tearing through the story, and, in what seemed like no time at all, it lay all but finished in front of him.

He came out of what felt like a trance, but what must actually be, he realized, a mixture of waning work- adrenaline, the remains of a Scotch hangover, and just plain tiredness. Through the window above his desk, the sun had already circled the globe and come up over the back of the house. Brighter than it had been the evening before, when it had hovered in the living room window, it now resembled a happy pumpkin.

By the clock, he saw that it was eight in the morning.

I worked five hours straight. Amazing.

Three tiny shadows passed by the window in front of the sun, hovering briefly before the screen, and he saw that they were yellow jackets. Briefly, he remembered the newspaper story from the day before. A shiver started, but was suppressed by tiredness.

He stretched, suddenly remembering Ginny.

I hope she just drifted off to sleep, and didn't wait for me.

He rose, stretched as if his frame had been locked into a sitting position for a year, rubbing his eyes while yawning, and left the office, tramping upstairs.

He thought of making coffee, but knew he would never stay awake while it brewed.

In the front hallway, he walked around Ginny's pile of belongings, noting with curiosity that the front door was open.

Upstairs, Ginny was not in the bedroom.

She was nowhere in the house.

On the pile of her belongings, perched like a bird, was a note: Peter I'm sorry, but I have to leave...

'And there's a possibility the note may have been written the previous night, before your reconciliation?'

'Yes.'

'Thing I don't get is, Mr. Kerlan: why'd she leave without her things?'

Detective Grant had been nice enough in the beginning, even solicitous; but now, standing with the man in the front hallway of the house, Peter sensed a change in the atmosphere, an aggressiveness that hadn't been present before. At first all the questions had been about Ginny, where she might have gone, why she would have left, but now, Grant couldn't seem to take his eyes off the pile of belongings in the hallway. Peter could tell it stuck like a wad of gum to the roof of the man's mouth.

'I told you, detective, we had a fight Sunday. A big one. I was sleeping on the couch when she came home, and when I woke up all of her stuff was in the hallway—'

'She packed while you were asleep—'

'Yes. And when I woke up we started the fight all over again. By the end of it we had squared things away, I thought. Ginny went up to bed and I went down to my office to work—'

'This was late, almost midnight—?'

'Yes.'

'And you worked through the entire night—' Grant said, referring to his notes. 'And when you went upstairs —'

He looked up at Kerlan from his pad, and for the first time Peter sensed a faint belligerence from the man.

'When I went upstairs she was gone.'

The detective snapped his fingers. 'Just like that?'

'Yes.'

'Left her belongings, her car, just took off after you had supposedly settled everything?' He gave a twist in emphasis to the word 'supposedly,' making it sound almost sinister.

'That's exactly right.'

'And you called us after you spent yesterday looking everywhere she might have gone, including her sister;