By the Light of the Moon

paper hats and by similar surly expressions.

With the dinner rush far behind, only a third of the restaurant tables were occupied. Customers lingering over dessert, liqueurs, and coffee were engaged in low, pleasantly boozy conversations. Only a few took notice of Shep as – preceded by Jilly, followed by Dylan – he allowed the hostess to lead him to a booth, remaining absorbed in his book every step of the way.

Shep would rarely sit next to a window in a restaurant because he didn't want 'to be looked at by people inside and people out.' Dylan requested a booth distant from the windows, and he sat on one side of the table with his brother, across from Jilly.

She looked uncommonly fresh, considering what she'd been through – and remarkably calm for a woman whose life had been upended and whose future was as difficult to read as a wad of tea leaves in a dark room. Hers was not a cheap beauty, but one that would wear well with time, that would take many hard washings and keep its color in more than one sense.

When he picked up the menu that the hostess had placed on the table before him, Dylan shuddered as if he'd touched ice, and he put it down at once. Deposited by previous patrons, a lively patina of emotions, wants, needs, hungers squirmed on the plastic menu cover and seemed to crackle against his skin, like a charge of static electricity, much stronger than what he'd felt on the door handle.

During their drive north from the interstate, he'd told Jilly about the psychic spoor. Now she understood at once why he had put down the menu. 'I'll read mine to you,' she said.

He found that he liked looking at her while she read, liked it so much that repeatedly he had to remind himself to listen to her recitation of salads, soups, sandwiches, and entrees. Her face soothed him perhaps as much as Great Expectations soothed Shep.

While he watched Jilly read aloud, Dylan placed his hands flat on his menu again. As he expected based on his experience at the restaurant door, the initial boiling rush of strange impressions quickly subsided to a quiet simmer. And now he learned that with a conscious effort, he could entirely quell these uncanny sensations.

As she informed him of the last of the dinner selections, Jilly looked up, saw Dylan's hands on his menu, and clearly realized that he had allowed her to read to him only to have an excuse to gaze at her openly, without the challenge of a direct return stare. Judging by her complex expression, she had mixed feelings about the various implications of his scrutiny, but at least part of her response was a lovely, even though uncertain, smile.

Before either of them could speak, the waitress returned. Jilly asked for a bottle of Sierra Nevada. Dylan ordered dinner for Shep and for himself, and requested that Shep's plate be served five minutes before his own.

Shepherd continued to read: Great Expectations flat on the table in front of him, the book light switched off. Hunching forward, he lowered his face within eight or ten inches of the page, although he had no vision problems. While the waitress was present, Shep moved his lips as he scanned the lines of type, which was his way of subtly establishing that he was occupied and that she would be rude if she was to address him.

Because no other diners were near them, Dylan felt comfortable discussing their situation. 'Jilly, words are your business, right?'

'I guess maybe you could say that.'

'What's this one mean – psychotropic?'

'Why's it important?' she asked.

'Frankenstein used it. He said the stuff, the stuff in the syringe, was psychotropic.'

Without looking up from his book, Shep said, 'Psychotropic. Affecting mental activity, behavior, or perception. Psychotropic.'

'Thank you, Shep.'

'Psychotropic drugs. Tranquilizers, sedatives, antidepressants. Psychotropic drugs.'

Jilly shook her head. 'I don't think that weird juice was any of those things.'

'Psychotropic drugs,' Shep elucidated. 'Opium, morphine, heroin, methadone. Barbiturates, meprobamate. Amphetamines, cocaine. Peyote, marijuana, LSD, Sierra Nevada beer. Pscyhotropic drugs.'

'Beer isn't a drug,' Jilly corrected. 'Is it?'

Eyes still tracking Dickens's words back and forth across the page, Shep seemed to be reading aloud: 'Psychotropic intoxicants and stimulants. Beer, wine, whiskey. Caffeine. Nicotine. Psychotropic intoxicants and stimulants.'

She stared at Shep, not sure what to make of his contributions.

'Forgot,' Shepherd said in a chagrined tone. 'Psychotropic inhalable-fume intoxicants. Glue, solvents, transmission fluid. Psychotropic inhalable-fume intoxicants. Forgot. Sorry.'

'If it had been a drug in any traditional sense,' Dylan said, 'I think Frankenstein would have used that word. He wouldn't have called it stuff so consistently, as if there wasn't an existing word for it. Besides, drugs have a limited effect. They wear off. He sure gave me the impression that whatever this crap does to you is permanent.'

The waitress arrived with bottles of Sierra Nevada for Jilly and Dylan, and with a glass of Coca-Cola, no ice. Dylan unwrapped the straw and put it in the soda for his brother.

Shepherd would drink only through a straw, though he didn't care if it was paper or plastic. He liked cola cold, but wouldn't tolerate ice with it. Cola, a straw, and ice in a glass at the same time offended him for reasons unknown to everyone except Shepherd himself.

Raising a frosty glass of Sierra Nevada, Dylan said, 'Here's to psychotropic intoxicants.'

'But not to the inhalable-fume variety,' Jilly qualified.

He detected faint quivering energy signatures on the cold glass: perhaps the psychic trace of a member of the kitchen staff, certainly the trace of their waitress. When he willed himself not to feel these imprints, the sensation passed. He was gaining control.

Jilly clinked her bottle against his glass, and drank thirstily. Then: 'There's nowhere to go from here, is there?'

'Of course there is.'

'Yeah? Where?'

'Well, not to Phoenix. That wouldn't be smart. You have that gig in Phoenix, so they're sure to go looking for you there, wanting to know why Frankenstein had your Cadillac, wanting to test your blood.'

'The guys in the Suburbans.'

'They might be different guys in different vehicles, but they'll be related.'

'Who were those phony duffers, anyway? Cloak-and-dagger types, you think? Or some secret police agency? Aggressive door-to-door magazine salesmen?'

'Any of that, I guess. But not necessarily bad guys.'

'They blew up my car.'

'As if I could forget. But they blew it up only because Frankenstein was in it. We can be pretty sure he was a bad guy.'

'Just because they blew up a bad guy doesn't mean they're good guys,' she noted. 'Bad guys blow up bad guys sometimes.'

'Lots of times,' he agreed. 'But to avoid all the blowing up, we'll go around Phoenix.'

'Around Phoenix to what?'

'Maybe stay on secondary highways, go north somewhere big and empty where they wouldn't think to look first, maybe up near the Petrified Forest National Park. We could be there in a few hours.'

'You make this sound like a vacation. I'm talking about – where do I go with my life.'

'You're focusing on the big picture. Don't do that,' he advised. 'Until we know more about this situation, it's pointless to focus on the big picture – and it's depressing.'

'Then what should I focus on? The little picture?'

'Exactly.'

She drank some beer. 'And what is the little picture?'

'Getting through the night alive.'