uneven, and I wasn't paying attention, so I almost fell on my face. The apparition retreated. Moved deeper into the trees. I followed. The grass was stiffer than anything we had at home, and it crackled underfoot. There was no clear track; I had to blunder forward as best I could through bushes filled with thorns and vines that, somehow, when they touched my skin, excited a tingling reaction. I pulled my hands up into my jacket sleeves. Then it disappeared again. I aimed the lamp at the trees, saw nothing, and decided to hell with it. Enough was enough. I turned to start back. And saw it behind me. About ten or twelve paces away. A gust of wind rattled the branches but had no effect on it. I wasn't sure if I'd simply not noticed before, but the apparition was pulsing, alternately brightening and dimming. In sync with my heart. I was the woman in the haunted-house story who sees strange lights upstairs and goes in to see what's happening. Even at that moment I wasn't really afraid of it, so strong was my assumption that it was a hoax. I knew, absolutely knew , that someone, nearby, was controlling it. But I put my hand on the barrel of the scrambler. Somewhere a bell sounded. Twice. Three times. Probably from the Hub. Maybe from a passing boat. The apparition didn't waver. Didn't move. It simply floated in front of me. And I found myself thinking of Ceily. Of her last day. I'd been directed not to let her out of the house. Kittens weren't safe outside, my father had warned me. We lived on the edge of a forest, and the woods were filled with predators. But she always wanted out, always tried to get through the door when I opened it, and I felt mean and contemptible keeping her inside. So one day I held the door open for her. She followed me onto the front lawn and we had such a good time together that I did it again the next day. I don't know why, but I've always remembered it was the second day and not the first. And I was standing there minutes later watching her crouch as if she were going after one of the birds in the feeder when a yakim came out of nowhere and seized her in its claws, scooped her up, and soared into the sky with her. The last I saw of Ceily was her big eyes fastened on me, pleading with me to help. Within seconds the yakim and the kitten were gone, into the trees, and I went screaming after them. I never found her, of course. But I kept running and crying until I was exhausted. Then I realized I didn't know the way home. And it got dark. It was a couple of hours before I heard distant voices calling my name. It was the only time in my life I wanted to die. And that night, in the forest on Salud Afar, it all came rushing back, as if everything had happened at once: Ceily rolled into the yakim's claws, her eyes round and desperate, my heart pounding so loudly I couldn't breathe, the dark woods stretching for miles in all directions, the dull dead sounds of the forest, the voices behind me somewhere. I fought back tears and thought how the world must have seemed to Ceily in those last moments, how alone she must have felt. And I traded places with her and rode with the yakim, while the ground fell away, knowing the claws would tear me apart within the next moments. Knowing I was alone.
Then Alex was there, holding me upright, asking in a scared voice what had happened?
I'm not sure what I said, but he responded by asking me about Ceily. 'Say again: Who is she?' He looked out of focus. 'Where is it?' I asked. 'Where's what ?' 'The light.' He thought I was talking about my lamp, which was lying on the ground, its beam playing across a tangle of thorns and berries. 'No,' I said. 'In the trees.' He looked around. 'I don't see anything. Who's Ceily?'
In the morning, it only seemed like a bad dream. Alex thought it was another warning that we should back off. But it wasn't like that at all. Something out there had gotten at me and triggered a response that no simple gimmick could have managed. I was still shaky when we called the people at Marquesi's to inquire about Vicki. She'd left her canoe in the hands of the boat-rental outfit until Marquesi's could fly someone out to ride it back. The store manager's lips tightened. 'You're not planning to do the same thing, are you?' he asked. His voice had turned hostile. 'I'll make it worth your while,' Alex said.
'Damn worth my while. You told me this wouldn't happen.'
Alex made the arrangements, and we gave the canoe over to Bessarlik Boating. By the way, did the owner remember somebody else doing this? Her name was Vicki Greene. 'The horror lady,' she said. 'Sure. I'd never forget her.' 'Why? Did she say anything out of the way?' 'Oh, no. Simply that I've read all her books. I loved meeting her.' 'How'd she seem?' 'How do you mean?' 'Was she all right? Did she seem upset, or anything like that?' 'No. She was really nice. Why? She's okay, isn't she?'
Vicki had mentioned she was headed for Morningdale. It was a town with a history of werewolves. Sounded like Vicki's kind of place. Alex and I arranged transportation, and an hour later we'd leased a skimmer and were on our way again. Below, I noticed one of the beanbags drifting near the edge of the river. And suddenly, while I watched, a long green tentacle whipped out of the trees. A moment later both the tentacle and the beanbag were gone. 'Your imagination,' said Alex. Maybe. By then, as far as I was concerned, tentacles were minor stuff.
A person must have time to grow accustomed to the idea that he will die soon. When it happens violently, suddenly, unexpectedly, he is simply not ready to leave. He will cling to a favorite chair, or retreat inside an AI. He will hang on to the things that are familiar and resist all effort at removal. In the end, you must throw out the furniture. If that doesn't work, sell the house.
- Midnight and Roses
The werewolf was a bust. Something howled in the woods around Morningdale, but there was no reason to believe it was anything other than a mahar , the local wolf-equivalent. Besides, I asked the lady at the hotel where we stayed, how could you have a werewolf when you don't get a full moon? Don't have a moon at all? 'When Callistra is directly overhead,' she said solemnly, 'it happens.' I laughed. She got annoyed. 'It's true,' she said. 'That star is the Devil's Eye.' 'Oh,' I said. 'Stay close to the hotel, and you should be okay.' The Devil's Eye. There it was again. The title for Vicki's next novel. The archives revealed there'd been a series of gruesome killings in the Morningdale area forty years earlier. But those had been attributed to an unusually malevolent mahar . The werewolf legend had started because a young man with mental problems had claimed to be the killer. When the authorities decided he needed psychiatric help, he'd resisted. Police had been summoned; the man had fled into the forest. Next day his body was found in the river that runs past the town. The killings stopped. But there were two similar incidents later. Each was accompanied by a string of murders, of people apparently torn apart by a wild animal. Each time, someone came forward, claiming guilt, claiming to be a werewolf. One of the nutcases was a woman. The killings were never resolved. And the confessions were attributed to a psychiatric disorder and the simple need to draw attention to oneself. In each case, according to one psychiatrist described as prominent, the victim had developed a morbid interest in the original werewolf story. 'Ordinarily,' he said, 'mahar s will not attack a human, but there are exceptions. What clearly happened in Morningdale is that there was a string of killings, and an unbalanced person attributed the actions to himself. Or, in this case, three unbalanced people. And I suspect, in future years, the pattern will repeat.' It had been eleven years since the last outbreak. But the town kept the story alive with the usual gift shop and several books purporting to reveal 'the truth' about the killings, and an HV presentation put together by a group of true believers. I'd have thought that the possibility of running into a werewolf would keep people out , but it apparently didn't work that way. In any case, I was relieved to learn that Vicki hadn't spent a night in the woods. She'd rented a room in a house at the edge of the forest and simply made herself comfortable on the porch during the hours when Callistra was overhead. The Devil's Eye. So we followed suit. We sat out there and listened to the sound of the woods. Occasionally, something howled. Presumably a mahar . The owner of the house, who stayed with us for a while, assured us that the creatures rarely came near the town. 'They're scared of people,' he said. The psychiatrist seemed to me to have a handle on things. Nevertheless, I had my scrambler with me. Alex smiled at that. 'It's a good move,' he said. 'You never know. But-' 'But what, Alex?' 'We'd probably be safer if you had something that shoots silver bullets.'
We followed Vicki around the world. We spent a quiet night in a church supposedly infected by demonic forces. We visited an office building that claimed to have a haunted storage room on the eighth floor. We spent three nights on Fermo Beach, where the only thing that came ashore was a harmless creature with an oversized shell. We visited an archeological site where, seven hundred years earlier, the inhabitants had sacrificed children and virgins. (It was hard to believe that was still going on nine thousand years after the Enlightenment.) We dropped in on several haunted houses. We watched in vain for the appearance of a phantom aircraft that was said to be a relic of
