the creatures, but the mass was still advancing. I couldn’t stop it.
My feet touched grass. There were many fewer worms than there had been, maybe only 10 percent of the original mass, but I wasn’t going to get them all. I cursed at them, swore at them as I killed them. Eventually, I had backed all the way onto the grass, and the first of the worms tumbled off the asphalt. Fewer than a dozen hit the soil and started tunneling, but that was still too many.
I jumped to my feet and rushed back onto the court. The worms had vanished beneath the earth, and I didn’t like the idea that they might tunnel up from beneath me.
I looked at my ghost knife. There was no residue on it, no blood, no black soot, nothing. It was as clean as the day I’d made it. I slipped it into my pocket.
A long skipping rope lay on the basketball court with a discarded baseball cap beside it. The cap was lavender. It had been a little girl this time.
I looked at the streak. The northern edge of the court was not ten feet from the spot where the fire had started, but the worms had turned toward the southwest. They’d gone a long way, exposed to danger, to head in that direction.
I turned and looked along the path of the black streak. It pointed in the general direction of the Hammer Bay Toys plant. It headed toward Charles Hammer the Third.
At that moment, killing Charles Hammer seemed like the most important and most natural thing in the world.
CHAPTER NINE
I walked the rest of the way to Hammer Street in a daze. I kept trying to picture the face of the little girl that had just burned away, but all I saw was a rotating series of faces, all absurdly angelic. At that moment, I would have knifed Charles Hammer in a police station, in front of forty cops and a dozen TV-news cameras.
This was my mind-set when I finally reached Hammer Street. It was a single block long, curving westward with no sidewalks. I walked up the middle of the street. There were stone walls on either side of me, and thick blackberry vines growing over the top. The road sloped upward, and as I reached a cul-de-sac, I saw three houses.
The smallest sat on the north lot. It was made of brick and had pretty white balconies. The second house, on the southern lot, was made of mortared stone. It was low and wide, and was probably very modern forty years ago. Both were shuttered and dark.
The largest house occupied the western lot. It was made of wood and stood three stories tall. It had a nest of slanting roofs, mismatched balconies, and clusters of stone chimneys. On the southern side of the house, a tall, round tower loomed above the rest. It was the oldest of the houses, and it dominated the street. I turned around and saw the town of Hammer Bay laid out before me. Maybe the house was meant to dominate the town, too.
I checked Cynthia’s card. Of course her address matched the large house.
I wondered if Annalise would be grateful if I killed Charlie Three myself, right now. I wondered if her hands would heal.
There were three cars parked in front. One was the silver Escalade. Beside it was a fifteen-year-old BMW, a good car and pricey when it was new, but it had suffered rust and salt corrosion and the damage had been allowed to spread. The third car was a blue Tercel. It was such an ordinary, unassuming car, it was nearly invisible beside the others.
The street was empty. There were lights upstairs at the large house, but everything seemed still. I assumed all three houses belonged to the Hammers, although I wasn’t sure what gave me that impression. Maybe it was the way the street had been laid out for maximum privacy. Maybe it was that I didn’t think anyone would share an address on Hammer Street in Hammer Bay with the Hammer family.
An instinct for caution made me approach the brick house first. I circled it, looking for an unblocked window. There wasn’t one. The stone house, though, had a broken shutter on a back window. I peered in.
Nothing. No furnishings, no art on the walls, nothing. It was an empty shell. I went to the big house and rang the bell.
To my surprise, Cynthia answered. She looked aggravated, and several strands of her dark hair stuck out in random directions. “You’re late,” she said. Her tone wasn’t friendly.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked. The anger in my voice surprised me.
She ignored the question. “I’m afraid I’m a little busy right now. I’ll have to ask you to wait in the library.”
“Where’s your brother?” I asked again. “Where’s Charles?”
“I don’t like the way you’re asking that question.”
I imagined myself throttling the answer out of her.
No. I turned away and stared back over the town. The cold, furious sense of purpose that had driven me across town began to fade. I was not going to start killing everyone between me and my target. Annalise would have, but I was not going that far.
“I’ll wait in the library, then,” I said to her.
She stepped backward to let me enter. “I don’t like that you’re late. I expect people to be punctual. I’m not a person who likes to wait for others.” She sounded flustered and annoyed, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to put me in my place because I’d scared her in the car, or if something else was getting on her nerves and she was taking it out on me. Either way, I didn’t care.
She led me into the library and shut the door. I looked out the window. I saw a wide green lawn with a winding white stone path laid across it. The sight was soothing.
I held up my hand. It was trembling. I wondered how I could find out the name of the little girl I had just seen killed. No one would remember her. No one would go looking for her. There would be nothing in the news. I could look for that fat lady, I guessed, under the assumption that it was her daughter, but what good would that do? She wouldn’t remember her any better than anyone else. I could break into their house and search the place for a photo…
