Game of Cages

to say. “Look at your cousin. Was she a bad mother before today? Did she hate her son?”

“No,” he said. “She loves that boy.”

“Yesterday she loved that boy. Today all she can think about is that damn sapphire dog.” That seemed to stagger him, but I wasn’t finished. “And you already know that Clara and Isabelle killed each other over it, don’t you?”

Steve stepped away from me, his shoulders slumping forward as if he suddenly bore a heavy weight. “Oh my heavens.”

“Maybe it’s temporary,” I said. He shot a look at me; he hadn’t even considered how long it would last. Of course, I’d seen predators at work before, and when they destroyed people, they didn’t do it on a temporary basis. “But our first job has to be to find that thing and kill it.”

“You made it vanish,” he said. “What did you throw at it?”

Now he was asking for too much information. “A credit card.” I pulled my MasterCard out of my pocket and showed it to him. “I scared it off. I don’t think it knows very much about this world.”

“Who brought this devil into our world?”

We were getting close to another subject I wanted to avoid. If Steve started talking about Jesus, I wouldn’t be able to turn him away from it, and judging by the way he talked to the paramedics, he had a lot of authority in this town.

Annalise had explained that predators and magic had nothing to do with God or hell, angels or demons. Magic was a way of controlling reality, and predators were just what the name suggested—hungry things from a place outside, sometimes called the Empty Spaces and sometimes called the Deeps.

If Steve started telling the people of Washaway that they were facing a devil, they might try to protect themselves with prayer and crosses, which was as effective as stopping a sniper’s bullet with a hopeful thought.

“It’s not a demon,” I told him. “It’s an alien.”

“Oh.”

“It didn’t come here in a ship. It’s just here. And it’s been here a long time.”

“It has? Where?”

“In Regina Wilbur’s house.”

“Regina? Why, she …”

His voice trailed off. I could see him reconsidering everything he knew about her in light of what he’d seen today. “But she doesn’t have a mark on her face.”

“No,” I said. “She’s kept it prisoner. It’s been hidden on her estate for all this time. But it can affect us at a distance. I think it did exactly that to her for decades. And I think it’s getting stronger.”

“What do we do?”

The paramedics were loading the boy into the ambulance. Sue had a bandage on her wrist; from the way the kid was lunging and snapping at them, I guessed he must have bitten her.

“How many roads lead out of town?”

“Just two,” he said. “This one, which leads to I-5, and Littlemont Road, which goes past the Breakleys’ to the pass.”

“We need to block them off. The predator is trying to get to a heavily populated area. Can you block the roads without causing too much suspicion?”

“No,” he said, “but the state police can. I’ll tell the mayor to call. Heck, considering everything that’s happened, it would be suspicious if we didn’t block them. But we’re going to do more than that, aren’t we?” He looked stricken and miserable. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

“We’ll try,” I said. “And help is coming.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Just tell me one thing, son. You didn’t cause this, did you? You didn’t let this thing loose on my town?”

The question startled me, although it shouldn’t have. “No.”

He sighed in relief. He believed me, although I had no idea why. “I’ll take Penny …” He trailed off as a battered yellow pickup screeched to a halt at the edge of the road. “Looks like you’re going to meet the mayor,” Steve said.

The driver’s door opened and a burly, gray-haired woman bowled out. She wore a Santa cap and a red-and- green coat covered with snowmen. She bustled up the hill toward us.

Steve turned to me. “What should I tell her?”

“You know her. I don’t. Would she believe the truth?”

He sighed. “Not a chance on God’s green earth.”

“Like I said: you know her. Tell her what you have to.”

“Good Lord, Steve, what’s going on?” she said when she was a few paces away.

“People are going crazy, Pippa, and the crazy is spreading.”

I kept my mouth shut, letting Steve take the lead. She stopped next to us, breathing hard. “Explain. No, wait. First, who are you?”

She stepped close to me. She may have been past sixty and barely five feet tall, but she looked at me with the