TWO

For a while, I just sit there on the couch and stare at the TV. I have the remote in my hand, but I’m sure I didn’t use it to turn off the set.

Pretty sure.

Then again, I’m also “pretty sure” that someone on a TV show just spoke directly to me. Which puts a whole new spin on those two words, and possibly my brain.

Galahad whines. He knows I’m upset—he can always tell. Then he does something he’s never done before: He grabs the remote out of my hand, springs off the couch, and sprints for his doggy door.

“Hey!” I say, too startled to be angry. I jump up and give chase.

I catch up with him in the back yard, where he’s digging furiously. I watch, stunned, as he excavates a quick hole, drops the remote in, then fills it back up.

I stare at him, then glance up into the sky. Nope, no UFOs or angels. Too bad; if I’m going to lose my mind—again—I’d really appreciate a few special effects added to the mix. “After all,” I say out loud, “if you’re going to go crazy, you may as well go all the way.”

No invisible people reply. I don’t hear anything but crickets and somebody’s badly maintained pickup in the distance. Ken Tanaka’s, by the sound of it.

It’s a nice night in September, the tail end of an Indian summer. The air is warm and a little dusty. I stand there for a while, hugging myself and just listening to the twilight sounds of a small town: children yelling and laughing in the distance, the bang of an old screen door, dogs barking. It’s peaceful and serene and very, very ordinary.

I try desperately to savor it, but I just can’t. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong.

And after a few minutes I sigh, dig up the remote, go back in the house and go to bed.

*   *   *

I’m working a breakfast/lunch shift at the diner the next day, so I crawl out from under the covers at an ungodly hour, stagger to the kitchen, and try to deal with the pre-coffee technology problem: you know, how to operate the necessary devices to make coffee before you’ve had coffee. The guy who invented the espresso machine was probably wired on three pots of dark roast at the time, but I’m guessing that for the first decade after coffee was discovered, people got up and blearily smashed some beans with a rock, then stuck the pulp in a cup of lukewarm water. They probably hit their fingers with the rock a few times, too.

Galahad watches me intently the whole time, like he always does. I don’t know why he finds the process so fascinating—I tried giving him a little coffee once and he wouldn’t go near it—but he does. I think he must have been a barista in another life.

Then it’s off to Farmers Diner to bring other people their coffee. Yes, I know it looks like there should be an apostrophe somewhere near the end of that word, but that’s how it’s spelled on the sign and that’s who generally eats there.

I’m not a morning person, but I do enjoy walking to work at this time. The sun’s just starting to rise, the air has that damp, fresh smell to it, the dew glitters where the light hits it—it’s nice. Not too many people are up, either, though I do nod hello to Brad Varney, our mailman. He’s a big guy, hairless as an egg, and it looks like he forgot to wipe off that last bit of eyeliner he’s wearing. I stop him and point it out with a smile, and he thanks me without a trace of embarrassment. Thropirelem may not have any transsexuals, but we do have at least one transvestite—a fact known only to Brad, me, and whomever he chats with online while wearing a cocktail dress and pearls. When he asked me how I’d found out, I told him not to worry; nobody else in town has my eye for psychological markers and incriminating details—like the lacy edge of a camisole peeking out from his open collar when he asked me to sign for a package.

By the time I get to work I’ve convinced myself that last night’s cryptic message was just a coincidence. The Sword was talking to Red Dog, not me. Longinus is a weird name, granted, but I probably just misheard what she actually said—Ron Shyness or John Highness or something. I blame it on combining booze with my meds and shove it to the back of my brain, where it can play Parcheesi with all the other crazy ideas.

The diner used to be a Chinese restaurant, once upon a time, and it’s still got the pagoda-style roof and carved dragons over the front door. It’s not locked. It doesn’t have as much window space as most diners, either, favoring small, rectangular panes set high in the wall. Inside, booths line most of three walls, with the door to the kitchen behind the counter and a few small tables in the center. There’s an ancient jukebox that hasn’t worked in years in one corner, and old-fashioned lights with green glass shades hanging from the ceiling over every booth.

I go in the back, drape my jacket over one of the chairs that function as our staff area, and say good morning to Therese. She and her husband, Phil, own the place; Therese does double duty as bookkeeper and waitress, while Phil handles most of the cooking. She’s a stocky, good-natured woman with curly brown hair and laugh wrinkles around her eyes.

Phil, on the other hand, is living proof of the principle that opposites attract. Where Therese is friendly, he’s grumpy. Where Therese is generous, he’s suspicious. He’s also short, balding, and Japanese.

“Morning, Phil,” I say. He’s already wearing a stained apron, and chopping onions. “How’s things?”

He gives me a scowl. “Mr. Isamu.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am your boss. You should address me as Mr. Isamu.”

I force a smile. “Okay. How’s things, Mr. Isamu?”

“Fine. Get to work.” He turns back to his onions.

I resist the urge to flip him the finger, grab my apron, and stalk out of the kitchen. “He’s in a mood,” I say to Therese.

She nods, a worried look on her face. “I’m a little concerned, actually. I know he can be cranky, but this is different. Been going on for the last few days, getting worse and worse. He hardly eats, keeps staring off into space. It’s like his mind is somewhere else.”

“Well, wherever it is, I hope it has a nice vacation and comes back cheerful and rested.”

“Arrested?” says a voice. I look up to see our first customer walk through the door: Deputy Quinn Silver. He’s a Native American—though I don’t know which tribe—and, of course, a regular. He once said to me that’s he probably eaten more of our breakfasts than his own mother’s, though he wouldn’t say which he preferred. “Let’s just say she thought rattlesnake was a fine substitute for bacon and leave it at that,” he told me.

I get him some coffee and take his order. More customers trickle in, every one of whom I know by name. “Morning, Mayor,” I say, filling his cup. “The usual?”

Mayor Leo Adams beams at me. “Thank you, Jace, that would be wonderful.” Mayor Leo—that’s what everyone calls him—beams a lot, which is probably one of the reasons he’s had the job for so long. He’s got a bit of a paunch, a wide smile, and two wiry tufts of gray hair that stick up on either side of a bald head; he looks a little like a retired clown.

“How about you, Mr. Falzone?” Today Mayor Leo’s having breakfast with my other boss, the one that owns the hardware store.

“Please, Jace, I told you—call me Donny.” His smile is as wide as the Mayor’s, but there’s a predatory gleam to it. Donny Falzone may be in his sixties, but he keeps his mane of silver hair immaculately groomed, the top two buttons on his shirts undone, and at least a pound and a half of gold jewelry on his neck and fingers. Like they say, there’s no wolf like an old wolf. He’s charming and polite, but I try not to bend over when he’s around.

The men wait until I’ve left before resuming their conversation, and talk in low voices when they do. Donny’s one of the town’s movers and shakers, and always seems to have two or three people hanging around him at any given time. Every small town has one, I guess, a local dispenser of wisdom and advice to whom people naturally gravitate. I’ve always wondered why he’s never run for mayor himself; I guess some people are just more comfortable behind the scenes.

It gets busier after that, but thankfully Terrance and his buddies prefer to sleep in. That’s good; I’m not sure I can handle any more needling after what happened last night. My conviction that I was imagining things erodes over the course of the morning with little surges of memory. I keep seeing the Sword’s eyes drilling into mine from behind that mask, staring right into my soul. Feeling that connection you get when someone does that to you face to face.

Now, here’s the really weird part. I keep thinking, Why her?

The Sword of Midnight is a recurring but minor character. I’ve never felt any kind of deep link with her before. So why her and not Red Dog?

“Because insanity and consistency don’t really get along,” I mutter to myself. I’m out back in the alley on my break, chewing on a breakfast burrito and trying to convince myself I’m not relapsing. “In fact, they probably can’t spend five minutes in the same room without one of them making a snotty remark and the other one pulling a knife.”

But that’s not strictly true, I argue back silently. Madness, like everything else, tends to follow patterns. Those patterns might shift and change focus, but they’re almost never completely random. So what’s the pattern here? What am I trying to tell myself?

My thoughts are interrupted by a wheezing old pickup pulling into the alley and parking next to the door. Ken Tanaka gets out and gives me a curt nod. I nod back. Ken and I dated briefly, but it didn’t work out; he had certain old-fashioned ideas about how a woman was supposed to act around a man, and I had a wicked left hook. We try to be civil around each other, but he’s not exactly one of my biggest fans.

I go inside and tell Therese the morning food delivery’s here, then make the rounds with the coffee pot. A booth that was empty is now occupied by our local physician, Doctor Peter Adams, and a redheaded woman I don’t know.

“Hey, Doctor Pete,” I say. “Eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage, and sourdough toast?”

“Yes, please,” he says with a smile. Doctor Pete is Terrance’s twin brother, and about the only thing they have in common is their appearance. I have to admit to having a little crush on the Doc, though I’ve never done anything about it. With my judgment, I’d probably wind up dating Terrance by mistake.

“Hi,” I say to the redhead. She’s quite stunning, with the kind of alabaster complexion that looks ethereal instead of just pale. “You look familiar—haven’t I seen you over by the school?”

She gives me a wide smile. “Yes, I’ve just started there. Athena Shaker.” She offers me her hand and I take it. Her grip is cool and strong.

“Jace Valchek. Welcome to town, Athena. What do you teach?”

“History and biology, mostly.”

“Interesting mix.”

She shrugs. “I like to know how things grow, I guess. In fact, I’m trying to get a community garden started down by the baseball field.”

“Well, there’s no shortage of farmers here; you’ll get plenty of advice, if nothing else. What can I get for you?”

She orders a ham omelette and orange juice, then goes back to talking to Doctor Pete. I feel a twinge of envy, but push it away. About the only relationship I can handle right now is the one I have with Galahad, and maybe caffeine. No, definitely caffeine.

The hours plod by. People come and go. I take orders, bring food, clear away empty plates. I catch Phil giving me dark looks more than once, though I have no idea what I’ve done to piss him off.

And I can’t stop thinking about what happened last night.

It’s not just the TV thing, either. It’s that story Terrance told. I know he was just trying to spook me, but he did a good job. I keep fixating on that one little detail about the suicide’s shoes dropping when the body goes limp. What if they were wearing boots? Gumboots might fall off, but anything with laces wouldn’t. And how about beforehand, when the body is kicking and twitching—hell, a shoe could go flying, land in the bushes where no one would find it. Then you’d have a corpse with a shoe missing, and that would probably confuse the hell out of anyone investigating the case.

Except there is no case. Just a headcase, named Jace. Who is losing the race to keep her sanity in place. Whee.

By the end of my shift I know I have to do something—anything—to get this out of my brain before it burrows in so deep it turns white and its eyes fall out. Unfortunately, about the only plan I can come up with is to give in and go see Old Man Longinus, who by all accounts is as receptive to visitors as an irritable whale is to a harpoon.

I go home first to walk Galahad and try to figure out my approach. “Hi, Mr. Longinus? I’m the local loon. I understand you’re the local crank, and I was wondering if we could get together and maybe discuss mutual areas of interest.”

Mmm. Needs work.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Longinus. A woman on TV with a sword informed me you have some answers, and I was hoping you might be willing to share them. No, I don’t know what the questions are. Oh, that’s down the street? Under the big neon sign reading CRAZY MOTEL—RUBBER ROOMS AVAILABLE, FREE DRY CLEANING OF STRAITJACKETS INCLUDED? Thank you so much, I’ll be right back.”

Big improvement. Should be tweaked a bit.

“MWAH-HA-HA-HA! My tinfoil hat pointed at your house! I like frogs! Would you like to floopa-floopa my gazinga-ding? No, sir, I am not phantasmagorical! Look, Ernest Hemingway eating a pickle!”

Much better. Or at least more accurate.

Galahad and I are on our regular route, down to the end of the street and then through a little patch of woods next to the grocery store, and I’m so lost in thought I’m not really paying attention. That’s how I wind up getting trapped.

“Hello, Jace,” says a raspy voice.

I blink and look up. Father Stone stands in front of me.

I’m not really sure what denomination he represents—the United Reformed Methodist Presbyterian Baptist Something, I think. He looks like a midget linebacker with a bad haircut and only seems to have one expression, like a robot that skimped on the options. That expression is supposed to be a friendly smile, but it seems about as genuine as something assembled by a taxidermist. He never wears anything but solid black with a little white collar, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he sleeps in the same outfit.

“Uh, hello, Father,” I say. “I’m just out walking my dog.” It’s a lame and obvious thing to say, but the man makes me nervous. He doesn’t blink often enough.

“I see,” he says, smiling. “How have you been, Jace? How are things?” He puts just the barest emphasis on the last word, but it makes it sound like he’s enquiring about a family of monsters living in my basement.

“Things are fine,” I say inanely. No, no, they’re not. Things are moaning and squelching and waving their tentacles like a squid trying to signal a waitress.

“We haven’t seen you in church lately,” says a voice behind me. My eyes widen and my heart sinks. Never let them surround you.

“Oh, hi, Miss Selkirk,” I say, turning. Miss Selkirk is a collection of wrinkles wrapped around a skeleton, with bright blue eyes and a mouth that wouldn’t know what to do with a smile if one ever showed up—maybe she sold hers to Father Stone. That would explain a lot; it was probably a bad fit but he just jammed it in there anyway and now he can’t get the damn thing to budge—

Shut up, brain.

“I’ve been … busy,” I say. Actually, I’ve never been to Stone’s church, but it seems unwise to bring that up now. They might insist on marching me down there for an inspection. “You know, with … stuff.”

“Your soul is important,” Miss Selkirk says. She’s dressed in lime-green pants held up with an orange belt, a purple and pink striped blouse, white gloves, and a black hat with what appears to be a dead crow stuck in the band. “You should take care of it.” She squints at me like a racoon sizing up a garbage can.

“I do,” I say. “I have it sent out and cleaned regularly.”

Neither of them react to this little gem in the slightest. “Come by any time,” says Father Stone. Smiling.

“We’d love to have you,” says Miss Selkirk. She sounds hungry.

“I’ll think about it. But I just remembered—Galahad did his business back there and I forget to bring a plastic bag with me. Gotta go get one.” I spin around and march away quickly, before one of them magically produces said item from under a hat or maybe a metal hatch in their chest.

I take Gally back home and consider my next move. I finally decide to wing it—I’ll march up to Longinus’s house, knock on the door, and just talk to the guy. Feel him out. If nothing else, I can always invite him to church.

I change my clothes first. Not sure why. Stretchy black pants, sneakers, black top. Your basic breaking-and-entering outfit, though I have no intention of burgling the place—all I want is to have a conversation. I tell myself that, over and over, the whole walk there.

Which doesn’t take long. The Longinus place is on the edge of town, but Thropirelem isn’t a big place—maybe a few hundred people, all told. Small towns are like islands, little pockets of habitation separated by plains or forests or mountains instead of water—but mostly just separated by distance. People say that distance has dwindled in the twenty-first century, shrunk by modern transportation and telecommunications into a single global village, but there are still plenty of places where you can expect to drive for an hour or more before you see another human face. That distance always has been—and always will be—a factor in how people who live there act and think; isolation always is.

Here that distance is mostly filled with wheat instead of water, vast rippling fields of pale yellow. The Longinus house perches at the edge of that grassy ocean like a rotting seaside warehouse, huge and ancient and dark. It’s only three stories tall, but it seems taller. The wood is that rough gray that unpainted lumber turns into under the hot prairie sun, like petrified elephant hide. All the windows are shrouded by dark curtains, and the front porch has a tumbleweed stuck in one corner beside an old wooden chair; I can’t help but think of the Gallowsman.

I force myself to mount the creaking steps. The front door is a huge slab of oak with a panel of stained glass at head height. The designs worked into the glass are disturbing, but I’m not sure why; there’s just something about the angles that seem subtly off, like an optical illusion you don’t quite get.

And the door’s ajar.

Just a few inches, enough to show a narrow slit of darkness beside the jamb. I freeze with my hand up to knock, then rap gently on the glass. “Hello?” I say softly.

Stupid. What’s the point in knocking and calling out if you do it quietly? I say in a louder voice, “Hello! Mr. Longinus?” and knock again, harder this time. Hard enough, in fact, that the door swings open wider.

Dark hallway. No sound. I see an old oval mirror in a silver frame on one wall and faded wallpaper in some kind of floral pattern behind it. A shapeless dark coat hangs from a peg beside the door, and a worn pair of boots sit underneath it.

I take a step inside. My nerves are screaming at me to just turn around and leave, but some other part of my brain has taken over; I find myself checking the edges of the door, looking down for footprints, even glancing toward the ceiling at the cracked and dirty light fixture. My right hand keeps drifting toward my left shoulder, like I’m going to pull something out of a breast pocket.

No, not a pocket. A holster.

“Cut it out, Jace,” I mutter. “You read too many police procedurals.” I don’t even own a gun, let alone a holster.

But apparently deep down inside I’m convinced I have cop DNA, because instead of leaving and closing the door behind me—or calling a real police officer—I move farther down the hallway.

There’s another door ajar at the end of it.

When I peer around the edge of that one, I see stairs leading down. Basement, of course. No trail of blood on the steps, but that would be overkill. Creepy old house, door open, basement. I’d have to be some kind of idiot to go down there, right?

I throw myself on the mercy of the court. About the only excuse I have is possible mental illness, which in retrospect is probably closer to an explanation than an excuse. Also convenient, and less insulting.

Down I go. The staircase is well lit and doesn’t creak. The stairs go down and end at another door, which is kind of strange. This one looks like it was forged out of cast iron about two hundred years ago, and it’s open too. There’s an orangey, flickering light coming from the other side; I peer cautiously into the room.

I don’t know what I expect to see, but it isn’t this.

First impressions: big room, lots of black draperies hanging down. More candles than the bedroom of a teenage goth girl, all of them lit. Lots of cushions on the floor, but no other furniture except for a big-ass table at the far end of the room.

No, not a table. An altar.

That’s what draws my attention and focuses it. Because the altar—a big chunk of square granite that looks as if it was carved right out of the bedrock—has a body on it. Male, dressed in a long black robe, with a face only an undertaker could love.

Old Man Longinus.

I don’t hesitate. I walk forward and inspect the body. He’s got a long, presumably ceremonial dagger sticking out of his chest, and no pulse. I don’t touch anything else, not at first. Instead, I look around and try to figure out what happened.

That’s when I notice the photos.

There are seven in all, and from the way three are positioned on the altar it looks as if Longinus was placing them in preparation for some sort of ritual when he was attacked. There are two more on the floor. I find the last one trapped beneath the body, the corner barely visible.

They’re all of me.

Me in different emotional states—gesticulating in anger, weeping, laughing, even one where I seem to be having an orgasm.

“Double. You. Tee. Eff,” I say.

I don’t study the pics for long. They go in my pocket.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my police-work research, it’s that the person who discovers the body is often the perpetrator. That, plus my being in the house for no good reason plus the pictures plus history of medical-grade wackiness equals Jace in jail. No way. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.

Okay, I may be crazy and stupid, but at least I try to alternate. And right now, I’m going to go with the crazy option and try to puzzle out what the hell went on here.

I look around. The burning candles are massive things that could have been lit days ago. But I also see the remains of smaller candles that are no more than puddles of cold wax that have obviously burned all the way down. That would have taken a while; if Longinus lit them before he was killed, the murder probably took place some time ago, hours at the very least.

No signs of a break-in or a struggle, so Longinus probably knew the person who murdered him. Whoever did it was fast, strong, and confident—the knife is buried up to the hilt, and it looks like it punched right through the breastbone. You don’t kill someone with a single thrust like that, from the front, unless you know exactly what you’re doing. Maybe you’ve even done it before.

The body isn’t restrained, and one leg is dangling off the side of the altar. Not a ritual posture, in other words. He might have been shoved backward and off his feet before the killing blow was delivered.

So he let someone in, someone he wasn’t afraid of. He was in the middle of preparing his altar, and then he was abruptly attacked and killed, possibly with a weapon of opportunity.

The cushions bother me.

You don’t just scatter a few throw pillows around a room like this to brighten it up. The pillows are there for people to sit—or, more likely, kneel—on while something vile and perverse happens on that altar.

The evidence seems conclusive. Longinus was running a sex club.

Why they picked me as their fetish object isn’t clear, but maybe it was only Longinus himself who was fixated on me. I go searching for corroborating evidence, convinced I’ll find a chest full of sex toys and illegal porn hidden behind one of the black draperies.

Not so much.