By the light of the moon

shards in the frame, clearing the way for
entrance.
    'Our house in California,' Dylan said, ' California – one hundred something thousand square miles—'
    Shep raised his right hand as if to swear fealty to the state of
California.
    '—population thirty something million something
thousand—'
    Whatever genetic cousin to a bull was charging the door charged
it again, and the chair cracked, sagged.
    Frowning as though still unsure of himself, Shepherd pinched the
air between the thumb and forefinger of his raised hand.
    '—state tree,' Dylan said, but then fumbled for the
species.
    'The redwood!' Jilly said.
    The drapes billowed as one of the assassins began to climb in
from outside.
    'State flower, the golden poppy,' Dylan continued.
    Persistence paid. On the fifth blow, the door shuddered inward
and the bracing chair collapsed.
    The first man across the threshold, kicking at the fragments of
the chair, was wearing pale-yellow pants, a pink-and-yellow polo
shirt, and a murderous expression. He had a pistol, and as he
rushed forward, he raised it with the clear intention of squeezing
off a shot.
    'Eureka,' Shep said, and tweaked.
    Dylan thanked God that he heard no gunfire as the motel room
folded away from him, but he did hear his name –
'O'Conner!' – shouted by the would-be shooter.
    This time while in kaleidoscopic transit, he had something
entirely new to fear: that the thug in golf togs had gotten too
near to them before they escaped the motel room, and that Shep had
folded a well-armed killer with them to California.

32
    Abundant slabs of shadow and a few shards of pale
light unfolded through the receding motel bedroom, and one split
second before Dylan recognized the new room that fell into place
around him, he smelled the lingering savor of a
cinnamon-pecan-raisin cake baked according to his mother's
cherished recipe, its delicious aroma unmistakable.
    Shep, Jilly, and Dylan himself arrived unscathed, but the killer
in the polo shirt didn't have a ticket to ride, after all. Not even
the echo of his shouted O'Conner! followed them out of
Arizona.
    In spite of the comforting aroma and the gladdening absence of a
door-busting assassin, Dylan enjoyed no sense of relief. Something
was wrong. He couldn't at once identify the source of his current
uneasiness, but he felt it too strongly to discount it as bad
nerves.
    The gloom in the kitchen of their California house was relieved
only slightly by a soft butterscotch-yellow light seeping across
the threshold of the open door to the dining room, and even less by
the illuminated clock set into the belly of a smiling ceramic pig
that hung on the wall to the right of the sink. On the counter
under the clock, revealed by that timely light, a sheet-cake pan
containing the fresh cinnamon-pecan-raisin delight cooled on a wire
rack.
    Vonetta Beesley – their once-a-week Harley-riding
housekeeper – sometimes cooked for them, using their late
mother's best recipes. But as they weren't scheduled to return from
their art-festival tour until late October, she must have prepared
this treat for herself.
    Following the momentary disorientation of being folded, Dylan
realized why a sense of wrongness could not be dispelled.
They had departed eastern Arizona, which lay in the Mountain time
zone, before one o'clock Saturday afternoon. In California, in the
Pacific time zone, the day should have waned one hour less than it
had back in Holbrook. Shortly before one o'clock in Holbrook
translated to shortly before noon on the shores of the Pacific, yet
the black of night pressed at the kitchen windows.
    Darkness at noon?
    'Where are we?' Jilly whispered.
    'Home,' Dylan said.
    He consulted the luminous hands of his wristwatch, which he had
set to Mountain time days ago, before the arts festival in Tucson.
The watch showed four minutes till one o'clock, about what he had
expected and surely correct.
    Here in the land of the golden poppy and the redwood tree, the
time ought to be four minutes till noon, not four till
midnight.
    'Why's it dark?' Jilly asked.
    In the belly of the pig, the illuminated clock showed 9:26.
    During the previous trips via folding, either no time elapsed in
transit – or at most a few seconds. Dylan had not been aware
of any significant period of time passing on this occasion,
either.
    If they truly had arrived at 9:26 in the evening, Vonetta should
have left hours ago. She worked from nine o'clock until five. If
she had gone, however, she would have taken