By the light of the moon

half convinced that any
authorities to whom she turned would prove to be in league with the
men who had blown up her cherished Cadillac. Worse, with every
heartbeat, her blood carried an unknown corruption deeper into her
tissues.
    On consideration, she realized that in this instance, reality
involved more frantic action, inspired more exaggerated emotions,
and encouraged less respect for cause and effect than any melodrama
ever staged. 'Melodramatic, my ass,' she muttered.
    Through the open back door of the Expedition, Jilly had a clear
view of Dylan O'Conner sitting beside Shep and talking –
ceaselessly, earnestly talking. The roar and whistle of passing
traffic prevented her from hearing anything he said, and judging by
Shepherd's faraway gaze, Dylan might as well have been alone,
bending no ear but his own.
    At first he held his younger brother's hands to put a stop to
the self-administered blows that had brought a thin flow of blood
from the kid's left nostril. In time, he released Shep and simply
sat beside him, bent forward, head lowered, forearms on his thighs,
hands clasped, but still talking, talking.
    Jilly's inability to hear Dylan over the traffic noise created
the impression that he spoke in a discreet murmur to his brother.
The dim light in the SUV and the posture of the men – side by
side, close and yet apart – brought to mind a confessional.
The longer that she watched the brothers, the more completely the
illusion developed, until she could smell the wood polish with
which the confessional booths of her youth had been maintained and
also the steeped-in scent of decades of smoldering incense.
    A strangeness overcame her, a sense that the scene before her
possessed meaning beyond what the five senses could perceive, that
within it wound layers of mysteries and that at the core of all the
mysteries lay... something transcendent. Jilly was too firmly
rooted to this world to be a medium or a mystic; never before had
she been seized by such a peculiar mood as this.
    Although the night could not possibly be redolent of anything
more exotic than the astringent alkaline breath of the Sonoran
desert and the exhaust fumes of passing vehicles, the atmosphere
between Jilly and the two O'Conners nevertheless appeared to
thicken with a thin haze of incense. This enwrapping spicy perfume
– cloves, myrrh, olibanum – was no longer a mere memory of fragrance; it had become as real and as true to
this moment as were the star-shot sky above her and the loose
gravel of the highway shoulder under her feet. In the cloistered
interior of the Expedition, the fine particles of aromatic smoke in
the gauzy air refracted and reflected the ceiling light, painting
blue and gold aureoles around the O'Conners, until she might have
sworn that the two brothers, rather than the small lamp above them,
were radiant.
    In this tableau, she would have expected Dylan to fulfill the
role of priest, for of the two, Shepherd seemed to be the lost
soul. But Dylan's expression and posture were those of a penitent,
while Shep's blank stare appeared to be not empty but
contemplative. As the younger brother began to nod slowly,
rhythmically, he acquired the gracious aspect of a cassocked padre
spiritually empowered to grant absolution. Jilly sensed that this
unexpected reversal of roles revealed a truth of deep significance,
but she could not grasp what it might be, and she could not
understand why the subtleties of the relationship between these two
men should be of such intense interest to her or should, in fact,
impress her as being key to her salvation from her current
circumstances.
    Strangeness upon strangeness: She heard the sweet silvery
laughter of children, although no children were present, and
immediately as these musical peals of merriment arose, a flutter of
wings soared after them. Surveying the vault of stars, she glimpsed
no birds silhouetted against the constellations, yet the turbulence
of wings increased and with it the laughter, until she rose to her
feet and turned slowly around, around, in bafflement,
wonderment.
    Jilly knew no word to describe the extraordinary experience
unfolding for her, but hallucination didn't seem to be
applicable. These sounds and scents had neither the dreamlike
insubstantiality nor the hyperrealistic intensity that she might
have expected of hallucinations, but were of a vividness precisely
matched to the elements of the night that she knew to be real:
neither more nor less resonant than