By the light of the moon

be
shaken even though it was doing a fine job of shaking itself. 'I'm
Marjorie, dear. What's your name?'
    Jilly would have gone into the downstairs hall in search of
Dylan if her only responsibility had been Shepherd, but Dylan had
left her with a second, this woman. She didn't want to leave Shep
alone in the SUV much longer, and if she left Marjorie alone within
reach of a telephone, more small-town cops would be milling around
this place than you'd find at a Mayberry RFD convention.
    Besides, Dylan had told Marjorie to get out of the house because
she wasn't safe here, but the old girl seemed to have lived nearly
seventy years while remaining a naif incapable of recognizing peril
even when the wickedly gleaming edge of it was descending toward
her neck. If Jilly didn't get her out of here, Marjorie might
remain in the kitchen, vaguely concerned but not alarmed, even if a
plague of ravenous locusts swarmed out of the pantry and gouts of
molten lava erupted from the sink drain.
    'I'm Marjorie,' she repeated, her fragile smile trembling like a
crescent of froth that might dissolve back into the pool of worry
that had flooded her features. Still extending her hand, she
clearly expected a name in return – a name that she would
give to the cops later when, inevitably, she eventually summoned
them.
    Putting an arm around Marjorie's shoulders, encouraging her
toward the back door, Jilly said, 'Sweetie, you can just call me
Chicken-sandwich-French-fries-root-beer. 'Chicky' for short.'
    * * *
    Each further contact with the spoor on the banister suggested
that the person whose trail Dylan followed was more malevolent than
the previous trace had revealed. By the time that he turned at the
landing and climbed the second flight into the gloom at the top of
the stairs, he understood that in the upper rooms waited an
adversary who could be vanquished not by a mere artist lacking any
firsthand experience of violence, but by no less than a dragon
slayer.
    Hardly more than a minute ago, downstairs, when he had seen the
woman alive but also as she might eventually appear in the
aftermath of murder, he had felt undiluted terror for the first
time slither into him. Now it tightened its serpent coils around
his spine.
    'Please,' Dylan whispered, as though he still believed
that he stood here in the iron control of – and at the mercy
of – an unknown external force. 'Please,' he repeated,
as though it were not becoming manifestly clear that this sixth
sense had been conferred upon him – or cursed upon him
– by whatever elixir the syringe contained, and as though it
were not equally clear that he continued on this dangerous course
utterly without coercion. His whispered please could rightly
be directed toward no one but himself. He was driven by motives
that he could not understand, but they were nonetheless his motives
and his alone.
    He could turn and leave. He knew the choice was his to
make. Also he understood that the way down and out of this house
would be easier than the path ahead.
    When he realized that he was indeed in full control of himself,
a remarkable calm settled through him with the rare grace of
windless snow layering smooth contours over a racked landscape. He
stopped shaking. When his clenched teeth relaxed, his jaw muscles
stopped twitching. His sense of urgency subsided, and his heartbeat
grew slower and less forceful until he thought that his cardiac
muscle might not explode, after all. Unwinding from his spine, the
serpent of cold terror bit its tail and swallowed itself
entirely.
    He stood at the head of the stairs, at the brink of the dark
hall, knowing that he could turn back, knowing that he would
instead go forward, but not knowing why, and for the moment
not needing to know. By his own assessment, he was not a courageous
man, not born to travel battlefields or to police mean streets. He
admired heroism, but he didn't expect it of himself. Although his
motivation here remained a mystery, he understood himself well
enough to be sure that selflessness wasn't a factor; he would go
forward because intuitively he sensed that to retreat would not be
in his best interests. Because he couldn't yet consciously process
all the strange information gathered by his uncannily heightened
perceptions, logic led him to rely on his instincts more than might
ordinarily have been prudent.
    Rose light climbed the trellis of the stairs only as far as the
lower landing. The dark bowers before Dylan were brightened only
–