By the light of the moon

helpless condition of this woman, but not in the real
world. Her paralysis was probably psychological, though nonetheless
hampering. To lift her off the bed and carry her from the room, he
would have to put down the baseball bat.
    'Where's Kenny?' he whispered.
    At last her gaze lowered from the ceiling, toward the corner of
the room in which one of the closed doors waited.
    'There?' he pressed.
    Becky's eyes met his for the first time... and then at once
shifted again toward the door.
    Warily Dylan moved around the foot of the bed, crossing the
remainder of the room. Kenny might come at him from anywhere.
    Bedsprings sang, and the girl grunted as she exerted
herself.
    Turning, Dylan saw Becky no longer lying face-up, saw her risen
to her knees, and rising still, all the way to her feet upon the
bed, with a knife in her right hand.
    * * *
    Tonk. Twang. Plink.
    Eating up trouble as though it were custard, but not pleased by
the taste, Jilly reached the archway on the tonk , found the
light switch on the twang . On the plink , she bathed
the threat in light.
    The furious beating of wings almost caused her to reel backward.
She expected the tumult of doves or pigeons that had spiraled
around her by the side of the highway, or the blinding blizzard of
birds that she alone had seen while in the Expedition. But the
flock made no appearance, and after the briefest spate of flapping,
the wings fell silent.
    Kenny wasn't sharpening knives. Unless he proved to be crouched
behind an armchair or a sofa, Kenny wasn't even present.
    Another series of metallic sounds drew her attention to a cage.
It hung five or six feet off the floor, supported by a base similar
to that of a floor lamp.
    With tiny taloned feet, a parakeet clung to the heavy-gauge wire
that formed the bars of its habitat; using its beak, the feathered
prisoner plucked at those same restraints. With a sweep of its
fluid neck, the parakeet strummed its beak back and forth across a
swath of bars as if it were a handless harpist playing a glissando
passage: zzziiinnnggg, zzziiinnnggg .
    Her tattered reputation as a warrioress having been further
diminished by mistaking a parakeet for a mortal threat, Jilly
retreated from this moment of humiliation. Returning to the stairs,
she heard once more the bird's vigorously feathered drumming of the
air, as though it were demanding the freedom to fly.
    The rap and rustle of wings so vividly recalled her paranormal
experiences that she resisted an urge to flee the house, and
instead fled up toward Dylan. The bird grew quiet by the time she
reached the midpoint landing, but remaining in flight from the memory of wings, she hurried to the upper floor with too
little caution.
    * * *
    Fake fear had washed out of Becky's blue eyes, and a mad glee
had flooded into them.
    She launched herself off the bed in a frenzy, slashing wildly
with the knife. Dylan twisted out of her way, and Becky proved to
have more enthusiasm for murder than practice at it. She stumbled,
nearly fell, barely escaped skewering herself, and shouted,
'Kenny!'
    Here came Kenny through the door that Becky had not indicated.
He had certain qualities of an eel: lithe and quick to the point of
sinuousness, lean but muscular, with the mad pressure-pinched eyes
of a creature condemned to live in cold, deep, rancid waters. Dylan
half expected Kenny's teeth to be pointed and backward-hooked like
the teeth of any serpent, whether on land or in water.
    He was a young man with flair, dressed in black cowboy boots,
black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black denim jacket brightened
by embroidered green Indian designs. The embroidery matched the
shade of the feather in the cowboy hat that had been perched atop
the suitcases in the bedroom across the hall.
    'Who're you ?' Kenny asked Dylan, and without waiting for
an answer, he demanded of Becky, 'Where the hell's the old
bitch?'
    The white-haired woman in the candy-striped uniform, home from a
hard day's work, was no doubt the old bitch for whom these two had
lain in wait.
    'Who cares who he is,' Becky said. 'Just kill him, then we'll
find the old pus bag and gut her.'
    The shackled boy had misunderstood the relationship between his
brother and the girl. Cold-blooded conspirators, they intended to
slaughter Grandma and little brother, perhaps steal whatever
pathetic trove of cash the woman had hidden in her mattress, toss
Kenny's two suitcases in the car, and hit the road.
    They might make a stop farther along the street at