By the light of the moon

door.
    When she looked up and saw Dylan and Shep approaching, palpable
relief chased the pensive expression from her face. Something had
happened to her in their absence.
    'What's wrong?' he asked when he reached her.
    'I'll tell you in the truck. Let's get out of here. Let's
go.'
    Opening the door, Dylan put his hand on fresh spoor. Bleakness,
an oppressive sense of solitude, a dark-night-of-the-soul
loneliness pierced him and filled him with an emotional desolation
as blasted, burnt, and ash-shrouded as a landscape in the aftermath
of an all-consuming fire.
    He tried immediately to insulate himself from the power of the
latent psychic print on the door handle, as he had learned to do
with the restaurant menu. This time, however, he wasn't able to
resist the influx of energy.
    With no memory of crossing the threshold, Dylan found himself
outside and on the move. Even hours past sundown, the mild desert
night withdrew the banked heat of the day from the blacktop, and he
detected the faint scent of tar under the kitchen odors that rose
from the restaurant roof vents.
    Glancing back, he saw Jilly and Shep standing in the open door,
already ten feet behind him. He had dropped Shep's book, which lay
on the pavement between him and them. He wanted to retrieve the
book and return to Shep and Jilly. He could not. 'Wait here for
me.'
    Car to pickup to SUV, he was impelled to venture farther into
the parking lot, not with the urgency that had earlier caused him
to turn the Expedition on a dime and leave nine cents change, but
with a nonetheless motivating perception that an important
opportunity would shortly be foreclosed if he didn't act. He knew
that he wasn't out of control, that on a subconscious level he
understood exactly what he was doing, and why, as he had
subconsciously understood his purpose when he had driven pell-mell
and hell-bent to the house on Eucalyptus Avenue, but he felt out of control just the same.
    This time the magnet proved to be not a grandmotherly woman in a
candy-striped uniform, but an aging cowboy wearing tan Levi's and a
chambray shirt. Arriving just as the guy settled behind the wheel
of a Mercury Mountaineer, Dylan prevented him from shutting the
door.
    From the psychic trace on this door handle, he again encountered
the heart-deadening loneliness familiar from the imprint back at
the restaurant, a despondency bordering on despair.
    A lifetime of outdoor work had given the man in the Mountaineer
a cured-leather face, but the decades of sun that crimped and
cockled his skin had not left any light in him, and the years of
wind had not piped much life into his bones. Burnt out, worn thin,
he seemed to be a scraggy gnarl of tumbleweed tenuously rooted to
the earth, waiting only for the gust that would break him loose
from life.
    The old man didn't tip his Stetson as he'd tipped it at Jilly
upon leaving the restaurant, but he didn't react with irritation or
alarm, either, when Dylan blocked the door. He had the look of a
guy who had always been able to take care of himself, regardless of
the nature of the threat or tribulation – but there was also
about him the aura of a man who didn't much care what happened
next.
    'You've been searching for something,' Dylan said, although he
had no idea what words were coming from him until he'd spoken them
and could afterward review their meaning.
    'Don't need Jesus, son,' the cowboy replied. 'Already found him
twice.' His azurite-blue eyes took in more light than they gave
out. 'Don't need trouble, either, nor do you.'
    'Not something,' Dylan corrected. 'You're looking for
someone.'
    'Isn't just about everybody, one way or another?'
    'You've been looking a long time,' Dylan said, though he still
had no idea where this might be leading.
    Through a squint that seemed wise enough to filter truth from
illusion, the old man studied him. 'What's your name, son?'
    'Dylan O'Conner.'
    'Never heard of you. So how'd you hear of me?'
    'Didn't hear of you, sir. I don't know who you are. I just...'
Words that had come without volition now failed him on command.
After a hesitation, he realized that he would have to tell a piece
of the truth, reveal part of his secret, if they were to proceed.
'You see, sir, I have these moments of... intuition.'
    'Don't count on it at the poker table.'
    'Not just intuition. I mean... I know things when there's no way
to know. I feel, I know, and... I make connections.'
    'Some sort of spiritist, you're sayin'?'
    'Sir?'
    'You're a diviner,