Prodigal Son

it."
        With an edge, she said, "If I buy it, homey, isn't that good enough for you?"
        When he hesitated to reply, she braked hard and pulled to the curb. Pissed, she switched off the light and got out of the car.
        In the movies, when they saw a body with two hearts and organs of unknown purpose, they knew right away it was aliens or something.
        Even though he hadn't met Deucalion, Michael didn't know why he was resisting the usual movie conclusion to be made from what Jack Rogers had found inside Bobby Allwine. Besides, someone had stolen Allwine's corpse and the autopsy records, which seemed to indicate a vast conspiracy of some kind.
        He got out of the car.
        They were in a residential neighborhood, under a canopy of live oaks. The night was hot. The moon seemed to be melting down through the branches of the trees.
        Michael and Carson regarded each other across the roof of the sedan. Her lips were tight. Usually they looked kissable. They didn't look kissable now.
        "Michael, I told you what I saw."
        "I've jumped off cliffs with you before-but this one's pretty damn high."
        She said nothing at first. What might have been a wistful look came over her face. Then: "Some mornings it's hard to get up knowing Arnie will still be… Arnie."
        Michael moved toward the front of the car. “All of us want things we maybe aren't ever going to get."
        Carson remained at the driver's door, not giving an inch. "I want meaning. Purpose. Higher stakes. I want things to matter more than they do."
        He stopped in front of the sedan.
        Staring up through the oaks at the creamy moon, she said, "This is real, Michael. I know it. Our lives will never be the same."
        He recognized in her a yearning for change so strong that even this-a trading of the world they knew for another that had even more terror in it-was preferable to the status quo.
        "Okay, okay," he said. "So where's Deucalion? If any of this is real, then it's his fight more than ours."
        She lowered her gaze from the moon to Michael. She moved toward the front of the car.
        "Deucalion is incapable of violence against his maker," she said. "It's like the proscription against suicide. He tried two hundred years ago, and Victor nearly finished him. Half his face… so damaged."
        They stood face to face.
        He wanted to touch her, to place a hand on her shoulder. He restrained himself because he didn't know what a touch might lead to, and this was not a moment for even more change.
        Instead, he said, "Man-made men, huh?"
        "Yeah."
        "You're sure?"
        "Honestly? I don't know. Maybe I just want to be sure."
        Heat, humidity, moonlight, the fragrance of jasmine: New Orleans sometimes seemed like a fever dream, but never more than now.
        "Frankenstein alive," he said. "It's just a National Enquirer wet dream."
        A harder expression pinched her eyes.
        Hastily Michael said, "I like the National Enquirer. Who in his right mind would believe the New York Times anymore? Not me."
        "Harker's out there," she reminded him.
        He nodded. "Let's get him."

CHAPTER 70
        
        IN A MANSION as large as this, a severed hand had to do a lot of crawling to get where it wanted to go.
        When previously it had scuttled unseen through the bedroom, the hand, judging by the sound of it, had moved as fast as a nervous rat. Not now.
        The concept of a weary severed hand, exhausted from relentless creeping, made no sense.
        Neither did the concept of a confused severed hand. Yet this one paused from time to time, as though it were not sure of the correct direction, and once it even retraced the path that it had taken and chose another route.
        Erika persisted in the conviction that she was witnessing an event of supernatural character. No science she knew could explain this crawling marvel.
        Although Victor had long ago trafficked in such parts as this, making jigsaw men from graveyard fragments, he had not used such crude methods in a long time.
        Besides, the hand did not end in a bloody stump. It terminated in a round stub of smooth skin, as though it had never been attached to an arm.
        This detail, if nothing else, seemed to confirm its supernatural origins.
        In time, with Erika in patient attendance, the hand made its way