Seize the Night

Environmental Protection Agency, or the Federal Office of Doughnut Management, and he probably spreads the rumors himself to deflect speculation from possibilities closer to the truth.
    He refers to himself as a grant facilitator , a term that feels as deceptive as calling a hit man an organic waste disposal specialist .
    Officially, his job is to keep outgoing paperwork and incoming funds flowing for those professors who are engaged in federally financed research. There is reason to believe that most such research at Ashdon involves the development of unconventional weapons, that the college has become the summer home of Mars, the god of war, and that Del is the liaison between the discreet funding sources of black-budget weapons projects and the academics who thrive on their dole. Like Mom.
    I had no doubt that Del and Judy Stuart were devastated by the disappearance of their twins, but unlike poor Lilly Wing, who was an innocent and unaware of the dark side of Moonlight Bay, the Stuarts were self-committed residents of Satan's pocket and understood that the bargain they had made required them to suffer even this terror in silence.
    Consequently, I was amazed that Charlie had learned of these abductions.
    “Charlie and Nora Dai live next door to them,” Bobby explained, “though I don't think they barbecue a lot together. The twins are six years old. Around nine o'clock last night, Judy is tucking the weeds in for the night, she hears a noise, and when she turns around, there's a stranger right behind her.”
    “Stocky, close-cropped black hair, yellow eyes, thick lips, seed-corn teeth,” I said, describing the kidnapper I'd encountered under the warehouse.
    “Tall, athletic, blond, green eyes, puckered scar on his left cheek.”
    “New guy,” Sasha said.
    “Totally new guy. He's got a chloroform-soaked rag in one hand, and before Judy realizes what's happening, the dude is all over her like fat on cheese.”
    “Fat on cheese?” I asked.
    “That was Charlie's expression.”
    Charlie Dai, God love him, writes excellent newspaper copy, but though English has been his first language for twenty-five years, he has not fully gotten a grip on conversational usage to the degree that he has mastered formal prose.
    Idiom and metaphor often defeat him. He once told me that an August evening was “as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart,” a comparison that left me blinking two days later.
    Bobby peered through the stained-glass window once more, gave the day world a longer look than he had before, then returned his attention to us, “When Judy recovers from the chloroform, Aaron and Anson—the twins—are gone.”
    “Two abbs suddenly start snatching kids on the same night?” I said skeptically.
    “There's no coincidence in Moonlight Bay,” Sasha said.
    “Bad for us, worse for Jimmy,” I said. “If we're not dealing with typical pervs, then these geeks are acting out twisted needs that might have nothing to do with any abnormal psychology on the books, because they're way beyond abnormal. They're becoming, and whatever it is they're becoming is driving them to commit the same atrocities.”
    “Or,” Bobby said, “it's even stranger than two dudes regressing to swamp monsters. The abb left a drawing on the twins' bed.”
    “A crow?” Sasha guessed.
    “Charlie called it a raven. Same difference. A raven sitting on a stone, spreading its wings as if to take flight. Not the same pose as in the first drawing. But the message was pretty much the same. Del Stuart will be my servant in Hell.”
    “Does Del have any idea what it means?” I asked.
    “Charlie Dai says no. But he thinks that Del recognized Judy's description of the kidnapper. Maybe that's why the guy let her get a look at him. He wanted Del to know.”
    “But if Del knows,” I said, “he'll tell the cops, and the abb is finished.”
    “Charlie says he didn't tell them.” Sasha's voice was laden with equal measures of disbelief and disgust.
    “His kids are abducted, and he hides information from the cops?”
    “Del's deep in the Wyvern mess,” I said. “Maybe he has to keep his mouth shut about the abb's identity until he gets permission from his boss to tell the cops.”
    “If they were my kids, I'd kick over the rules,” she said.
    I asked Bobby if Jenna Wing had been able to make anything of the crow and the message left under Jimmy's pillow, but she had been clueless.
    “I've heard something else, though,” Bobby said, “and