The Darkest Evening of the Year

didn’t notice that their dessert wine and that of their hosts were poured from different bottles.
    Later, excruciating pain had awakened them to the indifferent stars, the icy moon, the siren of silver light, and their hostess’s eyes as green as an arctic sea.
    “Ron was boring,” she says.
    “He broke so fast.”
    Harrow participates in such ceremonies only when she asks him to assist her. Just watching, he always has more than enough to keep him entertained and occupied.
    She says, “Karen was interesting.”
    “Quite a marshmallow roast,” Harrow agrees.
    In his mind’s eye, he sees Moongirl on that night, like an Aztec goddess accepting sacrifices made unto her.
    “Karen wouldn’t give up hope,” she says.
    “Well, at the end.”
    “It was a long way to the end.”
    Moongirl drinks wine without caution. She has no fear of Harrow. Besides, even when she’s inebriated, her senses are sharp and her reflexes uncannily quick, as he has seen.
    “Why do they hope?” she asks.
    “Not all of them do.”
    “The ones that do hope—why?”
    “They have nothing else.”
    “But hope is a lie,” she says.
    When she looks at the candles, the flames leap in the red-tinted votive glasses, and she smiles.
    He has seen her do this before, and he has asked her how she commands the flames, but she never answers.
    Raising her eyes from the candles to Harrow, she says, “Hope is a lie to yourself.”
    “Most people survive by self-deceit.”
    “They have nothing.”
    “Everyone has nothing.”
    “Oh, we have something. We have them.”
    She regards the candles again, smiles, and ribbons of flame twist, unravel, then ravel back closer to their wicks.
    Harrow thinks she does it with a trick of breathing, but he has never seen her nostrils flare or her lips part to betray her.
    “One thing is not a lie,” he says. “Power.”
    “Brian is lying to himself right now,” she says.
    “I’m sure he is. The world always brings you kindling when you need it.”

 
    Chapter
41
    W hile driving, Billy Pilgrim put on a soft-brimmed, green-felt Tyrolean hat with a small red-and-gold feather in the band, and he inserted a false gold cap over his two upper central incisors.
    When he had found the address he wanted and had parked at the curb, he slipped on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses of plain glass.
    Now that most cell phones were also cameras, you never knew when some meddlesome passerby might take a snapshot of you just prior to or immediately subsequent to a criminal act. Digital technology had contributed to a loss of privacy that he found appalling.
    Billy did not consider himself a master of disguise, but he understood the basics of obscuration and camouflage. Only a simple costume was required to foil facial identification from a photograph. A soft-brimmed and somewhat fanciful hat and dark-rimmed glasses went a long way toward changing the look of the face. The gold dental cap gave him a slightly bucktoothed aspect, which made his face seem rounder than it was.
    When he got out of the Land Rover, he locked the door. This was a fine neighborhood, but he believed in taking every precaution when he had a dead body under a blanket in his vehicle.
    The middle-class to upper-middle homes were in good repair. The landscaping appeared to be well maintained, and landscape lighting set an artful and welcoming mood, with path lamps flanking walkways.
    Although the evening was still early and the autumn air warm, no children played in the front yards or bicycled in the street. With predatory pedophiles more numerous by the year and organizing on the Internet to share hunting tips and abduction techniques, parents kept their kids on a short leash during the day and indoors after dusk.
    Billy was not a pedophile, but he was grateful to them. Although some biddy might be videotaping him from a window, suspecting him of trolling for toddlers, there weren’t half a dozen high-energy kids clustered around him, full of curiosity, asking what was with his hat, was he a mountain climber, did he lose his real front teeth in a climbing accident—which is how it sometimes had been as little as eight or ten years ago.
    A guy of about sixty answered the doorbell. He had a face that reminded Billy of certain birds of prey, and he looked as if he had just eaten a couple of live mice that were annoying him by writhing in his stomach instead of being dead.
    “Mr. Shumpeter?”
    “I don’t need any more