Tick Tock

consulted her wristwatch. “Looking good.”
    Tommy stood rigid, quivering.
    To Mother Phan, Mrs. Dai said, “So sorry about Mai.”
    “Break mother's heart,” said Tommy's mother.
    “She live to regret,” said Mrs. Dai.
    “I try so hard to teach her right.”
    “She weak, magician clever.”
    “Tuong make bad example for sister,” said Mother Phan.
    “My heart ache for you,” Mrs. Dai said.
    Virtually vibrating with tension, Tommy said, “Can we talk about this later, if there is a later?”
    From the beast at the window came the piercing, ululant shriek that seemed more like an electronic than an animal voice.
    Getting up from her chinoiserie chair, Mrs. Dai turned to the window, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Stop that, you bad thing. You wake neighbours.”
    The creature fell silent, but it glared at Mrs. Dai almost as hatefully as it had glared at Tommy.
    Abruptly the fat-man's moon-round face split up the middle from chin to hairline, as it had done when the creature had clambered over the bow railing of the yacht on Newport Harbour. The halves of its countenance peeled apart, green eyes now bulging on the sides of its skull, and out of the gash in the centre of its face lashed a score of whip-thin, segmented black tendrils that writhed around a sucking hole crammed with gnashing teeth. As the beast pressed its face to the window, the tendrils slithered frenziedly across the glass.
    “You not scare me,” Mrs. Dai said disdainfully. “Zip up face and go away.”
    The writhing tendrils withdrew into the skull, and the torn visage re-knit into the face of the fat man—although with the green eyes of the demon.
    “You see,” Mother Phan told Tommy, still sitting complacently with her purse in her lap and her hands on the purse. “Don't need gun when have Quy Trang Dai.”
    “Impressive,” Del agreed.
    At the window, its frustration palpable, the Samaritan-thing issued a pleading, needful mewl.
    Mrs. Dai took three steps toward the window, lights flashing across the heels of her shoes, and waved at the beast with the backs of her hands. “Shoo,” she said impatiently. “Shoo, shoo.”
    This was more than the Samaritan-thing could tolerate, and it smashed one fat fist through the window.
    As shattered glass cascaded into the living room, Mrs. Dai backed up three steps, bumping against the chinoiserie chair, and said, “This not good.”
    “This not good?” Tommy half shouted. “What do you mean this not good?”
    Rising from the sofa, Del said, “I think she means we turned down the last cup of tea we're ever going to have a chance to drink.”
    Mother Phan got up from the bergęre. She spoke to Quy Trang Dai in rapid Vietnamese.
    Keeping her eyes on the demon at the broken window, Mrs. Dai answered in Vietnamese.
    Looking distressed at last, Mother Phan said, “Oh, boy.”
    The tone in which his mother spoke those two words affected Tommy in the same way as an icy finger drawn down his spine would have affected him.
    At the window, the Samaritan-thing at first seemed shocked by its own boldness. This was, after all, the sacred domain of the hairdresser witch who had summoned it from Hell—or from wherever Xan River magicians summoned such creatures. It peered in amazement at the few jagged fragments of glass that still prickled from the window frame, no doubt wondering why it had not instantly been cast back to the sulfurous chambers of the underworld.
    Mrs. Dai checked her wristwatch.
    Tommy consulted his as well.
    Ticktock.
    Half snarling, half whining nervously, the Samaritan-thing climbed through the broken window into the living room.
    “Better stand together,” said Mrs. Dai.
    Tommy, Del, and Scootie moved out from behind the coffee table, joining his mother and Mrs. Dai in a tight grouping.
    The serpent-eyed fat man no longer wore the hooded raincoat. The fire from the yacht should have burned away all attire, but curiously the flames had only singed its clothes, as though its imperviousness to fire extended somewhat to the garments it wore. The black wingtip shoes were badly scuffed and caked with mud. The filthy and rumpled trousers, the equally dishevelled and bullet-torn shirt and vest and suit jacket, the acrid smell of smoke that seeped from the creature, combined with its gardenia-white skin and inhuman eyes, gave it all the charm of a walking corpse.
    For half a minute or more, the demon stood in indecision and evident uneasiness, perhaps waiting to be punished for violating the sanctity of Mrs. Dai's