Winter Moon

with fear, he was now a far whiter shade of pale.
        His face didn't look like that of a living boy so much as like a death mask of a face, rendered now in cold hard plaster as colorless as powdered lime. The whites of his eyes were gray, one pupil large and.the other just a pinpoint, and his lips were bluish. He was in the grip of terror, but it wasn't terror alone that drove him. He seemed strange, haunted-and then she recognized the same fey quality that he'd exhibited when he'd been in front of the computer this morning, not in the grip of the Giver but not entirely free. Between, he had called it.
        "We can get it," he said.
        Now that she recognized his condition, she could hear the same flatness in his voice that she had heard this morning when he'd been in the thrall of that storm of colors on the IBM monitor.
        "Toby, what's wrong?"
        "I've got it."
        "Got what?"
        "It."
        "Got it where?"
        "Under."
        Her heart was exploding.
        "Under?"
        "Under me."
        Then she remembered, blinked. Amazed.
        "It's under you?"
        He nodded.
        So pale.
        "You're controlling it?"
        "For now."
        "How can that be?" she wondered.
        "No time. It wants loose. Very strong. Pushing hard."
        A glistening beadwork of sweat had appeared on his brow. He chewed his lower lip, drawing more blood.
        Heather raised a hand to touch him, stop him, hesitated, not sure if touching him would shatter his control.
        "We can get it," he repeated.
        Harlan damn near drove the grader into the house, halting the plow inches from the railing, casting a great crashing wave of snow onto the.front porch.
        He leaned forward in his seat to let Jack squeeze out of the storage area behind him. "You go, take care of your people. I'll call the depot, get a fire company out here."
        Even as Jack went through the high door and dismounted from the grader, he heard Harlan Moffit on the cellular system, talking to his dispatcher.
        He had never known fear like this before, not even when Anson Oliver had opened fire at Arkadian's service station, not even when he'd realized something was speaking through Toby in the graveyard yesterday, never a fear half this intense, with his stomach knotted so tightly it hurt, a surge of bitter bile in the back of his throat, no sound in the world but the pile-driving thunder of his own heart.
        Because this wasn't just his life on the line.
        More important lives were involved here. His wife, in whom his past and future resided, the keeper of all his hopes. His son, born of his own heart, whom he loved more than he loved himself, immeasurably more.
        From outside, at least, the fire appeared to be confined to the second floor.
        He prayed that Heather and Toby weren't up there, that they were on the lower floor or out of the house altogether.
        He vaulted the porch railing and kicked through the snow that had been thrown up against the front wall by the plow. The door was standing open in the wind.
        When he crossed the threshold, he found tiny drifts beginning to form among the pots and pans and dishes that were scattered along the front hall.
        No gun. He had no gun. He'd left it in the grader. Didn't matter.
        If they were dead, so was he.
        Fire totally engulfed the stairs from the first landing upward, and it was swiftly spreading down from tread to tread toward the hallway, flowing almost like a radiant liquid. He could see well because drafts were sucking nearly all the smoke up and out the roof: no flames in the study, none beyond the living-room or dining-room archways.
        "Heather! Toby!"
        No answer.
        "Heather!"
        He pushed the study door all the way open and looked in there, just to be sure.."Heather!"
        From the archway he could see the entire living room. Nobody. The dining-room arch.
        "Heather!"
        Not in the dining-room, either.
        He hurried back through the hall, into the kitchen.
        The back door was shut, though it had obviously been opened at some point, because the tower of housewares had been knocked down.
        "Heather!"
        "Jack!"
        He spun around at the sound of her voice, unable to figure where it had come from.
        "HEATHER!"
        "Down here-we need help!"
        The