The Darkest Evening of the Year. Dean Koontz

needs burning.”

      “All right.”

      “Not her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

      “I’m not thinking.”

      “She’s for later.”

      “All right,” he says.

      “I mean a place.”

      “Where?”

      “We’ll know it.”

      “How?”

      “When we see it.”

      She sits up, and her fingers go to the lamp switch with the unerring elegance of a blind woman following a line of Braille to the end punctuation.

      When he sees her in the soft light, he wants her again, but she is never his for the taking. His satisfaction always depends on her need, and at the moment the only thing she needs is to burn.

      Throughout his life, Harrow has been a loner and a user, even when others have counted him as friend or family. Outsider to the world, he has acted strictly in his self-interest—until Moongirl.

      What he has with her is neither friendship nor family, but something more primal. If just two individuals can constitute a pack, then he and Moongirl are wolves, though more terrible than wolves, because wolves kill only to eat.

      He pulls on his clothes without taking his eyes from her, for she makes getting dressed an act no less erotic than a striptease. Even coarse fabrics seem to slide like silk along her limbs, and the fastening of every button is a promise of a future unveiling.

      Their coats hang on wall pegs: ski jacket for him, black leather lined with fleece for her.

      Outside, her blond hair looks platinum under the moon, and her eyes—bottle-green in the lamplight—seem to be a luminous gray in the colorless night.

      “You drive,” she says, leading him toward the detached garage.

      “All right.”

      As they pass through the man door, he switches on the light.

      She says, “We’ll need gasoline.”

      From under the workbench, Harrow retrieves a red two-gallon utility can in which he keeps gasoline for the lawn mower. Judging by the heft of the can and the hollow sloshing of the contents, it holds less than half a gallon.

      The fuel tanks of both the Lexus SUV and the two-seater Mercedes sports car have recently been filled. Harrow inserts a siphon hose into the Lexus.

      Moongirl stands over him, watching as he sucks on the rubber tube. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

      Harrow wonders: If he misjudges the amount of priming needed, if he draws gasoline into his mouth, will she produce a butane lighter and ignite the flammable mist that wheezes from him, setting fire to his lips and tongue?

      He tastes the first acrid fumes and does not misjudge, but introduces the hose into the open can on the floor just as the gasoline gushes.

      When he looks up at her, she meets his eyes. She says nothing, and neither does he.

      He is safe from her and she from him as long as they need each other for the hunt. She has her quarry, the object of her hatred, and Harrow has his, not merely whatever they might burn tonight, but other and specific targets. Together they can more easily achieve their goals, with more pleasure than they would have if they acted separately and alone.

      He places the full utility can in the sports car, in the luggage space behind the two bucket seats.

      The single-lane blacktop road, with here and there a lay-by, rises and falls and curves for a mile before it brings them to the gate, which swings open when Moongirl presses the button on the same remote with which moments ago she raised the garage door.

      In another half-mile, they come to the two-lane county road.

      “Left,” she says, and he turns left, which is north.

      The night is half over but full of promise.

      To the east, hills rise. To the west, they descend.

      In lunar light, the wild dry grass is as platinum as Moongirl’s hair, as if the hills are pillows on which uncountable thousands of women rest their blond heads.

      They are in sparsely populated territory. At the moment, not a single building stands in view.

      “How much nicer the world would be,” she says, “if everyone in it were dead.”

Chapter 6

      Amy Redwing owned a modest bungalow, but Lottie Augustine’s two-story house, next door, had spare rooms for Janet and her kids. The windows glowed with warm light when Amy parked in the driveway.

      The former nurse came out to greet them and to help carry their hastily packed suitcases into the house. Slender, wearing jeans and a man’s blue-and-yellow checkered shirt with the tail untucked, gray hair in a ponytail, eyes limpid blue in a sweet face wizened by a love of the sun, Lottie seemed to be both a teenager and a retiree. In her youth she had probably been an old soul, just as in her later years she remained a young spirit.

      Leaving the dog in the SUV, Amy carried Theresa. The child woke as they ascended the back-porch steps.

      Even awake, her purple eyes seemed full of dreams.

      Touching the locket Amy wore at her throat, Theresa whispered, “The wind.”

      Carrying two suitcases, followed by Janet with one bag and with Jimmy in tow, Lottie led them into the house.

      Just beyond the threshold of the kitchen door, still in Amy’s arms and fingering the locket, Theresa whispered, “The chimes.”

      Cast back in time, Amy halted. For a moment, the kitchen faded as if it were only a pale vision of a moment in her future.

      The child’s trance-casting eyes seemed to widen as if they were portals through which one might fall into another world.

      “What did you say?” she asked Theresa, though she had heard the words clearly enough.

      The wind. The chimes.

      The girl did not blink, did not blink, then blinked—and plugged her mouth with her right thumb.

      Color returned to the faded kitchen, and Amy put Theresa down in a dinette chair.

      On the table stood a plate of homemade cookies. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip. Peanut butter.

      A pan of milk waited on the cooktop, and Lottie Augustine set to making hot chocolate.

      The clink of mugs against a countertop, the crisp crackle of a foil packet of cocoa powder, the burble of simmering milk stirred by a ladle, the soft knocking of the wood ladle against the pan…

      The sounds seemed to come to Amy from a distance, to arise in a room far removed from this one, and when she heard her name, she realized that Lottie had spoken it more than once.

      “Oh. Sorry. What did you say?”

      “Why don’t you and Janet take their bags upstairs while I tend to the children. You know the way.”

      “All right. Sure.”

      Upstairs, two secondary bedrooms were connected by a bath. One had twin beds suitable for the kids.

      “If you leave both doors open to the shared bath,” Amy said, “you’ll be able to hear them if they call out.”

      In the room that had one bed, Janet sat on the arm of a plump upholstered chair. She looked exhausted and bewildered, as if she had walked a hundred miles while under a spell and did not know where she was or why she had come here.

      “What now?”