Violet Thayer woke to a bright, merciless light above her that sent razor-blade rays of pain through her eyes and into her brain. God, her head hurt. What had happened? Where was she?

She tried to get up and found she couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all. There was some kind of restraint around her forehead, she realized, strapped painfully tight. Neither could she move her arms or legs. “Hello?” she cried, finding her voice hoarse and querulous, like an old woman’s, which she was.

“Wakey wakey,” called a voice. It was weirdly deep, somehow distorted. The light above her dimmed and she saw that two feet above her head was positioned a complicated apparatus. She couldn’t quite make out what it was for, but it had two nasty-looking drills pointing downwards like accusing fingers. Set above this pair was an iPhone held in a simple clamp, and it was broadcasting via Facetime, like she sometimes did with her daughter in Portland. Even realizing this, however, it took her a minute or two to understand what she seeing on screen.

It was someone wearing a mask, a mask made entirely of curving spirals and spikes, glinting silver metal and black shadows. The mask was dominated first by two large protrusions on the lower cheeks, where the filters on a gas mask would be, and perhaps that’s what they were. Next she noticed the mirrored surfaces of the eyes, which were precisely engraved with black spirals. Gradually she realized that the whole mask was covered in screws, thousands of them in different shapes and sizes, so the mask’s edges were a blurred irregular outline no matter how the wearer turned.

It was familiar, somehow, but Violet’s head still hurt, and she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “Where am I?”

“Not important,” said the mask on screen.

“Am I in a hospital? Did I have a stroke?” You never knew, at her age.

“Not a hospital. You could say it’s a private facility.”

“Where’s the doctor, then? Why are you talking to me on the phone?”

“Fine questions, all.” The voice sounded pleased. “I see the anesthesia is wearing off. I do my best to be precise about the dose, but I’m not quite a professional, and sometimes I overdo it. Always disappointing when that happens.”

“What do you mean, you’re not a professional? And what’s this thing I’m seeing? Some kind of TV show? Where am I?” Something was wrong. This wasn’t adding up, stroke or no. She tried again to look around. To her right, in her peripheral vision, she saw white walls, a windowless door. To her left there seemed to be another table, with another person on it. “Excuse me! Hello! Are you there? Whoever’s on that bed, are you there?”

“Take it easy!” her observer said. “We don’t want you to tire yourself out. We have important things to talk about. There are decisions to be made.”

She closed her eyes and hung her head, focused on just breathing. “Where am I?” she repeated.

“I’m happy to say that you’ve been chosen to be part of an experiment,” the voice said. “You can regard it as an opportunity. If you live up to expectations, you get to leave here unharmed. If you fail, well, let’s just say you’re screwed.”

She looked up, eyes widening, seeing those drills again. They were positioned, she realized, directly above her eyes. All of a sudden she was fully awake, adrenalin spiking through her thin old body. She shuddered once, uncontrollably. “You’re the one they’ve been talking about on the news. That killer, what do they call you? The Screwball or something.”

“They call me Thumbscrew, thank you very much,” the madman growled. “Screwball seems a little undignified, wouldn’t you agree?”

Oh, she was in bad trouble here. She hadn’t been in trouble like this maybe ever, unless you counted when she’d run from Arnie, her first husband, after he’d smashed a beer bottle over her head when she was nineteen. That had been a bad time, too, but this was worse. “What do you want?”

“I want to show the world something essential about the human spirit,” Thumbscrew said. “Namely its utter emptiness. Its pliability. The darkness at its core. There remain those who believe in something righteous at the heart of it all, and I simply detest them. They’re either hypocritical or ignorant, every one, and the damage they do in this belief is simply incredible. So I like to take people of faith and goodness, like yourself, and give them the chance to open their eyes. To accept the reality of the world, red in tooth and claw.”

“Let me go,” Violet said suddenly. “If this is a joke, you’ve gone far enough. It’s not funny. Let me leave now, or I’ll call the police.”

Thumbscrew laughed. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until we’re finished.”

“Help!” she screamed, as loud as she could. “Somebody help! Anybody!” She struggled in her restraints, but she couldn’t move an inch. There was even a collar around her throat.

“There’s no one here to help you,” said her tormentor. “And Violet, the longer you go on like this, the harder it’s going to be for you. On the other hand, if you’ll just do something for me, one little thing, I’ll certainly let you go. Did you notice your friend over there?”

“Yes. But I don’t think I know him.”

“Can’t see very well, can you? Here, let me show you.” The phone cut to an image of a man’s face. He was white-haired, with a goatee and mustache. Not bad-looking. He looked dignified; she imagined him as a professor, or retired doctor. Around his forehead was a band of brown leather, cinched tight.

“I don’t know him.”

“Of course not. Though after today, I doubt you’ll forget him. Now, let’s begin.”

Above her, the drills began turning. They didn’t move fast, maybe one revolution per second. They didn’t look like medical drills. Their metal was dark, stained with what she hoped was oil but suspected now wasn’t. “What are you doing?”

“It’ll become clear. Look at your friend.” On the phone, she saw that there were also two drill bits in the picture there, likewise pointed toward the man’s eyes. And they too were moving.

Her eyes flicked back to the drills above her. Had they dropped, a tiny bit? Were they closer? They were! “What do you want?!” she half-screamed, muscles contorting involuntarily, desperate for escape.

“Feel under your right hand,” Thumbscrew directly. She scrabbled with her fingers, found a little handheld device. She grasped it, found a single button beneath her thumb.

“What is it?”

“Press it and see.”

She pressed it. The drills above her kept right on turning.Involuntary tears slipped down her cheeks. She pressed it again, and saw that while hers were unaffected, the drills above her neighbor’s face whirred to greater life.

“That’s clear enough, isn’t it?” Thumbscrew explained. “It’s sort of a race, really. With each revolution, the screws drop a little lower. If you do nothing, sooner or later they’ll reach your delicate little eyeballs and start doing what they do. Soon enough… pop! Although I seriously doubt you’ll die, at that point. No, they’ll keep right on drilling through the gooey mess until they reach your optic nerve, and while I’m not certain, I bet that’s going to hurt even worse than having your eyeballs burst. Then, finally, they’ll reach your brain, and you’ll die.

“I have to warn you, though: at their current speed, it’ll take at least half an hour or so.

“That’s all hilarious enough, but of course there’s a twist. I love twists, I live for them, really. The twist is that when you push that button, your partner’s screws speed up. They drop faster. And if you hold it down, he’ll be dead in, oh, probably less than five minutes. That’s all it takes: five minutes of pushing a button.

“The game ends when one of you is dead. Whoever lives gets to go free. Do nothing, and you both die. As it happens, you have something of an advantage, because Mr. Wassen here is having trouble waking up. Do it fast, maybe he’ll be unconscious for the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be a mercy? I suppose I should have waited, really, but I was impatient to get started.”

“Why are you doing this?” It was all she could think to say. Her brain seemed stuck on it. Her brain that would soon be just so much pudding under a mixer.

“I told you! You and your goodness, your churchiness! You work at a soup kitchen, you’ve done hospice work, you say kind words to strangers! I’ve been watching you, I hear what people you know say: Violet Thayer, she’s a saint! Kindest, gentlest woman you ever met. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“And I say, bullshit! You wouldn’t hurt a fly because there’s no self-interest involved. There’s nothing at stake. But I know that everyone is rotten at the core. Everyone will kill someone else to save themselves. It’s the truth!”

She tried to sort it out in her mind, but all she could focus on were the two drills dropping slowly toward her. They must have dropped an inch already. On the phone, the old man frowned, blinked his eyes. “Look, he is waking up,” Thumbscrew said. “John! Oh, John. You think you’re a goody-two-shoes, you should meet this guy. Runs a fucking animal sanctuary. Literally saves stray dogs and birds with broken wings. I bet he’ll decide to kill you in under ten minutes. John!”

The drills! Their dark metal shafts, their bright silver tips! What would it feel like? The button beneath her thumb felt large as a mountain. It felt magnetic, like it was drawing her thumbtip down without any conscious volition on her part.

Violet, no, she thought then. You know better.

“No,” she told her captor. “I’m not playing.” With an powerful effort of will, she lifted her thumb from the button. Then she let the device drop.

“You’re going to die a nasty, slow, violent death,” he said. “In unbelievable pain.”

“That may be,” she replied. “But I won’t participate in it. That’s what you want, I know. You want absolution. You’ve done unspeakable things, and to excuse yourself, you have to prove that anyone would have done the same in your circumstances, no matter how good they seem.

“I learned that from my first husband. He was always hurting me, and then trying to make it feel like it was my fault, somehow. Well, it wasn’t. It was all him, just like it’s all you now.”

The cut back to the man in the mask. “You’ll both die, then. You’ll be responsible not just for your death, but his too. You’ll be a murderer not once but twice.”

“We’ll both die, maybe, but neither of us is responsible. We’re only responsible if we join you. And I won’t do it. I refuse to share in it. Your violence is your own.”

“You’ll DIE!” he shouted. “You’ll have a drill in your fucking brain! Push it! Push the fucking button!”

“No.” Spastically she scrabbled with her fingers, trying to push the button away from her, and succeeded in pushing it off the edge of the table. Above her the screws kept turning.

Whenever Jareth had bad luck with a girl he needed someone to complain to, and tonight it was the bartender. He hadn’t quite caught the man’s name, but he was a tall fellow with a long blond beard and waxed mustachios, and he listened well. Eventually, though, business picked up in the inn, and Mr. Blondbeard had to attend to other parties.

“It’s always hard,” said the person next to him at the bar. Jareth looked over, saw an old man. Bit paunchy, white shoulder-length hair combed straight back. His clothes looked expensive but overly used and years out of fashion: a long, worn black coat with silver buttons, laced black boots, silver hose with visible runs in them. Stains on his silk shirt, gray stubble on his jaw. Jareth himself wore a bottle-green suit, pants hemmed at the shin, and low buckled shoes. He’d always believed in dressing well.

“What’s hard?” he said, not much interested but with no one else to talk to.

“Time. How people change. You can’t ever anticipate it. You start seeing someone, and you think you know who they are. Then the years go by, and you end up with someone different than you started with.” The man sipped his mug of treacle stout, looking contemplatively up at the painting on the wall opposite, of The Abduction of Lorallis. Satyrs groping young maidens. “It puts me in mind of a friend I had. A panelord.”

“Really?” Jareth exclaimed, ears pricking. “You knew a panelord?”

“Aye, knew him well. We were close as brothers, once. Met him at Bettner College.”

“Are you a paneweaver too, then?” Jareth said skeptically. There weren’t many of them, after all. It took natural talent in the first place – not just anyone could weave a pane – and then years of study to learn to control it. And a panelord was no ordinary paneweaver. Only they could open their doors not just to Havershire or Borden Locks, but to far Samaway and the distant East, and even to other worlds entire.

But the old man shook his head. “No, no panes for me. I was studying philosophy. I thought I would go on to be a barrister, but it didn’t go as planned.” He took another sip of his beer, wiped away the dark liquid from his lips.

“What was your friend’s name, then?”

“I shouldn’t really say.” But then he shrugged, leaned in close. “But if you want to know, it was Cannody. Bryce Cannody.”

Hell, that did sound familiar.  “You still in touch with him, then?” Maybe he could get an introduction. It’d be sweet to know a panelord. Maybe he could take a trip…

“No, not for many a year. Not since he lost his dear Tara.”

“Was that his girl?”

“His wife.” The old man shook his head. His eyes were damp, and Jareth could see it was no put-on. Sorrow had shaped his face from inside out. “Ah, he loved her so. Loved her with a passion that wracked him. You’re young, but even so maybe you’ll understand. If not… well, if you’re lucky, you’ll know a love like that before you die. Not everyone does.

“They met just after we finished school. It’s traditional, when a paneweaver gets their robes, to take a trip around the isles. A roustabout, they call it, and Bryce was kind enough to take me along on his. Ah, we had a fine time, wandering through the pubs of Quinck, going to the top of Mount Helston. Generally being drunken louts.

“Well, we took one pane further, to the coast of Selieu. I was a little worried about it, since after all he’d only just gotten his robes. What if we ended up getting stuck there? How’d we get home? But he just laughed it off, and summoned the pane, we stepped through that window in space easy as kiss your hand.

“It was in Selieu that he met Tara. First we’d gone to the town, a little fishing village, and drank raka. Then he said, let’s go down the water, and so we did.

“That town was famous for its oysters, and also for its pearls. So we walked down by the cliffs, and there we saw five or six young people diving for oysters. It may sound immodest to us, but the men just wore a bit of cloth around their parts, and as for the girls, they went naked as seals to swim. We went over and talked to them, and though only one spoke English, they welcomed us and did nothing but laugh. They shared their oysters with us and we sucked them straight from the shell with the sea-water still dripping from them.

“There were two girls there, and one was Tara. I doubt she was seventeen, but then Bryce was only twenty-two. And she was lovely, oh so lovely. I think he had never seen someone so natural or so bright. She was tanned gold from the sun, and her hair was golden too. She was lithe and limber, had spent her life so far just swimming and dancing, and there was a haze of freckles on her cheeks.

“And when she dove, ah, it was like watching an arrow slip through the air! She would leap from the cliff and point her whole body, and disappear into the waves with nary a ripple. I’ve known warriors who would charge an army with their swords swinging high, but none were so fearless as that Selliean girl.

“We went dancing with them that night, and I could see him looking at her with something like devotion in his eyes. One of her friends said her family had a bit of the blood of the sea sprites, the merwish. I know everyone says that, ‘Oh, I’m one-thirty-secondth faery,’ but when you looked at Tara you could believe it. Her eyes were just the green of the sea.

“The next morning, Bryce shook me awake and said we should leave now. I couldn’t see what the hurry was, until I saw Tara standing just behind him. ‘She wants to come with us,’ he said, just like that. ‘We’re going to get married.’

“I told him he was crazy, but he was adamant, and Tara said simply with her Selliean acccent, ‘I love him. We see all the worlds. Here, I only die.’

“So he summoned the pane back home. It took him some concentration this time, and for a second I was worried we really would be booking passage on a ship home. He had never opened a pane this far before, after all, and the further the journey, the greater the effort for the paneweaver. They say summoning a pane literally uses up your life-energy, and I know that that’s true. That’s why the weavers are always quick to open and shut their windows, and why they usually use a relay of multiple weavers to go long distances.

“His parents weren’t happy when he got home, that’s for sure. For a good two years they wouldn’t acknowledge Tara at all, virtually disowned him. But Bryce set himself up in business, and a paneweaver never lacks for work.

“He was good at it, too. He could send you and your whole carriage to Espanora if you had the coin, or drop a package on the front step of your aunt’s house in Yoder Lane. When he and Tara had a child, a little girl they named Sephanora, his parents came round. When he bought a house in Lakeside, they forgot they’d ever had a disagreement.

“Ah, those were golden years for those two. You can’t imagine the glory of being a young paneweaver with literally the whole world in front of you. Three days a week he would work, sending this traveller here, this shipment of dye there, always attentively, always developing his craft. Then, when it came Friday evening, he and Tara would decide where they’d want to travel, and set off with little more than few coins and a bag strapped over their shoulder.

“They ate scented chocolates in Callais-au-fein, they looked in on the shops in Lu-kwon. They sailed in the Bay of Tears, and swam beneath Queen Sola’s Falls. Sometimes Tara would swim nude, to the scandal of the locals. They slept between sheets of finest silk and at the top of Mount Heron in Lethiye, in the ruins of a castle there. They were more kings and queens than the actual rulers of nations.

“When Sephie was born they had to take a break, of course. They couldn’t be dragging an infant around so much. Then, too, Bryce’s father had made some poor decisions financially, and to get him out of the poor house he had to hand over a surprisingly sum. And maybe he himself wanted not just any place, but one place to call his own. A home, and a comfortable one. So they bought a new manor, and Bryce worked five days instead of three.

“On the weekends, now, he was too tired to take a trip every week. But Tara was restless. She was used to wandering the cliffs of her hometown, on her own time, with the sky above her. She wasn’t interested in what kind of sofa they purchased, or the state of the garden. She liked owning horses, and rode them joyously, but even her daughter seemed to hold limited interest for her.

“She pestered Bryce, and sooner or later he would relent. But now it seemed even the usual places weren’t enough. She had been to Davermark, and the Orange Coast, and the Tores Mountains. Where else could they go?

“Bryce wasn’t without curiosity himself. Where could they go? So he pushed further, to An’nu’nu’akia at the south pole, to the islands of Tor Aru, the dark caverns of Milastre. And finally, gathering his powers and concentration to a blinding point, he opened a pane to Felland.

“There are few that can open the panes from one place to another in our world, to be sure. One in a hundred thousand maybe, and maybe one out of five of them will ever develop their talent to a useful point. But even smaller is the number of those who can open a window between the worlds. One in ten million, perhaps five in all our country.

“These are the panelords, and what wonders they bring forth! Felland is the closest world to ours, as I’m sure you know, and I’m sure you’ve seen the moving statue in Timely Square, which Helmud the Farwalker brought back with him those centuries ago.

“But you’ve never been to Felland itself, I doubt. There small silver birds zip through the air on weird mechanical wings, and the Fellish stare at you like the stranger you are, with your furless skin and rounded ears.

“You can’t stay there too long, though. You’ll be lost, for certain, and it has happened many a time. It’s best to make your trips short, because the longer you stay, the more energy you will need to return home. It’s just this that happened to Helmud, and his grave is in their world, not ours.

“But Tara went there, and laughed, and showed the Fellish how to dive, which amazed them, for they hate the water.

“She was alive again, nearly exploding with energy, like a burning star. For weeks she spoke of nothing else, and barely seemed to notice her husband’s listlessness, his quickness to tire, or the new bit of gray in his hair.

“Travel within our world is demanding enough. But travel between worlds drains your life itself.
“Soon enough, though, Tara wasn’t satisfied. She could think of nothing but returning to Felland. And within a couple of months, Bryce felt well enough again to cast a new pane, and again they stepped through it, and brought back a souvenir, a gem that would expand and contract with a touch.

“And a little more of Bryce’s hair turned.

“‘Why stop at Felland?’ Tara asked. ‘Lots of people have been there. Probably dozens, maybe hundreds. Aren’t there other worlds?’

“There were, of course. Who knows how many? Like pebbles on the beach, but we ourselves like grains of sand to a grain of sand, and each pebble a million leagues away. But Bryce felt her hunger, told himself it was his own, and opened another pane, and another.

“Xao’xao: the world of the Rano, the bird-people.

“Uvalu-wu-alu: the cloud-world, where people live on floating trees.

“Danatias, a land of machines and burning smoke, which only two other living people have visited, and they only for moments.

“There were new lines in Bryce’s face, and at times he seemed to have trouble breathing. They barely returned from Danatias, and when they got back he collapsed and stayed in bed for three days.

“For a year, then, Bryce didn’t open another portal. He wrote of his experiences, and from each world he took a token to prove he had been there, and among the panelords he became famous.

“Eventually, though, Tara asked again.

“‘What use is life if you don’t explore?’ she challenged him. ‘You want to sit here in your armchair, when you could see worlds no one else, no one, has ever seen before? You have one life, and one life only.’

“‘I may not even have that, if this persists,’ he replied.

“‘One more,’ she insisted. ‘One more, further than ever. A door to the edge of possibility.’

“There was a wild light in her eyes. He knew it had gone too far, that when you push so much, you’re bound to lose yourself at some point. But at the same time, her fearlessness gripped him. He couldn’t say no to it. How could he live with himself if he didn’t find his true, absolute limits?

“He prepared carefully, laying his spells over the course of days, of weeks. But he could not achieve everything; if you wanted to expand your reach, you had to give up some stability. He would not be able to hold the portal open for long. Maybe long enough for him to step through and back; a minute, or maybe five, if his strength held out.

“Finally the day came. His runes were drawn in gold ink on the floor of his workroom. He said the words and made the motions, working unceasingly for hour upon hour, neither drinking nor eating. Nothing less would do.

“It took all his strength, every fiber, every bit of marrow, while Tara watched on. With voice hoarse, muscles straining, mind a single point of light, he wrenched open a door.

“It was small at first, but he fought it open. It was ten inches, then twenty. At thirty inches he could do no more.

“Through the pane they saw a eerie pink light. There were stones floating among pink clouds, and something shaped of rainbow light lifted itself on ray-like wings and floated toward them curiously.

“‘I can’t hold it open,’ he said through gritted teeth. He was sweating, his very organs trembling. Color seemed to be draining from him like water emptying down a sink.

“Tara, though, was looking through it with lips parted, in fascination. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

“‘I have to close it.’

“‘She looked at him, and finally seemed to see the strain he was under. She nodded slowly. ‘All right, my love. Come find me if you can.’

“And with that she leapt through the pane, and into some other world.”

The old man was weeping silently now, tears wet on his cheeks. Before the two of them stood a number of empty glasses, as Jareth had kept buying rounds while the old man told his story. “He couldn’t keep the portal open. He tried, but… she didn’t come back. In ten seconds it snapped shut.”

“Do you think she’s still there, then?” Jareth asked. “In that unknown world?”

“Unless she’s… unless she’s passed on to some other world yet. Whatever awaits us all.” He shook his head in defeat. “I could never … he could never open it again. He’d spent too much of himself, passed some midway point where it ceased to be possible. No other panelord has even heard of such a place, much as they might wish it.”

“So you are him,” Jareth said, trying not to sound awed. “You’re Bryce Connady.”

“I’m just an old man,” he said, standing up. “And it’s time for me go home. Thanks for the beers.”

The bartender wandered over. “Any more? No? Be two silvers thirty pence, then.”

Jareth handed over the money. “Do you know who that was?”

“Sure. That’s Monro Hughman.”

“Maybe that’s what he goes by now. But his real name’s Bryce Connady.”

The bartender laughed. “Oh, he told you that one again, did he? His beloved Tara, flown from this world?”

Jareth was stung. “What, you think it’s funny? A man loses the woman he loves, and you laugh at him?”

“Don’t take it hard, lad. I know you’ve had a rough day yourself. But Monro tells that story at least once a week. He lost his wife, sure, when she ran off with a vintner down in Dockville.” He shrugged. “Guess he took it hard. Been drinking ever since, leastwise when he can get somebody to pay for it.”

Danny Lee Brewer’s body was finally found by an old tinker woman on the road three miles south of the Scratch. She came into Castro’s store with her wares dangling on the wooden frame pack she wore, battered pots and tin cups clanging, and announced, “Dead body down south. You wanna buy a cup, maybe?”

Well, maybe he did – travelers were few and far between – but the mention of a corpse soured him on an immediate transaction. “What’s it look like?”

“Don’t look like much. Like raw meat. Sandstorm had its way. Maybe you spare a pone for an old lady, I can go show you.”

Normally he would have ignored this beggary – it was a store, not a charity – but he knew well that Danny Brewer had been missing from his home last night, when the storm winds had been shrieking over the canyon walls of the Scratch and the townspeople had been huddling in their cellars with their finest breathing masks tied across their faces. Hadn’t Ella Weaver come to this very shop in tears, braving the stinging sand, to ask him if he’d seen Danny, because Danny wasn’t at home?

Well, Castro hadn’t seen him. But he had an idea where he was now.

“All right,” he sighed, coming from behind the counter. “One pone, and you show me.” He ducked his head in the back room, said to his son, Segundo, “Watch the shop. We may be a while.”

When he handed the old lady the pone, she cradled it reverently. “A little paste?” she said hopefully. “No paste, no good, right?”

He sighed and got a jar of beejum from under the counter. It was a salty, fermented paste made from the bodies of bloodbeetles (minus their poison glands, full of bitter ink-blue toxin), and it and swordgrass pones were the staples of life in the Scratch. The beetles lived in the swordgrass, and the grass was nearly all that grew unprotected in the wild anymore.

He got out a knife, too, and cut the pone in half for her, then spread the beejum himself. If he’d let her do it, no doubt she’d have spooned up half a cup. Still, she grinned a happy gummy smile, and he had no doubt the calories would do her good. She was a withered doll beneath her rags, old leather stretched across a frame of sticks.

He made another pone sandwich for himself, and put it in a bag along with two plastic water bottles (worn gray with use, but still serviceable), put on his woven grass hat and ancient boots, and they set off.

Along the way they stopped first at the well, so the old lady could fill her own bottles. She grinned and waved at the other townfolk she saw, proffering a little painted clay bear to the children. “Ask your parents, it’s not much, five pones and he’s yours.”

“What’s your name?” Castro asked.

“Mayfair Mary. What you need, I carry.”

“Except food,” he observed sardonically. “You don’t carry that.”

“That I carry it in my belly,” she cackled. “Whenever I can.”

On the way out they stopped at Mason’s, because Mason liked to know such things. Cormac Mason was the mayor, as much as the Scratch had a mayor, or anyway people tended to do what he said, because he was a builder and it was always good to be in favor with a builder. Also he was the strongest man in town, even at nearly fifty years of age, a consequence of lifting stones all day, and people naturally seemed to respond to physical strength and size. It fit their preconceptions of a leader.

Mason wasn’t there, but his wife told them where he was, and it was on their way. They found him making a foundation for a new room for the Weavers, toward the southern end of the canyon. He was pounding a heavy stone mallet up and down on the dirt, packing it firm, shirt off, big arms flexing. His bushy beard came halfway down his chest, and his bald head was covered with a grass hat against the devilish sun.

Briefly Castro told him about his task and Mason frowned, eyes flicked to the window of the Weavers’ house. “Quieter, if you don’t mind,” Mason said. “Don’t want to upset her.” Belatedly Castro realized that was Ella Weaver’s room, and everyone knew she’d been seeing Danny. No point in upsetting her needlessly.

“Go see if it’s him,” Mason directed. “If it is, I’ll get Derrek and Braun with a cart and go get him. If not, it’s food for the flies.” He shook his head. “Saw him just yesterday, at noonday. Shared a meal. Then the same night he wanders off and dies. That’s the problem with brewers. Always sampling their own stock. ” Mason, Castro knew, was a Straightaway Evangelist, and didn’t approve of drinking, but of course the alcohol Brewer made from the swordgrass flour had many uses besides intoxication, and so Mason couldn’t oppose it too vociferously.

The road south was a strip of ancient asphalt through a wasteland of red rock and scrub bushes. Once there had been pines covering the hills, but the trees were long gone, known now only by precious scraps of scavenged wood. They had been killed, like everything else, by radiation, by endless drought, by the scorching sun pouring unimpeded through the damaged sky.

In places the road was drifted over with sand, and they slogged through it silently. Forty-five minutes on they left the asphalt and turned east. Squinting Castro thought he could just make something out. “You must have good eyes, to have spotted him,” he observed.

Mayfair Mary laughed. “You need good eyes, to live in this world.”

The body was at the very edge of a swathe of swordgrass, that hardiest of plants. Maybe the wayward traveller had thought to take shelter beneath it, somehow, or maybe he had been confused, thought he was at one of the patches closer to town.

It was a pitiful sight, curled up in a fetal position with its arms raised. He had taken off his shirt in an apparent effort to protect his eyes, wrapping it completely around his face, and the sandstorm had abraded most of the skin off, leaving raw red flesh embedded with grit.

Kneeling for a closer look, Castro saw that the dead man wore no shoes, and what’s more, his feet were strangely unaffected by the storm. Obviously someone had taken them. He raised an eyebrow at Mayfair Mary. “Know where his shoes are?” She shrugged innocently. No doubt stashed in her pack somewhere, to be traded at Harrisville, or Norton.

Tenderly, Castro extended a hand, lifted the head, and unwrapped the shirt. Sure enough, it was Brewer. His nose was crusted with dust, his eyes blood-red, and there was dark blood at his mouth. His skin was pale white, though, and his lips had turned dark blue with death. Having confirmed it, Castro covered his face with the shirt again.

Probably he’d died of suffocation, or dust inhalation, as was common with such storms. It was hard enough to breath inside the houses in the Scratch, and they were well-protected from the worst of it by the high canyon walls. That’s how come the Scratch even had survived, being a location protected from storms, easy to defend, and with good water at hand.

That night they had a funeral. They had it in the square outside Castro’s store, under the bare remnants of an oak that had grown there, long ago. Everyone who wasn’t too sick showed up, all hundred and twenty or so of the town’s residents. Ella May Weaver cried inconsolably.

Mason said some words. He said Brewer had been a fine man, fun to be around, always with a joke ready. He was sociable and everyone liked him. But there was also a lesson to be learned from his death: that this life demanded discipline. It demanded sober decisions. It demanded self-sacrifice. They all knew that Brewer liked a drink, or several drinks, and now it seemed it had caught up with him. Probably he’d been a bit tipsy and had gone out of town a ways, to look at the stars, because he was that kind of dreamer. Then he’d gotten turned around, somehow, and started walking the wrong way, and the storm came up and he was blinded. One mistake was all it took.

From now on, Mason decreed, alcohol would be used for the purpose God intended: as medicine and fuel. Anyone found drinking would be spoken to. Meanwhile Jephrie Piller, the apothecary, would take over the brewery.

But for now, let them remember the Danny they’d all known and loved, recognizing his virtues along with his faults. Solemnly they bowed their heads to pray.

The silence was interrupted by the low raspy cackle of the tinker lady, Mayfair Mary, laughing from the edge of the crowd, where she sat on a large stone. Despite her mirth, Mason began his prayer, but still she kept laughing, and after a few words he stopped, glaring at her. “If you can’t keep silent, leave.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” she said, still smiling. “Go on, please.”

He did, but again she started laughing. “Do you want to share with us what’s so funny?”

“Well, you say this fellow laid out here was a jokester,” she said, eyes twinkling, “but it seems to me that you’re the really funny storyteller here.”

Mason’s dark eyes glinted in the lamplight beneath his heavy brows. “I’m not amused. And old lady or not, I’ll happily escort you out of this community, if you can’t manage to respect it enough to wait to laugh until this man is buried.”

She nodded, and stood up, bones almost audibly creaking. “Fair enough,” she said. “But don’t you want to let everyone in on your joke?”

His expression turned hard. “That’s enough. It’s time for you to go.”

“Oh, I will, I will.” She turned and lifted her pack up to the stone, preliminary to putting it on. “But look at Mr. Brewer there! Doesn’t he look like he’s grinning, too?” Involuntarily the townspeople looked, and indeed his lips were held in a grim rictus. “Why, he’s laughing so hard, he’s blue in the face! Literally!”

“I’m not laughing,” Masons said, stepping down from the platform, obviously intending to make good on his word and escort her away.

“Wait,” Castro said to the old woman. “What are you saying?”

“Look at his lips. Blue as can be. Bloodbeetle blue.” She shook her head. “This man didn’t die in the storm. Didn’t die of drink, either. He was poisoned.”

An astonished murmur from the crowd. “To my knowledge, ” she went on, still smiling, “it takes about ten hours for the poison to work. So say he ate it around lunchtime. It would have be a concentrated form, though. It takes knowledge to prepare it like that… someone who knows how to extract it.” Her eyes fixed on Jephrie Piller, the apothecary. “And why would someone do anything like that? It would take motive. A desire for property, say. Or a pretty girl between them.” She looked at Ella May Weaver. “And a determined man to do it.” And finally her eyes returned to Mason.

“Get out,” the big man demanded, closing the gap between him and Mary in a few angry strides, all politeness gone from his tone. For a second Castro thought he might actually strike the old woman, but then Mason seemed to remember the others there and restrained himself. “You come to our town, spreading lies, accusing people falsely – we ought to string you up, you, you witch.”

“No need,” she said, turning her back on him. “You won’t see me again, I promise. But –” she turned a knowing eye one last time to the crowd – “I just think people should know what they’re really living with.”

With that she trudged away, heading north into the wastes. Mason stared after her, big fists clenched, face tight with rage. Then he turned and faced his neighbors.

Snuffkin had been exsanguinated.

Normally, when Patty McGillis woke up in the morning, her cat was one of two places: sitting on her pillow meowing in her face, or, if he’d refused to come in the night before, sitting on the back step meowing at the door. Today he was not on her pillow, so she stepped outside, expecting to hear his insistent cries.

And sure enough, there he was, lying at her feet in the early summer sunshine. “Good morning, Snuffy,” she said, squatting down to pet him. “All tired out?”

As soon as she touched him, she knew something was wrong. He didn’t respond at all, didn’t stretch out and flex his claws, didn’t flop over for a belly rub. His calico fur was soft as ever, but the lithe little body beneath it was unmoving. “Snuffkin?”

She laid her hand on his body and shook him just a tiny bit, then retracted her hand, tears already coming to her eyes. She sat watching him for a good minute, but his sides failed to rise and fall, his fur didn’t expand and contract, and his eyes, she saw, were half-open and utterly unmoving. Snuffkin was clearly, unalterably dead.

Gingerly, she reached out and took the cat in her arms. A sob shook her, at this completely unexpected hurt in what was already a difficult year. Snuffkin wasn’t even old! He was just six years old, full of life… too much life, sometimes, like how he’d offer his belly and then decide to scratch the shit out of you, or how he was always staying out at night, fighting with the other cats in the neighborhood, like that wild tom they called Lion who seemed to live in the empty lot down the street… It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t his time!

She stroked his fur, her cheeks wet, sobbing. But how had he died? She always expected, if this happened, that Snuff would just disappear, hit by a car, or carried away by a fox. Instead, here he was. He hadn’t been sick.

As she petted him this last time, she examined his little body, looking for a sign. He could have been hit by a car, and come back here and died of internal injuries. That was the most likely answer, though her fingers came up with nothing in particular.

Then she spied them, on the left side of his neck: two dots of dried blood in the patch of white fur there. She peered closer through her tears, spreading the fur away from the injury, saw the two small puncture wounds in his skin.

“Motherfucker!” she cried, with venom. A vampire had killed her cat.

“It’s one of these crazies I’ve been writing about,” she told the officer taking her statement, a big, pink-faced, blond man named Askew, which was how Patty felt today. Also hurt, enraged, and a little afraid. “These cultists, the Sons of Judas.”

They were standing in her back yard, over Snuffkin’s body. The other officer, a woman, stayed in the patrol car, apparently deeming this not worth her time. “Why do you say that?” Askew asked.

“Because a vampire obviously did this. He drained poor Snuffkin and set his body here on the step.”

“Do you have video of this, or…”

“No, I don’t have video. What I have is an inbox full of threats.”

She’d finally gotten his interest. “Can you show me?”

Sitting at her desk, the same place she’d written most of her stories, she showed him the three or four threatening emails she’d received. They were all from nonsense addresses, of course, but three were signed “True Son,” and all made vague if increasingly violent threats against her person. “We know where you live,” one read, “and you know we’re invisible at night.”

“See?” she said.

“Yeah, these guys aren’t happy,” said Askew. “But you know they can’t actually turn invisible, right?”

“Of course I know,” she snapped. “I just finished writing a three-part expose on the Sons of Judas. I’m well aware of what they are and what they can do.”

Askew gave her a troubled, disapproving look. “They’re not all like this, you know. My nephew’s got vampirism. It’s not his fault. He takes his pills, works the graveyard shift, stays inside during the day. He’s a good kid.”

Vampires, it turned out, had always been with humanity. It was a unique virus, transmittable only through bodily fluids. After a brief period of coma-like sleep, those afflicted developed a powerful desire to drink blood, were sensitive to light, and grew the famous fangs. For millennia they had either hidden themselves out of fear for their own survival, or simply died shortly after contracting the virus.

These days, there were medications they could take to control the bloodlust, if not the other symptoms. Nearly all had the fangs filed down or removed. A very few, however, took their condition as a special mark, a sign of divine favor, and claimed all sorts of supernatural powers.

Among these organizations were the Sons of Judas, who had a thriving little club here in Denver. As a reporter for the Denver Post, Patty had spent months learning about their organization, and her final expose had run just this last Sunday.

Now the Sons were receiving renewed scrutiny, and they were clearly pissed. There was no other reason to kill her cat but to threaten her; you couldn’t transmit the virus between species.

Back outside, Askew’s partner used a couple cotton swabs to take samples from Snuff’s wounds. “We’ll run the DNA, see if we can get a match,” she said.

“Until then, you might want to set up a security camera or two around your place,” Askew added. “Maybe also get some bars on the lower windows.”

Patty crossed her arms, shivering. “Can’t you guys, like, stand watch tonight or something?”

Askew raised an eyebrow. “We could have someone drive by a couple times, if you want. Beyond that, I’m afraid you’d have to contact a private security contractor. Until there’s a more serious crime, that’s all we can do.”

“So after they kill me, then you’ll really investigate.”

The officer sighed. “There’s not much else we can do, at this point.” He jerked his head and the two officers began walking to the back gate. “Sorry again about your cat.”

That evening she dug a hole beneath the catalpa in the back yard and buried Snuffkin there in an Adidas shoebox. She held it together while she was digging, but when she tried to speak she lost it. “Snuffkin, you were a good cat. You were always so full of life, you taught me how to live better myself.” She patted down the last shovelful under pink skies and went back inside to wash up.

She slept restlessly, waking up again and again, thinking she heard a cat outside meowing. Then, somewhere around three or four a.m., she woke from a doze with a jolt, certain she really had heard a cat.

She hurried downstairs in a bathrobe, heart beating fast. She left the lights off, though. What if it was actually the guy who had killed Snuff, returning for her? Moving silently, she advanced to the window in the back study, and lifted the curtain to look outside.

The moon was high and nearly full. She stared and stared, and sure enough saw a cat hopping up the steps. It’s a ghost, she thought wildly. It’s Snuff’s ghost.

Quickly she stepped to the back door and jerked it open. With her movement the back light turned on, and the creature there ran off a few yards. But it was tawny, not calico, and it was larger than Snuff, with matted fur.

It was Lion, the wild tom from the empty lot. And he had left her a present. She knelt down and looked at it.

It was a rat, and thoroughly dead. Turning her head, she could see two little puncture marks on its neck where the blood had been sucked out.

The Sons of Judas hadn’t killed her cat, she realized. It was just Lion, fighting with Snuff they way they always had. But this time Lion had changed. The virus, she realized, had mutated. It had jumped species.

Mind aswirl, she closed the door and went back upstairs to bed. One way or another, she had another story to investigate.

In the early dawn she woke suddenly, eyes wide with realization. “Oh God,” she cried, as she threw on her robe again. What if she was too late?

She shoveled in her house slippers, getting them filthy. She hoped her neighbors didn’t see her. They’d think she was crazy. When she thought she was close to the box, she got down on her knees to clear away the last of the soil.

When she heard the first meows, she began crying again. Snuff wasn’t dead, of course, not really. He’d just been sleeping, in the pre-vampiric coma.

She opened the lid and Snuff exploded out of the box like a rocket, tearing halfway across the yard before stopping to lick himself. “Snuffkin!” Patty cried with joy, extending her arms to him.

But Snuffkin only hissed at her, and from where she sat she could see the exaggerated fangs. She retracted her arms, and Snuffkin turned and climbed over the fence and was gone.

Oh well, she thought. Snuff always had been a bit of a handful.