“About…?” Clouds formed slowly on Polk’s face and he stared through confusion for several minutes as traffic swept past the double-​parked truck. Vic let him work it out. Finally, Polk’s face cleared of doubt and a mask of shock formed instead; his eyes grew very wide. He could actually feel his knees starting to tremble.

“Don’t even fuck around, Vic—”

“It’s no joke, Jimmy. You’ve known all along it was gonna start someday.”

“Oh, come on! That’s just crazy shit. It was a joke. Stuff we talked about when we got high back in school.” Polk was shaking his head back and forth.

“Jimmy…” Vic said softly, coaxing. “Don’t let’s play games. You know what we were talking about, and what it meant. Don’t play like it was all LSD trips. You know, man, you know!”

Polk looked at him for a minute, still shaking his head. He could feel a burning in the corners of his eyes and a tingling in his nose and realized with horror that he was about to cry. He made a face and started to turn away. “This is bullshit, Vic—”

Vic’s hand caught his shoulder in a grip so fast and hard that Polk was jerked back around to face the mechanic. The wrapped bundle of money fell to the ground. “Don’t you fucking walk away from me, Jimmy.” He leaned close and his voice was a whisper as cold and hard as the edge of a new razor blade. Polk didn’t want to look into Vic’s eyes, but they bored into him, the intensity compelling and unmanning at the same time. Polk was terrified, but he was trapped, too.

“You took money from me before, Jimmy. Hell, you took money from him! You think you can take the Man’s dime and not work for it?” He tightened his grip and pulled Polk even closer. Polk could smell cigarettes and something sour on Vic’s breath. “You took the man’s dime, Polk. You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me, and that means the Man owns us! He owns us. You should be fucking filled with joy that someone like him counts us among his chosen few. That’s an honor, you shit bag, and don’t you ever forget it. Ever!” He released Polk with a small shove that knocked Polk against the door of Vic’s truck.

Polk caught his balance and quickly looked up and down the street to see if anyone had seen him get roughed up. His partner was still asleep in the front seat of their cruiser, and no one but the old tramp Mr. Pockets had seen anything. The hobo stared at him for a moment and then continued rooting in the trash.

“Now,” Vic said softly, “pick up that money.” His eyes were hard as fists.

Polk didn’t even try to stare him down; his eyes dropped and he bent over and picked up the bundle wrapped in the greasy rag.

You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me.

Vic nodded his approval, and then suddenly smiled. “It’s gonna start happening soon. That’s your starting salary, man. It’s an advance, and there’s a shitload more where that came from. I’ll call you to tell you how to earn enough of it to let you buy all the broads and scotch whiskey in the world. I’ll call you soon.” He paused and pointed a hard finger at Polk’s face. “You be ready.”

With that, Vic turned and climbed back into his truck. He slammed the door, put it in gear, fought his way aggressively through the evening traffic, and vanished around a corner. Polk stood and watched him go, his eyes still wide, his heart hammering in his chest, and his mind reeling with the implications. Melanie slept through it all, waking only when she heard and felt the trunk slam shut. She raised sleepy eyes and looked at Polk as he climbed in beside her.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me, and that means the Man owns us! He owns us.

Polk dabbed at the sweat on his brow and upper lip. “No,” he said huskily. “I…uh, I suddenly don’t feel all that good.”

She shrugged, turned the key in the ignition, and eased the patrol car into the lane of traffic heading south.

3

“I gave her a sedative and she’ll sleep through,” Weinstock said as he settled into the bedside chair.

Crow nodded. About ten minutes after Val had snuck into his room, a tribe of nurses had come hustling in, scolding and clucking and scowling at Crow as if her elopement from her own room had somehow been his idea. They bundled her off to her room, shooting looks of disapproval over their shoulders as they went. A few minutes after that Saul Weinstock had come in.

“She tell you why she slipped out?”

Weinstock nodded. “Bad dreams. Who can blame her? I’m probably going to have my fair share of them tonight, too.”

“She only told me that she had a dream about that guy Ruger. No details.”

Weinstock sucked his teeth. “She said she saw Karl Ruger in her room. Oh, don’t look at me like that. With all that she’s been through I’d have been concerned for her sanity if she didn’t dream of that prick. But with the stuff we pumped her up with she’ll probably be dreaming of nothing more threatening than Santa Claus for the rest of the night.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Look, Crow, I want to be serious for just a bit, okay? We both know how tough Val is, and believe me, when she’s in form I would never want to cross her. But with everything that’s happened she’s likely to be a little flaky. And you”—he reached over and tapped Crow’s knee with a thick finger—“have to be the stabilizing force in her life. You’re going to have to represent sense and order so she can get back to herself.”

“Sense and order? Me?”

“I know, it’s a stretch for you.”

“Eat me.”

“You’re not kosher.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor, I know everything.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway…she’s going to need time and a lot of love. And patience. This could take weeks or even months for her to get over. You up for all that?”

Crow laughed. “Can I share something with you, Saul?”

“Of course.”

“Last night I was going to ask Val to go away with me for a weekend to a nice bed-​and-​breakfast in New Hope. Over a nice dinner and a superb bottle of nonalcoholic wine I was going to pop the ol’ question.”

A great big grin broke out on Weinstock’s face. “Then I guess you’re all set for the long haul.”

“As the routine goes…in sickness and in health.”

Weinstock patted his leg and stood up. “Good man.”

4

Saul Weinstock closed the door but lingered for a moment outside Crow’s room, staring up the hallway to where Val lay asleep. A police officer paced the hallway between the two rooms, and when he saw Weinstock looking in his direction he blushed and dropped his eyes. The officer—Barry Whitsover—had snuck downstairs for a smoke, leaving both Val and Crow unprotected, and hadn’t been on post when Val had gone truant. Weinstock had taken him aside and had reamed him out so long and so hard that the man’s ears were still bright red. Weinstock told him that it was only his compassion for the mentally impaired that prevented him from reporting it to Chief Bernhardt. The officer had no defense and had slunk away, relieved but humiliated.

But Weinstock wasn’t staring at him at the moment. He was looking at the door to Val’s room and thinking about what Crow had just said about proposing to Val. He smiled. The timing couldn’t be better. First, it would probably give her something to feel joyful about when everything else around her was dragging her down. Optimism was the best drug in the world. And, more importantly, it was a damn good thing because, based on what Val had said—and the blood and urine tests done when Val was admitted—they were already a fair way to starting a family.

He wandered away to start his rounds, his happy whistle at odds with the pall of dread that hung over the town.

Chapter 24

1

As a quiet autumn darkness settled over Pine Deep, Vic Wingate pulled his truck right up to the edge of the drop-​off at the Passion Pit, his bumper jutting out of the steep drop down to Dark Hollow. He killed the engine, fired up a cigarette, and settled back to wait. No radio, no sound.

He was in a happy mood. Everything was in motion and things were working well, just as the Man had assured him they would. And just as he, himself, had planned. Ruger had come to town, as the Man had foreseen, been stranded here, and had begun the Change. The Man had sicced Tow-​Truck Eddie on Mike, which should efficiently take care of that problem—after all, considering what Mike was and how soon he might discover his own nature, it was best to get him off the board as soon as possible. Vic just wished that he could kill the little snot himself, but he knew the folklore and shared the Man’s dread of what would happen to their plans if Mike died by a corrupt hand. It had to be a clean hand, or the whole plan would fail—and whose hands were cleaner than Tow-​Truck Eddie’s? The guy was a fucking saint. A major league fruitcake, to be sure, but as clean as a whistle when it came to matters of the spirit. That meant that Mike—and his potential—would be neutralized. With him out of the game the Red Wave could really work, and that jazzed Vic so much he actually got hard.

He smoked and considered the Ruger thing. There was still way too much heat around Ruger. Far too much for comfort. If that psychopath did what he was supposed to do, though, then the heat would be turned off. Vic wondered how Ruger would manage it, and what he’d do. Would he take his suggestion and take Crow and Val Guthrie with him, down in that blaze of glory? If so, that would simplify things, too, because the Man hated Crow. The “one that got away” all those years ago. Griswold had literally been a second away from tearing out Crow’s throat when that fucking Oren Morse had stepped in and saved the boy. That’s when things had gone wrong thirty years ago. Morse had saved young Crow, and had then managed to kill Griswold.

Vic shook his head in wonder. How that skinny guitar-​strumming nigger had managed to kill the Man was beyond him, but then he smiled when he thought about how bad a move that had been for Morse. Not just because it gave Vic a reason to orchestrate his murder—which had been quite a lot of fun—but because it had started the Great Change for Griswold. Not even the Man knew about that. Vic had always thought dead was dead, and though he served Griswold back then, the Man had been more or less mortal. Yeah, a werewolf, but still alive and still mortal. Then he’d been killed and buried in the swamp. Not in hallowed ground; not blessed by clergy or read over; but stuffed down in the swamp just the way he had died: halfway between man and monster.