There were other things Grahame Coats had noticed while looking for alcohol in the kitchen. There were, for example, knives. Some of them were very sharp. In a drawer, there was even a small stainless steel hacksaw. Grahame Coats approved. It would be the very simple solution to the problem in the basement.

"Habeas corpus," he said. "Orhabeas delicti . One of those. If there is no body, then there was no crime.Ergo .Quod erat demonstrandum. "

He took his gun out of his jacket pocket, put it on the kitchen table. He arranged the knives around it in a pattern, like the spokes of a wheel. "Well," he said, in the same tones he had once used to persuade innocent boy bands that it was time to sign their contract with him and to say hello to fame if not actually fortune, "no time like the present."

He pushed three kitchen knives blade-down through his belt, placed the hacksaw in his jacket pocket, and then, gun in hand, he went down the cellar stairs. He turned on the lights, blinked at the wine bottles on their side, each in their rack, each covered with a thin layer of dust, and then he was standing beside the iron meat locker door.

"Right," he shouted. "You'll be pleased to hear that I'm not going to hurt you. I'll be letting you both go now. All a bit of a mistake. Still, no hard feelings. No use crying over spilt. Stand by the far wall. Assume the position. No funny stuff."

It was, he reflected, as he pulled back the bolts, almost comforting how many cliches already exist for people holding guns. It made Grahame Coats feel like one of a brotherhood: Bogart stood beside him, and Cagney, and all the people who shout at each other onCOPS.

He turned the light on and pulled open the door. Rosie's mother stood against the far wall, with her back to him. As he came in, she flipped up her skirt and waggled an astonishingly bony brown bottom.

His jaw dropped open. That was when Rosie slammed down a length of rusty chain onto Grahame Coats's wrist, sending the gun flying across the room.

With the enthusiasm and accuracy of a much younger woman, Rosie's mother kicked Grahame Coats in the groin, and as he clutched his crotch and doubled up, making noises pitched at a level that only dogs and bats could hear, Rosie and her mother stumbled out of the meat locker.

They pushed the door closed and Rosie pushed shut one of the bolts. They hugged.

They were still in the wine cellar when all the lights went off.

"It's just the fuses," said Rosie, to reassure her mother. She was not certain that she believed it, but she had no other explanation.

"You should have locked both bolts," said her mother. And then, "Ow," as she stubbed her toe on something, and cursed.

"On the bright side," said Rosie, "Hecan't see in the dark either. Just hold my hand. I think the stairs are up this way."

Grahame Coats was down on all fours on the concrete floor of the meat cellar, in the darkness, when the lights went out. There was something hot dripping down his leg. He thought for one uncomfortable moment that he had wet himself, before he understood that the blade of one of the knives he had pushed into his belt had cut deeply into the top of his leg.

He stopped moving and lay on the floor. He decided that he had been very sensible to have drunk so much: it was practically an anaesthetic. He decided to go to sleep.

He was not alone in the meat locker. There was someone in there with him. Something that moved on four legs.

Somebody growled, "Get up."

"Can't get up. I'm hurt. Want to go to bed."

"You're a pitiful little creature and you destroy everything you touch. Now get up."

"Would love to," said Grahame Coats in the reasonable tones of a drunk. "Can't. Just going to lie on the floor for a bit. Anyway. She bolted the door. I heard her."

He heard a scraping from the other side of the door, as if a bolt was slowly being released.

"The door is open. Now: if you stay here, you'll die." An impatient rustling; the swish of a tail; a roar, half-muffled in the back of a throat. "Give me your hand and your allegiance. Invite me inside you."

"I don't underst-"

"Give me your hand, or bleed to death."

In the black of the meat cellar, Grahame Coats put out his hand. Someone-something-took it and held it, reassuringly. "Now, are you willing to invite me in?"

A moment of cold sobriety touched Grahame Coats then. He had already gone too far. Nothing he did would make matters worse, after all.

"Absatively," whispered Grahame Coats, and as he said it he began to change. He could see through the darkness easy as daylight. He thought, but only for a moment, that he saw something beside him, bigger than a man, with sharp, sharp teeth. And then it was gone, and Grahame Coats felt wonderful. The blood no longer spurted from his leg.

He could see clearly in the darkness. He pulled the knives from his belt, dropped them onto the floor. He pulled off his shoes, too. There was a gun on the ground, but he left it there. Tools were for apes and crows and weaklings. He was no ape.

He was a hunter.

He pulled himself up onto his hands and his knees, and then he padded, four-footed, out into the wine cellar.

He could see the women. They had found the steps up to the house, and they were edging up them blindly, hand-in-hand in the darkness.

One of them was old and stringy. The other was young and tender. The mouth salivated in something that was only partly Grahame Coats.

FAT CHARLIELEFT THE BRIDGE, WITH HIS FATHER'S GREEN FEDORApushed back on his head, and he walked into the dusk. He walked up the rocky beach, slipping on the rocks, splashing into pools. Then he trod on something that moved. A stumble, and he stepped off it.

It rose into the air, and it kept rising. Whatever it was, it was enormous: he thought at first that it was the size of an elephant, but it grew bigger still.

Light,thought Fat Charlie. He sang aloud, and all the lightning bugs, the fireflies of that place, clustered around him, flickering off and on with their cold green luminescence, and in their light he could make out two eyes, bigger than dinner plates, staring down at him from a supercilious reptilian face.

He stared back. "Evening," he said, cheerfully.

A voice from the creature, smooth as buttered oil. "He-llo," it said. "Ding-dong. You look remarkably like dinner."

"I'm Charlie Nancy," said Charlie Nancy. "Who are you?"

"I am Dragon," said the dragon. "And I shall devour you in one slow mouthful, little man in a hat."

Charlie blinked.What would my father do? he wondered.What would Spider have done? He had absolutely no idea.Come on. After all, Spider's sort of a part of me. I can do whatever he can do.

"Er. You're bored with talking to me now, and you're going to let me pass unhindered," he told the dragon, with as much conviction as he was able to muster.

"Gosh. Good try. But I'm afraid I'm not," said the dragon, enthusiastically. "Actually, I'm going to eat you."

"You aren't scared of limes, are you?" asked Charlie, before remembering that he'd given the lime to Daisy.

The creature laughed, scornfully. "I," it said, "am frightened of nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," it said.

Charlie said, "Are youextremely frightened of nothing?"

"Absolutely terrified of it," admitted the Dragon.

"You know," said Charlie, "I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?"

"No," said the Dragon, uncomfortably, "I most definitely would not."

There was a flapping of wings like sails, and Charlie was alone on the beach. "That," he said, "was much too easy."

He kept on walking. He made up a song for his walk. Charlie had always wanted to make up songs, but he never did, mostly because of the conviction that if he ever had written a song, someone would have asked him to sing it, and that would not have been a good thing, much as death by hanging would not be a good thing. Now, he cared less and less, and he sang his song to the fireflies, who followed him up the hillside. It was a song about meeting the Bird Woman and finding his brother. He hoped the fireflies were enjoying it: their light seemed to be pulsing and flickering in time with the tune.

The Bird Woman was waiting for him at the top of the hill.

Charlie took off his hat. He pulled the feather from the hatband.

"Here. This is yours, I believe."

She made no move to take it.

"Our deal's over," said Charlie. "I brought your feather. I want my brother. You took him. I want him back. Anansi's bloodline was not mine to give."

"And if I no longer have your brother?"

It was hard to tell, in the firefly light, but Charlie did not believe that her lips had moved. Her words surrounded him, however, in the cries of nightjars, and in the owls' shrieks and hoots.

"I want my brother back," he told her. "I want him whole and in one piece and uninjured. And I want him now. Or whatever went on between you and my father over the years was just the prelude. You know. The overture."

Charlie had never threatened anyone before. He had no idea how he would carry out his threats-but he had no doubt that he would indeed carry them out.

"I had him," she said, in the bittern's distant boom "But I left him, tongueless, in Tiger's world. I could not hurt your father's line. Tiger could, once he found his courage."

A hush. The night frogs and the night birds were perfectly silent. She stared at him impassively, her face almost part of the shadows. Her hand went into the pocket of her coat. "Give me the feather," she said.

Charlie put it into her hand.

He felt lighter, then, as if she had taken more from him than just an old feather...

Then she placed something into his hand: something cold and damp. It felt like a lump of meat, and Charlie had to quell the urge to fling it away.

"Return it to him," she said, in the voice of the night. "He has no quarrel with me now."

"How do I get to Tiger's world?"

"How did you get here?" she asked, sounding almost amused, and the night was complete, and Charlie was alone on the hill.

He opened his hand and looked at the lump of meat that sat there, floppy and ridged. It looked like a tongue, and he knew whose tongue it had to be.

He put the fedora back on his head, and he thought,Put my thinking cap on, and as he thought it, it didn't seem so funny. The green fedora was not a thinking cap: but it was the kind of hat that would be worn by someone who not only thought but also came to conclusions of an important and vital kind.

He imagined the worlds as a web: it blazed in his mind, connecting him to everyone he knew. The strand that connected him to Spider was strong and bright, and it burned with a cold light, like a lightning bug or a star.

Spider had been a part of him once. He held onto this knowledge and let the web fill his mind. And in his hand was his brother's tongue: that had been part of Spider until very recently, and it wished devoutly to be part of him again. Living things remember.

The wild light of the web burned about him. All Charlie needed to do was follow it....

He followed it, and the fireflies clustered around and traveled with him.

"Hey," he said. "It's me."

Spider made a small, terrible noise.

In the glimmer of firefly light, Spider looked awful: he looked hunted and he looked hurt. There were scabs on his face and chest.

"I think this is probably yours," said Charlie.

Spider took the tongue from his brother, with an exaggeratedthank you gesture, placed it into his mouth, pushed it in, and held it down. Charlie watched and waited. Soon Spider seemed satisfied-he moved his mouth experimentally, pushing the tongue to one side and then to the other, as if he were preparing to shave off a moustache, opening his mouth widely and waggling his tongue about. He closed his mouth and stood up. Finally, in a voice that was still a little wobbly around the edges, he said, "Nice hat."

ROSIE MADE ITTO THE TOP OF THE STEPS FIRST, AND SHEpushed open the wine cellar door. She stumbled into the house. She waited for her mother, then she slammed and bolted the cellar door. The power was out here, but the moon was high and nearly full, and, after the darkness, the pallid moonlight coming through the kitchen windows might as well have been floodlighting.

Boys and girls come out to play,thought Rosie.The moon does shine as bright as day....

"Phone the police," said her mother.

"Where's the phone?"

"How the hell should I know where the phone is? He's still down there."

"Right," said Rosie, wondering whether she should find a phone to call the police or just get out of the house, but before she had reached a decision, it was too late.

There was a bang so loud it hurt her ears, and the door to the cellar crashed open.

The shadow came out of the cellar.

It was real. She knew it was real. She was looking at it. But it was impossible: it was the shadow of a great cat, shaggy and huge. Strangely, though, when the moonlight touched it, the shadow seemeddarker . Rosie could not see its eyes, but she knew it was looking at her, and that it was hungry.

It was going to kill her. This was where it would end.

Her mother said, "It wants you, Rosie."

"I know."

Rosie picked up the nearest large object, a wooden block that had once held knives, and she threw it at the shadow as hard as she could, and then, without waiting to see if it made contact, she moved as fast as she could out of the kitchen, into the hallway. She knew where the front door was....

Something dark, something four-footed, moved faster: it bounded over her head, landing almost silently in front of her.

Rosie backed up against the wall. Her mouth was dry.