The dog lifted its head and moved up Deem's body. When it got to her face, it began to lick her. The man part of the creature was now positioned over her body. The body was big, lean, and muscular. Deem could feel its erection pressing against her.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Bune!" they heard from inside the trailer. "Get off her. Bune! No!"

The dog lifted its head to look at the trailer. As quickly as it had appeared, it faded away and was gone.

Winn raced to Deem's side and helped her up.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Deem said.

"Sorry about that," Awan said. "I forgot he can be a little exuberant around females. I've never seen him that excited."

"It's 'cause she's gifted," they heard Aggie say from inside the trailer. "You didn't tell me she was gifted, Awan."

"Oh," Awan said. "I didn't realize it mattered."

"Of course it matters," Aggie bellowed. "Bune goes for us girls with the gift, don't you, boy?"

Deem shuddered, sitting back down on the picnic table bench.

"You OK?" Winn asked.

"I'm fine," Deem said. "Just feel a little violated."

"I'm sorry," Awan said. "It didn't occur to me he might do something like that, or I would have warned you."

"So he's a dog?" Deem asked, brushing herself off.

"No," Awan said. "Just a dog head. He's much more than that. You know how, if you trance, you can get at information you normally can't see?"

"Yeah," Winn said.

"Well, you and I need proximity to do that," Awan said. "I can't just trance and start observing Paris or London. I can only observe around here, where I'm at."

"Bune can go further?" Deem asked.

"If he has a scent," Awan said. "If you give him something someone has touched, he can follow the scent anywhere. Including the past."

"Like a dog," Deem said.

"I think he was originally a rock demon," Awan said. "Let loose by the people who dug the well. There's a reason there's no one else out this way; for years he terrorized the place. Somehow Aggie was able to communicate with him. He won't talk to anyone but her."

"So she's Bune's master, in a way?" Winn asked.

"Kind of," Awan said. "He's nice enough to her. But he can be trouble if he's angry. That's why I didn't want you to touch him. I know a guy who lost an arm that way."

Winn gulped.

"So Aggie has never done anything more with the gift?" Deem asked, her voice lowered.

"No," Awan whispered back. "Her whole life has been Bune, ever since she met him. It's one of the reasons she let herself go. She really doesn't care about anything else."

"Not even her boyfriend?" Winn asked.

"The one she just had falsely arrested?" Awan said.

"Point taken," Winn said.

"How long will this take?" Deem asked. "And do you think he'll attack me again?"

"I don't think he will," Awan said. "Aggie's got a hold of him now. I'd give it twenty or thirty minutes."

Deem watched as the bats began to fly overhead, rapidly collecting the day's bugs. She remembered when she was a little girl and thought they were "night birds," fast little birds that flew only at dusk. She remembered a day when she was about ten, and one of them had gotten inside the house somehow. It flew rapidly from room to room, including her bedroom. At first she thought it was a bird, and she was delighted. Then it landed on her bedspread, a few feet from her face, and she saw its wings and little mouth, opening and closing, exposing sharp little teeth. She screamed, and her father came running. When he entered her room, he grabbed the first thing he could find a large, thick bible that Deem had been given in Primary. He swung at the bat, and it fell to the ground in Deem's bedroom doorway, stunned. Her father pulled the bedroom door over it and trapped it under the edge of the door. Deem hopped out of bed and examined the bat while her father went to get a bag to put it in. Having been whacked with a five pound bible, it didn't have much fight left in it. Deem could see its eyes move and its mouth open and close. Suddenly she felt bad for it. It wasn't the bat's fault it had gotten inside the house. It didn't deserve to die, just because she'd screamed when she saw it. She got closer to the bat, intending to pet it with her finger, maybe make it feel better. As she got close to it, it snapped at her and she screamed again. Her father told her to leave the bat alone, scooped it into a paper bag, and took it outside, where he dumped it onto the lawn. It sat there for hours. Deem would check on it every few minutes, waiting to see if it would regain its senses and fly away, like a trout that's been caught and released but hadn't yet started to swim. Eventually she forgot about it. When she checked on it the next day, it was gone. She worried the bat would remember her and hunt her down. Now, whenever the bats came out at dusk, she had a faint fear that they'd seek revenge for the one she'd harmed.

"Alright," Aggie said, reappearing at the doorway. "Here's the scoop."

They all turned to face her. She sat in the doorway as before, filling all available s.p.a.ce.

"Somebody write this down, I ain't gonna repeat it," she said.

"I'll remember it," Deem replied.

"Alright," Aggie said. "He took his brother down to an old mining shack south of Devil's Throat. His brother was allergic to bee stings. He trapped him inside the shack, then he took a log and banged on the walls of the shack to stir up a hornet's nest. His brother was stung hundreds of times, and died from the poison. Once the hornets died down, he buried him about fifty feet from the shack. That's your guy."

"Can you tell me where the shack is, exactly?" Deem asked.

"Well," Aggie said, "you know the road that goes south from Devil's Throat? Not the one that goes east, but the one that goes south?"

"Yeah, I know it."

"Well, you take that road. It's gonna go a ways. When you get near the end of it, it's gonna jog a bit to the left," Aggie raised her hands to ill.u.s.trate the jog, her arm flesh reverberating from the hand movements. "Well, you go past that, and there's another jog to the right. You go past that, and there's a wash you drive over. You walk up that wash about a quarter mile, then go up a hill on the right."

"Sounds like the Hardesty Mine," Deem said. "Is that it?"

"I don't know the name of it, honey," Aggie replied. "But at the top of the hill is a rock. You go around it, and there's the mine. Go further up the hill, and there's the shack. You trance at the shack, you'll find him."

"Thank you," Deem said. "I really appreciate it."

Aggie extended her hand, wiggling her fingers. At first Deem thought she might be wanting to shake hands, but then she realized Aggie had her hand pointed at the bottle on the picnic table.

"Awan," she said. "I'll take that Johnny Walker now."

Chapter Eleven.

Deem heard Winn honking in front of her house. She'd just removed a bone fragment from her mother's arm, with Aunt Virginia looking on.

"I've got to go," Deem said. "Keep an eye on her," she said to her aunt. "She should improve quickly, just like before."

"We've got to call the exterminator," Virginia said. "Really Deem, we can't go on like this."

"I'm working on it," Deem said. "Trust me." She left her mother's bedroom and raced to the door. Winn was waiting in his Jeep.

"Morning," he said as she jumped in.

"7-11, then off to Devil's Throat," Deem said.

"Good morning to you, too, Winn," Winn said.

"Sorry," Deem said. "I've been rushing around. Mom's still under attack by the skinrunner. My aunt thinks its spider bites, at least that's what I've told her. I'm worried she'll get sick of digging the bones out and try something else instead. We've got to shut this guy down."

Winn pulled into the 7-11 and they both went inside. Winn returned with a coffee, and Deem with her usual Big Gulp.

"You should get one of those refillable mugs," Winn said. "At the rate you go through pop, you'd save money."

"I'm not middle aged yet!" Deem said. "Please!"

"What, you're saying only middle aged women use refillable mugs?"

"Yes, haven't you noticed?"

"So you use a new cup each time, even though it'd be cheaper to do the refill, just because you think it would make you look old?"

"I'm not carrying around a nasty old mug."

Winn shook his head. "Whatever."

They drove toward Bunkerville and then down the small roads to Devil's Throat. It was slow going, but they were used to the route.

"I wonder how Jason is doing?" Deem said as they pa.s.sed Devil's Throat, remembering the events that had occurred there.

"You should give Eliza and Steven a call and find out," Winn said.

"Or you could," Deem said. "Been kinda busy."

"I wonder if Roy has tried out the EM gun yet," Winn said. "He told me he'd let me know how it worked."

"I don't know about you," Deem said, "but Jason didn't seem a hundred percent to me when they left. I mean, I don't know the guy, so I don't know what he was normally like, but he just seemed a little off."

"He'd just been ripped out of St. Thomas," Winn said. "And then all that with Michael. He was bound to be a little off."

"It's not that," Deem said. "Something else."

"Oh, the residual stuff?"

"Yeah. That's why I'm wondering how he's doing back in Seattle."

"Are you sure you're not just wondering if he remembers you?"

Deem shot Winn a skeptical look.

"Hey, he's a good looking guy," Winn said. "I can see why you'd be interested in him."

"I didn't say I was interested in him," Deem said. "Really Winn, you always a.s.sume everything's about s.e.x."

"I said 'interested in him,' not that you wanted to f.u.c.k him."

Deem winced when Winn said 'f.u.c.k.' Winn noticed.

"What, I can't say 'f.u.c.k' now?" Winn said. "You say it all the time."

"Not in that context."

"So it's alright to say as a swear word, but not if it refers to s.e.x?"

"Right."

"That's really kind of f.u.c.ked up, no pun intended."

"You'll never understand because you're so crude," Deem said.

"And you're just hung up on it," Winn said.

"No, quite the opposite. I merely think that s.e.x is more personal and private. Doesn't need to be discussed the way you do."

"You're the one who always brings it up!" Winn said, a little exasperated. "And you say 'f.u.c.k' ten times more than I do!"

"In context."

"Yeah, you said that already. f.u.c.k is f.u.c.k in my book, context be d.a.m.ned."

"I was just wondering if Jason had returned to normal, that's all. You're the one who brought up the s.e.x."

"So you think something was embedded in him? Do you think Steven and Roy are in danger?"

"Don't know," Deem said. "I did warn Roy about it, before they left. You've seen it before, did you think he was embedded?"

"The safe bet would be to a.s.sume that he was," Winn said. "No way to know for sure until something emerges. At least, there's no way to know that I've discovered. No test or anything."

"What happens when it emerges?" Deem asked.

"Every embedding is different," Winn said. "I knew one girl who became depressed and killed herself. There was another in Henderson, authorities caught her trying to poison the town's water supply."