"When you cross into what you call Elsewhere, you are known at once by those in the wasteland, Mr. Thomas. Known and hated. Hated because you are the ant.i.thesis of what they are. And because they can enter Elsewhere, one of them will always come for you. The senoculus chooses to look like you now. It will try to suck your life and your soul out of you."

"'Give me your breath ... and the sweet fruit at the end of it.'"

"Avoid the senoculus at all costs."

"If it shows up, how do I avoid it?"

"Run, Mr. Thomas. Run."

Doubting my ability to handle this, I said, "Maybe I should just call the police, tell them the missing kids are all here. Maybe I can convince them. Maybe they'll think they have to come take a look."

He regarded me with sadness, as if I were pitiably naive. "Mr. Thomas, the county sheriff is among the guests downstairs."

"Oh."

"Yes. Oh."

The director began to rise off the floor, as though he would leave through the ceiling, as he had done in the elevator at Star Truck.

I said, "Wait, wait, wait."

He drifted back to the floor. "Time is short, Mr. Thomas."

I said, "Why can't you just take the kids under your wing and get them safely out of here?"

"This world isn't run by miracles. This world is run by free will, and I can't interfere with yours or the children's."

"But you stepped in to give me all this advice."

"I was a film director, Mr. Thomas. I don't give advice. I give instructions. And you have the free will to ignore them."

When he started to rise again, like a Macy's-parade balloon, I grabbed his arm to hold him down. "Why didn't you talk to me right from the start, why all the pantomime until now?"

He smiled and shook his head as if to say that I had much to learn regarding the construction of a drama. "One does not reveal such a twist a moment sooner than the end of the second act." His expression grew serious, and he searched my eyes as if taking the measure of my mettle. "Children, Mr. Thomas. Innocent children."

"I'll do my best, sir."

"Do better than your best."

His usual droll demeanor gave way to more emotion than he had allowed himself in public, during his days of fame. "This world can be hard on children."

Later, I would learn that he and his wife, Alma, had had one child, a daughter named Patricia, on whom he doted. There are many charming pictures of portly Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k and tiny Pat on vacation with Alma in exotic places like Paris and Africa and Switzerland. His smile, though ironic when calculated for publicity, could be sweet, and never sweeter than in photographs with Pat or with her children. At play with the grandchildren, he had been like a child himself, Hitchc.o.c.kian dignity discarded in favor of partic.i.p.ating fully in the game of the moment.

Perhaps his regard for children and their happiness had its roots in his own lonely childhood. At the age of nine, he was sent off to a Catholic boarding school. Until he was fourteen, he was raised by Jesuits who believed most strongly in severe corporal punishment, and before he was fifteen, he quit school and took his first job. He was remembered by others as a sensitive and retiring boy, and he called himself "a particularly unattractive youth," though rare photos from those days don't really support such a harsh self-a.s.sessment. One of his earliest vivid memories was of waking late on Christmas Eve, when he was only five, to discover his mother sneaking two toys from his Christmas stocking, putting them in the stockings of his older siblings, and replacing them with a couple of oranges.

"This world can be hard on children," he repeated. "Now, these seventeen think they're being held for ransom. They don't know what's going to be done to them, although a few might suspect something. The cultists want to surprise them, the better to savor their terror as the full horror of their fate dawns on them."

"I'll remember everything you told me, sir. I feel better now that you're on my side. Everything's sure to be all right now."

He raised one eyebrow. "Is it sure to be, Mr. Thomas? Are you really certain that you've seen my films?"

I thought of the end of Vertigo, and wished I hadn't.

Again he rose off the floor.

This time I didn't try to stop him, though I did say, "Please call me Odd, sir."

Halfway to the ceiling, he said, "That's very kind of you, Mr. Thomas. Please call me Hitch."

"Yes, sir. Will I see you again, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k?"

"I would count on it, Mr. Thomas, whether or not you survive the next half hour."

He disappeared through the ceiling.

The time had come to kill or die. Or both.

Twenty-nine.

NOT BEING A QUICK-DRAW ARTIST, I WAS RELUCTANT TO leave both pistols in their shoulder rigs, as Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k had suggested. I understood that I would be more likely to arouse suspicion if I went everywhere with one of the Glocks drawn and ready for action, but I had to work up the nerve to do as he had instructed.

I turned out the lights in that room of paper towels and toilet paper. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I stepped into the bas.e.m.e.nt corridor.

As I moved toward the farther end of the hallway and the back stairs by which I'd come here, a door opened on my right, and a woman came out of the office of the man whom I had killed.

In her twenties, pretty even under enough Goth makeup to supply Alice Cooper through a national nostalgia tour, she wore high-heeled shoes, tight and wonderfully supple black-leather pants, and a sort of half jacket of matching leather that bared her midriff. As most belly dancers have a jewel in their navels, this woman had a carved-bone skull.

She didn't appear to be alarmed, which surely she would have been if she'd discovered a corpse, unless these people found so many corpses with such regularity that all the shock value had gone out of the experience. She smiled at me, and she had the whitest teeth I'd ever seen, though the upper cuspids seemed to have been filed into sharper points than nature would have given them.

I raised my fist and said "Contumax," but I felt like a satanic geek when instead of replying with "Potestas," she said, "Hey, look at you, boy toy."

"Hey," I said.

Being called a boy toy might have been flattering if she hadn't been festooned with knives. At each hip, two loaded sheaths were fixed to her belt. In a scabbard against her back hung a full-length sword, which she could draw by reaching over her left shoulder. From each wrist dangled a straight razor, and though the blades were at the moment safely folded into the polished-ivory handles, I suspected that with a flick of her hands, she could bring both razors out, up, and into service. Whatever all she might want to do to a boy toy, I didn't think I could a.s.sume that s.e.x would be part of it.

"You know Rob Burkett, honey?" she asked.

I said, "The twelve rules of successful management."

The sound she made was half laugh and half snort. "Yeah, he's kind of an a.s.shole. Where'd he get that stupid s.h.i.t-happens poster with the cat and the crocodile?"

"Wherever, it wasn't a Hallmark store."

"You seen him? He said he'd be down here in his office."

Evidently, she hadn't gone around behind the desk and looked in the knee s.p.a.ce, where Rob was in the fetal position as if being born into death.

She came close and looked me over from crotch to lips to eyes. "You part of the show tonight?"

"Yeah. Are you?"

"Can't wait. They're givin' me a juicy little boy."

With a flick of her wrist, she brought the dangling ivory handle into her hand and released the straight razor, which appeared to be sharp enough to divide a human hair from end to end.

"Excellent," I said, pretending to admire her dexterity and style. "You ever cut one before?"

"A juicy little boy? Nah. Youngest ones I've cut are like eighteen, they come on to me, thinkin' they're so hot, but they're p.u.s.s.ies. Only thing hot about 'em is their blood. My name's Jinx."

Yes, I thought, I suppose it would be.

But I said, "I'm Lucius."

"I think you're luscious," she said, and she stroked the flat of the razor blade slowly along my left cheek, as if she were giving me a shave.

The steel was cold.

Her eyes were the jaundice yellow of a very sick man's urine.

"Your eyes are amazing," I said.

"They're really blue. I'm wearin' contacts that make 'em this way. Wild-animal eyes. I want my little boy so scared the second he sees me, he p.i.s.ses himself right then."

"I think he will."

"You think he will?"

"I know he will."

Jinx said, "I'm from Reno."

"I'm from Arizona."

"Where in Arizona?" she asked, flicking open the straight razor in her left hand and drawing the flat of the blade along my right cheek.

"Little town you never heard of."

"Maybe I have."

"Lonely Possum, Arizona."

"Sounds like the a.s.s end of nowhere."

"You can get a lot of land cheap. Keep neighbors at a distance."

She said, "n.o.body hears nothin' you're doin', huh?"

"None of their business, anyway."

With a quick gesture of each hand, she flipped the blades back into the handles and let them dangle from her wrists again.

I didn't feel any safer.

Jinx said, "What're they givin' you for the show?"

"This girl. They say she's eight."

"Who's your patron?"

"Zebulun."

She was impressed. "I want to see her, the girl."

"What, now?"

"Yeah. Don't you want to see my juicy little boy?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Maybe in the show, when I'm almost done with him, you can step in and help me finish."

"And you could step in and help me finish mine."

Smiling, she put one finger to my mouth. Her nails were long and glossy-black. Slowly she traced the outline of my lips.

I couldn't decide whether she wanted to kiss them or cut them off.

She said, "Later, should we get it on, really rock it hard?"

This didn't seem to be the kind of woman to whom I could explain that there was only one girl for me, Stormy Llewellyn, and that I was faithful to her.

I said, "The way it looks to me, that decision is entirely up to you."

My response pleased her, and her smile widened. "You got that right, boy toy."

Just when I thought I knew what she would do, she surprised me by pressing close and licking my chin.

Although I had never before had my chin licked by anything other than a dog, I felt pretty sure that this lick would proceed to a kiss either directly or after she licked other facial features that she found appealing. I can fake a lot of things convincingly, but I knew I couldn't fake the rough and hungry kiss that she would expect from me, and in that moment her suspicion would soar.

When she had come out of Rob Burkett's office and had seen me, Jinx had left the door ajar.