I sighed. "I'll try. It's not gonna be easy, though."

She smiled. "I have all the faith in the world in you, Angel."

Though it should have, her statement didn't make me feel any better.

Millicent returned after a short time, rolling in a silver tea-cart upon which various tea accouterments were tinkling when they jostled together as the wheels rolled along from rug to hideous rug.

Stopping the cart nearby, she then proceeded to pour out the tea and hand us delicate china cups brimming with the dark, steaming brew.

Corinne sipped hers, smiling in appreciation. On cue, I sipped my own tea, not really tasting it for the bile still in my throat.

Apparently satisfied with Corinne's tacit approval, Millicent poured her own tea, then sat down in the armchair on the other side of the fireplace. Puddles promptly jumped into her somewhat more than generous lap and helped herself to a long drink, her entire body shuddering in what looked to be the throes of ecstasy.

"So," Millicent said after rescuing her tea from Puddles and drinking down the rest of it without a thought to how it must look, "what brings you here, Corinne? Surely it isn't the scenery. Or the populace." She said the last with a visible shudder.

"My niece," Corinne answered succinctly.

Millicent's eyebrows raised. Mine almost went up as well. "Oh?"

"Yes. Tyler is very much loved by her family, but I'm afraid she's become a bit much even for them lately." She leaned closer to Millicent, as if imparting a dark secret. "Left her poor fiancee at the altar. My brother is heartbroken about it. Simply heartbroken."

"Oh, how truly sad," Millicent replied, shaking her head in sympathy and looking at me as if I'd suddenly grown Vampire teeth and might bite. "However is he coping?"

"Not very well, I'm afraid. Her mother took ill, as one might expect, and it's all he can to just to coax the poor dear out of bed in the morning. They had such high hopes for this marriage. It was the perfect match. Hand picked, you know."

"Is there any other kind?"

"Not for us, no." She turned to me and smiled. "Tyler's always been a bit headstrong. Many children are these days, no matter how much love and guidance their parents give them."

"I think it's in the water," Millicent pronounced with God-like authority.

"It may well be at that. She announced, bold as you please, that she wanted to see a bit of the world first before settling down and becoming the proper wife to a prosperous young man. Being young once myself, I could empathize with her passions. Little did I know, however, just what sort of passions they were."

Looking in my direction once again, Millicent's face screwed up in that sour expression I so detested.

Corinne smiled. "I see you've met her."

"Not to talk to, certainly," Millicent said in a haughty tone. "But in passing, yes. Utterly base and without any hint of a redeeming quality whatsoever."

"Yes, but with a sort of magnetism that a young woman like Tyler can't help but be attracted to. Even I felt myself drawn, if only for a moment."

Millicent's eyes went round. "You did?"

"Oh yes. She has a power. Demon-given, I'm sure, but a power nonetheless. And without the benefit of experience which you and I have in spades, poor Tyler was powerless against her attentions. It happens to the best of us, sometimes."

"They recruit, you know," Millicent said, her voice once again full of authority. Then she looked at me once more, scanning me intently from head to toe. "And your niece is exactly the type they like to prey on. Young. Innocent. Mildly attractive."

Corinne's quick hand on my wrist was the only thing that stopped me from ripping the woman's tongue out and feeding it to her.

"Really? I find her quite attractive. She reminds me a little of myself when I was younger."

"Oh, no offense meant, Corinne," Millicent said hastily, to cover her faux pas, no doubt. "The family resemblance is quite striking, if I may say so. Quite striking. Why, in the right light, you look as if you could almost be sisters."

I resisted the urge to look around for the cow I just knew had to be hiding somewhere.

Corinne smiled as if the compliment was nothing but the utter truth as she saw things. "You're very kind to say so, Millicent." She sighed. "One of the unfortunate truths of life is that age does catch up with a body. I try my best to stave off its effects for as long as possible."

"And you're doing a magnificent job of it, Corinne. Simply magnificent. Why, I'm surprised you don't have suitors surrounding you like birds to a fountain. Even in this corner of God's hell."

"Oh, there's been some interest, to be sure. But honestly, I hardly see myself as pairing up with an elderly gas-station attendant, do you?"

Bulls-eye!

"Oh, not him. He's a perfectly dreadful little man. And a bit of a pervert as well, if you don't mind such base language. I simply can't think of a better way to describe him."

"I don't mind at all." Which wasn't, of course, near to being the truth. Though she didn't show it outwardly, I could feel Corinne's temper click up a notch based on the sudden, if imperceptible to anyone but me, stiffness in her body. "Has he made improper advances toward you, Millicent?"

"No. Well, not exactly. But every time I see him, it's as if he's undressing me with his eyes." She shuddered.

I almost swallowed my tongue at the mental image.

I could tell by the silent tremor next to me that Corinne was trying desperately to hold back a laugh. It was a very close call.

"How simply dreadful for you, poor dear," she said finally in a voice which was not quite her own. Then, because she was about a millisecond away from losing her composure, she turned her head to look out of the window, a broad grin cracking the staid plains of her face as she did so.

I almost hated her for a moment, jealous of her ability to take such a needed escape while I had to sit still and proper, playing the part of a lost little girl who's finally seen the light. A quick vision of Pop's face as he surveyed the damage Millicent had caused sobered me quickly and sent a warm, welcome flush of anger through limbs made stiff with inactivity. I kept my eyes glued to the tea-cup, studying the dainty pattern of trailing roses so as not to betray my emotions.

After a long moment, Corinne finally turned back, her face fully settled once again. "Unfortunate view," she commented, not bothering to point out the picture of Pop's burned out junkyard that stared in through the large window. "Does it effect your business any?"

Millicent's lips thinned and a very real anger sparked in her eyes. "You don't know the half of it. Why, when I first learned this place had befallen me, I had such high hopes. An entire society of wealthy friends have a taste for slumming, provided the proper accommodations are available, of course. Why, my volunteer circle alone could feed and house this entire backwater hellhole for years! Not to mention my friends at the country club. My only thoughts were to do right by this place, backward though it is. To show its people a touch of class, to help the needy, to be a good neighbor." Fat, crocodile tears beaded in the corners of her eyes, their very presence turning my stomach. "And what was I given in return? Hatred. Suspicion. Cruelty."

Pulling out a lace handkerchief as large as a tablecloth, she dabbed her eyes as her gelatinous body quivered with imagined grief.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, not giving into the almost insane urge to rip that handkerchief out of her hands and knot it around her neck like a noose. The tea sat sour and curdled in my belly and I had to swallow a few times just to make sure the joking threat I'd made to Corinne about baptizing a houseplant didn't become a reality.

For her part, Corinne sat still and quiet as a churchmouse, a smile frozen on her face as she watched Millicent play out the part of well-meaning but horribly mistreated philanthropist.

It might not have been so bad, even for all that, had Millicent not kept peeking up at Corinne, a flat sheen of cool calculation in eyes filled with false tears, to judge the effect her mournful display was having.

After a few more heartbroken sobs were manufactured for good measure, she wiped her face, then replaced the handkerchief in a hidden pocket somewhere on her person. I mourned the loss of so fine a weapon.

"So you can see that this hasn't been an easy road to travel. Out here, all alone, without one friend to call my own." She affected a deep sigh, swelling her already huge bosom to truly astounding proportions. "But, as always, I shall persevere, despite whatever these cretins try to throw at me."

"Have you tried to fight back?" Corinne asked in as compassionate a tone as she could manage under the circumstances.

"Indeed I have. I filed suits, I called in the police, I did everything I could think of. Nothing. No help for the inconvenienced." She laughed bitterly. "Justice, they say. Ha! They wouldn't know justice if they tripped over it."

"I can't say I'm a bit surprised," Corinne replied. "These Canadians have a way of protecting their own when it comes to outsiders. You simply wouldn't believe all the hoops I was forced to jump through just to rescue my beloved niece." She smiled; one that was hard with knowing. "Sometimes, I've found that it's best just to take matters into one's own hands."

Millicent's face then took on a cast of a young girl with a very deep secret and I knew the moment was at hand. I felt myself lean forward as adrenaline rushed its way through my body, speeding my heart. "Do you?" she asked in a very small voice.

"I do indeed. Sad as it is to say, gone are the days when one's station in life guaranteed one good service, Millicent. Now it's every person for himself. There are no free rides anymore."

I could almost feel the internal debate that was raging inside Millicent. Her eyes seemed far away as she nervously chewed on her bottom lip. Then she looked up, her eyes filled with something I'd never seen in them before: trepidation. "Have you ever done something like that?" she asked finally.

Corinne grinned. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Millicent's entire body relaxed with the statement and a huge smile of relief came over her face, making her look, for just a second, mildly attractive. Still, she didn't spill the beans, and so Corinne decided to nudge the boat just a little. "Surely there is someone in this tiny little town who detests the man as much as you do. There simply must be. Towns this size have entire graveyards of skeletons hanging in closets and a veritable mountain of rocks waiting to be turned over."

"Oh no, not here. Believe me, I've looked." Then she stopped, aware that she'd just given much too much away. She looked at me, then over to Corinne.

"Don't worry about Tyler, Millicent. She's learned her lessons well. Haven't you, Tyler."

I contrived to look the part of the successfully reprogrammed. "Yes, Ma'am," I replied, twisting my hands a little and lowering my eyes for good measure.

Millicent seemed satisfied with the gesture. "I have been speaking with a few good gentlemen outside of this town, however. Men with a some bones to pick with a certain Mr. Willamette. Large bones. Old bones."

"And are they willing to help you with your problem?"

Millicent's answering smile was coy. "Oh, they already have. Accidents have a way of happening, you know. Quite without warning. His place is a deathtrap anyway."

Corinne nodded sagely. "And has this helped any?"

"It's much too soon to tell, of course. I'm confident that it will, eventually. I want this badly, and I always get what I want. Always."

"I can see that you are a person who does, yes."

Then, like a message from Providence, the phone rang, and Millicent heaved herself up to her feet to answer it.

A long, meaningful look passed between Corinne and I. We'd come for answers, and we'd gotten them. In spades.

Neither of us was sad to see the conversation come to an end when Millicent rushed back into the room, her face flushed with some unidentifiable emotion, and tell us that an emergency had occurred and she needed to be elsewhere.

We excused ourselves gracefully and left, filled with a knowledge neither of us particularly wanted to have.

It made for an interesting walk home.

"You wanted proof? Now you've got it. Question is, what are you going to do with it?" Corinne sat back in her chair, fingers running relentlessly over the polished wood of the dining room table, and pinning Pop to his seat with her eyes.

He seemed to shrink a little before coming back into himself and mirroring her position in his own chair. "Don't know yet. Didn't expect you to come up with it quite so fast."

She smiled. "That's just because you don't know me well enough. You're not the only person in this little town who can get what he wants, when he wants it."

"S'ppose you're right." He lapsed into silence once again.

"Well?"

"Corinne ... ." I interjected softly, reaching across the table to lay a hand on her constantly moving wrist.

Turning her head, she shot me the same look she was using on Pop, but when I didn't shrink from it, she gradually relaxed and huffed out a dramatic sigh. "Fine. If he doesn't want to act on the information, there's not much more I can do, is there."

"Didn't say I wasn't gonna act on it, Corinne. Only that ya didn't give me any time to think on it."

She turned back to him. "Time? Dear god, man! You've had time to think about this since Millicent sent over those thugs to beat you within an inch of your life!"

"Now don't go sayin that, Corinne. No one knows for sure she was behind what happened there. Them guys are scum, pure and simple. No needin' to think any harder on that."

Corinne slowly shook her head, disbelief plain as day on her face. "For a man who supposedly knows it all, you're painfully naive at times, Willamette."

Pop narrowed his eyes at her. "What're you sayin, woman?"

"Just what it sounds like. I find it hard to believe that you don't know that that pump jockey Millicent's been seen around just happens to be the brother-in-law of the owner of the Rusted Nut. From what I've heard, those two men are thick as thieves."

"I knew that."

"You knew that and ...what? You put two and two together and came up with seventeen? Twenty? What?"

I tried again, alarmed at the plum cast that was taking over Corinne's face. "Corinne, please calm down, ok? This isn't getting us anywhere."

She looked from me, to Pop, and back again. Then she pushed herself up from the table. "I need some air."

And with that, she left.

I began to stand up to follow her, when a slow shake of Ice's head sat me right back down again. Sighing myself, I looked around the table. Pop, Ice and I weren't the only ones who had been treated to Corinne's somewhat uncharacteristic outburst. Tom Drew and Mary Lynch had both come calling, curious as to what had gone on behind Millicent's closed doors earlier in the afternoon. Because they were both on the front lines, so to speak, by virtue of their professions and the work they were doing on the Inn, they'd both been invited to the impromptu strategy session.

"Why don't we just call the police?" Mary said, logically. I couldn't help my heart rate as it sped up at the mention of that particular word. I looked over at Ice, who returned my look steadily. "I mean, if we spelled it out for them, with Corinne telling what she knew, wouldn't they at least investigate?"

Pop shook his head. "No. No cops. I've had my fair share of dealins with them in the past and I don't want em in here, investigatin all over everything. Cause more trouble than it's worth, getting them involved."

"But ... ."

"No cops. I ain't gonna say it again."

Tom Drew spoke up next. "Well, if you won't let us beat her up or burn her down, why don't we just squeeze her out? She won't be able to run that Inn without us there, fixing what breaks."

"Sure she will," Pop said. "She'll just call fer help up-country, like she been doin' all along. Then we'll have even more strangers tied up in this mess."

"But ... ."