So far, so good. Max led the way; Wally followed close behind. "Hi, Lyssy, happy birthday, don't peek," called Alison as they pa.s.sed through the kitchen. She was wearing one of her trampy Britney Spears outfits under an oversize letter sweater; she and her mother closed ranks in front of the kitchen table in order to hide the slightly lopsided birthday cake they were decorating.

A dark hallway led from the kitchen to the back door, with a pantry on the right and the bathroom door on the left. Max glanced behind him, past Wally, to make sure they were both well out of sight of the women in the kitchen, then grasped the doork.n.o.b and rattled it, as though the door were stuck or locked.

"Here, let me," said Wally. Max stepped aside, slipping his hand into his pocket and palming the knife. Wally opened the door easily. "There you go," he said, turning back to Max.

"And there you go," said Max, as a gash like a second mouth sprouted under Wally's chin, a ghastly, ear-to-ear grin spurting blood at both ends. Wally's hands flew to his throat; blood welled through his clutching fingers as he dropped to his knees, staring up at Max with one of the saddest, most surprised expressions Max had ever seen-and he'd seen quite a few in his day.

It was over in seconds. When he stooped to wipe the blade clean on Wally's shorts, Max caught a glimpse of the wrist.w.a.tch on the corpse's outflung arm, and discovered to his surprise that it wasn't even quarter to six. Less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since they first entered the house, and yet the most difficult and potentially dangerous aspect of tonight's business had already been successfully negotiated.

Which meant he might be able to enjoy the next part, the real fun part, in relative leisure. "Hey, Wal," he said aloud, as Lyssy. "You know what, I think this is going to be the best birthday party ever!"

3.

Pender parked the rent-a-car at the curb. The front doors of the Inst.i.tute were open, but the grand lobby was largely deserted, and a security guard with Elvis sideburns now sat behind the reception desk. "Evening," he said.

"Good evening," said Irene; Pender nodded.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I need to...Well, to..."To what? Irene found herself wishing she'd thought this out a little more carefully on the way over. "Is Dr. Corder available, by any chance? I know it's-"

The guard tapped a few strokes on a keyboard hidden beneath the high counter. "Sorry, he signed out an hour ago," he said un-helpfully; your move, read his expression.

"All right, well, here's the thing," said Irene, then paused, momentarily appalled. Here's the thing? She thought: how very glib! She soldiered on. "My name is Irene Cogan. Dr. Irene Cogan. I'm a psychiatrist."

"Unh-hunh?" the guard grunted, with a rising inflection, as if to say, go on, this ought to be good.

"One of my patients-my former patients-is a patient here now," she went on, trying not to sound quite so much like a potential customer herself. "Her name is Lily DeVries-is there any chance I might be able to see her?"

He consulted the computer again, shook his head. "Sorry, I don't seem to find you on the list."

"It'd only be for a second. I just want to-"

He cut her off. "Sorry. My orders are that all visitors have to be approved in advance by the patient's doctor."

"I understand," said Irene. "But here's the..."Whoops, she thought, and tried again. "Here's the situation: I have some important information about Lily that her doctor needs to know."

"And her doctor is...?"

"Dr. Corder is handling her case personally."

"Then you should probably call him in the morning, because there's nothing I can do for you tonight."

"Oh, sure there is," said Pender pleasantly but firmly; they were the first words he'd spoken since they'd entered.

"And you are?"

"E. L. Pender, Special Agent Emeritus, Federal Bureau of Investigation." He was, of course, counting on the guard having no idea what emeritus meant. "And what you can do for us," he continued, without raising his voice, "and for yourself, a.s.suming you'd like to keep your current position, or ever hold another job in the security industry, is get on the horn to whoever's in charge of this facility at the present moment, and get him or her down here asap-that's alpha sierra alpha papa, as in immediately, toot sweet, and p.r.o.nto, do you copy?"

"Sure, whyn't you say so in the first place?" grumbled the guard, turning his back to the visitors and picking up the telephone.

"Very impressive," whispered Irene.

Pender winked. "Well, you know what Harry Truman said when he gave the order to drop the bomb on Hiroshima: 'Sometimes you just have to get their attention.'"

4.

Strained small talk in the living room: "Are you enjoying your stay so far, Lily?"

"Yes, very much, thank you, Dr. Corder."

"Everybody treating you all right?"

"Oh yeah, everybody couldn't be nicer."

"Good, good." Thoughtful nod. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Do you have any Dubonnet?"

"I was thinking more in terms of something, ah, nonalcoholic."

"That's okay, never mind."

Corder checked his watch. "Maybe I'd better go see what's keeping everyone," he said, but before he could push himself up from the deep recliner, his wife came stumbling through the archway, with a blood-spattered Ulysses Maxwell shuffling in lockstep behind her, holding a knife to her throat with one hand, half-dragging young Alison by her long blond hair with the other.

"Lyssy, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"

An amused glance, a barking laugh. "I'm afraid Lyssy is no longer with us, Dr. Al."

"Who-who are you?" Corder managed to choke the words out.

"What's the matter, don't you recognize me, Doc?" he said, slinging Alison to the floor.

"Oh, G.o.d," Corder moaned. "G.o.d, no."

The familiar-looking stranger chuckled. "I'm afraid He's no longer with us, either."

5.

Martin Cohen was a short, tidy-looking, brown-skinned Hispanic in dark slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a powder-blue bowtie. He looked awfully young to Irene-scarcely old enough to be one of her students.

"Sorry for the delay-I was just getting ready to make my rounds," he said in a pleasantly textured Mexican accent as he ushered Irene and Pender over to a three-armchair grouping in the lobby and turned up the dimmer switch on a tall floor lamp with an upside-down frosted-gla.s.s shade. "I'm Dr. Cohen. Senior resident. Please, have a seat."

"I'm Irene Cogan, this is Agent Pender. We won't take up much of your time, I promise," said Irene; she and Pender sat across a low round table from each other, flanking Cohen.

"I appreciate it. I gather this is about your former patient, Miss DeVries?"

"You're familiar with the case?"

"I'm familiar with all our cases," he said, glancing pointedly at his wrist.w.a.tch. "Please, go on."

"Here's the situation. I've been trying to contact Lily by phone for two days-unsuccessfully. But I finally spoke to her about..."She glanced at her own watch. "...a little over an hour ago, and I had a very strong impression that it wasn't Lily I was speaking with, it was one of her alter personalities."

"I see," said Cohen; to Irene it sounded more like so what?

She understood his point of view. A patient's erstwhile doctor shows up after hours insisting that her erstwhile patient has been displaying symptoms of the disorder for which she'd been admitted in the first place-not exactly earth-shattering news.

But Irene persevered, making the same points she'd made earlier to Pender, and eventually, to his credit, Cohen caught on. Curtly, he excused himself to make a phone call, leaving Irene and Pender waiting in the lobby. When he returned a few minutes later, it was to Pender that he addressed himself. "I understand you're with the FBI?"

"For almost thirty years," said Pender ambiguously.

"Okay, sure, well, the reason I ask, we may have a small problem here." He told them about the birthday party at the director's residence. "There's probably no reason to worry-Walter and Patricia are very experienced psych techs, n.o.body's going to pull a fast one on them. Only when I call over there, there's no answer, n.o.body's picking up the phone, and Dr. Corder, he's not answering his pager. I'll keep trying, but I was wondering, just to err on the side of caution, if you wouldn't mind maybe going over there, make sure everything's okay?"

"Of course." Pender's turn to glance at his watch. "How far is it?"

"Right around the corner," said Cohen.

"I know where it is," added Irene. "C'mon, I'll show you."

6.

Max wasn't just being a wise guy when he'd made his earlier crack about G.o.d no longer being around. Even in co-consciousness, he had always enjoyed attending the nondenominational services held in the little chapel next to the dining hall every Sunday morning-after all, nothing supports the contention that the Creator has indeed abandoned His creation quite so powerfully as a spa.r.s.ely attended service in a madhouse.

But if additional proof had been required, the tableau of a helpless girl sobbing at her father's feet while Max held a knife to her mother's throat would surely have supplied it, he thought, as Lilith raced around the house locking doors, drawing blinds, ripping the telephones from their sockets.

She returned carrying a length of clothesline from the laundry room, with a hunting knife in a sheath stuck in the waistband of her low-rider jeans-unfortunately, she reported, there were no firearms to be found. Max switched hostages, tossing the mother to the floor, then dragging the girl to her feet and holding the steak knife to her throat while Lilith tied the parents together back-to-back with coil upon coil of polyester clothesline.

"My Swiss Army knife's in my front pocket," Corder whispered to his wife as Lilith and Maxwell conferred across the room. His plan, such as it was, was four-fold. One, get the little knife out-it wasn't much of a weapon, but it was all he had. Two, get Max close enough to drop a little bomb in his ear. Three: take advantage of subsequent confusion by inserting knife into Maxwell. And four: repeat step three as necessary.

"Hey, you two-no talking," ordered Max, quickly slipping the steak knife back into his pocket-Kinch was stirring again in the darkness. "I don't want to have to gag you-I'd much rather hear you moan while I do your little girl-but I will if I have to."

Do your little girl-hearing the words, Alison went limp. Max lowered her sagging body to the carpet. "You a virgin, honey?" he asked pleasantly.

Alison moaned; Cheryl slumped backward against her husband.

"Please, Max, you're making a terrible mistake," said Corder, desperately trying to buy time; in the guise of collapsing against him, Cheryl had worked her hand into his pocket. "Even if you escape, how long before they, ah, they recapture you? And what kind of a life will you have out there on the run?"

As he spoke, he and Cheryl inched their bodies around so that he was facing Max; shielded by his back, Cheryl had withdrawn the knife from his pocket, opened the longer blade (not an easy trick one-handed), and was trying to saw through the coils of rope one at a time without being too obvious about it. Not that Max or Lilith were paying much attention to them. Max was kneeling beside the apparently unconscious Alison, trying to bring her around by fanning her with a magazine from the coffee table, while Lilith s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pillow from the sofa and slipped it under the younger girl's head.

Cheryl kept sawing, Corder kept talking. He felt the last coils slackening; any second now, he'd be able to free his hands. "Enough to make it worth your while spending the rest of your life in some maximum security prison? Because that's what's going to happen. All these years, I've been the only one standing between you and the penitentiary-possibly even a death sentence. But if you lay a finger on my daughter, I won't protect you anymore. Do you understand me?"

Max glanced toward them; his eyes widened in alarm. "G.o.dd.a.m.n-it!" he shouted, taking out the steak knife again and limping across the room. He looked over Corder's shoulder, saw the knife in Cheryl's hand, the cut coils. "Naughty, naughty," he said.

Their faces were only inches apart; though his hands weren't free yet, Corder realized he had to make his move now. "Lyssy is a goood boy," he said, firmly but soothingly, then repeated the code phrase: "Lyssy is a goood boy."

Whoa s.h.i.t, thought Max-he hadn't seen that coming. Kinch roared in his ears; his consciousness seemed to be flowing downward, toward the knife in his hand. There's going to be h.e.l.l to pay, he told himself as he rushed toward darkness. Absolute h.e.l.l.

Wssh-wssh, wssh-wssh...

A soft, whisking sound. Lyssy glanced down and discovered he was making the noise himself, brushing the back of his hand against the thigh of his chinos. Grounding behavior, he thought-one of the alters has been paying a visit. Uh-oh-don't let Dr. Al find out.

He looked around, found himself sitting on the bottom of the front stairs at the director's residence. No idea how he'd gotten here, or how much time had pa.s.sed since...since when? He vaguely remembered a voice like dried corn husks whispering in his ear, then flames, then cool, cool darkness-but all that had to have been a dream, it just had to.

Lyssy took inventory. His right shoulder was so sore he could scarcely lift his arm, and his clothes were spattered with ketchup or food coloring or something.

Suddenly the silence in the room was broken by a beeping noise coming from the Corder's living room. A hospital pager-he would have recognized the sound anywhere. But before he could get up, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, saw his beautiful new friend Lily coming down the stairs wearing a brown sweater and tight-fitting jeans, holding one hand behind her back as if to hide something.

By now, Lyssy had concluded only that this had to have been the birthday party he'd been waiting for. But he was utterly clueless as to how long he'd been out of it, which alter had surfaced and done what to whom, or why his clothes were all stained and spattered. In any event, the usual imperative was in play: fake it as long as you can, hope n.o.body noticed anything out of what pa.s.sed for the ordinary around here. "Oh, hi," he said. "Been upstairs, hunh?"

She came closer, peered deeply into Lyssy's eyes as though she were looking for something-or someone. "You're f.u.c.king with my head, right? To get even for before, in the arboretum."

"If you say so," said Lyssy with a weak chuckle.

Her dark eyes narrowed, then widened again in recognition. "Lyssy?"

"Who else?"

"Oh, swell." In the living room, the beeping started up again. The girl sheathed the hunting knife she was holding behind her back, took a key ring from her pocket. Dr. Al's key ring-something else Lyssy would have recognized anywhere. "C'mon, let's get outta here."

"I-I can't. I'm not supposed to leave the premises."

"Fine by me," said the girl contemptuously. "Stay here and rot, see if I care."