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leave Manhattan, does he? Superstar thriller writer, with his swish Gramercy Park apartment and his ten-grand-a-year health club and his cute twenty-something publicists with the tits and teeth.”
    “Not fair.”
    “But accurate. But as a matter of fact, I don’t mind going alone. I’m nearer, and there’s no point both of us having a wasted trip, if that’s what it turns out to be.”
    “Okay. Works for me.”
    “I can’t leave Puerto Rico for another two or three days. I’m at the tail end of... something. You know. Business to finish. We’ve wrapped, but there’s one last thing to take care of.”
    “A world free of monsters.”
    “Got it in one, cuz. But when I’m done with that, I’ll fly south, see what’s what.”
    “Appreciated,” said Theo. “It’s almost certainly nothing, but keep me posted anyway.”
    “Will do. And Theo? Remind me. Who’s got a constellation?”
    Theo groaned. “For fuck’s sake...”
    “Yeah, but out of the two of us? Is it me or you? Let me think...”
    “That never gets old, Chase.”
    “Sure doesn’t,” said Chase Chance brightly, and hung up.
     
     
    “Y OU LOOK GLOOMY. Preoccupied.”
    So said Cynthia as Theo sidled back into the restaurant and retook his seat.
    “Do I? Shouldn’t. Not with that book deal in the offing.”
    “What’d he say? Chase Chance, Monster Hunter?”
    “He was just – just touching base. That’s all.”
    “Representation?”
    “Didn’t find out. Didn’t come up.”
    “Ah well. I’ll keep badgering you. You know I will.” She added, “You do seem worried, though.”
    “I’m not.”
    Not yet , he added mentally.
    He resumed eating his meal. The food was excellent; he ought to be enjoying himself, but he wasn’t.
    Cynthia rattled on, in her way. Contract fine print. Royalty thresholds. Foreign markets. A hint of Hollywood interest. Potential this. Probable that. Avenues to pursue, calls to make, trees to shake. Theo heard, but didn’t listen.
    Aeneas was dead?
    Couldn’t be.
    If he was, what did that mean for the rest of them?

 

    THREE
     
     
    El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico
     
    C HASE C HANCE STALKED through the rainforest. He knew his prey was nearby. He knew, too, that his prey was aware he was there.
    The beast had gone to ground. It seemed to have sensed that the man tracking it was no ordinary being. He was implacable; he was nemesis. Chase could almost smell its terror. But terror did not make it any less dangerous. Quite the opposite.
    This was the creature he and his camera crew had been pursuing for two weeks, seemingly without success. They had camped out at the edge of the El Yunque National Forest and ventured in every night, shooting on high-def video with a low-light image-intensifying attachment. Along with innumerable mosquito bites, they had gathered a hundred hours of footage. There’d been no direct contact with their quarry, but enough creepy moments – rustles in the undergrowth, flashes of retinal reflection, eerie animal calls – to fill out forty-three minutes of running time and generate another nail-biting, ratings-grabbing episode. Chase Chance, Monster Hunter never actually found any of the monsters he hunted, but viewers didn’t seem to mind, aside from a few online grousers who thought that the show was all foreplay and no fuck. The thrill, for the folks at home, was the search, the atmosphere, the possibility...
    Chase, in fact, had spent most of the two weeks deliberately steering himself and the crew away from where the creature was. He had figured out the location of its lair pretty early on: somewhere in the strip of forest between the western bank of the Icacos River and the El Toro Wilderness Area. Its trails and spoor all led in that direction.
    Consequently, he had made sure to stay east of the Icacos, pretending, with all his pop-science authority, that he was busy narrowing down the creature’s whereabouts. At one point, out of sight of the crew, he had adapted