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deprogramming screwed up kids.”
    “Deprogramming?” She made a quiet, nasal laugh. “What do you think I am, a Moonie?”
    “I didn’t hire him, your parents did. Far as I’m concerned, you and the rest of Laveda’s gang ought to be burned at the stake.”
    Her head jerked toward him.
    “That’s how the old-timers dealt with witches, I believe.”
    “We’re not witches,” she muttered.
    “Near enough. Laveda’s got her own set of rules and rituals, but it boils down to the same thing—you’re a bunch of homicidal lunatics on a power trip. You need to be stopped.”
    “We can’t be stopped,” she said, but the earlier tone of scornful confidence was gone from her voice. “We’re everywhere.”
    “Put the torch to Laveda, and the whole gang would fall apart.”
    “Shut up.”
    A layer of fog hung over the road as they neared the ocean. It swirled in the headlights, rolled off the windshield. Dukane slowed down. He squinted ahead, searching for the dim glow of traffic lights.
    In the silence, he thought about Alice’s bluster falling away at the mention of fire. She seemed to have an exaggerated fear of burning.
    He’d noted the same dread in the man named Walter. The muscular fellow had acted brazen, at first, during Dukane’s interrogation three nights before the bayou gathering. Like Alice, he’d claimed to be invulnerable. He’d refused to talk. But he broke down, whimpering and pleading, when Dukane doused him with gasoline. In short order, he told about Laveda’s group, its structure and purposes, the extent of its membership, the time and location of the meeting. What Dukane learned had scared the hell out of him, but it gave him all he needed to know in his search for Alice.
    At the blur of a red light just ahead, Dukane eased down on the brake. He hit the arm of the turn signal, hoping this was Main, and turned left when the light changed. He drove slowly, gazing into the fog, seeking a landmark. When he saw the Boulangerie, off to the right, he knew where he was. He continued down Main, glimpsed a cluster of vague figures at the entrance to the Oar House, and kept going until he reached the traffic signal at Rose. A pair ofdim lights appeared ahead. He waited for the car to pass, then turned left and parked at the curb.
    “Let’s go,” he said.
    They climbed from the car. Alice followed him up the street, hunched slightly and moving fast, her bare arms crossed against her breasts.
    “We’re almost there,” Dukane told her, his chin shaking. He clenched his teeth, then made a conscious effort to relax his muscles and stop the shivering. Alice, he knew, must be freezing in her thin sundress. He put an arm across her shoulders, but she whirled away.
    “Don’t touch me,” she said.
    “Just trying to help.”
    “I can live without it.”
    They crossed a dark street, and hurried up the sidewalk. “This is it,” he said, nodding toward the lighted porch of a small, wood-frame house. He opened the gate. They rushed up a narrow walkway. Dukane took the porch stairs two at a time, and rang the doorbell.
    Alice waited beside him, legs tight together, arms hugging herself, teeth chattering.
    The door was opened as far as the guard chain allowed. A black-haired, attractive woman studied them through her wire-rimmed glasses.
    “We’re here to see Dr. Miles,” Dukane said.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m Dukane.”
    The woman nodded. She shut the door briefly, then swung it open. “Please come in.”
    They stepped into the warm house. The woman shut the door, took a sip of coffee from her Snoopy mug, and turned to them. “You must be Alice,” she said.
    Alice curled her nose.
    “You both look chilled to the bone. Let’s go in by the fire, and I’ll get you some coffee.”
    They followed her into the living room. It was wood paneled and cozy, with the feel of a summer cottage. Alice crossed toward the fireplace. She stopped two yards from its screen, and held out her hands.
    “Cream or