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Mercedes sports car have recently been filled. Harrow inserts a siphon hose into the Lexus.
    Moongirl stands over him, watching as he sucks on the rubber tube. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket.
    Harrow wonders: If he misjudges the amount of priming needed, if he draws gasoline into his mouth, will she produce a butane lighter and ignite the flammable mist that wheezes from him, setting fire to his lips and tongue?
    He tastes the first acrid fumes and does not misjudge, but introduces the hose into the open can on the floor just as the gasoline gushes.
    When he looks up at her, she meets his eyes. She says nothing, and neither does he.
    He is safe from her and she from him as long as they need each other for the hunt. She has her quarry, the object of her hatred, and Harrow has his, not merely whatever they might burn tonight, but other and specific targets. Together they can more easily achieve their goals, with more pleasure than they would have if they acted separately and alone.
    He places the full utility can in the sports car, in the luggage space behind the two bucket seats.
    The single-lane blacktop road, with here and there a lay-by, rises and falls and curves for a mile before it brings them to the gate, which swings open when Moongirl presses the button on the same remote with which moments ago she raised the garage door.
    In another half-mile, they come to the two-lane county road.
    “Left,” she says, and he turns left, which is north.
    The night is half over but full of promise.
    To the east, hills rise. To the west, they descend.
    In lunar light, the wild dry grass is as platinum as Moongirl’s hair, as if the hills are pillows on which uncountable thousands of women rest their blond heads.
    They are in sparsely populated territory. At the moment, not a single building stands in view.
    “How much nicer the world would be,” she says, “if everyone in it were dead.”

Chapter

6
    A my Redwing owned a modest bungalow, but Lottie Augustine’s two-story house, next door, had spare rooms for Janet and her kids. The windows glowed with warm light when Amy parked in the driveway.
    The former nurse came out to greet them and to help carry their hastily packed suitcases into the house.
    Slender, wearing jeans and a man’s blue-and-yellow checkered shirt with the tail untucked, gray hair in a ponytail, eyes limpid blue in a sweet face wizened by a love of the sun, Lottie seemed to be both a teenager and a retiree. In her youth she had probably been an old soul, just as in her later years she remained a young spirit.
    Leaving the dog in the SUV, Amy carried Theresa. The child woke as they ascended the back-porch steps.
    Even awake, her purple eyes seemed full of dreams.
    Touching the locket Amy wore at her throat, Theresa whispered,
”The wind.”
    Carrying two suitcases, followed by Janet with one bag and with Jimmy in tow, Lottie led them into the house.
    Just beyond the threshold of the kitchen door, still in Amy’s arms and fingering the locket, Theresa whispered,
”The chimes.”
    Cast back in time, Amy halted. For a moment, the kitchen faded as if it were only a pale vision of a moment in her future.
    The child’s trance-casting eyes seemed to widen as if they were portals through which one might fall into another world.
    “What did you say?” she asked Theresa, though she had heard the words clearly enough.
    The wind. The chimes.
    The girl did not blink, did not blink, then blinked—and plugged her mouth with her right thumb.
    Color returned to the faded kitchen, and Amy put Theresa down in a dinette chair.
    On the table stood a plate of homemade cookies. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip. Peanut butter.
    A pan of milk waited on the cooktop, and Lottie Augustine set to making hot chocolate.
    The clink of mugs against a countertop, the crisp crackle of a foil packet of cocoa powder, the burble of simmering milk stirred by a ladle, the soft knocking of the wood ladle against the pan…
    The