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the terms of this order, you will be arrested. I will be forced to arrest you; do you understand me? I won’t be happy about it, but that’s what I’ll have to do.”
    Robert stared at the sheet, then at McMahon. “Don’t these things take a while to prepare? I mean, shouldn’t there be some kind of hearing? How did he get this so fast?”
    McMahon shook his head. Regret filled his eyes; his allegiance had shifted. “I don’t know how he did this, or where he went to get it, but it’s legal and binding. I’m afraid he has you over a barrel, Mr. Mitchell.” He blew air between his lips and blinked rapidly. “I really don’t understand what’s going on here, and what Corbeau has against you, but he seems to have decided you’re his enemy.”
    Sarah had remained silent until now, and when she did speak, she sounded as if she might weep at any minute. “Can’t you help us? That’s our house, I swear; it’s our house. That man is trying to steal our lives.”
    Robert glanced at her; her face was slack but her eyes were hard and cold, like slivers of ice. Something inside her had awakened, and she was doing her best to deny its existence. Robert could see it; he knew it; he had seen it once before, after the attack, when she had sworn to him that any man who ever touched her again without permission would die.
    “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. I don’t even understand what there is to be done.”
    “But we can’t just walk away and let them stay there. It’s our fucking house!” Sarah slammed a fist down onto the table. The sound was deafening in the quiet café.
    Quietly, Molly began to cry. Connor reached out and held her, his body shaking with either fear or rage.
    “I’m sorry,” said McMahon. “I’ll look into this, I promise. Just be patient…and trust me. I know something’s wrong here. I don’t know what it is, but it stinks, and I’ll find out what it is if I have to work through the night.” With that, the sergeant stood and walked away. When he reached the door, he turned back, offered a grim smile, and then left the building.
    A great and hungry silence stole inside and filled the room, entering Robert’s head through his ears, nose and mouth. His head swelled, approaching the point of critical mass, and then just as suddenly it returned to normal. Yet it held a strange and terrible echo, like that of a scream. While around him the world kept turning; people came and went; and a frightening presence sat in his house, no doubt drinking his wine and raiding his drawers and cupboards, and possibly even burning his books.
    He could almost hear their laughter as the skin of the world began to slowly unpeel.

MONDAY

4:30 A.M.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Robert woke in the dark and felt afraid. Fear gripped him by the shoulders and pinned him to the bed, trying to tell him something he should have by now realized. He strained against the night, blinking his eyes and willing his limbs to move. Gradually, he began to make out shapes in the room; the wardrobe, the other beds, the chair in the window, the open bathroom door. He knew where he was. He was safe—they were all safe, his family.
    There came a sound, like that of a shoe scraping against the wall.
    Robert sat up, his mouth dry and his skin prickling. There was someone else in the room. He could see a hunched figure crouching perhaps, over by the main door, watching him in the darkness.
    He reached out to the side of the bed, groping for the lamp. His fingers skimmed across his wallet, a paperback book, his car keys…and then, finally, he found the base of the lamp. With weak fingers he pressed the button, and light washed across the bed, covering his legs. He was staring at the door, at the figure. It was Connor, his son: Connor, standing against the wall.
    “What’s wrong?” he said, amazed he could even form the words with his dried-out lips. “What is it?”
    “I can’t sleep.”
    Robert opened his arms, and his