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brightness of their conversation dimming somewhat. Jack glanced at the articles on the wall again, and Molly turned to follow his gaze.
    “Courtney find something new?” he asked.
    Molly studied the wall, hugging herself now. “A lot of little things. Suspicious things in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Quebec . . . let me see . . . Arizona, L.A. Mutilation murders mostly, though the Wisconsin one was some builders who found some remains while digging a foundation for a house. Yeah, I’d want my house built there now. Might be Prowler killings or they might be something else.” Jack stepped up behind her and examined the printouts and clippings, the grisly headlines, photographs of the victims alive and well and smiling.
    “Chances are, most of them are human killers, and the FBI or the local cops will catch up to them,” he reminded her. “But we can’t go running around the country every time there’s some nasty murder. We’re not detectives. If a pattern shows up, or if somebody says they saw a monster, then we’ll look into it. We’ll fight them when we can find them. But there’s only the four of us, Molly, and it’s a big country.” Grim-faced, she turned to him. “What makes you think it’s just this country?”
    Jack nodded. “A big world out there, exactly. We can’t be the only people who know the Prowlers exist. There must be others out there who are fighting them.”
    “We should find those people, then,” Molly said, her eyes searching his.
    “You’re probably right.” Jack glanced away a moment, then he studied her curiously. “There’s only so much we can do. We have lives to lead. Responsibilities. You’re going away to Yale in less than two weeks, Molly. It isn’t like you can take off on some hunting trip to Arizona after that.” For a long moment she stared at him and Jack wanted to turn away from the intensity of her gaze, but would not. Molly hated the Prowlers as much as he did, probably more. They had discovered the monsters’ existence several months before, when a pack had come to Boston, and Artie Carroll had been one of the first to die.
    Jack’s best friend.
    Molly’s boyfriend.
    Jack and Molly had always been close, but Artie’s death created a new intimacy for them, both in their need to grieve together, and, after the discovery of the Prowlers’ existence, in their need to destroy the creatures. Over the ensuing months they had done both, and during that time Molly had left the home of her brutal, alcoholic mother and moved in with the Dwyers.
    It simplified things and complicated them all at once. Molly started to work in the pub, they focused their efforts on tracking news stories that might lead them to new Prowlers, and they tried to pretend that their intimacy was not on the verge of becoming something more than friendship. Not that it was a bad thing, these feelings they clearly had for each other, the single kiss they had shared in Vermont a month earlier when they had almost died.
    It would have been nice, but Artie had been dead only a few months and Molly was obviously still haunted by his memory.
    Jack, on the other hand, was haunted by his ghost.
    Shortly after Artie’s murder, the ghost had appeared to Jack in the pub after hours, and had touched him somehow, pried open a place in his mind that would allow Jack to see other spirits as well. Lost souls. A spirit world Artie called the Ghostlands. Among those lost and wandering phantoms were many of the victims of the Prowlers. With their help, Jack and Molly had survived, had destroyed a lot of monsters. Molly knew about the Ghostlands, but at Artie’s request Jack had never told her that her dead boyfriend’s ghost still hung around. He thought she suspected, but she didn’t know.
    Complicated.
    The silence between them lingered too long.
    “Yeah,” Molly said at last, her voice a hush. “Two weeks and I’ll be gone. Then you can have your living room back.”
    Jack didn’t know what to say to that.