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    The woman on the couch said, “Why shouldn’t he be careful? We’re all a little spooked.”
    “I’m not,” the blocky-faced man said flatly. As if to prove it, he opened a closet door and made the automatic disappear inside.
    The blonde woman looked relieved. “I’m Claire Lomax. This is my husband, Brian. And these are the Deckers—Brian’s sister, Paula, and her husband, Gene.”
    “Jay Macklin. My wife, Shelby.”
    “Shelby Hunter,” she said.
    Again, as always. If he neglected to add her last name in an introduction, she did it herself, immediately and automatically. And as always, it saddened him a little. Not because she’d chosen to keep her birth name—that had never bothered him—but because of what her making an issue of it subtly implied. Separate identities, linked by marriage but with a gap between them that could never be bridged.
    “Shelby,” Claire Lomax said, “that’s an unusual name.”
    “It was my maternal grandmother’s.”
    “Mmm. Well, you must be chilled. Come in, sit by the fire, have something to drink before you go.”
    “We don’t want to intrude—”
    “You’re not intruding. Are they, Brian?”
    Lomax said nothing. He was still scowling.
    Macklin was about to decline the invitation. Seeing Lomax with that automatic had made him edgy again. There was something else, too, a kind of charged atmosphere—as if there were frictions among the four of them and he and Shelby had interrupted a tense interaction.
    But Shelby didn’t seem to feel it; she surprised him by saying, “We’d like to, if you’re sure you don’t mind. I haven’t been warm since the power went out.”
    “I know what you mean,” Claire said, “it’s a miserable night. Here, let me take your coats.”
    “Sure, come and join us,” the dark-haired woman said. “Misery loves company.”
    Her husband said, “Shut up, Paula,” without looking at her.
    “Fuck you.”
    Gene Decker laughed as if she’d said something funny, but the glare he directed at her was venomous. He tilted his glass, drained it in a long swallow. “I can use another drink myself.”
    “So can I. God, yes.”
    “You’ve had your quota, honeybunch.”
    “Like hell I have. If you won’t make me another one, Brian will.”
    Lomax didn’t move.
    Tension here, all right. You could feel it, almost hear it—a subaural crackling like echoes from the pitch-pine logs burning in the fireplace. Whatever was going on with these people, Macklin didn’t want any part of it. But Shelby had committed them; he couldn’t just drag her out of here. Couldn’t have managed a quick exit anyhow because she’d already shrugged out of her coat. Nothing he could do then but shed his own coat, then follow her down the three steps into the living room.
    Paula made room for them on the couch. She was about Shelby’s age, plump and top-heavy, her round cheeks irregularly flushed like a person afflicted with rosacea. When Claire asked what they’d like to drink, Shelby said she’d been having a martini before the lights went out. At ease as usual in a social situation, even among bad-mannered, boozy strangers like these.
    Decker said, “Martinis are my speciality,” and crossed to a built-in, stone-fronted bar. “Gin or vodka? Up or on the rocks?”
    “Gin, please. Up.”
    “Same for you, Macklin?”
    “No. Nothing for me, thanks.”
    “Oh, come on. Free booze is free booze.”
    “Just not thirsty.”
    “Okay, then. More for the rest of us.”
    Lomax was still standing in the foyer. An imposing figure, a couple of inches over six feet and wide through the shoulders and neck, dressed casually like the others in slacks and sweater. His bristly rust-colored hair was cut so short his scalp gleamed pink and shiny through it. He’d lost his scowl; now his beard-dark face was set in tight, unreadable lines.
    His wife sat down in a chair on Shelby’s right. She was at least fifteen years younger than Lomax, Macklin thought. Eyes the