Dominion

Penelope nodded to a middle-aged woman sitting at a computer terminal.

"I'm just showing my friend around," she explained.

The woman smiled. "Go right ahead."

The two of them walked through the open doorway. "We're kind of taking the backward tour," Penelope said. "Or the sideways tour." She pointed at the row of tanks. "These are used for fermenting. Wineries used to do all of their fermenting in wooden casks, but that's not really an efficient method these days. What we do is allow the wine to ferment here, and then for certain blends we move it into the wooden barrels for final aging."

"Why?" Dion asked.

"Because the wood actually adds flavor to the wine. Redwood will add a slight, barely detectable flavor; oak has a fairly strong effect. So what we do depends on the type and vintage. Whites and roses we ferment and age completely in here. Certain reds we age in the oak barrels."

He shook his head. "It's weird hearing someone my age talk about wines like this. I mean, you're not even old enough to drink, and you act like an expert."

"What do you expect? I grew up here."

"I guess," He looked around the room. "Do you ever help out?"

"Not really. I hang around sometimes, but they never wanted me to actually do any of the work. I never wanted to either."

"Does your mother ever let you try any of the wines? In France, even little kids drink it. They have it with every meal. Do you guys do that?"

"No," Penelope said simply. "I don't drink."

Dion was glad of that.

"Come on, let's go into the pressing room."

Their tennis shoes sounded loud and absurdly squeaky on the silent tile.

Penelope led the way down the row of tanks and pushed open the white door at the far end. They passed through another, identical room filled with large, closed metal tanks, where Penelope nodded to two workers, then into the pressing room.

The pressing room was just as modern but not nearly as antiseptic and was the size of a small grocery store. The air here smelled of grape, and there were purple stains on the raised wood-slatted floor. Machines of various shapes and sizes were grouped according to type. Along the opposite wall were what looked like two electrical generators.

"As you can see, we don't all stand barefoot in a big barrel and stomp around to press the grapes. These are different types of presses. The women of the combine bought several kinds in order to experiment with different techniques. They all still work, and we usually end up using most of them at the height of the season, but we usually stick to these." She tapped a long metal cylinder suspended in a sturdy frame.

"Air-pressure presses. They squeeze from the inside out instead of the other way around like the rest of these do. For our purposes, it makes a much better must."

"Must?"

"The grape juice that we make into wine."

"Oh."

He followed her around the large room as she opened each press type and explained its workings. After that she led the way into a huge, damp, cavelike room in which hundreds of wooden barrels were stacked almost to the ceiling. This was what he'd though a winery would look like.

"This is just where we age the wines. After this the product is bottled and shipped out. I'd show you our bottling apparatus, but it's in another building, and it's closed up right now. The casks you're looking at now are arranged by year. We have wines in this room going back four, five, six years. My ... aunt Sheila does the testing to determine when the wines are ready."

Dion took a deep breath. The air was rich, smelling of sweet grape and tart fermentation.

He thought of his mom.

What if he and Penelope eventually got married? What would happen if there was a winery in the family? If his mom had unlimited access to alcohol?

He did not even want to think about it.

"That's the basic tour, the non-technical tour. If you want a more in-depth look at the wine-making process, if you want to follow it from step to step, I'm sure I could get one of my aunts to take us around."

He shook his head. "No, that was good enough." He smiled at her. "You're really an excellent tour guide. Ever think of doing it professionally?"

"Very funny."

They walked out of the room the way they'd come in, but exited the pressing room through a side door which led down a hall. There was only one door in the wall of the hallway. "What's in there?" Dion asked as they passed.

"In there? That's the lab. But we can't go inside. That's Mother Sheila's territory, and she's very protective. Even I've never been in there."

"What's the big secret?"

"Well, that's where they come up with new blends, new wines. That's where the serious brain work is done."

They walked outside, squinting against the sudden brightness of the late afternoon sun. "So where is your wine sold?" Dion asked. "I haven't looked, but Kevin told me your wine's not sold in stores, that you have to mail-order it?"

Her face tightened. "Did he call it 'Lezzie Label Wine'?"

"No," Dion lied.

"Kevin Harte? He didn't mention the word lesbian in there somewhere?"

Dion smiled. "Well, yeah, he did."

She shook her head. "We produce what are called 'specialty label' wines.

Kevin's right, they are mostly sold by mail order, but that's because most of our customers live out of state. Or out of the country."

"What's a 'specialty label' wine?"

"It's a wine that's sold primarily to collectors or connoisseurs. It's the equivalent of, like, a limited-edition book. A lot of the smaller labels like ours couldn't afford to compete with the big names in the mass market, so we've sort of carved out our own niche. We produce the type of wine that it is just not economically feasible for a big winery to produce. Specialty labels usually specialize in wines made from obscure or exotic breeds or new hybrids of grape. Some use archaic or adventurous pressing, fermenting, or distilling techniques on their product."

"Sounds like you're quoting from a textbook."

She laughed. "Close. Our sales brochure."

"So what do you specialize in?"

"Basically, we make Greek wine, the type of wine they drank in ancient Greece, in Socrates' time and the days of Homer. Wine played an important role in the religious and social life of ancient Greece, but the classic techniques of wine making have been virtually abandoned in favor of the European style of wine making. It's really almost a lost art. The machines you saw in there are all modern, but they're used to duplicate those processes." Penelope smiled shyly. "That's in the brochure too."

"That explains the architecture," Dion said. "And I assume that's why you're taking Mythology."

She looked surprised. "Not really. In fact, it never even occurred to me. But now that you mention it, yeah, I suppose it did influence me."

They walked slowly across the lawn, toward the house. Dion glanced up, saw Penelope's mother and two of her aunts watching them through a window. They smiled and waved when they saw him, and he waved back, but it made him feel a little creepy. He couldn't help thinking that he and Penelope were being spied upon.

"It's getting late," Dion said. "I should be getting back."

"This early?" Penelope sounded disappointed.

"My mom expects me home for dinner."

Did she really? he wondered. From school he had called his mom at work, explaining that he was going over to Penelope's, telling her that he would be home by dinnertime. He had assumed that she would be home before he was, would have dinner waiting, but a nagging voice in the back of his mind kept saying that this would give her free time, that she would use this opportunity to do what she wanted and that she would not be home when he got there.

Stop it, he told himself.

"You always talk about your mother," Penelope said. "Your father doesn't live with you?"

Dion shook his head.

"Are your parents divorced?"

"No." He looked at her, aware she was waiting for more, not sure how much he wanted to reveal. He took a deep breath, took the plunge. "I

don't know who my father was," he admitted. He glanced away from her, toward the house, ashamed, embarrassed, though he knew it was something over which he'd had no control.

"But doesn't--"

"My mom doesn't know either."

"Oh."

She was silent then. He wanted to apologize somehow, to say it was not his fault, to tell her not to blame him for the circumstances of his birth, but he said nothing. He tried to read her face, but he could not tell from her expression if she was disappointed, angry, hurt, sympathetic, whether he was tainted in her eyes or it made no difference to her at all. The silence dragged on, and he felt he had to say something.

"My mom's a slut," he said.

He regretted the words instantly. The statement did not really express how he felt, and outside the confines of his brain it sounded much too harsh, much too cruel. He had wanted to disassociate himself from his mother and at the same time show that her values, her lifestyle, were not his own. But he did not like the cold, judgmental tone of his own voice, the thoughtless dismissal implied by his words. And he could tell, that Penelope didn't like it either.

"You dare to say that about your mother?" she said, turning on him.

He wanted to take it back, wanted to explain what he meant, but he couldn't. "I don't know," he said ineffectually.

"Don't you have any respect for your parents?"

He was quiet.

"I'm scary," she $aid, pulling back. "I didn't mean to jump all over you. I don't really know the circumstances of your life, but I just don't think that you should heap everything on your mother. If you've had a tough time, then she has too. She's probably doing the best she can. It's hard being a single parent, you know? I mean, I don't blame my mothers for ..." Her voice trailed off..

"For what?"

"My father." She looked away..

Neither of them said anything as they continued walking across the grass. It was Dion who spoke first. "What about your father?"

She did not answer.

"Penelope?" he prodded gently.

"My father," she said, "was torn apart by wolves."

Dion was shocked into silence. He looked at her, turned away, not knowing what to say. He took a deep breath, "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Penelope nodded slightly, her voice subdued. "I am too." She pulled ahead of him. "Let's just forget about it."

Dion hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should continue with the conversation or let it drop. She'd said she didn't want to talk about it, but he sensed that she did. The subject of his father was a sensitive one for him; he knew how he felt when other people asked about it, and he was sure that she probably felt a thousand times worse.

Nevertheless, he hastened forward and caught up with her at the edge of the parking lot. "Do you remember him?" he asked.

Her steps slowed. She stopped walking, turned to face him. "I was a baby when he died. I have pictures of him, and from the way my mothers talk about him, I feel as though I know him. But, no, I don't remember him.

My father exists only in my mind." She looked at her watch. "It's almost five-thirty."

"Yeah, I'd better go."

Penelope licked her lips. "Still friends?" she asked.

He nodded. "Still friends."

"You don't hate me?"

"You don't hate me?"

"No," she said. "Of course not."

"I don't hate you either."

Penelope looked toward the house, met his eyes shyly. "My mother said I

could drive you home alone this time."

"Good," Dion said.

He meant it. He had nothing against Penelope's mother, but the drive home last time had been extremely uncomfortable. Penelope had been in the backseat, right behind him, but he'd still felt as though he was alone in the car with her mom. Her mother had done most of the talking, asked all of the questions, and most of those questions had been strangely personal. Or just plain strange. There had seemed something vaguely sexual about the way she'd smiled at him, something promising or threatening in the way her eyes had examined him. In a bizarre manner she reminded him of his own mom, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He had quickly revised his initial impression of her. And he had been grateful when the car had pulled up to the curb in front of his house and he had gotten out.

He'd said nothing to Penelope, of course. And this time when he'd seen her mom again, she'd seemed once more a typical, if slightly mousy, housewife.

But he was glad he wouldn't have to ride in a car with her again.

"I'll get the keys and tell them we're going," Penelope said.

"Okay."

He followed her up the steps and into the house.

Penelope turned out to be a good driver, a safe and cautious driver. She drove with her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, and she slowed for yellow lights. Dion found himself smiling at her conscientious concentration.

She must have seen him out of the corner of her eye. "What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing."

"Are you making fun of the way I drive?"

"Of course not."

She turned on her blinker to make a left turn. "I don't drive that often, you know."

He laughed. "I never would've guessed."

She left the engine on as she pulled in front of his house and put the car into Park.

"We didn't get much studying done," Dion said, picking up his books from the seat between them.

"No," she admitted. He looked at her, wanting to touch her, wanting at the very least to shake her hand and say good-bye, but he was afraid to.

"Do you want to come in?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head, as if shocked by the offer. "I couldn't. I

have to be straight back." She looked embarrassedly down at the steering wheel. "Besides, my mothers wouldn't like it."

"Mothers?"

"Huh?"

"Mothers. You said your 'mothers.' "

"Did I?"

"Yes. And you said it before too."

She blushed. "Well, I guess that's how I think of them. I mean, I know it seems weird, but they all take care of me. The women of the combine share business duties, and they also sort of share family duties too.

It's ..." She shook her head. "No. That's not exactly true." She sighed.

"I might as well be honest with you. I've never told anyone this before, but to tell you the truth, I don't know which one's my mother."

He stared at her incredulously. "You're kidding."

"No. It's true. I mean, I sort of adopted Felice as my mother because I

liked her the best, and for school and things I need to have one mother.

But to me they're all my mothers, and I don't know which is the real one."

"Have you asked?"

She shrugged. "Indirectly. But it's sort of an awkward subject. It's probably the way most people feel when they try to talk about sex with their parents. It's tough." She looked at him. "I didn't really even care until recently. It probably sounds strange to you, but I was brought up this way. I've never known anything else. So to me it seems natural."

"Natural?"

She smiled. "Almost natural."

"But why? It's just so .. weird."

She shrugged. "My mothers believe that I will turn out to be a healthier and more well-rounded person if I am not subjected to the family pressures that everyone else experiences. If I'm not forced to play a traditional role within our household, I will not be locked into playing a traditional role in society." She smiled sadly. "I guess I'm sort of an experiment."

Dion shook his head.

"A failed experiment."

"I don't think so. I think you turned out very well. And surprisingly normal."

She laughed. "Normal, huh? You know that you're probably the only person who would call me that."

"That's because other people don't know you as well as I do."

She reddened, looked away, and impulsively he reached over and touched the back of her hand resting on the seat. Her gaze jerked immediately up, her eyes locking on his. They stared at each other for a moment. Her skin felt smooth, soft, cool beneath his fingers. She pulled her hand out from under his.

"I'll see you in school tomorrow," she said, putting the car into gear.

"But--"

"I have to go."

"Still have those same old parental restrictions, don't you?"

Penelope laughed.

He got out of the car, closed the door. "Good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye. I'll see you in school."

She waved as she turned around, and he watched the car cruise smoothly down the block until it disappeared with a blink of red taillight around the corner.

April sat in front of the television, waiting for Dion to re: turn.

The TV was on, but she was not paying attention. She was thinking about her son, about the way he was growing older, growing up. She saw him in her mind as a child, then thought of him going out with a high school girl, holding the girl's hand, kissing her. It was an uncomfortable thought, and one she did not like. She knew it was normal and natural and that it was long past time that Dion showed some interest in the opposite sex, but she still didn't feel good about it.

She was angry at herself for thinking this way. She had always promised herself that she would not be an overprotective mother. So far it had not been a promise that was hard for her to keep. If anything, she had been underprotective, leaving him too much to his own devices. But then Dion had never needed much supervision. He was not the kind of kid to hang out with the wrong kinds of friends, or party or drink or use drugs.

The things she had done.

Now, though, she worried. It was not that she didn't trust her son. It was more mat ... Well, she hated to admit it, but she was jealous. She knew what Margaret would say if she told her about it. She knew all of them would laugh at her, would tell her it was time to let go, time to stop coddling her son, but she couldn't help wanting him not to change, wanting him to remain forever exactly the way he was now. There was nothing sexual about her jealousy. It was nothing like that. It was just that, for all of his brains, for all of his intelligence and sophistication, for all of the things he'd been exposed to, there was still something essentially naive and innocent about him, something that she alone knew about, that he shared only with her. She didn't want that to change. She didn't want that to disappear.

A commercial came on the television, a commercial for a nationally known brand of wine made here in the Napa Valley. Her eyes focused on the glass of chilled white wine shown sweating on a redwood table before a barbecue.

A glass of wine sounded good right now. It sounded very good. She needed to relax a little, to stop brooding over this situation. What was it Margaret had said about the medicinal value of good wine? She stood up and was about to walk into the kitchen when an unwanted memory of the other night burst upon her. She sat shakily down.

Not all wine was good.

She heard Dion's knock on the front door, heard his machine-gun ringing of the doorbell. She hadn't heard a car pull up, hadn't seen it through the window. She'd been too preoccupied. She stood up again. "Coming!"

she called. She opened the door.

Dion rushed in. His color was high, and he was obviously excited.

"What's for dinner?" he asked, putting his books down on the seat of the hall tree. "I'm starved."

April smiled. "That sounds suspicious to me. Why are you so hungry? What were you doing?"

He looked at her. "Huh?"

"Come on," she teased. "What's her name?"

He reddened. "Mom ..."

"Don't 'mom' me. This is exactly the sort of thing we should be talking about. We're supposed to be communicating, remember? We're supposed to be sharing our thoughts and feelings, et cetra, et cetra."

Dion smiled.

"I'm serious." She moved back to the couch, sat down, patted the seat next to her. "Sit down. Let's talk."

"Look, I have to study."

"I thought you wanted to eat."

"'I have to study until it's time to eat."

"You're going to talk first. Did you have a good time?"

"Mom ..."

"If you ever want to leave this house again, you'd better humor me.

After all, I'm your mother. I have a right to know. What's her name?"

Dion sat down next to her. "I told you her name last time. Penelope."

"Penelope what? You never told me her last name."

"Daneam. Penelope Daneam."

She frowned. "Daneam? Like Daneam Vineyards?"

"Yeah. You've heard of it?"

She felt a small knot of worry in her stomach. "Is this, uh, serious?

Are you two seeing each other, going steady, boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever you call it these days?"

"I don't know," he said.

"What's she like?"

"She's nice."

"Is she good-looking?"

"Yes."

"Pretty, sort of pretty or very pretty?"

"Mom!"

She smiled at him. "Okay, okay. I'm just trying to find out where things stand. Are you going to be going out with her? On a real date?"

"I told you, I don't know. I don't even know if she likes me."

"But you're attracted to her, right?"

He stood up. "I have to study."

"Sit down." She grabbed his belt buckle, pulling him back onto the couch. "You know, you're lucky," she said.

"Why?"

"Because. This is a good time for you, even though you might not realize it. It's frustrating, I know. You can't think, can't concentrate on your homework, you spend half your time wondering what the other person is doing, whether they like you or are thinking about you. But it's exciting. You interpret everything as a sign. You analyze every move they make, everything they say, for clues to how they feel about you."

She smiled sadly at him. "Once they're caught, once you have them, you lose that. The magnifying glass is gone. You no longer pay so much attention to the little things they do, you start paying more attention to the text of their words than the subtext." She patted his hand. "I don't mean to say it's not good. It is good. But ... it's never the same."

Dion stared at her. He had never heard his mom talk that way before, and for the first time he felt as though he partially understood the way she acted. He felt even guiltier for the name he had earlier called her, and he realized that he hadn't told Penelope that he loved his mom. He should have, he thought. He should have told her that.

"I'm hungry too," April said, changing the subject. She stood up, turned on the table lamp to dispel the creeping shadows in the room. "Let's eat."

"What are we having?"

"Tacos."

"All right."

"I'll cook the meat and chop the vegetables. You go to the store and get the tortillas."

He groaned. "I'm tired. I have to study. I don't want to go-"

"Or we have egg sandwiches."

He sighed, conceding defeat. "Give me the keys and some cash."

"I thought you'd see it my way." She grabbed her purse from the table and took out her keys and wallet. She handed him two dollars. "That should be enough."

He walked outside to the car in the driveway.

She watched him get into the car and back up onto the street, feeling worried, apprehensive, and a little bit scared.

Penelope Daneam.

Somehow she wasn't surprised.

And that was the part that scared her.

Dinner that night was more silent than usual, the occasional conversation more stilted, more reserved, and Penelope could feel a Big Discussion coming on. She sat at her usual place between Mother Felice and Mother Sheila at the long dining room table, trying to eat her spaghetti without slurping, not wanting to disturb the quiet. Her palms were sweaty, her muscles tense, and she waited for that first innocent lead-in question that would broach the topic on everyone's mind.

Dion.

None of her mothers had said anything to her about Dion the first time he'd come over. At least not anything serious or substantial. They'd alluded to him playfully, indirectly, letting her know that they were glad she was finally showing some interest in boys, and she'd found during the succeeding days that she felt a lot less reticent in talking about school, a lot less defensive in regard to her social life. If he had been nothing else, he had served as a validation of her normalcy, tangible proof that, despite her own and her mothers' worst fears, she was not a complete social misfit.

But of course he was something more than that, and she knew that that was what her mothers now wanted to talk to her about.

She looked from Mother Margeaux chewing her food thoughtfully at the head of the table, to Mother Margaret, across from her. She wished her mothers would just come out and say whaj was on their minds instead of putting so much weight and pressure on everything, turning every minor concern into a major topic of discussion.

But this was their way. Just as the rigidity of the dining arrangements was their way, although to Penelope, her mothers'

insistence of formal dinners every evening had always been something which rang false. Even as a small child, it had always seemed to her that her mothers were feigning civility and sophistication for an audience that was not there, mimicking scenes they had seen in movies or on television. She would never admit it to anyone, but more than once, surrounded by her mothers, eating elaborately prepared meals off expensive imported china, she had been reminded of monkeys dressed in business suits, going through motions they did not understand. It was a harsh assessment and not entirely fair, but the analogy did not seem to her that far off base. There was something wild beneath the calm exterior of her mothers, a sense of something untamed struggling to get out of a package of politeness. Mother Margeaux in particular always seemed so controlled, so unemotional, but Penelope knew from experience that her outward display of rationality was just that: a display. When Mother Margeaux was angry or she drank too much, when she let herself go, the results were truly frightening.

Penelope never wanted to see any of her mothers when they were really drunk.

Finished with her food, she pushed her plate away and swallowed the last of her grape juice. She stood, bowed, and addressed her mothers. "May I

be excused? I have a lot of homework tonight."

"You may not," Mother Margeaux said.

Penelope sat back down. In addition to its formality, dinner in their house was also uncomfortably ritualistic, and though she had lived with that every night of her life, it was still something that made her feel slightly uneasy. They dined at precisely seven-thirty every evening, and no matter what any of them were doing, they had to stop at seven, wash up, and change into a green dress. Her mother's dresses were all identical--simply designed full-length gowns--while hers was slightly different, not quiet as expensive. They began each dinner with a song, any song, which they took turns initiating. To leave the table after eating, each of them had to ask the permission of the others; if the decision was not unanimous, the person had to wait. Until she'd been in fifth grade and stayed overnight for the first time at a friends' house, she had thought all people ate this way. She had even begun to panic when she'd discovered that she'd forgotten to bring her green dinner dress to her friend's house. But after embarrassing herself by asking detailed questions of her friend's mother, she'd learned that not everyone ate dinner in such a ritualized manner, that in fact hardly anyone did. The knowledge had made her extremely uncomfortable.

She picked up her empty glass, poured the last few drops of grape juice onto her tongue. She fiddled with her fork.

It was Mother Felice who brought up the subject of Dion.

"So how's your boyfriend?" she asked casually.

"Dion?"

"Of course."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Her mother's next question died in her throat. She looked quickly around the table. There was silence.

"Penelope." Mother Margeaux's voice was quiet, but it was strong.

Penelope looked toward the head of the table. Mother Margeaux dabbed at her lips with a napkin and replaced the napkin in her lap. In the warm low light of the dining room, her lips looked almost as dark as her hair. The whites of her eyes seemed large as she focused her intense gaze on Penelope.

"I thought you and Dion were dating," Mother Margeaux said.

Penelope squirmed in her seat. "Not exactly. Not yet."

"Well, what exactly is your relationship?"

"Why do you want to know?'* Penelope felt herself reddening.

Mother Margeaux smiled. "We do not disapprove of Dion. Nor do we disapprove of you going out on dates. We would simply like to know the status of your relationship. After all, we are your mothers."

"I don't know," Penelope admitted. "I don't know what our relationship is."

"Are you planning to go out sometime?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"But you do like him?" Mother Felice asked.

"Yes!" She stood, exasperated, embarrassed. "May I be excused? I really do have a lot of homework."

"Yes, you may be excused." Mother Margeaux looked around the table.

There were no objections.

Penelope strode quickly from the room, running upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. She had avoided the Big Discussion she'd been anticipating, but her mothers' quiet probing had been even worse. There seemed something secretive about it, something that made her uneasy. The questions themselves had been innocent enough, but they had been asked in a manner that was anything but innocent, and as Penelope flopped down on her bed, she could not get out of her mind the satisfied way in which Mother Margeaux had smiled.

TOHTV Lieutenant Horton stood in front of the printer and read the report as it ran out. He held up the long roll of perforated paper and frowned as he read the DUI statistics. Up two hundred percent from last month? Up a hundred and ninety-six percent from the same period last year? That wasn't possible. Someone must have made a mistake. He dropped the paper.

The printer continued to noisily click out its dot matrix, one line at a time.

Now he would have to spend an hour double-checking the input.

He was going to have a lot of comp time accumulated by the time this was all over. In addition to working full- time on the murder investigations, he still had to perform his regular duties, which meant that he was putting in twelve-hour days as well as working weekends.

He took a drink of his lukewarm coffee, put the paper cup down on one of the shelves housing the tech manuals, and bent down to peer through the printer's smoked plastic window at the latest lines of the report.

Drunk and disorderly arrests up a hundred and fifteen percent.

Something was definitely wrong.

When he had transferred here from San Francisco over a decade ago, Horton had been surprised by the relatively few alcohol-related arrests made in Napa and the surrounding communities. Incidents of public drunkenness, reckless endangerment, DUI, etc., were surprisingly low, particularly for a region so heavily devoted to the production of alcohol. It was as if people, overly conscious of the area's economic dependence on liquor, made a special effort to behave responsibly when it came to imbibing. It was something that had remained constant during his tenure on the force and which he and everyone else took for granted.

Horton sat down on the low, empty table next to the door and waited for the report to finish printing. He pulled a bottle of Tylenol from his coat pocket, shook out two caplets, and washed them down with the last of the coffee. He didn't have a headache, but he could feel the blood thumping in his temples and his thoughts were heavy, muffled, coming to him as if through a thick fog.

He stared across the room at a faded poster someone had tacked up on the wall years ago: a stylized cancan girl kicking up her leg in a dance.

The poster reminded him for some reason of Laura, and he found himself wondering what had happened to her. It was not a thought that occurred to him often these days, but even after all these years it was one tinged with more than a hint of sadness. The alimony payments had stopped when she'd remarried, and though he'd thought at the time that he should still keep in contact with her, still keep tabs on her whereabouts, he had not made the effort. He had moved three times since then. There was no telling how many times she had moved. Periodically, he got the urge to run her name through the computer and find out where she lived now, but he didn't know her current last name, was not even sure if she was still married to the same man.

It was strange to think that two people who had once been so close could now not even know if the other was still alive. There'd been a time when he had honestly believed that he could not live without her, when he had selfishly hoped that they would both live well into their nineties and that he would die first so he would not have to go on alone. He'd been alone for over fifteen years now, and the woman with whom he'd shared his most intimate secrets, his worst fears, was now a stranger, sharing the hopes and dreams of another man he did not even know.

Horton slid off the table, stood. What the hell was he doing thinking about this? Why was he wasting his time on this nostalgia crap? There were enough problems for him to be concentrating on in the here and now. More than enough.

The murders for one.

The murder investigations were not going at all as planned. The police were doing everything they could-- interviewing friends, family, and business acquaintances, combing the nearby neighborhoods for possible witnesses, quizzing the appropriate file suspects--but there was no real evidence to go on, and despite the sophistication of their techniques, none seemed to be forthcoming. With the obvious cult angle, he would have thought Fowler's murder would be a little easier to work up a lead on, but both investigations were stalled at the starting point. They were simply going through the motions, following procedure, hoping something new would turn up. If these two killings were connected--and everyone from the chief on down believed they were--the murderer knew his stuff. He was obviously crazy, but he was just as obviously not stupid.

And that was a terrifying combination.

Jack Hammond thought it was something else entirely. He wouldn't say exactly what he thought was happening --apparently he belonged to some cult or fringe group that required a vow of secrecy--but he'd hinted around about resurrection and prophecy and all sorts of wacky religious crap. Which was why he'd been taken off the case.

Horton walked into the hallway, glanced up and down the corridor. At the far end he saw the captain still in his office, his silhouette outlined clearly against the lit window (hat faced the hall. As Horton watched, he saw the older man discreetly pour a shot of whisky into his Mcdonald's coffee cup. Horton frowned. Captain Furm'er drinking on the job? He could not believe what he was seeing. The captain was the most by-the-book officer he had ever met, a man who went into rages if staff meetings were not conducted according to proper procedure. This was definitely not like him.

Hammond. Furnier.

There were a lot of weird things going on.

The captain looked up, out of the window, saw him.

Horton immediately ducked back into the computer room. He stood in front of the printer and began folding the long roll of reports.

A moment later, he heard the captain's heavy footsteps pass in the hallway, but he did not look up and the captain did not stop by.

Officer Dennis Mccomber pulled out of the Winchelps parking lot, cinnamon roll in hand, a Styrofoam cup of coffee between his legs. He cruised down Main toward the periphery of town, eyes open for drinkers, tokers, partiers, parkers, the usual Friday night offenders. He was glad to be on the street again, happy to be driving. It was routine duty, but it sure beat working with Horton on homicide. It sure as hell beat that.

That glamour shit might look good on TV, might impress the women in conversation, but it was a creepy damn business and he didn't like it one bit.

He drove across the Spring Street intersection and slowed down as he passed the park. He was tempted to shine his light in the dark section of the parking lot, underneath the trees, but he was still eating the cinnamon roll and his fingers were sticky. He finished the pastry and drove with his knees while he pulled out a Wet One and cleaned his hand.

He took a sip of coffee. Working homicide was different than he'd thought it would be. A lot different. The academy training had taught him what to do and how to act, but it had not prepared him emotionally for the experience. All the films and reenactments in the world could not adequately simulate the intense pressure and heightened reality of an actual murder scene.

And no dummy or playacting test subject, no matter how good the makeup, could ever fill in for a real corpse.

Particularly not a corpse that had been mutilated.

Mccomber shivered, turning down the air conditioning though he knew the coldness came from within. He'd had nightmares about Fowler the watchman ever since that day at the winery. Nightmares in which Fowler, bloody and faceless, had stood in the fermenting cave and screamed endlessly with the raw, open hole that had been his mouth. Nightmares in which Fowler had chased him through a tortured, shadowed landscape of living grapevines to a monstrous vat of black wine. Nightmares in which he had gone to work and everyone in the station had been horribly, bloodily disfigured.

Last night he'd gotten drunk, really drunk, blackout drunk, for the first time since he'd met Julie. She hadn't understood, had been frightened of him, and though part of him had wanted to seek her sympathy, another part had wanted to hit her, hurt her, make her pay for the way he was feeling, and he'd had to force himself not to punch her in the face.

He turned onto Grapevine Road. He took another sip of coffee, but it tasted like shit, and he rolled down die window, dumped out the rest of the cup's contents, and tossed the cup itself onto the floor of the cruiser. He was coming up on one of the valley's busier lovers' lanes, and he slowed down, hoping for some action.

He was rewarded with a red Mazda parked underneath a tree by the side of the road.

Mccomber slowed, cut his lights, and pulled in back of the vehicle. He grabbed his flashlight, got out of the police car and, putting his right hand on fee butt of his pistol, walked forward. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a teenage boy in the passenger seat of the car, leaning back, his eyes closed, a look of relaxed joy on his face. A

moment later, a girl lifted her head from his lap, pushed the hair out of her eyes and back around her neck, and lowered her head once again.

Mccomber grinned. This was more like it. This was going to be fun.

He put on his most serious expression, strode up to the car, and rapped loudly on the driver's side window, shining the flashlight and peering in.

The chief's daughter sat up and stared back at him dumbly, fingers still grasping the boy's hard, wet penis.

Mccomber gazed at the pair, shocked. They were both hopelessly drunk. He could see it in their glassy-eyed stares, in the dumb slackness of their mouths. His light reflected off sweaty skin. The fun had gone out of this scare, but he decided to pretend he didn't know who the girl was, and he motioned for the boy to roll down the window.

He waited until the window was down before speaking. He tried not to look at the still stiff organ peeking out from between the folds of hastily pulled up pants. "What are you two doing, exercising in there?"

His voice was threatening, official, but though the boy seemed frightened, the chief's daughter was not intimidated.

She picked up a wine bottle from the floor and took a swig, not looking at him. "Fuck you."

Chief's daughter or no chief's daughter, it was time to play hardball.

"May I see your driver's license?" Me Comber said.

The boy licked his lips nervously. "Look, we're sorry. Please don't--"

"Your license," Mccomber repeated.

The boy dug through his pants and pulled out his wallet. His hands were shaking as he withdrew his driver's license.

"Mr. Holman?" Mccomber, said, reading the name next to the poorly shot photo. "Will you and the young lady please step out of the car?"

"We didn't--"

"Please step out of the car."

He hadn't intended to do anything but scare them, put them through a few sobriety tests, then let them off with a warning, but as he stood mere, the wine bottle few over the roof of the Mazda toward his head.

"Fuck off, pig!" the chief's daughter yelled.

The glass shattered on the asphalt.

He knew he was acting out of anger and not reason, that he was making what could be a career decision, but he strode around the car, yanked the staggering girl to her feet, and twisted her arm around her back.

"Police brutality!" she yelled.

"If you do not cooperate, young lady, you will be spending the rest of the night in a jail cell."

"She didn't mean it," the boy said, apologizing for her.

"Fuck you!" The girl was sobbing, but there was no sadness in her tears, only anger and frustration. She glared at Mccomber defiantly. "It's almost here, and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it!"

"What's almost here?"

"Him!"

"Who?"

Her expression clouded; her gaze seemed to lose some of its intensity.

"I don't know." Her voice was confused but still defiant.

"Look, I'll take her home. She's sorry--"

"Shut up," Mccomber snapped.

It's almost here.

He'd nearly understood that, it had almost meant something to him, and that was why he now held her without moving, why he wanted the two of them to shut up so he could have time to think. Even outside the car, he could smell the wine they had been drinking. It hung heavy in the air, recharged every few seconds by the girl's exhalation of breath, and it made him feel slightly nauseous, gave him a minor headache.

It's almost here.

He felt that too, had felt it ever since he'd seen the watchman's body at the winery, though he never would have thought to express it that way. There was a palpable feeling in the air, a building tension, like the accumulation of energy or the gathering of power or ... He wasn't sure. But something was coming to a head. Something he did not understand and probably would not believe in if he did. Something the chief's daughter had obviously tapped into.

He suddenly wanted a drink himself.

He looked toward the boy, now buckling his pants. "Mr. Holman?" he said.

The boy looked at him, frightened. "Yes?"

"I could run you in for being a minor and being under the influence, for having an open container of alcohol in your vehicle, for indecent exposure and, if I wanted to get nasty, for statutory rape." He stared at the boy, waited for a response, was glad to see that there was none.

"But I'm going to let you off with a warning this time on the condition that you lock your car and walk--I said, walk--the little lady home. If I come by later and find that this car had been moved, that will mean that you were also driving under the influence, and I am afraid that is an offense I will not be able to overlook. Do I make myself clear?"

The boy nodded gratefully.

"Fuck you!" the chief's daughter yelled.

"Now get Miss. Charm out of here before I haul her in on a drunk and disorderly charge." He let the girl go, and her boyfriend immediately took her arm, pulling her away.

"You can't stop it!" she called. "There's nothing you can do!"

Mccomber walked slowly back to his car, ignoring her taunts, wondering if he should tell the chief about what had happened or if he should try to keep it quiet. The good mood which had been his upon initially approaching the Mazda had long since fled, and now he no longer felt like cruising the streets at all.

He felt like drinking.

He felt like getting drunk.

It's almost here.

He did not acknowledge the boy's wave as he passed the two teenagers on his way down the road.

The ground was wet, the sky overcast, the air redolent with the fresh, invigorating odor of recent rain. Above the rooftops, the trees appeared almost black against the gray background, their heavy leaves and branches disturbed only by the cool northerly breeze which blew against his face. Dion felt happy, for no real reason at all. Days like this inevitably put him in a good mood, no matter what had happened the night before. He breathed deeply, smelled fireplace smoke, exhaled, saw steam.

In a puddle on the sidewalk he saw a reflection of the sky, silhouettes of trees and rooftops, a charcoal sketch.

Fall had always been his favorite season. While most kids linked the seasons with the school year, waiting anxiously for summer and school's end, dreading fall and the resumption of classes, his perceptions had always been more instinctual, less tied to the workings of the material world. He loved fall, always had. There was something about this time of year which made him feel healthy and alive. Autumn was usually assumed to be nature's dotage, the season before its death, but as he had learned from Penelope, plants such as grapes belied that assumption, bucked the general trend, died when others bloomed, bloomed when others died, and he himself felt a little like that.

A van drove by, its tires hissing on the wet asphalt. He waited a moment, then crossed the street, stepping into and splashing through a shallow puddle. Looking down, he saw muddy black water.

Black water.

He felt cold suddenly, and he shivered, his mood dampened by the remembrance of last night's dream.

It had been a bad one.

In the dream his mom had been staggering through a meadow, drunk and naked, holding in one hand an overflowing skin of wine, in the other a severed penis, blood still dripping from its torn, ragged end. There were other women nearby, also naked, also drunk, but his attention was focused only on his mom. He'd stepped forward, through a pile of rustling leaves. She turned and saw him and let out a great, excited whoop of joy. She dropped the wineskin, dropped the penis, and began dancing, a mad celebratory dance of wild abandon. A goat sprinted by, passing directly in front of her, and she leaped at it, grabbing the animal around the neck and twisting it to the ground. There was an audible snap of bone, and then she was on top of the goat, ripping with fingers, tearing with teeth, ecstatically smearing the blood on herself.

In the space between her legs, he could clearly see the goat's hairy erection.

And then the other women joined his mom, all of them coalescing into one madly carnal, wildly anarchic group of grasping hands and hungry mouths.

His mom grabbed the goat's erection, yankiag it out and proudly holding it aloft.

And then he was alone in the darkness, floating face up in the waters of a black river, everything, all of his thoughts, all of his feelings, all of his memories, fading, going, gone until he was a blank nothing drifting onward into a bigger nothingness, the black water streaming through his ears, through his nose, through his mouth to fill him up.

He'd awakened cold, shivering, his blanket kicked off the foot of the bed, feeling ... not frightened exactly, but ... disturbed. He'd felt depressed as well, filled with a strange sense of loss.

The feelings faded with breakfast, were washed away with his shower, and were forgotten when he saw the gorgeous fall day outside.

But now he was worried. He walked slowly down the sidewalk toward school. There was something about the dreams he'd had lately that didn't sit right with him. They didn't feel like ordinary nightmares, did not seem to come from the same subconscious pool as the dreams he usually had. He was not sure what about them made him feel this way, but whatever it was had him scared.

"Hey, dickmeat!"

Dion looked up to see Kevin hanging out the passenger window of Paul's Mustang.

"Need a ride?"

He shook his head, waved them on. "I need the exercise."

"I thought you got your exercise doing push-ups on Penelope!"

He pointed toward Kevin, then pointed toward his crotch. "Your breakfast, bud!"

Kevin laughed. "Later!"

The Mustang took off, tires squealing on the wet road, splashing water.

Black water, Dion thought, looking at the spray.

He shivered.

Kevin closed his locker. "She called it what? The commune?"

"The combine."

Kevin thought for a moment. "You know," he said, "there used to be a religious cult that ran a winery around Santa Rosa, back, I don't know, a long time ago. Fountaingrove, I think it was called. And it was run by a cult called the Brotherhood of the New Life. If I remember right, they used to use their wine in ceremonies. This sounds a little like that."

"Penelope's family is not a cult."

"It doesn't sound just a little spacey to you?"

Dion twisted his combination lock, pulled on it to make sure it had caught. "A little," he admitted.

"Just keep your eyes open." Kevin grinned. "You've got a rare opportunity here. You're seeing all possible permutations of the female Daneam. You're seeing Penelope's future. In twenty years she's going to look like one of them. Acorns don't fall far from the tree and all that good crap. So you've been given fair warning. If you don't like what you see, back out now. Save yourself some grief and heartache."

Dion tried to smile. "I like what I see," he said. "I hope so."

Dion tried not to think of Penelope's family as he and Kevin walked to class.

Bacchus, Mr. Holbrook wrote on the board. Dionysus. He underlined the words, wiped the chalk dust on his pants, and turned to face the class.

"Bacchus, or Dionysus," the teacher explained, "was probably the most important of the Olympian dieties. More important even than Zeus or Apollo. There are not as many stories about him, but the fact remains that he was, throughout this time, the most popular of the gods, and his followers were by far the most loyal. This can be attributed in large part to the fact that he was the only Olympian god who was both mortal and divine."

A student near the back of the room raised his hand.

"Yes?" the teacher said.

"Which name are we going to be tested on?" the student asked. "Bacchus or Dionysus?"

"We will be referring to him by his proper Greek name in this class:

Dionysus. You may be tested on both."

The class was filled with the sound of furious scribbling.

"As I said, Dionysus was both mortal and divine, the son of Zeus and Semele, the princess of Thebes. Zeus was in love with the princess, and after impregnating her while in one of his many guises he swore by the river Styx that he would grant any wish she desired. Zeus' wife, Hera, jealous as always, put the idea into Semele's mind that her wish was to see Zeus in all of his glory as the king of heaven, and this is what the princess asked for. Zeus knew that no mortal could behold him in his true form and live, but he had sworn by the Styx and could not break that oath. So he came to the princess as himself, and Semele died beholding his awesome splendor, but not before Zeus took the child that was about to be born."

Mr. Holbrook turned back to the chalkboard and wrote two more words:

Apollonian. Dionysian.

"Over the years, over the centuries, Dionysus has usually been misunderstood and misinterpreted. In general, these two words have come to mean 'good' and 'evil.' If something is described as "Apollonian,'

that means it is connected with light and goodness, order and lightness.

The word 'Dionysian,' on the other hand, applies to the dark and chaotic, and is often connected with evil. Although Dionysus was by no means a bad or evil god, this mistake is easily understood. As a god who was half human, half divine, Dionysus had a dual nature. This duality was further emphasized by the fact that he was the god of the vine, the god of wine. Wine can make men mellow, and it can make men mean.

Likewise, Dionysus could be likable and generous, warm, good and giving.

He could also be cruel and brutally savage. Just as the same wine that brings men together in camaraderie can also make them drunk and drive them to commit degrading acts and horrible crimes, Dionysus could bring to his worshipers joy or pain, happiness or suffering. He could be both man's benefactor and his destroyer. Unfortunately, over the years the dark side of Dionysus has tended to overshadow his good side, to the point where today most people's picture of him is highly distorted."

Mr. Holbrook turned back to the board. Dionysian Rites, he wrote.

Bacchanal.

"We will now look at the worship of Dionysus, which was done often through drunken orgies and festivals of debauchery."

Dion felt a pencil in his back. "Now we're getting to the good stuff,"

Kevin whispered.

Dion laughed.

Vella was absent, Kevin had a dentist's appointment, and for the first time Dion ate lunch alone with Penelope. He was glad Kevin wasn't there, but he felt guilty about it. He liked Kevin, enjoyed his friend's company, but at the same time he found that he preferred being alone with Penelope.

The two of them walked through the cafeteria line-- Dion picking up a hamburger and Coke, Penelope a salad and juice--and sat at a table near the low wall which separated the eating area from the softball field.

The conversation was easy, comfortable, free and wide ranging, shifting from music to school to plans for the future.

"What do you want to do with your life?" Penelope asked. "What do you want to be?"

He smiled. "When I grow up?"

She nodded, smiled back. "When you grow up."

"I don't know," he said. "I used to think I'd like being an archaeologist or paleontologist, dig for fossils and artifacts, travel to exotic locations. I thought it would be exciting."

"Exciting?" She laughed. "You've seen too many Indiana Jones movies."

"Probably," he admitted. "Then I thought I'd like to be a dentist. You know, have a big waiting room with lots of magazines and a saltwater aquarium, work five hours a day in a pleasant environment and rake in big bucks."

"Sounds good."

"I suppose. But I've changed my mind since then."

"What do you want to be now?"

"A teacher, I think."

"Why?"

"I could lie and say it's because I want to help open young minds and expose them to great truths, but actually it's because I'd get summers off. I'm spoiled. I like vacations. I like getting my two-month summer, two-week Christmas vacation, and one-week Easter vacation. I don't think I could survive getting two weeks a year, period." He took a bite of his hamburger. "What about you?"

She shrugged. 'The winery. What else?"

"What if you didn't want to work at the winery? What then?"

"But I do."

"What if you didn't? What if you wanted to be a computer programmer?

What would your ... your mothers dor "I don't know."

"They don't have anyone else to leave the place to, do they? You don't have any brothers or sisters."

"I don't have any other relatives."

He looked at her. "None?"

She stared out across the field, then turned back toward him. She wrinkled her nose mischievously. "What if you could be anything you wanted? Not anything practical or realistic. Your secret fantasy."

"Rock star," he said.

She laughed.

"Thousands of girls screaming for me, groupies galore."

"Hey!" He smiled, drank his Coke. "You really don't have any other relatives? Just your mothers?"

She reddened. "I don't want to talk about it, okay? Some other time."

"Okay. I understand." Dion finished his hamburger, rolled up the foil wrapper, and tossed it at the nearest trash can. It missed by several feet, and he stood up, picked it off the ground, and dropped it in. He turned around. Through the thin material of Penelope's blouse he could see the outline of her bra. He sat down next to her. "So what are we?"

he asked. He tried to make the question sound casual. "Are we friends or are we ... more than friends?"

She licked her lips, said nothing.

His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, and he suddenly wished he hadn't said anything. "What are we?" he asked again.

"I don't know."

"I don't either." His voice sounded too high.

They were both silent for a moment.

"I want to be more than friends." Penelope said softly.

Neither of them said anything. The surrounding lunch noises faded from background sound into something else, something less. They looked into each other's eyes, neither knowing what to say but neither turning away.

The silence was awkward, but it was a pleasant awkwardness, the welcome discomfort of initial intimacy. Dion smiled, embarrassed. "Does this mean that we're, uh, like boyfriend and girlfriend?"

She nodded but looked down at the ground. "If you want to be."

"I want to be," he said.

There was a second's hesitation, an instant of uncertainty, then he took her hand in his. His palms were sweaty. He was embarrassed by their sweatiness, but not embarrassed enough to move them away. He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back.

He let out the breath he'd been holding. "Well, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"It wasn't?" She laughed.

He laughed.

And then they were laughing together.

Dion met with Mr. Holbrook after school.

He hadn't discussed the independent study idea with Holbrook since the teacher had originally brought it up, had, in fact, nearly forgotten about it, but he'd received a pink summons notice during his last period, requesting that he meet the mythology instructor after class, and after dumping his books in his locker, he made his way through the rapidly emptying hall to Holbrook's room.

The classroom was empty when he arrived. He waited five minutes, but the teacher still hadn't shown. He would have left then and there, but a message on the blackboard read:

Dion, Please wait. I will be back shortly.

There were other words on the blackboard as well, most of them half-erased. Many appeared to be foreign, the characters part of a non-English alphabet, and while Dion didn't know how he knew, he realized that they were entirely unrelated to classwork or school.

That frightened him for some reason.

The door of the room opened, and Holbrook walked in. He was carrying what looked like a folded sheet atop an armload of supplies, and he placed them all on top of his desk. "So, Dion," he said. "How're things going?"

"Well, there haven't been any big changes in my life during my afternoon classes."

Holbrook chuckled, but there was no, humor in the sound. 'That's true.

We just saw each other this morning, didn't we?

In class."

Dion had been leaning against the back counter, and he straightened up.

There was something about the teacher's tone of voice that seemed odd, off, unusual.

Threatening.

That was it exactly.

He stared at the instructor, his stomach knotting up. The hostility had been vague, veiled, but it had been there, in the voice, and it was there now in the look the teacher was giving him from across the room.

What did Holbrook have against him?

He suddenly realized that the classroom door was closed.

"I ... got your summons." He held up the pink notice, aware that his voice was quavering, wishing he could stop it.

"Yes," Holbrook said.

"Is mis about the independent study thing? I already told you I don't want to do it."

"Why?" the teacher asked. "Afraid of being alone with me?" He grinned.

This was getting too damn weird. Dion started toward the door. "I'm sorry," he said. "I have to go."

"Afraid I'll attack you?"

Dion stopped, turned toward the teacher. The supplies on the desk, he saw now, were rolled-up scrolls of parchment. "Is there a reason you called me here?" he said coldly. He met the teacher's eyes.

Holbrook looked away, moving back a step. "Why do you think I asked you here?"

He wished Kevin was with him. If he'd had his friend's moral support, he would have replied, "Because you're a pervert, that's why." But Kevin wasn't here, and he wasn't brave enough to talk back to the teacher.

"I don't know," he said.

The teacher had pulled open the top drawer of his desk. Dion craned_his neck, trying to see what Holbrook's hands were fiddling with, caught sight of what looked like a long, shiny knife amidst the pencils and paper clips.

The door to the room opened, and Dion jumped, startled.

"Wait a minute!" Holbrook said.

Dion was not sure if the teacher was talking to him or to the group of men walking into the room, but he quickly pushed his way past the men, through the doorway, into the hall. He was sweating, his heart pounding, and the first thing he noticed was that the school seemed to be empty.

There were no faculty or students in sight.

He turned, caught the last of the men looking at him, and quickly sprinted down the hallway toward the exit. There'd been five men altogether, and each of them had been carrying scrolls and white cloth--just like Holbrook. Dion didn't know if he'd been invited to a Klan meeting or what, but there was something about the situation that didn't sit right with him, and he did not stop running until he was outside the building and on the sidewalk headed toward home.

Pastor Robens looked out over the half-empty church. He tried to smile, though smiling was the last thing he felt like doing at the moment. Three weeks ago, when church attendance had started to drop, he'd attributed it to a flu bug that was going around. Two weeks ago, he'd blamed the playoffs. But last week, as his flock continued to dwindle, as the number of people coming to the already poorly attended fellowship fell to single digits and as the spaces between people in the pews on Sunday became bigger, he'd had to admit that there was something seriously wrong.

He'd spent the last five days trying to nail down the problem, trying to determine what was happening. He'd gone over his notes for the past two months, looking for anything offensive he might have said in one of his sermons, something that might have driven people away, but he had found nothing. He'd even called some of the longtime parishioners who'd quit attending Sunday services and asked them if anything was the matter, if there was some reason why they had stopped coming to worship. To a person, they said everything was fine and promised to show up on Sunday.

None of them were before him now.

And six other churchgoers were missing.

Pastor Robens folded his hands and smiled at the people who had shown up as the organist finished playing. His smile was false, a mask. He did not feel happy today, he did not feel at peace.

He was worried.

The last notes of the hymn faded.

Pastor Robens bowed his head. "Let us pray."

* * *

Polly Thrall gobbled the wafer and enthusiastically gulped the wine.

Father Ibarra smiled at her, gave his blessing, and moved to the next person, Bill Bench. He looked over Bill's head at the empty pews, then down at the double row of kneeling men and women. Overall attendance was down, but participation in communion was up.

Way up.

He should have been happy about that. But he wasn't There was something about the eagerness with which his parishioners drank their small sip of wine which seemed to him sacriligious, almost defiantly so. They were performing the most holy of rituals, enthusiastically going through all of the proper motions, but there seemed something wrong about it, something blasphemous, and he found their enthusiasm both unhealthy and unchristian. They appeared to be more interested in the wine than the ritual, though that did not make any sense to him.

Bill ate the proffered wafer, greedily swallowed the wine.

Father Ibarra smiled, gave his blessing, and moved on.

He didn't like the way things were going.

He didn't like it at all.

The restaurant was nothing like he'd expected. From its name, and from its stately, rustic, vaguely European exterior, Dion had imagined the Foxfire Inn to be a tastefully elegant eating establishment, a dark dining room filled with Victorian table settings, expensive chandeliers, and dimly heard classical music. Inside it was dark, all right, but file booths were covered with red and rather shabby naugahyde, and the plain walls were decorated with sportsmen's memorabilia: moose heads, antlers, guns. Through the open doorway which led into the smoky bar, he could see neon beer signs and could hear the hyperactive jabbering of a sports announcer from a too-loud TV.

Things were not turning out the way he'd planned.

But Penelope was taking it all in stride. In his mind he had mapped out every moment of the evening, had practiced each intended topic of conversation, and so far nothing was occurring in the way he'd foreseen.

The perfect romantic evening he'd envisioned was turning out to be a series of barely avoided misadventures.

But it didn't seem to matter. Penelope had merely laughed when he'd left his wallet at the Shell station and had to turn back for it. She'd politely ignored the fact that when he'd come to the door to say hello to her mothers, his zipper had been down. She'd registered no disappointment when she saw the inferior interior of the "nice"

restaurant he'd promised to take her to and for which she had worn her best dress.

The logistics of the evening had turned out to be a nightmare, but Penelope had turned out to be better than he had dared dream.

The food, to be fair, was not bad, and they ate slowly, talking. He told her of his life, she told him of hers. Their rapport was immediate and instinctually trusting, and even though this was only their first date, Dion shared with her thoughts and feelings that he had never shared with anyone else, that he thought he would never share with anyone else. He felt he could tell her anything, and that both scared him and made him feel exhilarated.

Two hours flew, by.

After they'd finished eating, the busboy cleared everything but their water glasses, and their waitress returned. "Is there anything else I

can get you?" she asked.

Dion looked questioningly at Penelope, but she shook her head. "I guess not," he said.

"I'll be back in a minute with your check."

Dion nodded and smiled, but as he looked at Penelope across the table, he realized that he didn't know how much money to leave for a tip. The dinner had gone surprisingly well, much better than he had expected or had reason to hope, but he had another chance to blow it right here. If he left a tip that was too small, she would think him cheap and miserly.

On the other hand, if he left a tip that was too large, she would think him foolish, since she already knew he wasn't rich. But how much was too little in this instance? How much was too much?

"I'll get the tip," Penelope said.

He stared at her. It was as if she had read his mind. But he shook his head anyway. "No," he said.

"You paid for the meal. It's the least I can do." She opened her purse, took out three one dollar bills, and placed them on the table.

Three dollars.

Relaxing now, he picked up the bills and handed them back. "No," he said firmly. "I'll get it."

She smiled. "Macho guy." But she put away the money.

They had paid the bill and were halfway to the door when Dion heard a woman's voice call out, "Young man!" He looked toward the source and saw, off to his left, an elderly woman seated alone at a small table.

She was in her late fifties or early sixties and was wearing a tight brightly colored dress inappropriate for both her age and the era. Her dyed blond hair was frozen in an unattractive beehive, and even in the dim light he could see the thick texture of her makeup. She winked at him.

He thought uncomfortably of his mother. It was too easy for him to see her as this old woman, alone and desperate, trying pathetically to recapture days that had long since passed her by.

"Young man!" the woman repeated. Her voice was high, hoarse.

Dion turned to go.

"She's talking to you," Penelope said. "Go see what she wants."

"No. She's talking to someone else."

"Young man!"

"Go see what she wants. Be nice."

Dion walked across the carpeted floor of the darkened room to the old woman's table. She was wearing no bra; he could see her large breasts and the points of her nipples beneath the tight material of her dress.

He was disgusted at himself for noticing.

"Sit down," the woman said, gesturing toward the chair next to her.

He shook his head. "We have to go."

This close he could smell the liquor. It hung about her table like strong, cheap perfume, permeating everything, and when she spoke it doubled in intensity. The woman grabbed his arm with bony fingers. He saw liver spots on the wrinkled flesh beneath her bracelet. "See that fish up there?" the woman asked. She pointed to an oversize plastic marlin mounted on the wall behind him. He was aware that people at the tables nearby were looking at him, giggling. His face felt hot.

"See that fish?"

He nodded dumbly.

"The owner of this restaurant caught that fish."

He looked toward Penelope for help, but she was merely looking at him, her face unreadable.

"He caught that fish on the wall."

"Yeah," Dion said.

"The owner caught that fish."

"Well, I have to go now." He tried to pull away.

The woman's grip tightened on his arm. 'That same fish right there.

The owner caught that fish."

And suddenly he wanted to smack her, to hit her in the face. The old woman continued to babble drunkenly, inanely, her eyes glued in their fixed position, her mouth open and closing like that of a ventriloquist's dummy, and he wanted to punch her hard, to feel his fist connect with the bone beneath her skin, to hear her cry, to hear her scream as he beat her.

The smell of the alcohol was making him dizzy. He pulled away. "That fish is plastic," he said.

"The owner caught that fish!" The woman sounded as though, she was about to cry. Her breasts shifted beneath her tight dress. "The owner didn't catch that fish. That fish is plastic. And you're drunk." He hurried across the room to Penelope. He heard people at the tables behind him giggling.

"He caught that fish! That same fish there!"

"Come on," Dion said. He took Penelope's hand and pulled her toward the front door.

"Have a nice night," the hostess said as they hurried past her and outside.

The night air was cool and crisp, fresh and clean. The sounds of the restaurant were cut off as the heavy wooden door closed behind them.

"What was that about?" Penelope asked.

Dion shook his head, taking a deep breath. "The old woman was drunk."

"I know, but I mean why did you overreact like that? I thought you were going to hit her."

"Did you?"

"It looked like it."

"It was just ... I don't know, claustrophobia, I guess. I have a slight headache. I had to get out of there."

She looked concerned. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." The cool air was already making him feel better. "I

don't know what came over me. I just couldn't stay in there." He shook his head, smiled at her. "Let's go. It's a school night, and I need to get you home."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

Hand in hand, they walked down the sidewalk to the parking lot, the sound of their heels loud in the quiet. Dion glanced at the news rack as they passed by. >

And stopped, holding his breath.

On the front page of the paper was a photo of a man with a mustache.

The man who had spent the night with his mom.

He did not have to read the headline to know that the man had been murdered.

"What is it?" Penelope asked.

He realized that he was squeezing her hand, and he lessened his grip. He licked his lips, which were suddenly dry. "Nothing," he said. He stared at the picture, thought of meeting the man in the hallway at night, thought of seeing his mother in the kitchen the next morning.

Thought of the blood on her sleeve.

He took a quarter from his pocket, dropped it in the machine, and opened the cover to grab a copy of the paper.

"What is it?" Penelope asked, reading the headline. She looked at him.

"Do you know that man?"

Dion folded the paper, put it under his arm. He shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't."

He led the way across the parking lot to the car.

His mom was gone when he came home, and there was no note left for him on the refrigerator. All of the lights in the house were off, which meant that she'd left while it was still light outside, probably only a little after he had.

He deliberately placed the paper on the front table-- folded, photo up--where she would be sure to see it.

He went to bed.

He was half-asleep when she bustled into his room, drunk and crying, sitting down heavily on the side of his bed. He sat up. Through blurry, half-focused eyes he could see that the digital clock said one-something.

His mom hugged him close, and he could feel beneath her blouse the softness of her body. She smelled sweetly of wine, sourly of breath, and he thought of the old woman at the restaurant. One of her hands massaged his bare back, and he tried to pull away, backing against the headboard.

She let him go, stopped crying, and suddenly turned on him angrily.

"What's the matter?" she demanded, "Are you drank?"

"No!" he said.

"You better not be. If I ever smell alcohol on your breath, you're out of this house. You're old enough to take care of yourself now, and if you don't abide by my rules, you're gone. Do you understand me?"

"Why?" He was getting ready to argue a position in which he did not believe, but he wanted to hurt her.

"Because I say so. Because it's wrong."

"It's not wrong when you go out and get wasted and bring some guy home and fuck his--"

She slapped him hard across the face, a slap as painful as it was loud.

He angrily gathered up his covers, scooted to the opposite side of the bed. His cheek was stinging. Unwanted tears formed in his eyes.

She sat there for a moment, inert, blank, then suddenly began crying again. She cried openly, unashamedly. Her face turned red. A torrent of tears rolled down her cheeks. A thread of saliva hung from her mouth, and she did not bother to wipe it away. "Don't make the same mistakes I

made." Her words were distorted by her sobs.

He could still feel the pain on the skin of his cheek. "If they're mistakes, why do you keep doing them?"

"I don't know. I wish I could tell you. I wish I had an easy answer. But I don't I drink. I smoke. I can't help it. I wish I could say it was a sickness or an addiction, but it's not. It's something else. I don't want to be this way, Dion. But I can't help it."

He stared at her from the other side of the bed. There was an urgency to her manner that made him realize that she was not just drunk but that she'd seen his newspaper. It made him think of the man who had been murdered.

It made him think she had been there when he'd died, * * *

After Dion dropped her off, Penelope went into the kitchen for a drink of water. She could hear her mothers talking in the living room as she passed, and though she didn't want to disturb them, wanted only to sneak upstairs and into bed, she heard Mother Margeaux call her name. She dutifully walked through the doorway to greet them.

Mother Margeaux was standing near the fireplace. "Hello, Penelope. How was your date?"

She shrugged. "Fine."

Sitting next to Mother Sheila on the couch, she saw a tall blond woman she didn't recognize. The woman wore a short jean skirt and a tight white blouse which accentuated the fullness of her large breasts. The woman smiled at her, and Penelope looked away.

"Where did you go?"

"We just went out to dinner."

"Did you have a good time?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Mother Margeaux smiled. "That's good." She looked at her watch. "We're going to be talking a little while longer, but after our guest leaves, we want to talk about your evening."

"I'm tired. It's late--"

"It's not that late. Take your bath and come back down."

"I don't--"

"Penelope." Mother Margeaux's voice indicated that she would tolerate no argument.

"Yes, Mother. I will."

Penelope retreated upstairs. She got her pajamas out of the dresser, and stole a People magazine from Mother Felice's room, bringing it with her to read in the bathtub.

A half hour later, she went back downstairs. She walked into the living room. The blond woman was gone, but all five of her mothers sat on the overstaffed couches, facing her in a semicircle. The arrangement was somewhat intimidating. None of her mothers were talking, none were smiling. They were all waiting patiently for her to join them. Mother Margeaux was still wearing the business suit she used when meeting potential clients, an ensemble intended to exude an aura of strength and confidence, and its message was coming through to Penelope loud and clear.

She sat quietly down on the love seat.

"We are going to talk about sex," Mother Margeaux announced.

Penelope blinked dumbly.

"We have never had this discussion before," Mother Margeaux continued, "although perhaps we should have had it long ago."

Penelope's cheeks felt hot. She looked at her shoes, nervously playing footsie with herself. "I know all this," she said.

"Yes, but I don't think you know about birth control."

"I already know." She wished this agony would end.

"Do you know about the pill? Do you know what an IUD is? A diaphragm? A

condom?"

"Yes," she said miserably.

"Well, where did you learn all this?"

"I don't know."

"From school?"

"Yeah, I guess. I just ... I don't know. From reading. Hearing people talk."

"Have you and Dion discussed this? Have you talked about birth control?"

"Mother!"

"You are a senior in high school, as is Dion. I assume you both have the natural urges universally shared by all young men and women your age.

This means that you are probably going to have sex. Your other mothers and I simply want to know if you have talked about it."

Penelope looked embarrassedly away, said nothing.

"Have you kissed him yet?"

"It's none of your business."

"It is our business. Have you thought about having sex with him?"

"Look," Penelope said. "It hasn't gone that far. It may never go that far."

"If it does," Mother Margeaux told her, "we do not want you to use any form of birth control."

"What?" Penelope glanced up, shocked. She looked from one to the other, but though her mothers were smiling at her tolerantly, it was clear that they were totally serious. She felt embarrassed and confused at the same time. Disoriented. She did not know what to say or how to act.

Mother Janine grinned. "Have you thought about his cock?" she asked.

Penelope stared at her. She had never heard any of her mothers use profanity, aside from an occasional "hell" or "damn," and the sound of such a base word in one of her mothers' mouths sounded disgustingly obscene.

"He has a big one. It's nice and long."

"That will be enough," Mother Margeaux said sternly.

Penelope looked around the semicircle. Her mothers were not outraged, as she would have expected. They were calm, unruffled, acting as though this sort of conversation occurred every day.

What was going on here?

"Don't use any contraceptives," Mother Felice said kindly.

Mother Margeaux and Mother Sheila nodded in agreement.

Mother Margeaux smiled. "Invite him over," she said. "We want you to invite him over for dinner tomorrow. We haven't really had a chance to meet him."

She glanced from mother to mother, confused. One moment they were being totally crazy, the next they were behaving like typical concerned parents. She shook her head in disbelief. "Is this some kind of test or what?"

"Test?" Mother Margeaux laughed. "Heavens, no. And we don't mean to put any pressure on you. But, as you know, we have brought you up in an atmosphere of complete honesty and openness, and we just want to state our position at the outset. I'm sure you will agree that acknowledgement of the reality of this situation is preferable to the clandestine deceit and denial practiced by most families. You are now a woman, faced with a woman's choices, and we recognize that fact."

"It's big." Mother Janine grinned. "His cock is big."

"Janine!" Mother Margeaux shot her a withering glance which wiped the smile from her face. She turned back toward Penelope.

"Will you ask him to dinner?"

She nodded, still too stunned to know how to react. "I'll ask him. I

don't know if he'll say yes."

"He will."

They were all silent for a moment, looking at one another.

Penelope stood. "Is that all?"

"Yes. You may go to bed."

She left the room and started up the stairs. Halfway up, she heard Mother Janine's off-center giggle. A moment later, they were all laughing hysterically.

Even Mother Felice.

The house was dark when Horton arrived home. The bulb in the living room lamp attached to the timer had obviously burned out. He braille-scanned the metal contents of his key ring on the stoop of the unlit porch, feeling for the smooth roundness of the house key. He found it next to the blocky squareness of the key to his long-discarded Thunderbird, and he used it to open the door, automatically flipping on the light switch as he walked inside.

The house smelled old and closed, of dust and dirty clothes, of previous meals. He walked across the dark shag carpet of the living room. Though the light was on, there was still a dimness about the room, a yellowed hint of shadow which stubbornly fended off all attempts at cheerfulness.

It looked, he thought, like what it was. The home of a bachelor. Despite the fact that the rooms had been decorated by his ex-wife, that initial woman's touch had not been updated, re'freshed or renewed, and an air of lonely maleness hung over the house. Last night's can of Coors sat in a dried ring of condensation on the crowded coffee table next to a pile of newspapers, a stack of half opened junk mail, and an empty potato chip bag. Yesterday's socks were balled up at the foot of the couch. The only sound in the house was the muted hum of the electric clock on the cluttered knickknack shelf above the hi-fi, and he quickly turned on the television, grateful for the noise and companionship it offered. His gaze fell upon the framed family photograph atop the TV, and as always his eyes scanned over it without looking.

He walked into the kitchen. Taking a frozen burrito out of the freezer, he slit the plastic wrapping and popped it into the microwave. He grabbed a beer from the fridge.

Sometimes he wished he didn't have to eat or sleep. Sometimes he wished he could work nonstop. He hated his job, but truth be told, he hated his time off even more. At least when he was working his mind was kept busy, he had something to think about besides his own life.

He downed the beer in three quick swallows, but he found that it wasn't enough. He needed something stronger.

The microwave timer rang, and he took out his burrito, dropping it on a plate and pulling off the wrapper. He opened the cupboard above the refrigerator alcove and withdrew a bottle of scotch. He thought of getting out a glass, but decided against it. He didn't need another glass to wash.

He sat down, ate a bite of burrito, drank a swig of scotch.

The burrito and the bottle were finished at almost the same time.

In the light of morning, with an all-news station reciting a litany of last night's events on the radio, with the smell of fresh coffee permeating the kitchen, the idea that his mom could have been involved in someone's death seemed not only far-fetched but ludicrous. He stood in the doorway, watching for a moment as his mom, her back to him, stood at the counter, spreading cream cheese on toast. If she had killed that man, he realized, she would have had to have done so between two o'clock, the time he'd met the man in the hall, and six o'clock, the time she'd come down for breakfast. She would have had to have done so without making a noise, and to have disposed of the body just as silently.

He was thankful that his suspicions had faded. If he had still suspected his mom, he would not have known what to do. Would he have turned her in? Told the police anonymously? Confronted her? Done nothing? He did not know.

His mom either heard him or sensed his presence, for she turned around.

There were dark hangover circles around her eyes. She tried to smile at him but only partially succeeded. "I'm sorry about last night," she said. She would not meet his eyes.

He nodded silently, equally embarrassed, and busied himself looking through the refrigerator for orange juice.

"I went out with Margaret and Janine and a few other friends after work, and I guess I had more to drink than I thought."

He frowned. Hadn't she seen the newspaper? He glanced over at her. She appeared chastened, ashamed, but not to the extent that he would have expected. He cleared his throat. "That guy was murdered," he said.

She looked at him blankly.

"Your friend. The guy who spent the night."

"What are you talking about?"

"Didn't you even read the paper?" He shook his head at her and strode purposefully out to the living room, but the newspaper was no longer on the table.

"What did you do with the paper?"

"What paper?"

"The newspaper I put there last night!"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It didn't just get up and walk away."

"Dion--"

"I left it there for you!"

"Why?"

He was angry at his mom suddenly. "Because that guy you fucked was murdered! I thought you might be at least mildly interested!"

Her expression hardened. She advanced on him, but he backed up behind the couch. She stopped, pointing at him with a furious finger. "Don't you ever speak that way to me again."

"Fine!" Dion said. "I won't speak to you at all!"

"Fine!"

The two of them glared at each other for a moment. Then his mom turned and stalked back into the kitchen.

Bitch, he thought. Fucking bitch.

He went down the hall to his bedroom and slammed the door.

Dion wiped his sweaty hands nervously on his pants and pressed the doorbell. From somewhere inside the huge house came the sound of chimes.

A moment later, Penelope opened the door. "Hi," she said shyly.

He smiled. "Hi."

The door opened all the way, and he could see, standing behind Penelope, her mothers. The women, all of them, were wearing identical green dresses--tight dresses which accentuated their figures. He could see dark nipples through the sheer fabric, faint triangles of pentimento pubic hair, and he realized that none of the women were wearing underwear. The knowledge embarrassed him.

Penelope too was wearing green. But her dress was looser, less revealing, and made of a different, thicker material.

All of them were barefoot.

He felt awkward. He was wearing blue jeans and a white shirt, with black tennis shoes, and he felt as though he had committed some type of fashion faux pas.

"Come in," Penelope said. "You didn't have any trouble with the gate, did you?"

He shook his head. "No problem."

"That's good." She smiled and gave him a private bear with-me look, then gestured behind her. "Dion, I'd like you to meet my mothers. All of them this time." She pointed, one by one, at each of the women in line. "This is Mother Margeaux, Mother Felice, Mother Margaret, Mother Sheila, and Mother Janine." She motioned toward Dion. "Mothers, this is Dion."

The women bowed to him in a strange, awkward looking half curtsy, a movement that seemed familiar to him but that he could not quite place.

"We are very pleased that you accepted our invitation to dinner," Mother Margeaux said. "We have been told so much about you and have been looking forward to formally meeting you." She smiled at him, a wide white toothpaste-commercial smile that he knew was supposed to be welcoming and ingratiating but which instead made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Why don't you all go into the other room?" Mother Felice suggested.

"You can talk for a while while I get dinner ready."

"We're having lemon soup and chicken with goat cheese," Penelope said.

"I hope you like it. I guess I should have asked you first."

"it sounds delicious," he told her, and it did.

Mother Janine grabbed his hand and pulled him away from Penelope, leading him toward the doorway into the next room. He could feel her smooth fingers lightly pressing against his knuckles. "I'm so honored to finally meet you," she said. "I'm so thrilled."

He looked back at Penelope, but she only smiled, shrugged, and followed them.

"Do you have dreams, Dion?"

"Everybody has dreams," he said.

Mother Janine laughed, a low, sultry laugh that somehow put him on edge.

"I dreamed last night that I was a flea bathing in your blood--"

"Janine!" Mother Margeaux said sharply.

His hand was let go, and Penelope sidled next to him. "Sit close to me,"

she whispered. "I'll help you through this."

They walked into the sitting room.

The dining room table was large and regal, the place settings formal.

The room smelled of an unfamiliar odor, a scent at once organic and alien. Dion sat near the head of the table, next to Penelope. The pre-dinner conversation had been neither as awkward as he had feared nor as strange as he had expected. Penelope's mothers had asked the usual parental dating questions, subtextually quizzing him on his intentions toward their daughter, and they seemed to be fairly pleased with his responses.

Dinner appeared to be a different story. The moment they had stepped into the dining room, all conversation had stopped, as though they had walked through some sort of soundproof barrier, and the only noise had been the scraping of chair legs and the quiet slap of bare feet on hardwood floor.

Now the only sound was the slurping of soup.

Dion cleared his throat, intending to talk, if only to pay Mother Felice a generic compliment on the food, but the sound was so loud and out of place in the stillness that he immediately gave up the idea of speaking at all.

Across the table, Mother Sheila picked up the carafe from between the twin soup tureens. "Would you like some wine?" she asked Penelope. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

The girl stared at her in surprise. "I'm not supposed to--"

"It's a special occasion. Besides, you're nearly eighteen. You're mature, responsible. I think you're old enough to handle it." She smiled teasingly. "You've lived in a winery all your life. Don't tell me you've never sneaked a taste."

Penelope blushed.

"I don't think she should have any," Mother Felice said, prim-lipped.

Penelope smiled gratefully at her favorite mother.

"She may have some if she wishes," Mother Margeaux said from die head of the table.

Mother Sheila poured Penelope a glass. "Here you go." She looked questioningly at Dion. "Dion?"

He shifted in his seat, feeling extremely uncomfortable. Having seen the destructive effects of alcohol close up, drinking seemed to him neither exciting nor adult. It seemed wrong and somewhat frightening. Still, he did not want to offend Penelope's mothers. His heart was pounding. "Just a little," he said.

Mother Sheila smiled and poured.

Dion took a sip. He had never tasted alcohol before, though he'd had ample opportunity to do so. It was milder than he expected and more pleasant. His mom had often left open bottles around the house, had breathed her drunken breath on him many a time, and after a while the smell alone had been enough to nearly make him gag.

But this was good. He took another sip, a bigger one.

The table had once again lapsed into silence. The other mothers continued to slurp their soup and drink their wine as Mother Felice went out to check on the chicken.

Dion finished his soup and, realizing that he was the first one done, made a concerted effort to sip his Wine slowly. He emptied the glass, and Mother Sheila quickly poured him another. He did not touch it. He felt strange, queasy, slightly dizzy, and as he looked around the table at Penelope's smiling mothers, his first thought was that he had been poisoned. They had put a drug in his wine to kill him in order to keep him away from their daughter. But that was stupid, crazy thinking, and he at least had enough sense to realize that the alcohol was affecting his thought processes, impairing his judgment.

Was this what it felt like to be drunk? If so, he didn't like it.

"Have some more," Mother Sheila said, nodding toward the untouched wineglass.

He shook his head. His brain felt heavy, full. "No, that's enough."

"Come on," Mother Janine told him.

He felt a bare foot rub against his leg, caress his calf.

It was getting hard to think. He glanced at Penelope, next to him, and she looked at him and shrugged, not certain of what behavioral clues to offer, "Don't you like our vintage?" Mother Margeaux asked him.

He picked up his glass and obligingly took a sip. He nodded. "It's very good," he said.

He took another drink. The feeling in. Ms. brain changed, and now he found that he did like it. The heaviness, the queasiness was gone, replaced by a subtle sense of exhilaration.

Penelope's mothers smiled at him.

Mother Felice brought in the chicken.

They ate the rest of the meal in silence.

After dinner, Penelope went upstairs, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and the two of them went out to the Garden alone. The air was crisply cold, but he felt warmed by an inner fire. The alcohol, he assumed.

He wondered if he was going to be able to drive home.

Penelope led the way over to the same stone bench they'd sat upon the last time they'd come here/Leaning against the wall behind it, Dion saw several long sticks tipped with pine cones. He frowned. Like the women's welcoming curtsy, they too seemed familiar, though he could not quite place the reason why.

"Your mothers are nice," he said. His voice sounded different to himself, louder, amplified. He wondered if Penelope noticed any difference.

She nodded. "They are. Mostly. But sometimes they're a little strange."

He chuckled. "I'll give you that one."

They were sitting close on the bench, and Penelope drew closer. Their hands, lying flat on the stone, were almost touching. Dion put his fingers over hers and was surprised at their warmth. He leaned to the left until their shoulders were pressed together. Not knowing what to say, not knowing if he should say anything, he put his arm around her and pulled her to him. He licked his lips to moisten them, then-bent down to kiss her.

She was ready, and she moved up to meet him. Lips parted, tongues met, and Dion felt an immediate reaction stirring between his legs. The kissing grew more passionate. Their mouths pressed harder together, their tongues intertwining.

Dion pulled back. "Are your ... can your, uh, mothers see us here?"

Penelope reached around his neck. "No," she said. "Besides, they trust me."

Dion felt her tongue slide deeply into his mouth, and he tentatively reached around her to cup her right breast in his hand. It was small but firm, and he could feel the raised bump of her nipple. She did not push his hand away but instead leaned into him. He began massaging her, his fingers moving in slow circles, and he felt her body stiffen imperceptibly.

His hand worked its way down to her pants.

This time she tried to push him away. "No!" she said, but the word was muffled in their kiss.

Dion ignored her protestation, slipped the fingertips of his left hand beneath the waistband of her jeans, touched the cool silk of panties.

She pulled away. "No," she said firmly, removing his hand from her waist.

"Okay," he said, withdrawing. His face was hot and he was breathing heavily. "I'm sorry." His words were apologetic, but he was aware that his tone was not. Part of him was embarrassed, embarrassed at what he had tried, more embarrassed that he had been rebuffed. But another, deeper, more frightening part was angry, angry at her rejection, angry at her attitude, angry at her. He wanted to hit her, wanted to hurt her, wanted to feel the warm giving elasticity of her skin as he struck her face, wanted to slap her across the mouth until her blood ran, wanted to throw her down on the hard stone fence and take her now by force as she screamed in pain and fear and longing.

He realized that his fists were clenched, and he unclenched them. He shook his head to clear it.

What was happening to him?

Penelope stood up, straightened her hair and her T-shirt. "It's getting late," she said.

Dion nodded, and the two of them walked back inside.

All of the mothers walked with them to the door to say good-bye. Dion thanked them for a wonderful time.

"Why don't you come back next Saturday?" Mother Janine asked sweetly as he took his keys out of his pocket.

He looked at Penelope, who looked away. "Okay," he said. "Thanks. I'd like that."

Penelope closed the door to the bathroom and locked it. She felt tike crying. Life was so unfair! She pulled down her pants and unrolled a foot or so of toilet paper, which she doubled and used to take out her maxi-pad. Why the hell did she have to have her period now? She wrapped up the pad and dumped it in the garbage.

She remembered the way Dion's hand had felt on her breast, the way his tongue had felt in her mouth, the way his erection had felt against her thigh. She had wanted him then, and when his fingers had slipped inside her pants she had wanted them to get in all the way, had wanted to feel his fingers touch her vagina.

Why had her period come now?

She looked down at the soak of red blood through white tissue paper.

Although she hated the fact that she had to have a period at all, hated the pain and discomfort, the accompanying pimples and mood swings, the blood itself didn't bother her. Of the entire ordeal, in fact, it was only the changing of the pads she enjoyed.

She saw a smear of crimson on the tip of her index finger, and she put it to her nose. The blood smell made her invigorated, almost excited.

She felt like going out and raping Dion right now.

She sat down on the toilet, feeling a little lightheaded.

She shouldn't have touched that wine. It was making her behave strangely, making her think weird thoughts.

She stood, took out a new pad, affixed it to her panties. Before pulling them up, she breathed deeply, inhaling the musky fragrance. She touched her breast, remembering how Dion's hands had felt through the thin T-shirt cotton. For a moment there, when she had made him stop, it had seemed as though he had almost wanted to hit her, to force her to comply to his wishes.

And for a moment, a brief moment, she had wanted him to do just that.

Dion pressed down on the gas pedal as he drove away from the winery.

There was a burning in his crotch as he sped down the darkened rural road toward home, a painful aching that demanded to be released. He was hard, extraordinarily so, but there was no pleasure in it. Rather, the feeling was one of extreme discomfort. His penis seemed supremely sensitive, and each turn of the steering wheel caused his erection to chafe against his underwear. It hurt, but at the same time it made him stiffer.

The pressure on his penis increased as he pushed farther down on the gas pedal, hurrying, speeding up, desperately anxious to get home.

He thought of Penelope, thought of the way her panties had felt against his fingers, the cool silk and smooth skin soft to his touch.

His erection throbbed.

He couldn't take it anymore. He swerved off the side of The road, shoved the gear shift into Park, and fairly threw himself out of the car, leaving the engine running. He lurched into the bushes as he frantically unbuckled his belt, ripped open the button fly of his Levi's, and grasped his engorged organ. He held it hard and began pumping, his hand sliding quickly up and down the shaft.

He came almost immediately, a shower of thick, milky white semen falling on dirt and dead leaves.

He kept stroking his penis until it hurt, but he could not come again.

His erection, however, remained as hard as ever.

Oh, God, he thought. There really was something wrong with him. He needed some kind of help. Medical or psychological or both or ... He bent over and threw up into the bushes, his throat and stomach working in sickening tandem, clenching and unclenching until there was nothing left to disgorge.

He wiped his mouth and walked slowly back to the car, buttoning his pants, buckling his belt. He had not cried, had not felt like crying in ... he didn't know how long. Years, probably. But now he got into the car, locked the doors, made sure the windows were closed, and leaned his head against the steering wheel.

He sobbed like a baby.

"Miss. Daneam?"

Penelope turned around. Her eyes quickly scanned the crowded school hallway looking for the owner of the voice before locking on Mr.

Holbrook, standing in the open doorway of the teachers' lounge. He beckoned her over. She gave Vella a quick look of apology, then walked over to where the mythology teacher stood.

"Penelope," he said.

"Yes?"

"Penelope." He stretched the word out, rolled it on his tongue. "A good name. A classical name."

"Yes, I know. Penelope was Odysseus' wife." She looked impatiently back toward Vella.

"You wouldn't happen to know the origin of your last name, would you?"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid my family was never big on geneology."

"Were your ancestors Greek by any chance?"

She shrugged. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Just curious. The real reason I called you over is because I was wondering if you were related to the Daneams of Daneam Vineyards?"

She nodded. "It's my family's business."

"I had some of your wine the other night. Remarkable stuff. Very interesting indeed. I was wondering if perhaps you could arrange a tour of the winery for me."

"We don't give tours." She frowned. "And how did you get a bottle of our wine? It's not sold around here."

"A friend of mine, a lady friend, let me try it."

"How did she get it?"

"I believe she bought it at the liquor store."

"Here? In Napa?"

He nodded. "I think so."

"That's strange. I'll have to ask my mother about that."

Mr. Holbrook smiled. "Do you think you could ask about a tour at the same time?"

"I'm sorry. We don't give tours."

"Just thought I'd ask."

Penelope looked at him. "This isn't going to affect my grade, is it?"

He chuckled. "No," he said. "You have the same C-minus you've always had."

"What?"

"Just joking." He laughed. "Don't worry. You and Dion both have easy A's."

"Well, bye, then." She backed away from the door.

"See you in class."

Penelope walked back across the now not so crowded hallway. Weird, she thought. Just plain weird. What was that all about? Did he want to meet one of her mothers? That was the only thing she could think of. Why else would he be acting like that? She tried to imagine Mr. Holbrook with Mother Margeaux or with Mother Janine but could not do so without laughing.

"What is it?" Vella asked, stepping up to her.

"He wanted to take a tour of the winery."

"Why?"

Penelope shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe he wanted to meet my mom."

She and Vella both laughed as they headed toward fourth period.

Mel Scott drove home after work instead of going straight to the hospital. It was stupid, he knew, and completely illogical, but he wanted to change before he went to see Barbara. She would not care what he wore, she would not even know, but dressing up for her made him feel as though everything was back the way it was supposed to be, as though Barbara was still alive.

Not that she was dead. She was comatose, had been so for the past nine months, but she was still alive, and the doctor said there was a slim chance she could come out of it one of these times.

Although the possibility of that occurring grew slighter every day.

She had been hit on a Friday afternoon while walking home from work, a drunk driver ignoring a stop sign and not seeing her as she crossed a corner. He'd plowed into her from behind, and she had bounced over the hood before cracking her head on the asphalt, the blood staining one of the white crosswalk lines so badly that it had to be painted over.

She was lucky she hadn't died.

Ironically, after the trial, after the man had been sentenced to fifteen years without the possibility of parole, Mel had turned to drink himself, and though he made sure he never drove drunk, he had often been intoxicated while visiting his wife in the hospital.

He wondered if she knew that.

Lately, he had switched from whisky to wine, and while this should have been an improvement, should have sharply reduced his intake of alcohol, for some reason he'd also begun drinking more. A lot more. He now found himself drinking wine not only after work and after dinner, but during dinner, for lunch, and, even more recently, for breakfast. He just couldn't seem to get enough of the stuff.

- This morning he'd even poured a dash of it into his pancake batter.

He had thought about that all day. Part of his mind rationalized this latest act, told himself that it was no different than the cooking sherry Julia Child seemed to pour over everything, but another part of him warned that this was not ordinary behavior. This was obsessive behavior, addictive behavior.

But he felt no compunction to stop.

Amazingly enough, none of this had affected his performance at work, although even if it had, he was pretty well insulated from possible repercussions. He had less than a year to go until retirement, and the review and dismissal process would take at least that long--if it even got off the ground, which was a long shot for someone with his seniority and his well-publicized problems.

At home, Mel took a shower, combed his hair, and put on his suit. He drove to the hospital, waved to the doctors and nurses in his wife's wing, and went into her room.

Her status was unchanged. As always, he felt a second's flash of disappointment He'd known she would be unmoving, in exactly the same position on the bed, with exactly the same expression on her face, but part of him always hoped that there would be some response as he opened the door, that she would be sitting up groggily as he entered and ask where she was and what had happened, that she would be waiting for him with open arms.

She was lying prone, however, tubes and sensors in place, machines and oxygen tanks flanking her bed.

He patted his coat pocket. This past week he had taken to bringing a bottle with him to visit Barbara, a flask. He knew it was pathetic, the act of a pitiful, desperate man, but he needed the support. The nurses and doctors had objected when they'd found out, warning him about hospital regulations, but their protestations were perfunctory. They knew how much he cared about Barbara, they could see the toll this was taking on him, and they understood, even if they did not condone.

He was under a lot of pressure.

His hand found the flask and he pulled it out. He made sure no one was in the hallway outside the door and quickly downed the entire contents.

He sat down on his chair next to the bed and closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the wine do its work. When he opened his eyes again, Barbara looked changed. The hospital surroundings and medical paraphernalia now seemed extraneous, fake, and she appeared to him to be merely sleeping.

"Barbara?" he called softly.

She did not answer.

He swallowed back the tears he could feel approaching. She was not merely sleeping. She was in a coma. A deep coma. And she might never come out of it.

"Barbara?" he said again. He touched her cheek, felt warmth there but no life. He looked at the wall, tried to think of what he would have for dinner, tried to think of the assignments he had to complete at work tomorrow, tried to think of anything that would keep the tears at bay.

He wished he'd brought another bottle.

A lone tear escaped from underneath his eyelid and rolled halfway down his craggy cheek before he wiped it away. He sat there, unmoving. A

moment later, the mood passed.

Grateful, he held Barbara's hand and, as always, told her of his day. He described to her the minutiae which made up his life and shared with her the thoughts and feelings he would have shared had she been at home with him and cooking dinner. His mind filled in what would have been her responses, and it was almost like having a real conversation.

He stroked her hand as he talked. He continued stroking her hand even after he had run out of things to say.

He thought of all the times that hand had stroked him.

He smiled. They had not done it all that much the last few years. They'd still loved each other, perhaps more than they ever had, but the sex thing seemed to have died down for both of them. They'd done it only infrequently in the past decade, and even then it had not always worked.

But he'd discovered recently how much he missed that part of their relationship. In bed alone, he remembered their early years together, when they had done it almost every night--and when she had continued to please him even when it was her time of the month.

He'd masturbated a lot lately.

He held Barbara's hand and looked at her face. Her slightly parted lips looked wet, full. Inviting.

He closed his eyes. What was he thinking? What the hell was wrong with him? He let go of her hand. It was the wine. He'd had too much of it today. It was starting to get to him.

He opened his eyes, looked again at Barbara's moist lips, and felt a stirring in his groin.

He stood up and, as if underwater, walked across the room and closed the door. He turned back toward the bed. The tubes were in her nostrils, he thought. She would still be able to breathe.

And of course she would want him to be happy.

No. This was crazy.

He stood for a moment next to the bed, staring at her familiar face. He could feel his erection growing. He was hard, painfully so.

He pulled down his pants, crawled on top of her.

He heard the door to the room open behind him. He heard the nurse's gasp. "Mr., Scott!" she yelled.

But his penis was already in her mouth, and he was thrusting.

Penelope was standing alone in the main hallway of the school. Only the school was empty, abandoned, the bare floor covered with the dust of age. It was night, and only a thin sliver of moonlight shone through the boarded windows, but it was enough to-show Dion that Penelope was naked.

And that she was robbing herself.

As he watched from the shadows, there came a growing, insistent flapping, like the sound of birds taking off or a helicopter landing.

The sound grew, intensified, and from the blackness behind Penelope he saw a shifting shape emerge, descending downward through the color spectrum, growing lighter, grayer, white, a huge fluttering, whirlingly ill-defined creature that he identified to his horror as a monstrous swan. Even in the dark he could see pliant lips on an orange, ungiving bill, calculating human eyes within the tangle of feathers above. As if on cue, Penelope stopped fingering herself and dropped to her hands and knees, waiting on all fours.

Behind her, Dion could see the swan's massive penis.

Penelope arched her back, baring her buttocks for the swan, which mounted her from behind. She screamed once, loudly, a horrible cry of agonized pain, and then the feathers were flying, the swan disintegrating in a rain of white which floated down on Penelope as a baby gruesomely pushed its way out of her exposed forehead, the skin below her hairline ripping, breaking open in a wash of blood that rolled cleanly off the emerging infant.

The baby smiled at him, pulling the remainder of its body from Penelope's head as she fell onto her side. "Father," the baby said in a voice like thunder. "Son."

Dion awoke feeling strange. He sat up. The bottom half of his body seemed different, unfamiliar, as though it belonged to someone else. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. He found that he was afraid to move his legs, afraid they might not work, afraid they might work in ways to which he was not accustomed.

He turned his head to look out the window. Outside it was still dark.

From this vantage point he could see the rounded silhouette of the hill, backlit by the moon.

He looked immediately away, frightened.

What the hell was happening to him?

He didn't know, and it was a long time before he fell back asleep.

Kevin and Dion walked past the school bus on their way to the parking lot. It had rained earlier in the day and the ground was wet, the sidewalk's ostensible flatness belied by a series of off-center puddles.

"You know," Kevin said, "ever since you two got together, you don't do shit with me anymore. Not that I miss having to drag your sorry ass around, but--"

A paper cup filled with ice was thrown from one of the bus windows and landed on the sidewalk to Kevin's right. "Pussy!" a boy's voice called out.

"Don't tell me your problems!" Kevin shot back. He reached down, picked up the smashed cup, and threw it at the side of the bus. It hit with a wet splat.

Dion laughed.

"So what are you plans for tonight?"

Dion shrugged. "I don't have any."

"You're not doing anything with Penelope?"

"I don't know."

"So take a night off. We're going to pay a visit to Father Ralph again.

Paul's been grounded for the past week, so this time he's really going to get back at his old man. It should be great."

"I'm not--"

"Come on, don't be a flit."

Dion grinned. "Flit?"

Kevin nodded. "Flit."

"Okay." Dion laughed. "You talked me into it."

They met again at Burgertime. A guy Dion didn't know had brought his van, so all six of mem could fit into it. This time there was a bottle in the car, and Paul lit up a joint. Dion frowned. Was it his imagination or did all of them seem a little wilder than usual, a little more on edge? The joint was offered to him, and he shook his head firmly.

"Candy ass," Paul sneered.

Dion ignored him.

As before, they parked a little way up from Father Ralph's house and crept through the bushes and the mud until they reached the backyard.

This time all of the lights were out. Only the pulsing blue glow of a television shone from one of the windows.

Paul crept up to the window, peeked in. He crouched immediately back down, giggling. "Check it out!" he whispered. "He's in there boffing some babe!"

The rest of them moved closer and peered into the bedroom.

Dion's stomach dropped. One of Penelope's mothers, Mother Margaret, was on all fours on the floor next to the bed, the preacher kneeling behind her, grasping his hardened organ, positioning himself. Dress and underwear, pants and panties, were strewn across the rug. An empty bottle of wine lay tipped over on the nightstand next to the bed.

Penelope's mother cried out, and her large breasts jiggled as the preacher entered her from behind. "Yes!" she moaned. "Yes! Yes!"

Dion turned away, sickened, slumping against the wall of the house.

"Get ready to run," Paul said. He stood, held up the camera he'd brought, and began snapping pictures. Dion could see in his mind the shifting tableaux as the dark was illuminated by a series of quick flashes. He saw the preacher's shock and rage and fear, saw Mother Margaret's confusion as she became aware of the crowd at the window.

"Run!" Paul screamed.

And then Dion was following the rest of them through the brush, crashing through branches, slipping in mud, tripping over roots until they reached the van.

They took off, laughing excitedly, "Who was that?" someone asked.

Kevin shook his head. "I don't know."

"Nice titties, though." Paul grinned. "No wonder my old man coveted her ass."

Dion closed his eyes as the other boys laughed, and they sped through the night toward the burger stand.

He avoided Penelope the next morning at school, afraid to face her, feeling guilty, almost as though her mother's actions were his fault, as though he was the one who had done something wrong.

He met Kevin next to the lockers before class, but the usual joking insults were nowhere in evidence. His friend's face was grim, his manner subdued. "You heard the news, didn't you?"

Dion shook his head.

"Father Ralph's dead."

Dion stared at his friend, not knowing what to say.

"Heart attack, they think. Paul's really taking it hard."

"What about the woman? Did they--"

"Haven't heard anything about her. I bet she split after it happened."

"Maybe it happened after she left."

"I don't think so. I think she probably brought it on."

Dion closed his locker. "Does--does Penelope know?"

"I have no idea." Kevin frowned. "Why?"

"Nothing," Dion said. "No reason."

Kevin looked at him suspiciously. "No reason?"

"No reason." He swallowed, looked away. "Come on. It's getting late."

Kevin nodded slowly. "Yeah. All right."

The two of them walked together to class.

He talked to Penelope on the phone that night.

She called him, worried, wondering why he had avoided her all day, and he wanted to tell her what he'd seen, what had happened, but instead he lied, told her that Kevin was having some family problems and that he'd felt obligated to be there for his friend, to give him some moral support.

Penelope was silent for a moment. "I thought maybe it was because you'd changed your mind."

"Changed my mind?"

"About us."

Now Dion was silent. His heart was pounding, and his hand holding the receiver was shaking. He swallowed, forced himself to speak. "I

haven't," he said.

Penelope, when she spoke, sounded as nervous as he felt. "How do you feel about me?" she asked.

He knew what she wanted him to say, but he wasn't sure if he could say it. Or if he should say it.

He said it anyway: "I love you."

And it was true. He didn't know if he'd felt that way before, if he'd felt it all along, but he felt it now, and his pulse raced as he heard her say softly, "I love you too."

A painful erection was pressing against his jeans. He was in his bedroom, with the door closed, and he unbuttoned his pants with his left hand, releasing his hardened penis. He touched himself gently, and he pretended that she was the one who was touching him.

Neither of them had spoken yet, and Dion was aware that the silence was becoming awkward. "Do you--" he began.

"Are we--" Penelope said at the same time.

They laughed. "You go first," Dion said.

"Are we going to see each other this weekend?"

"Yes," Dion said. He was stroking himself, and he closed his eyes as he pressed the receiver to his ear, wondering if Penelope would be stroking him this weekend.

"They're having a fair tomorrow and Sunday," she suggested. "I read about it in the paper."

"That sounds good."

"I can drive if you want."

"No, I can drive," Dion said. He suddenly thought of Penelope's mother, naked on her hands and knees in front of Father Ralph.

And he came. Semen shot all over his jeans, all over the bedspread. He released his softening organ and looked at the mess, disgusted. "I have to go," he said quickly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Okay?"

"Okay. What time are you going to come by?"

"Is ten o'clock okay?"

"That's fine."

"Ten o'clock, then."

"Okay." There was a pause. "I love you."

"I love you too."

"Good night," Penelope said.

"Good"--he had been about to say "bye," but somehow "night" seemed nicer, more intimate, more appropriate --"night."

He hung up the phone, looked around for Kleenexes or a towel or a napkin, something to clean up the bedspread. He grimaced as he wiped his sticky left hand on the cuff of his pants. What the hell was the matter with him?

He didn't know, but he thought again of Penelope's mother, on her hands and knees, and for some reason he remembered the wine he'd had at Penelope's house, how it had tasted, and his penis began to stiffen.

Before he knew what he was doing, before he could think about it, he had pulled his pants down around his ankles and was once again furiously stroking himself.

He climaxed almost immediately.

"Fifteen cents is your change. Thanks." Nick Nicholson dropped the coins into the young woman's open palm and watched admiringly as she walked out of his store to the red Corvette in the parking lot. Her ass swayed gently back and forth beneath the material of her tight skirt.

She looked up at him and smiled before unlocking the car door and getting in. He glanced quickly away, caught but not wanting to admit it.

What was in those Daneam wines? He'd received a shipment on Tuesday and had just sold the last bottle of burgundy to the Corvette woman. And he wasn't the only one who couldn't keep them in stock. Jim over at OKay Liquor had sold out almost immediately, as had Phil at Liquor Shack.

The amazing thing was that he had never before seen a Daneam label. He'd been aware of the winery, of course, but as far as he'd known, Daneam sold only by mail order and only to specialty collectors. Now, all of a sudden, the company had been supplying its vintages to area stores, offering everything in its catalog.

Just as spontaneously, people had been buying. Not just collectors, not just connoisseurs, but regular people. There'd been no advance publicity, no hype of any sort, but there was now a sudden demand for Daneam wines among seemingly all segments of the general public.

He didn't understand it. He'd talked to several of his friends who were buyers for some of the area's better restaurants, and they too had started carrying Daneam wines. Two of them had even elevated the vineyard's products to "house wine" status.

All within the past week.

It was crazy.

A bearded, burly man wearing ripped jeans and a Chicago Cubs T-shirt walked into the store, jingling the bells over the door. He strode directly up to the counter. "You have any Daneam wines?" he asked.

Nick shook his head. "Sorry, just sold the last one."

The man slammed his fist down on the counter. "Shit!"

"You might try Liquor Barn over on Lincoln."

"I just came from there, asshole." He glanced around the store. "You sure you don't have some hidden in the back?"

"No. Sorry."

"Bullshit! I'm going to check myself."

"No, you're not." Nick reached under the counter until his fingers touched the handgun hidden there. "You're going to leave. Right now."

"Who says so?"

"I say so." Nick looked hard into the man's eyes, trying to stare him down, hoping he wouldn't have to pull out the gun and threaten the man with it.

"Fuck," the man said, shaking his head. He knocked over a small display of Chapstick products and pushed open the front door, causing the bells to ring crazily as he stormed out of the store.

Nick relaxed, able to breathe again, but he did not take his hand away from the handgun until he saw the man cross the street and disappear from view. He stood there for a moment, uncertain, then walked around the edge of the counter, locked the front door, and flipped the sign in the window from Open to Closed. The store wasn't scheduled to close for another half hour, but he didn't feel like remaining open any longer.

There wasn't any point to it.

He was all out of Daneam wines.

And he had the feeling that the customers who came in tonight weren't going to be asking for anything else.

Dion awoke, robbing his eyes, stretching. The blanket on top of him seemed heavy, and he kicked it off, sitting up. Outside the sun was out, light streaming through the window in pillars roughly the shape of the wood-bordered panes, but the atmosphere felt dark, oppressive. He had never been claustrophobic, but that was how he felt now. Everything seemed close, confining, as though both his room and the world outside were pressing in on him. Even his underwear felt unnaturally restrictive, the cotton much too tight against his skin. He peeled off his T-shirt, peeled off his shorts, but the feeling persisted.

He stood up. His body felt small. It was a strange thing to think, but it was the only way to describe the sensation. He had certainly not shrunk during the night, but his body seemed somehow compacted, as though his being was too large for its physical form.

No, it was not as if his body had shrunk. It was as if, inside, he had grown.

But that made no sense. Why would he even think of something like that?

He'd had dreams. All night. A lot of them. And though he could remember only fragmented images, he was filled with the certainty that the dreams had been all of a piece, that they had been not only related but interconnected, like individual episodes of a serial.

That frightened him for some reason.

Just as frightening were the images that had remained with him: the head of Penelope's Mother Margaret, grinning, impaled on his enormous erection as he paraded before a huge, orgiastic audience in an outdoor amphitheater; a line of ants on the dirt suddenly growing, changing, metamorphosing into men who bowed before him and promised their undying fealty; dead women swimming in a black lake, their faces blank and lifeless but their legs kicking, their arms paddling; Mr. Holbrook, shirtless, pushing a boulder up the side of an incline in a dark cavern;

three beautiful nude women standing on top of a high cliff, singing, as men on the flat ground below the cliff ran crazily forward, smashing their heads into the rock.

He wasn't sure why the dreams had frightened him so, but they had, disturbing him in a way that seemed almost more real than real life.

What was most disturbing, though, was that there was an element of anticipation in the fear. Despite the fact that he was awake and the dreams were over, the unpleasant feelings lingered, and they were not fading residual reactions to something that he had experienced but growing expectant feelings of dread for something that had not yet happened.

He walked into He bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror.

Perhaps he was psychic.

That was a scary thought He took a quick shower, and once again had the sensation that his body no longer fit him.

He pushed that craziness out of his mind.

He hadn't told his mom that he was going out with Penelope today, and after he showered, shaved, dressed, and walked out to the kitchen to grab something to eat, she asked him if he'd mow the lawn this morning.

He told her then that he was planning to go put, and to his surprise she paused a moment before giving her approval. He'd expected her to be understanding, accommodating, completely supportive. She'd seemed excited for him until now, happy that he was finally dating, and even this slight hesitation put him on the defensive. His mom hadn't attacked Penelope, but anything less than total backing smacked of criticism, and he felt immediately resentful. Hell, his mom hadn't even met Penelope.

What was she doing passing judgment?

Maybe she should meet Penelope.

Maybe.

He'd think about that later.

He ate a quick breakfast of toast and cocoa and borrowed ten dollars from his mom, promising to pay her back.

"Pay me back?" she said. "How?"

"When I get a job."

"Are you planning to get a job?"

He grinned. "No. But when I do, you'll be the first person I'll reimburse."

She tossed the car keys at him. "Get out of here."

He was lucky. The car's tank was full, so he didn't have to waste any money buying gas. He hadn't thought of that before. If he had, he would've borrowed twenty dollars.

He backed out of the driveway and pulled' onto the street. He glanced east toward the hill as he drove, and though the sight of the hill had unnerved him in the past, there seemed something familiar and comforting about it now, and he could not remember what had so disturbed him about the hill before.

Although it was only quarter to ten when he pulled up in front of the winery gates, Penelope was already waiting for him, sitting on a bench next to the driveway entrance. He was glad that she was alone, that he would not have to go up to the house and see her mothers. He didn't feel up to that this morning.

She stood when she saw him, and got in the passenger side when he reached over and unlocked the door. "Hi," she said.

"Hi."

They were shy with each other, the intimacy they'd shared on the phone, in the nighttime privacy of their own rooms, making them self-conscious in the rational light of day. Dion was embarrassed as he thought of the way he'd played with himself while talking to her, but he also found himself becoming aroused again.

Would they do it tonight!

He didn't know, but the possibility both scared and excited him.

Penelope reached into her purse, pulled out a newspaper article she'd clipped. "The fair's on Elm, outside of town. You know where that is?"

He shook his head.

"Go down to the next street and turn left. I'll tell you where to go."

"Okay."

They were silent after that, neither sure of what to say or how to act.

Dion wanted to turn on the radio, but he was aware that that would only draw attention to the silence, and he kept both hands on the wheel.

He cleared his throat. "What kind of fair is this? A Lion's fair?"

"No. It's, like, a festival, a psychic festival. They have fortune tellers and tarot readers, stuff like that."

Psychic? That was a spooky coincidence.

"Turn left here," Penelope said.

He did so, glancing to the right at a grove of trees as he turned. The grove looked familiar to him, and as he looked he experienced a momentary flashback to one of last night's dreams.

Women in the forest, naked, smeared with blood, howling wildly, screaming, begging for him "What are you doing?" Penelope demanded.

The car was half off the road and bumping over the shoulder toward the embankment. Dion swerved quickly, too quickly, and Penelope was thrown against the door as the car reentered the lane.

"What was that about?"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "Daydreaming."

He felt a soft hand on his arm, and he realized that this was the first time she had touched him without his initiating the contact. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "I'm fine."

But he was not fine. His dreams had escaped their sleep-bound confines and had entered the waking world, intruding upon reality, almost getting them into an accident, and that scared the hell out of him. What was happening? He wondered briefly if it could be something like an acid flashback. Maybe, back in the old days when he was a baby, his mom had put LSD in his milk or some thing, and now he was finally experiencing the side effects.

No, even at her worst, his mom would not have done something like that.

He didn't really think it was anything along those lines, though, did he? He wasn't afraid that it was drugs he'd been given as an infant or ultraviolet rays streaming through the hole in the ozone layer or even mental illness. No. He didn't know what he thought it was. But he knew that it was much scarier than any of those possibilities.

"Are you sure?" she said.

"Yeah." He looked over at Penelope and smiled, and he hoped the smile looked more real than it felt.

The Fourth Annual Wine Country New Age Music and Art Fair was scheduled to open at eleven, but when they arrived a little after ten-thirty, there were already quite a few people milling about, browsing amongst the booths, watching latecomers set up shop on the sawdust. The two of them got out of the car and, holding hands, walked across the small wooden footbridge to the fair entrance. The weekend event had been scheduled originally to be held in the park downtown, according to Penelope's article, but an inability to meet city permit registration deadlines had forced the fair organizers to move to an empty meadow near the foothills.

The change of venue did not seem to have affected attendance at all. A

number of people had arrived before them, and cars were continuing to pull into the makeshift parking lot. A sign above the entry booth said that admission was a dollar for children, two dollars for adults, and that picnic baskets and water jugs were welcome. Dion pulled out his wallet, taking out a five-dollar bill and handing it to the cashier.

"Did you go last year?" he asked Penelope.

She shook her head, smiling. "With who? I had no one to go with.

Besides, I'd never even heard of this thing until this week."

"Really up on current events, huh?"

She hit his shoulder, and that spontaneous expression of camaraderie made him feel closer to her than he ever had before. He put an arm around her waist, drew her to him.

Taking their tickets, they walked through the gate, getting their hands stamped by a ponytailed man in case they wanted to leave the fair and come back later in the day.

Dion looked around at the posters filled with pagan symbols, the booth closest to them that was stocked with witchcraft paraphernalia.

"Are you a Christian?" Penelope asked.

He turned to face her. "Why? Are you?"

"I suppose so. I mean, I don't go to church, but I believe in God."

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."

She smiled teasingly at him. "Scared you, didn't I? When you heard that word 'Christian,' you thought I wanted to know if you were born again."

"No," he lied.

"Be honest."

He laughed. "All right. Yeah. For a second. I thought maybe you'd been keeping this secret from me, waiting to tell me until you felt you could trust me, and you suddenly decided to spring it on me now."

"Because I was offended by all this heathenism?" He grinned. "Something like that."

She laughed. That's great." They walked toward the witchcraft booth.

"Oh, and I forgot to tell you--I'm a lesbian."

"I've heard that one before."

The woman in the witchcraft booth beamed at them, having obviously overheard them. "We're all lesbians in my coven," she said. "In fact, witchcraft is a celebration of our womanness."

Dion felt a tug on his arm as Penelope pulled him away from the booth.

"We have literature if you're interested," the woman said.

Penelope shook her head as they walked away. "No, thanks."

They stopped by another booth featuring exotic Third World musical instruments. Dion played with a rain stick, while Penelope used a mallet to hit what looked like a log marimba.

The two of them wandered through the fair, hand in hand.

Penelope looked toward a windowless trailer on which was painted the words: afterlife progression.

She turned toward Dion. "Do you believe in heaven?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I guess."

"Have you ever wondered what it's like? I mean, most people think of heaven as this wonderful place where you're reunited with your loved ones for eternity, but I always wondered, which loved ones? If a woman's husband dies and she marries again, is she reunited with both husbands up there? Is there polygamy in heaven? What about first boyfriends or lovers?"

Dion laughed. "I never thought about it that way."

"And what about pets? A lot of people think that they'll meet up again with their dog or cat in heaven. But which dog or cat? Does God make you choose and only allow you to have your favorite, or are you surrounded by all the pets you had throughout your life?"

"That's weird."

"Well, how do you see heaven?"

"I don't know. I've never given it much thought, really."

"I always thought that you'd have this huge entourage. You'd be surrounded by parents and brothers and sisters and friends and lovers and husbands and wives and dogs and cats and hamsters and goldfish and anything you ever loved."

"Sounds crowded."

"That's not all. It's heaven for them too. So each of those people would have their own entourage. All of your parents' friends and lovers and pets and their friends and lovers and pets and on and on and on."

"Sounds like hell."

She nodded thoughtfully. "It does, doesn't it?"

"Well, what do you think hell's like?"

"I don't know. Do you have any ideas?"

"Oh, a hot place where I'm bent over a gym bench and Mr. Holbrook is shoving razor blades up my ass for eternity."

She hit him, laughing. "You're bad!"

"Must be the Kevin influence."

From off to their right, Dion heard the high-pitched sound of feedback from a P. A. system. He looked in that direction and saw a group of musicians dressed in strange costumes atop a small raised platform. A

crowd of about thirty was standing in front of the stage.

The musicians began playing.

"That's a weird instrument," Penelope said. -"What do you think it--?"

Dion stiffened. His hand, gripping her arm, tightened.

"Hey!" she said. "What do you think you're doing?"

And then he was dancing, laughing, running down the hill naked, the women in pursuit. He could smell their ripeness, their hot arousal, mixed with the earthy odor of goat. He knew the women were going to tear him apart, rip up his flesh and drink his hot blood, but that was what he wanted, that was what he craved, and he felt wonderfully ecstatic as he ran from them, wanting to prolong this feeling, wanting to savor every moment of the chase before he felt the glorious pain of their nails and teeth as they killed him again.

He opened his eyes and he was looking up at the sky, a ring of people above him. He realized that he was lying on the ground. He could feel weeds and rocks pressing into his back through the material of his shirt.

"Dion?"

He saw Penelope, staring down at him, worried. She bent down next to him, took his hand in hers. "Are you all right?"

"What ... ?" he began. He cleared his throat. "What happened?"

"I don't know. All of a sudden you just collapsed. Like you fainted or something."

"Should I call an ambulance?" one man asked.

"No," Dion said, sitting up. "It's okay."

"Maybe you should have a doctor look at you," Penelope suggested.

"I'm fine." He stood, and though he felt a little dizzy, he tried not to let it show. He looked at the faces of the gathered crowd and forced himself to smile "That's it. Show's over. Leave money in the hat."

A few people chuckled, and the crowd began to disperse.

Dion felt a hand on his shoulder. "You sure you're okay?" It was the man who'd asked about the ambulance.

"I'm fine," he said. "I just tripped on a rock. Knocked the wind out of me."

The man nodded and moved off.

"You didn't trip," Penelope said.

No, he hadn't. But he didn't know what had happened. He did know that he did not want to be taken to a doctor, although he was not sure if it was because he was afraid the doctor might find something or because he already knew that there was nothing to find.

Maybe he had a brain tumor. Or some type of cancer. Maybe he'd had a mild stroke or a heart attack or something.

No. He didn't know how he knew it, but he knew it. This wasn't a medical thing. This was triggered by the sound of the pipes. And it was related somehow to his dreams and to ... His head hurt, and he closed his eyes against the pain.

"I think we'd better go," Penelope told him. "I'll drive."

He nodded and let her lead him out through the front gates of the fair and across the field to the car.

"I really think you should go to the doctor," she said. "What if this is something serious--"

"It's not."

"First, you swerve off the road, then--"

"It's an acid flashback," he said.

"What?" She stopped walking, letting go of his hand. Her face was white, shocked.

"A friend of my mom's put it in my milk when I was a baby," he lied. "I

get these every so often."

"My God."

He took her hand again, and they continued walking toward the car. He made up a story about how his mom had found 'out, how the man had been arrested and jailed. He wanted to tell her the truth, wanted to tell her that he didn't know what was happening, but something kept him from it. Although the truth was far more innocuous than the lies he was spinning, it seemed more intimate somehow, and a part of him was not ready to share that intimacy.

They ended up going to a movie, a matinee that took the rest of his ten dollars. Afterward, Penelope treated him to dinner. Mcdonald's. When they finished eating, they walked around a few of the stores not yet closed.

It was still early in the evening when he pulled to a stop just before the entrance to the winery and turned off the engine, killing the lights. The inside of the car was dark with the sudden absence of dashboard illumination, but he could clearly see Penelope's face, lit by the low glow of the sodium lamp above the winery gate. She looked gorgeous in the dim light, her skin smoothly pale, her lips full and red. The darkness gave her already alluring eyes a deepness beyond that whkh they normally possessed. He reached over and took her hand. Her skin was soft, warm.

"How do you feel about me?" she asked. There was a slight trembling in her voice.

He knew what she wanted to hear but was not sure he could say it. He had said it before, over the phone, but in person it was harder. Besides, he had never loved anyone before, and he did not know if he loved Penelope now. He liked her, was obviously infatuated with her, but he was not sure mat his feelings went any deeper than that. "How do you feel about me?" he asked.

She looked into his eyes. "I love you."

"I--I love you too," he replied, and it was true.

They kissed. His left hand was around her back, and his right cupped her breast, squeezing it gently. His penis was hard, and when his tongue slid between her lips and found her own soft tongue, he felt as though he was going to explode. His hand on her breast began to cramp from the awkward position, and he let it fall to a more natural position in her lap. She did not try-to push him away, and he moved his hand between her parted legs and started massaging her crotch through the jeans.

She reached for him and her fingers lightly traced the outline of his erection.

Peripherally, through the windshield, he thought he saw movement outside. He looked up as he kissed her and saw the security camera stationed on the top of the winery gate post swivel toward the car, but he didn't want to interrupt the rhythm they'd found and didn't want to upset her, and he pushed Penelope down on the seat as he started to unbuckle her pants.

April drove quickly in order to beat Dion home. She went over in her mirid what Margaret and the others had told her.

It explained a lot, she thought.

It explained everything.

The moon was full and hung high over the hills, white now after bleaching upward from yellow. The Vintage 1870 shops were closing, and Tim South and Ann Mel bury walked hand in hand across the gravel parking lot to the car, following a few other late stragglers. The air was warm but tinged with a cool autumn breeze. Tim, for one, welcomed the changing of the seasons. He was tired of sweating--his old Dart didn't have air conditioning and seemed to retain heat even with the windows open--and he was equally tired of spending the first half of each date in broad daylight. It was bad enough that his parents made him come home by eleven, but the fact that it didn't get dark until eight or eight-thirty put a further crimp in his style. He was glad the days were getting shorter. And he could not wait until Daylight Saving Time disappeared.

They reached the car, and he gallantly opened the passenger door, letting Ann in before stepping around to the driver's side.

She ran a hand through her short, spiky hair as he climbed into his seat. "So what do you want to do now?" she asked.

Tim shrugged. "I don't know."

He knew what they were going to do next. They both knew. But they always went through this hypocritical little routine anyway, pretending it was a spontaneous decision on both their parts, as though each of them hadn't thought about it all day, hadn't washed the most intimate portions of their bodies in preparatory showers, hadn't made sure they were wearing clean underwear and socks without holes.

"We could stop by Dairy Queen," Ann suggested. "They're still open."

"We could," Tim agreed. He paused. "Or we could just drive around."

She smiled. "On South Street?"

He nodded, grinning. "We could."

"Okay."

He started the car and pulled out of the parking Jot onto the street.

South might not be an officially recognized lover's lane, but it was their lover's lane, bordering as it did several of the wineries and the wooded foothills, safely away from casual traffic.

As always, they pulled onto the dirt shoulder and parked in a dark area between two large trees. Tim got out of the car and took a blanket from the backseat. Several times they had done it in the car, when it had been raining or too cold outside, but it had always been an awkward experience. The backseat was cramped and uncomfortable, and half of the front seat was taken up by the steering wheel, making movement extremely difficult, so they preferred, whenever possible, to do it outside.

That was one thing he would miss when winter arrived.

A pickup roared by, brights on, and they heard the laughter only seconds before a water balloon hit the hood of the Dart.

"Asshole!" Tim yelled.

He was answered only by a retreating honk of the truck's horn.

"Let's go into the woods," Ann suggested. "Away from the road."

"What if someone vandalizes my car?"

"They won't."

"They already did." He pointed toward the wet hood.

"You want to go home?"

"Of course not."

"Well, come on, then." She took his hand, leading him through the grass and toward the trees. "I'm not about to stay here and wait for those morons to come back and hit us next time."

"But--"

"No buts."

He shook his head. "You drive a hard bargain, Miss. Melbury."

"You better believe it."

They walked around a copse of bushes, away from the road. "How about here?" Tim asked.

"Ground's too rough. Remember that time when my back got all cut up?"

He nodded, grimaced. They continued walking.

They reached a small clearing and he was about to suggest that they spread the blanket here when he heard a sound of rustling leaves and cracking twigs from somewhere up ahead. He stopped, grabbed her arm, put a finger to his lips. "Shhhhh."

She listened, heard it. "Do you think it's an animal?" she whispered.

"I don't know." He began walking slowly forward.

"I don't think we should--"

They both saw it at once. Movement through the trees, flashes of skin, bluish white in the moonlight.

"Come on," Tim said, creeping closer. Through the leaves he saw rounded breasts, a triangle of pubic hair. A naked woman. Dancing.

Ann shook her head, holding back. "Let's get out of here."

"Let's just see what it is." He grabbed her hand. Her palm was wet, sweaty.

"I think it's some kind of orgy."

"You think so?" Tim grinned. "Come on, let's check it out."

"No," she said, and her voice was serious. "I'm scared."

"There's nothing to be scared of."

"Nothing to be scared of? Someone's dancing naked under the full moon and you say there's nothing to be scared of? We don't know who it is. It might be a witch or satanist or something. Let's just get out of here.

We'll go somewhere else."

"No," Tim said stubbornly. "I want to see." He started moving away from her, toward the dancing woman. He heard low, throaty laughter, thought he heard a sexy moan.

Maybe it was an orgy.

He crept forward. The ground here was littered with empty wine bottles, many of them broken, and it was almost impossible to walk quietly. He heard Ann following behind him, the ground crunching beneath her feet.

He wanted to tell her to be quiet, but he was afraid of making noise himself.

Afraid?

Yes. He was afraid. He was aroused, excited, titillated, but Ann was right. There was something spooky about the whole thing, something scary. Naked women did not just dance in empty fields under the full moon for no reason at all.

He could see the woman more clearly now. And another woman. They were older, in their thirties or forties, but they were still pretty damn sexy, and they were laughing and dancing in joyous abandon. Were they lesbians? He couldn't tell. But he thought that Ann was probably right.

They probably were part of some cult, performing some type of pagan ritual.

He crouched down behind a bush on the edge of the field. Ann moved behind him, pressing against his back. "Let's go," she hissed in his ear.

He shook his head, watching the women. They were laughing, obviously enjoying themselves, and his erection grew as he stared at their bouncing breasts, at the thatches of down between their legs.

The dancing sped up, became more frenzied, more frenetic. Tim was not sure when the movements crossed the border from free form into fanatic;

he knew only that suddenly the women were no longer dancing, no longer celebrating. There was a wildness to their steps, danger in their motions. They seemed mad, almost maniacal, and he was frightened. His erection was gone, and he wished that they were safely back in the car and on their way home.

Now there was laughter behind them as well as in front of them, and it no longer seemed happy or joyous. He turned his head, saw a nude woman dancing in the small clearing where he'd wanted to spread the blanket.

"Let's get out of here," Ann whispered.

He shook his head. Intentionally or unintentionally, these women, whoever they were, had surrounded them. It was now impossible for them to return to the car without being seen.

But why was he so afraid of being seen?

He didn't know. But he was afraid, very afraid, and he wished he'd listened to Ann in the first place and left when they'd first heard the sounds.

He was grabbed from behind.

He tried to scream, but a hand was clamped over his mouth, a filthy hand smelling of wine and woman. He tried to lash out, tried to kick, tried to hit; but whoever was holding him was stronger than he was and held him tightly. He turned his head as far as he could to the left and saw a naked woman carrying Ann into the field. Two more carried him, following.

He couldn't see for a moment, could see only the ground and dirty legs from the angle at which he was carried. Then he was thrown onto the ground. A small branch stabbed his side. He screamed with pain and heard the noise. They were no longer holding his mouth shut. He screamed as loud as he could, "Help!" at first, then just pure sound. Ann was screaming too, and the women still holding his arms and legs turned him so he faced her.

The women were ripping her clothes off, laughing, drinking from a bottle of red wine, the thick liquid spilling down their chins, down their chests, looking like blood.

What the fuck was happening?

He was filled with not only fear but panic--and with the certainty that both he and Ann were not going to get out of this, that they were going to die.

The first woman, the dancer they'd first seen, finished off the wine.

She was on top of Ann, facing backward, bottle in hand. "No!" Ann screamed, real terror in her voice. "No--!"

Her screams were cut off as the woman sat on top of her face and began shoving the thin end of the wine bottle viciously between her legs, in and out, in and out, thrusting with all of the strength in her arm, until the glass was opaque with blood.

"Ann!" Tim cried, but the other women were upon him now, ripping his clothes, pulling his hair. He went down. A finger found his eyeball, pressed in, and, with a stream of hot juices, pulled out. Teeth began ripping skin, rending flesh. Fingers were shoved into his anus, pulling, stretching, ripping. His screams were not even coherent, not even words.

The air was filled with the smell of salt and sex and heavy wine.

And they tore him apart.

It was long past her usual bedtime, but Penelope couldn't sleep. She had always been sensitive to moods, oversensitive perhaps, and the mood when she'd arrived home had been tense. Her mothers seldom argued, and never in front of her, but they did have disagreements, and their differences came out in subtle ways, small changes in familiar rituals, purposeful transgressions of established etiquette. They no doubt thought that they were hiding their problems from her, sparing her, but this clandestine conflict had made her that much more sensitive to small shifts of emotion.

The current fight was big.

Ordinarily there were one or two mothers involved in a dispute, and the others covered for them as best they could, acting as arbitrators, preserving the facade in front of Penelope. But tonight they had all been unusually silent, unusually solemn when she arrived home. All except Mother Margeaux, who, for some strange reason, was not there.

Mother Felice asked Penelope a few perfunctory questions when she walked into the living room, but it was clear that even she was not interested in the answers, and the other mothers sat in obviously expectant silence, waiting for her to leave so they could resume their conversation.

She did leave, going to the bathroom and taking a hot shower, and when she'd gone into the kitchen afterward to get a drink of water, she'd heard her mothers talking in the living room. Their voices were low, cautious, almost conspiratorial, as if they were afraid of being overheard, and the clandestine tone of the conversation caused Penelope to tread softly and to halt in the hallway outside the door, listening.

"She's our daughter," she heard Mother Felice say.

"That doesn't matter anymore." Mother Margaret.

She moved away from the doorway, not wanting to hear any more, her heart pounding, the blood racing through her veins. She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, closed the door and locked it.

She had not been able to fall asleep since.

Now she reached next to her, felt for her watch on the nightstand, held its vaguely luminescent face next to her eyes.

One o'clock.

She put the watch down, stared up into the blackness. More than anything, she wanted to sneak down the hall to Mother Felice's room, to crawl into her favorite mother's bed the way she used to, to find out what was wrong, what was happening, what they'd been talking about That doesn't matter anymore --but that was not possible. Even though she knew her mother supported her, even though she'd heard her mother defend her, she could not be entirely certain that her mother's sympathies were completely on her side. Mother Felice loved her, yes, but she was one of them too, and perhaps those loyalties were stronger.

One of them.

When had it become that? When had it turned into us versus them!

She wasn't sure. But it was probably something that had been building for a while. She'd noticed, many times before, that although her feelings for Mother Felice had remained constant, she seemed to like her other mothers less and less as she grew older. She had never been sure if that was because she was changing or because they had changed. They had all seemed equally nice to her as a child, she had loved them all, but as she'd grown she'd begun to see the differences between them. And the difference between what they were like and what^ she had thought they were like. Mother Margeaux's strength and focus began to seem bossy to her, her once admirable iron will autocratic and dictatorial. Mother Janine's free spiritedness seemed for a while flighty and irresponsible, then self-destructive, then just plain crazy. Mother Margaret's dispassionate intellectualism became cold, Mother Sheila's single-minded study of the science of the grape annoying and nerdily fanatic.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe this was something all children went through. Teenage rebellion and all that crap.

Maybe.

But she didn't think so.

The one thing which had not changed was that they all had equal power over her. If there were divisions of labor within the business, a hierarchical order with Mother Margeaux at the top, there was no such structure in their family life. At least not in regard to her. They were all her mothers, and if there were ever conflicting orders or requests or restrictions, it was up to her to resolve them. She had learned early on that it was impossible to pit one mother against another. They always took one another's side.

Which was why she could not ask Mother Felice.

It was Dion's influence too, she thought She had become much more assertive since she'd met him, more willing to stand up for herself and to openly disagree with or disobey her mothers. She saw her life now as he would see it, looked at it as an outsider would, and although she had always done that to a certain extent, it seemed as though now she was able to see, to know, to understand how truly strange her lifestyle was.

She didn't fit into her own life.

That was the truth of it. She had been raised this way, but it hadn't taken. She often felt like an outsider amongst her peers, but now she felt just as much an outsider around her mothers.

What would things be like if her father had lived?

She wondered about that more and more often lately. How would her life be different? How would she be different?

She wished she remembered her father, but she'd been too young when he died and everything she knew of him had come from her mothers. Even his appearance would have been a mystery had it not been for the photograph.

If he had only lived a little longer ... She could remember nearly everything, almost all the way back to her birth, and if her father had lived a few months longer, she would probably have retained a memory of him as well. She clearly remembered lying in the crib, in the nursery when she was only a few months old, although, to be fair, her memory was probably not as accurate as she believed it to be, comprised as it probably was of not only real events but events imagined during childhood, the visualization of extrapolations from her mothers'

stories, a recollection of things she had thought about rather than seen. But the images, all of them, were so vivid, so real, that they seemed like things that had happened, not things that she had imagined later or heard about secondhand.

Only many of the things she remembered did not correspond to what her mothers told her.

That scared her.

In one clearly remembered dream image or flash of recollection, she saw Mother Janine, laughing, naked, covered with catsup, dancing in the moonlight in front of the nursery window. But that couldn't be right, could it? That couldn't have happened.

Maybe it could have.

That's what frightened her.

She thought of those dreams of her father. Had that happened too? She could see in her mind a particularly vivid image that had recurred in several nightmares: her father, naked, screaming, held down by the rest of her mothers while Mother Margeaux licked the blood from a gaping wound in his chest.

She sat up in bed. Her mouth was dry. She reached next to her, felt around on the top of the nightstand for her glass of water, but she'd forgotten to bring it into the bedroom with her.

She kicked off the blanket and got out of bed. She could get a drink of water from the bathroom--the cup she used when she brushed her teeth was in there--but she did not like drinking bathroom water. She'd rinse her mouth out with it, but she would not swallow it. She knew that the sink water came from the same pipe as the water in the kitchen, but somehow the fact that it was in the same room as the toilet tainted it for her.

She'd go down to the kitchen.

Penelope opened her bedroom door as quietly as she could and stepped into the hall. The house was dark, and she noticed for the first time that it was completely silent. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, someone was always doing something, and there was activity, movement, sound, noise. But now her mothers were all asleep, all of the lights were off, and the dark silence seemed eerily oppressive.

She didn't want to wake her mothers, so she didn't turn on any lights but felt her way along the wall to the staircase. From somewhere below, from one of the shadeless windows in the kitchen perhaps, came a diffuse blue illumination that served to make the surrounding blackness darker.

There were chills on her arms, and she almost turned around and went back into her bedroom. There was something spooky about the house tonight, and though she'd lived in it all her life, though she'd gone up and down these stairs thousands of times, it felt different to her now.

She forced herself to start down the stairs. She was just being a baby, afraid of the dark. There was nothing here that wasn't here in the daytime. And their security system made the house probably the safest structure west of the Pentagon. No one could be hiding in here. No one could have broken in.

She was not afraid of someone breaking in.

No, she had to admit, she wasn't. She was trying to look at the situation logically, but her uneasiness was anything but logical. There was no sound basis for it, no reason why it should be there.

But it was.

She reached the bottom step and hurried to her right, through the doorway into the kitchen. Here, finally, she turned on a light. The small one above the stove. As she'd hoped, illumination drove away the fear. The objects around her were recognizable now--counter, sink, refrig erator, stove--and that air of threatening unreality which had existed only seconds before was effectively dispelled.

Nothing fought off monsters like light.

She opened the dishwasher, took out a glass, and turned on the faucet.

A figure passed in front of the window above the sink.

She jumped, almost dropped the glass, catching it only at the last second. Her first thought was: ghost. The figure had been pale, a blur of movement undistinguishable as a specific form.

Then she heard the familiar sound of the alarm being deactivated as a password was keyed into the panel outside the door, and in the dim circle of light on the other side of the window she saw Mother Margeaux.

What was she doing out this late? Where had she been?

The door opened, and Penelope stood there, glass in hand, as Mother Margeaux walked into the kitchen. She saw Penelope but said nothing, moving quickly and silently past her as though she wasn't there.

Penelope said nothing either, simply watched her mother's pale form fade into the darkness of the hall, her chill returning, wondering why her mother's blouse was torn.

Wondering why it was stained with blood.

Horton stared at the empty wine bottle on the table before him. He'd been staring at it now for nearly twenty minutes, trying to figure out why it was empty.

He could not remember drinking the wine.

He knew he had done so. He was drunk and acutely conscious of the fact.

But he could not for the life of him recall the specifics of the event:

how long it had taken to finish off the bottle, where he had gotten the wine in the first place, when he had started drinking.

Blackout.

That's what scared him. He'd known enough alkies in-J| his time to be familiar with the symptoms, and though he had been hitting the sauce a little heavier than usual ,| lately, it did not seem to him that he was having any difficulty controlling his drinking.

That was the problem--it never seemed that way to the person involved.

There was something else, though, something beneath | the surface fear of alcohol abuse that troubled him as he stared at the bottle, and it had to do with the wine itself.

Daneam.

Lezzie label wine. He'd heard of it, perhaps even seen a bottle here and there, but it had never been available, to ] his knowledge, to the general public.

And he could've sworn that he picked up this bottle at | Liquor Shack.

But he couldn't remember for sure.

He rubbed his eyes, massaging them until they hurt. The effect that the wine seemed to have on him was different than that of any alcohol he'd ever drunk before. Instead of feeling lonely and alone, cut off from everything except himself and his sorrows, he felt ... connected. To who or what he didn't know, but the feeling of communing with others through the wine, through his intoxication, was there, and it was creepy.

He also felt ... well, sexually excited. That was not something that usually happened either. To others, maybe, but not to him. He'd always found alcohol to be anything but an aphrodisiac. A de-sexualizer, if anything. Yet he was sitting here now with an erection, aroused after remembering the one time he and Laura had tried something kinky. She'd wanted him to cuff her to the bedposts and rape her, roughly, and he'd been happy to oblige, but when it came down to it, when she was manacled and spread-eagled before him, he'd been too inhibited and hadn't been able to maintain an erection.

Now, though, thinking back on the incident, he had no problem keeping up his erection. It pressed painfully against his slacks, and he thought that if Laura was here right now, he'd throw her on the fucking floor and shove it up her pussy until she screamed.

He picked up the bottle. It felt comfortable in his hands, familiar, and he supposed that he'd held it as he drank the wine, though he could not remember doing so.

Blackout.

What the hell was happening here?

The phone rang, He sprang to his feet, instantly sober, already striding out of the kitchen toward the telephone in the living room. The phone never rang unless it was someone from the station calling him in, and some cop's instinct, some perpetually responsible part of his brain automatically kicked into gear, immediately negating the effects of the alcohol.

He caught the phone halfway through the second ring. "Horton."

"Lieutenant? This is Officer Deets. I'm on-site and patched through the station. We, uh, have what appears to be a double homicide here--"

"Cut the police talk. What happened?"

"Two teenagers. They were torn apart."

Horton's mouth was dry. "Where?"

"On South Street."

"I'm on my way."

Searchlights, flashlight beams, and the blue-red strobes 1 of patrol cars lit the lonely section of road between the^ entrance to the Daneam vineyards and the old Mitchellj ranch. Horton stood inside the roadblock next to the meat truck and lit up. The inhaled smoke felt good in his lungs. Warm. He exhaled, looked toward the Dodge Dart, where Mccomber and another uniform were dusting for prints. Someone had spotted the car a half hour ago and called in. Both sets of parents had already phoned the station hours earlier, worried about their kids, and when the plates of the abandoned vehicle matched the kids' plates, Deets and Mccomber had been sent out.

They'd found the bodies in less than five minutes.

Or what was left of them.

Horton took a deep drag on his cigarette, trying not to think of that assembled pile of flesh and bone they'd bagged and packed in the meat truck. An adult was bad enough, but teenagers, kids ... He looked up at the stars, wondering for the zillionth time how, if there was a God, /

He could allow shit like this to happen.

He hated this fucking job.

They'd finally gotten a break, though. And, amazingly, old dickhead Deets was the one who'd found it.

A weapon. With prints.

Bloody prints.

He tossed his cigarette onto the asphalt past the road-"j block and walked back over to the black-and-white. The; weapon was still on the hood where he'd left it, bagged,3 tagged, and ready for the lab: a Daneam wine bottle.

He picked up the bag, thought of the bottle still sitting!] back on his kitchen table, and shivered.

"Lieutenant!"

Horton jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly? dropped the bag. He feigned calmness, looked back to-i| ward the evidence officer. "Yeah,"

he said.

"You through with that?"

Horton looked down at the bag in his hand and nodded| slowly. "Yeah," he said. "I'm through with it. It's all yours.";!

April awoke feeling hungover and horny.

She rolled over and squinted at the clock on the dresser but could not tell if it was eight-thirty or nine-thirty. Reaching down, she felt around on the floor next to the bed until her fingers found the wine bottle. It was not quite empty, there were still a few drops left, and she held the open neck of the bottle above her mouth and let the drops fall onto her lips and tongue.

God, it tasted good.

Her left hand slid under the sheet, between her legs. Lazily, she began rubbing herself. She was already wet, and there was a tingling within her vagina that she recognized as the need to be filled.

She'd give anything to have a hard cock inside her right now.

From the front of the house, from the kitchen, she heard the sound of the sink running, heard the rattle of silverware on pots and pans. She stopped fingering herself and let the bottle fall to the floor again.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, then sat up, leaning against the headboard. She thought about last night, about what Margaret and Margeaux and the others had told her.

Dion?

It didn't seem possible.

She didn't want it to be possible.

That was the truth. That was the reason she'd gotten so drunk last night. She'd told herself even as she downed the first bottle that she was tired of being good, that she simply wanted to cut loose after being straitjacketed for 80 long, but the fact was that she was drinking not to feel good but to forget, trying to numb her brain and block out what they'd told her about her son.

Because she knew it was true.

That was the bottom line. She knew it was true. She'd always known, perhaps, on some subliminal level. She'd been surprised, but she hadn't been shocked or disbelieving when the others had sat her down and explained it all to her, and she'd believed it instantly. All of it.

"Mom?" Dion knocked on the door of her bedroom.

She didn't answer.

"Mom? It's almost ten. Are you getting up?"

Ten? She squinted at the clock. It hadn't said nine thirty. It had said nine-fifty.

"Mom?"

She felt again that tingling, that maddening need between her legs, and she kicked off the covers and stood naked facing the door, not saying anything, half hoping that Dion would open the door and walk in and see her, but when he called "Mom?" again and started to turn the knob, she quickly said, "I'm up!

Don't come in! I'm not dressed!"

"Okay." She heard him move away, down the hall, and she felt ashamed that she would even consider exposing herself to her son. What could possibly make her act this way? What was the matter with her?

But she knew exactly why she had acted that way, she knew exactly what was the matter with her, and as she stood there, staring at the closed door, her fingers slid down her body, through her pubic hair, and into the soft, spongy moisture between her legs.

It was hard picking up a guy on a Sunday morning.

Not impossible. But hard.

She'd left Dion at home, with a list of chores and things to do, and she'd gone cruising. She hadn't done that for a while, and it felt good.

Pickings had been mighty slim at the first two taverns she'd hit:

barflies, winos, old men. But the third time had been the charm, and at the Happy Hour, she'd found a handsome, athletic young man gone only slightly to seed, an obviously once hot stud now beginning to fray around the edges but still substantially intact.

She sat next to him, drank with him, talked to him, touched him, and when he offered to drive her back to his place, she'd readily agreed.

Now he was naked and whimpering on the bed, the sheets covered with sperm and blood and urine, and she looked down at him, feeling sore and satisfied, and gently ran a finger through his hair. He flinched at her touch, and she felt a warm satisfaction at the response.

She'd been about to get dressed and return home, but she was suddenly in the mood for more, and she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. She still had time. Dion wasn't expecting her home until six.

She knelt before him, reached between his legs, grabbed his bloody, swollen penis.

"No," he cried. "No more."

She slapped his face, smiled. "Yes," she said.

She took him in her mouth, tasted the saltiness of the sperm and the blood and the urine.

She began to suck.

On the way home she stopped at Taco Bell and picked up some tacos for their dinner. She was home in time to see 60 Minutes.

On Monday afternoon, Dion was suspended for fighting.

He had never been in a fight before in his life. He'd been threatened by bullies a couple of times in grammar school and junior high, but he'd always managed to avoid getting beat up: running away or not showing up at the prearranged meeting place or somehow using his brains to escape the brawn.

But this time he was the one who started the fight.

Afterward, he wasn't even sure exactly what had happened or how it had escalated so fast. One minute he was sitting on top of a lunch table with Kevin and Paul and Rick, and the next minute he and Paul were rolling on the cement ground, clutch punching. Paul had made some joke about Penelope being a lesbian, and he had defended I her, responding in kind. Insults had flown back and forth.' And then they were fighting.

He could not remember having made a conscious decision to try to physically hurt Paul, but all of a sudden he was lunging at the other boy, fists flying, and by the time Kevin and Rick pulled them apart, he had already drawn blood.

A crowd had gathered, and though he heard the cheers I only peripherally, was aware of the crowd only as back' ground to the fight itself, he knew that the crowd was on his side, rooting for him, and with each punch he landed, he heard the exclamations of approval, sensed the satis- > faction of the watchers.

And then they were pulled apart.

The gathered students were staring at him silently, almost worshipfully, and he was trembling, pumped with adrenaline, as Mr. Barton, the counselor, led him to the ]

office. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had inflicted much more damage on Paul than Paul had on him. He would not have thought that possible even a few days before, but it did not surprise him now, and he was pleased with himself as Mr. Barton closed the office door, sat him down in the chair opposite the desk, and told him that he was to be suspended from school for three days.

Dion nodded numbly.

The counselor smiled at him. "I'm only doing this because I have to, you know. If it were up to me, I would've let you kill him."

Dion blinked. "What?"

Mr. Barton opened his bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorking it. "You know how it is. We all have to play these little games."

Dion realized belatedly that the counselor was drunk. Mr. Barton took a swig of wine, and Dion recognized the sweet, heady fragrance from his dinner at Penelope's. It smelled good, and he wanted some, but when the counselor offered him a drink, he shook his head.

"Come on," Mr. Barton said.

He could practically taste it in his mouth, and he felt a familiar stirring between his legs, but he forced himself to say, "No."

The counselor took another long drink from the bottle. "I understand,"

he said. "Saving it for later." He waved a hand toward the door. "You're free," he said, winking. "You're suspended. Get out of here."

Dion stood, left. It was not until he was off school property and walking home that he began to think back on what had happened and to wonder what had come over him and made him behave so completely out of character.

Beating someone up? Hurting someone?

Liking it?

And that weird encounter with the counselor ... There were things going on here that he sensed were related, interconnected, but that he just could not seem to Piece together. He was frustrated. It was like working on a math problem that he almost understood but could not quite get a handle on.

It had something to do with his dreams, though. And Penelope's mothers. And his mom. And Wine. By the time he arrived home, he was again trembling.| This time it was not adrenaline, though. It was fear.

Penelope stopped by after school. He hadn't seen her.; that morning in class, hadn't seen her at lunch, and he'd assumed that she'd been sick and stayed home, but when he'd tried to call her earlier in the afternoon, after he'd first arrived home, he'd gotten an answering machine and had hung up without leaving a message.

Now she and Vella walked into the house, Vella nervously, Penelope looking around with curiosity. She had never been inside before, and Dion wished he'd had time to clean up a bit. Breakfast dishes were still piled in the sink, visible through the kitchen doorway, and the living room floor was littered with Coke cans and the newspapers he'd been trying to read all afternoon. Not a good first impression.

She smiled at him. "So this is what you call home."

He reddened. "It's usually cleaner," he said, apologizing. "If you'd called and told me you were coming, I could've at least straightened up a bit."

Penelope laughed. "I wanted to catch you in your natural habitat."

Vella looked uncomfortably toward the window. "We heard what happened,"

she said. "We heard you got suspended." His face felt hot, flushed. He wanted to explain but he didn't know how, wanted to apologize, but he didn't know what for. Instead he stood there stupidly, nodding, looking at Vella, not wanting to meet Penelope's eyes.

"No one likes Paul much anyway," Vella said. "You're a big hero." But he could tell from her tone of voice that she didn't think he was a hero.

"It just happened," he said. He looked over at Penelope. "He called you a lez."

She blushed.

"Hey," he said, changing the subject. "You guys want something to drink?

Coke? 7-Up? Dr. Pepper?"

Vella shook her head. "No, We've gotta go. I'm supposed to just drive straight to school and straight back. I'm going to be late already. My mom'11 go ballistic if I'm any later."

"I thought you might want to come over," Penelope said quickly. "Vella could drop us off and I could drive. you home."

"But we have to hurry," Vella said.

Dion nodded, grinned at Penelope. "Let me write my mom a note."

Ten minutes later, Vella was dropping them off in front of the winery gates. They said good-bye, Penelope thanked her friend, and then Vella drove off and Penelope opened the black security box with her key and punched in the access code. She frowned as she did so, and Dion lightly touched her shoulder, not making the gesture too intimate, aware of the security camera trained on them from the top of the fence. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Penelope started to shake her head, then nodded.

The gate swung open, and they stepped onto the driveway.

"What is it?" Dion asked.

She turned to face him. "My mothers."

He was not surprised by her words, found, in fact, that he'd been expecting them. His heart was pounding. "What about them?"

She shook her head. "That's just it. I don't know. Not exactly." They began walking slowly up the drive. She told him what had happened Saturday night after she'd gotten home, described the way in which Mother Mar geaux had sneaked into the house after midnight, her blouse torn and covered with blood. "I love my mothers," she said. "But I don't know them." She took a deep breath. "I'm--I'm afraid of them."

"Do you think--"

"I think they might've killed my father."

They stopped walking, stared at each other. From the vineyard, carried on the slight breeze, came the low, musical hum of a conversation in Spanish. Somewhere near the buildings ahead, a car engine started.

"I have no proof," she continued quickly. "Nothing to go on, really.

It's just a feeling, but ..." She trailed offjf Her voice when she spoke was lower, and she glanced to the left and right as if making sure that no one was listen-i ing in. "I pretended I was sick yesterday. I stayed in myl| room. The reason I wanted you to come over today was! not because ... you know. It's because I was scared to,| come home alone."

She took a deep breath, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I don't know what to do."

"You should've called me."

"I couldn't."

"Is that why you weren't at school today?"

"I came after lunch. I--I spent the morning in the library."

Dion licked his lips. "What can I do?"

"I don't know."

He reached for her, hugged her, held her, and she began crying. He could feel her shaking, sobbing against his shirt, and though he wanted to be sympathetic and understanding, he could not help becoming aroused, and a powerful erection pressed outward against his jeans. She had to notice, but she didn't seem to mind, and he held her tighter, closer.

He thought of the man his mom had brought home, the man who'd been murdered, and the parallels were just too close for comfort. He thought of telling Penelope, but didn't want to worry her any further. He himself had dealt with the situation by ignoring it, not thinking about it, but Penelope was reacting in exactly the opposite way, and he tried to imagine what it must be like for her, living with people she suspected were murderers. He looked over her shoulder at the Greek-styled buildings at the top of the drive and shivered.

Too much was happening, there was too much going on. He didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, didn't know how to react. This wasn't a simple situation where there was a problem and a solution, where there was someone he could talk to, someone he could turn to who would set things right. He couldn't just go to the police and say that he was having weird dreams and there seemed to be something creepy about Napa and, oh, by the way, Penelope thinks her mothers are murderers. He couldn't talk to his mom because ... well, because he had the feeling that she might be involved somehow. He could probably tell Kevin, but Kevin wasn't in any better position to do something about it than he was.

Do something about what?

That was the main problem. That was the most frustrating aspect of this whole business. Nothing had happened. Nothing concrete, at least. There were hints and feelings and hunches, but there was no one specific thing he could point to that would convince a rational outsider that his fears were justified.

Penelope was afraid too, though.

That counted for something.

She pulled away from him, dried her eyes, tried to smile. "Sorry," she said. "I think I got mascara on your shirt."

"Don't worry about it."

They were silent for a moment.

"So what do you want to do?" Dion asked.

"I want to look in the lab. I want to walk into the woods. I want you to go with me."

"What do you think you'll find?"

"Nothing probably. But I want to know why I've been kept away from them all these years. I thought about it yesterday, and I feel like I'm some type of Skinner experiment, like I've been conditioned and trained to act and feel certain ways. I mean, I've never even been curious about the lab. I've just accepted that I can't go in there. I've been curious about the woods, but I'm afraid of them, and I feel like those are the responses I've been conditioned to have." She looked into his eyes. "I

want to break my conditioning." He nodded slowly. "What if we do find something?"

"I don't know. We'll figure that out when we come to it."

Mother Felice was in the kitchen, baking bread, and Mother Sheila was out in the vineyard somewhere, but the rest of them had all gone into San Francisco for a meeting with their distributor.

"Perfect," Penelope said to Dion over glasses of grapej juice. t "What?" her mother asked.

"Nothing."

They had some fresh bread with the juice, then went upstairs for a moment, ostensibly to Penelope's room. She stationed Dion on guard at the top of the stairs and quickly ducked into Mother Sheila's bedroom, emerging a moment later, holding a key which she quickly pocketed.

They walked downstairs and outside, walking clockwise around the house from the front, coming at the main winery building from the side not visible from the kitchen window. Inside it was dark, only the security lights on, and Penelope did not turn on the rest of the lights as they went in. They walked past the pressing room in the dim halflight, and stopped in front of what looked like a small closet door. "Wait here,"

Penelope said, opening the door and walking in.

"What is it?"

"Security. I'm going to turn off the cameras." There was a click, a hum, and a beep, and Penelope walked back out, closing the door behind her.

"Come on."

He didn't remember exactly where the lab was. He thought it was somewhere far ahead, at the opposite end of the building, and he was surprised when Penelope stopped at the next door down.

She looked at him, tried to smile. "This is it," she said. She was scared. He could hear it in her voice, and he put a reassuring hand on her arm as she inserted the key in the lock.

She glanced around, double-checking, making sure that no one had followed them, that the security cameras were not on, then quickly pulled open the door and walked inside.

He followed.

He was not sure what he had expected, but it certainly wasn't mis.

Sensors had turned on overhead tights the second they had walked through the door, and they stood with their backs to the entrance looking at Nothing.

It was a lab in name only. There were no machines, no beakers or test tubes, no tables. There was no furniture at all. The walls were empty, the floor was spotless. There was only a circular hole surrounded by a low stone wall in what appeared to be the exact center of the room.

Dion wanted to leave. If before everything had been too vague, too nebulous, things were fast becoming far too concrete. The fact that Penelope's mothers had for years been spending time in here, telling her that they were working in a lab on stains of grape and varieties of wine when in reality there had been nothing in here but this well, scared the hell out of him. The seeming irrationality of it, the fact that he could make no sense of the situation, was what frightened him the most, and he was suddenly afraid for Penelope. He wondered if his mom would let her move in with them, if he could Penelope squeezed his hand, moved forward.

"No!" Dion said.

"What?"

"Don't go near it."

She smiled, but there was no humor in it. "You think a monster's going to pop up and grab me?"

That wasn't exactly what he thought, but it was close.

"I have to know," she said softly.

He held her hand tightly, and the two of them walked forward into the center of the room. They looked down into the well, expecting to see a black, bottomless pit, or an empty shaft with bones on the bottom. But instead they saw, a foot or so below the stone rim, their own reflections staring back at them from the deep, glassy burgundy surface of wine.

"What is this?" Penelope asked.

"I don't know," he said, but on some level, he thought, he did know. For the fear he'd felt before, the worry, was gone, replaced by calm. The feeling that things he didn't understand were spinning out of control was not mere anymore. This room, this well, this wine, all of it felt reassuring to him, comfortable, as though he was now ensconced in familiar surroundings. He breathed deeply. The smell of the wine reminded him of the counselor's office, of Mr. Barton drinking from the bottle in his desk, and he thought back to the fight with Paul. On one level he was horrified by what had happened, disgusted witi himself, but a deeper part of him approved, and as he re-.J played the fight in his mind, as he thought of the small ^ changes that would have resulted in Paul's death, hef smiled.

"What are you smiling at?" Penelope demanded.

He opened his eyes, looked at her, blinked. What had^ he been smiling at? The thought of killing Paul? He shook his head. "Nothing."

The two of them looked down at the well of wine.

"What now?" Dion asked.

"The woods," Penelope said.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "I knew I'd have to go there ever since I caught Mother Margeaux sneaking into the kitchen the other night. I tried to pretend otherwise, tried not to think about it, tried to tell myself that--that there was an explanation for it, but I knew there wasn't."