He couldn't afford to have that happen.
He turned around and walked back out to the street. The ur'droch joined him after a dozen paces, all shadowy presence and rippling movement at the edges of the light.
"Anything?" he asked.
When the shadow-demon gave no response, he had his answer. It was not unexpected. It wasn't likely Ross was there if the young woman hadn't seen him. Who was she, anyway? Where had she come from? Another pawn on the board, waiting to be moved into position, he thought. It would be interesting to see how he might make use of her.
He walked back down the road to where he had left the car parked on the shoulder and climbed inside. The ur'droch slithered in behind him and disappeared onto the floor of the backseat. He would give Ross another three days, until Christmas, before he gave up his vigil. It wasn't time to panic yet. Panic was for lesser demons, for those who relied on attributes other than experience and reasoning to sustain them. He started the car and wheeled it back onto the roadway. It was time to be getting home so that he could enjoy the little surprise he had prepared for Nest Freemark.
Nest climbed in beside Kathy Kruppert, squeezing her over toward her husband on the Suburban's bench seat. In the back, somewhere between six and nine teens and preteens, two of them Krupperts, jostled and squirmed while trading barbs and gossip. She exchanged hellos with everyone, then leaned back against the padded leather while Allen backed the big Chevy onto Woodlawn and headed for the next pickup.
Her thoughts drifted from John Ross and Findo Gask to Bennett and Harper Scott and back again.
"Everything okay, Nest?" Kathy asked after a few minutes of front-seat silence amidst the backseat chaos. She was a big-boned blond carrying more weight than she wanted, as she was fond of saying, but on her the weight looked good.
Nest nodded. "Sure, fine."
"You seem awfully quiet tonight."
"For a basically noisy person," Allen added, straight-faced.
Nest gave him a wry grin. "I'm just saving myself for later, when the singing starts."
"Oh, is that it?" Allen said, nodding solemnly. He glanced at her over the top of his glasses, beetle-browed and balding. "You know, Kath, it's always the quiet ones you have to look out for."
They hit a bump where weather and repeated plowing had hollowed out a section of the roadway. Ouch! Hey, watch it! the kids all began yelling at once in back, offering myriad, unnecessary pieces of driving advice.
"Quiet down, you animals!" Allen shouted over his shoulder, giving them a mock glare. When they did, for what must have been a nanosecond, he declared with a smirk, "Guess I showed them."
Kathy patted his leg affectionately. "Father always knows best, honey."
Allen and Kathy had been married right out of high school, both graduating seniors, six or seven years older than Nest. Allen began working as a salesman with a realty firm and found he had a gift for it. Ten years later, he was running his own business. Ten years earlier, he had approached Nest with an offer for her house at a time when she was seriously considering selling. Even though she had decided against doing so, she had been friends with the Krupperts ever since.
"How are the Petersons?" Kathy asked her suddenly.
"Pretty frail." Nest dug her hands into her parka pockets with a sigh. The truth was, time was running out on the Peter-sons. Their health was deteriorating, there was no one to look after them, and nothing anyone said or did could convince them to consider moving into a care facility.
"You do the best you can for them, Nest," Kathy said.
Allen shifted his weight in the driver's seat and brushed back his thinning black hair. "They're determined people. You can only do so much to help them. There's no point in fussing about it. They'll go on, just like they have been, until something happens to force them to change their way of life. You have to respect that."
"I do, but I worry anyway. It's like sitting around waiting for the other shoe to fall."
"Sure enough," Kathy agreed with a sigh. "My uncle Frank was like that."
"Gran, too," Nest said.
Allen chuckled. "Good thing you two understand the problem so well. That way, you won't become part of it later on. That'll sure be a relief to a lot of folks."
They picked up two more teens from the Moonlight Bay area, then headed back into town for a rendezvous with a van-load of kids driven by Marilyn Winthorn, one of the older ladies who still worked assiduously with the youth groups. From there, they started on their rounds, following a list of names and addresses supplied by Reverend Andrew Carpenter, who had taken over the ministry after Ralph Emery retired three years ago. At each stop, they sang a few carols at the front door, deposited a basket of Christmas goodies supplied by the ladies' guild, exchanged Merry Christmases and Happy New Years, and moved on.
By the twelfth visit, Nest had stopped thinking about anything but how good this was making her feel.
It was sometime around eight-thirty when they pulled into the driveway of an old Victorian home on West Third, an area of fallen grandeur and old money gone elsewhere. The name on the list for this home was smudged, and no one could quite make it out. Hattie or Harriet something. It wasn't a name or address anyone recognized, but it might be a church member's relative. They climbed out of the vehicles, walked to the front entry, and arranged themselves in a semicircle facing the door.
There were lights on, but no one appeared to greet them. Allen stepped up to the door, knocked loudly, and waited for a response.
"Creepy old place, isn't it?" Kathy Kruppert whispered in Nest's ear.
Nest nodded, thinking that mostly it seemed rather sad, a tombstone to the habitation it had once been. She glanced around as the kids whispered and shuffled their feet, waiting impatiently to begin. It was a neighborhood of tombstones. Everything was dark and silent along the rows of old homes and corridors of ancient trees. Even the street they bracketed was empty.
Someone came to the door now and inched back the curtain covering the glass. A face peeked out, its features vague and shadowy in the gloom.
The door cracked open, and a frail voice said, "Goodness."
Taking that as a cue to begin, Allen stepped off the porch, and the youth group began singing "Joy to the World." Their voices rang out through the darkness and cold, and their breath clouded the air. The door remained cracked, but no one appeared.
They had begun the refrain, "Let heaven and nature sing," when the door burst open with such force that it shattered the glass pane, and a huge, hulking figure stormed through the opening and down the steps. Albino white and hairless, he stood seven feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds, but he moved with such quickness that he was on top of the group almost as quickly as their singing turned to shrieks of fear and shock.
"Joy to the world! Joy to the world! Joy to the world!" the big man shouted tunelessly.
The kids were scattering in every direction as he reached Allen Kruppert, knotted one massive fist into the startled realtor's parka, and snatched him right off his feet. Holding him aloft with one arm extended, he shook Allen like a rag doll, yelling at him in fury.
"Joy to the world! Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"
Fists pressed against her mouth, Kathy Kruppert was screaming Allen's name. Marilyn Winthorn was herding the kids back toward the vehicles, intent on loading them in as quickly as she could manage, her face tight and bloodless.
Allen was kicking and shouting, but the big man held him firm, continuing to shake him as if he meant to loosen all his bones and empty out his skin.