She caught sight of Robert Heppler across the room. "Larry, I see someone I need to talk to. Thank you for the invitation."
She hurried past him before he could respond, anxious to forestall any other misguided offers he might be inclined to make. Larry was a nice guy, but she had no interest in him at all. Why he couldn't see that was a mystery to her, but it was the sort of mystery commonplace in relationships between men and women.
She came up to Robert with a grin. "Hey," she said.
"Hey, there you are," he replied, grinning back.
She reached out and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Still rail thin and towheaded, still looking very much like a mischievous little boy, Robert might have been mistaken by those who hadn't seen him in a while for the same smart-ass kid he had been all through school. But Robert had grown up when no one was looking. Right out of graduate school, he had married a small, strong-minded young woman named Amy Pruitt, and Amy had set him straight. Forthright, no-nonsense, and practical to a fault, she loved Robert so much she was willing to take him on as a project. Robert spent most of his life with his head somewhere else, developing codes, languages, programs, and systems for computers. Always convinced of his own brilliance and impossibly impatient with the perceived shortcomings of others, he had gotten as far as he had mostly on grades and the high expectations of his professors that one day they could point to him with pride in cataloging their academic accomplishments. But the real world has an entirely different grading system, and Amy was quick to recognize that Robert was ill equipped to succeed in the absence of a serious attitude adjustment.
She performed the surgery with flawless precision. Nest could hardly believe the difference in Robert between the time he met Amy and the time he married her, scarcely ten months later. Robert seemed totally unaware of the transformation she had wrought, believing he was just the same as he had always been. But after getting to know her a little better, Nest was quick to realize that Amy was the best thing that could have happened to her old friend.
Now they had one child, a boy of two who was clinging to Robert's leg playfully, and another on the way. Robert had a family and a life. He was a real person at last.
"Hey there, Kyle," she said, bending down to ruffle the boy's blond hair. "We missed you downstairs today."
"Was 'n church," the little boy mumbled, then blew her a kiss.
"I kept him with me," Robert admitted, shrugging. "I wanted some companionship. Amy stayed home. Not feeling so good this morning when she woke. This pregnancy has been a little rough."
"Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, sure. You know Amy. Tough as nails. But she's being careful. She's a little over six months. Kind of a touchy time."
"You'll let me know if I can do anything?"
Robert laughed. "I'll let you know if / can do anything. With my parents and my sister and her husband hovering over her twenty-four hours a day, I can't get close enough to find out!"
He glanced over at Larry Spence, who was watching surreptitiously from behind his coffee cup. "I see you can still draw bees like honey. Or maybe horseflies would be a better choice of word."
She arched one eyebrow. "I see you still haven't lost your rapierlike wit, Robert."
He shrugged. "I'm just being protective. He reminds me a little of that guy who kept coming on to you the summer before we entered high school, the one I would have decked if you hadn't hypnotized him into falling over his own feet. What was his name, anyway? Bobby something?"
"Danny Abbott," she said quietly.
"Yeah. That was a summer, wasn't it? I was in trouble all the time. Of course, you were the one playing around with magic."
He meant it as a joke, but it was closer to the truth than he realized. Nest forced a smile.
"You remember that business on the Fourth with John Ross and those fireworks exploding all over the place?" he pressed. "I was chasing after you through the park, and I fell down or something, hit my head. I can still remember the way you looked at me. You said afterward you used magic." He paused, suddenly thoughtful. "You know, I never did understand what really happened."
Nest reached down abruptly, snatched up a squealing Kyle, and thrust him at his father. "Here, Kyle, you explain it to him," she urged.
"Splane," Kyle repeated, giggling.
Robert took his son into his arms, jiggling him gently. "Don't forget the Christmas party Tuesday night," he said to Nest, kissing Kyle's fat cheeks. "You got the invitation, didn't you?"
She nodded. "Sure. I'll be there."
"Good. My parents are sure to find a way to blame me, if you aren't."
"Serve you right," she said, moving away. "See you later, Robert. Bye, Kyle." She wiggled her fingers at the boy, who hid his face in his father's shoulder.
"Hey, don't scare him like that!" Robert threw after her.
She put her coffee cup on a tray near the kitchen door, ready to leave. Larry Spence was still watching her, but she tried not to notice. Life in a small town is filled with moments of trying not to notice, she thought wearily.
She was just departing the reception room to retrieve her coat from the narthex when a tall, angular young woman with wild red hair and acrylic green eyes came up to her.
"Are you Nest Freemark?" the young woman asked, eyes wide and staring like a cat's. Actually, on closer inspection, she seemed more a girl barely out of her teens than a woman. Nest nodded. "I'm Penny," the other announced.
She stuck out her hand, and Nest took it in her own. Penny's grip was strong and sure. "I just wanted you to know how much I admire you. I've followed your career, like, ever since the Melbourne Olympics. I was just a little girl, but you were such a great inspiration to me! I wanted to be a runner, but I didn't grow up with strong enough lungs or something. So I became an actress. Can you tell?" She giggled. "Anyway, I thought you should know there's someone who still remembers you. You know, when you were famous." She giggled some more. "Hey, it was nice meeting you. You'll be seeing me around, I expect. Bye-bye."
She was gone before Nest could reply, disappearing into the crowd gathered by the coffee urn. Someone who remembers you from back when you were famous? Nest grimaced. What a strange remark! She had never seen the young woman before and had no idea who she was. She didn't even look like anyone Nest knew, so it was impossible to match her up to a Hopewell family.
Must be someone new in town, she thought, still staring after the young woman. Things around here change so quickly, she thought, mimicking Alice in Wonderland.
Speaking of which, there was Larry Spence, moving in her direction with a decidedly hopeful look in his eye. She turned as if remembering something and hurried out the door.
CHAPTER 3
Findo Gask stood across the street from the First Congregational Church, just in front of the Hopewell Gazette, waiting patiently for Penny's return. He was an incongruous figure standing there in his frock coat and flat-brimmed hat, his tall, stooped figure silhouetted against the white stone of the newspaper building by the bright winter sunlight. With his black book held in front of him like a shield, he might have been a modern-day prophet come to pronounce judgment on an unsuspecting populace.
The truth, however, was a good deal scarier.
Even as demons went, Findo Gask was very old. He was centuries old, and this was unusual. For the most part, demons had a tendency to self-destruct or fall prey to their own peculiar excesses rather early in their careers. In completing their transformations, demons shed their human trappings, reducing themselves to hard, winged husks, so that when stripped of their disguises they looked not unlike bats.
But as hard as they worked to shed their human skins, they remained surprisingly dependent on their origins. To disguise themselves, they were forced to resume looking like the creatures they had been. To satisfy their desperate need to escape their past, they were forced to prey upon the creatures they pretended to be. And to survive in their new forms, they were forced to struggle constantly against a small but intransigent truth—they hungered endlessly and helplessly for contact with the creatures they despised.