She clapped the dark lenses to her face and turned to view the painted facade. "More weird-colored lights, better illlusion." She laughed uneasily. "Speaking of illusions, I was pretty reactive to those cheesy effects. I must be a little worn down."
"Why not?" Matt pushed his hands in his pants pockets against the night chill. "You've been through a lot. Almost choked to death by a dying romance-cover model, then that dank expedition to the Goliath for the Midnight Louie she--"
"You were the one who got wet!"
"I wonder how Kinsella got out of there without us seeing him, and without getting wet."
"Who said he didn't get wet? Max has done underwater escapes before, you know."
"Have you seen him since?"
"No." Temple turned away from the haunted house to eye the long stretch of empty lot to the fence.
"Neither have I."
She looked up, startled. "Why should you?"
Matt shrugged. "He seemed to enjoy inflicting himself on me."
"Why did you put up with that?"
"Because ... he claimed he could help me find out about my stepfather."
"Maybe he can, but it'll only be because that will help Max."
"Is he that selfish?"
"Selfish? No, just a survivor. And he's had more to survive than most of us, I think."
"So are we survivors?"
"You mean ... by nature?"
"I mean, you and I. We were starting to be we, and now--" He looked off to the fence too.
Temple sighed. Max might be absent, but he had become a fence between them just as effectively as if he had turned into interwoven steel and encircled them.
"I guess we can be whatever we truly want to be, no matter what," she said.
"But how do you know? "
"Instinct. Experience."
"And if you don't have any?"
She saw his point. "Hey, even with those things, it's still a struggle."
"Maybe it's for the best." Matt stared off at the fence again. He was used to fences; what he wasn't used to was freedom. "Maybe we needed a ... time-out. I've got to concentrate on settling the issue of my stepfather: is he dead or isn't he?"
"The police aren't sure?"
"The fingerprints are different. The question is, was someone masquerading as Cliff Effinger until a few years ago, or doing it more recently? Then the question is, why the masquerade?"
"Tough questions. The police will probably have to put them in the dead-case file."
"Memory has no dead-case file. I have to know, so Til look where and when and how I can."
"I could help you."
"I know you could. But it's something I have to do on my own, without any magical assistance. Kinsella got me thinking in some new directions, 111 give him that. I'll probably see him again too; he's right about the two casino deaths being connected. That I know. By instinct."
"See, you're getting some."
"Maybe's there hope."
What there was hope for stayed unspoken.
"Just don't hesitate to ask if I can help," she said.
He turned to her, looked down, about to say something, about to move, about to follow some instinct he maybe had never had before.
A spotlight lifted from the ground and arched toward them like a falling comet. They blinked and reared back from a nova-bright light the size of a dinner plate that burned everything around them into anonymous darkness.
"What do you think of the protesters?" a male voice demanded from the dark. "Are they interfering with your right to have a little Halloween fun?"
"What protesters?" Matt asked.
"These people who are all for bats, rats, snakes and spiders. Haven't you seen them picketing outside the fence?"
"They weren't there when we came," Temple said, "so we have nothing to say." She grabbed the sleeve of Matt's windbreaker to pull him out of the spotlight.
"Still." The reporter's voice followed them, as did the light. "You saw the haunted house.
Does it give rats, bats, snakes and spiders a bad rap? Do you believe these vermin are really our friends?"
Temple stopped to confront the following camera crew. "I believe that I would know some vermin with my eyes closed, and it's generally human. So, Crawford, I have no comment on those other creatures."
By now they had reached the gate. As new attraction-goers trick-led in, they had to pass a marching string of men and women bearing signs.
"He'll film us anyway," Temple muttered to Matt, her low voice sinking to an irritated growl.
"Just to be a pest."
So they plunged into the protesters' midst, still haloed by the blazing camera lights.
"Do you want to support the exploitation of helpless creatures?" a woman in a nylon parka asked. She lifted her cupped hands to reveal something small and furry. "Bats eat hundreds of thousands of insects, protecting our plants without chemicals. They don't deserve to be portrayed as bloodsucking sidekicks to vampires."
"Large spiders like this tarantula can live for twenty years, longer than the average domestic pet." A teenage boy held up a small glass terrarium occupied by the large desert spider known for never using Nair on its legs. "Would you want Lassie to be a figure of horror and distaste like Stella here?"
The spider's formidable legs worked against the confining glass.
"Maybe she's trying to tell us Timmie is down the well again," Temple suggested as she stared at an arachnid she'd never before seen up close and personal. "I'm sure she's an upstanding citizen and a model mother. But..."
"We don't want to see our friends made into monsters," the boy went on, his earnest adolescent face aimed at the camera, "just because some people are afraid to see them for what they are."
Thanks to the setup, Temple and Matt were cast as the ignorant creepy-crawly-haters.
Although, Temple thought, in fact she was an ignorant creepy-crawly-avoider, if nothing else.
"I couldn't kill a fly," she added in her own defense. "And I'm sure that few people take the Halloween image of these animals seriously, any more than people really think black cats are unlucky. I happen to have a black cat--"
"Do you know where your black cat is tonight?" A man had thrust his pale, intense face into the well-lit circle.
"Well, uh... sometimes he gets out."
"Out?" The first woman was back, more indignant. "Letting a cat roam is bad enough, but a black cat at this time of year? Are you crazy, lady? You want some Satanist to swoop him up and do some* thing horrible?"
"No! He isn't a cat you can swoop up easily. I mean, he's big, really big."
"What about the closet sadists who like to run over animals if they can? Who's going to see a black cat on the street?"
"I'm sure he'll be at home waiting for me. He always is."
"Until the day he doesn't come home," the woman said ominously.
The boy lifted his spider house. "Someday she won't come home and all the baby spiders will die."
"It's all right to kill things that we portray as horrible and scary," the man said. "We vilify creatures that we fear because they compete with us for something, or because they have defenses against us."
"Stop persecuting rats, bats, spiders and snakes," the woman sang out. The man and boy and other protesters joined her.
Matt and Temple stood by, silent vilifiers helpless to do anything, poor misrepresented creatures caught in a media trap with a relentless Crawford Buchanan hidden behind the camera.
Tiring, the protesters huffed off to march and shout other slogans.
"Well," came Crawford's deeply insincere baritone from beyond the hot circle of light. "Have you changed your mind about these creatures?"
"Yes, indeed," said Matt blandly. "We will definitely give them up for Lent in future."
With that they ducked past the camera crew and bustled down the sidewalk into the simple racket and bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip.
"Oh, that was ... intolerable journalism, trapping innocent bystanders between the devil behind the camera and those well-meaning protesters. Only Crawford Buchanan would pull such a stunt, and for Hot Heads, the sleaziest tabloid show on TV. Looks like the worm is still working for them, our bad luck."