She turned her head to look at the number of the row house to her right. "Damn," she whispered, because, as usual, caught up in her thoughts, she'd lost track of where she was and what she was doing. Ryerson Biergarten-whom she'd come from Buffalo to see-lived at a number behind her and on the other side of the street. She pulled his letter from the pocket of her simple rust-colored fall jacket and checked the return address. She repocketed the letter, and, not for the first time, had misgivings about being here, in Boston, on her way to see the most celebrated and successful of the nation's psychics. She thought, also not for the first time, that it was like the criminal hanging around the police station and acting nervous. Sooner or later someone was bound to ask questions, and sooner or later all the terrible answers would come spilling out. Especially if the someone asking the questions was Ryerson H. Biergarten.
She turned around, started back down Newbury Street. She saw Ryerson's house almost at once. It was a two-story white row house with black shutters on long, narrow windows. And there was a tall, attractive woman coming out the front door. Joan caught the woman's eye and the name "Coreen" flashed through her head. Doesn't fit her, Joan thought. She looks like a bitch. But the name, she realized, could have come from anywhere. It could have come from some elderly man sitting in one of the row houses, for instance, his thoughts on a long-dead love affair. That sort of thing had happened before, as if the frequency of Joan's psychic receiver changed at random, so, from time to time, what she received was a burst of something totally unrelated to the moment. She had a quick and urgent desire to call out the name, to see how the woman would react, but within a few moments the woman climbed into a late model LTD Crown Victoria and was speeding away from her, southwest down Newbury Street. Joan sighed; these quick bursts of psychic input were always strangely wearying.
A few moments later she was ringing Ryerson Biergarten's doorbell.
Chapter Three
In Buffalo, New York
Laurie Drake said to her best friend Jennifer Wright, "They do too eat people."
Jennifer rolled her eyes. "No, no, no, Laurie-werewolves eat people."
They were coming out of an advanced placement class in mythology at the Henrietta Heberling Memorial Junior-Senior High School and were on their way to lunch. They were best friends because most of the other kids in the school thought they were strange and unapproachable. The fact was that they were very bright, brighter in fact by half than their classmates, and so they had gravitated to each other. Jennifer, however, couldn't help but think that Laurie could be impossibly dense at times. She went on, her tone very instructional. "Vampires are subtle, Laurie. They feed, but they don't feed too much. They don't waste anything."
Laurie would hear none of it. "I know what I saw-"
Jennifer cut in, laughing, "My God, it was only a movie."
"Nothing is only anything, Jennifer," Laurie interrupted icily. "Don't you think that people research these things?! Of course they do. Besides, what we're talking about here is hunger! Have you ever been hungry, Jennifer?" She paused; they both knew the answer to that-Jennifer had never wanted for anything. Laurie nodded sagely. "Of course you haven't. I have. I've been hungry enough to eat an old shoe-and let me tell you something-"
Behind them a man's voice said, "Hurry along, girls." They turned their heads in unison to see the physical education teacher, Mr. Piper, behind them. He added, "Cheeseburgers today; you don't want to miss out on cheeseburgers, do you?" And he slid gracefully past them and into the cafeteria. "What a fox!" Jennifer whispered.
Laurie would normally have agreed very heartily, but her stomach-which had been aching on and off now for several days-suddenly began to ache very badly, so her only response was a whispered "Uh-huh."
~ * ~
In Boston
Hell, Ryerson thought, convinced that Coreen had returned for another whack at him.
"No!" he called, although he was on the second floor of the house and whoever was ringing the doorbell couldn't possibly hear him. With Creosote in his arms, he made his way down the open spiral staircase to the front door. He hesitated. The doorbell rang again. He looked down at Creosote, whose tongue was wagging at him. "It's a woman, isn't it, boy?" Creosote's tongue wagged harder. Ryerson went on. "And it's not Coreen, is it?" Creosote's tongue disappeared into his mouth; he cocked his head questioningly. "It's a stranger," Ryerson said. "Someone from out-of-state." Creosote's head cocked to the other direction; his tongue reappeared briefly.
Ryerson pulled the door open.
He had never seen Joan Mott Evans before. He had tracked her down to Buffalo, using various standard sources-the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Vital Statistics, the New York Motor Vehicle Department. At the beginning he had only her first name to go on, which was given to him by the parents of poor, damned Lila Curtis; "Our daughter had a friend," Mrs. Curtis had told him. "Someone she confided in, someone she looked up to, like a big sister. She said her name was Joan." He had a good description of her, too, also given to him by Lila's parents. And eventually, using those two pieces of information-Joan's first name and her description-it had been easy enough to track her down, although when he'd arrived at her house in Buffalo two months earlier, there had been no answer to his knock.
"Yes?" he said now.
"Hi," said Joan Mott Evans with a slight, unconvincing smile, as if sorry she were disturbing him. "We've never met, Mr. Biergarten." Her smile flattened. "Not formally, anyway."
"Yes?" he said again.
"I was in the city visiting a friend-her name's Nadine Homer; perhaps you know her."
Ryerson shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not." The description that Lila Curtis's parents had given him had been very accurate-short auburn hair, a round, appealing face, small straight nose, large, round, expressive gray eyes; "She's very nice to look at," Lila's father had said. "She's no beauty queen, but she is nice to look at."
Mrs. Curtis had merely shrugged and said, "Yes, I suppose so." She had a trim and athletic-looking body, too; Ryerson got a quick mental picture of her doing an hour's worth of aerobic exercises each morning-it was an image he liked, because he had always been a firm believer in a healthy body being necessary to the maintenance of a strong and healthy mind.
Joan rattled on, clearly nervous now, but trying hard not to show it. "I have a copy of your book…." She produced a copy of Conversations with Charlene from her purse and thrust it at him. "And I was wondering if you could autograph it for me."
He smiled graciously, took the book from her, patted the pocket of his shirt-beneath his ragged white pullover sweater-and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have a pen."
She smiled back, searched a few moments in her purse, came up with a gold Cross pen, and handed it to him. She said, as he wrote on the title page of the book, "Actually, we have met, in a way. You came to my house a month ago."
He handed her the book. "Thanks," she said, and began to stuff it into her purse.
"No," he said, "please. Read the inscription."
She smiled nervously at him. "The inscription?"
"Yes. Please read it."
She took the book from her purse, opened to the copyright page, then to the title page. She read: