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"Lactose intolerant?" She wiped her lared at the Sea Beast "You have no proble down a paperboy and the closet perv from the hardware store, but you can’t eat dairy cows?"

Steve rolled onto his back and tried to look apologetic - streaks of purple played across his flanks, purple being his embarrassment color Viscous tears the size of softballs welled up in the corner of his giant cat’s eyes

"So I suppose you’re still hungry?"

Steve rolled back onto his feet and the earth rumbled beneath hi," Molly said "Stay close to the tree line" Using her broadsword as a walking stick, she led hied tofollowed by a e

Theo

For soh Theo’sthe ion is the opiate of the ion of the addict," Theo thought Which is why he was feeling the gut-wrenching remorse of the excommunicated as he took the machete to the first of the thick, fibrous stereen weeds fell likeof the machete, and his hands picked up a film of sticky resin as he threw each plant onto a pile in the corner of the yard

In five minutes his shirt was soaked with sweat and the pot patch looked like a miniature version of a clear-cut forest Devastation Stuh pile of cannabis, then pulled out his lighter and se the flame to a piece of paper "Throw off the chains of your oppressors," Marx had said These plants, the habit that ith them, were Theo’s chains: the boot that Sheriff John Burton had kept pressed to his neck these last eight years, the threat that kept hi,

He threw the burning paper, and the flames of revolution whooshed over the pile There was no elation, no rush of freedom as he backed away from the pyre Instead of the triu loss, loneliness, and guilt: Judas at the base of the Cross No wonder communism had failed

He went into the cabin, retrieved the box fro collection into shrapnel with a ballpeen ha fro in the shade just outside the uel labored away inside, cooking the chemicals down into methamphetamine crystals Beakers the size of basketballs boiled over electric burners, the fuuel was short and wiry, just thirty years old, but the lines in his face and the grinacio was only twenty, fat and full of hness, and convinced that he was on his way to being the new godfath-er of the Mexican Mafia They had crossed the border together six led in by a coyote to do exactly what they were doing And what a sweet deal it had turned out to be Because the lab was protected by the big sheriff, they were never raided, they never had to move on a moment’s notice like the other labs in California, or bolt across the border until things cooled off Only six h nacio was driving a flashy Dodge four-wheel drive and wearing five-hundred-dollar alligator-skin Tony Laht hours of work a day, for they were only one of three crews that kept the lab running twenty-four hours a day And there was no danger of being stopped on the road while transporting drugs, because the big sheriff had a gringo in a little van cos away

"Put out that cigarette, cabrone!" Miguel shouted "Do you want to blow us up?"

Ignacio scoffed and flicked his cigarette into the pasture "You worry tooHe ht, he didn’t know if the , he was brooding, and no auel appeared at the doorway and stood over Ignacio "Do you feel that?"

"What?" Ignacio reached for the AK-47 that was leaning against the shed "What?"

Miguel was staring across the pasture, but see You worry tooacross the pasture toward the tree line "I have to go over there Watch nacio stood up and hitched his silver-studded belt up under his belly "I don’t hoatch the stove I’uel strode over the hill without looking back Ignacio sat back down and pulled another cigarette from the pocket of his leather vest "Loco," he mumbled under his breath as he lit up He s about a time when he would run the whole oper-ation, but by the ti to worry about his partner He stood to get a better look, but couldn’t see anything beyond the top of the hill over which Miguel had disappeared

"Miguel?" he called But there was no answer

He glanced inside the shed to see that everything was in order, and as far as he could tell, it was Then he picked up his assault rifle and started across the pasture Before he got three steps, he sahite wo over the hill She had the face and body of a hot senorita, but the wild gray-blonde hair of an old woman, and he wondered for the thousandth ti with American women Were they all crazy? He lowered the assault rifle, but s to warn the wo her suspicious

"You stop," he said in English "No trespass" He heard the cell phone ringing back in the shed and glanced back for a second

The wo "We nacio asked

His answer ca like two burned scrub oak trees, then the giant cat’s eyes "Holy Mary, Mother of God," Ignacio said as he wrestled with the bolt on the assault rifle

Theo

Eight years of living at the edge of the ranch and never once had Theo so much as taken a walk down the dirt road He had been under orders not to But nohat? He’d seen the trucks going in and out over the years, occasionally heard nore it all, and there had never been gunfire Going onto the ranch to investigate automatic weapons fire seemed an especially stupid way to exercise his newfound freedo about hi to face Was he, in fact, a coward?

The sound of ain the distance made the decision for hi off stea screa collection off the front steps and went back to the closet to get his pistol

The Smith & Wesson rapped in an oily cloth on the top shelf of his closet next to a box of shells He unwrapped it, snapped open the cylin-der, and dropped in six cartridges, fighting the shake that wasfrom his hands to his entire body He dumped another six shells into his shirt pocket and headed out to the Volvo

He started the Volvo, then grabbed the radio ood that would do Response ti as thirty minutes in Pine Cove, which was one of the reasons there was a town constable in the first place And ould he say? He was still under orders not to go onto the ranch

He dropped the ear, and was starting to back out when a Dodge minivan pulled in beside him Joseph Leander waved and smiled at him from the driver’s seat

Theo put the Volvo in park Leander clierand looked at the 357 lying on the seat "I need to talk to you," he said

"You weren’t o"

"I a out on the ranch"

"That’s perfect," Leander said, shoving a sh theinto Theo’s face "We’ll go together"

Eighteen

Dr Val

The bust of Hippocrates stared up at Val Riordan from the desk "First, do no har her Versace scarf over the Greek’s face

Val was having a bad day The call fro that her treatment, or lack of it, had not caused Bess Leander’s suicide, had thrown Val into a quandary She’d zo questions with questions, pretending to take notes, and not catching a word that anyone said to her

Five years ago there had been a flood of stories in the ers of Prozac and similar antidepressants, but those stories had been set off by sensational lawsuits against the drug companies, and the follow-ups, the fact that not one jury found antidepressants to cause destructive behavior, had been buried in the back pages One powerful religious group (whose prophet was a hack science fiction writer and whose followers in-cluded masses of deluded ainst antidepressants, reco instead that the de-pressed should just cheer up, buck up, and send in so The various professional journals had re ported no studies that proved that antidepressants increased the incidence of suicidal or violent behavior Val had read the religious propaganda (it had the endorsement of the rich and famous), but she hadn’t read the professional journals Yes, auto her patients with antide-pressants had been wrong, but her attes was just as wrong Now she had to deal with the fact that shethem

Val hit the speed dial button to the pharmacy Winston Krauss answered, but his voice wasand Gibt"

"Winston, you sound horrible"

"I hab on my mask and snorkle"

"Oh, Winston" Val rubbed her eyes, causing her contacts to slide back in her head somewhere "Not at the store"

"I’m in the back room" His voice became clear on the last word of the sentence "There, I took it off I’ to talk to you about killer whales"

"Pardon?"

"I’ a Jacques Cousteau tape about them"

"Winston, can we cover this in session?"

"I’m worried I was especially turned on by the male one Does that make me a homosexual?"

Jeez, it didn’t worry hi as he wasn’t a gay wannabe whale-humper As a psychiatrist, she’d tried to drop terms like "full-blown batshit" froht, yet with Winston, she couldn’t keep the ter the batshit concession on the cave floor It had to stop "Winston, I’ everyone back on their SSRIs Get rid of the placebos I’et their levels up as quickly as possible Make sure to warn the ones ere on Prozac that they absolutely can’t miss a day like they used to I’ll move those who need it later"

"You want me to take everyone off of the placebos? Do you knoto call ive them credit for the unused placebos they still have"

"I won’t do it I alh saved to spend a month at the Cetacean Research Center on Grand Bahama You can’t take that away from me"

"Winston, I won’t coo on vacation and fuck Flipper"

"I said I won’t do it You were the one who started this What about your patients’to put everyone back on antidepressants either, so you’re going to lose sos in the first place"

"No"

Val was shocked at the conviction in Winston’s voice His self-esteeer seeress "So you want the town to know about your little problem?"

"You won’t do that You have more to lose than I do, Valerie If you blow the whistle on me, then I’ll tell the whole story to the papers I’ll get io to jail"

"You bastard I’ll send my patients down to the Thrifty Mart in San Junipero Then you won’t even have the legiti to stay just the way they are, Dr Val" Winston hung up

Valerie Riordan stared at the receiver for a second be fore replacing it in its cradle Ho in the hell had she given control of her life over to so to get it back without going to jail?

Theo

Joseph Leander had the autoainst Theo’s ribs He’d thrown Theo’s gun into the backseat Leander earing a tweed jacket and wool dress slacks and a fil on his forehead The Volvo bounced over a rut in the dirt road and Theo felt the barrel of the auto to remember what you were supposed to do in such a situation, but all he could reive up your gun

"Joseph, could you pull that gun out of ? This is a pretty buet new shocks" That sounded sufficiently glib, he thought Professionally cal himself

"You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? It would have just passed into history and no one would have noticed, but you had to dig things up"

"So you did kill her?"

"Let’s say I helped herabout"

"She was the ht, and she treated me with about as much respect as a turkey baster"

"Wow, you lost me there, partner"

"They use the stoner One squirt and you throw the a turkey baster, so you hung your wife?"

"Her herb garden killed her Foxglove tea Contains huge aitalis Stops the heart and it’s al for it Ironic, isn’t it? I would have never known about any of that crap if she hadn’t blathered on about it constantly"

Theo was not at all happy that Leander was telling hi to have to make some sort of move to save himself or he was dead Ram a tree maybe? He checked Leander’s seat belt; it was buckled What kind of criminal kidnaps someone and remembers to buckle his seat belt? Stall for now "There were heel ht I don’t know, sheher up there"

They were co out of the forest that surrounded the ranch into an open pasture Theo could see a metal shed next to a double-wide house trailer a couple of hundred yards ahead A bright red Dodge truck was parked by the shed

"Hot a new trailer for the boys Pull up to the shed and park"

Theo felt panic rise in his throat like acid and fought it down Keep the and they won’t shoot Hadn’t he heard that so-screen TV and a tumble with Betsy? Divorce never occurred to you?"

Leander laughed and Theo felt a chill run through his body "You really are dense, aren’t you, Crowe? See that shed up there? Well, I hauled twenty-eight million dollars’ worth of et a piece of that, but it’s a nice piece I move it all I’m a salesman, a family man, innocuous and unnoticeable Who’d suspect me? Mr Milquetoast"

"Your wife?"

"Bess found out about it Funny thing is, she was following me because she suspected an affair, but she never found out a thing about Betsy andto turn me in I had no choice"

Theo pulled up next to the shed and turned off the Volvo "You have a choice now, Joseph You don’t have to do this"

"I’ back to h etBess I’s This isn’t crime, it’s just a well-paid delivery route"

"So you’re not going to shoot me?" Theo really, really wanted to believe that

"Not if you do what I tell you to do Get out of the car Leave the keys Slide over and come out on my side"

Theo did as he was told and Leander kept the pistol trained on him the whole time Where did Leander learn to do that? He’d hadn’t had a television that long Guy uel! Ignacio! Coestured with the pistol for Theo to et through the door and i, and plastic barrels of chele metal chair sat in front of half a dozen electric burners that were filling the shed with a brutal heat

"Sit down," Leander co yanked out of his back pocket

"Put your hands behind you" Theo did as he was told and Leander threaded the handcuffs through two metal bars at the back of the chair and snapped theuys," Leander said "Probably taking a siesta What was Burton thinking when he put a house trailer down here? I’ll be back in a second"

"Then what?"

"Then Ignacio will shoot you, I’uy that actually did what you asked hi down the ranch road, she asked Steve to make himself look like a trailer and he had done it Sure, she had to ram in the air with her hands, and heto make himself look like the tin shed next to hi andover his head, but after a few seconds he got it What a guy Okay, his tail, which had always hung down into the creek bed before, was showing, buthi unit Or at least it was an air-conditioning unit now No telling what body part it had been before he changed into a trailer

She’s patting rowl of pleasure rolled out of his front door

Molly ran and hid behind the shed, peeking out to watch the white Volvo pull up and stop She almost stepped out to say hi to Theo, then saw the other un on hiuy led Theo into the shed and nacio won’t be shooting anyone, Mr Bald Guy He’s busy being digested right now," but the guy did have a gun How the hell did Theo let himself be taken prisoner by someone who looked like an assistant principal?

When it was evident that the bald guy was coe of the air-conditioning unit, and swung herself up onto the roof

The bald guy was going around to the front door She ran over Steve’s back and looked down over the edge

"Miguel! Ignacio!" the bald guy yelled "Get out here!" He seeo in there," Molly said

The bald guy stepped back, looking like he was going to go into a fit searching for where the voice had come from

"You’re an assistant principal, aren’t you?" Molly said

The bald guy finally spotted her and tried to hide the gun behind his back "You’re that crazy wo here?"

Molly scooched up to the edge of the dragon trailer "’Scuse nored her question "What are you doing here?"

"Excuse"There is an as-yet-unapologized-for aspersion on the floor You’ll have to handle that before weWhat are you doing here? Where are Ignacio and Miguel?"

"You’re not apologizing?"

"No Get down froun

"’Kay," Molly said, patting Steve on the head/roof "Steve, eat this impolite motherfucker"

She’d seen it before, but it was especially exciting to be sitting on Steve’s head when he changed shape and his tongue leapt out below her to wrap around the assistant principal After the initial slurp, the inevitable crunch (which had bothered her before) was sort of satisfying

She couldn’t figure out if it was because the assistant principal had pointed a gun at her friend and called her a crazy wo used to it

"That was just swell," she said She ran across Steve’s back, slid down to the top of the air-conditioning unit, then jules of his trailer foron shape He rolled over on his side and Molly watched as the scales on his belly parted and seven feet of dragon penis eed as thick and stiff as a telephone pole Luan

"Wow, that is i a few steps backward

Steve sent her a e similar to the one he had sent to the fuel truck It worked better on Molly Her knees obbly, a warhs, and she could feel the pulse rising in her temples

She looked into Steve’s eyes (well, one of theently touched him on the lips (or ould have been lips, if he’d had them), and let the sweetly acrid smell of his breath (a mix of Old Spice, manly Mexicans, and barfed coash over her

"You know," she said, "I never kissed a guy with assistant principal on his breath"