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Outside, a truck engine started The noise ebbed, and silence flowed back into the night

I re sone?

She said, Do you think they’re gone?

Over dinner, I had agreed to be her paladin, and no self-respecting paladin would decide on a course of action based on a ht, I said, let’s go

We cliht to find our way to the es creaked when it swung open, which I had not noticed previously

In the narrow passage between the garage and the tall hedge, no one waited to tear off our heads So far so good But they would be waiting elsewhere

After dousing the flashlight, I hesitated to lead her out to the driveway and the street, for fear that a sentinel had been stationed there

Intuiting ate to a public greenbelt

We went to the rear of the building Passing the steps that led to her apart down at us

We crossed the foggy yard Slick yellow leaves littered the wet grass: fall-off froer on this stretch of the central coast than elsewhere

In a white fence with scalloped pickets stood a gate with carved torsades Beyond lay the greenbelt A sward of turf vanished into theAnnao south, I think

Stay near the property fences here along the east side, she advised The greenbelt borders Hecate’s Canyon to the west It’s narrow in soic Beach, Hecate’s Canyon was legendary

Along the California coast, ers, reach crookedly toward the sea, and any town built around one of thees Soh to be called defiles

Hecate’s Canyon was a defile, but wider than so the strearew athis, and co conditions and by the toxic substances that had been illegally dumped into the canyon over the years

The walls of the defile were navigable but steep Wild vines and thorny brush slowed both erosion and hikers

In the 1950s, a rapist-ic Beach He had dragged theraves

The police had caught hi of his eighth victim His wispy blond hair had twisted naturally into Cupid curls His face eet, his -fingered hands had the gripping strength of a practiced climber

Of the previous seven victims, tere never found Clerebold refused to cooperate, and cadaver dogs could not locate the graves

As Annareenbelt, I dreaded encountering the spirits of Clerebold’s victims They had received justice when he had been executed in San Quentin; therefore, they had mostly likely moved on from this world But the those bodies had never been foundfor their poor bones to be reinterred in the cemeteries where their families were at rest

With Annamaria to protect and with the responsibility to thhatever vast destruction was on the yellow-eyed hulk’s agenda, I had enough to keep me busy I could not afford to be distracted by the irls ould want to leadabout those sad victiered, I tried to elicit more inforh the nearly iinally from around here? I asked softly

No

Where are you from?

Far away

Faraway, Oklahoma? I asked Faraway, Alabama? Maybe Faraway, Maine?

Farther away than all of those You would not believe me if I named the place

I would believe you, I assured her I’ve believed everything you’ve said, though I don’t knohy, and though I don’t understand most of it

Why do you believe me so readily?

I don’t know

But you do know

I do?

Yes You know

Give me a hint Why do I believe you so readily?

Why does anyone believe anything? she asked

Is this a philosophical question--or just a riddle?

Empirical evidence is one reason

You ravity because if I throw a stone in the air, it falls back to the ground

Yes That’s what I enerous with empirical evidence, I reminded her I don’t even knohere you’re from Or your name

You know my name

Only your first name What’s your last?

I don’t have one

Everybody has a last naht was cold; our breath sht have been persuaded that we had exhaled the entire vast ocean of fog that noned all things, that she had come down from Olympus with the power to breathe away the world and, out of the resultant

I said, You had to have a last naone to school

You’re home-schooled?

She did not reply

Without a last naet welfare?

I’m not on the welfare rolls

But you said you don’t work

That’s right

What--do people just give you money when you need it?

Yes

Wow That would be even less stressful than the tire life or shoe sales

I’ve never asked anyone for anything--until I asked you if you would die for me

Out there in the dissolved world, St Joseph’s Church tower , for in the distance its fae for two reasons First, the radiant dial of ht in the , St Joe’s le strike of the bell and the half-hour with two Now it rang three ti

How old are you, Annahteen years without asking anyone for anything--yourequest

I had an inkling, she said