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She playfully pinched his cheek

"What?" he said

"You’re cute"

As they drove out of Svenborg, it occurred to Holly that the distribution pattern of the houses and other buildings was more like a pioneer settles were concentratedopen space toward the periave way to rural precincts But when they ca, the delineation between town and country was alht and unan, with only an intervening firebreak, and Holly could not help but think of pioneers in the Old West constructing their outposts with a wary eye toward the threats that ht arise out of the lawless badlands all around them

Inside its boundaries, the town seemed ominous and full of dark secrets

Seen from the outside-and Holly turned to stare back at it as the road rose toward the brow of a gentle hill-it looked not threatening but threatened, as if its residents knew, in their bones, that so to claim them all

Perhaps fire was all they feared Like much of California, the land was parched where huht water to it Nestled between the Santa Ynez Mountains to the west and the San Rafael Mountains to the east, the valley was so broad and deep that it contained raphical variety than soh at this ti, olden hills, brown e points on their two-roith chaparral, valleys within the valley where groves of California live oaks flourished, and sreen vineyards encircled by vast seared fields

"It’s beautiful," Holly said, taking in the pale hills, shining-gold meadows, and oily chaparral Even the oaks, whose clusters indicated areas with a coh water table, were not lush but a half parched silvergreen "Beautiful, but a tinderbox Hoould they cope with a fire out here?" Even as she posed that question, they came around a bend in the road and saw a stretch of blackened land to the right of the two-lane county road Brush and grass had been reduced to veins of gray-white ash in coalblack soot The fire had taken place within the past couple of days, for it was still recent enough to lend a burnt odor to the August air

"That one didn’t get far," he said "Looks like ten acres burned at most

They’re quick around here, they juood volunteer group in town, plus a Department of Forestry station in the valley, lookout posts If you live here, you don’t forget the threat-you just realize after a while that it can be dealt with"

Jih, and he had lived there for seven or eight years, so Holly tried to suppress her pyrophobia Nevertheless, even after they had passed the charred land and could no longer se in her ht, afla like tornadoes and consu that lay between the raes

"Ironheart Far her

As Jim slowed the Ford, Holly looked to the left of the blacktop county route

A farmhouse stood a hundred feet back from the road, behind a withered lawn It was of no particular architectural style, just a plain but cozy-looking two-story farle roof, and a coht have been lifted off its foundation anywhere in the Midwest and plunked down on new footings here, for there were thousands like it in those cornbelt states

Maybe a hundred yards to the left of the house, a red barn rose to a tarnished horse-and-carriage weather vane at the pinnacle of its peaked roof It was not huge, only half again as large as the uni house

Behind the house and barn, visible between them, was the pond, and the structure at its far side was the ht on the farm

The windmill

Jim stopped in the driveway turnaround between house and barn, and got out of the Ford He had to get out because the sight of the old place hit hi a chill to the pit of his stomach and a flush of heat to his face In spite of the cool draft from the dashboard vents, the air in the car seeen content to sustain hi deep breaths, and tried not to lose control of himself The blank-ed house held little power over him When he looked at it, he felt only a sweet iven ti sadness or even despair But he could stare at it, draw his breath nor seized by a powerful urge to look at it again

The barn exerted no emotional pull on him whatsoever, but the windaze on that cone of li transformed into stone hiical serpenthaired Medusa when they had seen her snake-ringed face

He’d read about Medusa years ago In one of Mrs Glynn’s books

That was in the days when he wished with all his heart that he, too, could see the snake-haired wo rock

"Jim?" Holly said froed roohest on the first floor the two-story ht But to Ji as a twenty-story tower Its once-pale stones had been darkened by a century of gri ivy, roots nurtured by the pond that abutted one flank of theeasy purchase in deep-mortared joints

With no one to perform needed maintenance, the plant had covered half the structure, and had grown entirely over a narrow first-floornear the timbered door

The wooden sails looked rotten Each of those four ar a sixty-foot spread across adjoining spans, and each was five feet ith three rows of vanes Since he had last seen the ether The time-frozen sails were stopped not in a cruciforet this place cleaned up,to happen next"

She followed him to the head of the steps but stopped there and watched him descend two at a time, with the air of a kid excited by the prospect of adventure All of his s about the mill and his fear of The Enemy seemed to have evaporated like a few beads of water on a red-hot griddle

His ehest point on the track thus far

Sensing soe web had been spun above the door, across the curve where the wall beca around as her thuer, greasy as a dollop of wax and dark as a drop of blood, was feeding greedily on the pale quivering body of a snared moth

With a broos, they made the sht so supplies at the house, so they could scrub the griht

Holly chased down and killed not only the spider above the door but seven others, checking darker corners with one of the flashlights until she was sure she had found the with countless other spiders She decided not to think about that