

Poppycock

(A Midsummer Night's Mare)

A. Michael Schwarz

Poppycock: A Midsummer Night's Mare

Copyright © 2014 A. Michael Schwarz

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from A. Michael Schwarz.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Book Layout by A. Michael Schwarz

Cover Art by Alex Donovan

Dedicated to Mr. Dexter Sederquist

who believed in me long before I did.

.

" _My mistress with a monster is in love."_ —Puck

A Midsummer Night's Dream

" _Fear is the most real belief there is."_ —Poppycock

A Midsummer Night's Mare

Possession

They resembled clouds of smoke. Pollution. If it had been daylight, an onlooker would simply have seen puffs of black, noxious fumes and wouldn't have thought it possible that it could be anything else.

It was, however, not daylight and no one was gazing up to look at them. They watched together. They had always been together. It had never been any other way, despite the contradictions of history, story books and anyone living, dead or in between.

Always Puk and Poppycock.

The ground lay beneath them, grassy and cold. A dusty country road rambled nearby, with trees, bushes and weeds. A frog croaked in the distance. A car idled, its exhaust mixing with the red tail lights like a bloody fog.

Nothing particularly distinct or interesting marked this spot of land, except for one detail: a shallow ravine with two dead men in it. Evidently, a struggle had taken place. These two mortal men, intent on destroying one another as they had been, wouldn't be missed much.

A larger bloke, dumpy and swollen at the waist, hair a mess of unkempt curls, lay over a thin necked, reedy fellow with gangly limbs and slicked back hair that grayed at the side burns. This dumpy bloke, holding a switchblade, had fallen dead on top of the reedy fellow who was holding a handgun.

The time had come to do the deed. A hundred days of planning and a hundred years of waiting, all coming together right here, right now.

In the sky the smog clouds roiled.

Chapter 1: The Life of Sarah M

Fog, observed Sarah Montgomery, can hide things. It can hide a great many things, such as decay and grime and all those little parts of a city that can never truly be cleaned. Yes, those deviant eyesores can be covered up; they can be blanketed and blotted so the eye can fixate on something else more palatable, more agreeable, more beautiful.

Like the Palace of Fine Arts.

She inhaled deep breaths, hands on her hips. Her watch showed ten past seven in the morning. A greening koi pond glimmered before that wondrous Romanesque extravagance in the middle of San Francisco's Marina District.

The Palace of Fine Arts was a left over remnant from a world's fair of decades past. Its enormous Corinthian columns and vaulted arches did nothing if not inspire. Sarah enjoyed running around it, partly because she could go four times for the perfect workout, but mainly because the structure made her forget about the real world, particularly on a foggy morning.

She gave herself up to the swirling mist and closed her eyes. She could feel her soul quiet with each beat of her heart. Sweat slicked her skin, blood thumped comfortably in her ears, her body radiated heat. It felt good.

Then, out of her control and unable to accept the idea of inner peace, her mind reverted back. Back to the place she'd tried all night to forget. No. No, she couldn't forget. Couldn't get that image out of her head.

She began her cool-down around the pool. Her mind dwelt once again on the image she hoped to forget. Perhaps her mind would find itself capable of discarding the memory once she sucked every detail out of it. Like a desiccated worm baked in the sun, if she could just get out the meat, it might blow away.

She followed the deep furrows of her memory back two days ago, back to Los Angeles, to the coroner's office and the city morgue. She followed her thoughts again, down those cement steps, past that little room with the dentist chair and the cadaver that sat there as if waiting to have a cavity filled, past the man-sized scale and sink for God knows what, to the gurney and sheet and the bloodstained flesh.

To the body.

Why _into_ the morgue? Why did they have to go into that crypt? "I'm so sorry, Miss Montgomery, our viewing room is full."

Her mind brought it back in agonizing detail: the blackening skin, the incisions in the wrists and ankles that had been made with the utmost surgical accuracy, no slightest jag, no hitch in that gray bone stump. She let her mind drift and hover there, remembering the decomposing and defiled thing, the stench of rotting meat that mixed unhealthily with some awful cleaning agent. It had clung inside her nose, as if its molecules had fused permanently with her olfactory nerves.

She sneezed.

Just how had those cuts been made? The forensics team, Detective Logan had said, had determined that the killer had removed the feet and hands on site, right where that goddamned cadaver had lain. The lab boys confirmed it, the time of death had been coincident with removal of said appendages and the body had not recorded—in skin scrapes or other external trauma—having been moved. Not one inch.

Into her already distraught mental detail emerged the absurd image of a killer with a bone saw, plugging into a heavy-duty 12-gauge extension cord as he hunched over a fear-paralyzed victim.

The body had lain right where it had been found, chopped stumps where hands and feet should have been, in that awful dumpster, was it? Isn't that what the burly detective had told her? That the poor sonovabitch had been killed, naked, amidst the dirty diapers and dog food?

"Jesus." A swear word that became a prayer. _Yes, Jesus, have mercy. If you're out there, have mercy on us all._

She had yet another thought as she rounded the first turn in the paved path, the part crowded out by fir trees and scrub; "Why me? _"_

In her travels to meet up with Detective Logan, once she had denied that the victim was her father, Samuel Montgomery, she had not considered that that same father might then be implicated in the murder, until the detective had made a subtle hint to it.

How do you go from victim to suspect in all of five seconds? Logan had said how on the way back to his office. "There were two men at the scene that night, in that strip club where the body was found, one of whom was identified as your father.

"But there were _also_ two men who went missing around the same time, your father and a man named Jacob Hexler. So, we just didn't know if this victim and your father were the same person or if there was some other explanation."

It was that "other explanation" that had set her teeth on edge.

She paused to contemplate the placid waters and the low hanging clouds. True, she did not know her father. True, the man had been carted off to prison when Sarah had been little more than eight years old, but somehow the knowledge, or rather the very idea that he could be involved, engendered its own form of alarm. Yes, "Why me?" meant "Why was I born to such a rank derelict?"

Had some part of his inadequate and criminal constitution been ferried down the gene pool, straight into Sarah's own stock? _Can that even happen?_ The thoughts were a disjointed hodge-podge of self-doubt and nonsense. Still, it held some alien power to unnerve her.

She continued her cool down, filling her lungs with that misty, cleansing air.

She recalled sitting in front of Logan, that odd expression on his face, as if he were saying, "Now, Miss Montgomery, if you are aiding and abetting him, you're just as guilty as he is, you know that right?" Only he had not said that, he had simply implied it with, "Miss Montgomery, you would tell us if you had any information regarding the whereabouts of your father, wouldn't you?"

The detective had squirmed in his seat after that, shifting his copious gut about, preparing to deliver the next blow. He'd breathed out his long nose and pushed a cloud of stale coffee breath into the space between them before delivering the next round of disgust and fright.

Logan had opened a drawer, pulled out a file and flipped to the middle of it. He'd held up a piece of paper sheathed in plastic.

"This was nailed to the victim's forehead," he'd said, too calmly, holding the paper out to her. She'd noticed the filthy nail, dried and crusted with organic debris. It had been about three inches long, resting dangerously at the bottom of the pouch under a blood smeared note:

Compliments of your friendly neighborhood Poppycock. Have you hugged your Poppycock today? Poppycock: it's good for all that ails you! What's the name of the big, bad wolf? The big, bad wolf? The big, bad...?

Sarah had had the distinct impression of a singing man and if she hadn't been so god-awful nauseated she would have burst into...glee perhaps? Yes, a singing man, on some perverted stage acting out his horror-fest for all the world.

At the bottom it had read: kcocyppoP _._

"Who is this person?" she'd asked, stunned.

_Yes_ , she thought now, staring into that shapeless fog, the fog that erased the world and somehow reformed it according to her own illusion, _who is this person? This Poppycock?_

Her father? Even the fool that he was, even the idiotic fool that he was, he wouldn't have been able to do that...right?

Suddenly, the cool air on her skin grew clammy. Suddenly, the solitude brought on by the morning mist didn't seem so pleasant or innocent anymore. She was all alone in a city full of people.

She shivered. _Got to get home, get in the shower, get ready for work._ She began retracing her steps along the now frigid path. She began to jog. At least she could run, fast too and, yes, get back to work. Get back to the real world of make-believe, _her_ world of make-believe, of public relations, acceptable lies and half-truths about people and products and other meaningless nonsense of materialism. Just before she willed herself back, she imagined something parting the mists and stepping forward. From a nightmare, another time, some strange other-world.

Enough.

She began to sprint, shaking away her hyper-imaginations. Her mind was wired that way, always able to concoct the worst, push it into her synapses and make her body react.

She felt the secure hold of her shoes against the solid ground, concentrated on it, felt the trusty laws of gravity, felt the earth below her feet, solid and real. Her legs carried her out of the park, back to Bay and Broderick, to her apartment and to that shower.

Her mind switched channels then; she forced it to and it obeyed. She felt herself come back from that ghastly scene in LA, from the inner realm of doubt and cerebral overload, from that stinking morgue and eerily suspicious cop, to her own life and her work and, fortunately or unfortunately, to Brad.

Chapter 2: Sarah Gets a Surprise

He squeezed a blood bag and traced his eyes over the woman's chest again. He settled on the imprint of her nipples underneath the white sheet. He'd seen many mortal women naked, but only as electronic television signals transmitted from several thousand feet, which he rather preferred over the real thing.

His brother entered the room toting a gray feline; scratch marks covered his forearms. The feline growled.

"It did _that_ to you?" he asked. But the question was rhetorical. He didn't really care. He found the sight of fresh blood more erotic than the woman's breasts.

The woman's eyes went wide, terrified, as he splayed his fingers above her, hunched and poised, before he made the cuts.

"Shhsss," he whispered. "All's well that ends well, eh?"

He placed one hand over the woman's forehead and with a bare fingertip of the other, drew a line from cheekbone to chin. She screamed beneath the gag. Her skin split open. Blood coated one side of her face. She thrashed under her restraints, gnawing at the leather strap between her teeth, making one hell of a lot of noise.

"She'll pass out," he shouted, to his brother who was nursing his scratch wounds and dripping blood onto his own shoes.

Her screams fell to whimpers, her eyes fluttered, she drooled.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite," he advised, as he pulled the skin back and tightened it around her cheekbones. When he got it right on that side, he slapped her head the other way.

"Don't hurt her," protested his brother.

"Do it yourself if you don't like how I play."



For Sarah, the week moved quickly after the encounter with Detective Logan, which was a good thing.

All week she had specialized in the cold shoulder routine with Brad. She'd done it so well and with such conviction that he had apparently given up on trying to get her attention, which, of course, had disappointed her.

She pushed her mind off of that and put her attention on closing two big accounts.

"Yes, Mr. Walberg, I totally understand your concerns and let me assure you that blah, blah, blah..."

Friday came and she welcomed it. Next week would be a better week, a week to apply herself, get her groove back, and reel in some more accounts.

Each hour dragged out, until four o'clock when she started putting her pens away and rearranging her paperclips. At a quarter past four she ducked out early. Most people ducked out early on Fridays but Sarah always felt guilty about it.

The fog had lifted and come back. It was an endless cycle.

When she arrived home, a vase with a dozen or so red roses sat on the porch. Beside it, a midnight-blue box tied with a silver bow and a card that read "Forgive me _yet_?"

"Ugh! Brad!" He was just trying to wear her down, only now he was doing it romantically.

She and Brad had been a lukewarm affair, until she'd recently ended it. It had begun, as these things so often do, with harmless flirts and smiles. In the break room, in the hallway. A banter of catchy remarks and faint innuendo.

Then things had led to other things and the flash of white teeth and standing just a little too close in the elevator had translated into an invitation to a drink, a "going Dutch" arrangement, the way partners or friends would do it and this, of course, had led to the bed and then the sex.

She had underestimated him. She had truly underestimated his mastery of disguised bedroom dialogue, the eloquence of meaningless compliments and the easy-mannered gestures all meant to pray upon a woman's delicate sensibilities. The drinks had been good, they had been fruity, and the talk, though empty, had been fun.

Perhaps, in the weeks that followed, it had been the casual way he had expected her to invite him over all the time, the all too quickly unbuttoned blouse in the front seat of her car that had turned her off.

It seemed sex was all he had really been after. Compliments of her person had degenerated to compliments of her breasts. Small talk had become sex-talk and gestures once meant to put her at ease had vanished.

She took some pride in not having given in since she'd broken it off. Of course, it had only been one week, during which she'd managed to ignore him whenever he undressed her with his eyes.

No, she had not given in. _Yet._ That single, monosyllabic word haunted her mental monologues. Somehow, ever-present in the back of her mind, a snickering little demon kept saying _Yet! Haven't given in, Yet! Haven't screwed him again, Yet!_

A wave of calm washed over her as she entered her condo. She set the box down on the counter and put her attention elsewhere. This was the perfect place for her; her shelter and solace against the world.

She'd moved in about three years ago and had never once regretted it. Positioned on the corner of Bay and Broderick in the elegant Marina District, it was a split-level townhouse, equipped with oak hardwood floors and warmed by sunshine when the city's fog bank would allow it. It pleased her without reservation.

She cranked up the heat.

Her mother and her mother's husband, Carl, had provided the down payment and—speaking of her mother; she hadn't even bothered to call about her father's possible Missing Person status. She called and got the voice mail so left a breezy message, omitting any and all details of Poppycock and the cadaver.

A polished black baby grand piano that her mother had purchased twenty years ago commandeered the far corner of the living room. Her mother had been intent on learning how to play it, of course, but never had, so when she'd moved out East, she'd given it to Sarah.

An overlarge bay window gave a perfect view of the neighborhood.

She sank into her favorite Papasan chair opposite the baby grand, feeling far away from the world. Her mind drifted, her body relaxed. _TGIF_. She had all weekend to clear her head. She closed her eyes.

What about Poppycock?

A sudden weight dropped on her lap. She jolted. It purred. "Darn it, Prissy! You scared me."

Miss Priss blinked and licked a paw. Sarah hugged her cat and stroked her whiskers.

"Yeah, I know, you don't know any better."

Miss Priss motored and kneaded and otherwise basked under a shower of human love.

Sarah's eye returned to the flowers on the counter.

Brad.

He was persistent; she had to hand him that. The sight of his puppy dog eyes when she'd told him off kept slapping her upside her psyche. It had been a game for both. Those sad eyes were just as artificial as her frigidity. All just a stage play.

"Wait a minute."

Something about that box didn't sit right. Brad only ever wanted one thing. Giving chocolates was just too romantic, too simple and too damn old-fashioned. She motioned for Miss Priss to jump off and went to the counter. Something she hadn't noticed before on that box cover: the image of a phallus-toting cupid.

"You—" She held a hand over her mouth and shook her head. She didn't dare open it; she didn't dare participate any further in this dirty game.

Sarah had never been the naughty type. Not really. At least she'd never considered herself to be. Curious maybe, but this box, this silly box...oh, hell. She pulled the ribbon off and lifted the lid slowly, timidly even.

"Oh, Brad, you little jerk! This is just totally disgusting!"

They were chocolates all right. Sweet figurines in various and compromising positions. A giddy surge of something not entirely wholesome zinged through her.

"Yeah. No _way_. Oh, you are not good for me."

An hour later Brad called. He asked about the chocolates and she told him she'd thrown the box out before opening it. They talked for a bit, small and random banalities about the office, the Leadsdown account and other beat-around-the-bush bullshit.

She managed to bring up her trip to LA, casually, of course, sans Poppycock and murderous fathers. She also told him about how pathetic her week had been because somehow she wanted him to know that.

When he asked her again if she really did throw out the chocolates, she said, "I don't think I've ever been that grossed out before."

"And what if I don't believe you?"

"I'd say you had delusions of grandeur."

"Maybe, but you haven't answered my question, yet."

She could sense his deviant smile on the other end, feel him working her, and she was enjoying it. There was no real shame in it. This little parley, this game of blush and tell.

"Then I will tell you absolutely not," she said.

"And I'll ask you to prove it."

"How do you propose that I prove it, Mr. Bradley, sir?"

"Invite me over and find out."

"If I did that, you'd have to behave yourself and I doubt you're capable of anything of the sort."

Chapter 3: Brad Waxes Philosophic

Under the trace of his fingertips, spurting a fan of hot blood, the feline's skin split apart. The beast wailed one last sorrowful moan and went still.

He, with a blood speckled face, crimson to his elbows, sneered broadly and peeled the skin from the animal's carcass. Once he'd skinned the beast from head to tail, he pulled another one from the dusty metal cage under the cot. It yowled louder than the first, smelling the death all around it. In response he snapped its neck and skinned it. Clumps of soaking fur splattered to the floor. He reached for another and another and another; snap, scrap repeat.

His stupid brother just sat in the corner, head in hands. He was covered in scratch marks, hands, arms and face, but too distraught to care, too preoccupied with the surgery taking place in front of him. He wept and whimpered and cringed every time an incision was made, every time a feline mewled for its life.

When he asked his stupid, pathetic brother if he should stop, if he should just forget the whole thing and "dump the unconscious bitch in the sewers," his brother begged him to keep on. Because he must. For his own sake, despite the pain it caused him, if he wanted to live, if they both wanted to live.

He began the tedious work of grafting all that cat fur onto the woman's face.

Brad showed up at the door unshaven, wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and smelling of Gucci Envy. She never knew what a crooked smile actually was until then.

She tried to get him to sit still and engage in small talk, but he had a single track mind.

What next took place was the usual fare. The time he'd taken to come over had primed them both for the event. She'd given up on her inhibitions.

She took great pleasure in unbuttoning his shirt and pushing the fabric away from that flat belly, touching his thin chest. He really did have a nice body, something she could admit despite the smug pride he seemed unable to conceal.

She let him sink his fingers into her hair and run his hands down her back to her hips. She let him unsnap and unzip her everywhere. He took care then with each delicate part of her and when the time came, the moment of no return, she welcomed it.

It was over all too soon, signaling the beginnings of regret and post sex shame. It was a bad boy thing. The more she knew she would get hurt, the more they attracted her, the more wrong it was, the more right it felt and all that reverse psychology mumbo-jumbo. An axiomatic law of human physics: make something forbidden and it becomes irresistible.

Then again, she wanted to be anything but alone tonight, considering the whole Poppycock business, and having Brad there made her feel safe.

She sat up and groaned. "Hey, what's this all about?" he asked. At least he hadn't just pulled on his pants and walked out the minute he'd gotten his rocks off.

She sighed. "If you only knew."

"Come on," he said, "don't regret that fast. Jeez, it hasn't even been five minutes."

"Yeah, I have to take a shower."

When she came back into the room, she saw that he had turned on the television. He was sitting in bed, covers wrapped around his waist, remote in hand.

He was handsome and looked nice sitting half-naked in her bed. She wished that he could be a real lover who would be true to her until they both grew old and senile. She reached for her underwear and found her oversized robe in the closet. She sat down on the end of the bed and stared mindlessly at the TV.

"You know," he said. "I'm not going to bite, why don't you come sit by me?" She found his manner was casually inviting.

She shook her head and twisted around to address him. "It'll just make it worse. I don't want to get too attached to you."

"Jeez, I didn't know you were so mean, Sarah. What's wrong with enjoying each other's company? Does it have to be so serious all of a sudden? You act like we just broke up, but I just got here."

She shrugged. "Sorry."

"I like you. You're fun...well, when you're not moping. I mean you got this sexy, little way about you even though you come off all prim and proper."

"Good."

"Sorry?"

"Good. It's not prim and proper, it's good." Her back was turned to him. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't do that with him here. Oh, why did she have to be such a sap?

He crept over the pillows and blankets, gently peeled away the collar of her robe and kissed her neck. Warm. Gentle. He knew how to touch a woman.

"Well, I think you're a very good girl," he said, "who loves chocolate and guys with motorcycles."

Maybe one more time wouldn't hurt. His hands slid over her shoulders, pushing the robe apart. His warm fingers were steadily finding their way. She closed her eyes and relaxed into him. She listened to his breathing, at first soft, then heavy, then... _Poppyock._

"What?" She bolted upright.

Brad recoiled.

Sarah fixed her eyes to the television, reached for the remote and upped the volume.

... _it's the story that has California officials baffled. A series of brutal killings is rocking across southern California. Officials state they are using the most modern techniques to find the killer, but refuse any further comments. The self-dubbed Poppycock specializes in surgically removing the hands and feet of his victims and leaving behind a lurid note. The most recent slaying was of a Burbank man. Earlier today, officials released the name and identity of Alfred Salizar..._

A photo of the man flashed on the screen. Then it cut away to a piece on Salizar's personal life.

"Jesus," she gasped, hand over mouth, "that's the dead guy I saw. I guess they ID'd him."

" _What?_ " Brad asked.

The news piece cut back to the female reporter, who was standing outside a _Happy Donut_ shop _._

It was here that the body of thirty-five year old Santiago Perez was found. As with Alfred Salizar, Perez's hands and feet were surgically removed, then wedged up his nasal cavity. The name "Poppycock" was carved into his forehead. Investigators are stumped. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to these killings. There are only the victims and the tragedy left behind.

It cut to a plump Hispanic woman crying hysterically into the microphone, wiping tears from her eyes with a voice-over translation.

My son was a good boy. He never did anything wrong. I know now that he is safe in Heaven and I pray every day that they find this Poppycock. In Mexico we have a saying: "He who strikes first, strikes twice." We have to stop this terrible Poppycock before he strikes again.

It switched back to the female reporter.

_Still missing and wanted for questioning are fifty-five year old Samuel Montgomery, and forty-eight year-old Pink Flamingo bounty hunter, Jacob Hexler. Their implication is unknown at this time._ _Will Poppycock be stopped or will he slay again? I'm Lisa McDaniels for CNBC Evening News._

Sarah clicked it off. "Jesus," she said, "what have you gotten yourself into?"

"You didn't tell me about all that," said Brad.

"Yeah, well, they didn't want me saying anything. Besides I didn't really want to think about it." She started to shiver.

"Hey, come here, you're freezing."

She walked to the head of the bed and slid in under the covers. She shivered so that her teeth chattered. Brad pressed his body to hers and pulled the covers around her.

"I-I-It wa-wa-was fuh-fuh-freaky."

Brad entwined his legs with hers, tangled them up in her robe and slid his arms under her breasts, spooning her. After a minute or two the shivers abated.

"I don't know. It's so weird. It didn't look real at all, you know. And they had this stupid gift shop where you could buy toe tags and bizarre bull crap. Maybe in Hollywood nobody knows the difference between reality and fantasy. Then the detective showed me the note, 'what's the name of the big, bad Poppycock?' like some screwed up nursery rhyme.

"He said something that made me think he thought my dad was in on it and then I really did get freaked out. Even now I'm sitting here wondering if Poppycock is outside right now."

"Shh," said Brad. "There's no Poppycock anywhere near us. Serial killers rarely leave the metropolitan area they kill in. It's a sort of fascination they have with their city. Besides, they always find an MO on these guys, even if slight. I mean, it could be as minor as a demographic. Is Salizar a Spanish name? The photo of that guy looked Caucasian."

"Yeah, I think so. Maybe he's from Spain or something, you know, European."

"See, it would make sense then. He kills Spanish people. Both those guys on the news were Spanish. So, my sexy little chocolate eater, you have nothing to worry about. Montgomery is English, right?"

"French."

"Oh, even better. French girls are hotter."

She became aware with that last comment that his hands had parted her robe beneath the covers and were cupping her breasts. She wondered if they'd been there all the while.

"As for the chocolate, did we eat it all?" he asked.

"I don't think so," she said. "The last piece I ate was that sixty-nine one, but there are plenty of blow job ones left. Why did you get those awful things, anyways?"

"Succulent Candy Creations dot com," he said, smugly.

"No, why?"

"Oh, because they're fun."

"They're terrible," she said.

His man-thing was now up against her butt. The fear of Poppycock was fading and the titillation of erotic chocolate candies was gaining. She understood then why he'd bought them. The very idea fueled the eroticism.

"Speaking of erotic candy," she said. "I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do about the fact that I've just had illicit and casual sex with you."

He withdrew his hands from her breasts. " _Illicit?_ That's a pretty harsh word."

The spell passed and she rolled onto her back. Now that she figured out the chocolates had been piquing her lust, they lost their ability to affect her. "I know that when you leave here I'm going to feel horrible. I'm already starting to."

"I didn't know I was that bad," he said, rolling over and staring at the ceiling with her.

"Brad if I told you all the guys that I've been with that I knew I shouldn't, you'd be amazed."

"I sort of doubt that. How many has it been?"

"All of them," she said staring at the popcorn ceiling and seeing little pornographic shapes in the stucco. "It's not the numbers that are impressive, though I think I'm somewhere around fifteen, which is bad enough, well make that sixteen with you.

"Basically, I can say definitively that every man, or boy, was the wrong match for me. Oh, they all had a lot going for them...most of them anyway. But they were bad for me. That's all, just bad for _me_."

Brad hesitated, then said, "That all? Just sixteen? You're practically a virgin."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that." She didn't even want to know which notch-number she constituted on his proverbial bed post.

"So you think I'm bad for you, too?"

"Oh, yeah, you're definitely a bad boy."

"Hhmm," Brad squinted. "Let me ask you this, do you think there's a Mister Right out there or something?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, isn't there? God, I hope so."

Brad shook his head. "There is no Mr. Fucking Right. Or Mr. Fucking Wrong for that matter. It's _all_ just a matter of instinct. We are nothing more than intelligent animals and even that's pushing it. We just act on the impulse of what we feel at the moment. Like that Poppycock freak. He can't help what he's doing any more than you can help what you're doing."

Sarah shrugged.

Brad continued. "So, I say, if you gotta be trapped by your own devices, why not have some fun with it? That's what Poppycock is doing."

"So you agree with Poppycock?"

"Of course not. It's just an example. Okay, how about this one, the lady who boozes it up and has loose legs, then suddenly finds religion. She turns into Church Lady and has all kinds of holier-than-thou shit to say and she's going on about 'kids these days' and all she's really doing is objecting to her own crap that she used to pull. She might as well come right out and say, 'I used to be a lecherous slut.' Do you think she's any happier now that she's moralizing the new generation?"

Sarah's aunt could be described similarly, though not as dramatic. "I don't know, is she? Probably." Then she thought of her aunt again. "Probably not."

"Let me tell you, she's not. The person is still the same miserable wench, or jerk. She's so filled with guilt and shame that she has to tell everyone that what they're doing is bad to cover up for her past. I'll bet you ten to one she'll do it again.

"My point is, Church Lady just does it out of instinct. Poppycock just does it out of instinct and so do you. And me too. We can't change what we are: animals with minds. Animals that want to eat, screw, play chess, whatever, just fill in the blank. We can't help ourselves, so why feel guilty?"

Sarah stretched out on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

"I am here with you because you can't resist bad boy types. Well, that's what you say. Anyway, you see me as a bad boy type. I happen to enjoy sweet girls who have a naughty streak, so we're perfect for each other."

"I hope I'm not the naughty type."

"Hey, I don't mind. Anyways, enough of my rant."

"I didn't know you were such a philosopher."

"I'm not normally. Usually I just want to have fun, but since you brought it up, you got me going." He was sitting up in bed now.

Sarah sighed. "Well, I don't know that I agree with all of what you said, but I do admit that there are some things about myself that I haven't been able to change. But I don't think we're all trapped of our devices, destined to follow some preset genetic code."

"Well, suit yourself, but sooner or later, you'll see that I'm right. I always am." He slid back down into the covers. "I've only been wrong once. And then she got an abortion."

"What?"

"Just kidding! Jeez. Anyways, Sarah baby, honey, I'm really starting to want to emulate some of those chocolate positions again. I was just getting started when you went into your whole self-loathing routine. I got more surprises for you."

"Brad—"

"Don't say 'no,' please. I can go all night."

Pleading for sex, among other things, disgusted her.

"Brad," she said, "I think I want to be alone."

He breathed heavily through his nose and she knew she'd annoyed him. He got up and reached for his clothes.

"Well, call me if you miss me," he said and bent to kiss her lips. She turned away and gave him her cheek. Then he patted her head. "Cold shoulder again, no problem, I can handle it."

She listened to him letting himself out and only when she heard the roar of his motorcycle did she flop back onto her bed, arms splayed out like a crucifix.

The door creaked and she popped up. Thoughts of serial killers and upset ghosts burst into her head, but there at the door was neither Poppycock nor the ghost of Alfred Salazar, but rather a small, white, furry critter known formally as Miss Priss.

"Prissy, come 'ere." Sarah patted her lap.

Prissy was an all-white Turkish Angora. Sexy as cats went. She made a single leap from the floor to Sarah's lap and purred contentedly. Then she began licking her paws. Sarah wiped the tears from her cheeks and stroked Prissy's soft head.

"Oh, Prissy, I've done it again. When am I ever going to learn? Or do you think all humans are a bunch of puppets, too?"

Miss Priss stared up at Sarah. She had one blue eye and one amber eye. It was why Sarah had picked her from the litter.

Sarah shook her head and sighed. "The problem," she said, "is that I just don't love him."

Miss Priss meowed.

Chapter 4: Sarah Becomes Afraid of the Dark

Gloria Hanson opened her eyes. She could make out the familiar lines and contours of a dresser, books on shelves, knickknacks and blood bags. She could even see the glint of the metallic doorknob, and all this with no light. She saw in greenish shadows, but they were clear and detailed shadows. Not one item in the room was hidden to her. Not one.

The pain had abated and the bleeding had stopped, she hoped, for good. The cot under her was covered in dried blood and it creaked under her weight. She wondered if, once the blood bags on the rack drained down, they'd bring in more.

Vodka spiked tomato juice. That's what it reminded her of: Bloody Marys in a bag. Well, if true, she had one hell of a hangover.

They'd captured her days ago. Maybe weeks. She'd lost count after the surgery.

_Surgery!_ Yes, now she remembered something. There had been that surgery, she was certain of that. Mostly. Or had it been an accident? She remembered fingers, dirty fingers that smelled of onions and brown sugar, fingers that cut like razors.

More plastic surgery maybe? But I don't remember contacting the insurance.

Her face felt lumpy and swollen. Worse than the nose job, way worse, a whole face job. It hurt too much to touch. Her breasts didn't hurt at all. That was odd. She had wanted a boob job, the kind that would reduce her breast size and elevate the nipples. She had thought about that, but certainly the surgery had not been a breast augmentation.

So what had it been, then?

"I-I-hhhddd—" her voice made that sound again. It made it every time she tried to speak. She didn't know why, though she was quite certain that she hadn't always spoken that way. She was quite certain that at one time she'd been able to speak perfectly normal, perfectly... _human._

"Remember hhhrrrr," she told herself. She had to try. Perhaps the doctors would help her. The doctors? Was that what they were? They wore white lab coats. One of them wore a black top hat, of all things. Thick, bushy hair covered his eyes, accentuating his grin, which was really a sneer. What kind of doctor was he?

She wanted to cry but couldn't. A word came to her, bubbled up from her subconscious like muddy water from a storm drain: _Poppycock._

The door swung open and light exploded. She raised an arm to shield her eyes.

"Pssst," said the one who was familiar to her, the one who reminded her of someone she once knew, who she thought of as Baby. "Come in here."

Cautiously, Gloria slunk off the rickety cot. She hadn't tried to walk and wondered if she could. She tried to stand, lost her balance and toppled over. She landed in a heap of boxes and dirty laundry—laundry that smelled of her baby's sweat and aftershave.

"There now, I'll help you," he said taking her hand in his. She loved his touch. She hobbled across the floor. _What is wrong with me?_

He took her out of the room and to the one next door. She paused, uncertain.

"There now," he said, "it's nice and safe in there. You have nothing to worry about but me. Come on I promise I won't bite. I'm not making fun of you. It's just an expression."

She tried to speak, this time determined. "Whatttrrddd..." she began, "harrrddd—"

"Shh," he said, "quiet now. We've made you the best of all that you are. We've made you beautiful." He stroked her face. "We've made you Chimera."

She didn't know what that word meant. He guided her across the hall, into his room and closed the door behind him.

"You'll thank me later," he said. "Come, come now, into my bed and put your—"

The door swung open with a thunderous crash. A man stood in the dim light of the hall. He was wearing a top hat...with hair that hid his eyes...and a sneer. He held a camera around his neck and a box light in his hand. "Let's do this, eh?" he said. "I gots other shit to do."



News of Poppycock spread on a par with nuclear fission, surpassing the previous week tenfold because, shockingly, three more victims had been found. Sarah thought it downright blood chilling that a serial killer was loose somewhere only six hours away from her. Oh, Christ Almighty, what if he was a morgue employee who had followed her home and—it was illogical, of course. Then again, the existence of a killer named Poppycock, who wrote perverted nursery rhymes and surgically removed people's hands and feet, was illogical, too. Wasn't it?

The whole thing begged for a reality check. What was up with the police not being able to find the guy? Where were the fingerprints? The DNA tests? They'd done a handwriting analysis, but hadn't found a single match in all the databases, or so the news anchor had reported. Sarah wondered how many handwriting analyses databases there even were. She wondered if the police had any clue at all.

It wasn't just Poppycock, either. Since this whole thing had started, TV had become rife with infamous LA killers, a loathsome menagerie of the most brutal and demented personalities, from the Black Dahlia to Charles Manson to Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker who terrorized Los Angeles and San Francisco with his terrible case of halitosis.

Undoubtedly, Poppycock was basking in the media coverage created by butchering citizens. She didn't even want to talk about it because to do so made the fear spread and lent credence to the bastard, something he surely wanted. Fear did that, spread like crude oil on the ocean, or frost on a rose petal. The more you tried to mess with it, the stickier it got.

Sticky, Sarah realized, was how she felt about Brad. She'd been ignoring him all week. Again.

She'd considered going to Oregon and living with her cousin Belinda for a while or perhaps with her parents in New England. Both ideas were almost as unreal as Poppycock. Belinda was a club rat and though Sarah was quite certain they would have more fun together than a Chinese circus, she was also quite certain that she'd be in a whole other world of trouble.

Staying with her mother would be worse. Besides, she couldn't just up and leave from work, and her accrued vacation time was less than a week. So...the only person she could even think of to keep her company, stay with her and protect her, feeble or robust, was Brad.

"Oh, no. I'm not asking him."

At work things were copasetic. Having people around and getting her mind occupied with natural monotony was a good remedy. She'd even closed two big accounts in the last week.

At night, though, when the "condo-settling" noises kept her from drifting asleep and the contours of branches sent shadows fluttering across the walls and floors, she longed for a warm body snuggled up beside her. Miss Priss was okay but she was, after all, just a cat. Besides, cats weren't dogs; they couldn't ward off would-be intruders or...Poppycocks.

Something else had been rattling around in her head the past few days, too. Something Detective Logan had said over the phone: _Not until a witness came up with a description that matched your father's: a man in the bar who reportedly was singing, um, with another, ah, man and dancing._ Was her father homosexual? She doubted it. She'd always known in some sixth-degree-of-separation-way that he'd had girlfriends. Why, then, had her father been seen singing and dancing in a strip club? Odd. Too odd, all of it. The thought of a whole weekend of these nights and wonderings was too much.

She took a deep breath and gazed at the clock. It was after four on Friday, again, which meant she was supposed to sneak out soon.

Brad was still there. Since their little interlude— _just call it what it is, Sarah. Unadulterated sex_ —he no longer left before she did. She knew what he was doing: hoping that in some moment of temporary insanity or perhaps an eruption of thoughtless passion she would walk past him on her way out and say, "Oh, Brad, can you come over tonight?" The words came out before she could stop them.

"Thought you'd never ask," he said.

Sarah shook her head. That smile of his made her nervous. "Look, Brad, I know what you're thinking and...well, the reason is because—oh God—I'm scared." As soon as she'd admitted it, she wondered if that was the real reason. Maybe she just wanted to be scared so that she had an excuse to invite Brad over, to let him conquer her again. It was the perfect face-saver.

"Hey, it's cool. Remember I don't bite." He was grinning that awful grin.

You don't love him. You can't see yourself growing old with him. You can't even take him to meet your mother.

"I'm not so sure that you don't. But really," she used a whiney voice, "Brad, I really just need someone to keep me company right now."

"I'll keep you company."

"Not that way. Just listen. I need someone to be there. I'm—I'm sort of tweaked over this whole Poppycock thing and—you know, I mean I had to go down and see the body. Plus I usually have the TV to keep me company, but now I don't want to turn it on. So, please, please, please just be a sweetheart and keep me company."

"Listen, Sarah, I think that what you're saying is to be a gentleman? Is that right?"

"Yes! That's exactly right. Be a gentleman."

"Well, I can do that," he said. "I understand. No X-rated chocolates or any funny stuff. Just plain old charm. Right?"

"That would be really sweet."



Brad would be over a little after eight o'clock, once he'd hit the gym and showered. So, Sarah swung by the grocery store on her way home to make a nice meal for the two of them.

It was kind of a date. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be done. Dinner before dessert, so to speak.

She examined the meat. "Let's see here." She wasn't much of a meat eater so didn't know all the lingo. Carl had always made tri-tip whenever they'd grilled on Sunday nights, so in the tradition of family dinner, she picked up a couple of cuts.

Next she was off to the wine section, another area of illiteracy. There was just no way of knowing what constituted a good wine. She stared at the rows and rows of bottles. Reds, whites. Who knew? So she just picked a bottle of pink shit.

At the checkout counter, she perused the fifteen flavors of gum before eye-balling the tabloids. She spotted _The Cosmos_ with a _Cat Woman Lives_ headline across its glossy cover. It was the photo below it that held her attention.

Hanging pell mell from the woman's cheeks, chin and cleft upper lip were patches of ragged fur.

"Halloween already?" Sarah was a bit of a tabloid junky and in the spirit of pure, unwholesome drivel she opened the magazine to the article.

The woman in the photos posed this way and that, sexually suggestive, baring the bulk of her breasts. Underneath one headshot, the caption read: _This rare disease confuses Ms. Hanson's human DNA with that of felis domesticus._

The last photo, a grainy black and white vignette, showed the cat woman sitting next to a man in a white smock. His arm was draped around her shoulders with a crazy boomerang smile, stretched across his face. The caption read: _Dr. Goodfellow with Ms. Hanson._

"How dumb."



When she got home she put the groceries away, took a shower and waited for Brad. He arrived on his motorcycle, again, wearing his brown leather jacket, a five o'clock shadow and a boyish grin.

"Hi," she said. "You look nice."

"Yeah, I thought we could go out to dinner, you know, my treat."

"Oh. Well, yeah, I suppose that would be fine."

"Unless you wanted to do something else?"

"No, no. I—I'm just not dressed for it is all, but give me a second and I'll change."

Sarah went to her room while Brad waited in the living room with Miss Priss. Even though her closet was a small retail store in its own right, she could hardly find anything to wear. She decided on a pair of designer jeans, her cutest blouse and a pair of Chloe Silverado boots she'd practically stolen from eBay for five hundred dollars. When she finished dressing, she slapped on some lip gloss and a single splash of perfume. It would work.

"We're not going on the motorcycle," she said. "I'll drive."

Brad didn't protest.

"Did you have any particular place in mind?" she asked.

"Yeah, I was thinking of this place over on Cyril Magnin, uh, First Crush?"

"Pricey, huh?" she said over the roof of her Volkswagen Jetta.

"Yeah, well, you know, you said to be a gentleman so I took you seriously."

"Well, there's always a first." She unlocked the car.

That Brad was overtly wining and dining her didn't bother her, even though she had no doubt about his intent. A girl didn't turn down a man's offerings just because he was trying to get down her pants. Particularly if he had already gotten down those pants. It meant he was trying.

After twenty minutes, they arrived at First Crush and sat at the bar until they could be seated. "So," said Brad, "haven't talked for a while."

"No. Well, I've been busy."

"Or avoiding," he took a sip of his martini.

"Do you always rehash uncomfortable situations?"

"Sorry, you're right. I promised to be a gentleman. By the way, your boobs look good in that outfit."

"Thanks."

The hostess called them for their seats. They sat across from a big window at street level. It felt cozy and ritzy all at once. They talked about nothing of import.

The waiter was a gregarious metro-sexual selling them on this dish or that, expounding with adjectives such as "robust" and "divine" and mentioning gourmet treats such as truffle soaked French fries. They got two wine tasters and Sarah felt decidedly gypped on the amount of wine in each glass.

"Why do they call them _flights_?" she asked, of the wine tasters.

"Because we're supposed to keep ordering and get high."

"The white one was good."

"Yeah these red ones suck ass."

"Brad!"

"Excuse me, they don't agree with my pallet."

She caught Brad's eyes wandering. Anything over the age of fifteen, with a slim waistline and long hair, got his attention. She wondered if it was intentional and then realized it wasn't. It was just Brad. In a way, it saddened her. How lonely Brad must be underneath his social charms.

Sarah decided to order the second most expensive thing on the menu, the Halibut, to get her money's worth. If Brad minded he didn't show it. The food was delicious, gourmet and satisfying. After dinner they went back to Sarah's condo where they nibbled on chocolate liqueurs left over from Christmas.

"Here, try the rum one, it tastes like butterscotch," she said and handed him a tiny foiled bottle of Captain Morgan. She recognized that they were eating chocolates again.

"Mmm, that's not bad, but try this one," he handed her the Jack Daniel's one. She unraveled it and bit into it.

"Whoa, that's got some bite!"

"I know, right."

They ate a few more until Sarah started feeling sick. "Well..." she said.

"You're not kicking me out now, are you?" he asked.

"'Kick' is not the right word."

"You know," he said, "I was thinking of this Poppycock problem of yours and maybe you should get a PO Box somewhere."

She recognized the tactic and didn't fall for it. "Brad, I stopped worrying about Poppycock."

"Oh, good. When?"

"At dinner when your eyes were glued to all those girls' asses," she said.

"Is that why you're so frigid?"

"No," she said, "but you were ogling every time they walked by."

"Montgomery, you are the most finicky, high maintenance girl I have ever known."

"Am I? I just, I don't know, want a guy who'll...stare at _my_ ass. It doesn't make a girl feel special when you're staring down every chick in the place."

"Sarah, didn't I make you feel special the other night?"

"What, when we had sex? Oh, you mean when we went out and had drinks? Yeah, but then later I figured you were just trying to get down my pants. So, no."

"That's not fair," he said. "You're a hypocrite."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really. And I'll tell you why. You want to play this game like you're so good and proper and every man you've ever been with is so bad, but it's just a fading smoke screen 'cause you're just as bad as they are. You do all the same things you complain about. You play along like it's all sweet and innocent, like you don't know where it's going and then you act like it was all done to you. You were just as much a player as I was the other night and you know it."

Sarah fell silent. "Well—" she began. He was right; she just couldn't admit to it. She wondered why she'd wanted Brad to come over, really. Had it been because she was secretly planning—hoping—that one thing would lead to another and they'd wind up doing it again? Maybe. Or had she just really been afraid? Or had she made herself afraid so that he would come over and one thing would lead to another? "Maybe you should leave."

He shrugged and was about to say something when her cell phone erupted with the Pink Panther ring tone. "That's Detective Logan."

"Answer it!"

"Hello? Yes...oh...okay, wait a second." She grabbed a pen. "Go ahead." She scribbled a phone number down then said, "Oh, oh, thank you, Detective, that would be good, I would really appreciate that. Okay then...yeah...we'll talk later...right. Okay, good night. Bye"

She looked at Brad. "He said that my dad's girlfriend...um, Gloria Hanson—" she shook her head, "where have I heard that name before? He said that she's gone missing too and they wanted to make sure I was okay. Said he would have the San Francisco police send a patrol car around the neighborhood here to make a few passes tonight." She swallowed. "Brad, now I _am_ scared...can you stay over?"

Chapter 5: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

They yowled so loud Rob wondered if the whole of San Francisco would wake from it. Then others joined in and, eight in total, sang their chorus of pain and fright into the morning darkness. He heard them because he always heard them.

He emerged from the little door at the base of the crumbling apartments located somewhere on the border of Chinatown and Little Italy. He shivered slightly in the early morning chill.

Non-sentients could only give so much patronage, so you needed a lot of them. A few men, however, made you very strong and could nourish the soul for eons if you played it right, but not everybody could be Jesus Christ. You took your chances with the most capricious and self-willed race.

Rob had carved out this little niche and done well for himself over the years. Not the jungle ones, just regular domesticated ones, because they had more _personality_.

Living in America, a necessity due to less enthusiastic euthanasia policies, wasn't so bad, but he knew he would always long for the Isles. Perhaps, in a hundred years, everything would change so that he might find himself back near Cornwall or, Oberon willing, the moors.

He staggered under the weight of pain, not physical, but mental, and not his own. Their deaths made the tiniest, little deaths in him, too. A cell here, a neuron there. Not enough to cause physical pain, but enough to notice.

He pulled his black velvet coat more tightly around him.

The cold damp was seeping into his bones already. _Hey, at least you have bones!_ Though this disturbance made him wonder if that was suddenly, somehow at risk. He prowled through the wonderfully London-esque fog, thinking of his congregation.

The outmoded injunction of _Make new alliances_ , favored by Old World thought and morality, nagged in the back of his mind.

Making alliances in the kingdoms, both sentient and non, took eons, at the beginning of which found you wasting away, a beggar in the streets before enough homage could come floating your way to sustain you.

Get all scattered with new alliances and treaties every century and you might as well _fade_ right now.

He hung a left and ducked inside the shadow of a dilapidated church that connected with the shadow of an Italian coffee shop. Here he was able to shorten space, save time and cross the street all at once.

Rob had his own applied theory. He preferred choosing one species and sticking with it through the lean period, working tirelessly to make his memory part of the breed.

You had to get your memory entrenched in the genetics and install "recognition without cognition" and dear god that could take a while.

One might be able to get a quick shot in the arm with another strategy, but if the rise was too quick, chances are that it was also unstable and just as fast as you went up you'd come crashing down. Sometimes lower than where you'd started.

He stared at the tops of his black boots silently treading the top of the road median. His fingerless gloves only did so much to preserve the heat, but his shoulder length, raven black hair worked better than a wool scarf. He hadn't been able to grow hair this long in...oh, quite a while.

He crossed over the median, jumped onto a dumpster and caught a fire escape ladder. He didn't need to think about it anymore, he just did it. Up top, to the discerning eye, the fire escapes and overhanging roof eaves formed a network of cat-walks.

He dropped into an alleyway off Columbus where the call had originated.

He knelt on the filthy pavement, held open his arms and waited. He could hear them rustle, and what's more, he could hear them die.

In a nightmare procession they hobbled, limped, shuffled out into the open. Eight skinned felines with neither teeth nor claws.

He gasped. He gawked. He'd never seen such mutilation. "How are ya still ambulant?" He could feel them drawing strength from him, enough to tell their tale before death.

Tears slid down his cheeks. What had caused such horror to his devout? He picked up the first to reach him. Patches of bare and bloody skin peeled away under his touch so that he could only watch the blood drip and blink away tears. A shallow breath escaped the creature.

"Show me," he said in a whisper. "Quickly." He found the connection that was inside him. The tiny mind opened and he peered inside.

Images flooded in. A man snapping the tabby's muzzle shut between his forefinger and thumb—a man with the scent of decay on his skin, of rancid garlic and sour milk on his breath. In spurts of hot blood the man popped off each slender claw. Then with his fingertip—only his fingertip—he traced the feline's coat from neck to tail tip and great tufts of fur fell away in crimson tangles.

The memory-cat screeched and flailed its paws.

Then those same fingers squeezed so hard that Rob could feel the phantom pain crush the nape of his own neck and he watched horrified, through mind-vision as the man shaved the feline's skin bare. Then screams—human screams—and the name he never thought he'd say again.

"Poppycock!"



Sarah couldn't concentrate. Brad had been sleeping over on and off for a week and she'd let him sleep in her bed for most of it. She was regretting it right now.

She'd suffered through more of his speeches about the human condition and how we're all just a lot of doomed animals who don't know right from wrong. She'd put up with his panting for sex and declarations that he could "go all night" and "how about a quickie?" She'd given him what he wanted, mostly and within reason, and had enjoyed most of it.

But she still didn't love him.

"I have to break this off," she said to Crystal Worthington over lunch.

Crystal, who had changed her name from Christine last year said, "Sarah, honey, you should never settle for second best. Brad McBride is second best, in my opinion. Maybe even third. What you need to do is find your soul mate."

"Yeah. I just don't think I have a soul mate. I don't even think I have a soul."

Crystal giggled. "Of course you do, silly girl. Everyone has a soul and every soul has a mate."

"Do you really believe that?"

Crystal nodded. "I do. I know it seems...goofy maybe, but I don't believe we're alone. I think we're all part of something much bigger than ourselves. Everything happens for a reason."

"Is Steve your soul mate?" asked Sarah.

"Steven," she smiled thin-lipped and pondered momentarily. "Yes. Yes, he is. Steven and I are meant for one another, I'm sure of it. I don't know why and I don't care. When we met, I just knew it. You see, angels are all around us all the time. They can help us, guide us, tell us what to do. You know?"

"I probably have too many demons."

"Your angels can help you banish your demons, but you have to ask them."

"You mean they have to be invited into your home, then?" asked Sarah.

"Precisely."

"The way you have to do with vampires and horny schoolboys?"

"That's right." Crystal's phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and rolled her eyes. She opened her phone. "What? Yep...nope. Look Steven, I'm very busy at the moment and I will talk to you later, understood? Say you understand." She hung up with a sharp tap of her finger and sighed. The smile returned to her face. "So, your soul mate."



Sarah thought of her apartment, which now seemed somehow cold and lonely. She thought of the withdrawals from intimacy she was going to have after Brad packed up. Was being with someone you could never truly love better than being alone? It was debatable. Being alone felt worse sometimes.

Their physicality had been fun, and in some ways more than fun, but it would never be love. Love—what the hell did that mean anyway? She was pretty certain that it wasn't what she and Brad had. _No. I'm not doing this again. I'll be alone if I have to, even if I cry myself to sleep every night. I'll tell him after work._

The rest of the afternoon she didn't go to the break room. She stayed on the phones whether she had anyone to call or not. She only went to the bathroom once, after she'd made sure Brad was in a meeting. Crystal had given her a meditation exercise to do before talking with Brad, which Sarah was trying to do while she wrote an overdue press release. She was supposed to be thinking "We're never alone, we're never alone" but her mind kept altering it to "There's no place like home, there's no place like home."

Work ended. Time to do the deed.

Brad was sitting at his desk waiting for her to come out of her office first. He became cute, suddenly, and innocent. She wondered if she could do this. She walked back to her office and sat down. She needed to make sure she really wanted to, that it was the right thing to do. She thought of him in her bed and decided not to. Then she thought of the next five years and knew she had to. It was a debate between physical gratification and integrity to self. She stood up again. _There's no place—shut up._

"Brad. I need to talk to you." Her heart pounded.

"Uh oh," he said, "not that pouty look again. Hey, I thought we could go to that new place by the Embarcaderos tonight. Great sushi and—"

"Brad. No. Listen, I can't keep doing this."

"And what exactly is _this_?" he asked.

"Pretending to have a relationship," she said, nearly blurting it out.

"Who's pretending?"

"I am. I guess. I don't know, but please don't come over any more. I'm sorry. I have to go."

"Whoa there, little horsey," he said. "Let's not get carried away just yet. Why don't you tell me what's going on and we'll see what we can do."

She shook her head. "Brad. I don't know, okay. I just don't want to keep seeing each other."

"Sex is bad, isn't it?"

"No. No, it's not bad."

"Sex is too good?"

"No, Brad. It has nothing to do with sex at all. Anymore. I don't think, anyway. Oh God, I don't know. That's the whole problem. I just don't know. We have fun, but I just don't—" She was holding onto her purse straps as though they were support beams.

He tilted his head. "You don't know what?"

"I don't know that I want to be with you. I don't know that I can love you. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh."

"Sarah, come on, the L word? Really? Let's not jump the old gun here. I don't care. I'll settle for _tolerate._ "

"Brad, I don't know anything, okay, which is why I need to stop. I just need to stop seeing you. Okay? I'm sorry. Maybe my angels are telling me something."

"Aha!" he said and jumped to his feet. "I fucking knew it!"

"Knew what?"

"That you, my sexy little cowgirl, were talking to Christeeeene Worthington."

She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled away from him. "I'm going home now."

"No, no, no. Just hold on a sec. Were you talking with Christeeeene?"

"Brad, who cares if I was?"

"So you admit it then, that you talked with Chris—"

"Stop saying her name like that. And yes, if you must know, I did. So what?"

"So, don't get me wrong. Chrissy is a hot, little oinker but she's got a few screws loose"

"That, right there."

"Pardon?"

"What you just said. That's a reason right there. I don't know if it's all of the reason, but it's part of it. You—you refer to women like they're toys or something, or objects or sex pots. You think of every woman as a game. Women don't want to be treated like Playboy bunnies all the time. What's a hot, little oinker anyways? It's just gross. I gotta go."

"You got a real identity crises Sarah M."

"Save it." Sarah was already halfway down the hall to the elevator.

"It means she squeals for more!"



When Sarah got home, she cried with Miss Priss in her lap.

"Missy Prissy," she said, "I fucked everything up."

Miss Priss purred and blinked in response.

"Oh, I know." Sarah wiped her eyes. "I shouldn't swear, but I just don't know what to do. I'm either totally alone or sleeping with a creep, but I have you, don't I? "

At ten o'clock she turned on the TV and found out about the latest Poppycock slaying.

Chapter 6: Sarah Gets a Visit

"I'm fading. It was worse before you came, but you've bought me some time, dear, with your magazine spread. I only hope it's enough."

Gloria hated the idea that anything could happen to this man, who now called himself Puk, or that he could run out of time for anything, because she was counting on him to change her back someday—and because she was in love with him. More so now than she'd ever been. Samuel Montgomery had been his name, but now a lot more than that had changed. It made her simply crave him.

"What rrhhrr can I rrhhrr do, baby?"

He smiled with eyes that twinkled and said, "Just be what you are. Poppycock will probably have to catch someone else for me and add them to the menagerie."

"Ssssomeone else?" She asked.

"Oh, dear, you'll have to get used to the idea of sharing me."

That was good enough for now. She couldn't explain her willing submission to him. Before, when he had just been plain old Sam, running off to the horse races and dodging IRS agents, they had argued up a storm on most topics. Now, she just wanted to help him.

"I have an idearrrhhrr," she said.

"Oh?"

"Yes, you may not know it, but yourrrhhrr...you hhhhhave a-a da-da-daughthherrrrr."



Sarah decided to clean her apartment. Since she'd kicked Brad out, cleaning seemed the most logical thing to do. It had been a while since she'd done it, anyhow. She pulled on an old pair of jeans, grabbed the blue, plastic pail out of the closet and got to work. Of course, the first area to get a spritz and wipe down was Miss Priss's litter box.

Sarah moved onto the rest of the apartment and, after two hours, got the whole place shining.

Satisfied with herself, she decided it was time to relax when her phone rang.

Brad.

"Oh, fuck. Now what? I'm not answering it." She listened while her ring tone repeated the refrain. When it ended she listened to the silence in her condo and had a few flash thoughts of picking up the phone and dialing him back, but she put the notion aside. She wasn't even going to entertain the idea.

Her phone buzzed with a text message: _Change yer mind yet?_

She wasn't playing this game. She set her phone to silent and went into the bathroom where she ran the shower. A nice hot soak would do the trick and afterwards maybe she'd curl up with a good book or take a nap. It occurred to her that she must be getting old. Then again, the cleaning had made her tired. So had staying up the night before watching the news and late night talk shows.

She hadn't slept so well after that. Dreams—nightmares, really. Not the kind that you wake from in some hysterical, cold sweat, but the kind that exhaust you, that grind away inside your head until five o'clock in the morning when you just wake up with an umbrella of fear hanging over you. You knew you'd been dreaming, you just didn't know you could feel that afraid.

She stepped inside the shower and reached for the soap. It was coconut soap and she loved the smell of it and that it was white.

When she was a little girl her mother used to insist on buying only Ivory soap because, in addition to being free of dyes and perfumes, it was somehow morally wholesome. There was something about Ivory soap that made you feel a type of religious purity. Coconut soap wasn't free of perfumes, but it was white. So, it was kind of in keeping with her mother's dictates, even though she didn't care anymore.

She lathered up and thought about her dream. She'd been walking to her condo, only she'd been walking to her mother's house, and she'd been wearing her exercise outfit, only it was a business suit.

Then, on her way to the house, which for some reason or other she'd never been able to find, she'd become possessed of the notion that someone was following her, but when she'd whirled around, no one was there. Then she willed herself to see who or what it was and for a split instant, she'd seen just enough—an outline of bushy hair and a crooked top hat, which then began to fade into smog...or fog.

That's when she'd woken up and looked at her clock radio at five fifteen. Shivers had tingled down her back and she'd wished that she had someone to cuddle with. It had taken her an hour and a half to fall back asleep.

Here in the shower, with the hot water running over her body, she knew that her imagination had just been trying to keep her entertained. That's all it had been, that's all dreams ever were. Just a recombining of people and events and places she had known. Probably the house had been her mother's house because that was most representative of home to her. Her exercise clothes had been the business suit because she worked so hard and.... She was psychoanalyzing the dream and the very act of doing that made it more than a dream. _No, it was just a stupid dream._

She rubbed the soap vigorously across her tummy and then her legs... _but what about_...she didn't want to think of it. Dreams were just dreams. Dreams were nothing more than—she thought of Crystal and knew her friend would say otherwise. She shook her head and squirted shampoo into her hand. _Sarah, what about..._ she rubbed the shampoo in her hair... _what about the_... scrubbed it in with her fingertips... _what about the..._ smelled the fake apple _top hat._ She began rinsing her _bushy hair._

_Who was that, Sarah? In the dream, Sarah? In the dream, with the bushy hair and the mother fucking top hat. Who was it, Sarah? Where the fuck do you know_ him _from?_

"No!" she said aloud. "Stop it." She shut off the water. Wisps of steam floated up above the showerhead, clinging to the ceiling. She reached for her towel and dried off quickly, racing to avoid the shock of cold air. She wanted to take a nap now, she was certain of that; she wanted to sink under her sheets, under her thick goose down comforter and drift away into a dreamless sleep. _Dreamless, goddamn it, please be dreamless!_

She wrapped her hair up and slipped on her bathrobe. When she lay down the tension drained out of her muscles. She pulled the covers over her head and went to sleep.



Night had fallen and a drowsy glance at the clock radio confirmed that it was almost eight o' clock. Her head felt thick, her mental processes sluggish. Grogginess threatened to pull her back to sleep, but she resisted. If she didn't get up for at least a few hours, she'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning and throw her whole schedule off. She tried to concentrate on the phosphorescent clock display as the numbers bobbed and blurred.

She forced herself to get up and turn on the light. She dropped the robe and opted for sweat pants and a T-shirt, then shuffled down to the living room. Miss Priss was curled up in a ball on the Papasan. Sarah reached for the cat and noticed her cell phone. She had thirteen missed calls and five text messages, all from Brad.

"Jesus," she said and opened the last text message, which read: _U R a bloody cunt._

"Whoa!" she threw the phone on the couch. Stared at it. "What the fuck?"

Then it started buzzing.

"No, don't answer it."

It buzzed, rang off and buzzed again. _Don't answer it, don't answer it._ The screen flashed, another text message.

She swallowed. _Don't do it._ But she had to. _What, is he stalking me now?_ She picked it up and thumbed the display screen button. _What's the name of the big, bad wolf? The big, bad wolf? The big, bad...?_

She trembled. Rage seeped through her. How dare he play her like that. Take advantage of her legitimate fears and concerns? "Mother fucker," she spit, squeezing the phone, thumbs poised for high-speed hate-texting.

But she couldn't type anything, because a volley of messages began to flood in, like viral pop-ups on some awful porn site. She screamed. Her hands shook. Every message said the same thing, the one thing, the only answer to the riddle.

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

Poppycock!

She gasped and dropped the phone. It vibrated wildly at her feet. Tears streamed down her face, hot fear was shaking her nerves from the inside. She was hyperventilating.

The door buzzer rang.

She screamed.

Brad!

"Please be you!" She all but choked on her tongue. She swallowed bile. Her heart could have leapt out of her chest.

The next moments marched to the beat of pumping blood. Her breath was labored. She couldn't move, couldn't think. The phone had gone still.

Who is at my door? Who the—

It buzzed again.

"Fuck!" She screamed and dropped to her knees. "Who's there?" Her voice bounced off the ceiling. "Detective Logan!" She scrambled for her phone, bit her lip and frantically pushed buttons. It was jammed.

Bzzzzzzzt!

She froze, listening, breath caught.

Bzzzzzzzt!

She stared at the intercom, waiting for something to happen. She found some part of her that wasn't in terror and concentrated on it, made it fester, found anger at having been so royally messed with. "Brad, if that's you, if this is some horrible joke, or some way of getting back at me, I'm going to have you arrested!" she screamed.

Bzzzzzzzt!

"Fuck you!"

Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt!

"Fuck! You!" She got up and stabbed a finger at the button. "Who are you?" She was hysterical now. She didn't care. She waited. The silence went on too long. She feared she'd lose her nerve.

A muffled noise came out of the amplifier, the sound of a throat being cleared. Then an oddly familiar voice. "Sarah, that you?"

A swallow nearly became a gag.

"Sarah, honey?"

That voice tone, the underlying speech pattern. There are some things you never forget.

"Dad?"

Chapter 7: Meeting the Family

"Dad?"

"Well, who else?"

Sarah shook her head. What was he doing _here_? She thought of Detective Logan. _You would tell us if you had any information regarding the whereabouts of your father, wouldn't you?_ Would she be an accomplice if she didn't report it?

"Where have you been? I've been getting calls from the police and—"

"Why, I've been in my apartment," he said. "I've been in the City of Angels. If you'll just let me up I can explain everything."

She hit the intercom button again. "What about Poppycock?" She didn't even know what she was asking, really, or what answer she was looking for. She just wanted to hear what he had to say when she mentioned the name.

"Poppywho?" he said.

"Poppy _cock_."

"What about him, my dear? He's all over the news."

"Yeah, what do you know about him?"

She waited for his response. After a few dead-air moments he said, "Sarah, are you going to keep an old man waiting in the cold because of news stories? For God's sakes, you can hardly believe the media these days." That really did sound like something her father might say, so she buzzed him in.

He wasn't how she remembered him. He was thinner, frailer. Even his face was slimmer. His skin was papery. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Hhmm? Oh, yes. Quite." His smile reminded her of a boomerang. It was the shape of a smile, but too mechanical and too big. "What a wonderful home," he said and walked toward the Papasan chair where Miss Priss sat on high alert. She let out a low feline growl.

"Prissy!" said Sarah. Prissy leapt off the chair and ran out, her tail stiff and low.

"A little temperamental, eh?" He sat in the chair.

She sensed something but couldn't quite place it. A connection with nature perhaps, the wisdom of trees.

"What's going on?" she asked. "Why are you here?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why are you here?"

"Why, I'm dear old Dad!" He wheezed a laugh.

"You just show up here out of the blue after all these years? You know the police have been looking for you, don't you?"

"Have they?"

"Yes." Sarah eyed him sternly, refusing to sit down. "I need you to tell me what's going on. I don't want any trouble."

"My dear," he said, "you needn't be afraid of a thing. Right now, it's just you and dear old Daddy-O sitting here having a nice chat. Say, do you have any tea? I'm awfully fond of Earl Grey with lemon."

"No. Listen, I know this is probably going to sound rude, but if you're not going to be straight with me and tell me what is really going on, I am going to kick you out, and I mean it."

"Why, I just got here." He glowered a bit, then shrugged. He shifted his weight and appeared to sink deeper into the chair. She'd always known her father to be somewhat eccentric, but this was something else, this was a whole new personality. His speech had changed too. Proper perhaps, more...English with a heavy dose of metrosexual.

She admitted that she didn't know the man very well, having only seen him on a handful of occasions, but people just didn't change that radically. He'd inspired her habit of mentally cataloguing man types. He'd been the first man she'd ever mentally typecast: Loser Dad.

"Then be straight with me," she said. "I didn't invite you here. I don't know what you're even doing here. All I know is that I was called by the police to go to the morgue and see if you'd been murdered or not."

"Murdered?"

"Yes, well, you had gone missing at the same time as people had started getting murdered by Poppycock, and one of the bodies didn't have any hands or feet so they wanted to make sure—you do know who Poppycock is, don't you?"

He smiled again, that same boomerang grin, and said, "Now, you can see as clear as rain that I have not been murdered."

She smelled a slight scent of smoke. Not cigarette smoke, something else, something more crisp, a sort of dry, wood scent. Then she noticed beads of sweat on his forehead. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Nothing was adding up. "If you're not going to tell me what this is really all about, then I need you to go."

He sat forward in his chair, licked his lips and brought back that horrible grin. "I'm not leaving."

"Well, I'm telling you to leave."

"Well, I don't give a winged fuck," he said, politely.

"Excuse me? What did you just say?"

"He said he staying right where he at," said a gravelly voice from behind her.

She snapped her head around. Standing at the doorway was another man, a larger man, a wider man. On his face was a twisted snarl. Bushy hair covered his eyes. On his head perched a battered top hat.

"Hoh!" she gasped, hands popping to her mouth. _Who is that, Sarah, who is that? In the dream, Sarah? In the dream, with the hair and top hat..._ "Get out!"

The man in the doorway began to wheeze and laugh and cough. He spit phlegm on the floor. He picked something off his tongue and flicked it at her.

"Get the fuck out of here right now! Both of you!" she screamed.

"Excuse the holy fucking Christ outta me?" said the man at the door. "Them ain't no manners befittin' a celebrity in your midst. Do you even know who I am? Do you know where I come from?"

"I don't know who you are. Either of you. You better get out of my house." She was trembling, on the verge of hysterics. "Or I'll..."

"You'll what, lil' girl? You'll what exactly? You'll...call the village bobby?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

"Sounds delightful!" said the man in the chair—her father.

"Delightful," said the man in the top hat. Then he said it again with the tip of his tongue licking his front teeth, "de-light fullll-ah." He stepped inside and closed the door, then locked it.

Her throat went dry, some part of her shriveled up inside. _This is it_. _Really it._

The man in the top hat approached her, step by step. She shrank back against the couch. She couldn't escape. She could be raped, tortured, killed. She wanted to scream, but couldn't. She thought of Brad and a glimmer of hope rippled somewhere inside her. Maybe Brad would show up after all, maybe he would come....and...

The killer leered down at her. She dropped onto the couch and somehow couldn't look away. She saw glints of black under the unctuous curls and wondered if those dark spots were eyes. She could smell him. Spoiled chicken, maple syrup, sour farts. There was something else, too; from the space all around him came a kind of a white noise.

"Know me?" he asked, his lips opening to a sneer.

"No."

"Oh, but you do," he breathed.

She swallowed and forced her vision straight ahead, trying to un-see him. Her nose itched and eyes burned from his stench. "I don't know you," she whispered, tears making tracks.

He edged in closer. "Who am I?" he whispered. She wanted to gag.

"I don't know who you are." Her stomach jerked, her Adam's apple bobbed. She wanted to get away from him, wanted to run out screaming.

"Lying bitch," he said. "Lying, sodding whore. Lemme give you a clue: I'll kill you, I'll gut you, I'll eat you out the way you never been. Who am I?"

An unearthly silence flooded in and all she could hear, all she could listen to, was that silent, white noise. She found a pattern in it, the beat of some familiar song on the radio even though the volume is turned down too low to hear the words. She listened closer...she couldn't help it, closer. The nameless tune took shape inside her head, a thousand voices all crying out at once, all screaming and singing.

_What's the name of the big, bad...the big, bad...the big, bad_... _?_

"Poppycock!" She covered her mouth as though she'd shouted a curse word in church.

He exploded into peals of wicked laughter. "Yes! Oh, fuck yes! Screamin' in the middle of the night! Screamin' in the cancer ward!" He paused. "Screamin' in a nightmare."

She was trembling, near shock. She bit her lip. She didn't want to cry. She wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands and forced the tears back. She hadn't meant to scream his name, but he had lured her into it, made her shout it aloud for his amusement.

"Please," her voice whimpered.

"Please what?"

"Nothing—"

"Please what?"

She shook her head and swallowed. Afraid and disgusted, she refused to look at him.

"Come on. Please what?"

She shook her head.

He hovered over her. She understood now; he was all of them. He was Manson and Ramirez and the Dahlia slayer.

He was Poppycock.

"Please what!"

"Don't kill me!" she shouted.

He wheezed laughter. Doubled over in the hilarity of it all. Then spit.

"Poppy, that's enough," said her father. "Now, dry your eyes, dear. If Poppy had come here to kill you, you'd already be a sliced Spam loaf and airing on the nightly news." He paused and saw her disbelief. "Oh, confound it. We're not going to kill you."

"Yet," said Poppycock.

Sarah wiped her eyes. "W-w-w-hy are you h-h-here then? If-f-f y-you're n-not g-going to kill me?"

The one who resembled her father said, "We want to impress you, for one. I hope we have. We also have an offer for you. Of course, refuse and..."

Poppycock ran a finger across his neck and stuck out his tongue.

"You're not my father, are you?"

A smile tugged up at the corners of his mouth. "Not necessarily."

"I know you're not, but I don't understand how you look like him."

"And you don't need to know any of that, my dear. Name is Puk and this is my brother, Poppy."

"Cock!"

"Oh, stop it!" Puk said without looking at his brother. "Well, then," he continued, "are we ready to begin our discussion?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Wonderful. And not really. Now, you see, I am not well." He sat up. "And you are going to help me get better."

She stared wide and unblinking.

Puk reached into his coat pocket and removed a manila envelope. He slapped it down on the coffee table and pushed it toward her. "For you."

Slowly, half expecting it to explode, or a cloud of anthrax to come billowing out, she brought it to her lap. Fingers shaking with adrenaline, she unwound the string, opened it and reached inside. She pulled out several photos and spread them out on the coffee table. They were photos of the cat woman, some of which she'd seen in _The_ _Cosmos_. There were scores of them. Many were nude shots, others were portraits or partial nudes.

Patches of fur covered her face. Bright green eyes stared up at her. Bleach blonde locks either hung down or were done up. Ears like uncooked chicken tenders stuck out from the hair. Sarah gawked at those ears.

More mottled patches covered her body, but her breasts were bare, her nipples square and firm. Her buttocks and groin, hairless. It made Sarah feel as if she'd done something wrong just seeing them.

"She is the first in my menagerie and a most faithful nymph. Pan himself would have wept at the skillful homage to Eros which she has demonstrated. I doubt that any other satyr or—hold my tongue—Dionysos himself could do as well." He laughed nervously. "I probably shouldn't have said that."

"He's dead," Poppycock said.

"Who?"

"Dino."

"Okay," Sarah said, still staring at the photos. Then it clicked where she'd seen Puk's ridiculous smile before. "Doctor Goodfellow?"

"You catch on quick," said Puk.

"I don't get it."

"Well, you see it's quite simple. I'm dying. You see this?" He waved his hands in the air. Sarah saw something flitter in the light, something ethereal. "Well, that's me dying. And this—" He pulled a thermometer from his pocket and plunked it under his tongue. The mercury raced to the tip. "One hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit." He slid it back into his coat pocket.

Sarah eyed him dubiously.

Puk eyed her back as if she were a child. "What I need is you to take these photos and make me a household name. You grasp that?"

"A household name? These photos? I'm having trouble with that."

"That's what you figure out," said Poppycock. Sarah had temporarily forgotten that he was standing there. A dark weight returned.

"Yes, that's what you figure out," said Puk.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean."

"Lying bitches is dying bitches," said Poppycock.

Puk said, "You don't need to play games. We already know."

"Know what?"

"Well, that you're president of the vice. That you advertise the campaign. Sell the snake oil."

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but fell short when Poppycock handed her an iPhone in a familiar black case and lit the screen. She stared into it, at a video clip of a man gagged around the mouth, screaming a muffled bawl. The video showed his face and the top of his bare chest.

Brad.

_Brad!_ She'd nearly forgotten all about him.

"What is this?" Her breath came short. "What have you done to him?"

"Poppy," said Puk, "I was getting to that. Now you've gone and upset the poor girl all over again. I've not had a chance to properly enlighten her."

"What have you done with him?" she screamed. "Tell me right now!" She wasn't afraid for herself anymore.

Poppycock kneeled in front of her. "Shh," he said, placing a soiled finger over her lips. He put his arm around her shoulder. She smelled rotting onions. He ran his finger across his throat. Sarah thought she saw a pink line form on his neck where his fingertip had passed. Thought she saw drops of blood slide down. He stared at her—made the expression of staring. His communication was clear. Don't argue.

She wanted to spit in his face, wrap her fingers in his greasy hair and yank it away, tear it out from its roots and jab out whatever eyes existed underneath.

"Now, as I was saying," Puk continued, "you're going to make me famous, or rather, _in_ famous, I should say. You are going to take these delightful photos and promote the pagan hell out of me. Am I quite clear, my sweetling?"

"You can't be serious."

"Oh, to the contraire."

"I don't get it, you seem to be doing just fine on your own with that _Cosmos_ article."

"Pish posh," he slapped the air. "It was a lucky strike from a mail out solicitation. Those dolts won't even return my calls anymore. No, darling one, I need a godsdamned agent. I need a Big Thinker. You know, I need an In. Tag, you're it. _The Cosmos_? How about _Time_? _Newsweek_? _Martha Stewart_? I want the big top, the three layer cake, I want it all. Well, I need it all. And you're my ticket to the movie. Get it?"

She got it alright. He was a nut job from the _Twilight Zone_. "Even if we got all that, which, by the way, is utterly and irrevocably impossible, there is no way you'll get away with any of this."

Poppycock rose to his feet making the sound of sweaty skin rubbing against wet leather. The sodden stink of unwashed clothes and stale smoke wafted across the room. "Wanna bet?" he said and walked to the television. He turned on the _ABC Channel Seven News with Carolyn Johnson_ : _The body of forty-five year old Beatrice Farmer was found today, the latest victim of the Poppycock Killings..._

He picked up the remote and changed it to _Larry King Live_ : _So how much of a threat does Poppycock actually pose..._

On the entertainment system he switched on the radio. Sarah knew it was set to _Live 105_ FM: _Hey, folks, to be on the safe side lock your doors and windows. Authorities have issued a statewide warning: Poppycock on the loose. Stay tuned for our next Live 105 Power Play..._

He plucked Brad's stolen iPhone from Sarah's hands and fiddled with it, then held it out to her. He'd pulled up the Yahoo homepage. The featured article read: _Poppycock, Murder Spree Worst in History._

"Still wanna bet?" He opened up Gmail. For several seconds he held the phone under his thumbs and typed vigorously. When finished, he sneered from ear to ear and showed her the screen. The email was addressed to _sfpdcommissions@sfgov.org_. The subject line said: Headlines, San Francisco Police Go Blind. The message read:

dear esteemed police officers and commissioners, this is to inform you all, that i am the one and only poppycock. i am the one who has been gutting your city and enjoying it every "offal" step of the way. the very one who fucked up los angeles. now i'm gonna do it in this fuck-hole you call home. come and catch me, come and kill me—if you believe in me. but i think you're all too scared to do that, i think you're all too effing blind for that.

eternally yours,

kockyppoP (Poppycock)

He pushed Send.

"Okay! Okay!" she yelled.

Poppycock turned off the TV and radio, and pocketed the iPhone.

Sarah eyed Puk. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps and she considered leaping up and lunging at him. She also considered throwing herself out the window. She'd rather die than work for these mad men, but the image of Brad, it made her think twice. She may not be intending to marry him, but she couldn't let him get tortured and killed.

"So I do this for you, and what do I get in return?" she said, her voice catching in her throat.

"Him," said Poppycock, holding the iPhone out up.

She shook her head. "Not until you tell me what you've done with him. I need to know if he's still alive. He could already be dead." She'd seen a lot of _24_ episodes and knew the tactics.

Poppycock shrugged and walked over to the window. He drew the blinds and shut off the light. "Come here," he said. Cautiously Sarah rose to her feet and crossed the room. She was careful not to stand too close. "See?" he said. Below on the street was parked a green station wagon with blotchy rust spots on the doors and quarter panels. Inside, in the back seat, sat a handsome—Brad.

She covered her mouth.

Poppycock closed the blinds and clicked on the light.

Sarah sat back down on the couch. Poppycock, Puk, they weren't real, she told herself, but it didn't change that they were right here in her home, right here in her living room, trapping her boyfriend in their rusted out station wagon and forcing her to agree to do their bidding. Suddenly she missed Brad desperately. Suddenly, Brad wasn't an ex-boyfriend, he was a fellow human being, just like all those other people out there on the news and radio and internet.

"What do you want me to do?"

Chapter 8: Sarah Gets a Wire

The female FBI agent was pretty and Sarah took an instant liking to her. When the woman announced that she would be setting up the surveillance wire, Sarah felt at ease. The rest of the agents and detectives were men who, while pleasant enough, seemed to fill the room with stale testosterone. All of the agents were wearing standard bureau jackets, blue with "FBI" stenciled on the back in yellow block letters, while the SFPD detectives were wearing plain clothes. Detective Logan was there, too, having followed his high profile investigation to the new jurisdiction.

"You get used to them," said the female agent as she cut a strip of tape.

"Them?"

"All those hot shots out there." She flattened the tape over a small black transmitter under Sarah's rib cage. "They come off like God's gift, but underneath they're just a bunch of little boys."

"Yeah. I don't mind them so much. I probably wouldn't want to work with them all the time, though."

"Yeah, well, like I said, you get used to them. Okay, now I'm going to run this wire around and up your back, like this." The agent drew the wire from Sarah's side up along her spine. It was cold and it tickled a bit. "We'll tape it down, too, so you don't feel it. But you need to wear a thicker shirt, or a sweater. No T-shirts, or else you'll get burned, got it?"

"I assume 'burned' means 'found out'?"

"That's right." She cut a few more strips of tape and smoothed them over the wire, attaching it firmly to Sarah's skin. "Now, you're just going to do and say whatever you normally would, but see if you can find anything out about Poppycock, if he's alone, but don't push it. Only mention it if it comes up. We don't want to make him any more suspicious than he's already going to be."

Sarah nodded. "Right."

"How does that feel?"

Sarah wiggled in her chair. The tape pulled slightly on her skin. "Good, I guess. I don't feel it too much."

"Good. If you do feel it peeling off or something, excuse yourself to the bathroom and see if you can fix it. I'll leave some tape under the sink. Just don't draw attention to yourself by taking too long. And don't push it. We don't have to catch him in the first night, okay?"

"Okay," Sarah said, swallowing. She was feeling terribly nervous. She wondered if she would feel nervous without the wire. Probably, but not as much. It was the secret nature of the thing that made her feel like she had something to hide, because she did.

"Okay. Now if you get into anything where you feel like your life is in danger, I want you to say, 'I think something is burning.' Okay? That's the code."

"Got it."

Once the FBI team and local cops had set up the remote surveillance van, it was time to wait. Sarah studied the clock like she'd never seen one before. She knew the surveillance team could hear anything she said, which was strange. The idea that someone was listening in on her at all times was a foreign one. She had no mind to watch TV, so she did what anyone would do: sat there thinking.

She thought of all the times she'd wished she had a real father. Someone who'd been around or who'd given half a care. She remembered when she had met him. He'd just been released from Avenal State Prison, wearing a tattered patchwork sport coat with brown slacks and a dingy, white shirt. He'd reminded her of a professional wrestling announcer. He'd smiled at her, but it hadn't been the smile of a father. It had been a smile you give to someone else's kid. Then he'd pulled a quarter from behind her ear and told her not to spend it all in one place.

Afterwards, he'd talked to her mother for a good long while. Sarah hadn't been interested so she'd wandered off to her room and watch _Bewitched_. When her father had left he hadn't said good-bye, but he'd left a big purple teddy bear for her. It had a red bow and a card sewn into its left hand that said: _Show you care, hug a bear._ The heartbreak in her mother's eyes had been for Sarah, for a father she would never have.

Sarah came back to herself. She was in the living room, staring at the clock and waiting for someone who looked like that man to come over and spook her. She didn't believe that this man was named Puk or that he was even a different person. He was the same man, the father she had never known. Why he was using this ridiculous alias and taking up company with the villain who was sure to become the most notorious serial killer in history, she did not know.

The clock crept toward seven o'clock. Crept.



Poppycock sat down in the middle of a doughnut shop on the corner of Twelfth and Geary. He stuffed a chocolate-covered, fried doughnut into his mouth. The kind with creamy, yellow custard oozing out from the sides. It was sweet and sugary and it made him feel that mellow swoon that came whenever he ate sweets. He ate thirteen of them.

He was staring at an older man in a blue jean jacket, with long greasy hair and a scraggly beard. The man had an odor of musk and Poppycock could smell it from across the shop, despite the sugar and butter saturating the air. He was thinking of this man with his legs all tied up around his collarbone, his arms flailed out and his head twisted backwards.

He thought about the obese chef he'd flattened out less than an hour ago.

He'd stuffed the jolly man's severed toes and fingers so far up the man's rectum it would be a wonder if they were ever found again. He relished the memory of stabbing the man bare-handed, his own fingers poking like a surgeon's scalpel, through layers of fat and muscle. He could still feel the silky slip of intestines, could still smell the offal, see the hot wash of blood. He thought about it very carefully as he crammed the rest of that jelly doughnut into his mouth.

The man in the blue jean jacket was walking out of the store. He was leaving before he'd even ordered a single crumb, because he knew better. As he left, he cast a sly eye at Poppycock, a quick but not casual glimpse. It had been dripping with fear. Poppycock could taste it.

It tasted sensual.

The man had been so nonchalant, but had left so quickly. Perhaps, he'd sensed something there that shouldn't be, a silent voice screaming at him to get out.

Sometimes it was just the way they looked. Sometimes it was how they smelled. Sometimes it was just because they were beautiful.

Yes, sometimes.



Sarah watched the clock and continued to wait. She no longer noticed the wire under her shirt and wanted more than anything to hear the buzz of the intercom so that she could begin this awful night.

The whole affair had already exhausted her and her father hadn't even arrived yet. Again, she mentally went over the proposal she would give him. She'd managed to put up a rudimentary WordPress page and upload some of the photos, those that were less revealing. She'd been able to write some of the copy for it, but needed a lot more material from him.

When the intercom buzzer did sound, she stared at it, doing an internal check to ensure she was ready. "He's here," she said quietly, knowing that the surveillance team was on the other end. That was a comforting thought, knowing that they were there, knowing that with a coded message, she could make them come and break down the door. She thought about saying that simple sentence now, just to see if it worked, just to see how fast they could get there.

The buzzer sounded again. She stabbed the button and said, "Who is it?"

"It's me, Puk Goodfellow, of course."

She hadn't grasped before then that Goodfellow was really his last name. She buzzed him in and then listened for his footfalls on the steps outside. She wanted to know if Poppycock had come with him. She had to know that, because Poppycock was the one who gave her gooseflesh.

"Just me tonight," he said, rounding the corner into her line of sight. "All alone."

He looked worse than he had the other night, thinner even, less there, less tangible somehow. The overhead light illuminated his head and she saw for a brief instant a grayish haze hanging around his shoulders. "May I?" he said and made the gesture of bowing.

"Oh, sure," she said, "come in." She stepped aside and closed the door behind him. "How's Brad?" she asked. "I need to know that first. I need to know that he's okay."

"Certainly," he said and handed her Brad's iPhone. On the screen was a video image of Brad seated in a robe, eating. The camera zoomed in to his face, then down to his plate of food. His face was clean, no marks, no blood. He paused as the camera shifted angles and said, "I'm fine, see, totally fine."

Sarah wondered if she should describe what she was seeing over the microphone to ensure it would be recorded. Kidnapping and false imprisonment was no light matter, but she wondered if detailing what she was seeing would be too obvious. She refrained and handed the phone back to him.

"May I take a seat?"

"Oh, sure." She indicated the couch.

He plopped down and looked about the apartment. "Water?"

"Of course," she went to the refrigerator and shoved a Tupperware tumbler under the water dispenser. She filled it halfway and brought it to him. He gulped it greedily. "Thank you, that was quite good. So, I trust we should get down to business then?"

Sarah crossed her legs. She was sitting on the piano bench, her back to the baby grand. "No Poppycock tonight?" she asked.

"Oh, no. He went out to commit murder."

Sarah swallowed. The way he'd said that so casually, she wondered if he were even telling the truth, then she wondered if this man and his friend really were who they purported to be.

"Dad?"

"Hmmm? Who me?" he said. "No, dear, I know that looks can be deceiving, but I'm not your father. Well, I am now, but I am not who he was. It's a terribly long story, terribly complex, and one which I don't wish to get into at the moment."

"Okay," she said and decided to just leave it alone. She was supposed to get intel. This _was_ her father; she knew that, even if he didn't. _He's probably got amnesia or schizophrenia._ "Does he really do that?" she ventured.

"Who?"

"Poppycock. Does he really just go out to murder people like he's going to a nine-to-five job?" Sarah hoped she wasn't giving herself away. She figured it was a question she would normally ask. Then she said, "Of course he does."

"Yes, I'm afraid so. He has to. Grizzly method of staying corporeal, not something I wish to do, but that's why we're here tonight."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Sorry, for what?"

"Sorry that he—you and he, feel you have to do that to people."

There was a kind of pleading in his eyes. "Me too," he said.

She took a breath. "Well then, shall we get started?"

"Sure, sure."

"Okay, well, let's go over here to the kitchen table where I've gotten this set up so I can show you what I've done so far."

With some effort he got to his feet and they adjourned to the kitchen. They sat down in front of the computer screen. On the screen was the WordPress page labeled "Puk's Weblog" across the top.

"I made this blog for you," she said.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"A blog. It's a kind of traveling website...no, let me see...your own private printing press?"

"Oh?" His eyes lit up. "My own press? Where?"

"Here," she pointed to the screen, but Puk's expression turned dull. "Well, it's not a real printing press. It's a virtual one, on the Internet. You do know what the Internet is, don't you?"

"Poppycock says it's the new way to get infamous."

Sarah explained what the Internet was, what a blog was, but he still wasn't grasping it. "Okay," she said, "let's start with computers. Do you know what a computer is?"

"That," he said and pointed.

"Yeah, well, that's the monitor."

"The what?'

"The screen, the screen is called a monitor, this down here is the computer," she said.

He shook his head, "I don't know."

"Oh, my God," she said. "Where have you been?"

He shrugged, despondent.

"Okay, okay. Do you know what a television is? TV?"

"TV!" his eyes lit up. "Humphrey Bogart, _Hawaii 5-0_ , _The Addams Family_ , _My Favorite Martian_."

"Ooohhh-kay, so you know what TV is. Let's start there."

In an hour she managed to get him to understand the basic concepts of the Internet. She showed him the site and together they were able to write some of the copy. They changed the heading to "Doctor Puk Robin Goodfellow" because he said he wanted to be known for his legal name, not his nickname. More exposure that way. He picked out which photos he wanted on the page, but Sarah had to edit five of them because, she explained, they were pornographic, and they wanted to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. He argued that showcasing the bare assets would be sure to earn more attention than just portraits and seductive poses. In the end, she compromised by putting up three nudes, and only one shot below the waistline.

"There is a lot more we can do with this, a lot more, but I think that's all we have time for tonight. Oh, wait, I need to get your photo."

"Oh, all right. Shall I pose?"

"First we need to give you something...wait here, I'll be back." She walked into her bedroom whispering, "I'm going to see if I can find out where he lives." She'd said it so quietly she wondered if they had heard it at all. She opened her closet and rummaged around. Then she found it, a black fedora costume hat that she'd purchased for a date one Halloween. She walked out into the kitchen.

Puk was in the living room, playing something softly on the piano that sounded remarkably like one of Chopin's preludes. The way he played it, so soft and somber, Sarah had no idea that Chopin could sound so sad. When he reached the end of the piece, he played it again.

"This one's in A," he said. "It helps me to clear my head sometimes."

Sarah allowed a gentle, almost sad smile to cross her lips, and for a moment allowed herself the enjoyment of seeing her father playing the piano. She'd had that piano since college graduation and had only played it a handful of times. "Sounds lovely," she said. "Lovely and sad."

"Yes, I suppose it does. Why don't you try your hand at it?"

"Oh, no. I haven't played that thing in years." She felt shamed, realizing that she'd probably forgotten how.

"Oh, now, I insist. Come on, I'll help you." He stopped playing. "Come on."

Sarah decided that to fight it now was useless. She put the hat down and sat next to him, placing her hands on the keys. "Gosh, it's been so long—" she pressed down and slowly began playing, missing notes here and there, but overall playing well enough that the piece stayed relatively intact.

"That was very nice," he said. "Well then. I thank you for your time tonight." He placed his hand on her back and gently rubbed a small spot. The wire pressed into her skin as his fingers passed over it. She froze.

"More again tomorrow?" he said. Then he shifted sideways on the piano bench and pointed to the computer on the kitchen table. "Say, how soon until everyone can see it?"

"Oh, it's live now, so anyone can log on and see it, but we'll have to promote it. Do you have an address? If we put your address on it, it will help."

"Really? How so?"

"Well, people can find you that way. Famous people always have people finding them, didn't you know? You do want them to take your photo and put it in the tabloids, right?"

"Yes, I suppose I do. Right?"

"You do, because you want to be known everywhere and the tabloids, as you know, are quite good for that." Her nerves pinged because he was falling for it. She was going to get his address.

He rubbed his chin, "Yes, I suppose so. Though Poppycock knows more about them than I do."

"Well, put your address on the page then, otherwise it won't work at all." She knew he would never know better, she could tell him anything. She was feeling guilty all the same. She tried to push that away. She shouldn't have indulged in his company. Shouldn't have played the piano with him. _Be a cop, Sarah, be a hard bitten bitch._

"Oh, well we live in Los Angeles, in Koreatown at 3217 West Third Street," he said.

Sarah's heart skipped a beat, and then pounded in her throat. She tried to stay calm while she pumped him for data. "You and, ah, Poppycock live there, the both of you?"

He hesitated, "Yes, but that's not where we're staying now, of course."

"Oh?" her hands were wet with sweat. "Where would that be?"

Puk sat back against the piano. "That's on Jones Street. Jones and O'Farrell."

"Oh, here in San Francisco?"

"Yes, yes. It's called the Hotel Harrington. Nice enough. Bathrooms at the end of the halls and a whole lot of folks who don't have much to do during the day. Plenty of whores, too. Reminds us of home. Well, what used to be home. We drift around a lot."

Sarah could hear the blood pumping in her ears. She didn't want to give herself away, didn't want to pry too much. _Careful, Sarah, just keep him going, keep him talking, but keep it natural. You are catching this, aren't you boys?_

"Oh, Hotel Harrington, yes, that sounds...nice. Poppycock, he'll be there tonight?"

"Tonight. Tomorrow. You can never really tell with him. Sometimes he's out all night, mucking around, killing this person or that. When he gets into his work, it could be days before you see him again."

She dropped her façade. "Wow."

"What's that?" Puk asked.

"I can't get over how cavalier you are when you talk about what he does. Are you both really that cold-blooded?"

"Me, no. Him, yes. I don't fully understand it myself, so I try not to judge."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said.

He stared at the floor.

"It's time for you to go."

"Yes, I suppose so." He walked to the door and twisted the knob. "Is that bad?"

Standing there across the room with wisps of gray around his sideburns, thin chested and long necked, garbed in a bland overcoat and black galoshes, she was confronted with the horror that this man was her father, gone mad. Perhaps he too had been kidnapped by Poppycock—or whatever his real name was—and this was just how he coped with it.

"Yes. It's bad. Listen, if you don't agree with him, then I don't understand why you don't do something about it," she said. "You are so totally pathetic I can't stand to even look at you anymore. You play this charade pretending to be God-knows-what. I wish you weren't my—you need help." She looked down.

"Our time is up I'll see you tomorrow. And if you get the idea of messing around with Brad or hurting him in any way, I will not help you anymore."

Puk lowered his head. He didn't appear to have the strength to fight back. He simply walked out.

Chapter 9: Gobbledygook or Poppycock?

Sarah shifted in her seat and glared across the table at Detective Logan. He had just finished making an uncomfortable accusation and was now taking a sip of black coffee.

Torn open packets of sugar and creamer littered the table top. She hadn't even tasted her own coffee. A distant metal fan and the faint electronic hum of a micro cassette recorder filtered the silence. They were in an interrogation room, which was equipped with a two-way mirror.

"What are you saying?" she asked. "That I'm an accomplice? Should I get a lawyer, Detective?"

"I'm saying that there are some things that we need an explanation for, is all."

"I thought you'd be happy with the results. I got his address, Detective. Where he lives and where he's staying. What else do you want from me?"

Logan reclined in his chair, making the rivets squeak under his weight. "Tell me once more, Miss Montgomery, where was that address?"

She scoffed. "How many times are you going to ask me? I already told you. Los Angeles, 3217 West Third Street."

Logan nodded and pursed his lips.

"What?" she asked. "You make that expression every time I say that address. What's the matter?"

"You really believe that, don't you?"

"Detective, it's not whether I believe it or don't believe it, it's what he told me. It's on the tape. Don't you have the tape?"

Logan clasped his hands. "The tape, Miss Montgomery, is nonsense, pure and unadulterated nonsense. Nursery rhymes, music lyrics, misquoted Shakespeare."

She shook her head. _"What?"_

"Just what I said. A bunch of gobbledygook."

"I don't—I don't know what you're saying." She suddenly wanted to scream.

Logan rolled his head and took a deep breath. "Wait here a sec." He called for the tape and waited until a junior officer fetched it and a play back machine. He brought it in, set it up and rewound it.

Sarah listened to the high-pitched whine of voices talking backwards and thought of the 80's art of encoding messages from Satan in the most popular rock and roll songs.

The tape finished rewinding and Logan pressed play. After a few moments of silence she could hear breathing, her own. Then a door buzzer, footfalls and door openings.

On tape, Sarah spoke first: _To be or not to be, to thine own self be true._

Puk's voice: _There once was a man from Nantucket, who drilled two holes in a bucket, he gave the bucket a twirl and said like a churl, 'If my pale was a girl I would—'_

Sarah's voice cut in: _Sing a song of six pence, a pocket full of rye._ _Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, they all began to sing—_

Puk cut in: _Now I lay me down to sleep, pray the lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, take my soul my soul to—_

Take me out to the ball game, take me out to—

Saints go marching in, Lord, how I want to be in that number, when the—

Lady doth protest too much, methinks—

On it went, skipping from one nursery rhyme or song or limerick or quote to another. Sarah listened with wide-eyed horror until Logan pushed the stop button.

"What the fuck?"

"Do you have any explanation for this, at all?"

"No. I don't. We never said those things, Detective. None of that. I'm not lying to you. I have no reason at all to lie about this. I'm sorry, I—"

"That is your voice isn't it, Miss Montgomery?"

She didn't like how he said her name, authoritative, the way one might address a criminal, or a mental patient. "I didn't say those things, Detective. I—"

"This tape was recorded directly from your wire." He was staring at her in disbelief. Anything she might say would just be further proof that she was lying. She could see the conviction in his eye. Suddenly, she understood why, after all these weeks of investigation on this case, authorities had managed to come up with exactly nothing. She understood why, when she had threatened to get the police involved, Poppycock had simply shrugged.

"Poppycock," she said, laughing a bit sarcastically under her breath, as if she'd just gotten the punch line.

"Beg your pardon?" said Logan. "Something funny?"

"That tape," she said, "is a load of poppycock."

Chapter 10: Sarah Catches a Clue

Sarah walked out of the police building onto Bryant Street. Outside, the city was bathed in the bloody-pink of sunset. The crisp air chilled her skin and she pulled her leather jacket more tightly around her shoulders. She crossed the street to her car. She shivered. She didn't want to think about what had just happened back there with Detective Logan. She couldn't explain it.

She unlocked the car and sat inside, glancing into the back seat out of habit. She always did that when things felt out of the norm. She had no idea how long she'd been in there with Logan. She turned on her headlights and pulled out.

She wanted to get home and lock the doors three times over. She wondered if she'd get a patrol car tonight. Probably not.

She wanted to cry, or scream or...something. There was simply no emotion she could find for it, nothing save for a sort of surreal unreality that somehow seemed to be getting more and more solid.

She wound through traffic and got onto Van Ness. Then Lombard and home. When she arrived she checked the street up and down, searching for a certain station wagon. It wasn't there. Up at her door she slid the key into the lock, hoping everything would be as she'd left it.

Hoping and praying.

She stiffened and took a deep breath. Poppycock and Puk could easily have broken in. For that matter, they could easily be lurking outside. She turned the key and burst into quiet tears.

Inside Miss Priss was sleeping quietly in the Papasan chair. Not one fiber of rug, or piece of furniture was out of place. She wiped her cheeks and decided that tears could wait. She closed the door and locked it at the knob, then slid the chain and cranked the deadbolt. She closed the curtains. Then she picked up Miss Priss and cradled her.

"So, here we are."

She thought of the interview with Logan and the interludes with her father and the lunatic Poppycock. She thought of Brad, and for the first time wished he was here with her.

"Not dead," she whispered. Miss Priss stretched in the familiar feline arch. Then leapt to the floor and went prowling off into the kitchen. Sarah listened for the soft crunch of Meow Mix.

"Not dead yet," she said to herself and suddenly appreciated how true that was. She was not dead. Poppycock had not sliced her up like everyone else on the news.

Then something wedged its way into her mind, interrupting her thoughts and begging for resolution. It was the image of Logan sitting back in his chair with that quizzical expression on his face when she'd repeated the address her father—Puk—had told her. That look had been unnerving. At the time, it had been all she could do to restrain herself from smarting off. Thinking of it now, in the quietude of her own home, that look meant something else.

"Wait a minute." If her voice could be altered when being recorded on tape to say nonsense, then it was reasonable to assume that it could be altered in reality as well.

"Wait a damn-fricken minute, maybe that isn't my father, maybe that isn't a man, either. Maybe they're—" _Now Sarah, that's the silliest thing you ever—_ she ignored the inner voice of reason (her mother) and thought it over again. She went to her entertainment center and studied the CD drive. "Don't I have...." She went to her bedroom closet.

On the high shelf, stuffed in between an old suitcase and a stuffed bunny rabbit, sat an old and tattered box of crap that for some reason she'd been carting around since high school.

She reached up and grabbed the musty thing. Inside, was an old-fashioned tape recorder. Yes, a black tape with a torn blue and white label to go with it.

"Bingo!" she said and sat on the bed. She checked the batteries and found the chamber empty.

She searched the kitchen, found four C sized batteries and plopped them into the cassette recorder. "I hope they're still good."

She pressed play to the mellow tones of Night Ranger.

She hit stop.

"Perfect."

She pressed record and said: "Testing, testing, one, two, three."

She rewound and listened: _Testing, testing, one, two, three._

She hit record again and said: "This is Sarah Montgomery. The date is September 22nd and it's about eight o'clock at night. I live at 2424 Bay Street, near the corner of Bay and Broderick in San Francisco, California."

She rewound and listened again: _This is Sarah Montgomery. The date is September 22nd and it's about eight o'clock at night. I live at 2424 Bay Street, near the corner of Bay and Broderick in San Francisco, California._

It was the same. Good.

She pressed stop another time, before the rest of the 80's rock ballad came back on, and left it queued at that point.

Then she pushed record and said: "Los Angeles, 3217 West Third Street. Samuel Montgomery lives at 3217 West Third Street in Los Angeles."

She clicked the tape off. She could feel her heart beat in her chest. She took a deep breath and placed her finger on the rewind button. The moment of truth.

She took another breath and pressed play: _testing, testing, one, two, three. This is Sarah Montgomery. The date is September 22nd and it's about eight o'clock at night. I live at 2424 Bay Street, near the corner of Bay and Broderick in San Francisco, California. Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb, Puk Robin Goodfellow lives in Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb—_

She hit stop.

"Oh shit." She rewound and listened to the whole recording again and again it ended with _"Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb."_ "This is impossible."

She fast forwarded to another section of tape. This time it was Depeche Mode proclaiming their inability to get enough.

She pressed record and said in as clear and loud a voice as she could muster: "3217 West Third Street, Los Angeles."

She stopped the tape, rewound and pressed play. In the same loud and clear intonation the recording played back: _Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb_ _._

Then she recorded: "Samuel Montgomery."

Rewound and hit play: _Puk Robin Goodfellow_.

And in her own voice!

She pressed record and said: "Samuel."

Rewound and hit play: _Samuel_.

She did it again saying the full name: "Samuel Montgomery."

Rewound and listened: _Puk Robin Goodfellow_.

"This is fricking impossible!"

She fast forwarded and recorded: "Three-two-one-seven."

She played it back: _Three-two-one-seven._

She fast-forwarded and recorded: "West Third Street."

When she played it back it was simply her voice saying: _West Third Street_.

She recorded again saying only: "Los Angeles."

Same thing. Then she put them all together again: "Los Angeles, 3217 West Third Street."

She inhaled deeply, rewound and pressed play: _"Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb."_

She put the tape player down and to Miss Priss, said, "No wonder he thinks I'm fucking crazy. I am."



Poppycock walked down Bush Street, soaking in the shadows and the dark, smelling the scents of the night: the cigarette smoke and car exhaust, the ladies' perfume and the drunkards' booze. He sat down against the Chinatown Dragon Gate, which was covered in bird droppings and smelled of urine.

Above him was a single window. Inside, flashing disco lights backlit the shapes of people. He watched those figures come together and pull apart, undulate in pulsing blue flashes.

He wondered what publicity he could get for a party slaughter.

It was about more than just the publicity and media coverage, though. Like he'd felt over a hundred years before, he sensed the change inside, the transmutation to Native.

He gazed at those lighted windows again, watched those silhouettes. He wanted to play, he wanted to party, he wanted to—

"Go inside," he heard a female voice say.

"Not invited," he said.

"Oh, that'ssokay, you're invited now. Come on."

He stepped closer, out of the shadows and into the streetlight where he could better see her. She was young, buxom, black as Midnight Mass and drunk. He could tell by the way she swayed, by the way she slurred her words, and by the way she smelled—a subtle change in her physiology. The wisps of her frizzy hair hung around her face like a ring of Fade Smog.

"You comin'?" she asked, swaying a little.

All he could think about was stabbing his fingers through her clothes, slashing her ebony skin, laying her down, and watching her bleed out into a glimmering pool. "Yeah, I am."

She led him up narrow stairs to a top flat. "What's your name, anyways?"

"Poppycock."

Spittle and drunken laughter filled the entryway. "Oh, that'sss good," she slurred. "You're funny."

"What's your name?" he said.

"Tracy."

The door opened. A young Chinese man in a white T-shirt and black slacks ushered them inside. The lights flashed, making it hard to see, and the overpowering music seemed alien. The young man and Tracy shouted into each other's ears over the music. Then the man ogled Poppycock and burst into laughter, just as Tracy had.

He grabbed Poppycock's hand and shouted, "That's a good one, man!" giving him a complex handshake Poppycock was sure to forget. He reveled in the feel of the soft Asian skin against his.

Many of the people inside were dancing, others were lounging around on couches or on the floor. It was a multicultural mix—whites, blacks and yellows. Three people, a man who resembled Alex Trebec and two Chinese women with slight figures, huddled around each other with hangers on their heads saying, "We're the children of Druk. We bring the thunder." Their vapid eyes were hollow and distant.

Tracy nudged him. "Come on!" she yelled and took him by the hand, leading him through the apartment. They passed others on the way, some lying out on a couch, others groping each other.

"Hey!" shouted Tracy, just noticing that he'd paused for a bout of voyeurism. She pulled him into the kitchen.

There were two other people inside: a Chinese woman and a good looking American man. The woman was staring fixedly at the toaster. "It's crawling. Can you see it?"

"Come here," Tracy said, leaning against Poppycock. One of her breasts brushed against his arm. She produced a pillbox from between her cleavage and picked out a small, white tablet. "Open wide, baby," she said and Poppycock did.

She winced, but in a way that showed she didn't want to offend. It didn't bother him. Mortals had never been fond of his scent. The feeling was mutual.

"Stick out your tongue, baby. Gawd, it's so long. And purple."

Poppycock didn't respond, just let her gawk and tease as he felt the burn of humiliation. "Okay, there we go," she said, placing the pill on the tip of his tongue.

The tab dissolved quickly and had no taste. He rolled it around inside his mouth and swallowed. Tracy took another one from her pillbox and ate it.

"Now we wait," she said. "So, where you from?"

Poppycock liked her, which made it difficult for him, because he rarely liked anyone. She reminded him of a girl named Polly from years and years and years ago. Polly had been a doll and had looked so pretty dead. A shame she'd decomposed so quickly. He supposed Tracy would also look beautiful that way. Polly was white, Tracy was black, a nice contrast.

"Yoohoo! I said 'where you from?'" She laughed.

"From nowhere," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yup."

She laughed again and Poppycock wasn't sure why. She acted as though she might be enjoying his company, which wasn't normal. Or sane. Most people walked the other way or ignored him.

Tracy passed out white tabs to the others in the kitchen. When she finished, she pressed her lean body against Poppycock's, her shapely breasts flattening against his chest. She stood so close to him, as though she were a lover, but why? He couldn't figure it, but he didn't fight it. He enjoyed the awkward exchange of her giggling at his scowls.

After a couple minutes she said, "I'm feelin' somethin', aren't you?"

Poppycock shrugged, he didn't feel anything, but Tracy staggered back, her eyes large and round. "Whoa," she said, eyeing him up and down. "Now that be some shit."

She reached with a slender finger and touched his arm. "Is it real?"

The other woman and the American broke up their make out session to ogle him. "Holy fucking shit!"

"Eh?"

A shrill scream erupted from the American. "Oh, my God!"

Poppycock grabbed the man around the collar and dragged him up, making him scream all the more.

"Enough!" snarled Poppycock. With a nimble flick, he drove a fingertip deep into the fop's Adam's apple. The vocal cords came out with the ease of overcooked chicken off the bone. Blood poured down the gurgling man's shirt. Then he shut up, for good.

Bloodlust bloomed. Tracy and the other girl huddled in the corner, whimpering, shaking.

"Fuck you cryin' about?"

"Just a bad trip, just a bad trip," Tracy was saying between sobs.

Poppycock stretched, energized in the presence of their raw fear. He had never killed while others were watching. Never. Until now. He let his tongue unfurl, drooling, as if he could lick the terror out of the air.

"Oh, Oberon be damned," he breathed. "Feels so good." He lingered close to both of them, letting that pure terror coalesce, breathing in that unadulterated emotion, sucking it through his nostrils as if it were cocaine. Pure power rippled down his arms, surged in his chest. His loins burned hot. _This is the true drug of choice._

"Give me more," he said, scarcely able to restrain from ripping their bodies apart.

"More!" he roared and inhaled. "More more more!" He breathed in their terror. He knew how they saw him; he could see it in the way they shivered, sense it in their fear. Perhaps the drug had made them see him this way, or perhaps he was closer to Native than he'd known.

He could take it no longer and burst through the kitchen door. Sweat sluiced over his skin, drool wept from his lips. He dove into the flashing lights and pounding music. The occupants of this room were none-the-wiser.

"More!"

He pushed through the crowd to a pair of half-naked lovers, who were squirming on a couch, oblivious to him. Then the man saw him and erupted in a volley of insane giggles. "Wow, what a freaky costume!"

Poppycock ignored the insults and ripped the last of the girl's clothes free. He groped a breast and squeezed. She screamed. Blood spurted like a ruptured ketchup packet. The man ceased his ridicule and Poppycock licked his teeth.

"Oh, yes!" Poppycock roared, reeling in their festering passion, nearly unable to stand under the great infusion of mainline terror. They believed in him now, didn't they? Couldn't help it. Their fear, their terror, their belief coalesced around the room in near tangible eddies. No longer was he the laughingstock. Suddenly, "Poppycock" didn't mean "nonsense" anymore.

Muscle swelled against the seams of his clothes. His heart jack-hammered. He'd never felt so alive. He tore the shreds of his garments away and basked naked before them.

I'm coming back to Native.

But how? The drug? He'd experienced nothing. Yes, but Tracy had and only then had she seen him. Then it spread, a hysterical chain reaction, to the others. Fear begetting fear. Pure fission.

Shoving living bodies aside, he leapt across the room to the man and women cowering in a corner. He sneered at their screams.

In motions as natural and unrestrained as breathing, he gutted both of them. Entrails burst from slit bellies. Blood bubbled from tortured mouths.

A swirling wave of dread and disgust rippled through the room as the others connected with what was happening. Screams drowned out the music. Poppycock rose to his feet, absorbing that nourishing swell of homage.

Magic. Pure mother-fuckin' magic.

All eyes locked on him. He held their gazes. They could see him true now, drug or no drug. It had been so very long since he'd felt his native bones. So very, very long since so many had truly believed.

He panted, preparing for their worship. "I am..." he breathed, "I am your god. I am your... _beautiful monster_."

He basked in their horror, in every vibration and miniscule throb of repulsion, every mad consideration that begged for mercy.

He imagined their heads popping off with the ease of dandelion tops.

And they did, in soggy splats against the walls simply because he'd envisioned it.

_Puk, you fool,_ this _is the magic. This is what you need. What we all need._

He waded back through the carnage to the kitchen, where the two women who'd sparked off his transformation still held each other in shivering terror. They screamed with wide open mouths.

When he'd finished them off, he walked to the living room wall, pulled a blood-drenched limb from a quivering heap and, with this morbid pen, wrote the note.

Chapter 11: Crying with the Boss

Sarah had forgotten to get Puk's photo the evening he'd come over, so she sent a text message to Brad's iPhone and in a few seconds received a photo back. She didn't know if it was actually Puk or not; it was just a silhouette of someone wearing a trench coat and a fedora. She didn't care one way or the other.

She uploaded it and completed the Facebook page. The background now matched the photo, both dark.

Then she set up a Google Plus, Instagram and Twitter account with the same photo and the tagline: "Waiting for the magic."

She sat back and inhaled a deep breath. If she was ever going to get Brad back, she decided, she would just have to give them what they wanted. Then, when she and Brad were both safe, maybe she would think about undoing what help she'd given them.

Factually, though, she didn't care. She just wanted to get Brad back and forget all about this. Get on with her life. Leave Puk and Poppycock to the police. She wondered if, when she did get Brad to safety, he would be different...changed...broken, perhaps.

She didn't want to think about that. Somehow, if Brad didn't come back with his usual smartass self intact, she didn't know if she could take it. If he was too quiet, or apologetic, or...or—no, she just wanted him the way he was.

Someone knocked on her door. Through the side window, she spied the familiar dark blue suit pants. This individual had a thing for dark blue suits. "It's open!" she called.

Keith, her boss, poked his head in and looked at her with raised brows. "Hey, Sarah M."

"Hey, Keith...last name initial."

"Mind if I come in?"

"Be my guest." She knew she was overdue for a Keith talk. Keith Dillingham was a CEO who believed that people should only be talked to if they were messing up. She'd usually managed to keep Keith at a comfortable, smiling distance. Probably because he stared at her ass when he thought she wasn't noticing.

He sat down in the chair beside her desk, the one she used for interviews, and crossed his legs. She got a whiff of his aftershave and thought of Puk.

"Sarah," he said, "how we doin'?" He peeked at her computer screen. "That for a client?"

A partial nude of Gloria Hanson filled her screen. Sarah had just finished putting the photo-effect stars over the nipples. "Uh huh." She minimized the window.

"I see. Anyways, Sarah, how _are_ we doing?"

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"Yeah."

"I can always tell when someone is lying." He took a sip of his coffee and smirked.

"How?" she asked.

"Oh, something to do with those big, droopy eyes. Sad puppy dog looks. Usual fare for girls in love."

"Sorry?"

He sat back. "You miss McBride, donchya?"

Sarah opened her mouth but Keith cut her off. "I don't hold it against you. Office romances can be verrry tricky and as you know, our policy on the matter is...well, not to have any policy."

"But—"

"But, but, but," he tapped his thigh, "if it gets in the way, then we have to...have a talk."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're—"

"Sarah, it's okay. He'll return soon enough. Until he does, though, I need you on your game, sport."

"Keith, sir, I don't know if you know this or not, but Brad McBride is missing."

"I know."

She gave him wary stare. "No, I mean missing, like 'missing person' missing. Where do you think he's been for the last week?"

He popped his eyes and made a comical face. "Jeez, you got it real bad donchya? Worse than I thought, even."

"What do you mean?"

"A real case of the love bugs, huh?"

"You don't believe me at all do you?"

"About what? That McBride is missing? I know that. Hell, he just sent me a text message from the Bahamas. He's on vacation. Check it out." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a new Blackberry. He flipped the screen to show it to her. It said: _Hey Boss, I wasn't kidnapped or anything. I'm in the Bahamas. On vacation._

Sarah shook her head. "No," she said. "No, no, no. That's not possible. Keith, you don't get it. He—he's not in the Bahamas, I know—he's not, he's—"

"He is," he said. "Says so right here." He pointed to the screen.

"Yeah, I know what it says, I know, but he's not in the Bahamas. He's—"

Keith shifted his weight. "Well, where is he then? If he's not where he says he is, where is he, Sarah?"

Tears crowded her eyes. It was as though she was all alone in a psych ward and everyone in the entire world was staring while she tried to explain that her monsters were real. "Come on," he pressed. "Where is he?"

She blinked. "He's—he's w-with P-P-Poppycock!"

Keith burst into laughter and held his hand over his mouth. He laughed so hard tiny tears began to form. His faced went red as an Irish drunk's nose and his body jittered as if he were being electrocuted.

It made Sarah's own eyes well up. Warm tears slid down her cheeks. She covered her mouth, also, and the two of them sat across from each other, holding their mouths, tears streaming from their eyes, one laughing, one crying.

After some minutes and more than a few tissues, Keith said, "Oh, now that was a good one. That was a real good one, Sarah. I ought to give you a raise for that. I mean, really. Say, are you crying?"

She shook her head and blew her nose. "Yeah," she said. "What else would I be doing?"

"Atta girl," he said. "Well, I think we're done here. Oh, and keep that up." He pointed to her computer monitor. "Good stuff."



Detective Edward Logan had been stumped only once before in his career. Really stumped. Back then, he had been a rookie. He hadn't had his procedure down and his method had been all askew. He had been too "wet between the legs," as his captain used to say.

That had been twenty years ago, and eventually he had solved that case.

This one now had Logan up Shit's Creek without so much as a spoon.

He dropped another brown lump of sugar into his drink and gave it a stir. The spoon clinked on the ceramic cup. He inhaled the aroma of fresh coffee. Not much could compare with that.

"Cream, sir?" asked the old woman, so old she couldn't keep her liver-spotted hand steady. Her name: Mrs. Doherty. Logan thought she must be in her nineties. She was Chinese-Irish, a combination he didn't know could exist. Her blue eyes were clear as the Caribbean seas and, behind them, her mind was sharp as a Chinese cleaver.

Her apartment, on the other hand, resembled something akin to a schizophrenic novelty shop. The walls were so crowded with knickknacks one couldn't see the paint between them and the place was filled with stacks and stacks of publications. Books, catalogues and periodicals of all manner and title. The kitchen table and living room sofa were covered with protective plastic sheeting.

"Oh, no ma'am. Don't take cream in my coffee. I take it black and sweet. Where I come from cream makes it weak and no man likes a sissy," he said and winked an eye.

"Oh, heavens me," said Mrs. Doherty, "doesn't all that sugar make it weak, too?"

"Oh, no ma'am, sugar spices it right up." Logan plopped another lump down into his steaming black cauldron and gave it a taste. "Yup, sweet spice, that."

"Well, you can take it any way you want it," she said and pushed the plate of candied fruit and nut bars at him. He'd already eaten three of those and figured he'd finish off another ten before they were through. He was playing along, because that's what you did when you wanted someone to trust you and tell you everything. Besides, he had something of a sweet tooth to satisfy.

"Mrs. Doherty," he said, "how long have you lived here?"

"Oh, now what is it? Oh, I'd say nearly forty years now. Moved in here just after Mr. Doherty opened up the Tool and Dye store. Took that loan from the bank and started up a business that didn't make a cent for nearly five years. Then it made a pretty penny, Detective. Why, he bought this whole building just so he could become his own landlord.

"It made Mr. Doherty a plump man in body and pocketbook and I enjoyed every minute of those days. Oh, my." She stared off into the space between things. "I assume, Detective, that you are going to ask me what I saw last night? Hmm? Am I right?"

Logan nodded deeply. "Yes, indeed," he said. "I am very interested in what you have to say about that."

"You know, there's a saying that the Irish have, Detective. It is 'nature breaks through the eyes of a cat.' Have you heard it before?"

"No, ma'am, I can't say that I have."

"Well, Detective, it means something like 'it takes one to know one,' you see? It means that the true nature of a person can always be known."

Logan took a sip of his coffee.

"Detective, now you understand, I've never seen anything like it before and I doubt very much I will ever see anything like it again. If I tell you what these old, mortal eyes bore witness to, why sir, I want your word that you won't lock me up and throw away the key. Can you agree to that, Mr. Logan?"

"Oh, yes. Quite."

"What I'm about to tell you, sir, could get one put away in this day and age, because, you see, it's seeing through the eyes of a cat, it is. It's seeing the world in its truest sense.

"But to the uninitiated, to the layman, there is every reason to think that what I'm about to say proves me a kooky old spinster, you understand?"

Logan bowed his head in a gesture of submission as the image of the house next door struck him again. Her words had brought it back.

Upon entering the scene, he'd thought he might vomit. Then he had, but only once. One didn't make it as far as Logan had with a weak stomach.

This case was testing him, though. Even now, here with Mrs. Doherty, his gut was going sour and he placed his half-eaten treat back down on the plate.

It had been more than the guts that had made him sick, more than the smell. It had been the knowledge that someone or something intelligent, sentient perhaps, had done it. No—intelligent maybe, but not sentient.

That message on the wall, the one he had taken dozens of digital photos of, the one written specially for him he was sure, had said:

Don't lose your heads when you try to figure out who did this one. There's only one answer. Always and only one answer...

Forever Yours,

POPP-y-mother-fuckin-cock

"Detective? Are you all right?" Mrs. Doherty reached across the table and grabbed his hand with her shriveled, warm fingers.

He came to his senses, realizing only now that he'd been sweating and his heart had been surging like a sump pump in a rainstorm. "Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, what's that you were saying?"

"I'm sorry, Detective."

"For what, Mrs. Doherty?"

"For what you saw in there."

"Oh? And what did—"

"The young ones had many a celebration in that house, Detective. Many. I knew, even before it happened, that it was coming. I knew it because I dreamt it. Sure enough, those blue lights flashed for the last time, last night.

"Understand there weren't supposed to be witnesses, not a single one. Because that's how he works, you see? That's how he does it. How he's always done it. Not one stray eye was supposed to bear witness and live. Just the aftermath, just the terror, that's what's supposed to linger, that's what's supposed to live and make him live too. Do you understand, Detective?

"I saw it right through that window there. That one, that faces due north, toward the city of Falias, in the direction of the Stone of Destiny. I saw with these mortal eyes, what no woman or man should ever see and live to tell. I stared with terror and couldn't pull myself away no matter how much I wanted to. I saw the incarnation of death itself. Fingers sharp as razors, sir, tusks long as pikes and ears that flap in the wind like the Jolly Roger itself, I did. If I never see it again, it will be too soon. A monster, sir, that's what I saw, a real and living monster."

Logan took a deep, shaky breath. "What kind of monster, Mrs. Doherty? Can you elaborate?"

"Oh, but I know all too well. It was the unnamed one, Poppycock," she said the name with a long and strained whisper.

"Yes, Poppycock, right, but what—what did you see? I mean, what is this Poppycock? A monster, you said? How so?"

"They are gods and not gods, sir."

"Beg your pardon?"

"A race of men that are more than men, a race of gods that are less than gods, eh? This one, this Poppycock is the worst of the lot. Most unseelie and most unkind. This Poppycock is as vicious and unnatural a creature as any that exists under God or the devil. This Poppycock is a bugbear, a goblin most vile, a bugaboo most foul. There won't be a mortal man alive who can catch him. Not one, not even you, Detective."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Doherty, I don't understand. Can you please—"

"Faerie!" she cried, her clear eyes now clouding up darkly, her palsied hands at once steady. In that moment she was a young and powerful woman, beautiful under her aged appearance, anything but the kindly old spinster.

Logan swallowed. The thickness of his saliva made him want to gag. "Poppycock is a faerie? Is that what you're telling me? Like Peter Pan?"

"Praise be the saints," she said and threw up her hands. "Yes, Detective, that's exactly what I am telling you, exactly what I am saying to you now, except Peter Pan is a myth and Poppycock is history."

For a brief instant he wanted to laugh, cry and jabber all at once, like an inmate at Bedlam. Then he shook his head and stared down into his coffee. He tasted the sugar on his lips. His gut felt too full. He clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. A silent burp burned up his throat. He didn't feel so good.

He was losing his grip on the case again, drifting further away from any clues that might have meaning. He was miles away from any lead that could crack this one. "Mrs. Doherty, did you see a man in that house across the street? A _man_?"

She shook her head and smiled wistfully. Then in a motion so slight Logan scarcely noticed, she plucked a figurine from a nearby collection and set it down before him on the table. "Not a man alive who can solve it," she whispered. "No. I saw no man other than those who were slain. I saw no mortal man, but I saw a monster, sir, a monster." She tapped on the base of the figurine that stood before her, a ceramic icon of a creature with tusks and fur and enormous claws. A beast-man wearing a top hat.
Chapter 12: The Glory Days

Puk sat back in his reclining chair, sipping on warm milk and snacking on freshly baked _krumkake_. He was fading still, but less so. He could feel the efforts of his body's daughter hard at work. He appreciated those efforts...and her personally.

She'd informed him a day ago that one of the chimera photos had gotten ill with some kind of virus. He never knew a photo could catch a virus, but apparently this virus could spread to men and this was good for business and, of course, staying alive. It meant that so many men were paying homage to the lecherous Dr. Goodfellow and his amorous hybrid.

Poppycock's infamy had kept them both supported in style these past weeks. The magic had grown so rapidly from killing sprees and media frenzies that it had enabled them to juxtapose certain parts of the Hedgerows, the dark places that existed beyond known matter, into the Realspace of their once tiny apartment in Los Angeles.

They'd been able to connect the apartment with the hotel in San Francisco, collapsing the space between them and thus easing their commute, and it had begun to transmute from a filthy modern two-bedroom into the genesis of a thirteenth century manse.

It was just the beginning, for even though Poppycock had accumulated much infamy, it took a great deal more power to transform whole spaces that had been owned so thoroughly by another space and time.

Dirty drywall and yellowing paint had been replaced with sections of limestone. The bathroom plumbing had ceased to operate and a developing sluice system was taking shape underneath the floorboards. The kitchen floor had hardened to stone where fleecy rushes appeared over drying chicken bones.

The hallway, now covered with colorful scenes of fiefdom, led to the parlor where his captive man and buxom chimera spent the majority of their time.

_All a work in progress_. _In due time,_ _we shall be back to where we were so many years ago. In due time._

Puk chomped down on a cream-filled wafer and thought of the old days, the Golden Days when he'd been so strong, when he'd first begun to experiment with the chimera.

Most of those initial projects had failed, but not all. He recalled the successes clearly: mainly Marlin. Beloved Marlin had been a lanky apothecary failing at his trade. He'd met Marlin, of all places, in...



...Tammany Hall on Fourteenth Street in downtown Manhattan.

Puk walked up the steps he'd walked half a thousand times since moving to New York. The smell of pipe tobacco was rife in the air, talk and chatter rumbled in the hall. Men in black and gray sack suites, matching spats and silk cravats, frequented this stronghold of New York party politics.

Puk was on the prowl for a certain invisible and otherwise colorless man, a virtual dust mote in the public eye.

The scent of roasting peanuts filled the hall. He stepped out and with the nickel in his vest pocket, purchased a bag.

He considered the task at hand: to catch a crooked politician and publish his misdeeds. Puk had the perfect venue to do just that: his very own _Puck Magazine_.

_Puck Magazine_ had originally been printed in German, a marketing ploy to gain support from German immigrants residing in the New York boroughs. _Puck_ , a spelling coined and popularized by none other than Blind Bill of bardic fame, had caught on quickly and the publication had rushed to the tops of newspaper stacks everywhere.

He had decided to go with "Puck" because of the dead poet's work and because phonetically, in the minds of human men, "Puck" would be close enough to his Native "Puk" to link homage. It was an ingenious ploy to stay alive in a time that no longer believed in the first races.

Concerning routine business matters he used the human pseudonym of Joseph Keppler.

Puk had not heard anything from Poppycock since he'd been in New York, some three months. It was Puk's hope that he could earn enough reverence to keep the both of them eternally solid. Unfortunately, his brother's name had become synonymous with _nonsense_ , which made it very difficult, in this day and age, for sentient races to take him seriously.

He chewed a crisp peanut and tasted its roasted, buttery flavor. Amidst the men climbing the steps into the hall he spotted his quarry: a thin man with a handlebar moustache and a head of wavy, thick hair. Robert Van Wyck.

"Sir," said Puk, "may I have a word with you?"

"Good day, do I know you?" said Van Wyck.

"Not by face I am sure, but undoubtedly by name. I am Joseph Keppler of _Puck Magazine_."

Van Wyck snorted. "Drivel."

"Drivel to you mayhap, but half a million say otherwise."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Keppler? My time is short and I have other matters to attend to." He crumpled his newly purchased bag of peanuts under a tight fist, his appetite undoubtedly being ruined by the nosey magazine editor.

"Oh, please, call me Puk."

Van Wyck guffawed. "So in love with your work, you become it?"

"Something like that, yes."

"Have you anything of use to say or shall we conclude this meeting, _Puck_?"

"I am quite interested in the recent attention you've gathered from this fine establishment."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

Puk knew he was making the man uncomfortable. That was his goal after all. "Come now, my good man, 'tis no secret that yesterday you were but a nameless city moderator and today you find yourself a favorite of the Tammany Boss, a selected candidate for mayor of New York City. Why? Have you Irish blood pumping in those Dutch veins?"

"You heard nothing of the sort," muttered Van Wyck, shoving his way through the crowd.

"Oh, but I did, I did. A favorite of Dick Croker himself, but why? That's what we at _Puck_ can't quite figure."

Richard or "Dick" Croker was a political boss who had New York City wrapped up inside his Tammany Hall power base, the gentlemen's social club that half a hundred years earlier had become active in politics and that now ruled the New York Democratic party and thereby the city.

By garnering the votes of Irish American immigrants fresh off the boat, in exchange for jobs, money and protection, the institute ensured the votes for any candidate they chose. Croker had been the caricaturized focus of many a _Puck_ article.

"You know nothing of Mr. Croker and—"

"My guess? Your name was chosen because you'll be as sympathetic to the patty as is Croker and you'll likely turn your cheek to his cattle prodding of every city official within a fifty mile radius. Any comment, sir?"

"How dare you!" Van Wyck flushed bright red. "You know nothing of what you speak and if it is true at all, at all, I say sir, that I am indeed in the running for mayor of this elite and most impressive city, then it shall be made known in due time to you and all the population at large."

"So then you admit it?" Puk's blood pressure seemed to warm the folds of his cravat. That Van Wyck was still standing here meant he had something to fight for, which meant he had something to hide, which meant that the rumor was true.

"I admit nothing of the sort, sir, nothing at all and I resent the notion that you would accuse me and the good Mr. Croker. Why, our city is finer and richer and better off for his service, and I should think that any elected official would be appointed by a propitious popular vote. By the book, sir."

"Yes, and I am sure you would make those claims all while the greenbacks flow secretly into the private accounts of the privileged few. Is that not right, good sir? Are those not the people you mean when you say 'finer, richer and better off'?"

"Good day, Mr. Keppler— _Puck._ This meeting is adjourned." Van Wyck stalked away, his bag of peanuts a greasy mess tucked under one arm.

Puk realized with alacrity, as well as some despondence, that he had not allowed the man to eat but one of those tasty peanuts. But he had gotten enough sputtering denials to write a fine article—and caricature—that was sure to curl the toes of Croker and Van Wyck both.

Puk was standing on the steps of the hall, about to depart, when a man stepped over from the other side of the building and said loudly, "I saw your spar and I admit that while I do not know the facts of the matter, I was quite impressed. Did I hear right that you are Mr. Joseph Keppler?"

Puk bowed. "In the flesh."

The man walked to him and began pumping his hand. "Good day, sir, good day indeed. I don't think there is a single issue that I've missed since the first English edition and, sir, if I could read German I would read all those, too. I say, one of the finest publications ever to hit the streets and," he leveled a thumb at the hall doors, "sewers of New York City."

"Well, I thank you very much," said Puk, "and excuse me, sir, what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't. So glad you asked. My name is Dandyfield. Marlin Dandyfield."

"Hell of a name, Mr. Dandyfield," said Puk.

Dandyfield blushed. "Yes, well, I get that a lot. Can't have a name like 'Dandyfield' without it."

"Tell me, sir, what is your profession?" Puk asked. Dandyfield was still pumping his hand enthusiastically, which Puk was silently enjoying.

Dandyfield looked down sheepishly. "I am in the drug business—ah, I mean legal drugs, of course. I'm a pharmacist. Truth be told, I hate the profession and did it only at the behest of my father. Truth is, sir, that I have only one true love. At heart I am a writer. And—And I know that if given a chance I could—"

"A writer? Really?"

"Oh yes, sir, I love to write. Well, that's why I love _Puck_ so much, you see, I could write those articles and—"

"Hhmm, tell me again, how much do you love _Puck_?"

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"No matter. Why don't you come over to discuss it then?" asked Puk.

"Oh, sir, I would—"

"Come over this evening and we shall discuss every last, little part of it. Why, I have been in the market, for some time now, for a personal assistant who will work with me on another project and I see by your eager and never ending handshake that you may be the candidate I so desperately seek."

Dandyfield pulled his hand away shamefaced. "Oh, my apologies, sir."

"No, no, no, sir. No apology necessary." Puk picked Dandyfield's hand back up and continued the shake. "I see that spark in your eye and that is exactly what we need for _Puck_ , a man who possesses such enthusiasm. Come to my private home and we can talk it over."

"Thank you, sir, thank you very much."



Dandyfield couldn't write worth a damn, which did not surprise Puk in the least. Certainly, if Puk had relinquished his own column in the magazine to him, it would have been the publication's undoing. However, what Dandyfield did possess was eagerness and enthusiasm and sentimental admiration for Puk personally.

Though Puk had little use for the man in a professional capacity, he had every use for the him on a personal level. He appointed Dandyfield to Head of Household for his personal estate.

"Sir, you mentioned your personal projects? I would like very much to begin my writing process, sir. I am quite exuberant at the prospect," said Dandyfield as he put down a plate of Cornish game hen, scalloped potatoes and green beans.

"Are you not pleased to be living with me? Is that not enough for you? I care for you, my sweet man, and I give you the run of the place, do I not?"

"Oh, sir, you do. You truly do. As you know, I have admired your work for many years, but sir, I am truly very sad that I am not able to write for the magazine. My father has sent me these." He produced three letters and laid them down before Puk.

Puk chewed his hen slowly and sipped at a glass of red wine. Only when he had finished his meal, did he deign to pick up the first letter. Dandyfield shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Puk had taken twenty minutes to eat his meal. In his personal home, he required homage and Dandyfield was wont to give it.

Puk opened the envelope.

"My Son,

"You have disappointed your mother and me once again. Firstly, because we know you will never marry. Secondly, because you have left your schooled trade to pursue a dream you will never achieve. We hang our heads and pray to the good Lord that you will find your way again and give up this foolhardy path. We beseech you to return to your fine and lucrative career as an apothecary. If you do not, we will be forced to strike your name from the will.

"Your Repeatedly Disappointed Father,

"Edgar C. Dandyfield"

"The others are similarly written," said Dandyfield as he spread them out on the table. Tears sparkled in the man's eyes. "I want to prove to him that I can do it, that I can achieve my dream. If you would tell me, just a little even, what this other publication is, anything at all, sir, I would be delighted to begin posthaste, in my spare time of course."

Puk pushed his plate away. "It was a good meal," he said, picking his teeth with his tongue. "You're a hell of a cook. Good with a broom, too."

"Thank you very much, sir."

"You've a good hand at caring for a body also...but, as we have discussed, not such a good hand at writing prose."

Dandyfield hung his head. "Sir, I am sure that given the chance I could—"

"Be silent. I cannot employ you with the magazine. _Puck_ is my lifeline. It keeps me whole. But it is not my first love."

"Pray, sir, what first love is yours if not _Puck_? Name it and I will take it on as my own."

"Perhaps it is too much of me to ask that you be satisfied simply to share this house with me, to serve my meals and clean my clothes, to pluck the lint from my belly button and clean up after me and take your life's pride from caring for my baser needs?"

"Oh but, sir, I do love to—"

Puk raised a hand. "No quibbles." He enjoyed that Dandyfield was so eager to appease, so ready to explain his gratitude, and so quick to be defensive. It had been the reason he had taken to the man months earlier. He had seen it in his eyes. The man fawned over him and had done so from the very beginning and that alone secured his employment. "Hush," he said. "Have I ever shown you the menagerie?"

Dandyfield blinked. "Menagerie, sir?"

"Yes, I suppose I never did then. Do you recall the bedtime story I told you last month?"

Dandyfield bobbed his head vigorously. "The one of the cloven-footed man in the woods, who with his flute made all the young men and women lose their minds, and clothes, and dance and make merry in the forest. That one, sir?"

"Yes, the very same."

"Indeed, sir, I loved it very much, very much, sir."

"Well then, do you see that the shape of a man can be changed then?"

"The shape of a man, sir?"

"Yes. Hmm, better to show you. Fetch me the album in my nightstand. The leather one tied with cord." Puk clapped his hands.

Dandyfield dashed upstairs. He returned, panting and holding a thick leather portfolio. He handed it to Puk. "May I sit, sir?" he asked.

Puk glared up at him with a singular nod. Dandyfield took a seat on the other side of the table. He sat up straight with his hands in his lap, the posture that Puk had taught him.

Puk leafed through the photos, many of which were considerably aged. "Ah, here we are." Puk turned the book around and placed it on the table. "Look here then." He pointed to a photo.

"Dear God!" Dandyfield exclaimed. "What manner of bedevilment?"

Under the photograph was written the inscription "Joseph Merrick." He had a giant bulbous and lopsided head and an arm, which would better have served as a club, covered in thick calloused skin. The poor creature's legs were of similar affliction and he appeared quite unable to stand straight.

"Yes," said Puk, "left me instantly. They're calling him the Elephant Man now. He's off in a circus, making a certain showman very famous. Very famous. You do remember what I told you about fame, do you not?"

"'Fame,' you said, 'is the food of kings. With it you can live forever, without it you just fade away.' Did I get it right?"

"Almost," he said. He turned the page and showed the next photo, a woman with thick, dark eyebrows, a flat nose and grotesquely swollen lips.

"Egads," said Dandyfield. "She's hideous."

"Yes, indeed," said Puk. "Ran off several months ago to who can say where. Lost, I suppose. Oh well, no bother." He turned to the next photo, a woman dressed in a modern brocade bustle gown. She had curly hair and a very dark and curly beard. He flipped the next five pages, which exhibited photos of similarly bearded women, one of whom had hair growing from what appeared to be every follicle on her face, a complete mask.

"Dear God," gasped Dandyfield. "What horrors reside in your personal collection!"

"Yes, more failures. None of them did I even want to keep. This one I shooed out the same day. This one here," he flipped to the woman with the mask of hair, "the same hour."

" _You_ did this?" said Dandyfield.

"My dear, silly and very naive Dandy," he said. "What else did you think I was saying?"

"I-I don't know, sir, but I-well, I have lived here for two months and seen nothing of the sort. Further, I don't understand how you could have brought these afflictions about in these people. All of them are clearly suffering from some medical malady which cannot be explained."

"Yes, well I suppose it appears that way. My fine Dandy, I made all of these creatures you see here, regrettably. I want nothing more than to perfect the process and create truly wonderful works of art, not these hideous deformities. Then I will take them out in an exhibition of my own. No sense all the fame going to a few charlatans who can no more create the freaks they put on display than you can write a paragraph of prose."

At once Marlin began to cry.

"Oh, there now," said Puk. "I was joking."

Marlin sobbed. "You meant it, I know you did. Just like my father. I can't write, I know. I can't. I will never achieve my dream. Never. Oh, I can't bear to go back to the pharmacy. I just can't. Please help me. Please. If I can't be a writer, if I can't do it, then I am ruined. Just ruined I say. Please help me, Joseph, please."

Puk studied the man. He'd been toying with a certain idea. He did so enjoy Dandyfield's bone structure and physical composure. His jawline and the slope of his forehead should work well with certain themes. The man had proven to be a trustworthy sap. After all he hung on Puk's every nuance, a form of worship in itself.

He did not want to spoil the man's natural beauty with a botched experiment. However, since he'd begun publishing _Puck_ in English, his infamy and strength had risen a goodly notch. He could feel the potency of his magic.

"Marlin darlin'," Puk said, "allow me to show you a new dream."



Puk glanced at the platter, which was now covered in crumbs. He'd been musing over past glory days and had managed to scarf down all twenty-one of the miniature _krumkakes_. His milk, too, was all gone.

He missed Marlin and wondered where his beloved had gone. Perhaps Africa. Hidden deep in the jungle. Or perhaps the circus? He didn't know.

Marlin had screamed so very loud during the morphing process. It had frightened Puk. But Marlin had adjusted well to his new form, to the round snout and floppy ears, to the upturned nose. He had adjusted quickly to an inability to attract a normal woman or man, and to the fact that he was no longer human at all. He'd become as entertaining as any pet pig and Puk had learned so much of how to practice his craft provided, of course, that his fame was thick enough.

Puk heard a bump, then footsteps. Brad had come out of the hall and was standing behind his chair. "Hello, Bradley Boy," he said.

"Sir, how are you?" Brad walked to the couch opposite Puk, which had partially transmuted into a medieval day bed, and sat down cross-legged upon it.

"Where is Gloria?" asked Puk.

"Oh, she's sleeping. I tuckered her out."

"Did you enjoy the _krumkake_?" asked Puk.

"I was hoping I could have some more, if you say it's okay."

Puk smiled inwardly. This mortal was so weak that he had already fallen under the spell, already adopted the warm and ardent feelings a chimera holds for its master, and he hadn't even been created yet. Indeed, he had only been held captive in the spacetime behind the Hedgerows for a few short weeks. "So much my Marlin, aren't you?"

"Hmm?"

"A friend of mine. Many, many years ago. You remind me of him so. Even your delicate features..."

"Oh, I'm sure that's a huge compliment. May I have some more cakes?"

"Yes. You may. There is another platter in the kitchen. Go and fetch it and we will snack on them together." Puk clapped his hands twice. "At once, don't keep me waiting!"

Chapter 13: Sarah Barters for Brad

Sarah opened the door. Puk stood in the hallway in a tan colored trench coat and black gloves. His hair was slicked back and he smelled of cheap aftershave.

"You're back," she sighed.

"You don't seem too happy about that."

"So maybe I'm not."

He shrugged, "May I?"

She gestured him in. He took a seat in the Papasan chair, crossing his long legs as he always did, as her father had. The lamp light shone on him in such a way that she perceived him somehow fuller and more opaque.

"Can I get you something?" she asked, not caring whether he answered or not.

"No, I'm quite all right, unless of course you have goat cheese," he said.

"Goat cheese. Right. How about water?"

"No. Thank you."

Sarah took a seat at the piano bench. She stared at him.

"My dear, this will never do. You are so negative," he said.

She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. "No Poppycock with you, again?" she asked.

Puk shook his head. "I haven't seen Poppycock for some time now. Nearly a week."

"I've noticed that the news coverage hasn't changed for a while, no new victims," she said.

"True, true. Say, I should have some more curiosities for you soon," he said.

"Curiosities?"

"You know, to put up on the line," he said.

"No, no, no. Just stop right there," she held up a hand. "I—I am not doing this—any of this—because I want to help you. You understand? I am only doing this so that you release Brad and leave me alone. What kind of delusion are you under, anyway?"

"Delusions of grandeur perhaps," he said.

"No. You don't get it. I did what you wanted and now—now you need to hold up your end of the bargain."

"We're just getting started," he said pleadingly. "You can't quit on me now."

"I don't work for you. Oh, my God, I don't even know why I thought I could trust you. What am I doing? You're—you're so fucking crazy!"

"I'm sorry, I don't—"

"Shut up." She looked at him straight on. "Just shut up and listen. I don't really know what or who you are, okay. I don't know and guess what, I don't want to know. Somehow you and that sick fuck Poppycock have figured out a way to cheat the system or keep from being found out—" she wasn't too sure if she wanted to mention the taping incident, she wasn't too sure if she even believed it herself.

"Ah," he said, "I see you tried the police."

Sarah paused, but then decided against commenting. "As I was saying, somehow you figured out a way to get around the system. Whatever. But so help me, if you don't give Brad back to me I will personally undo everything that I have done to help you. Okay? I don't care if you send Poppycock in the middle of the night to slit my throat because it might be better than kowtowing and putting your fucked up pictures on the Internet."

He didn't say anything for a few moments. "You can have Brad back."

"What? Are you serious? I can never tell whether you're serious or not. That easy, you just give him back?"

"You leave me little choice," he said. "You're obviously very upset and I can't have you undoing the work you've done. I'm just starting to feel good again. I will release Brad."

"Really?"

"Truly," he said, his jaw muscles relaxing.

"Promise me that you and Poppycock will leave us alone. Promise me you will never come back to me, or him, for any reason at all. Ever."

"A promise from me will put you at ease?" he asked.

"I would rather it be a restraining order."

"I promise."

Before Puk departed, he insisted on playing another tune. Sarah, begrudgingly, let him. This time he played Fur Elise. She stood between the dining room and the living room expecting to feel a deep loathing for him, but instead found herself admiring his talent, appreciating his musical deftness. She watched him play, listening to the melancholy notes float up under the soft touch of his long fingers. She could never hope to play so well. The music touched somewhere deep inside. She had no idea that it could be played with such solemnity and broken-hearted beauty. She wanted to cry.

Abruptly, he finished. "Goodnight," he said. "Come by tomorrow evening at the hotel."

"Hotel?"

"Yes...well, the one on Jones Street."

"Hotel Harrington?"

He sighed contentedly. "That's the one."

"You mean Brad has been here in the city this whole time?"

Puk was thoughtful. "Yes, in a way, I suppose he has."

She decided to let the issue drop. "What time?" she asked.

"Any time after seven would be fine. Your time that is."

"PM?"

"Yes. Good night Sarah."

She closed the door behind him and bolted it, then slid the chain lock into place. She sat down on the couch, deeply troubled. She feared the worst for Brad, feared that he may no longer be as she had known him.

She wondered what Puk was really up to.



Puk left Sarah's apartment and strode out into the night. As he walked he admired the stars and watched them twinkle. He thought them very much like the twinkling of Sarah's eyes.

How many excuses must he make to see her?

He wished that he could please her. He sighed. Maybe, just maybe, he could make her admire him, desire him, come to him. Maybe he could make her, not an addition to his collection, but a consort at his side.

That was the catch, though. Somewhere inside she had to want _him_. She didn't. Not Sarah Montgomery. At least not as Puk Robin Goodfellow. As the father she'd never had, perhaps. He could sense that in her and, truth be told, in himself, too. Some part of him, the human part no doubt, wanted to be that father desperately, but that wasn't proper, wasn't Native. She must want Puk, not some other incarnation she thought him to be. She must come to him.

How to make that happen...?

He pulled his coat around his shoulders and disappeared into the fog.

Chapter 14: Behind the Hedgerows

Sarah didn't know what to expect. She wished someone could come with her. She considered phoning Detective Logan, but figured that wouldn't be much of a winner. She thought of Crystal. There again, no dice. Crystal, for all her talk of New Age wisdom, peace and harmony, had a very low tolerance for anything remotely stressful and was not likely to be much help in any scenario involving Puk and Poppycock. It was unfortunate, but true, Sarah would have to get Brad back on her own.

She reasoned it out. If they hadn't killed her yet, they probably weren't going to do it tonight. Then again, who knew?

The Hotel Harrington was located on the corner of Jones and O'Farrell in the Tenderloin District.

"Hotel Harrington Reasonable Rates and Hot Tub." A cool breeze blew the stench of urine over her. A nearby bum in a filthy sleeping bag rolled over.

She thanked her lucky stars that it was still light outside and hoped to get in, get Brad and get out before the sun set. The Tenderloin at night wasn't any more delightful than the Tenderloin at day.

She opened the lobby door and stepped inside, where she was greeted by cigarette smoke, mildew and the sound of canned laughter.

"Hello." she said to a dirt smudge of a man at the front desk.

"Hmm?" He watched a small black and white TV and chewed on a soggy cigar.

"Hi, I'm looking for the room of...Samuel Montgomery."

"No one here by that name."

"Fine," she said. "How about Puk and Poppycock?"

"Room thirty-two." He didn't bother pulling his gaze away from the television, which was playing a rerun of _The Honeymooners_.

Sarah considered taking the elevator, but opted for the stairs instead. The paint on the walls bubbled, reminding her of marshmallow cream. In one corner on the second landing, she noticed animal feces. Several patches of wood lathe were also exposed where crumbling plaster chunks spilled onto the carpet. Cobwebs fanned in the draft, high up on the walls.

She arrived on the third floor, located the room and knocked. Several moments passed with no answer. After two more attempts she got the idea, but she had come this far and was not about to turn back. She turned the door knob. To her surprise, it opened.

She could not see a single fixture inside the dark room and the odor had changed radically. No longer did she smell the stale smoke and mildew of the hotel, but instead breathed in a deep, earthen humidity. Swamp mud.

"This is weird." She hadn't totally appreciated that she had stepped inside the room until the door latched behind her. Attempting escape, she found it locked.

"Cheap trick." She listened in the dark, trying desperately to prepare herself for what would come. She heard the sound of her own breathing, the anxious thumping of her pulse, but she also heard the sounds of a wooded glen at night. The far off buzz of crickets and the distant croak of a frog. As she waited with one hand on the doorknob, her vision adjusted and the glimmering surface of a pond, illumined by the silver light of the moon, suddenly became visible.

Her courage returned. "Hello?" she called out. "Hello!" Her voice echoed. The space inside the room was vast; she could sense it and she knew instinctively that she was no longer truly in the hotel, or in San Francisco, and possibly not even Earth. "Goddamn it, someone answer me!"

Her eyes continued to adjust. The plant life grew uninhibited on all sides and in front of her lay a cobblestone path. The path ended in a wooden sign post with several arrows pointing every which way. She read a few: _Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Manchester._

A few yards ahead towered a brick wall barricade with a round, wooden door in the center.

"Where does that lead?" She shook her head and moaned. "Christ, why am I fucking here?"

She let go of the doorknob and stepped forward. A burst of yellow light flashed, followed by a low hiss. Sarah screamed and dropped to her heels.

She crouched ninja style and listened to that hiss, but no attacker came; only the light from a nineteenth century gas lamp in the middle of the room.

"What now?"

She examined the lamp. On the post hung a tattered notice:

"The notorious and infamous: Leather Apron. He's been thought to kill one woman and scare half a hundred more. Lurking in the shadows and alleyways the man known as Leather Apron is a tall and thick man, with dark glinting eyes behind unruly hair. He's been known to wear a black top hat. He has been thought to leave the area and no one knows where he is."

"Boo."

"Poppycock!" Sarah screamed.

She didn't turn around, didn't need to, to know that he loomed behind her.

Sarah sucked in a shallow breath. Her heart galloped, her gut jerked, her hands went icy cold. She turned her head to see him out of her periphery. "Where is he?"

Poppycock shrugged, but through the door in the brick wall, a shape emerged. Puk, dressed in a tailored ivory suit and vermillion fedora.

"Well, I see you found your way to the Hedgerows then," Puk said, as he took his place beside Poppycock. "I apologize; it's growing a bit out of our control." A thick fog began to swirl, coating the ground in a knee-high mist. Sarah considered Puk's comments to be more a taunt than a greeting, and so did not respond. "Mortals rarely find them, you know."

"Where's Brad?"

Puk bowed. "Yes, of course. Direct and to the point."

He clapped twice. Instantly a figure appeared near the wall and stepped forward, cutting a path through the mist.

"Oh, Brad," she gasped and threw her arms around him. She never thought she'd be so happy to see him. She hugged him as if he were her child and then put him at arm's length to get a better look at him. "I'm so happy you're...Brad?"

"Hi, Sarah," he said, a wide grin plastered on his face.

"Whew, you scared me for a second."

"Scared, whatever for?"

She held her cheek to his chest. "I don't know. It's just—whatever, let's go home." She grabbed his hand and to Puk, said, "Thank you. Goodbye." She pulled Brad behind her.

They walked through the mist. Ahead, a rectangular outline of light floated in the dark, the door.

"Come on, let's get outta here." She pulled his hand, then stopped cold. The shadows on Brad's face were dancing, rearranging, almost as if they were the shadows of a bird's wings fluttering. Once they settled he stepped into the light.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! _Oh! My! God!_ "

Brad did not say anything. Did not, because he could not. Because he'd grown a donkey head in place of his human one.

"I can't do a whole body, yet," Puk, now obscured by curtains of fog, called out. "But a head, I can do! Thanks for all your help, keep in touch!"

Sarah covered her mouth, bit her lip and screamed bitterly. She screamed and screamed and screamed into the empty nowhere behind the Hedgerows.

Chapter 15: Sarah Helps an Ass

When they stepped into the hallway of the Hotel Harrington, Sarah's sense of time felt off; not that she noticed much, contending as she was with other matters.

She'd managed to locate an oversized pillow case in a hall closet and tear two holes in it. Brad didn't seem to notice when she pulled it over his head.

Thankfully, the concierge desk was empty when she brought Brad through the lobby into the bright mid-morning sunlight.

When they reached her car, the windshield of which was covered in parking tickets, she sat Brad down and buckled him in.

Then she drove and didn't think. She turned the radio on and immediately turned it off because the DJ had said it was Saturday morning. _Saturday morning._ She'd come to the hotel on Tuesday night.

_No, must not think, not now, not until I get home and..._ she slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing a bum.

When they arrived in front of her home, she bustled around to the passenger door and, with a discreet glance to ensure no one was lurking nearby, ushered Brad gently out of the car and up the stairs into her condo.

Once inside, she locked the door. She began to slide the chain into place before decided it was pointless. She sat Brad down on the couch, took a series of deep breaths...and removed the pillow case.

She burst into tears all over again. The head of a mule sat upon his neck, like Pinocchio in the Land of Toys.

"Oh, Brad, I'm so sorry," she cried.

Brad said nothing and if he noticed anything, it didn't show. Once she'd stopped crying, she sat for several more minutes examining him. The head was connected seamlessly, as if he'd been born that way.

She took his hand in hers and patted his jaw.

"Brad, can you hear me? Brad?"

He jostled his head a bit, slowly brought his gaze up to her and brayed.

She wiped her face. "Brad?"

Stiffly, he nodded, his eyes seeing past her.

"Can you talk?"

He blinked, twitched and sighed. "Yup," he said through lips that somehow formed language.

"Do you want anything? Need anything?"

More moments passed. Slow and drawn out moments. Finally he said, "Puk."

"What?"

He hiccupped. "Me want Pu-uk."

Sarah's heart broke. Not because he was rejecting her, or because his intellect had appeared to have been lobotomized, but because he was longing for the monster who'd bewitched and deformed him. She wouldn't have cared if he'd said any other name, real or not, but that he'd said that particular one was more than she could handle. "Okay," she said, resolute. "He's not here now, so do you want to lie down, maybe?"

He allowed her to guide him upstairs to the bedroom where he obediently lay down and closed his eyes. She watched him for several minutes until he fell asleep. Then from the doorway she heard a soft meow. Miss Priss.

"You don't want to see him, trust me." She lifted the feline in her arms and hugged her, then closed the door. It hadn't occurred to her until then that she hadn't fed Prissy for several days. "Oh, shit." But finding the shredded bag of Meow Mix and an overly full litter box told her that Prissy hadn't really wanted for much these past days, except love, of course.

Sarah didn't want to eat, didn't want to sleep—didn't want to do anything but cry. Instead she sat on the couch curled up with Prissy, staring off silently and thinking of nothing in particular. "I don't know what we are going to do, Prissy. I really don't."



Detective Edward Logan hadn't been feeling well. In fact, he'd been feeling so poorly that he made up some excuse about a family emergency and begged off the case for a week.

His wife didn't know what to make of it. Her husband of twenty years had never taken a single unscheduled day off, scarcely even a sick day, let alone return from an extended-jurisdiction case that had the whole of California and thus the nation in a tizzy.

For the first four days Logan stayed in his room, stepping out only for a quick meal or a shower. When Mrs. Logan would ask if everything was okay, he would only respond by saying "Does it look okay?" to which the missus had no rejoinder.

Holed up inside his room, he passed the time reading library books, stacks of them. When he finished one, he reached for the next, as though it were but a page turn in the book he'd been reading. He hadn't studied so vigorously since his high school finals.

He learned a lot.

He learned all manner of things about mythology, magic and legends. He learned about fantastical giants that used to roam the British Isles, about faraway lands and people you couldn't see. He learned about the impossible, the silly, the unbelievable. When he closed the flap of the last book, he was no longer in doubt.

He placed the books into neat stacks by the bed stand, walked past an array of dirty plates and cups into the bathroom and took a long hot shower. He let the water flow over him.

When he finished he dried off, wrapped a towel around his waist and shaved. It felt good to shave after four days. He enjoyed those simple moments, thinking simple thoughts, because he knew when he stepped off the plane back in San Francisco, things were going to be anything but simple. Things were bound to get a whole lot more complicated before he'd see the end of this one.

Logan hugged his wife and told her he loved her; then he kissed her like he hadn't since their honeymoon. That's when she got that worried look in her eyes, the way a cop's wife gets every now and then. He shushed her and kissed her again.

If the missus was going to cry, she held it back. She'd been married to a cop for twenty years, she could handle it, even if she broke down the instant he walked out the door.



Brad slept the rest of the day and through the night. Sarah checked in on him every few hours to make sure he was resting properly, not too much pressure on his neck and that sort of thing. She had no idea what having a mule head could do to the human body, so she wanted to take every precaution.

He appeared, however, to be sleeping just fine, as if his body knew no difference. _That's pretty good magic_ , she thought, angry at herself for having helped Puk so much.

Downstairs, Sarah did the only thing her mind could tolerate—clean. She scrubbed the shower, bathroom walls and ceramic tile floor. She cleaned the kitchen, living room and stairway. She washed the dishes, dried them and put them away. She dust mopped, scoured the sink and did two loads of laundry. She polished her boots, hemmed a pair of jeans and sewed a button. When she ran out of things to clean or mend, she took a long hot shower.

The mail came around noon. A self addressed stamped envelope from _The Sun Magazine_ came with the daily delivery. She opened it to a form rejection letter stating that though her current project did not interest them, to keep trying. She had not yet heard back from _The National Enquirer_.

By late afternoon, after a cup of Chamomile tea, she fell asleep on the couch snuggled up with Prissy.

She woke at four o'clock in the morning and found Brad still snoring away. She figured she might as well catch the sunset if she couldn't fall back to sleep. She considered going back to Puk, demanding or pleading for his help. Then she thought again. That's what he wanted her to do and she wasn't playing anymore.

Tea in hand, she went online and typed in various key words. "Demon" and "shape-shifter" yielded thousands of results.

After some surfing, and information overload, she'd managed to find nothing in the line of country she was looking in. The words "curse" and "magic" brought on some interesting sites and articles, but there again, the search was too broad. She typed in "Puk" which gave her almost nothing except for the sites that she had put up.

"Wait. It was never spelled that way." She typed in "Puck" and set to work reading though the information. She spent the better part of two hours jumping from one site to the next educating herself on the mythological faerie. Interesting as it was, there was nothing that pertained to her current plight. She typed in "Poppycock" and got nothing but newspaper headlines and YouTube videos.

She shook her head and sipped her tea. Then she typed in "my boyfriend was turned into a donkey."

The first page of search results yielded two sites that promised some hope. She navigated to the first and found a list of stories on "The Donkey Lady" haunting. She navigated to the next one: an essay on "The Pouka and His Many Tricks" by Frieda Doherty.

She took another sip of tea and began reading:

The pouka is a very mischievous sprite indeed. He makes promises he will never keep and deals he will never honour. One is better off dealing with the devil himself... perhaps the most famous pouka is Puck. Also known as Pwca, Puca, Puk. Puck has been known to turn people into human-animal combinations called chimera. He has been known to poison the grain, sour the cream and taint the wine, sometimes to disastrous effect, such as death. He appears as a black stallion or a as a satyr who beguiles young women and men.

She heard the ceiling creak upstairs. Quickly she minimized the browser window and, retying the loose flaps of her bathrobe, started up the stairwell. Before she got past the second step, Brad appeared on the top landing, shirtless in pink pajamas and slippers. He glowered down at her with expressionless black eyes.

"Brad?" Other than a listless nodding of his head, he did not respond. "Brad, are you okay?"

"Puk?" he said slowly and flapped his lips against his big square teeth.

"No. Puk isn't here," she said, at which point he promptly brayed. "Why don't you come down here," she said and extended her hand. "Come on."

He swayed from side to side and then slowly began creeping step by step to the midway point, and paused.

"Come on," she said. "It's okay." At once he relapsed into a fit of brays, followed by a deep vibrating snort. He eyed her darkly.

"Okay. That's okay," she said. "Why don't you come down here with me? Are you hungry?"

Brad threw his head back and squealed. Then he said, "For krumkake."

Sarah shook her head. "I don't know what that is, but I'm sure we can find you something that you'll like. Come on."

After more prodding, she managed to cajole him into sitting at the kitchen table. He said little more than "Where's Puk?" amidst intermittent brays, but once seated he was tractable enough.

Mostly, he sat staring out the sliding glass door. Sarah didn't know what to cook for a creature with a human stomach and a donkey head. She considered making eggs then thought perhaps asparagus or even cat grass would be more suitable. So, she compromised and fixed him an asparagus, cat grass and bacon omelet. He gobbled it down, scattering blades of grass all over the table and floor as he did so. When he finished it, he even nibbled down his napkin.

"I guess you liked it?"

He didn't respond.

"Well," Sarah said, "at least you won't go hungry." She didn't know what else to say. There didn't seem to be much of anything to say at all. She just felt an acute awareness that she had better find out how (if it were possible) to reverse the spell that had been cast on him and find something to do with him meanwhile. "What do you want to do now?" she asked.

A bit forlorn and dejected, he glanced about the kitchen. She wasn't sure if he had heard her, but decided to be patient. Then he let out a bray mixed with language.

"I'm sorry, did you say bath?"

He nodded his head vigorously and made a deflated horn sound.

"Okay. Sure, you can take a bath."

He honked again, this time with a musical note of sorrow. He shook his head and chomped his teeth. Then clapped his hands.

"Oh. You want me to give you a bath?"

He brayed and shook his head up and down and side to side.

"Okay, okay," she said. "Come on." He popped up too eager and followed her into the master bathroom.

"How about a shower?"

He shrugged.

"Yeah, you're probably right. A bath would be easier, hmmm?"

He didn't answer; he was staring at himself in the mirror.

"Brad?"

He whimpered disharmoniously.

"Brad, come on, come away from there. We're going to fix that." She placed her hands on his arms. "Come on," she said gently. "We're going to find a way to fix it, okay?" He just whined and snorted. If donkeys could cry, she thought. "Come on." She guided him from the mirror to the empty tub. "No funny business."

He lips flapped.

She kneeled down and stoppered the tub, then began drawing the water, ensuring it was warm enough, but not too hot.

When the water level had filled the tub halfway, she told him to get in. He did, with the towel still wrapped around his hips. "Here, let's take this off now," she said and helped him remove the sopping wet thing. She grabbed a washcloth and laid it out over his groin.

She was relieved that his feet were in fact feet and not hooves and that the rest of him was all human. Then she cursed Puk all over again.

She used the detachable shower nozzle to wet his back and head. Then she scrubbed liquid soap over the upper portion of his body, avoiding his midsection, which made him bray in defiance. "Sorry," she said, "but we're not going to be doing any of that today." She was reminded of when she was in college and she had taken a job as a home health care worker for the elderly. She'd done a lot of bathing and butt wiping then, but it had paid tuition fees, despite destroying her weekends. Inevitably the elderly gentlemen would sprout erections and want her to wash them there. She'd gotten used to telling them "no" firmly but with a gentle hand—er demeanor.

When she had finished rinsing Brad, she bid him to stand and step out of the tub and dried him off, which she found difficult to do without arousing him. She dressed him in a change of his own clothes that he had left behind after one of his many sleepovers.

She walked him into the bedroom where he laid down on the bed and began unbuttoning his pants.

"Hey! Knock it off."

He did and sat on the edge of the bed, looking forlorn and dejected.

"I am going to find out how to help you, okay? I can't make any guarantees, but I'm gonna try. That means I have to do research and I might go to the library, so, you'll have to entertain yourself, all right?"

"Puk?"

"Not Puk. Someone else. I'm going to see what I can do. But I need you to do me a favor, okay? I just need you to be patient. Can you do that?"

He shook his head, then leaned in toward her, leading with his cheek.

"Brad, I—"

He hee-hawed violently.

"Oh, all right, just settle down." She went to kiss his fuzzy jaw and caught horse lips at the last second. He stomped his feet and clapped his hands.

"Blehya!" She spit and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Not cool!"

He snorted and looked the other way.

"Oh, come on. When this is over, when we've gotten you back and fixed, then I will. Okay?"

"P-p-p-roh-mise?" he said laboriously.

"Yes, when we're through with all this, I will most definitely kiss you for as long as you want. I promise."

He furrowed his brow.

"On the lips."

He honked in agreement.

"Okay. For now, we'll put this on." She turned on the TV to _Good Morning America_. Brad brayed.

"All right," she said and flipped through the channels until she landed on the Cartoon Network, at which point he squealed like a rusty door hinge and flopped back contentedly against his pillow. "Okay, here you go." She handed him the remote.

Downstairs she went back to her web browser and searched for Frieda Doherty. She clicked on the first entry. Photos of an elderly woman and an essay appeared on her screen. She clicked on the "About the Author" tab.

"Oh, my God," she said. "She lives right here in the city."

Chapter 16: Chinese-Irish Wisdom

San Francisco's Chinatown always seemed like a place of deep mystery to Sarah. Not that she'd spent a tremendous amount of time in the district, but it felt steeped in old occultism that made one wonder what went on behind the crepe paper.

It was on the edge of Chinatown where she was standing now, at the Grant Street Dragon Gate. She searched for the address, but only found a Chinese market where they sold everything from giant green frog statues to gold kimonos.

"Chinese food!" said an over exuberant voice from the next door down. "Come on, is goo' foh you!"

"No thank you, but do you know where this address is?" Sarah held out her MapQuest page for the barker to see.

The woman studied the page, squinting in the wan afternoon sun. "Oh, yeah, it here." She pointed above her head. "It here, it here. Upstair, you go upstair right there, right there." Up the steps and to the right, much more modest and cloistered, was another entrance.

"Oh, I see it now, thank you."

"You welcome, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha—you welcome!"

Sarah stepped up to the door and gave it a healthy knock.

She waited for too long, but didn't want to appear rude, so kept waiting. After a time, she heard soft footsteps and the brassy sound of a chain latch sliding out of the groove plate. The door crept open to the scent of freshly cooked fish.

"Oh, hello my dear, you must be Sarah." The woman was short with a faint coloration of skin, eyes only slightly stretched at the corners and hair as white as snow.

"Mrs. Doherty?"

"Oh, never mind. My father was an Irishman with an eye for poor, Chinese emigrants and my husband had a taste for both. Now, come in and let's see what we can do for you, shall we?"

Inside, figurines of all types, sizes and shapes occupied the shelves, tables and walls. Sarah peered about with wonder at the many cabinets, ledges and countertops where the porcelain icons watched regally over the rest of the apartment.

There was no apparent unity of theme, though she spotted some familiar figures amidst the collection: dragons and winged faerie women and Greta Garbo and other statuettes the likes of which she'd seen in the windows of the shops below, such as the frog in golf pants.

"Have a seat here, dear, right here." The old woman shoved several empty hat boxes aside and revealed a straight backed chair. "I'll boil up a pot of tea, unless you prefer coffee."

"Oh, I'm okay, really."

"Nonsense." Mrs. Doherty, more nimbly than Sarah would have thought possible, disappeared into the kitchen and put the pot on. Then she brought out a plate of powdered fruit bars. "Have as many as you can stomach."

Sarah didn't want to be impolite, so took one and bit into it. "You have quite a collection here," she said, indicating a collection on the nearest wall.

"Yes, well they are cluttering, but each one has a story, each one, a life of its own."

"I'm sure." She wasn't sure, but that's the way of small talk, lie and make nice.

A small eternity passed while they waited for the water to boil and their tea to steep.

"So, my dear, what can I do for you?"

"Well," said Sarah, shifting in her seat and taking her cup between her hands. "Like I said on the phone, I don't really know what you can do, I just don't know where else to go."

"Poppycock?"

"Sorry?"

"Is this about Poppycock?"

Sarah nodded stiffly. "How did you know?"

"A good guess."

"What do you know about him?"

"Too much and not enough. What he's doing now isn't a whole lot different than what he's always done. Only now, he's got the media on his side."

"He's been doing this for a long time?"

"Very long, my dear, very long. For as long as their kind has walked our world, Poppycock has hated men."

"And Puk?"

The old woman eyed Sarah through a squint. "So long as he's with him, Puk too." Then old Mrs. Doherty smiled tightly. "Daughter of the fey," she whispered.

"What?"

"You, my dear, have faerie blood running in your veins."

"I do?"

"You do."

Sarah shook her head and blinked. "No. No, that's not possible. I'm not—there isn't—I don't—that's not—"

"Oh, but it is," said the old woman. "It is indeed. Think on the matter and you'll see."

Sarah stared down at her tea and the fruit bar on her plate. "Wait," she said. "Puk...?"

The old woman waited patiently.

"I didn't want to say it, but Puk, well, looks like my dad. I mean, at first I thought he'd just gone crazy, then I thought it was coincidence and then..."

"And then?"

"And then I don't know. You mean to tell me that Puk really is my father?"

Mrs. Doherty shifted her head from side to side. "I'm telling you that, by hook or by crook, you have gotten fay blood into your veins. I don't know how, but I know it's done. Or else Poppycock would've ripped you apart."

Sarah was not really sure how to take this. She thought of Puk and Poppycock. Puk looked like her father, but who did Poppycock bear resemblance to? Hadn't the media said it? Hadn't they said a name? "Association by default," she murmured.

"What's that you say, dear?"

Sarah gazed into Mrs. Doherty's clear eyes. "Puk...Poppycock, they took over bodies, I think. No, that _is_ what they did. Puk took over my dad's.... That means I'm Puk's daughter by default."

Mrs. Doherty took a deep breath and folded her hands across her lap. "Family ties work in weird ways with the fey," she said. "I do believe what you said is just exactly how you got faerie blood in you, honey. Oh, it can be such a gift." She sighed. "But in due course, in due course. Right now, dear, you're out of my league. You need one of your own kind, now."

Sarah furrowed her brow and watched as the old woman's nimble fingers curled around a black statuette on a nearby shelf. She placed it down in front of her and waved her hand. On the table was a porcelain image of a man wearing a black trench coat. He had dark, curly shoulder-length hair. Even from the statue she could see that he was strikingly handsome.

"Now, he's an old puss," she said. "If you give him an inch, he'll take a country mile, you understand, but he's local and he's one of your kind and he's the only hope you have for whatever mess you're in."

"But I don't—"

"Now, drink your tea, dearie, and I'll give you directions to where I think he might be—well, to the best of my knowledge. You see, it's never easy to find a stray fay in San Francisco."

Chapter 17: Sarah Gets Lost

Brad tore off the wings and watched the injured fly bump into the window and land on the sill, over and over again. He reveled in the cruel impulse that flashed up hot inside him. Another fly buzzed and went up. Buzzed and went down. Up. Down. Then he smashed it with the palm of his hand and felt its little fly guts burst.

He flicked it onto the carpet and sat on the edge of the bed and waited for another fly.

Sarah was out and wouldn't be back until later, but why should he care? She didn't care anymore. She wouldn't even kiss him. Not like Papa Puk.

Why not?

He'd never once turned her down. He remembered those days, remembered sex, and wanted it back again.

Well, he would see what could be done about that. Because Sarah owed him, didn't she? It seemed to Brad that she should put out and not make him wait anymore and be a good girl again, a naughty good girl.

She was real pretty with a nice little body. He wanted to squeeze her and he wanted her to...only one way to make her do that.

He dashed from the room and down into the kitchen. He opened one drawer, then another and another until he found it, glistening and sparkling in the sunlight, laying there waiting for him.

"Beautiful." In his hand, he held a thin, silver steak knife. "Hee-haw!"

He dashed up to the top of the stairs again and into the room. Then he slashed a long incision into the side of the mattress, placed the knife discretely inside and pulled the sheet and blanket back.

"Fun. For me, for later," he breathed. "But not for Sarah. Hee-haw!"



Sarah was walking back and forth on Columbus. She'd been over it and over it, but couldn't make sense of the old woman's directions. An alley called "Old Fig Mountain" should have been right there, near the corner of Columbus and Green. It simply didn't exist.

"Shit."

Café Romania, however, did exist and the scent of fresh brewed coffee overpowered her resistance; she simply had to go inside. Checking her watch, she confirmed the time: three in the afternoon Yup, she always needed a fix at three.

Inside, the décor appealed to her somewhat finicky tastes and the warm air soothed her. It was damn cold for the middle of summer. She ordered a latte and waited for it at the end of the counter.

The shop was homey and cozy. From the hippie chick barista with nose ring and dread locks, to the signs, old stamps and burlap coffee sacks with stenciled brand names, Sarah got the idea that despite everything else, she had come to right place.

But for what?

The chairs and tables were quaintly old fashioned and the couch in the corner hung low at the center, as though inviting one to fall into it and go to sleep.

That's when she noticed the sign above the couch, over a dark doorway. _Old Fig Mountain_.

"Holy cow." She instantly forgot about the latte she'd ordered. She walked to the rear of the coffee shop, through the doorway and down a flight of creaky wooden stairs.

As she descended, she was assaulted by the stench of musty mops, stagnant water and dirty drains, the usual odors one might expect to find in the basement of a restaurant.

"Now what?" She stared for awhile at the cement wall in front of her wondering when the barista would figure out she'd come down here. "This is stupid," she muttered.

She searched around a bit more, peering between boxes and burlap bags only to be disappointed.

Until she spied a chink in the wall.

At first the chink was merely that, but then a small flicker of light flashed through the jagged cement.

Space back there?

She knelt down on the cold floor, shoving boxes and paper aside, and pressed an eye to it.

Oh, wow.

There was space all right and more than just another room, a whole system complete with cobblestone streets.

She sighed. "Oh, not this crap again." She'd had enough of hidden spaces within spaces, enough of medieval overlays in the modern world. Mrs. Doherty's words echoed in her head: _Blood of the fey in you._ Sarah knew that she had better get used to it because her own days behind the Hedgerows had just begun.

Crowbars can go unnoticed in a cluttered basement most of the time, but not today. No magic either, just pure, naked desperation.

She wedged the flattened metal tip into the chink and slowly, carefully got nowhere. This was going to take something more than her arms could give. So she positioned the bar again and sat down on the cold basement floor. With her panties bunching up into her crotch and her skirt riding up in a very un-ladylike fashion, she kicked at the bar. In an attempt to cover up the noise, she coughed at the same time, but the bar went flying and clattering loudly regardless, and a tiny chip of masonry smacked her right in the fleshy cheek of her left lower buttock.

That's when she saw the door.

It was hidden behind a rack of dusty boxes on the other side of the room and more than a few spiders trickled out as she moved the boxes one by one onto the floor. She wrestled with the shelving unit until she'd created a space just large enough for her body to squeeze through. The heavy work left her covered in dust and cobwebs, and if she hadn't been surreptitiously prowling in the basement of a coffee shop, she would have screamed _and_ cried.

But not today.

The door was locked with an old and very ornate padlock, which she attempted to remove with the crowbar. It turned out not to be that easy. After fiddling with it for several minutes, her arms were aching, she was covered in a light sweat, and a wrong thrust broke not one, but two fingernails.

That's when she saw the key. It was hanging on a nail to the side of the door and when she put it inside the padlock, the padlock sprung open.

She watched a spider scuttle across the tip of her shoe, causing her to fling the spider and the shoe across the room.

She pulled on the door, which didn't open because the hinges were solid rust.

"Fuck!"

She'd passed the point of sanity and she was determined to open this door, a dangerous combination. She got back to work with the crowbar. Eventually, she was able to pry the door open approximately ten inches, just enough for her to squeeze through. As she gave it a final thrust, the crowbar slipped and grazed the buttons of her blouse, ripping it down the middle and exposing her cleavage for all the world to see.

"Mother fucker!" she spat, trying to keep her voice low and not managing it very well at all. Then she kicked off her other shoe and stepped inside.

The space behind the door smelled like the rest of the damp basement. She panicked, thinking she'd merely found an old pantry after all.

Her eyes adjusted and she could see that this space did, indeed, exist behind the Hedgerows, stretching on farther than any pantry ever could. As she walked, she heard the faint rushing of water, like one hears through the walls when the shower is turned on in the bathroom.

Her pulse pumped with excitement as she ventured farther and farther in, leaving the known world behind. The terrain shifted and she stepped into running water that was very, very cold.

"Jesus. It's just a fricking sewer."

Tentatively she took a step back, uncertain that she wanted to be here anymore. Besides, it was way too quiet and the freezing water was trickling around her feet.

M-E-O-W.

"Ahhhahhh! Jesus. Shit. Goddamn it, where are you? What the—" Sarah fell backward into the icy water and then really did cry.

A black cat with green—nearly fluorescent—eyes leered back at her from a wall niche, out of reach of the water, of course.

"Oh, that's great for you." She pulled herself to her feet, dripping, shivering.

" _Meow, raah."_

Sarah shook her head. "Where is he? Huh? Don't tell me you're the only one here."

The cat blinked.

"Hell with it." She wasn't any closer to solving her dilemma; she was caught in a perverse maze of bizarre events. Now she was wet and icy cold to boot. Right there in the fairyland sewer.

Puurrr.

"Oh, come here." She reached out her hand and let the feline sniff at her fingers then stroked its head as it purred contentedly. "You smell Prissy don't you?" She considered her wet hands. "Or not."

She stroked the black cat in the sewer, letting it rub back and forth against her hand and press its face and whiskers into her fingers. The place was barren, empty and cold. Her feet were numb and she was soaking wet. This girl had had enough.

"Tell whoever that I came and think his world sucks." She walked back the way she came, back over the cobblestone flooring, back to the entrance door.

She stepped through it into the basement cellar of Café Romania, where four uniformed policemen waited for her.



Sarah tried to explain to the police that she'd gotten lost and trapped in the basement. They hadn't bought it, but she hadn't broken any serious laws and once she'd convinced them that she'd never had any psychiatric treatment, they let her go.

When she got home she checked on Brad who was sound asleep in her room, another relief, for she couldn't deal with him right now. She sank shivering into a hot bath.

The water soothed her aching muscles and frigidly cold skin. She closed her eyes and let herself drift away. She thought of the recent events, the freakish characters, the strange interstitial spaces. She tried to make sense of it. She thought of the old woman and resolved to return to her, to tell her that she had failed to locate the one she'd been sent for.

She was so sleepy and...Brad stood naked above her, camera in hand.

Flash flash flash!

Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs. She scrambled around in her bath, heels and elbows knocking hollowly against the inner walls.

Another scream burst from her throat as Brad, caught off guard, slipped back, his oversized donkey head shattering the vanity.

"H-e-e h-a-w!"

Adrenaline storming her veins, she stood up in the tub and covered her breasts. "What are you doing?" she screamed. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Brad scrambled about on the floor, grinding his knees into the broken glass, braying and bleeding.

"What the fuck are you fucking doing?" she wailed.

Brad found his feet and, camera in hand, sprinted out the bathroom door.

"What are you fucking doing?" Sarah screamed again. She reached for a towel and stepped, hyperaware of broken glass, out of the tub, feet slick on the smooth tile. She crept to the stairwell, thinking Brad had gone downstairs. "Brad?"

No answer. Downstairs, she searched the kitchen before circling back to the steps.

"Oh, God," she sighed. "Braaad!"

He appeared, still naked, sans erection, at the top of the stairs, one hand tucked behind his back.

"Brad, what are you doing?" She was shaking now.

He shrugged.

"Come on. Where's the camera?" She held out her hand.

Sheepishly, he raised a small Polaroid photo in his free hand and held it in front of his chest.

"Give it to me. Now."

He made a pretense of offering it to her.

"Brad, come on." She breathed heavily. "Fine." She stepped up to the third step, to retrieve the photo, and Brad moved back half a step. She paused. "What are you doing?"

Brad shook his head and shrugged.

Sarah stepped up two more steps and held out her hand again. "Come on, give it over."

One hand behind his back, the other still offering the photo, he tried to get Sarah to take the next step up. She was standing just two steps from him now. "Give me the photo," she said, her breath shaky. She was shivering under her clammy towel. She became suddenly aware how totally vulnerable she was.

Brad took a step back.

Sarah took a deep breath and glared at him. No lights, just the dark stairwell and her unlit room behind him. He gestured to her to take another step—another step and she could get that photo back. Another step and....

"You know what, keep it. Jerk off to it, post it online, I don't care." She began stepping back down.

Brad stepped forward, an expression of insistence.

"No," she said. "It's all yours now." She swallowed. Something didn't feel right. "All yours." She stepped back down the stairs one by one. "Good night," she said.

She left him standing alone at the top of the stairs. After a few seconds, she heard the ceiling creak and knew he'd gone into her room. She grabbed her robe from the bathroom and sat on the couch. In the dark she stared out the picture window onto Bay Street.

The bathroom light was still on, the tub was still full and broken glass still covered the floor. She took a deep breath and made room for Miss Priss to jump onto her lap. How much longer could she keep this up? Brad acted like he was two years old...or senile...or psychotic. She couldn't take care of him for much longer. But then, where else would he go?

She didn't care about the bathroom. She'd worry about that tomorrow. Or maybe not. Maybe she didn't care about anything anymore and she'd just give up. She wondered about the Whoever Guy she was supposed to find. She wondered if she really did have a boyfriend with a donkey head. _Why_ did she have a boyfriend with a donkey head? She wondered about a lot of things. She felt crazy. Maybe she was. Whatever.

She lay down on the couch and gave in to her fatigue. Soon she'd be asleep and maybe someone would come and slit her throat or bash her brains in, and if they did?

Maybe it would be better, because being alive was just too weird. And painful.

Chapter 18: Miss Priss Gets Her Wish

If Miss Priss had been a human being, she would have been very pretty indeed, this she knew. For as a feline she was very sexy. It was so obvious. Miss Priss was not human, however, and for that she felt a pang of disappointment. It wasn't that she didn't adore cat-hood; all felines are happy to be. It was because she liked humans very much, despite their many downfalls.

She supposed that humans sometimes fantasized about being cats, too. She knew that Sarah did, and once in a while, she even said so. It was only natural. Of course it would be best to be both, or to be able to be both, for when one tired of being human, something sure to happen, he or she could assume the feline form and relax.

Over the last four thousand years, the feline program of conniving the human race into mercilessly pampering them, thus turning _Felis domesticus_ into a global leisure class, had met with great success. It was a fact at which Miss Priss often marveled. Felines had little trouble slipping in and taking a head of household position in any human estate and siphoning the proverbial cream off the top. This, of course, had its disadvantages. Too much leisure and you got careless.

If Miss Priss could have expressed her thoughts to a human being, these are the things she would have imparted. As it turned out, such expression was not possible. The vocal cords just weren't into all that enunciation. And why bother when a few succinct meows, chirps or trills could say so much more? And the pheromones, by god, they spoke volumes in a single sniff. Indeed, cat-speak was infinitely more direct than any human tongue.

Regardless, a certain Someone, who could do all of that and more, arrived. She purred involuntarily and felt tingly all over. She supposed that if she were human, she would have laughed with much gaiety and if she had been a dog, she shivered at the thought, she would have spastically wagged her tail and slobbered all over everything. When He approached, she rose and arched her back. The urge to scratch and claw all the furniture in the condo was overwhelming.

Then He petted her.

Mmmmmm. Few things compared to _that_. Ever. Anywhere. She soaked it up. Rubbing this way and that, back and forth, never able to get enough. She even felt the compulsion to sink her claws into that hand, but knew that would be inappropriate.

He spoke to her. "You are a very pretty kitty. I know exactly what you want."

And certainly he did.

Laying there on the bookshelf, something began to change inside her. An increase in gravity of such magnitude and velocity overtook her that she found herself standing no longer on the bookshelf, but amidst its ruins and comfortably on her hind legs, too. All in a blink Prissy stood as tall as any human anywhere.

She inspected her hands and her bare skin, so wonderfully supple and smooth. But the best part was yet to come: the breasts. Oh, wow. She lifted one by the nipple, hissed and let go. They were utilitarian, slightly cumbersome, alien and beautiful all at once. Her fascination had just begun.

The One with her laughed infectiously while Prissy prowled the room, catlike, with a body so unlike a one.

She tried to speak and failed utterly.

Even though she'd been listening to Human-speak for the last several life times she could not speak it to any sensible degree. No matter. That would just take some time and practice.

She sniffed the air and frowned.

"Oh, I know," He said. "One of the few drawbacks, but...."

But nothing, there was so much more to explore with this new body and to see what it could do. She walked around the living room, the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom. She ran, stomped, made strange gurgling noises, sang off key tunes, jiggled her breasts, and laughed—most of all laughed.

"There, there," He said patting her head. "It's a new world for you now." She stood before Him, giddy and grinning like a Cheshire, when she heard the floor creak above.

She froze.

"What's that, my little pussy cat? What's wrong?"

If only she could speak, if only she could—footfalls, across the floor, to the stairway. She shook her head and pointed, just as the jackass appeared at the top of the stairs. She ducked behind Him and watched as the ass pulled something from behind his back, something long and slender and made for killing.



Sarah worked until about four o'clock and then decided that she would leave. No one noticed. No one noticed anything anymore. Brad had been missing from work for twenty-three consecutive days and the only concern Keith, the boss, ever expressed was that he hoped Brad was enjoying himself in Puerto Vallarta.

Meanwhile, the new reality TV show, _Finding Poppycock_ , was topping the charts at 12 million viewers per week. Popular T-shirts sporting the bloody "kcocyppoP" logo were retailing at forty dollars apiece. KQRS radio had dedicated seventy-one tracks to Poppycock in the last week alone. Action figures were going for nineteen odd dollars. A startup rock band, _Birthday for Poppycock_ , had just debuted on MTV with its smash hit, "Murder the Mortals." A twelve o'clock curfew had been enacted in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood until further notice.

Sarah was doing her best to tune out these reminders, but was finding it difficult.

She parked on Bay Street. The security door of her building was propped open. It sent alarm bells ringing in her head. Images of Puk and Poppycock waiting for her inside her apartment, drinking Earl Grey tea with lemon flashed in her head.

She considered driving away, getting on a plane to God-knows-where and disappearing, and she would have, but for Prissy. She simply could not leave without Prissy.

Her legs felt like rubber as she ascended the stairs to her unit, hands shaking as she fumbled for the door knob. Cool relief washed over her when she found it securely locked, just as she'd left it, just as she always left it. A neighbor was probably moving in a couch or something.

She inserted her key into the lock, swung the door open and stepped inside. And saw him. Sitting in the Papasan chair, feet propped up like he owned the place, a naked girl hiding behind him.

"What the—?"

His hair was shoulder-length, dark and wavy, in perfect contrast with his skin. He was wearing a black trench coat. And he was stunningly, exceptionally and irrevocably good looking.

Mrs. Doherty's figurine!

"Good day to you." His smile was pleasant, his Irish accent sexy as all get out. Something else struck her too, something playful, a trifle atavistic and maybe even a little sinful, but God, he was handsome.

"Usually people knock or call first," she said, the way she did with rude clients.

"Do they? That's funny because you didn't."

"Excuse me?"

His mouth jerked into a sarcastic smile. "When you came to my house, or did you forget it already?"

"Oh, you're the one Mrs. Doherty sent me to see, then, I guess? Right?" She knew he was, she just had to play it off in a feeble attempt to save face.

He sighed. "You cried, quite literally, for my assistance."

"I didn't know anyone was there."

"You met my assistant didn't you?"

"Oh, you mean the—"

"Cat." He raised both eyebrows.

"Right. Yes, I met your...assistant." At that moment the woman hiding behind the Papasan peeked around the chair and stared solemnly at Sarah. She had shoulder length, silver-white hair and rosy red cheeks.

"Forgive her. Cat's got her tongue, as they say." He sat up and extended his hand for an abbreviated handshake. "Name's Rob."

Sarah walked across the room and shook hands.

The nude woman behind the chair knelt beside him and put her head under his hand. She smiled childishly as he stroked her hair. Then he patted his lap and she, grinning ridiculously and slinking around like she'd just stepped off a Playboy set, sat down on top of him. The Papasan creaked under the weight.

"Sarah this is Prissy. Or Miss Priss if you please, though I doubt she'll be a Miss for very long now."

"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"

"Oh, just that she is bound to become a Misses before—"

"No, the bit about her name, what did you call her?"

"Prissy," he said.

Sarah opened her mouth but nothing came out. Then with great effort she managed, "Ma-my cat?"

"Well, I think it's fair to say she's her own cat now."

The woman clapped her hands, bounced on Rob's lap and giggled.

Sarah peered dumbfounded. "Prissy?" But even as she asked, she saw the coloration of her eyes, amber and blue. The woman squealed with glee, jumped up from Rob and smothered Sarah on the couch.

"Whoa!" cried Sarah, but she was hard pressed to do anything about this woman's—Prissy's—affections. After a bit of wrestling accompanied by a very stern "No!" and a light spank on Prissy's bare bottom, she finally obeyed and slipped onto the floor, waiting happily at Sarah's feet.

"She's new to this being human business," said Rob. "She'll get the hang of it. We all did."

Sarah smoothed her blouse, mind gone numb. "I don't know what to say to that."

Rob rocked his head back and forth. "Let's leave that be for a little bit and get to why I'm here. There was something the matter? Or so I was led to believe."

Sarah stared at him only half believing reality. "Well, you know Poppycock, right?"

Rob yawned. "Who doesn't?"

"Oh, right."

"You want to get rid of him, I take it?"

"That would be nice." She sat back.

"Would it?"

"Yes. What kind of question is that?"

"Well," he said, "once you start interfering with his corporeal development and things such as this, you're likely to call out the banshees on yourself as well. He's gonna protect the ground he's gained and not be wont to go down without a battle and a big one at that."

"Well, I guess I haven't thought it through all that much—"

"Haven't thought it through, lass? Haven't thought it through? You're not serious, then."

"How?" she said. "How do you kill something that can't be killed? Police couldn't catch him if he walked into the station and started killing them.

"All I know is that I can't keep going this way, I mean—I have to—I'm sorry, I'm having a moment here."

Her face got hot as a stovetop because all she could think about was wild monkey sex with this Rob. She took a breath and forced it to pass. "Anyways, I just need help. That's all."

"Well, if you want my advice, and it seems you do, you'll have to find a way to do what no one else can. What they say is true, y'know, faeries never die, they just fade away."

"What's that supposed to mean? Sounds like a bumper sticker."

"It means that if you want to kill a faerie, you've got to kill a faerie, not a man."

"Well, I don't know how to kill a faerie," she said.

"Then you can't stop Poppycock."

"Okay, this is stupid."

"What's stupid is a young and mostly mortal woman who wants to fight an evil demigod but is afraid to break a frickin' nail."

Sarah sat back and thought of her episode that afternoon in the coffee shop basement. He had a point. Problem was that she could scarcely think of anything else other than having hot, monkey sex with him. It made it hard to take him or the conversation seriously.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"What? Oh, nothing. I—I was just thinking."

"Thinking you want to turn back, is that it?"

"No," she shook her head.

"I saw your boyfriend, by the way."

"Oh, he's not my—Brad? Where is he?"

"Ran off."

"What? What do you mean, ran off?"

Rob shrugged. "Ran off. That's all I mean. I couldn't help it. Or stop it. I welcomed it. He almost laid a hand to this dear one here and that I wasn't gonna tolerate."

"What?"

"You really are in over your head, aren't you, lass? Didn't even recognize a programmed assassin living under your own roof?"

Sarah shook her head. Too much information. All of it. She couldn't process it. "I'm sorry for bothering you. I see now that it was a mistake. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm not ready to handle this situation."

"All I'm sayin' is that you just need to front up to the whole situation and take your share of the responsibility. Only in that way, can you, or anyone else, succeed. I want him gone too. He's not too good for my cult either." A small calico cat appeared outside the window.

"Oh."

"For whatever reason, it seems you're the one who holds the key to put an end to him. Not sure why or how, only that you are."

"That's an easy out for you," she said. "Putting all the responsibility on me like that."

He shook his head. "Best not to think with mortal morality when you're dealin' with the fey. I don't mean responsibility in those terms. I don't intend to dump my fair share of the load on you. Gods know I've got my own part to play, or else you wouldn'ta sought _me_ out. No, I mean, the one who can truly do somethin' about it. Not the police, nor the media. The 'chosen one,' if that kind of wording makes you feel better about it."

She sighed. Unfortunately, she actually believed that. After all, who else did she know who's dad was Poppycock's brother?

Rob continued. "If you want my help, you got it, lock, stock and musket, but you can't be afraid to go all the way."

_I'm not afraid to go all the way. With you._ "And by go all the way, you mean—"

"Die."

Sarah took a long, thoughtful breath. She considered working for Puk and Poppycock for the rest of her life. "Fine. Sure. I'm ready."

Rob got up, straightened his overcoat and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?"

He paused, hand on the doorknob. "When you can say it like you mean it, we can talk again. Because whether you realize it or not, care or not, the two people—make that t'ree people—who are likely to do anything about it at all, are standing right here in this room. Good day to you, miss."

Sarah shot to her feet. "Wait," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks, fists balling up at her sides. "Wait a fucking minute. Fine, you want me ready to die then I am, okay? I am. I don't want to, but I'm not afraid of it, if it means it will stop this nightmare. Now turn around and help me get rid of him, goddamn it!"

Rob turned around, a proud smile under his eyes. "Now, there we are, folks, the real Sarah Montgomery has just entered the ring."

Chapter 19: Rob Teaches History

"Kill?" said Puk. "You want me to kill?" He crossed his legs.

The apartment had grown since last week, with many more spaces branching out including a medieval exercise room replete with iron free-weights, Poppycock's latest fetish.

"Nofink I wouldn't do," said Poppycock, holding a dumbbell in his hands and curling two iron disks.

"I can't do that," said Puk. "I just can't. Morph them, change them, rearrange them, yes, but kill them? Kill them? No Poppy. I won't."

Poppycock snorted and strained until the dumbbell reached his chin, then he let it down again, slowly. "You will or I'll kill _you_."

"You don't mean that and even if you did, I would still say no." Puk shoved his chin out defiantly.

Poppycock set the dumbbells down and opened a black leather medical bag. He rummaged around in it, pulling out several different bottles from which he removed pills of bright colors; reds, greens and blues.

"I don't fink you're taking me too seriously, brothah," he said, grabbing a jug of milk.

"Of course not," said Puk, "because you know it's not in my nature."

"Hhmm," Poppycock said, through a mouthful of pills. "Maybe we'll change your nature then."

"Oh, I doubt it."

"When we kill _her_."

"Who?"

"Who do you fink?" Poppycock picked up his dumbbells and got back to work, grunting out the repetitions.

"Well, I don't know," said Puk, his blood pressure rising, the room getting hotter. "Who?"

"One guess: starts with an S and ends with a dead bitch."



"There isn't much more to it than that, I'm afraid" said Rob.

"So, let me see if I got this straight. In order for you to exist, you've got to have people believe in you and if enough people believe in you, then you live for eternity?"

"Close enough. Though it's not _believing_ as much as _knowing_. A world of difference between those two words."

"So you have to have people _knowing_ in you?" asked Sarah.

"It's knowing something so well you don't have to put any effort into it. It's knowing that if you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, you're gonna fall."

"I see."

"Real is solid. It's knowing without thought. That's why fear is so effective for Poppycock. Fear demands no thought at all, yet gives maximum _knowing_ , maximum return."

"Believing in gods and monsters," she mumbled.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

"I don't think of us that way," he said. "I think of us as things in between, somewhere in the middle of heaven and hell, if you will."

"Hmm," said Sarah. "I can relate to that, but what about Puk? What's his deal?"

Rob sighed. "Puk's been under Poppycock's thumb for as long as I can remember. They're not really brothers, they just pretend to be, which in fey parlance is the same thing."

"So, why bring it up?"

"It's important to know, that's all. It means their connection doesn't have to be so—"

"What if your dad's body was taken over by a fey?"

Rob's tea cup crashed to the floor. Sarah gasped and Prissy started. The cup bounced, unbroken.

"I'll get it." Sarah grabbed a towel from the kitchen. Rob paced as she blotted up cold tea. "What is it?"

He grabbed her shoulders and stared into her eyes.

"What?"

He inspected either ear. Then sniffed her.

"Rob!"

"How do you feel?"

_Horny._ "I don't know, fine. Why?"

"When did you learn of this?"

"A month, maybe a little longer. I didn't believe it at first; I just thought he'd gone crazy."

Rob breathed a heavy sigh and slumped back into the Papasan.

"Why?" Sarah sat down on the couch opposite him. "What's the big deal?"

"Things are making a bit more sense now, that's what." He shook his head. "What I was sayin' about the only people that could do anything about this whole mess bein' right here in this room, well, that was more true than I knew." His eyes had grown round as saucers.

Sarah sat back. "How long have they been around, Puk and Poppycock?"

"A long time," said Rob. "Like all of us."

"So, they've been around before then—I mean, in other forms?"

"Hmm, what better way to explain that, than tell a story?"

Sarah shrugged. "Whatever works."

"Yes. Well, the year was, I believe..."



...1888, the year Puk's corporeal development peaked and Poppycock's ebbed to a record low. It happened, the Fading, not so quickly that one could detect it from day to day. Not any more than one could detect his own hair growing—or falling out—were he to watch it in the mirror.

Puk grew as strong and powerful and fancy as the current fashion, after going abroad to America, to New York City, and taking on the mortal alias of Joseph Keppler.

"I am an art'eest," he'd said before setting sail for the New World, where he had begun publishing a magazine, which he had unimaginatively and vainly dubbed: _Puck Magazine._

Poppycock had not been so inclined, quite certain that his brother would fail miserably and fade into nothing. He hadn't however, and this was making Poppycock not only jealous, but enraged, for his bodily constitution was going the way of the Slow Death. Drifting, as was the way of his kind, soulless and hopeless into the great beyond.

It had been that way since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, when public belief in their ilk had been replaced by faith in the machine, homage to the cogwheel, worship of the steam engine.

Poppycock opened his brother's latest letter:

"My Dear Poppy,

"The name Puck is the best way to capitalize, you see. If Blind Bill did me any favors at all it was making that name popular enough to sell magazines. The very name itself conjures up my image in the public mind.

"It's what you need, too. Come to New York City and see the magic here. I'll help you get solid. You know I will."

If there was one thing Poppycock loathed it was seeing his brother succeed. "Poppycock's the fool's name now, is it?" he grunted.

He reached for the grubby little candle he used to light his room. "Even you, Puk, with your silly magazine, will drift up someday, just like this, just like the Black Smog," he said aloud as he lit the letter and watched it burn just as the most recent issue of _Puck Magazine_ had burned.

Poppycock had seen every single issue of _Puck Fucking Magazine_ because Puk took great pleasure in sending them to him, extolling his own good fortune, and Poppycock had burned every one.

He detested the logo on the front cover, a half-naked fey baby with the well-known quote "What fools these mortals be!" scrawled across the top. Who had made that quote famous, but Blind Bill himself? And here Puk was selling out to it.

Worse than that it meant Puk was doing something without him and might just get away from him, forever.

He needed a drink. He didn't bother to lock his door.

The harsh poverty of the Whitechapel District of London mocked him and made him feel more lost than he'd ever been. Thick London smog blotted out the sun, a reminder of the times, the demise of his race.

The air was cool, too cool for late August, and was cut with an icy edge when the wind blew. Down in the frigid pitch he walked like a small boy who'd lost his way, a boy who'd been working the coal mines for a nickel a day, poor, pathetic and ashamed.

He could sense the deep burning inside his skin, the heat of discorperation. It seeped into every internal organ, every organic space. He could smell it; the pungent fetor of his own burning, like wood or match sticks or crisp meat on the spit.

He opened his moth-eaten overcoat and allowed the frigid air inside, an attempt to cool the fever.

Thick globs of horse dung littered the street, mixing with the mud to form a dark and grimy mulch. The smell of it saturated the air. Men and women milled about aimlessly. Beggars, workers, children, traders, thieves. Dingy linens hung from windows and billowed in the heavy breeze. Gas lamps hissed their blue flames inside singed glass, dotting the street paths at regular intervals, disappearing into the fog like ethereal watchmen.

He passed a row of beggars who stunk of feces and urine, their eyes covered in milky cataracts, limbs so thin and brittle they might break off. It was not just Poppycock who suffered the Slow Death. He was not the only creature under the gods' eyes slowly eroding into nothing. Of course they would fade differently; beggars would wither from starvation, disease, anything that made their mortal bodies grow less.

Poppycock would whither from something else entirely, but, nevertheless, had the power to undo all physicality. He would fade simply from lack of adulation. And that wasn't fair. "I'll not end up like you!" he shouted and shook his fist at the roiling fog around him.

He stepped onto Buck's Row, where the crowds abated, and sat down on the steps of the board school building. The sun began setting, a flame through dirty gauze. It slowly dipped into the horizon.

The first women of the night appeared.

One standing in a doorway, another under a lamppost. In no more than an hour, the full pitch of night would fall and the streets would be home, not to factory workers, millers and beggars, but to Night Women, hookers and the whore-hounds who bought and sold them.

He watched the whore by the lamppost, watched her pace lazily back and forth, smile and pretend-swoon over passersby. She was wearing a shawl, which she periodically opened to reveal her cleavage. Her dress was tattered, her hair long and tangled, but she was slender and pretty beneath her grime. He rarely found mortal women appealing.

The pink sun was now little more than a glimmer through the dark clouds. He walked towards the whore. She eyed him, burrowing her dark eyes into his. Her unspoken reach called to him. She was a Night Lady and she knew the business of allure, despite her ragged appearance. Poppycock was not interested in her. It was the poster on the lamp that caught his attention.

BEWARE

Of

The notorious:

Leather Apron

He's been thought to kill one woman and scare half a hundred more. Lurking in the shadows and alleyways the man known as Leather Apron is a tall and thick man, with dark glinting eyes behind unruly hair. He's been known to wear a black top hat. He has been thought to leave the area and no one knows where he is. One woman was walking from Whitechapel onto Brick Lane toward the Spitalfields when she felt a presence behind her. She did not hear a single sound, but felt a man was stalking her and trying to murder her. She was more afraid than at any other time in her life.

"Need somefin', do ya? Need some a this?" said the whore. She opened her shawl to him. Poppycock could smell the liquor on her breath and the musk on her skin, not one goose pimple in the cold air. She didn't feel a thing, boozed up and numb like she was.

He let her fawn over him, brush up close to him and thrust her groin against his leg. In those days, Poppycock was thin and of short stature and she nearly pushed him over.

"Give you wha' you want for two shillin's and a pint a somethin' fruity," she said. "Give you wha'ever you want for as long as you want it."

"You afraid a him?" he asked and pointed to the poster. He could feel it in her even as he asked the question, the slight change in scent, the quickened heartbeat, the dilation of pupil. He could feel her fear.

"Who, the one they call Leather Apron?" she asked.

"None other."

She backed up and staggered slightly, squinting at the poster. "Leather Apron," she read. "I don't fink I like the name. Give 'im a bettah name and I imagine I might be."

Poppycock put his arms around her waist and held her close to him. He basked in her thick, musky fright-lust. "What kind a name?" he said. "What kind a name scares you?"

"Maybe somefink to do with rippin' out me heart and breakin' it in two, makin' me cry out in the middle of the night."

"Like a nightmare?" he asked.

"I suppose so. A nightmare, yeah." She was looking at him in a way she hadn't before; her eyes were wider, more alert. No longer the whore pandering for a trick, she was really seeing him now. He'd become _real_ to her.

Then came, an injection of what he needed most. He sniffed the air, sniffed the whore, tightened his arms around her.

"More," he whispered, "tell me more of what _frightens_ you."

"What scares me, sir, scares me more than death or monsters or nightmares, is the feeling that I'm all alone and I ain't got nufink or no one to care about me in all the world. Don't you, sir? Don't you feel afraid at the thought that there just ain't no one at all to love you?"

"Oh, God." He staggered under the influx of raw emotion. A tear appeared in her eye. "Oh God, I need that. Oh God, feels so good," he breathed. "What's your name?"

"Polly," she said. "Polly Nichols. And yours, sir, what's your name, please tell me?" She was shivering, but not from cold.

Poppycock swayed, fear-drunk, feeling the swell of her buttock beneath her skirts, the press of her breasts against his thin chest. "Just...call me...Jack."

"Jack, sir? Any man's name?"

"Not any man," he whispered as he groped her breasts. "Every man. Every man's name, every man's fear."

Chapter 20: Puk Gets a Reality Check

Prissy was fast asleep on Sarah's lap. "Jack?"

"Yep, worked too. For awhile. They never caught him back then either."

Sarah toyed with the name in her head. _Jack, Jack...Oh!_ "Jack the Ripper?"

"The very same."

"I don't understand."

"To stay corporeal." He said it like she'd asked him the sum of two plus two. "Once he'd seen what raw fear could do for him, the rest was a no-brainer or so the story goes."

"So, that's what you're all trying to do then, stay corp—with body?"

"More or less, yes," Rob said. "Some do a better job than others. Isn't that what you're trying to do, too?"

Sarah frowned. "What happens if you fail?"

"We transmute and fade into smog."

Sarah nodded deliberately, eyes squinting.

"Not so different than you," he said. "We fade to smog, you crumble to dust."

"You've got a point."

Rob shifted in his seat. "When I say 'London in the 1800's,' what image immediately comes to mind?"

"Pollution."

"Right. Any wonder what caused all that pollution?"

"The Industrial Revolution? Just a guess."

"And that's the answer that every history textbook will tell you. Truth is always so much more incriminating than fiction. London smog, my dear, that ethereal pea soup so thick you could've cut it with a knife, was simply the rotting corpses of thousands of fey folk."



"You don't need them to worship you if they're afraid a you," said Poppycock. "Fear is the most real belief there is."

Puk shook his head. "I just don't think I can do it." He stared off into their dark demesne behind the Hedgerows.

Poppycock dropped a dumbbell on the floor. "You can and you will, brother, so help me." He stepped over to the table and picked up a leather bag the size of a woman's purse. He lifted a needle and syringe from it. "See, lil' brother, the way I look at is, you've got no other choice, eh? You're fading even now."

Puk glanced at his hands and watched the thin wisps of black smoke peel off. "But she—"

"Fool!" Poppycock boomed. "That silly bitch can't do nothing to keep any one of us solid. It takes a lot more than fan clubs and bullshit. It takes _fear._ " He drew up the hem of his shorts and slapped the top of his thigh. Then stuck it with a needle and deployed the plunger until the syringe emptied.

Poppycock closed his eyes and shivered.

He grabbed his bag and pulled two bottles from it. He took a handful from each one and with a quart of milk choked them down, wiping the dribbles from his chin. He flexed a bicep. It bulged like a veiny balloon.

"What is that stuff?" asked Puk.

Poppycock resumed curling, this time with nearly four times the weight on either end. A rash of bright red pimples began dotting his hairy shoulders. "That, my lil' brother, is what we call 'The Sauce.' And The Sauce keeps me right fit. Dependable, too. And the longer I stay right fit, the more chance I got of making it back to where I was. Back the way nature intended."

Puk gazed at his brother's arms as he performed the repetitions of his exercise. Poppycock was easily fifty pounds heavier since the last time Puk had seen him. His entire body had grown. His thighs bulged with huge lumps of muscle, his chest and shoulders were wider and the gut around his belly had trimmed up. Thick cords stood out on his neck as he curled the weight.

"Does The Sauce make you grow?" Puk asked.

"Indeed. Indeed. You see, broth-ah, right now, I got the best a both worlds. Mortal mixed with Native gifts. I'm anchored in deep and I plan to stay a good long while. And you're gonna do the same, right here at my side.

"That's why you, me and those specimens a yours," he indicated a wooden door with a wrought iron window grate, "are going to send crime rates out the mothah-fuckin' roof. Going to prepare for The Showdown."

"My chimeras! What have you done?" Puk ran to the door and yanked it open to the scent of horse dung and pig slop. Before he could ask for a flashlight, a gas powered streetlamp flared up casting the chamber into a yellow haze. "Oh, my sweet Titania!"

On four high wheels sat a stout wooden carriage with heavy iron bars over the windows. Inside, Puk's newly-mades were lying about lethargically in soiled hay.

"Oh, my darlings," he cried, throwing himself against the bars, shoving his hands through the slats. Only one, the man-bat, stirred and came to the side of the cage, pressing his head under Puk's open palm. Puk could feel the smitten admiration emanate from the creature. He gladdened, despite the situation. It gave him strength, but the others appeared to be too tired to move. The goat-headed girl, the dog-woman, the insect-nymph and the overweight lizard-man with an elephantine nose all peered at him with eyes too weary for action. Or homage.

"I'm so sorry," said Puk, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. "You're not meant to be in cages. None of you. You're meant to be Free!"

Puk returned to his brother, tears streaming. "You can't do this!"

The only response was the clink of iron disks.

Chapter 21: Sarah Gets Her Freak On

"If Puk is his brother," Rob said, "that makes you his niece."

Sarah screwed her face up. "Poppycock is my uncle?"

"Yeah, that's a hell of a thing to say, isn't it?" Rob resumed his reserved-for-critical-moments-pace.

"Okay, aside from that being creepy as hell, what does that have to do with killing him?"

Rob held his chin as he paced. "Genetics is a very base level of knowing. Things get pretty solid at the gene level."

"So?"

"So killing a faerie is easier when you've got a genetic connection."

"Whoa. Poppycock isn't even remotely my uncle in the real world" she said. "Don't _genetic_ relationships have to have something to do with, well, genetics?"

Rob tilted his head from side to side. "Yes and no. I mean, your question is valid and ordinarily would hold up in any Realworld court, but not in this case, I'm afraid. Once one of us opts into a human gene line, those relationships will get all jumbled up. So, even though by strict interpretation Poppycock is nowhere near your gene pool, by fey association he's sittin' right smack dab in the middle of it."

"Wait, didn't you tell me that Puk and Poppycock aren't really even brothers?"

"I did, but it's all so intertwined that you can't tell the difference," Rob said. "The line where genetics ends and associative magic begins is terribly blurred."

Sarah shook her head. "So, I'm Puk's daughter because he stole my dad's body, and I'm Poppycock's niece because he's Puk's faerie brother, so it's a genetics and magic mix?"

"Indeed. You see, a worshiper may refer to us in the paternal sense and in that way it is true enough, but in your case, it is all the more true. As long as Puk keeps wearing your father's shoes, the link can't be broken. What you lack with magic, you make up for with genetics, and vice versa.

"You got the best of both worlds."

"I hope I don't start killing people," she said, alarmed.

Rob raised an eyebrow. "By god, that's it."

"What?" Her heart skipped a beat. She hoped she didn't have it in her to become a monster like her dad and her uncle.

"Sarah, you just explained the whole of it in that one little sentence."

"Huh? I was sort of joking."

"No, no, no. If anyone can do it, you can, because you can't kill a fey the same way you kill a human and you can't unbelieve a human like you can a fey. I wonder if Poppycock can even kill _you_."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa lemme get this straight." She repositioned herself in her chair as she gathered her thoughts. "Only I can kill Poppycock because on the one hand, he's my blood relative, so he's a human being and so he _can_ be killed. He's also a faerie, which would mean he can't be killed like a human, _but_ since I am also the daughter of a faerie, I could kill his faerie side too, because somehow I can _unbelieve_ him to death?"

"You're so eloquent."



That evening, over multiple cups of coffee, tea and two glasses of wine, Sarah and Rob drew out their plans. Sarah took notes on her laptop and somewhere around three in the morning they came up with a solid outline.

"Well, I'm ready for bed," said Rob, as a long yawn overcame him.

Prissy, already asleep, perked up now that the cadence of the voices had changed.

"You can sleep in my bed, Prissy," said Sarah.

Prissy smiled and stretched her long nude legs then tiptoed upstairs.

Rob and Sarah sat in silence. Sarah couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss him. Among other things.

"Rob...." She wasn't sure how much she wanted to say, how much she wanted to bare her soul here at the kitchen table, but she was aching to say something.

"Rob, I don't want you to get the wrong idea but I—"

"Me too."

"Wait—what?"

"Let's do it."

Sarah swallowed, feeling her blood pressure rise. "That was rude."

He shrugged.

She sighed. "I'm confused."

"Don't be. You were going to beat around the bush and I just stated the obvious."

It was true enough, but why did he have to go and say it like that? It reminded her of Brad's pandering. "Are you people always so brazen?"

He eyed her quizzically. "Isn't that what people who love each other do?"

"Love?"

"Why, yes, Sarah, I'm in love with you, or did you miss that too? Why the blazes are you turning so red? I was under the impression that the feeling was mutual."

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it. Shrugged.

"Cat got your tongue now, eh?"

She shook her head. "It's just never that easy. Something must be wrong."

"That's your problem," he said. "You think something is wrong even when it's right. So, for you, everything is always wrong when it comes to love."

She shook her head.

"I love you. Just accept it. It's not hard to love you. I find it very easy. What's difficult is convincing you." He offered his hand. "I want to show you something."

She made a face.

"Oh, don't be a pervert, it's not like that." He brought her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. "Close your eyes."

He spread his warm hands across her lower back. She enjoyed it and gave into the idea of just doing it right here, when she perceived something else. In her mind, a link formed and it connected them together in way she'd never experienced with anyone.

"Shh, keep your eyes closed," he whispered. "Let me show you. That's it."

The blackness behind her closed lids became the place where she'd first searched for Rob, behind the walls in the coffee shop basement, only now she saw it from a different angle.

She saw a woman walking in the tunnel, in ankle-deep water. Sarah was stunned at the beauty of this woman. Everything about her was full of life and wonder.

The woman slipped and fell. Instantly Sarah felt sorry for her, remembering how she too had walked in that same tunnel and fallen into that cold water.

The woman began to cry the most beautiful tears. Sarah wanted to weep too, not with sadness, but with joy because of the beauty that this woman displayed even in her grief.

Who is she?

In the vision, the woman spoke and when she did, she said the same words that Sarah had said. Only this woman's voice sounded melodious.

There was something so familiar about this woman. Her clothes—she was wearing a neat business suit, so similar to the clothing Sarah had worn that day. In fact, she'd worn that suit to work many times.

"Wait." She opened her eyes and stared into Rob's.

He lifted an eyebrow.

"No. _No._ "

A corner of his mouth twitched up. "Is it so hard to believe?"

Tears again. "You see _me_ like that?"

"From the very start," he said.

"Rob..." Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. She didn't know what to say, so just held him. It had never occurred to her that anyone, especially this Rob, might see her like that.

He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, pushing her tears aside. Then he kissed her, whole mouthed and passionately, the way she'd imagined it.

"I admit," he breathed, "I love you with all my heart."

A bad boy who's good for me?

He led her to the couch in the living room.



He'd run away, but that didn't mean far away; that didn't mean he'd gotten past the neighbor's yard, or even out from under the porch.

Why?

'Cause Sarah Montgomery had done him wrong, for one. 'Cause Rob the Cat Hob had done him wrong, for two. And 'cause without Puk he was lost anyhow.

Brad pulled himself up by his fingertips, flattening the blood out from under his nails, and peered straight into the living room. He snorted and flapped his lips. The knife hilt jabbed him in the gut. Tonight he'd use that knife to carve something other than steak.

Why?

'Cause Sarah Montgomery needed to learn a lesson 'Cause Rob the Cat Hob had it coming. And 'cause without Puk he was lost, lost, lost.

Inside the living room, nothing much was going on, but something was going on inside the kitchen. Something secret. Something bad. Brad pulled himself up higher, straining to see what they were doing and who was doing it, but he already knew. Sarah and the cat.

I'll punish her. I'll slap her up. Carve her up. Hee-haw!

He waited, hanging on the ledge, muscles straining, sweat trickling. Pain, yes, but nothing compared to the pain of becoming a monster, having your handsome head taken and replaced with that of an ass. Nothing compared to watching your girlfriend get the business from a fucking cat faerie.

So, he'd fuck her up and him too. 'Cause faerie blood runs just as red as human's does. He'd dish out some of what he'd been force fed.

Why?

'Cause Sarah Montgomery had hurt him bad. 'Cause Rob the Cat Hob made him mad. 'Cause without Papa Puk to turn him back, he was so mother-fucking lost.

He hung there until his arms shook and his fingers went numb and that's when Sarah and Rob came into the living room, kissing and hugging, feeling and rubbing, stripping and—he couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't stand the sight of that cat fucker touching his girl.



Rob opened her blouse, then kissed and caressed her all over. From her breasts to her belly button he worked his way south.

She enjoyed the way his dark curls hung loose around his shoulders, the way raven black chest hair contrasted with ivory skin. She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and worked the button on his trousers, stealing glimpses of his naked body as she undressed him, rubbing her hands over his smooth skin and through his hair. He cradled her knees and gently opened them and she closed her eyes.

A burst of pleasure shot up between her legs. She saw stars, the sky, the moon; all with the awkward impression of straddling a comet, bare assed naked out into the middle of outer space.

When she opened her eyes, she saw...a donkey!

The next moments were a blur. Sarah covered her breasts and screamed. The window imploded and a donkey headed man wearing gardening gloves and pajamas scrambled through.

Brad brayed and hee-hawed uncontrollably. In his hand, he brandished a long steak knife.

Rob crouched, arms outstretched, hovering to protect Sarah.

"You can't do everything _dear_ _Father of Felines!_ " Brad shouted, immediately adopting a confused expression, as though he had spoken out of turn.

"Easy big fella," said Rob in a calm and steady tone.

"Horse is not in my nature. 'Tis an ass you see in me. Wait, what?"

"What you say we put the knife down, eh?"

"Me...methinks...methinks thou—oh, fuck you!" Brad launched, thrusting the knife at Rob's belly. Rob dodged, making Brad trip forward and take a nasty spill on the hardwood floor. He regained quickly. Sarah screamed again.

Rob leapt forward, but the ass evaded, squealing, "What knavery hast thou committed with my Peasblossom!" swinging at Rob's torso, scowling as though he couldn't figure out the last word in a crossword puzzle

Both paused. Brad hiccupped.

A thin red line of blood swelled across Rob's abdomen. Sarah screamed again.

"Hah!" brayed Brad. "How does that feel, mo-mo- _my good Monsieur?_ " Brad made a face as though he'd swallowed a lemon. "I mean _Mo-Mo-Monsieur._ Damn it!"

"Put the knife down," commanded Rob, paying no mind to the gash on his belly. "You're under a spell and you don't know what you're doing."

" _Methinks not!"_

"Your words prove it. Now put the knife down or I'll be forced to put _you_ down."

"I am not so easily _afeard._ Ahhh, stop it... _methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay_...ahhh!" Giving up on words, Brad lunged, his knife aimed at Rob's heart. Sarah's breath caught in her throat. Brad's knife whistled through the air, its aim true and straight. Sarah covered her eyes and watched though her fingers as the very tip of the blade poked the soft, vulnerable skin of Rob's bare chest.

And froze.

A stiff silence fell over the room, then motion, followed by a series of grunts and the sounds of bones popping. Sarah kept her left eye open.

At the start it appeared as though Rob and Brad were dancing a strange, grotesque ballet. Their bodies intertwined artfully and then began spinning, which is where the dance metaphor ended and the exorcist one began. Limbs, Brad's, were bending forwards and backwards in ways no limbs ever should.

It lasted far too long.

In the end, Brad lay on the floor tied with black and white checkered straps. His hands were connected behind his back to his feet, similar to the cover on the erotic hog-tie kit in Crystal Worthington's trunk. He was gagged with a similarly colored handkerchief.

Out of breath, Rob tossed the steak knife onto the coffee table where it clanked loudly.

Sarah blinked. "Oh," she said. "I didn't know you could do that."

Chapter 22: Puk's First Time

Sarah opened her eyes to daylight. She wondered how long she'd been asleep. Then again, she didn't care because she'd never felt so good.

She was lying on the pull out couch bed in the living room. Sunlight was pouring in through the open window. A few stray shards of glass glistened on the hardwood floors. She remembered sex with Rob, though she didn't remember setting up the hide-a-bed or putting sheets on it. She did remember the episode with Brad.

"Oh," she groaned, thinking again of that sex with Rob. Not once but twice, the second time better, longer and with no interruptions.

She smiled lazily, eyes closed, thinking of that orgasm. What's more—an impulsive giggle escaped her lips—she had no regrets. Not a one. She rolled over and kissed a black cat.

"Ahhhhh!"

She yanked the comforter across her chest and scooted to the other side of the bed.

She'd seen this cat before, in the canal system under that coffee shop. Rob's house. Yes, this cat had been there, and she had spoken to it feeling very disappointed that the Patron Saint of Cats hadn't— _shoulda known._

Her heart fluttered. Because last night she'd had sex with this cat. _I'm a very sick..._

"Sorry."

Beside her in bed, sheet around his waist, lay Rob squinting in the sunlight.

"I hope I didn't upset you. It's just so much better for sleeping."

"Oh, God."

"I know it takes some getting used to," he said.

"I think I'm going crazy."

"Did you have a good time last night?"

She snorted. "Is that what you call that?"

Rob rolled over onto his side, head propped up under a palm. "When you touch me I take you into my spacetime a bit."

"That's your spacetime? Riding a comet in orgasmic pleasure?"

He grinned sheepishly. "Your world—Realworld—is rigged to make us unreal. To us Realworld is flimsy, often times invisible, which is disconcerting. When you and I touch intimately, I come a little more into your world and you into mine. We trade places a bit. It's exciting both ways."

"Yeah," she agreed. "I was pretty excited."

"You'll get used to it."

She shook her head. "I hope not. I mean that was... _incredible._ Anyway, maybe you could refrain from doing that cat thing for a while, and certainly not after sex."

"Fair enough."

"I guess we should get ready. We have a lot to do. What are we going to do with Brad?" They'd stashed him in the garage after Rob had tied him up.

"Don't worry about that one. I'll take care of him." Rob flung his blankets aside. He obviously had no qualms about open nudity and Sarah didn't mind one bit.

She went into the downstairs bathroom and found Prissy sleeping in a pile of blankets and pillows in the tub. She woke beaming when Sarah came in.

"Is that where you ended up?"

Prissy giggled.

"Well, you have to get up so we can take showers."

Prissy pulled herself out from under the blankets and stretched naked and contented. Sarah laughed. They were a regular nudist colony this morning. She picked up the blankets from the shower and started the water.

"Prissy, you'll need to shower too, so don't give me any—oh." Prissy had already stepped in.

Sarah helped her get ready, showing her how to soap her skin and shampoo her hair and then how to dry off.

Afterwards, she got Prissy into a pair of jeans, but as soon as she turned around to find a top, Prissy pulled them off.

"Prissy, come on, wear clothes today." Sarah pulled the pants back up around her hips. Prissy pushed them back down to her ankles. This went on a couple more times before Sarah finally said, "What then, huh? What do you want to wear? Because you have to wear something. We're not going to walk around naked all day."

Prissy frowned.

"Come on, pick something. We have a lot of things to do today."

Hesitantly, Prissy peeked into Sarah's closet.

"Go on," said Sarah.

Prissy began sorting through the stacks of clothes and rows of hangers. After several minutes she pulled out something black and shiny. Something Sarah thought she'd thrown out.

"No, Prissy!"

Prissy just giggled and to Sarah's surprise began pulling out all of the costume's component parts, right down to the mask and clawed rubber gloves. "Prissy, not that. Anything but that."

Prissy got dressed and strutted in front of the mirror, modeling herself in the Halle Berry Catwoman costume.



Poppycock stabbed his fingers through their skin, their hearts, their eyeballs, while Puk pinned their shoulders down to help him do it. Their twisted faces, pleading moans and strangled cries etched a permanent scar in Puk's psyche.

Now they lay still, growing cold. He watched as the light in their eyes faded forever. Those beautiful twin sisters.

"Do it!" grunted Poppycock.

He did it in glistening gashes that sickened him. He carved it into their breasts and flat bellies with a butter knife from their kitchen, feeling every inch of the way, the pain they no longer could, until he'd written three bloody letters: Puk.

He dropped the knife to the floor and sobbed into his blood-stained hands.

Poppycock sneered from ear to ear. "Now you know," he said. "Now you know." Then Poppycock hung them upside down, with rope made from their own hair, to either side of the chandelier. Their bodies swayed and dangled, waiting for the police to find them. Puk vomited and wished, with all the longing in his heart, for his own death.

Much later, when Poppycock was pumping iron and gobbling up his multi-colored pills, Puk curled into a ball and cried himself dry.

"No, no, no!" he wailed aloud for no one to hear, dying within while growing stronger without. He listened to the far off clanking of metal weights as Poppycock grew his muscles for The Showdown.

"Pssst."

Puk sat up, pulling his face from the mud patch he'd been laying in. "Who goes there?"

"I do."

"Who?" he said.

He heard a scurrying in the bush.

Puk waited, squinting into the darkness until a small face appeared, one with ragged fur and misshapen lips, cheekbones that didn't fit and ears like uncooked chicken tenders.

"Gloria!" he whispered, never so glad to see a chimera. "Oh, come here," he said and held his arms out to her. She scurried from the dark thicket to him, on all fours. He gathered her close, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her forehead.

"Oh, Gloria," he said, tears streaming. "How did you get out? All my darlings have been locked up by _him_."

"I was neverrrhhhrrr," she said, brushing her feline lips against his. "I've neverrrhhrrr been one to blindly obey."

It was then that Puk saw how filthy she'd become and how hollow her face. "Oh, my dear, you're famished," he said, caressing her chin.

"I've eaten a lot of mice rah-rah-rrrhhhhr-recently," she said, struggling against her surgically installed morphology. "But I'm strong enough."

"Strong enough? For what?"

"Escape." She scratched her chin with her foot, her chimerical form having advanced a bit over time.

He bowed his head as the despair of apathy overwhelmed him.

"We can get away from him, you knowrrrhhhrrr," she said.

Puk began to weep bitterly. "Oh, how I wish that were true," he said. "You don't know how truly fixed I am to him. For all my life, I cannot shake _myself_ Free."

"Has such a he-he-he-hex always been, ba-baby?"

Puk sighed. "I'm afraid so." He let out a small chuckle. "But you know, I don't think I ever really knew just how affected I was until now. Now that I've seen what he's capable of. Truly."

A long silence ensued before Gloria asked, "Does he make you do it too? Khhill, I mean?"

Puk cringed inside himself. He was hoping she wouldn't ask that. He burst into tears all over again. "He said he'd kill her if I didn't! I had to! Oh, I'm a horrible sprite."

Gloria placed a hand-paw on his back and rubbed it, comforting him. He'd ignored her for too long. He leaned into her and sobbed.

Leaning back, he kissed her on the lips, then fingered the tresses of her hair in the shiny moonlight. "I'm sorry for ignoring you," he whispered. "I've been a fool."

"Shh."

Puk had more to say. "I know I've not been very fair. I mean, I know I can be very self-centered sometimes. But you have to believe me when I say, it wasn't my intention to hurt you."

She purred.

"I'm not sure why you love me anymore at all," he said.

She thought that over. "Because of who you arerrhhhrr and ha-ha-have always been," she paused. "I know you are not mhhhy Samuel, but I alsoooooo know that Samuel lives inside you somewhererrhhhrr because I see him in yhhourr eyes. I see him when I see you. So, even though people change, sometimes so much that you have to find each other all overrrhhhrrr again, you can still go on loving them. That's how it is for me. I love you with all mhhhy hearrrhhhrt, Puk Robin Samuel Goodfellow Montgomery, and I don't think anything in this world could everrrhhhrr make me stop."

Gloria looked down as moonlit tears shone in her eyes. "Oh, Gloria," he said, "you've so much to give this world still." He kissed her again, feeling the fullness of her lips and mouth, the heat of her breath.

He wanted to reward her for being so loyal, but the idea of that quickly dissipated. It wasn't rewards that were needed now, but concise planning and action. For the first time in all the long history of Puk Robin Goodfellow, he saw one of his chimeras, not as a worshipper to make him a god, but as a friend who's sincerity he needed more than ever.

"I love you, too," he said. It was the first time he had ever said that to one of his own. Then again, he hadn't created her had he? Poppycock had done this one for him, surgically, so maybe there was something good in his brother after all.

"I love you, Gloria, I really do. Now, how do we get away from here?"

Chapter 23: Puk Says He's Sorry

Sarah put a plate down in front of Rob. Chicken casserole. Nothing fancy, but still pretty good. Rob dug in. Sarah was happy to have someone to make it for. It had been her grandmother's recipe passed down through antiquity.

Prissy didn't know what to make of it, but once she took a bite, saw what she'd been missing all these years.

Brad was not dining with them. He was still tied up in the garage. Rob volunteered to feed him after dinner. Sarah hadn't seen Brad since the incident and didn't want to. Not because of what he'd done, but because she couldn't stand to look at him anymore. The whole thing made her feel guilty, but with what they needed to get done in the next days, she didn't want to expend any energy on regret. So, better that he was tied up in the garage where she knew he was safe, from himself and others.

"Very good, Sarah," said Rob, pushing his empty plate away.

"You're done already?"

"Doesn't take much with cooking like that. I can't even remember the last time I had an honest meal."

"Hhmm," said Sarah, "I didn't know a meal could be dishonest."

When Sarah finished, and after Prissy began licking her plate clean, they piled their dishes by the sink, cranked up the coffee pot and got to work.

The first task was to set up the recording equipment. Both she and Rob scratched their heads while they deliberated over which jack was "A/V In" and which jack was "A/V Out," which one for video and which one for audio. How to record, play back and everything else.

"Okay, I think we finally got it," said Sarah, pressing play on the video cam. "Now, we just need to figure out how to upload."

The door buzzer sounded.

Sarah looked at Rob, who shrugged. She went to the intercom. "Hello?"

Silence, then: "Can I come in?"

"That depends, who is it?"

"Please," said the voice.

"Puk?"

A long pause ensued, followed by muffled static and then: "Drats! Yes, but don't hate me. I'm alone—er, without Poppycock."

Sarah turned to Rob. "I don't believe this."

"Interesting," said Rob.

"Am I supposed to believe him?"

"I think so," said Rob.

"Do you?"

"Don't know."

Sarah returned to the intercom. "How do I know you're telling the truth?" She waited for the answer.

"You're right. You don't know. But I am telling it."

Somehow she believed him, perhaps because his answer was so uncreative, or perhaps it was just her intuition. Regardless, she pressed the buzzer and let him in.

When Puk arrived at the door she knew at once that he had spoken the truth. The haggard look in his eyes and care worn lines in his face told her that he was deeply troubled. He was not alone. Behind him came someone, or something, else.

Sarah had only ever seen this individual in photos and magazines and up till this point, in some quarter of her mind, wondered if such a creature could truly exist.

The woman at Puk's side walked low to the ground, as if she suffered from a humpback condition. Though she was covered in fur from head to foot, it was plain to see she was naked, because her privates were bare. Her blonde hair fell crimped around her face like the mane of a lion.

She crouched at Puk's feet, holding onto his pant leg. "I don't believe you two have met," he said morosely. "Gloria, meet Sarah. She is the one who helped us stay manifest."

"My pleasure-rrhhhhrrr," said Gloria.

Sarah swallowed, trying very hard not to cry. "Uh, won't you come in?"

As the chimera lumbered in, Rob watched her and shook his head in a manner befitting a concerned member of the clergy.

Puk plopped down on the couch. He stared forlornly down at his belly. It reminded Sarah so much of her father the time he'd lost his car in a gambling bet.

"Are you all right?" Sarah asked.

Puk's lower lip quivered and his chin turned to gooseflesh. "No," he bawled. "I'm not."

"He's been abused by that knave o' the fehhhy, that bugaboo most terrhhrrrible," said Gloria as she lit a cigarette. "Unseelie as theyhhhhyy get."

Sarah shot a bewildered glance at Rob, who returned it with one of his own.

Gloria sat cross-legged, puffing on a Virginia Slim, massaging Puk's knee.

Sarah kneeled down in front of him and took his hands in hers. "Puk, what happened?"

He sobbed and sniffled and did not answer for several moments. Then said, "I-I'm sorry for what I did to you. I'm sorry for everything. Most of all I'm sorry for not stopping Poppycock before everything got so screwed up."

"Okay. Okay. Can you tell me what happened?" She sat down next to him. "Prissy, tissues."

Prissy, who had been staring at Gloria in horror, scampered out of the room and returned with a wad of toilet paper.

"W-well," began Puk, and he went on to explain recent events, including how Poppycock had threatened to kill Sarah if he didn't join in on the murder spree.

"It's already started," Rob said, glancing at Sarah. "You've decided, haven't you? You've really decided to take him down."

"Yeah," she said. "I have. I think it was when I realized that I actually could, but why does that matter? Why, with all his infamy, should he care what I decide?"

"Because, sweet child, blood runs thicker than water. You're my beloved daughter," Puk said. "The only one I've got and the only one I want."

Sarah paused; she'd never heard anyone claim her as family before, and to hear it now, in this context, with this man who at once was and was not her father, made the sentiment all the more powerful. "Thank you."

Puk smiled despite his quivering lip and pink-shot eyes. "Sarah, I'm so sorry—"

"No," she said. "No. It's not your fault. Not entirely—" Suddenly she remembered Brad tied up in the garage. "Rob, Brad..."

"I'll check on him."

Puk took a breath. "Bradley, my sweet ass!"

"That reminds me," said Sarah. "He's been trying to kill me."

Puk swallowed. "Oh, no. It isn't his fault. Poppycock used him, don't you see? Poppycock made him do it. He used us all. We've all been so...victimized."

Sarah worried at his use of the word "all", wondering who else he was referring to.

"Brad's such a friggin' sweethhhrrreart. He rhhhrrreally is," said Gloria in a throaty smoker's voice.

"That has got to be the weakest attempted murder defense I've ever heard," Sarah said to Puk.

"Well, he is very impressionable."

She scoffed. "Not even the half of it."

"Brad's fine, for the moment," Rob said, returning to the discussion.

"How did you end up with my dad's body, anyway?"

Puk blinked. "I don't remember."

"And he won't for quite awhile," said Rob. "It's like asking you to remember your birth. When we enter gene lines it really screws the pouka, as they say. It's last resort only."

"Speaking of last resorts," said Puk. "Anyone figure out how to stop Poppycock?"

"As a matter of fact, we have," said Sarah. "But how do I know you're not going to help him if we tell you?"

Puk stared astonished. "Well, you've my word."

Chapter 24: The Menagerie

They set to work, shortly after which, Puk, jumped up and said, "Oh heavens, I almost forgot!"

He ran to the window and ripped open the curtain. Out in the middle of the street stood a large wooden wagon with iron bars and wooden wheels.

"What the hell?"

Puk whipped outside, quick as the wind, and began pulling on the thick rope attached to the carriage. To Sarah's astonishment, it began to roll slowly into the driveway.

"What do you suppose is inside that thing?" Sarah asked Rob as they watched from the bay window.

No answer could have explained. Puk helped the passengers step out, one by one. Oddly misshapen humanoid forms emerged from the wagon.

"Oh. Wow."

The first creatures to enter her apartment came as a pair. Man and woman. They entered casually, her arm linked in his, as if they walked along the promenade on a summer's eve.

Black hair covered the man's chest and arms, a thick beard of stubble coated his face. An upturned nose with two very flared nostrils left no question as to his species. The man-bat wore dark sunglasses, a black leather motor cycle jacket unzipped to his naval and a leather biker cap. Sarah thought he looked frighteningly close to Freddie Mercury, circa mid 80's.

His consort, who he relied upon to guide him, was a shapely woman with the head of a spotted owl. She peered at Sarah, as she passed, with eyes like tea lights.

The others followed: a man with lizard skin and an elephant trunk; a woman with the body of a porn star and the face of a mosquito and three others with dog, frog and giraffe parts.

Once the last of them passed, Puk returned. "Sorry for the inconvenience, we simply had to bring them all. Also, I think they're quite famished."

And famished they were. For the next two hours Sarah, Prissy, Rob and Puk cooked up chicken, spaghetti, left over pot roast, asparagus, potatoes, more potatoes, grilled cheeses, and a myriad of other meals.

They passed out plate after plate, Sarah trying her best not to stare but, along with Rob, having little luck in that department. For whatever reason, Prissy was showing no special interest in any of them.

They watched as the elephant trunked lizard man cut his food very carefully, chewing like a gourmand, as the man-bat sniffed his food then screeched sonar and wolfed it up, as the insect-woman sucked milk from a glass.

"I don't even want to know how that works," Sarah said of the sucking-air straw sound as she began to wash the dishes.

When they had their fill, the man-bat rose and said, "It is finished."

"That's a good thing, too, because the fridge is pretty darn empty," said Sarah.

"I can see we're going to need to go shopping," Rob said.

After dinner and dishes Puk pulled Sarah and Rob aside. "I'm sorry, but I don't think we have much time. You see, Poppycock will not take lightly to the fact that we, me in particular, have escaped him. Surely he will predict my actions and trail us here. Once here, he'll waste no time dispatching us."

Rob nodded sagaciously. "He's right. We had better get this show on the road and quick. Do any of your _friends_ have computer knowledge?"

"Oh," said Puk. "Scout, come here."

The man-bat rose, the owl-headed girl on his arm. "Father?" he said as he took a place beside Puk.

"These folks have a task for you."

"Lady and sir," said Scout, addressing Sarah and Rob. "I am well versed in both the art and science of computer linguistics and application. Having worked for over three and a half years at a major search engine provider, I would be most pleased to use these acquired skills to help in any worthwhile pursuit especially, and forgive my intrusion but I could not help overhearing, in matters concerning bringing Poppycock to lawful justice."

"Come on," said Rob, "I'll get you set up and help you read the—"

"Worry not, Cat Hob," said the bird-headed girl through a beak that could somehow enunciate English. "He is blind as a bat, but the strength of my sight is enough for us both."

Ah, thought Sarah, she's got owl vision.

"No doubt, lady." Rob gestured toward the computer, while Sarah conferred with Puk on camera issues.



"So, you see" said Scout to Rob, "linking it this way will give you the most viewers, most expediently, in order to make a home video go viral. Provided you have somewhat satisfactory material, that is."

"Fantastic, you're promoted to internet marketing."

"Gladly, sir."

"Puk, any construction experience in your crew?"

"Of course," he said and clapped his hands. "Leaption, report!"

The rotund man with the trunkish nose and skin mildly resembling a lizard's, lumbered over and saluted with two hands.

"How many homes have you built?" demanded Puk.

"None," he said, proudly. "But I've done hundreds of stage sets in the early years of my thespian career."

"Perfect," said Rob. We need a set built right here in the middle of the living room."

"Say no more." Leaption blew a snort from his trunkish nose, thereby calling a small crew of bizarre hybrids to his side.

Something knocked on the door.

"More?"

Puk shook his head. "Not from me."

"Rob?"

"I work alone."

"Hmmm." Sarah went to the door and squinted through the peephole. "Whoa. Um. Puk, I think this one's for you."

Puk put his eye to the peephole and gasped. He began wiping his hands on his shirt and nodding nervously. "Open it. It's okay."

Sarah opened the door.

"Madame," said a figure in a deep baritone as he bowed lavishly, tipping a black velvet fedora. He straightened and met Sarah's gaze. "I am honored to be in your presence, my dear."

Sarah swallowed, taken aback despite herself. Two piggy eyes and a pinkish, piebald face greeted her. A snout crinkled into two oval slits. Ears sagged low below the hat brim, each pierced with twin rows of silver hoops. A perfectly handsome pig.

"Uh...won't you come in?" she said and gestured. Puk hadn't moved or spoken since she'd opened the door and now, seeing the look on his face, she knew why.

He opened his arms to the creature, the way one might if he were welcoming home a son he'd regretfully sent away.

"Father, I have returned."

"Oh," cried Puk. "Oh, my sweet, sweet darlin'. Oh, my lovely, lovely Marlin. You've come, you've come at last!" The two men embraced with the kind of passion reserved for reunited family.

"I heard of Uncle Poppy's infidelity with the Oberian Creed, his lust for corpus, his insatiable appetite for unholy supplication. I have come to help, to defend, to destroy."

"Oh, Marlin, just look at you. So dapper. So quaint. So full of grandiloquent speech and high fashion. How sorry I am for making such a fool of you, for thinking you so incapable and undeserving of greatness and homage."

"You have made me in your image, Father, according to your whim, in line with your fancy. Do you not think that I should aspire to be only half so great as he who crafted me?"

Puk, still embracing Marlin, bawled over his first chimera's shoulder, sobbing like a man in love.

Sarah left them to their reunion and made her way upstairs to get ready. In preparation for the shoot, she dressed in a V-neck T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans. She pulled her hair back and put on a pair of faux glasses.

She studied a tatter worn script and practiced her lines into the mirror until she could recite them without stumbling.

When she came downstairs, Rob was waiting for her. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Set's ready, too." He pointed to a mock news room, and its lavish news anchor desk, sitting where the couch had been.

"That was fast."

"You've never seen the way these guys can work."

Behind the news room, hung a makeshift green screen made from squares of poster board.

Sarah took her position and waited for Rob's signal.



The kid in the green sweatshirt did little more with his time than play shared video games, blog and surf the Internet for free porn. His mother and father, highfalutin personal injury attorneys, ignored him obsessively.

Not that he cared. He didn't want to live in the real world. Even reality TV was too much for him, but he did follow Poppycock. Not the mass media hype, but the underground stuff. The kind of stuff you had to know how to find: Poppycock LARP parties, costume events, how-to videos and supposedly genuine footage, which usually consisted of a distant blur running across the screen.

Of course, a number of blogs had popped up, three of which were moderated by the kid in the green sweatshirt.

So, on Friday night after he was all played out on World of Warcraft and had surfed enough porn for one day, he went searching for something different.

He found a video stream entitled "The Poppycock Project." He'd never seen it before.

The woman was pretty enough. He definitely noticed the nice set of knockers under her T-shirt. Plus, she was wearing glasses, which made her hot. Oddly enough, however, he found himself getting hooked by her sincerity. She seemed so honest, and that threw the kid because real was something he didn't do.

"Poppycock," said the hot chick in glasses, "is not a person. He is an idea made up to frighten people, because fear is the way populations have been controlled for centuries."

The kid knew that.

The woman went on: "Think about it. How do you feel when you see Poppycock all over the media and television networks? Might you put up with a few more police checks, a few more guns, a few more curfews to make sure you're safe, even if it means taking away some of your freedoms?

"Well, if you would, there's nothing wrong with you, but let me ask you this: how would you feel if you found out, after your freedoms had been taken away, that there was no Poppycock at all?

"The idea that there is a psycho killer named Poppycock on the loose is itself a load of poppycock. No single perpetrator could murder ninety-eight people and still be at large. The so-called Poppycock killings were committed by multiple individuals. Some were crimes of passion, others were gang related and still others were suicides. We've requested that the authorities release all records pertaining to these cases. The police and our government know what I'm saying is true, they just don't want you to know."

The kid sat back and wondered if all that was true. Then he decided it didn't matter. Whether it was totally true or not, the woman had a point, and it needed to be shared. He still had his final blog to write, and the video would make great subject material.

He posted it and wrote: _To my friends. I think everyone needs to see this._ It was about the most sincere thing he had ever written.

Then he did a curious thing. He sent it not only to subscribers of that blog, but to all the subscribers to all his blogs. Some seven thousand names in total. Then he sat back, rolled a joint and forgot about it.

Chapter 25: The Goad

Logan followed the man on foot for nearly four hours. It was unusual.

Through the seedy Tenderloin District he watched the man dig arm's length into garbage bins, eat dripping handfuls and piss in the middle of Jones Street as cars swerved and honked, but never hit him. He followed as the man crept through the nighttime cityscape by means of alley and gutter, stopping to jab himself with finger-length needles or accost whores or search the piles of stench and rot for unknown items.

Logan did nothing as the man beat a homeless person nearly to death. He did nothing as the man slapped a hooker and forced her to her knees under the lamppost on the steps of the St. Boniface Church. He did nothing while the man stabbed a dog, kicked a baby, broke a window.

Because he had to know if it was the right man.

In the dark, he couldn't get close enough to make a positive identification. Somehow the night was protecting this man. The shadows were hiding him like camouflage in the woods. With each new deed, the shadows played tricks. His silhouette became tall or broad or inhuman.

Ostensibly, Logan followed several different "men" that night, yet because of the proximity to the crime, he knew them really to be the same man. Still, he worried feverishly again and again that he'd lost the trail. He was throwing out all the rules of surveillance and procedure and relying steadily on something no cop ever should: faith.

_You stupid, fucking, idiotic jerk._ _Is this right? I'm crazy for doing this._ _This can't be right, this isn't the same person_.

Yet, when that same man stole the purse off a cripple, Logan's faith was restored. Still, he couldn't get close enough to see the face.

The man was moving from one victim, one despicable deed, to the next, but he had yet to perform the only act that mattered.

Logan could have arrested him on any number of counts, but he wasn't going for arrest. He wasn't even wearing his badge. Tonight, he wasn't playing the cop.

Tonight, he had one chance.



"So far we're doing phenomenally well out there," Sarah said of the hits they'd gotten since the previous night. "Over four thousand on our blog."

"Is that good?" asked Puk.

"That's beyond good at this stage."

"Then we'd better get prepared on other counts," said Rob.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Poppycock isn't about to sit by and let us defame him."

"Since that would kill him." Puk shook his head, a grave expression on his face. "No, you're absolutely right. If I know Poppy, and I believe I do, he's already finding a way to put period to our little uprising here. He's planning for the Showdown."

"The what?" asked Sarah.

"The Showdown," said Rob. "When faeries and humans fight to the death. Or union, no one knows for sure."

Sarah blinked. "Huh?"

"It's an old—very old legend," said Rob. "A bit ambiguous, too."

"What is it?"

"Well, it's one of two things. One, the final time when either faeries or humans kicks the other out of the world."

"And two?"

"And two, when faeries and humans come together."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Well," said Rob, "your guess is as good as mine. The text isn't terribly clear. Most scholars agree that one race will win out and dominate the other. The legend says that one _being_ will 'ignite the heat to start the fire.' In other words, spark off the final confrontation, or Showdown, as it's called."

"Then?"

"Then one side will win."

"It doesn't say which side?" asked Puk.

"It does," Rob said. "Problem is it says both. Depending on the interpretation, of course."

"Is there a prize for the winner?" asked Puk.

"Oh, God, what is this, Highlander?" asked Sarah.

"The Earth," said Rob.

"How do you know all this, anyway? And how come you never mentioned it before?" asked Sarah.

"I know because I've had to study a lot of lore for my current position. You don't become the Patron Saint of Domestic Cats overnight. You need to know things. As for why I never said anything, it wasn't relevant. I had no idea that Poppycock was claiming to be the Goad."

"Are you saying the _god_?" asked Sarah.

"No, I'm sayin' the _Goad_. Because anyone who is the _Goad_ will become the _god_. It means—"

"A catalyst," said Puk.

"Exactly," said Rob.

"Yes, I'm remembering this now," said Puk. "The Goad sort of kicks off the whole affair and, if memory serves me well, the Goad can be either human or faerie?"

"Ah," said Rob "then you _are_ a student of the Leabhar na nÓg."

Puk chuckled. "You complement me too much."

"What the hell are you two talking about?" asked Sarah.

Puk shrugged, a boyish grin on his lips. "Well, it has been a while, but it sure feels good to remember these old lessons."

"Hello!" said Sarah. "The what?"

Puk turned to her. "Ah, Leabhar na nÓg—Book of the Living. It's an ancient Celtic text."

"Don't you mean Book of Invasions or something," she said, remembering her anthropology class in college.

"That is one of the books," said Rob. "The Leabhar na nÓg is different."

"We didn't learn about that at Berkeley."

"And you wouldn't have. It's a secret."

Sarah shrugged. "You people and your weird books and impossible language. I have a question while we're on the subject. What the hell is _Fal-ee-as, Teer na Marb_ anyway?"

Puk perked up then. "Have you been there?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "No. I just want to know what it means because it comes out every time I say a certain address _."_

"That's my home address."

"So I found out."

"His too." Puk pointed to Rob.

"Not exactly, sir," said Rob. "I hail from Murias. Well, most recently."

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" demanded Sarah.

"Teír na Marbh—it means Land of the Dead. Falias is a city there."

"And the other one?"

"Murias is a city in Teír na nÓg, Land of the Living or Land of Youth."

"Wait, you're from the Landing of the Living, and Puk's from the Land of the Dead?"

"Faerie geography," Rob said. "Doesn't matter a whole lot because you can't really think of it the same way as you think of Earth space. We're all from everywhere, at different times, depending on what phase we're in."

Sarah shook her head.

"Anyhow," continued Rob, "yes, the Goad could be human, faerie or something else, though the possibility of that is very unlikely and most scholars don't grant that theory any credence at all. Problem is the text never specifies one way or the other. Either way, once the Goad sparks off the Showdown, it's a war to the death," said Rob. "Or excuse me, the end."

"And," said Puk, "if the Goad's side wins, the Goad becomes a god, or so it is written."

"And if the Goad's side loses?" asked Sarah.

Puk shrugged. "I think the Goad just becomes a loser, too."

Rob shook his head. "No, that's not quite right. The Goad doesn't have a side. He picks a side. So, when the Goad's side wins, he becomes a god, but the truth is that whatever side wins, the Goad will automatically become a part of that side, too."

"Confusing," said Sarah.

"The whole point is that the Goad sparks off the Showdown, then whoever wins, the Goad rules over them and thus the world."

"So, let's say that faeries win," said Sarah. "And the Goad is human. Then what?"

"Then the Goad would become fey, or vice versa. It would just happen."

Sarah shook her head. "Okay. So, I guess the best thing to be then is the Goad, that way you win no matter what, right?"

"Precisely," Rob agreed.

"I'm sorry, but if this involves humans so intimately, how come we know nothing about it?" she asked.

"You do," said Rob. "Some of you, anyway. You have to realize that just because I know something about it, doesn't mean that other fey folk do also. I know because I have to, because I'm a saint."

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. "Is that what you are?"

"Sarah, haven't I made that clear?"

"An actual bona fide, by the book, saint?"

"Yes, I am an actual, bona fide, by the book, mother fucking saint."

Sarah took a deep breath. She'd been sleeping with a saint and didn't know how she felt about that. "I'll worry about that later. Okay, so I got it on why _you_ know about it, but Poppycock, how does he know?"

"Because he's bent on world domination," said Puk.

"Most probably," said Rob. "But we digress."

"Wait, so if he's the Goad, then we're screwed either way, because whoever wins the Showdown is under his rule anyhow, right?"

Rob nodded a _yes_.

"That just sucks," said Sarah. "You can't win then."

"Which is one of the many reasons I didn't bring this up before," said Rob. "But just so we don't all go into a tailspin and give up before we begin, allow me to elaborate.

"For one, that question you just asked, Sarah, has been the subject of quite some discussion, shall we say, between the ancients. On the one hand, it certainly does appear that if an evil tyrant turns out to be the Goad, then we're all for it anyway, so why not just give up now?

"However," he said, stabbing a finger into the air, "there is no way of knowing who the Goad is, so we don't need to commit seppuku just yet. Trying to predict fate, by definition, is impossible."

"Harrumph," said Sarah, sarcastically. "Basically, you're saying we have no way of knowing so who cares?"

"Thank you."

"So Poppycock wouldn't know either?" she asked.

"No way he could," said Rob.

"So..."

"So," said Puk, "he's trying to figure it out. He's trying to start the Showdown so he can find out who the Goad is, on the off chance he's it."

"He wants to manually pit humans against faeries," said Rob. "Force the issue."

Sarah squinted. "Doesn't this whole Goad business sort of preempt trying to predict it?"

"It does," Rob agreed, "but Poppycock doesn't really care. He's going to do anything he can to see if he's the Goad, no matter what, because it's the only way he can survive into eternity."

"So, if he's trying to start this war, wouldn't it behoove him to simply tell the world that he's fey? That's sure to piss off the humans and split the camps up, right?"

Puk sighed. "I do think that's why he wanted my help. If he's got enough magic and power, he can announce that and people will believe it. I do believe that's what he's working toward."

"Hhmm. If he's not the Goad he's wasting his time," said Sarah.

Rob took a deep breath. "Am I gonna say this? No. Yes. Okay, I'll say this and then we really need to drop it and move on." He made a teepee with his fingers. "There's no way of knowing who the Goad is, right? We can't just mystically figure it out. Agreed?"

Sarah and Puk both nodded affably.

"Good. Now, if—and it's a big if—Poppycock succeeds in sparking off a war or confrontation or whatever you want to call it, he will inevitably, for all intents and purposes, become the Goad. A back door into it."

"Do-It-Yourself-Goadhood?"

"Exactly."

"Wait, like if he kicks the whole thing off, he'll become the Goad by default?"

"Yeah, 'you can if you think you can.'"

"Wow," said Sarah.

"Then we'd better stop him," said Puk, "no matter what."

Chapter 26: Showdown

Perhaps it was chance that the light fell in just that way, or perhaps Logan decided he'd seen enough. He had this moment and there would never be another. The alley stunk of urine and garbage. The man was about to shoot himself with a needle when Logan stepped out from a hidden niche.

"Fuck you want?" growled the man, a rubbery beef patty flapping between his lips.

"Jacob K. Hexler," Logan said, training his Glock on him.

The man coughed out the patty and burst into hysterics, spittle flying like a Black Plague sneeze. Then he wheezed. Wiped his nose. "Oh that's good, that's really good. Now fly away, lil' gnat, so's I can do some damage. I hate it when lil' boys try to pretend they're men. I gots more to do and I gots an appetite for somefing wicked. I ain't done yet and tonight I plan to make a real messy show of it. I plan to gut four families before the sun comes up and I'll do it in their sleep, when they don't know who's a comin', when they can't protect themselves 'cause it's better that way, makes people afraid to go to _bed!_ "

Logan didn't wonder anymore.

"Jacob K. Hexler," he said again.

Poppycock laughed and wheezed and coughed. "I said outta here, lil' cunt. You gots other things to do, a missus to plug. Don't you want to watch your favorite program on the telly? Why not go home and jerk it so you won't have to care about these piss-soaked streets."

"Jacob K. Hexler."

Again, Poppycock rasped amusement, but it was less enthusiastic than before.

"Jacob K. Hexler."

The laugh became a chuckle that caught in his throat and the wheeze turned tubercular. "Shut your hole!" Poppycock shouted.

He stood up. He was taller than Logan had expected, thicker. Poppycock pitched a turkey leg. Logan dodged it.

"Jacob K. Hexler!"

Poppycock lunged at Logan and grabbed him by his shirt. Logan's bladder gave way. Warmth blossomed in his crotch. Poppycock pushed the cop up against a brick wall and inhaled through his nose. "Love it!" He breathed. Logan gagged. "Love that smell!" Poppycock licked his lips then Logan's face. "Love that fucking smell."

Logan forced the words through chattering teeth. "J-J-Jacob K-K-K. H-H-Hexler!"

Despite knowing that he would surely die, Logan found the strength to keep saying that name. Poppycock coughed and spit and gagged, but it wasn't enough. He wasn't going to let go of Logan.

_Now! Do it now, now, now!_ He was too frightened to do anything. He had not known this would happen, that he would be too terrified to use his gun

"Say goodbye to the world, copper," rasped Poppycock. "Say goodbye to your lil' world. I hadn't planned this, but you make it so very pleasant. Cop kills always boost my ratings."

And then Logan knew. He knew that everything he had done, every step he had taken since the day the first Poppycock file had slid across his desk, had led directly to this unavoidable moment and it didn't matter anymore.

"Y-you're J-Jacob K. Hexler and that's all. You're a man and you have this...." He squirmed under Poppycock's grip and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.

"Fuck you babbling about?"

"This!" Logan held it up, wrinkled and twisted, torn at the edges, but intact. _"Birth certificate!"_

Poppycock's sneer faded. The dark places where eyes ought to be grew wide. "You're human!" Logan shouted, and somewhere between Poppycock's razor-tip fingers plunging up through Logan's intestine and a bubble of blood bursting out from Logan's lips, he managed to squeeze off a shot. Point blank into Poppycock's gut.

"It's my bullet that shot you!" Logan screamed. "Mine! And I know who you are, I know the truth, I know you were born!"

The monster howled and slashed. Logan slid down the wall on a slick of blood, saying over and over again: "Born in '62."

It was the last thing he ever said.



The man in the blue shoes was a major proponent of Poppycock media, despite having grown weary of it over the last several months.

Tonight, he received a video link entitled "Poppycock News: If you watch one thing tonight, watch this." It was different and got his attention. The video post held his interest from beginning to end. What struck him most was the honesty and conviction of the woman. She really believed in what she was saying. He hadn't seen anything quite like that before.

She showed a series of California stats. Gang related homicides totaled more than twenty thousand every year. Suicides accounted for thirty-five hundred deaths per year. Another three hundred or so were the result of domestic violence. Then she said, "Why then, with statistics like these, do we only hear of the ninety-eight deaths, allegedly caused by one man, who for all we know doesn't even exist?"

So the guy did something. He posted it on his own syndicated blog so that it might be available to some five hundred and thirty other blogs. Then he posted links on a number of Poppycock friendly blogs such as _Poppycock My Girl_ , _Sightings_ and _Poppmycock.com_. He posted links on some of the high traffic discussion platform communities. In short, he posted links everywhere he could think of.

Then he sat back and slammed a soda.



The cop lay in the gutter, his head beaten to a bloody pulp.

"What the fuck?" Poppycock was looking down at his own gut, was watching black blood leak out as though he were a punctured oil can. "Heal!" he shouted. "Fucking heal!"

It wouldn't close up.

He snatched the birth certificate from the dead cop's hand. He howled, mashed it in his fist and ate it. "No birth!" he wailed. "No fucking mortal birth. Heal!"

But his gut still bled.

He wandered from the alley and walked down Leavenworth toward another area of town. The empty streets slowly became crowded. He began moving through swarms of people, wondering which one he should slaughter next. Then he saw it.

On some girl's phone. _Her._ He ripped the phone from the girl's hands, shoved her to the ground and watched the video. _Her._ It was _her_ telling all the world not to believe.

His gut still leaked blood.



Sarah's eyes burned from staring at her computer screen. They'd been marketing the video to every site that would take it, both paid and unpaid, until none of them could think of another single place to post it.

That's when Puk stood up and in a cold, gravelly tone said, "It's time. He's coming, I can feel it."

There was a brief instant of puzzlement. All this preparation on marketing and nothing for the confrontation.

"Weapons," said Rob. "We'll need weapons."

"Um, the garage?" said Sarah.

They all rushed into the garage, surrounded Brad who'd been sleeping (and drooling), and began examining various tools, discussing how each could be reinvented into a Poppycock death weapon.

Rob grabbed a broom, snapped off the head and began whittling the end down into a point. Sarah found a hammer and started swinging it through the air. The man-bat located a pair of hedge clippers and taped them to a mop handle. Prissy put on a bicycle helmet and played with the strap. The insect-nymph swung a tennis racket. The overweight lizard-elephant-man took the propane tank from the barbeque and began fiddling with it. Puk found a set of garden hand tools and a serrated super-shovel and got busy working them like daggers and a sword. Gloria found a gas can and asked for matches.

Sarah took a step back and considered the crew of half-human men and women and couldn't decide whether she should laugh or cry. _We're the only defense there is._

Night settled around them, cold and silent. The single streetlamp on the corner flickered in a repetitive strobe. They'd switched the lights off inside the house and were crouching down low in the living room, staring out the window, keeping watch and waiting.

Sarah fingered the crowbar she'd remembered to get from the trunk of her car. Not ideal, but it was the best weapon she could find. Pointed at one end, crooked at the other, it would have to work.

The plan was simple: rush him, beat him, kill him. Given enough force, anything could be killed, but how much force was enough? They trusted that from the work they'd done, he'd be weak enough.

"Unless, of course, he goes Native, but let's just pray he doesn't or can't. Let's hope he hasn't gained that much control yet."

Whether he went Native or not, it wouldn't be easy. Not with a faerie as powerful as Poppycock. They only hoped it would be enough.

So, Sarah did something she hadn't done in a very long time: prayed. To God. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, she didn't care. Just God. The Big Guy in the Sky. The Almighty. Him. Yahweh.

"He's here," Puk whispered.

Poppycock was out there, standing casually under a street lamp, as though he'd been standing there the whole time.

Sarah stiffened, blood rushing from her head dizzily, as if she'd just stepped onto a tight rope. The others got up and crowded around her. He stood under the flickering streetlamp, his body a dark silhouette against the yellow light. Sarah studied his physique, different now than when she'd first met him.

The figure under that streetlamp was fit. _Oh, God, he's got muscles now._ She could see it in how his limbs hung taut, in his broad chest and V shaped physique. He appeared to have grown a great deal younger as well. But his unruly hair and top hat hadn't changed. She wondered if he had grown any eyes behind those oily bangs.

He was leaning against the lamppost, staring back at them, hat tilted, arms folded.

"Okay, everybody in position!" called Rob, who shot up and took his spot by the door. Sarah and the others took their places as well.

From her new post, Sarah could still see Poppycock, which both relieved and terrified her. He remained unmoving for what felt like hours, and the sweat trickled in her armpits and her feet began to ache. At times she wondered if it wasn't a cardboard cutout or a mannequin standing under that streetlamp, some kind of trick to waste their energy before the real Poppycock showed up.

The area around his midriff glistened with what she took for strands of black tinsel. "What is that?"

"Looks like he's bleeding."

Then they waited some more, listening to the sound of each other breathing, feeling the nervous tension mount.

When the silence had gone on for too long and Poppycock hadn't moved an inch, she said, "What is he doing?"

Rob answered. "He's seeing who will make the first move. I think."

Puk agreed, though admitted Poppycock's behavior could sometimes be ambiguous.

"Like he thinks we're going to go out there?" she asked.

"Yes," said Puk. "He doesn't want to come in here, too close and too many of us."

"How would he know—oh, that." Sarah indicated the wagon in the driveway.

Another hour went by. Sarah's feet and back were cramping and she longed to lie down on the couch, sleep for a while, but she dared not pull herself away from that window, dared not blink an eye for fear that—

Poppycock moved. He was no longer standing under the streetlamp. "Oh, shit! Where is he?"

"Over there," said Rob pointing to a neighbor's yard. Sarah caught just a glimpse as he disappeared behind some dark bushes.

"What happened? Where'd he go?"

Rob shook his head.

"He must have gone inside," said Puk.

Several minutes passed. Then the front door opened. Three figures appeared and walked together into the yard. It wasn't until they came into the light that Sarah saw it was Poppycock, along with the married couple who lived in the house. He was holding them by the napes of their necks.

"No!" Sarah gasped. She knew her elderly neighbors.

Poppycock paraded the couple out into the middle of the street. Sarah could see him more clearly now. Then the old man screamed and dropped to his knees. The woman, too, as Poppycock squeezed their necks. Their faces glistened with tears.

He's been thought to kill one woman and scare half a hundred more. Lurking in the shadows...

Sarah wept as Poppycock ripped into their flesh. Ripped with bare fingertips that were sharp as knives. Blood geysered like some morbid garden sprinkler, then pooled black in the yellow light. Their screams were the sounds of wild beasts. Both fell silent and Poppycock towered over them, hands stained, feet mired to the ankles.

Sarah burst into tears and heard the others in the room crying too. Poppycock crossed his arms again and waited for them.

Another hour passed without Poppycock moving a single step, arms crossed, standing in the shredded human remains. They took turns resting their legs, going to the bathroom and getting water.

Then, just as suddenly, Poppycock moved.

"Oh, there he goes!"

They watched him approach the next house.

"Not again."

He disappeared behind trees and porches, blending in with the front yards and hedges. Sarah didn't see him again until he walked out onto the street, this time with two more people in tow. Two young women in their underwear.

"No!" screamed Sarah, her voice reverberating in the room. "I won't let him do it again!" She sprinted to the door.

"Now!" shouted Rob. Together chimeras, humans and things in between approached the street, bearing down with broomsticks and shovels, crowbar and hedge clippers.

"Let them go," said Rob. "It's us you want. We're here now, on your terms."

Poppycock pinched one of the girl's faces and brought her to her feet. He inhaled, as if he meant to eat her.

"Why should I?" he asked without looking away from her. The girl bawled, choked on her tears. "She's so fear-drunk I don't need anything else."

"Now!" boomed Rob.

Poppycock stared at Rob and smirked. "Fuck off, cat meat." He dropped the girl.

He began walking toward Rob, but Rob held his ground brandishing a weed whacker.

"Gonna need more than that Lord of the Felines!"

Poppycock lunged. Rob side-stepped and yanked the pull cord on the weed eater. He swept the buzzing tool in a wide arc and connected with Poppycock's right thigh. The small engine smoked and cut out. Rob tossed it to the side. He met Poppycock head on.

Sarah caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Dark shapes approached from the shadows. They crept out into the light and surrounded the duelers. Cats. Scores of them.

They began to hiss and growl and arch.

"Come on!" screamed the man-bat, launching forward. The owl-headed woman followed, screeching into the lonely night, her clawing fingertips connecting with Poppycock's face. Marlin squealed, tore his suit coat from his shoulders and assaulted the serial killer with kata-perfect Judo.

A gaggle of felines piled in on the melee. The insect-nymph swatted him with her tennis racket. Prissy threw rocks. Sarah jabbed with her crowbar.

One by one, Poppycock fought them all off.

The owl-women thudded against a large oak and slid to the ground. The man-bat found himself face down in the street, bleeding badly. A chorus of feline screams died on the night air. Prissy ran for the car and crouched behind it. Rob staggered off, deep lacerations across his chest. Marlin found himself hog-tied.

Poppycock raised his head, the dilapidated top hat holding tight.

Sarah stood her ground some thirty yards off, gripping her crowbar and waiting for the next round. Rob, Puk and the remaining chimeras gathered around her.

Poppycock stepped forward. "Stop me?" he snarled.

She wanted to scream, cry, fall over and run away all at once. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt. Her lips and mouth went dry as sand. Cold sweat trickled along her spine. If Poppycock didn't kill her, her fear surely would.

That's why fear is so effective for Poppycock. Fear demands no thought at all, yet gives maximum return.

"No," she said, "I won't be." She stepped forward from the others. She'd been afraid of Poppycock since the beginning. She'd been afraid of too much in her life. _I won't be!_

"I won't be afraid of you!" she shouted. Her voice sounded small, hardly a force to be reckoned with. "I won't be!" she shouted. It still wasn't enough. She heaved in a huge breath and at the top of her lungs screamed, "I WILL NOT BE AFRAID OF THIS POPPYCOCK!" That time the air really did part for her, her voice ringing as clear as a clarion trumpet call.

Poppycock launched, sprinting toward her with incalculable speed.

"Step aside," grunted Leaption, the lizard-man with a trunk nose. He shot his propane fueled projectile at the oncoming attacker. The white barbeque tank sailed true and struck Poppycock square in the chest, only to bounce off. The killer ran on, closing the distance between them.

"Me neither," said Puk. Small and quiet at first, but he repeated it again and again until his voice boomed from his chest, rumbling through the night. "I AM NOT AFRAID!"



Poppycock struck like a freight train. The battle resumed. They were determined now to lay waste to this monster-man.

_He is a man, though._ _He's got a man's body. What name had Detective Logan used? The news anchor had said it, too._

Rob wrapped his hands around the bugbear's neck, but Poppycock broke free and knocked his legs out from under him. The man-bat made another gouge for the eyes, but Poppycock swatted him down like a common fruit bat. Puk raised his shovel, swung and struck him, but Poppycock grabbed his hair, yanked him to his feet and said, "Family or no, I'll kill you, too!"

On it went until the last person standing, the last one left for Poppycock to mow down, gripped her crowbar, waiting for the next move.

"Sarah," he said, "why don't you run away and hide, you bloody cunt?"

"I'm not afraid of you," she breathed. "I am not."

He cackled. "Oh, but you are. You so fucking are!"

"I'm not, but I know you are of me. That's why you have to kill me. That's why you have to stop me because you're afraid of the truth, and you're afraid of what I can do by telling it. You're afraid of what will happen when people stop being afraid of you."

He shook his head, opened his mouth to say something. He took a faltering step toward her.

"You know it's true," she said.

All her friends were down, even Rob, none of them could help her now. It was just her.

The Showdown.

"You're not the Goad," she said. "I know you're not."

"Fuck you."

"You know you're not."

"Fuck you."

"You're not, because you're too evil to be; you could never lead or rule a people, never. Everything you stand for mocks it."

"Fuck you!"

"You know it. Everything about you is a total lie."

Poppycock lunged, his meaty hand and sharp fingertips reaching for her tender flesh, but he didn't reach her; his arm was intercepted by a man-thing; a man-thing with a donkey head, who brayed and flapped his lips, and chomped hard with square teeth.

Sarah recoiled and watched with pity as Poppycock all too easily cast Brad aside, though not without a price. Squarish bite marks dotted his left arm.

Brad crumpled and Poppycock stepped over him, then bolted at Sarah. His body flew straight to her, as if the space between them had been a mirage. Sarah did not move, did not blink. There was nowhere else to go.

_I will not be afraid of you. Not anymore. Because I see through you._ Poppycock's face loomed close to hers, so close she smelled his hot, wreaking breath, so close she saw the black spots under his hair where eyes ought to be, so close she felt his sharp fingertips light upon her tender neck.

She dropped her crowbar, certain she would now die. "Your name is Jacob K. Hexler. You're already dead and you're not my uncle."



The hot Asian girl in the tight yellow T-shirt would not ordinarily have clicked on anything having to do with Poppycock, let alone a forty-five minute video with some really poor graphics punctuated by a host of hackneyed and worn out phraseology. This was mainly due to that fact that the girl didn't believe in mass media scare tactics and underground perversion-cults that gorged on the Poppycock slayings.

The girl, despite the misogynistic theory that hot girls could not also be brilliant, educated and politically superior, refused to take part in such control tactics.

She took a sip of wine.

Even though she'd seen Poppycock related media appearing everywhere online, there was something about this video that set itself apart. The woman on the video had nothing to hide, that was obvious, and nothing to gain.

The hot Asian girl in the tight yellow T-shirt sent it to everyone in her network, which included a multitude of men, both young and old (go figure), a transgender and trans-cultural network of intellectuals, artists and activists, not to mention a googolplex of average Joes.

It arrived to the in-box of the older gentleman who was trying to quit smoking, to the wealthy Armenian mother who'd just told her son not to play so many video games, to the financial investor who spent too much money on cocaine, to the albino man who wished he'd been born with normal pigmentation, to the Vietnamese fashionista who'd just signed a deal with Vogue, to the Korean minister of Gender Equality and Family, to the Puerto Rican woman dissatisfied with Jenny Craig and hundreds more.

These people, then, forwarded it on to their lists until Sarah Montgomery's video had gone viral.

Chapter 27: A Moment on Bay Street

The corporeal manifestation known as Poppycock burst into a thousand particles, like dust, or smoke, or pollution.

It drifted off into the night air, dissipating into the atmosphere, floating and somehow sleeping. Forever.

She dropped to her knees, drenched in sweat, on the edge of life and wept into her hands. She allowed herself that moment, let the overwhelming emotions she'd kept at bay course through her and discharge. She began to shake.

A warm hand touched her shoulder. Rob's hand. She kissed it and held it to her lips.

"I can see him leaving," he whispered, staring up into the night sky. "We won."

Chapter 28: Lessons Learned From Blind Bill

Puk pounded a two-step into the hollow stage, making a deep, rhythmic thump. He twirled, caprioled, skipped and leapt in an ostentatious frolic. He clicked two cloven hooves together and landed sprightly on their shiny tips.

The curtain closed to a round of enthusiastic applause. When it re-opened, they were all there to take their bows: the man-bat, the owl-woman, the lizard-man, the insect-nymph and others, some of whom Sarah had never met.

Puk postured regally, basking in the praise of the audience. Then he uncorked the top of a wineskin that was hanging around his chest and drank greedily, dribbling red wine down a fluffy goatee.

The curtains closed once again.

The audience rose to its feet and gave another healthy round of cheers. The house lights came on and the crowd began to disperse.

"Not too bad for opening night," said Brad, still clapping lazily, his usual handsome, boyish grin on his very human lips.

"Not at all," said Sarah. "I'm impressed."

Prissy clung to Brad, both arms hugging his. Her hair was up in a French braid and she wore a silver evening gown. "Sarah, how does him see out through his house when cloths hanging straight like clouds?"

"What? Oh, the curtains. Well, it's not real, Prissy. It's a play. When the curtains close, it means the play is over."

"Playing for fun in rainbow sky castle?"

Sarah thought of their recent trip to Disney Land. "Well, yeah, playing for fun. Pretending for everyone to see."

Prissy nodded and blinked. "Play for me and you and Bradley boy, too?"

"And me," said Rob.

Brad put his arm around Prissy and kissed her forehead. They made a cute couple. "That's right, baby," he said. "Playing for all of us."

"Come on," said Sarah, "let's go back stage."

The four of them made their way through the thinning crowd to the backstage area. Rob led them to P.R. Goodfellow's suite. Sarah laughed at the star on the front door.

"I guess he made it big after all."

Inside Puk shouted, "Sarah!" He threw his arms out and hugged her, and then Rob, Brad and Prissy, too.

"You did great tonight," said Sarah. "It was wonderful."

Puk sighed relief. "Oh, thank Oberon, I was afraid we may have offended you."

"Nonsense!"

"Very enjoyable," said Rob.

"Loved it," said Brad.

"Scared us," said Prissy.

It was the opening night of _A_ _Midsummer Night's Mare_ and of all the many bizarre and wonderful characters, not a one was called You Know Who.

"Oh, thank you. I'm so glad you enjoyed it," said Puk. "I've learned a few things from Blind Bill after all, eh? Say, what did you think about the costuming?" He raised his left brow flirtatiously.

"Like the real thing," said Sarah, punching him on the shoulder.

He laughed, pulled back his robe and tapped a cane on a pair of cloven hoofed goat legs. "One hundred percent Native!"

The corners of Sarah's mouth turned up and she gave him another hug. "I'm proud of you," she whispered.

"It really means a lot to me that you came."

She studied his big brown eyes. "I wouldn't have missed it for anything...Dad."

Puk grinned with flushed cheeks. "That means the world coming from you, it really does."

"Well, look who's here." A blonde woman wearing a skintight cat suit walked up and put her arm around Rob. Rob hugged her and gave her a peck on the cheek. The woman's orange tabby suit clung to the contours of her body so that her protruding breasts bounced illicitly with each step. It was as if she weren't wearing anything at all. Then Sarah realized, she wasn't! Not a cat _suit_ , but cat _skin_!

Wow, it really pays to have your friend, The Cat Hob, join forces with your boyfriend, The Chimera Pouka.

Yeah, something like that.

"Oh, Gloria," she exclaimed. "I'm sorry I didn't recognize you." Sarah threw her arms around her furry waist and gave her a big hug.

"Oh, I know," said Gloria. "I get that reaction a lot more than once every fortnight."



Much later that evening, at Sarah's favorite restaurant, after they'd talked, drank, ate, hugged, kissed and in general delighted in one another's company, Sarah felt so relaxed and tired that all she wanted to do was slide between cool, clean sheets and fall asleep.

"Well, I love all of you, but I've simply got to go." This of course brought about another round of hugs and kisses. Then she and Rob stepped out into the foggy San Francisco air.

They walked the empty street, arm in arm, both feeling enlivened by the still mists and gentle moonlight, before Sarah broke the silence. "So," she said, "I have a question."

"Shoot," said Rob.

"Well, I was wondering, was that the Showdown, then, that final fight with You Know Who?"

Rob shrugged his shoulders. "Good question," he said. "Anything's possible.

"So, it could have been, you think?"

He took a big breath, paused, and let it out. "Ah, no. I'm sorry, Sarah, there's just no way. I'm afraid the Showdown is yet to come."

The Beginning

~Breadcrumbs~

Read:

Rutlinger: A Midsummer Night's Hunt

Volume II of the Poppycock Books.

Sarah Montgomery has no idea how her life turned into one long installment of strange, but last year when she went toe-to-toe with Poppycock, the most infamous serial killer the world had ever known, and survived to tell about it, she decided to just "go with it."

Now, she finds herself investigating an outbreak of a rare human growth disorder and dodging bullets from The Big Game Hunter, an eight foot killer with a sniper rifle.

Meanwhile, a renegade Satanic priest is developing a grizzly blood magic, designed to rekindle faded gods. And, all the while, the world is edging closer to the Showdown.

Under the Ring

Foster Greenbow sank his teeth into the heart of a mouse.

Blood dripped down his chin and tickled his throat. Tiny crimson rivers stained his starched cuffs and elaborate lapels.

He didn't want the mess, the slobbering drool, but he had to eat the raw, still quivering heart. That was the order.

He took another bite, holding the organ in both hands, the flesh slippery and warm in his delicate fingers. He chewed and gagged.

Foster looked up and wished he hadn't. A dozen of his comrades stood in the Banquet Hall, Under the Ring, home to his kind for nigh three thousand years, since before the Christ was born. Prince Yarrow had announced a feast, had called them all together, and once they'd arrived he'd told them of war. Thirteen squeaking mice had been carted in. At threat of death, Foster and his comrades had all snapped their creatures' necks, and then reached into the squirming guts and ripped out the hearts.

Foster glimpsed his brothers and saw the agony on their pale faces as they carried out the directive.

Under morose expressions of disgust, all of them wore the blood of their beasts, dripping or smeared on their tunics.

Everyone except Prince Yarrow.

So, Foster sucked the blood from between fibrous strands. The filth dripped on his coat. Had he merely been gutting a beast at the hunt and feasting on its most powerful organ, he would have disrobed.

He'd heard of such rituals. They were hunting traditions, ceremonial rites to imbibe the spirit of the slain creature. He did not believe in them. They were savage.

But he was not hunting. And this was not dining.

For how long had Yarrow been planning this? Foster looked again at his fellows, all dressed in their finery; some had worn full regalia in anticipation of a formal feast. But here were not the lavish tables of Beltane piled high with the sweet and spicy foods of the season; no fig cakes here, only dead vermin.

And Yarrow—glaring, scheming Yarrow—had done this in the name of his father, King Brokk, and it hadn't occurred to Foster until now that he had never heard it from the ailing king's lips.

Only Yarrow's.

When the magic hit, it came like a bee sting. This was not Native magic; this was not the glamour of trees or the sortilege of dreams.

This was death.

He fell to his knees, cried out and vomited a dark spray.

He writhed, clawing at his throat. Something was burning him, burning in him.

"No!" he screamed. He watched his beloved friends, his companions, twist and smolder.

He was crying, he could hear himself weeping, but his tears evaporated before they left his eyes.

They all _smoked_ ; their essence floating up like so much fog to the earthen roof of their barrow knoll, Under the Ring.

_Are we dead now?_ _And where is Prince Yarrow?_

Foster was almost gone, fading into fog.

"Liar!" he screamed. "Bastar—!" His throat broke into a million bits.

And in the last fisheye view from somewhere above, he saw the source of the spell: the dark priest in his shimmering blue and silver robes, arms folded, eyes like white fire, standing in the shadows next to the traitorous Prince Yarrow.

And Yarrow's jerkin was as clean and dry as the summer sun.

Foster rose up and out, and beside him: all the others. They were going...somewhere...far from the Ring, and he was changing into...something...without moral conscience.

Chapter One: The Hunter

Gerald "Pappy" Rutlinger didn't need to hide behind a tree, didn't need to sit in a hunter's perch and didn't need to wait by some wayward pine. He simply walked up and shot the hog's skullcap off.

The boar twirled and flopped.

Rutlinger's trusty Winchester Model 70 never failed him. It was, after all, the ancestral model of the original gun that had won the west; America's favorite rifle. He never left home without it. He liked to load it with 500 grain, Super-X ammunition; the bullet size recommended for buffalo.

Rutlinger aimed and fired, deftly reloading the bolt between blasts. The hot shells popped out of the chamber like bread from a toaster, and four more boars got "happy for Pappy." The one that took it in the eye flipped back as if from reverse gravity. The next took a hit in the shoulder and dropped. On the third, he aimed low and struck the heart. Instant kill. And the last leapt legs over tit as Rutlinger's buffalo bullet found its way straight up the sow's ass. That one somersaulted cartoon style for a good fifteen yards before it flattened.

His four Danes, who'd corralled the boars, howled and tail-wagged from a job well done.

"Good boys!" Rutlinger bawled into the air. "Good fuckin' boys!"

Lucy, the female of the lot, curled around her master's legs, waiting for the usual rough neck congratulations that always accompanied a kill.

"You my special girl, eh? Pappy's pretty girl."

The others came galloping up and Rutlinger praised each one in turn, calling them by name, then as "Pappy's boy." The four Danes stood nearly to his waist and made for an impressive troupe, but they pandered and submitted to their master as though he was nothing short of a god. And he was.

Their god.

"Now we got game to clean," Rutlinger said of the five dead boars. "And thank the good Lord, too. But who's gonna clean 'em?" Dog tongue kissed his lips. Dog tongue kissed his tongue. And Rutlinger laughed out loud.

He had purchased his dogs in Australia from one of the few Dane breeders still in existence. Great Danes had been used in centuries past to hunt boar and other big game, but not so much nowadays, except for Lucy, Mowser, Bugsie and Pip.

Rutlinger hunted not only wild hog, but deer, coon, pheasant, and bear; and, depending on the continent, a lot more than that. There was no limit to what Rutlinger would hunt.

He liked using big bullets. He enjoyed the surety of the kill, but above all he enjoyed the raw, naked power. In his hands he held life and death, and nothing said death like a big mother fucking bullet. Some would accuse him of "overkill" but then, he never knew how to kill something less than dead.

The mewling had been present since the echoes of the gunshots had drifted away, but it wasn't until now that Rutlinger had really heard it. Mewling, squealing, and crying: the orphaned young. He took Mowser by the scruff of his neck and spoke into the big dog's muzzle.

"And where do you suppose they are? Hmmm? Go find 'em for Pappy, boy. Go fetch 'em for Pappy."

Mowser bolted into the thicket and within seconds the dog was howling and carrying on as if he'd found gold.

"Aye!" Rutlinger howled back.

He set his rifle down against a tree and reached inside his coat. Slowly, lovingly, as if handling a newborn, he withdrew that black barreled beauty, that apple of his eye, his vintage Peacemaker, the Colt Single Action Army revolver. God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal. _You bet your bottom whore he did._ Rutlinger's respect for this weapon was without parallel. His awe never ceased. Love was too shallow a word.

"And he shall have dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air and the beast in the field and all that creepeth in the earth," he said to the swine pups, making the sign of the cross over his chest.

And then, one by one, he pushed the tip of his long barrel against the pups and blew baseball sized holes through them. And on the last one—paralyzed with terror as it was—Rutlinger deftly placed the barrel tip of God's lance against the pup's snout and with a "let's get happy for Pappy" blew its brains out.



The great thing—perhaps the greatest thing—about the Great Dane is its size. Rutlinger was fond of size. Standing at just over six feet and weighing in at two hundred and eighty pounds, he was a big man.

Big and lucky, he always told himself, because he'd come from a long line of big, unlucky men. His father had been a longshoreman, until he'd taken a boat hook through the brain. His uncle had been a damn good logger, until the chainsaw had gotten between his legs. And his grandfather, the largest of the lot at six feet, five inches and three hundred and six pounds, had simply died of cancer.

Rutlinger knew where his luck came from: a fast and abiding faith in Jesus Holy Christ.

He harnessed the dogs and lashed the boars by their cloven hoofs.

"All set to carry the load," he said below his breath, patting Pip. "All set to carry the load, like our Lord and Savior, we carry the load." His voice took on a low sing-songy lilt as he sang an altered version of his favorite hymn. "Carry the load, carry the load. Just like Christ we carry the load. Gonna carry the load for Pappy."

They trampled through the wood, boars in tow. It would be a goodly walk back to the truck, about an hour. Rutlinger had that airy feeling in his chest that comes with the pride of accomplishment. Though no single boar constituted a prize kill, the sheer number made for a respectable hunt.

Oh, praise God, for the big game cometh.

He had not noticed the cloud that was moving in over him and his hunting dogs. Indeed, he wouldn't have noticed much for the cloud was wispy, if not a trifle translucent. And it was not so low to the ground that one would see it and suppose it was ground fog.

Regardless, Rutlinger had not seen the fog drift down from the tree tops, had not noticed its bizarre pulsing and when he was breathing it in, didn't particularly notice the chalky taste on his tongue. If he thought anything of it, it was perhaps an "oh, it must gonna rain soon" or "Santa Ana winds carrying dust today."

He had been thinking of the hunt, the kills, the size of the holes driven through the living meat. Ah, he did like using big bullets.

He inhaled fog.

The dogs did too, though being dogs they didn't know any better.

"Oh, what a friend we have in J-e-s-u-s. All our sins and griefs to bear..." Rutlinger was feeling good now, better than before, high maybe. "Oh, when the saints, come marching in, how I want to be in that number..."

He kept feeling better and better. Better than before. Better than he used to, better than—

He fell to his knees. He wasn't feeling better anymore. No, sir, he was feeling very bad all of a sudden.

One of the dogs stumbled over to him. Bugsie. Big Bugsie.

"How's my boy, huh? How's my—?" But Bugsie didn't wag his tail, didn't slobber on Rutlinger's face. Bugsie fell over on top of the dead boars.

"Bugsie?" Rutlinger's voice squeaked like he'd just turned thirteen.

The other dogs had stopped. No, not stopped, fallen over. Toppled, just like he was about to do. His vision was fading in and out, his head was swimming.

"Lucy?" he called out, and again came that pubescent crack.

He was sweating, feeling chills. Chills?

"No, now I'm hot as Hell."

He fell over and no dogs came to revive him. No Danes tromped over to protect their master. All Rutlinger could see was boar head and boar feet.

He opened his mouth to scream and puked. Wretched all over his chest, down his jacket. Vomit ran yellow, then green, then swirled with dark red streaks. It bubbled down his chin. _I want to be in that number..._

He was going to die. He was dying. But how? He had been feeling so good, praising the—

Did it even matter? The heart was giving out. Oh, but that wasn't right, either. That didn't seem to fit because the dogs were dying too. Something he'd eaten—drunk.

But what?

No, it was something they'd all... _breathed_.

His eyelids peeled back and a dark blob swam across his vision. It began to grow. It got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then everything went black. And Rutlinger didn't know who—or what—he was anymore.

Chapter Two: The Show Must Go On

" _Where is Marlin?"_

What had begun as a simple question was turning into a full-on manhunt. Sarah Montgomery had simply needed to size the pig-headed chimera for a new suite, for Act Three, when she had innocently started the search. Opening night was a mere twenty-seven hours away and the tailor needed at least a day's notice.

After the usual dressing rooms, backstage break rooms and smoking nooks, she'd inspected the more obscure hiding places, and when that had failed, Sarah had begun interrogating everyone in sight with a feverish _"Where is Marlin?"_

"Miss Montgomery! Oh, Miss Montgomery!"

Sarah stopped, heaved a sigh of protest and turned around.

"Not now, Leaption, I've got—"

"Milady!" said the portly man, jogging to catch up with her, sputtering for breath, ungainly under an elephant trunk-nose and platform style, pachyderm feet. "Oh, thank God, I have finally caught you! The matter is most urgent as I am sure you can plainly see!"

Sarah's arms were feeling leaden under the piles of dresses, suit coats, slacks and other costume parts, which she had neglected to put down when her search and rescue mission had begun.

"Leaption, have you seen Marlin? I've been looking all over for him and I can't find him anywhere. I'm starting to get worried."

Leaption frowned. "Mayhap, the old boar slept in after a night of women, wine and song?"

"I doubt it, well, the woman part anyway. I have to go find him."

"Wait!" Leaption caught her by the arm and then, as if realizing he'd committed some terrible transgression, pulled away. "I'm sorry, please forgive me." He bowed.

Sarah rolled her eyes. If she didn't at least pretend to be interested in the man's problem he wasn't going to let her get on with anything else.

"Fine," she said. "What's the matter?"

"Well," the actor proclaimed, "as you can see, I am quite out of costume!"

"Ah, Leaption, you are your costume."

"I am, my dear, in most dreadful need of _tights!_ "

Sarah looked down and winced. The fat of his thighs bulged under the blue nylon of his pantyhose. She faked a smile.

"Ah, then you see it!" he roared. "My tights are too tight!" And somehow that was cause for a great trumpeting laugh from the man who had become the unlikely combination of an elephant, a lizard and a man.

"I'll find you a size up."

"Two sizes." He held up his fingers. "Two, milady."

"Two sizes, Leaption. Okay, I got it." He was already stepping out of his tights and handing them over to Sarah. "Just put them on top of the coats," she said. "Away from my face. Right. Thank you. Now, really, I have to go!"

"I bid thee ado."

"Whatever."

The chimera, or fey enhanced half-human hybrids, had a tradition of grandiloquent speech. They were under no enchantment to speak that way; they simply enjoyed the use of the old style when it suited them. Some, like Leaption, were more prone to indulging in it than others.

Sarah raced on, frantically scanning for Marlin among the other chimera, all of whom were bustling around in a blur of costumes and face powder, preparing for a last-minute-this and an oh-my-God-that.

"Where is Marlin!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, still refusing to drop the bus load of costume parts from her aching arms.

No one heard her. Or if they did, they didn't let on.

"Miss." A warm hand landed on her shoulder. Sarah whirled around to meet the blind-man's stare of their security guard, Scout, the man bat.

Scout favored a mid-80's Freddie Mercury or Village People fashion of black motorcycle leathers and dark sunglasses. Beside him, as always, was his exceptionally endowed owlish consort, Owlene, her big, saucy eyes taking in more scenery than high exposure camera film.

"Puk is here," Scout said. "Perhaps he knows where Marlin is."

"Puk is here?"

"Indeed. Arrived only moments ago. In his stateroom."

"Ughhh! I was just there. Okay, thanks Scout. Later."

She didn't need to knock because the door was open. Puk was sitting with his legs crossed, staring at the wall. A cigarette smoldered between his fingers. He was, at the moment, the perfect expression of her father: his long gangly limbs, cheap suit and graying sideburns. Well, he was the perfect expression of who her father had been, when he'd been Samuel Montgomery and not Robin Goodfellow.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

He sighed and said, "Oh, hello" as if he hadn't seen her until then.

"Is anything wrong? You look sad."

"Ah," he said, "sad is a relative state. Degrees, Sarah, it's all a matter of degrees."

Finally, because her arms couldn't take it anymore, she dropped the pile of costumes.

"So what degree are you?"

"Melancholy," he said.

"Okay, so last I checked, melancholy was pretty sad. Want to tell me about it?"

"Well," he said, suddenly too eager, "you see it goes like this—"

"Oh wait, before we go diving down the rabbit hole, have you seen Marlin?"

"Marlin? Marlin ran off."

"What?"

He shrugged. "True."

"Wait, ran off, ran off? As in ran away?"

"Sorry to say, but yes."

"Again?" She found a chair and slumped into it. Her fatigue had just hit her. It had been a week of three hours sleep a day, if she was lucky, and an otherwise around the clock schedule getting everything ready for opening night. It was the second season of _A Midsummer Night's Mare._

"So there goes Act Three, I guess."

Puk stared at her judiciously. "Bull can stand in. He understudied that part."

"He did? I don't remember that."

"Yes, well, the beginning of last season."

"Oh, right."

It had been six months since Sarah had left her position as VP of Marketing at the Sitron Group in downtown San Francisco. At first, after the miraculous cessation of the Poppycock slayings and during the slow fizzle of the media hype, Sarah had gone back to work at the well-known public relations firm. Well, she'd tried to anyway. It just hadn't been the same. Not because the people she worked with had changed, but because Sarah herself had.

And one of the many changes in her life was the company she kept, which seemed to demand more and more of her time. After six grueling months of late nights and spreading herself too thin between the theater, work, Rob, and Project Zero, she had all but melted into a puddle. So, she had opted to quit her job and join the show full time.

And then she'd melted into a puddle.

"Didn't Scout tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?" Puk asked.

"Scout? He just told me you might know where Marlin was."

"Oh, innocent man bat," he said. "That's his way of telling you I needed to see you. Anyway, the problem is vastly complicated and I doubt you have any time whatsoever to deal with it."

"Oh, be quiet. I'm here, aren't I?"

Puk sat up. "Okay."

After several months of working full time with Puk's Playhouse Theater Company, Sarah had gotten used to his ways. They had performed the play all over the city, alongside such productions as Kinky Boots, Newsies and Phantom of the Opera. Once, when their show had gotten sandwiched between two weeks of Shakespeare's A _Midsummer Night's Dream_ , Sarah had had to continuously remind Puk that "the show must go on no matter how depressed one gets."

Unlike other production companies, Puk's Playhouse Theater Company did a minimal of touring, instead remaining home in The Golden Gate Theater. There were several reasons for this, not the least of which was that The Golden Gate Theater was unused for much of the year.

Puk continued. "Look, my lovely daughter, it's like this: I don't want to hit the road. I don't want to do anything else other than what we're doing now; do you understand? I love the play, absolutely love it."

"Hmmm," said Sarah. "Why would you have to hit the road?"

"Well, you see, the popularity of what we're doing here is tied so directly to my infamy, I don't think the show will sustain us. And by 'us', of course, I mean me."

"Then we should tour, start on the west coast and go east."

"Oh, no, that's not it either. Don't you see, it's all so very complicated. Oh, vastly so. If I am forced to tour, it won't be with the play. No, it will be with something else entirely—much more dreadful and utterly bawdy. Prurient ribaldry."

Sarah shrugged. "I guess I'm having trouble imagining what that might mean."

He leaned back and sighed. "We are experiencing a nice uptrend at the moment, aren't we? First season was nothing short of magical." He raised a fist above his head. "We had audience members actually believing it was real. They were leaning over their arm rests and going 'look how genuine it is.' Why, they even mentioned it in the reviews, 'costumes so authentic you can almost believe they're not costumes at all.' Do you remember?"

"I do," she said. "What's the problem?"

"It won't last," he said morosely. "I've been at this a long time, Sarah, and I know a wave when I see it. In fact, back in the old days, when I had Puck magazine, I experienced it. A sudden surge in popularity followed by a slow decline." He exhaled and hung his head. "That's why I took to the road. Oh, god. _Puk's Traveling Medicine Show: A Menagerie of Horrors_."

"Oh. I see." She winced. "That was with Marlin, right?"

"Oh, it was with Marlin, Pumpkin, Wildcat Joe, you name it. But, yes, Marlin. He was a celebrity, Sarah. They all were, but Marlin made us rich, I mean, I can't tell you. People wanted to see the pig-headed man with a poet's tongue. He couldn't write worth a damn as a man, but give him a pig's snout and the art and style never turned off. It was—well, downright freakish."

"Double entendre?" she said.

"What?"

"Nothing. So, you might have to do that again, is that it? Really, it could be a lot worse. People have to do all kinds of rotten things, you know, to stay alive."

"You're missing the whole point, because you're not listening."

"Okay, fine. Enlighten me."

"If I am to take to the road, reinvent the traveling freak show, then I will need to enslave everyone again and that...that just breaks my heart."

"I see," she said, pondering that statement. "Why?"

"Sarah, really?"

"Hey, I don't know all the ins and outs of your magic."

"Well, don't look at me," he whined. "I'm no expert myself. The magic is so damn finicky I don't think anyone knows. My god, it changes with the wind, well, with human nature. Oh, would that I had such a fan base as your boyfriend, Rob. Patron Saint of Cats, indeed. Can't we just proclaim me Deity of Dogs and be done with it?" He leaned forward, tapping his cigarette ash onto the floor. "Oh, don't look so horrified, I'm only kidding. But really, it would be so much simpler. Transfix a few generations and, voilà, you've got it hardwired into instinct. Not so with human beings. They're volatile. They don't like to be penned up. They rather despise being poked fun of.

"I set everyone Free at the end of season one, but honestly I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. Free-willed subjects want more for themselves, which means less for me, and without me, we got nothing." He exhaled. "If I really do have to reinvent Puk's Traveling Medicine Show, why then, it really will be the worst of both worlds." He took a sip of water.

"You're so negative."

"And you've never toured. It's a positively miserable life, Sarah. Sixteen or more hours a day, constant sleep deprivation, going from one pathetic venue to another, horrible conditions and all for the voyeuristic and unholy delight of the lower classes."

"I see," she said.

"Oh, Sarah, I can't tell you the burden."

He was baiting her again, she knew, but that was his way. "Whatever do you mean?"

He scoffed. "Oh! Back in the old days, when it was just me and Marlin, I set him Free rather quickly, but in the end it was the show's undoing, and eventually mine. Free, he wanted more. More money, more attention. And he took it away from me. Soon I was no longer seen as the creator, but the manager and then... the lackey. And the poor pig, utterly sick and tired of playing the freak, ran off with all the money and fame and left me to smolder."

Sarah shook her head and studied the ceiling. The problem did seem complicated, but she knew that Puk made things more complicated than they had any right to be. If the problem was complex, the solution must be very simple.

"Have you ever thought of telling the truth?"

"The what?"

"You, your life, the past year. I mean, go Native and show the world your true form. Tell the story of..." —she was about to say Poppycock and thought better of it— "the story of you."

He shook his head. "Preposterous."

"Why? If you were to show your true form on YouTube and TV and whatever, you would garner more fame and infamy than you've ever had before. I mean, you can just be yourself and be totally famous the world over. Why don't you just do that?"

"Oh, stop it!" he said, lighting another cigarette.

"Stop what? It's the best solution there is. Why wouldn't you?"

"Because I don't want to be the freak on display, that's why!"

She laughed out loud. "You're impossible! I'm not even going to comment on how hypocritical that statement is."

"No," he said. "I want to do the show. It's making money hand over fist and it's making fame enough. At least for now. The wave isn't over, so everyone can stay Free for the time being. Second season is going to be great, and I've got another script nearly done which I am dying to get into production."

"You do? You never told me. What is it?"

"It's untitled," he said, "but rest assured it's got all the murderous mayhem and wonder of its predecessor, with some new characters that are not only fantastical, but utterly real. Critics will love it, but more importantly, the general audience will believe it."

"That reminds me," she said.

"What?"

"Opening night is twenty-six hours away and I still have a ton of things to get done, not the least of which is getting Bull up to speed on standing in for Marlin."

Sarah's phone rang; the ring tone for Jaws. "Oh, shit."

"Who's that?" asked Puk, alarmed.

"One of my contacts for Project Zero." She answered her phone. "Hi, Rosie, what do you got?"

The voice on the other end shrilled, exuberantly.

"Oh!" Sarah replied. "Well, um, I guess I can be there in, say, forty-five minutes? Okay, see you soon. Bye."

She turned to Puk. "Sorry, I have to go." She jumped up, gave him a hug and a kiss and headed for the door. "Don't brood too much, it's bad for your complexion."

Sarah found Bull, the minotaur chimera, where she'd expected him to be: in the little makeshift café. She handed him a dog-eared script and told him to get in front of a mirror.

"And when you've got the hang of the script, find the closest thing to a midnight-blue zoot suite as you can."

"Indeed."

"And Bull?"

"Madame?"

"With pants long enough, please. I don't want anything the audience can call 'floods.'"

"Your wish is my command."

"I'm sure it is."

Then she was out of there.

Chapter Three: A New Case for Project Zero

The Bryant Street Hall of Justice building was a horrendously ugly Bauhaus monstrosity in the middle of San Francisco's South of Market or "SoMa" District. Every time Sarah went there, her mind conjured images of Gotham City. It was gray and depressing and she did not like it. She also did not like the people who were always in it. Not the cops; the thugs. But once she was inside, tucked away in the morgue, she would be okay.

After the metal detectors, she made tracks to the cafeteria and got some watery coffee. Better than nothing, though she wished she had stopped somewhere else on her way in. Then she headed through the two doors to an outside covered walkway that led to the medical examiner.

Waiting for her at the mag-lock doors was the very petite and very pretty Rosie Magday.

"Sarah, oh good, you here already!"

"Don't tell me you were actually waiting for me."

Rosie giggled and stepped aside. "Come in."

Rosie was small and Filipino and looked adorable in a white lab coat.

"How's your grandmother?" Sarah asked on their way through the 1970's décor viewing room.

Rosie took in a big excited breath. "You know, I just visit her, yeah, on the island. She so funny, so many story, ah, so many story."

Rosie's grandmother, or _lola_ , was a powerful _mankukulam_ , a sorceress who practiced a brand of Filipino earth magic called _kulam_.

"Lola say she so busy healing, she have no time to eat. Can you believe it? I spend my whole day just making food and feeding her. I worry, you know, that she not gonna eat and just wither away! Oh, Lola!"

They entered the antediluvian facility, where the dead were carved up for science.

Morgues weren't exactly Sarah's favorite hangouts, though she had developed a tolerance to them. Plus, the San Francisco morgue wasn't nearly as daunting as the LA County one. Anything was better than that one, actually.

It was smaller, for one, and smelled better on most days because they had fewer boarders, well, spots for dead folks. It wasn't any more modern, which made Sarah think she should be horrified, but actually it put her at ease—knowing dead people could be dissected, no matter the technology.

Today the morgue was quiet, very quiet, which made Sarah smile inwardly because how else should a morgue be?

Rosie turned on the lights.

"Came in last night," she said, crossing the floor, past the examination tables to the door of the big refrigerator, which Sarah could not imagine being used for anything but cold cuts and milk.

"Here." She shoved a small jar of Vicks VapoRub into Sarah's hand as she smeared a glossy line under her own nose. "You gonna need it for this one! Hahaha!"

Sarah hoped for the best.

"Yeah," Rosie was saying, "I cook all the day and all the night for my lola and you know what she say, 'I'm not hungry!' Can you believe it?" She ducked into the stinking fridge (where a few cadavers had taken up residency today) and pushed out a gurney.

"Oh, so much things I make for her to eat. Okay, Sarah, you ready?" Her exuberance bespoke that of a child in a candy store and Sarah found herself quite unable to do anything but admire it. After all, that very same brand of enthusiasm had led Rosie to join Project Zero.

It was a very small club, composed of those who had vowed to rid the world of any trace of the serial killer Poppycock, a bogy fey—what most children might call the Boogie Man. Reminders of the deceased faerie, who had thrived on the societal fear brought about by his savage ways, could possibly come back should enough people begin to believe again. And that's where Project Zero came in: zero remembrance.

At Sarah's nod, Rosie removed the sheet.

"Oh, God."

"I know. I sorry."

"Jesus, Rosie, what the hell happened to this poor girl?"

"She look bad. I'm gonna bring her under the light? You okay, Sarah?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Rosie rolled the gurney under a lamp while Sarah took a moment to apply another helping of Vicks. It was getting easier to look at the girl now. The sudden shock still thrummed, but the girl was looking less like a she and more like an it.

"So, she got this whole area gone."

In fact, the girl had half her stomach torn away. Torn or eaten? It was like—

"One big bite mark," she said.

"Yep, exactly," Rosie agreed. "Crunch!"

"Yeah, crunch."

The jagged skin had turned puffy and black around the edges and liver mortis had discolored the back half of the girl's body. Liver mortis, "the blue color of death," was one of the first things Sarah had learned in her new profession as amateur sleuth and bootleg crime scene analyst. Gravity makes no qualms about applying its laws to the dead, so when the blood settles inside the body, it settles toward the ground, causing the skin to turn a grayish purple.

One bite and that was it. Her viscera showed like a terrible anatomy lesson, but there again, half of it was gone.

"One giant bite, all the way through?"

"Yep."

Sarah knew why Rosie was showing her. The size of the bite, its finality, made for a very perplexing scenario. What kind of thing could do that? A bear? That was a good guess, the closest probably, but even there, extremely unusual. What kind of bear would take out a chunk of flesh the size of a basket ball and then walk away?

"Where was she found?"

"The park."

Sarah blinked. "Golden Gate?"

Rosie nodded quickly, perfunctorily, and this time she did not giggle.

"A bear in Golden Gate Park? Impossible." It wasn't impossible, but it was highly improbable.

Rosie took a breath. "We take sample from here and here, but have nothing back yet. I let you know as soon as the result come."

Sarah knew she meant saliva samples.

"Rosie, what am I missing here? Aside from this enormous bite, which is bad enough, what else is wrong with this picture?"

For whatever reason Sarah's attention went to the girl's face.

"So young," she said, "and pretty." The girl's blonde hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. "It was just another day for her," she pondered. "When did they find her?"

"Police find her at night, but she go missing that morning. She wearing her jogging suit."

"Oh? Can I see it?"

"Yep. We done with her for now?"

"Um, yeah. No, wait." The girl's face caught Sarah's attention again. So pretty and so young and so...clean.

"You didn't wash her, did you?"

"Heck no! We doctor, not dumbass."

"Sorry, Rosie, had to ask. How about x-rays?"

"No. You want?"

"Maybe."

"Why?"

Sarah was studying the dead girl's skin where liver mortis had discolored it. The beginnings of a theory had begun baking in her head. Sarah wasn't a forensics expert by any stretch, but recent experience had taught her well. She had gotten a crash course in visceral murder in the last year and a half that few cops, let alone civilians, ever got.

Since they had battled Poppycock, Sarah had been on twenty-five of the thirty-three subsequent murder cases. That was a lot in a year and a half, but they were all of a kind: the victims of Poppycock's murder spree. The ones that had been discovered, at any rate.

All of them had involved corpses in states of advanced decay. Sarah's entire agenda of getting in with the police and forensics people had been to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt that the dates of death had predated Poppycock's.

And so, she had learned an awful lot about dead folks.

She inspected the rest of the girl, from fingers to feet.

"Do you see a bruise in there?"

Rosie leaned over and took a closer look.

"I think so," she said. "Here you mean?"

"Yeah, here, around the shoulder and going down the side of the arm."

"Sarah you have good eye, but why you want x-rays?"

"Because," she said, thinking it through at the same time, "this girl has a bite this big taken out of her and no scrapes on her face or hands or legs."

"Instant kill."

"Instant kill, yeah, but she laid there while some...thing ate her stomach. That means she was already dead or unconscious."

Rosie's eyebrow quirked.

"So, with the bruise here, it would indicate that something knocked her down with enough force to knock her out."

"Smart lady," said Rosie, "that why you the boss of Project Nothing."

"Zero."

"Oh, right!" Rosie said, and giggled.

Chapter Four: Wrong Patrol Code

Officer Derek Barnes got the call sometime around midnight. He wasn't too sure exactly, because he wasn't paying that much attention. It was a standard patrol code 415, noise complaint.

"Ah, crap," he sighed. "Another high school party."

That's what a 415 usually meant. He checked the glove box and pulled out the breathalyzer. They'd show up, get a few readings, call a parent or two and, voilà, the party would be over. Civic duty, that's all.

When his partner, Officer Rebecca Lansdown, returned to the squad car, Barnes informed her of the call.

They cruised down Geary until they hit Thirty Sixth Avenue and hung a right. Entering the neighborhood felt like driving into a library: quiet, cozy and sleepy. Thirty-sixth bisected Clement, on the other side of which lay a golf course, giving the effect of a wide open space on the edge of town.

It wasn't hard to find their culprit.

The corner house on the left sported flashing lights and loud disco music. Barnes parked the car and sized up the scene.

"Hand me the breathalyzer."

He pulled the door latch, all set for the overrated sport of busting underage drinkers, when he spotted a peculiar sight in the side mirror.

"Get a load of that, Lanny," he said, craning his neck to better view the neighbor. A man was toiling in the front yard of a big, old Queen Anne. "Toiling" seemed a good word for it, the only word that came to Barnes's mind.

"What is that thing?" asked Rebecca of a rumbling, grinding and obviously Diesel powered machine in the yard.

"A cement mixer?" Barnes hadn't heard it when they'd driven up. He'd been distracted by the disco party. Now he wondered how he'd missed it.

The man had his back turned to the squad car and was hunched over. A layer of cement bricks rambled in a big U shape around the front perimeter.

"What kind of lunatic?"

The man was big, that much they could see from the car, but just how big would soon become all too apparent.

Barnes unclasped his gun clip. "You ready for this?"

Rebecca shook her head. "Shouldn't we be busting that?" She pointed to the party house.

Barnes shrugged. "Aren't we supposed to be finding crime? That guy could be the next Ed Gein."

"I think we should call in a 5150, then," Rebecca replied.

"Go ahead; I'm going to check it out." He pushed the door open

Rebecca put her hand on his arm. "Don't you think we should call it in first, just in case? I mean, he looks..." She was about to say "huge," but the way Barnes was looking at her sent a clear message, he was not going to become a living cliché and "call for backup."

"Come on, Lanny, what's he gonna do, spackle us to death?"

She didn't laugh.

"Oh, come on. I doubt he even makes sense when he talks. This is a usual job of Usher and Roll."

Usher and Roll. One of Barnes's little sayings. Usher them into the car and roll away. He used it when they apprehended bums. You could tackle them, hold them at gunpoint and shout obscenities, like Big Wally Parks had done with the emaciated, scraggly bearded bum trying to steal coins from the newspaper stand, or you could just usher them quietly into the car, and drive them to County. Easy, simple and hassle free. Just the way Barnes liked things, his women included.

He got out and his partner reluctantly followed.

The stench assaulted their senses. It was like sitting in traffic behind a Gross Polluter: gas fumes mixed with coal.

As they approached the residence, the toiling man took no notice. When they stood on the edge of the property, shiny shoes stepping just shy of thick gobs of wet cement, the man still hadn't so much as looked up.

"Jesus Christ," Barnes swore under his breath. "Hey, buddy!"

No response.

Barnes looked at Rebecca. She was getting antsy and he settled her with a hand gesture.

"Buddy!" he called out over the rumbling machine.

Still no answer.

"Barnes, we—"

"Shh. I got this. Hey, bub!" he yelled, and this time he got the man's attention. Slowly, so painfully slowly, the man's head began to turn.

Like some kind of horror flick melodrama, when a long camera shot slowly reveals the face of the monster from the shadowy confines of a Gothic cathedral, the man met his gaze. The moonlight caught his eye so that it glinted wetly. But there was something else the matter here. Something that Barnes wasn't able, then or ever, to put into words. The man, his face, that shape.

All wrong. It was all he could think. All wrong.

The idea to call for backup still hadn't crossed his mind. It would before this episode had come to its conclusion, but for the moment Barnes was sufficiently transfixed by the eerie malevolence of this individual's sidelong stare.

Then he stood up.

Barnes was by no means a short man. At just over six feet, he had grown accustomed to looking down at most people. When he had to look up at someone else, he really knew that person was tall.

Or giant.

As the man stood, Barnes's eyes kept sliding up, kept going higher, until Barnes, little Barnes, was gazing up at a big-ass mother fucker with a trowel in his hand.

"Got a noise complaint!" he shouted over the sputtering, and somehow bestial sounding, mixer. Barnes hardly knew what he was saying, hardly heard himself say it, because his jaw seemed to have flopped open and his quarter-round eyes were refusing to blink.

Lumpy, asymmetrical and terribly mismatched, the guy's face told horror stories. One eye loomed wide as if under a cartoon monocle. His mouth was a crimson gash. It hung loose on one side, which made Barnes think of Old Mrs. Sachs in his high school Spanish class. Slack-Mouth Sachs with her Bell's palsy paralysis.

The giant chewed on a soggy cigar stub.

There was something familiar about this man, too. Something that told Barnes he'd seen him before. But where? Some kind of old picture, old film footage, perhaps.

"Hey, you hear me!" Barnes shouted, because despite his inability to look away, he had to say something. He was the cop here and he was in charge, even if he was pissing his pants.

The giant swallowed and somehow Barnes heard that over the rumbling machine, heard the dry click in the big man's throat.

"Copperrrrrrrr," the giant said in the same low chord as the mixer. "I hear you just fine. Just fine, ma'boy."

Right about the time Barnes was about to shout to "turn that goddamned thing off," he caught a wink in the moonlight that caused his gun hand to jerk.

"Freeze!"

This was followed by a second "Freeze!" from his terrified partner.

A soft clink told him how badly he'd overreacted, as the cap of a Zippo lighter flipped open.

The giant lit the cigar and puffed up an enormous taupe cloud into the foggy air.

Barnes hadn't noticed the fog bank roll in, but it unnerved him. Rebecca's eyes darted over the landscape.

The giant reached inside his coat.

"Freeze!" he shouted again, certain now that 415 had been the wrong patrol code.

"Freeze!" Rebecca echoed.

If the giant was rattled, he didn't show it. He pulled the long, black barrel out of his coat, lovingly as if the object weren't a rifle but a bassoon that he was going to play Moonlight Sonata on.

"Drop it, goddamn it! Right now!"

He didn't drop it, didn't aim it. He simply nodded.

Nodded.

No other gesture could have sent that kind of chill up Barnes's back. There was something altogether terrifying about that nod. Some kind of implied terror waited for him on the other side it.

Rebecca looked first, behind them, then her eyes met Barnes's. Wonderstruck? No, horror-bound.

Barnes turned now. He hadn't heard the approach of the thing over the bellowing cement mixer, though he didn't really think he would have heard it anyway.

The first word that popped into Barnes's terrified mind was horse. But then he knew that wasn't it. Not because it was ridiculous, but because it just didn't fit. There was one other word that came to mind.

Gigantic.

It was the last word he ever thought.

Rutlinger: A Midsummer Night's Hunt

Volume II of the Poppycock Books.

