She stared at me stonily, lips tightly pursed.

“They’ll come with the siren blazing. They’ll put cuffs on her. She’ll ride in the back of the cop car and be processed and printed and strip-searched before being interrogated.” All of which was total bullshit, but I figured this lady wouldn’t know.

She relented. “Very well. But Amber, dear, listen to me.” She took the girl’s hand, and I got the immediate impression the girl wished she wouldn’t. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to tell this woman anything. If at any time you want the questioning to stop, you just call for me. Understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Collier.”

The woman disappeared herself, leaving us alone. Amber was taller and beefier than Helen had been, with lighter hair and a way of talking that seemed both lazy and smart.

“Kind of controlling, isn’t she?” I said, hoping to break the ice.

Amber shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“I guess you must be, if you’ve known her since you were six. Were you over here a lot?”

“Most times we hung at my house. It’s closer to school, and my dad keeps the pantry well stocked. Over here I was always worried that I might drop a cookie crumb on the carpet and give Mrs. Collier a heart attack.”

I grinned. Mordant Humor R Us. “But you and Helen were tight?”

“Yeah. Best buds.”

“And when the two of you took off on Friday nights, you weren’t going to a church and you weren’t going to any Shirley Temple show either, right?”

Now she became wary. Which I could understand. Why should she trust me? “What makes you think that?”

“My psychic powers. Am I right?”

She didn’t answer.

“I found one of Helen’s bus tickets.”

Still nothing.

“Found Helen’s party suit, too, and I feel certain she wasn’t wearing that getup to any church.”

Amber smiled a little.

“Where’s the Goth scene these days, Amber? Was there a bar you two liked? Maybe something on campus?”

“Nothing like that,” she said quietly.

“Did you go down to the Strip? Pretend to be hookers just to amuse yourselves?”

I was getting warm, but I hadn’t arrived. “We did go to the Strip sometimes.”

“To do what?”

“Whatever. Just hang. Went to shows sometimes.”

“And not tap dancing.”

“Helen was more into heavy metal.”

“But there wasn’t always a concert.”

“Sometimes we’d just walk. Go to the mall at Caesar’s or the Aladdin. See what was happening at the hotels.”

Of course. “The Transylvania. She liked the Transylvania, didn’t she? Where else would a Goth girl go?”

Amber nodded. “She got off on all that creepy stuff. Haunted houses. Horror movies.”

Sure she did. Anything that was the antithesis of her mother. That was her quiet rebellion. “Anyplace else?”

“There was this club near the Transylvania. An Army grunt hangout. Helen was kinda sweet on military types.”

“Do you know where she went the night she disappeared?”

“No. I had to go to Los Angeles with my parents. So I guess she went out without me.”

“Maybe with another friend?”

“Maybe. But I don’t know who it would be.” Her eyes lowered. “I bet she went alone.”

I bet she did, too, damn it. That’s why she’d been so easy to snatch. “Do you have any idea what happened to her?” I asked, but I knew Amber didn’t and I was right.

I left the house excited. I still had a long way to go, but I was definitely making progress. And the bizarre thing was, I wasn’t anxious to get back to HQ and wow O’Bannon. I wasn’t aching to spill the beans to Lisa.

I couldn’t wait to tell Darcy.

I found him more or less where I’d left him, out in front of the house. He was crouched down in the rather bosky garden that lined the north side of the house.

“Do you think Helen wore a size six?” he asked as soon as he saw me. “Because I think maybe she was a size six.”

“No,” I replied. “She was too busty.”

He looked at me, puzzled. I made an explanatory gesture. He blushed, then averted his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Did you know that I was asking about her shoe size?” he muttered, staring at the ground. “I was asking about her shoe size.”

“Oh, geez, sorry.” Pretty adorable really, watching him flush up like a radish over nothing. “Size six, huh?” I remembered the shoes I’d seen in the girl’s closet. “That sounds about right.”

“I think she was a size six,” Darcy repeated, still flapping his hands nervously. “At first I thought maybe her mother was a size six. But I saw her feet when she came to the door and they were like boats.”

I giggled. I thought I was allowed, since my feet were also of the boatish variety. “Why were you wondering about Helen’s shoe size?”

He pulled me into the garden, behind a row of hedges, then crouched down and pointed. Behind the hedge, close to the house itself, there was a faint but discernible impression in the soil. A footprint. The tread looked like some kind of spiked-heel number.

I looked up. We were directly beneath Helen’s bedroom window. There was a drainpipe attached to the wooden siding that could provide some support. Not that much was really required. Her window wasn’t that high off the ground.

Thanks to Darcy, I had a pretty good idea how Helen could walk on the wild side on nights other than Friday. Even if her mother did make sure she was in bed at ten and locked the doors.

“You’ve got a good eye, Darcy. That looks like it could be a size six. Maybe seven.”

“Six.”

“Well, to be sure, we should-”

“It’s six and five-twelfths inches long. That’s a size six.”

I’d been around this wunderkind long enough to know not to argue. “Let’s get some plaster out of my car and make a cast.”

“And after that?”

I grinned. Something about this guy brightened my spirits, just being around him. “I think you’ve earned a custard. Don’t you?”

He grinned excitedly. “Very Excellent Day! Very Excellent Day! Are you going to try the Strawberry Mash?”

“Maybe. What about you? Vanilla Toffee again?”

“I usually have Vanilla Toffee on Wednesdays and Strawberry Mash on Thursdays, unless there’s a new flavor, and then I substitute the new flavor for whichever flavor on my list has the most letters in its name. If there’s a tie, I cross out whichever one comes last in the alphabet, unless the Thursday falls on the last day of the month, ’cause then I reverse the alphabetical order and…”

He was so close. She was the third and final offering, and once he was done with her his work would be complete. He had crossed the Rubicon. The Golden Age would soon be upon them.

“You hurt me,” he said as soon as Lenore opened her eyes.

It was a long while before she could reply. Her eyelids fluttered as she slowly shook off the soporific. She parted her lips, then worked them slowly, soundlessly, as if taking them for a test drive. She tried moving other parts of her body and soon found that she could not.

He watched it all, reading her emotions as they raced through her head. Her first instinct was panic, but she stifled it. Even in this dazed state, she was smart enough to realize a cool head would be required if she was going to save herself. Her next emotion was anger, but that too she managed to sublimate. She thought that he was probably some kind of sexual deviant-how could she know?-and that she was more likely to survive by acting submissive and helpless. And waiting for her opportunity.

It was more than a minute before she actually spoke. “I-I’m sorry. I can see your hand is sore.”

“I don’t mean there,” he said. He placed his injured hand over his heart. “I mean here.”

“I-I-I’m sorry,” she said. She must be tired, lethargic from the drug. But he still sensed that she was playing him, exuding vulnerability until she had enough strength to make a break for it. Poor little offering.