“Naturally she’s going to call you, let you know how she’s doing?”

Marilyn nodded.

“Where will she call you?”

“At my boyfriend’s, in Bar Harbor. But I’m not there anymore, am I? My boyfriend will tell her that the cops came around and I left.”

That was true enough, Savich thought, no hope for it. He just hoped that Tammy wouldn’t call until they’d found out where she was in the Caribbean.

Marilyn said, “I’ll bet she really wants to kill you bad because of what you done to her. She’ll come back when she’s really well, and she’ll take you down. Tammy’s the meanest female in the world. She beat the shit out of me every time I saw her when we was growin’ up. She’ll get you, Dillon Savich. You’re nuthin’ compared to Tammy.”

“What are the Ghouls, Marilyn?”

Marilyn Warluski seemed to grow smaller right in front of him. She was pressed against the back of her chair, her shoulders hunched forward. “They’re bad, Mr. Savich. They’re really bad.”

“But what are they?”

“Tammy said she found them when she and Tommy were hiding out in some caves in the Ozarks a couple years ago. That’s in Arkansas, you know. It was real dark, she told me, real dark in that stinkin’ cave, smelled like bat shit, and Tommy was out takin’ a leak, and she was alone and then, all of a sudden, the cave filled with weird white light and then the Ghouls came.”

“They didn’t hurt her?”

Marilyn shook her head.

“What else did she say?”

“Said she knew they were the Ghouls, just knew, that somehow they’d got inside her head and told her their name, then told her that they needed blood, lots of young blood, and then they laughed and told her they were counting on her, and then they just winked out. That’s what Tammy said: they laughed, spoke in her head, and just ‘winked out.’ ”

“But what are they, Marilyn? Do you have any idea?”

She was silent for the longest time, then she whispered, “Tammy told me just a couple of days ago that the Ghouls were pissed off at her because she and Tommy hadn’t given them their young blood in the barn, that if Tommy was still alive, they’d eat him right up.”

“Do you think that’s why Tammy got that kid? So the Ghouls could have their young blood?”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at him and slowly nodded. Then she started crying, hunched over, her bowed head in her hands.

“Do you know anything else, Marilyn?”

She shook her head. Savich believed her. He also understood why she was shivering. He was close to shivering himself. He had goose bumps on his arms.

Two FBI agents escorted Marilyn Warluski out of Savich’s office. She would remain here at Quantico, a material witness and the FBI’s guest until Savich and Justice made a decision about what to do with her.

He was standing by his desk, deep in thought, looking out the window toward Hogan’s Alley, the all-American town that the FBI Academy had created and used to train their agents in confronting and catching criminals, when Jeffers, a profiler in the Behavioral Sciences, housed three floors down here at Quantico, said in his slow, Alabama drawl even before he cleared the doorway, “This is about the strangest shared delusion I’ve ever heard, Savich. But what are the things to them? How do they interact with Tammy Tuttle? Marilyn said Tammy told her the Ghouls got in her head and told her to do things.”

“What we’ve got to do is predict what Tammy Tuttle will do next given this belief of hers in the Ghouls,” said Jane Bitt, a senior profiler who’d lasted nearly five years without burning out.

Jane Bitt came around Jeffers and leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. “Lots of other monsters but not anything like this. Tammy Tuttle is a monster. She’s got monsters inside her-monsters within a monster. The problem is that we don’t have any markers, any clues to give us even a glimmer of an idea of what we’re working with here. We’re faced with something we’ve never seen before.”

“That’s right,” said Jeffers, the two words so drawn out in his accent that Savich wanted to say them for him, that or just pull them out of his mouth. “How do we get her, Agent Savich? I sure want to hear what she has to say about the Ghouls.”

Savich said, “You heard Marilyn say that Tammy went to the Caribbean, to an island ‘right’ for her. She couldn’t have walked there, and she sure can’t be hard to spot. Just a moment, let me call Jimmy Maitland. They can get on that right away.” He placed the phone call, listened, and when he finally hung up, he said, “Mr. Maitland was nearly whistling. He’s sure they’ll get her now. What else do you guys think from listening to her?”

“Well,” Jane said as she sat down, crossing her legs and leaning forward, “it seems to be some sort of induced hallucination. Marilyn seems to think they’re real, and both you and the boys saw something unusual in that barn, isn’t that right, Agent Savich?”

“Yes,” Savich said.

“Maybe Tommy and Tammy have some sort of ability to alter what you see and feel, some sort of hypnotic ability.”

Savich said to Jeffers, “You did a profile on Timmy Tuttle before he turned out to be Tammy.”

“Savich is right, Jane,” Jeffers said. “We ain’t got nothing useful that fits a psychotic cross-dresser who may have hypnotic skills.”

Savich laughed, said, “You know what I want to try? I want to talk Marilyn into letting us hypnotize her. Maybe if you’re right about this, she can tell us a lot more when she’s under.”

Jeffers laughed. “Hey, maybe the Ghouls are real, maybe they’re entities, aliens from outer space. What do you think, Jane?”

“I like the sound of that, Jeffers. It’d perk up our boring lives a bit, add some color to our humdrum files. White cones whirling around black circles-maybe they’re from Mars, you think?”

Savich said, “Actually, I’ve been reading articles, studies on various phenomena involved in past crimes.”

“Found anything?” Jeffers asked.

“Nothing like this,” Savich said. “Not a thing like this.” He added as he stood, “Joke all you want, but just don’t do it in front of the media.”

“Not a chance,” Jane said. “I don’t want to get committed.” She rose, shook Savich’s hand. “Marilyn told you that Tammy met up with the Ghouls in a cave. My husband is really into speleology and we usually go spelunking on our vacations. In fact, we were planning on visiting some of the caves in the Ozarks this summer. No matter how much I can laugh about this, I might want to rethink that plan.”

Washington, D.C.

Lily was leaning over her drawing table, looking at her work. No Wrinkles Remus was emerging clear and strong and outrageous from the tip of her beloved sable brush. The brush was getting a bit gnarly, but it was good for another few weeks, maybe.

First panel: Remus is sitting at his desk, a huge, impressive affair, looking smug as he says to someone who looks like Sam Donaldson, “Here’s a photo of you without your wig. You’re really bald, Sam. I’m going to show this photo to the world if you don’t give me what I want.”

Second panel: Sam Donaldson clearly isn’t happy. He grabs the photo, says, “I’m not bald, Remus, and I don’t wear a wig. This photo is a fake. You can’t blackmail me.”

Third panel: Remus is gloating. “Why don’t you call Jessie Ventura? Just ask him what I did to him.”

Fourth panel: Sam Donaldson, angry, defeated, says, “What do you want?”

Fifth panel: Remus says, “I want Cokie Roberts. You’re going to fix it so I can have dinner with her. I want her and I’m going to have her.”

Lily was grinning when she turned to see Simon Russo standing in the doorway.

He looked fit, healthy, and tanned. She felt suddenly puny and weak, still bowed over a bit. She wished he’d just go away, but she said, “Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but you should be in bed. I just spoke to Savich, and he said to check on you. He knew you wouldn’t be following orders. You’ve got a strip nearly ready?”