“Yeah, I got it in one.”

Around the corner, the terrier started barking. She took that as her cue and started up the street. She heard the car door open. She was thinking about how they’d actually pulled it off-her plan so carefully worked out. By now the bus had reached the interstate and was waiting for her to tell them to let the next passengers go. She switched on the walkie-talkie and said, “Okay, six, get up and get out.” The thing was supposed to have a ten-mile range. If it did, they’d go a while longer, and she would broadcast one more set of orders, send the bus out into the ’burbs for another half hour. If not, they’d shortly be looking for a man and woman in masks. She was halfway up the street before she realized that the car door had never closed.

She turned around, walking backwards. The Toyota sat there against the curb. The driver’s door hung open wide. She couldn’t see if Andy was in the car or not. What the hell could he be doing, putting his bag of loot in the trunk? Idiot. For a second she considered going back, and she slowed her pace. Something was wrong back there. Instinct compelled her to move, to get off the street. She turned and picked up speed.

The thing came out of the darkness beside her, a moon-colored blur moving in swift smears across the night, across a lawn from shadow to shadow, and then suddenly right before her. Golden feral eyes met hers. She ought to have been terrified but it was as if she’d expected this, as if someone had told her it was coming. The rich, dark voice-real or imagined-said, “You’ve borrowed something of mine, I’m afraid, that you should not have.”

She thought of words to say but couldn’t find them before the eyes swelled like twin suns and drank her down.

“It was terrible,” said the branch manager. Iancu Svekis nodded.

“A tragedy, I’m sure,” he said.

“They could have killed them. You know, that’s what everybody’s scared will happen in a robbery. That one girl-the one they shot-she’s going to be okay.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“But you were there, right? I had to call Erica, because she’d put through your wire transfer and she knew what was going on with it-”

“Yes,” he said heavily, “I was there.”

“That thing in the bathroom-she said even the cops can’t figure it out. They think maybe it was a gang thing, but nobody saw any gang, did they?” Svekis said nothing, but she went right on. “Of course, finding the bodies in that car trunk along with the money-that’s got everyone thinking it’s a gang thing, too. It’s so weird.” When he only sighed, she seemed to understand that he didn’t want to talk about this any further.

“Anyway,” she said, and handed him back his passport, “everything’s fine, your money was transferred from overseas into your new account. Here’s the documentation and the number. You can draw on that at any of our branches anywhere from here to Boston. There’s a list of addresses in here, too. But you should get your ATM card in about ten days.”

“Thank you.” He took the envelope she held out and started to get up.

“I was wondering,” she said. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Yes?”

“Um, Erica wanted to know how you got your passport back. She said she was sure they scooped it up when they were cleaning out the tellers.”

He looked at her with some concern. “Oh, no,” he assured her. “They left it on her desk and I took it back when they weren’t watching.”

“Wow. That was pretty brave.”

“I did not, you know, think of it that way. Perhaps brave, perhaps foolish. But then, stealing is foolish.” He tucked the envelope into his jacket and reached out. “Thank you,” he repeated, and she shook his hand. No one was watching, and he only needed to hold on to her for a few moments.

He left her sitting, staring off into space. Someone would notice eventually and shake her back into the here and now, but she would remain vaguely confused as to what had occurred and to whom she’d been speaking just before she dozed off.

Svekis pushed open the door and walked out into the light.

La Lune T’Attend by Peter S. Beagle

Even once a month, Arceneaux hated driving his daughter Noelle’s car. There was no way to be comfortable: he was a big old man, and the stick-shift hatchback cramped his legs and elbows, playing Baptist hell with the bad knee. Garrigue was dozing peacefully beside him in the passenger seat, as he had done for the whole journey; but then, Garrigue always adapted more easily than he to changes in his circumstances. All these years up north in the city, Damballa, and I still don’t fit nowhere, never did.

Paved road giving way to gravel, pinging off the car’s undercarriage… then to a dirt track and the shaky wooden bridge across the stream; then to little more than untamed underbrush, springing back as he plowed through to the log cabin. Got to check them shutters-meant to do it last time. Damn raccoons been back. I can smell it.

Garrigue didn’t wake, even with all the jouncing and rattling, until Arceneaux cut the engine. Then his eyes came open immediately, and he turned his head and smiled like a sleepy baby. He was a few months the elder, but he had always looked distinctly younger, in spite of being white, which more often shows the wear. He said, “I was dreaming, me.”

Arceneaux grunted. “Same damn dream, I ain’t want to hear about it.”

“No, wasn’t that one. Was you and me really gone fishing, just like folks. You and me in the shade, couple of trotlines out, couple of Dixie beers, nice dream. A real dream.”

Arceneaux got out of the car and stood stretching himself, trying to forestall a back spasm. Garrigue joined him, still describing his dream in detail. Arceneaux had been taciturn almost from birth, while Garrigue, it was said in Joyelle Parish, bounced out of his mother chattering like a squirrel. Regarding the friendship-unusual, in those days, between a black Creole and a blanc-Arceneaux’s father had growled to Garrigue’s, “Mine cain’t talk, l’t’en cain’t shut up. Might do.”

And the closeness had lasted for very nearly seventy years (they quarreled mildly at times over the exact number), through schooling, work, marriages, family struggles, and even their final, grudging relocation. They had briefly considered sharing a place after Garrigue moved up north, but then agreed that each was too old and cranky, too stubbornly set in his ways, to risk the relationship over the window being open or shut at night. They met once a week, sometimes at Arceneaux’s apartment, but more usually at the home of Garrigue’s son Claude, where Garrigue lived; and they both fell asleep, each on his own side of the great park that divided the city, listening to the music of Clifton Chenier, Dennis McGee and Amédé Ardoin.

Garrigue glanced up at the darkening overcast sky. “Cut it close again, moon coming on so fast these nights. I keep telling you, Jean-Marc-”

Arceneaux was already limping away from the rear of the car, having opened the trunk and taken out most of the grocery bags. Still scolding him, Garrigue took the rest and followed, leaving one hand free to open the cabin door for Arceneaux and then switch on the single bare light in the room. It was right above the entrance, and the shadows, as though startled themselves to be suddenly awakened, danced briefly over the room when Garrigue stepped inside, swung the door to, and double-locked it behind them.

Arceneaux tipped the bags he carried, and let a dozen bloody steaks and roasts fall to the floor.

The single room was small but tidy, even homely, with two Indian-patterned rag rugs, two cane-bottomed rockers, and a card table with two folding chairs drawn up around it. There was a fireplace, and a refrigerator in one corner, but no beds or cots. The two windows were double-barred on the inside, and the shutters closing them were not wooden, but steel.