And as the bouncer prodded me back around to face Alana, she lifted the lid from the barbecue and placed the slice of Samantha-flesh on the grill. It hissed, and a tendril of steam rose up from it.

"Oh," Samantha said in a muted, faraway voice. "Oh. Oh." She rocked slowly against her bonds.

"Turn it in two minutes," Alana said to Bobby, and then she came back to me. "Well, piglet," she said to me, and she reached over and pinched my cheek; not as a doting grandmother might, but more like a shrewd shopper checking the cutlets. I tried to pull away, but it wasn't quite as easy as it sounds, with a very large man pushing a shotgun into my back.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" I said. It sounded more petulant than it should have, but I really didn't have a terribly strong position at the moment, unless you count the moral high ground.

My question seemed to amuse Alana. She reached forward again, both hands this time, and she grabbed my cheeks and shook my head fondly from side to side. "Because you are my piglet!" she said. "And I am going to absolutely devour you, darling!" And a small and very real gleam showed in her eyes this time, and the Passenger rattled its wings in alarm.

I would like to say that I had been in much tighter spots, and I had always found a way out. But the truth was that I could not think of any time I had ever felt quite so uncomfortably vulnerable. I was once again taped and helpless, with a gun in my back and an even more lethal predator in front. As for my companions, Deborah was unconscious or worse, and Samantha was truly being put over the coals. Still, I had one small hole card left: I knew that Chutsky was out there, armed and dangerous, and as long as he was alive he would never let any harm come to Debs or, by extension, to me. If I could keep Alana talking long enough, Chutsky would be here to save us.

"You have Samantha," I said as reasonably as I could. "There's more than enough of her to go around."

"Yes, but she wants to be eaten," Alana said. "The meat always tastes better if it's reluctant." She glanced at Samantha, who said, "Oh," again. Her eyes were wide now, wild with something I could not name, and focused on the grill.

Alana smiled and patted my cheek. "You owe us, darling. For escaping and causing all this trouble. And in any case, we need a male piggy." She frowned at me. "You look a bit stringy. We really should marinate you for a few days. Still, there's no time left, and I do love a nice man chop."

I will admit that it was a strange time and place for curiosity, but after all, I was trying to stall. "What do you mean, there's no time left?" I said.

She looked at me without expression, and somehow, the complete absence of emotion was more unsettling than her fake smile. "One last party," she said. "Then I'm afraid I must flee once again. Just as I had to flee England when the authorities decided that too many undocumented immigrants had gone missing there, as they now have here." She shook her head sadly. "I was just getting to like the taste of migrant worker, too."

Samantha grunted, and I looked. Bobby stood in front of her, slowly working the point of a knife across her partially exposed chest, as if he were carving his initials on a tree. His face was very close to hers, and he wore a smile that would wilt roses.

Alana sighed and shook her head fondly. "Don't play with your food, Bobby," she said. "You're supposed to be cooking. Turn it now, dear," she said, and he looked at Alana. Then he reluctantly put down the knife and reached onto the grill with a long-handled fork and flipped the flesh. Samantha moaned again. "And put something under that cut," Alana said, nodding at the growing pool of dreadful red blood dripping from Samantha's arm and spreading across the deck. "She's turning the deck into an abattoir."

"I'm not fucking Cinderella," Bobby said happily. "Stop the wicked-stepmother shit."

"Yes, but let's try to keep things a bit neater, shall we?" she said. He shrugged, and it was very clear that they were as fond of each other as two monsters could ever be. Bobby took a pot from the rack under the grill and placed it underneath Samantha's arm.

"I actually did straighten Bobby out," Alana said with just a trace of something that might have been pride. "He hadn't a clue how to do anything, and it was costing his father a small fortune to cover things up. Joe just couldn't understand, poor lamb. He thought he had given Bobby everything-but he hadn't given him the one thing he really wanted." She looked right at me with all her very bright teeth showing. "This," she said, waving at Samantha, the knives, the blood on the deck. "Once he had a small taste of long pig, and the power that goes with it, he learned to be careful. That dreary little club, Fang, that was Bobby's idea, actually. A lovely way to recruit for the coven, separating cannibals from vampires. And the kitchen help provided a wonderful source of meat."

She frowned. "We really should have stayed with eating immigrants," Alana said. "But I've grown so fond of Bobby, and he begged so prettily. Both girls did, too, actually." She shook her head. "Stupid of me. I do know better." She turned back to me, her bright smile back in place. "But, on the positive side, I have a good deal more cash this time for a new start, and a smattering of Spanish, too, which I shan't waste. Costa Rica? Uruguay? Someplace where all questions can be answered with dollars."

Alana's cell phone chirped, and it startled her for just a second. "Listen to me prattling on," she said, looking at the phone's screen. "Ah. About fucking time." She turned away and spoke a few words into the phone, listened for a moment, spoke again, and put the phone away. "Cesar, Antoine," she said, beckoning to two of the shotgun flunkies. They hurried over to her and she said, "He's here. But…" And she bent her head down next to theirs and added something I could not hear. Whatever it was, Cesar smiled and nodded and Alana looked up at the revelers by the grill. "Bobby," she said. "Go with Cesar and lend him a hand."

Bobby smirked and lifted up Samantha's hand. He took a knife from the table and raised it up, looking expectantly at Alana. Samantha moaned.

"Don't be a buffoon, love," Alana said to Bobby. "Run along and help Cesar."

Bobby dropped Samantha's arm, and she grunted, and then said, "Oh," several times as Cesar and Antoine led Bobby and his friends down the wobbly ramp and away into the park.

Alana watched them go. "We shall be getting started with you shortly," she said, and she turned away from me and walked over to Samantha. "How are we doing, little piggy?" she said.

"Please," Samantha said weakly, "oh, please…"

"Please?" Alana said. "Please what? You want me to let you go? Hm?"

"No," Samantha said, "oh, no."

"Not let you go, all right. Then what, dear?" Alana said. "I just can't think what." She picked up one of the oh-so-very-sharp-looking knives. "Perhaps I can help you speak up a bit, little piglet," she said, and she jabbed the point into Samantha's midsection, not terribly deep, but repeatedly, deliberately, which seemed more terrible, and Samantha cried out and tried to squirm away-quite impossible, of course, lashed to the mast as she was.

"Nothing at all to tell me, darling? Really?" she said, as Samantha at last collapsed, with terrible red blood seeping out in far too many places. "Very well, then, we'll give you some time to think." And she put the knife down on the table, and lifted the lid of the barbecue. "Oh, bother, I'm afraid this has burned," she said, and with a quick glance to be sure that Samantha was watching, she took the long-handled fork and flipped the piece of flesh over the rail and into the water.

Samantha gave a weak wail of despair and slumped over; Alana watched her happily, and then looked at me with her serpent's smile and said, "Your turn next, old boy," and went to the rail.