"All right," I said, standing up and turning off the light. "Good night."

"Good night, Dexter," Astor said.

"Night," Cody said softly.

In the normal course of things, I would probably sit down on the couch with Rita and watch another hour of television, just for the sake of disguise maintenance; but tonight there was no need to subject myself to the ordeal of pretending the programs were funny or interesting, so I didn't return to the living room. Instead, I went down the hall to the small room that Rita called my study. I had used it mostly for research connected to my hobby. There was a computer for me to track down those special individuals who deserved my attention, and there was a small closet where I could store a few harmless items like duct tape and fifty-pound-test fishing line.

There was also a small filing cabinet, which I kept locked, that contained a few folders holding notes on prospective playmates, and I sat at my little desk and opened this up. There wasn't a great deal there at the moment. I had two possibilities, but due to the press of events I had not really pursued either of them, and now I wondered if I ever would. I opened a folder and looked inside. There was a murderous pedophile who had twice been released because of a convenient alibi. I was fairly sure I could break the alibi and prove his guilt-not in the legal sense, of course, but enough to satisfy the strict standards my cop adoptive father, Harry, had poured into me. And there was a club in South Beach that was listed as the last place where several people had been seen before disappearing. Fang, it was called, a truly stupid name for a club. But in addition to the missing-persons reports, the club had turned up in a few INS documents. Apparently, they had an alarmingly high rate of turnover in their kitchen staff, and someone at INS suspected the dishwashers were not all running home to Mexico because the Miami water tasted wrong.

Illegal immigrants are a wonderfully easy target for predators. Even if they vanish there is no official complaint; family, friends, and employers don't dare complain to the police. And so they do vanish, in numbers that no one can really guess, although I believe it is high enough to raise a few eyebrows, even in Miami. And someone at this club was clearly taking advantage of the situation-probably, I thought, the manager, since he would have to be aware of the turnover. I flipped through my file and found his name: George Kukarov. He lived on Dilido Island, a very nice Beach address not too far from his club. A handy commute for work and play: balance the books, hire a DJ, kill the dishwasher, and home for dinner. I could practically see it-a lovely setup, so clean and convenient that it almost made me envious.

I set down the file for a moment and thought about it. George Kukarov: club manager, killer. It made perfect sense, the kind of sense that got Dexter's inner hound up on point and salivating, whining eagerly, quivering with the need to be out and after the fox. And the Passenger fluttered in agreement, stretching its wings with a sultry rustle that said, Yes, he is the one. Tonight, together, Now…

I could feel the moonlight coming through the window and pouring through my skin, slicing deep inside me, stirring the dark soup of my center and making these wonderful thoughts float up to the top, and as the smell of the simmering broth drifted up and out on the night air I could picture him taped to the table, squirming and curdling with the same sweaty terror he had sauteed from who knows how many, and I could see the happy knife go up But the thought of Lily Anne drifted in, and now the moonlight was not so bright, and the whisper of the blade faded. And the raven of Dexter's newborn self croaked, Nevermore, and the moon went behind the puffy silver cloud of Lily Anne, the knife went back in its sheath, and Dexter came back to his small suburban life as Kukarov skittered away into freedom and continued wickedness.

My Dark Passenger fought back, of course, and my rational mind sang harmony. Seriously, Dexter, it crooned with oh-so-sweet reason. Could we really let all this predatory frolicking go unchallenged? Let monsters wander through the streets when it is well within our power to stop them in a final and very entertaining way? Could we really and truly ignore the challenge?

And I thought again of the promise I had made in the hospital: I would be a better man. No more Demon Dexter-I was Dex-Daddy now, dedicated to the welfare of Lily Anne and my fledgling family. For the first time human life seemed rare and valuable, in spite of the fact that there was so much of it, and for the most part it consistently failed to prove its worth. But I owed it to Lily Anne to change my ways, and I would do it.

I stared at the file folder in my lap. It sang softly, seductively, pleading with me to sing along and make lovely music in the moonlight-but no. The grand opera of my brand-new child covered it over, overture swelling, and with a firm hand I fed the folder into the shredder and went to bed.

I got to work just a little bit later than usual the next morning, since I had to deliver Cody and Astor to school first. In the past this had always been Rita's task. Now, of course, everything was different; it was Year One of the Lily Anne Golden Epoch. I would be dropping the two older children at school for the foreseeable future, at least until Lily Anne was a little bit older and could safely ride around in a car seat. And if it meant that I no longer got to work with the first robins of the day, it seemed like a very small sacrifice.

The sacrifice seemed slightly larger, however, when I finally got to the office and found that someone other than Dutiful Dexter had actually brought in doughnuts-and they were all gone, leaving only a tattered and stained cardboard box. But who needs doughnuts when life itself is so sweet? I went to work anyway, with a smile in my heart and a song on my lips.

For once there was no frantic call for me to rush off to a crime scene, and I managed to get through a great deal of routine paperwork in the first ninety minutes of the day. I also called Rita, mostly to make sure that Lily Anne was doing well and had not been kidnapped by aliens, and when Rita had reassured me in a sleepy voice that all was well, I told her I would come to visit that afternoon.

I ordered some supplies, filed some reports, and got my whole professional life almost entirely squared away, and although that did not quite make up for the doughnuts, it nonetheless made me feel very pleased with myself; Dexter dislikes disorder.

I was still wrapped in my pink cloud of satisfaction a little before ten o'clock, when the phone on my desk rang. I stepped over and picked it up with a cheerful, "Hello, Morgan!" and was rewarded with the surly voice of my sister, Deborah.

"Where are you?" she said, rather unnecessarily, I thought. If I was talking to her from a phone attached to my desk by a long wire, where would I be? Maybe cell phones really do destroy brain tissue.

"I'm right here, on the other end of the telephone," I said.

"Meet me in the parking lot," she said, and hung up before I could protest.

I found Deborah beside her motor pool car. She was leaning impatiently against the hood and scowling at me, so in a fit of strategic brilliance I decided to attack first. "Why do I have to meet you out here?" I said. "You have a perfectly good office, and it has chairs and air-conditioning."

She straightened up and reached for her keys. "My office is infested," she said.

"With what?"

"Deke," she said. "The smarmy dim-witted son of a bitch won't leave me alone."

"He can't leave you alone," I said. "He's your partner."

"He's making me nuts," she said. "He leans his ass on my desk and just sits there, waiting for me to fall all over him."