"It's Stan."

  "Yes… and?"

  "We've got one. It's on."

  "I'm very glad to hear that."

  "How soon can you be ready?"

  "Everything's all set up at the cottage," Lacey said. "All I have to do is get there. Say… an hour fifteen, to be on the safe side."

  "Fine. We'll see you there."

  "Stan?"

  "What?"

  "Thank you."

  When I told McGuire that Karl and I were going to take personal time for the rest of our shift, he looked at me and nodded grudgingly. He doesn't like stuff like that, but union rules say we can, and neither one of us does it a lot.

  McGuire looked at me. "Do I want to know how you and Karl are going to be spending the time?"

  "No, you don't."

  He nodded slowly. "All right. Good luck."

  As we walked outside, I asked Karl, "You sure your uncle's not likely to show up in the middle of things?"

  "Naw, he's already in Florida. I called him last night, before I gave Lacey the key and directions. He's down there, all right."

  In the parking lot, Karl said, "No point taking two cars, is there?"

  "None that I can see."

  "Which one, then?"

  "You've got more trunk space," I said.

  "Good point. OK, get in."

  In another ten minutes, we were ringing Carol Ann's doorbell. She answered it almost at once.

  "Come on in, guys."

  She gave me a quick hug. "Good to see you, Stan."

  She had a hug for Karl, too. "How've you been, Karl?"

  "Not too bad, I guess."

  Carol Ann asked him, "I understand you're nosferatu nowadays," she said. "How's that working out for you?"

  "Ah, it's like anything else, Carol Ann – good points and bad ones."

  I asked her, "Did you prepare what we talked about?"

  "Yep, got it right here."

  She showed me a small statuette. I'd had a bad experience with a Gorgon statue a while ago, but this one looked entirely different. There was nothing evil about it.

  "It's a representation of the goddess Hecate," Carol Ann said. "I'd like it back someday. No hurry."

  "I'll take good care of it," I said.

  "When the time comes, just close your hand around it, like this–" she made a fist "–and say the word pardac. It's only charged to work once, so be sure you're ready before you say it."

  "It's pardac," I said. "Right?"

  "Perfect. Here you go." She handed me the statuette, and I carefully put it in my jacket pocket.

  "Well, any time you guys want to take out the garbage, he's ready for you," she said.

  Five minutes later, we pulled out of Carol Ann's driveway. In the trunk we had an unconscious commando, who was probably in for the worst night of his life.

To get to Lake Wallenpaupack, you take Route 84 east from Scranton for about twenty miles, then follow shitty secondary roads that seem to go on forever – or at least they do in the part we were headed for, a stretch of shoreline that mostly consists of smaller houses or cottages. They're empty for about half the year.

  Often a bunch of fishermen will chip in and buy one of the cottages, and use it as a base in the summer. Karl's uncle had one all his own, and that's where we were headed, much to the dismay of Karl's shock absorbers. We bounced through the potholes at ten to fifteen miles an hour. Our guest in the trunk should have been glad he was unconscious, although he'd still find himself all bruised and banged up when he awoke. And that was going to be the least of his problems.

  Lacey's Dodge Perdition was already there when we pulled into the graveled driveway. Good – that was the plan.

  We opened the trunk, and Karl carried the limp form down some sloping ground and around to the back, to the basement entrance. A couple of big doors that belonged on a barn stood slightly open, and a light shone from inside. I pulled one of the doors wide enough for Karl and his burden to get through. He didn't need an invitation – he'd been in here before.

  As we came into the big, open room, we found Lacey facing the door, waiting for us. "Good evening," she said. Some people might have said that à la Bela Lugosi, but not Lacey – she was serious tonight. Deadly serious.

   I took in the dirt floor, peeling wallpaper, and ramshackle furniture that I figured had constituted all the original furnishings. But Lacey had brought in a few things of her own.

  The most impressive of the new additions was a big frame made of black PVC pipe, the stuff they use in industrial plumbing and scaffolding. The freestanding structure was about eight feet square, and the plastic surface of the pipes gleamed in the overhead light. It looked like a big Tinkertoy that had been designed by the Spanish Inquisition.

  Next to the PVC structure, but at a right angle to it, was a folding table that I assumed Lacey had also brought with her. Arrayed along it was a collection of implements, which I had described for Lacey from the two snuff films I'd seen.

  The macabre smorgasbord included knives of course, and a new-looking blowtorch. Somewhere she had found an old-fashioned corkscrew – the kind that is just a tightly wound spiral of steel with a sharp point at one end and a handle on the other. She had a hammer and the needlenose pliers, too.

  Lacey looked slowly around the room and said, "Nice place your uncle has here, Karl."

  "I know it's a wreck," he said, "but fishermen aren't too fussy. All they wanna do is fish, tell lies about what got away, and drink beer."

  Lacey shook her head. "No, Karl, I'm sorry – you misunderstood. No sarcasm intended – I mean it. For what we're going to do tonight, this place is perfect. I practically fell in love the first time I saw it."