Then I stopped, and while they could not see me or hear me or really even know I was there, they knew I was there—and I stopped and thrust my cold finger into the bait-child’s ear.

She rose up screaming hysterically, screaming and screaming, and the men came streaming from the porch, shotguns and flashlights waving in wanton disarray. I looked upon them sadly, gathered my cloak about me and walked softly back home.

I slid quietly into my coffin, completely forgetting Daniel—and his crucifix. I lay awake for many hours, replaying the scene in my mind, fretful and restless, trying to capture an essence that flitted through, something that I had missed, an important element of the evening that was eluding me, had eluded me in my excesses and overindulgences.

I lay on the cold concrete floor, not unhappy, yet not pleased with the revelation of my new nature—just cold and alone, and I waited for the sleep to come and erase my thoughts.

And when I awoke, I smelled Boyd.

“The next day there were funerals. Children’s funerals. There were six children’s caskets lined up at the cemetery, all draped with identical blankets of flowers.

“Odd, that funeral. I saw no emotion, not even from the parents of the children we buried. I looked around at the faces of the people in the crowd as the minister gave the service, and they all had deep lines etched in them, as if slashed there by razor blades. There was no conversation, no talk, no tears, no nothing. This town had been sucked dry over the months. Sucked dry.

“After the funeral, we held another meeting. That’s when the emotion emerged, and it came out as rage. She’d killed another four people the night before. She knew about the trap—the guys who set it even thought they’d seen her, but they didn’t know . . . They didn’t have any idea of what we were dealing with. Neither did I, really.

“Anyway, it was on a Thursday, or a Friday—I can’t really remember, except that it was a school day, and we held the meeting at the fairgrounds just outside of Wilton. Everybody in town must have been there—all the factions were divided up. It was an angry crowd, and they had no one to vent their anger at, so they took it out on each other.

“One group wanted to call the National Guard. Another group wanted to call the Pope. One guy gave us a deadline. He said he would be going to the national press to sell his story and the story of Wilton’s bloodsucking monster on Monday. If we wanted it kept quiet, we would have until Monday. The people who would benefit from a town full of gawkers wanted to tell the press anyway; the police and the mayor only wanted to tell people who could help.