Mick’s new mouth pressed closed, crookedly. Then he said, “We all did. There wasn’t one of us I’d trust to feed my dog for a weekend. But that was a long time ago.”

“As long as that?” Her smile was really only a baring of her teeth. “Heavens, Mick, did you think we’d evolve!”

It took him a moment to rally. “Learn, maybe? Change? People do.” But his voice was fainter, battered down by her manner.

“And lucky they are, too. But we’re not people. We’re sharks. It’s our nature. We can’t stand to see clear water without a little blood in it.”

“Fran, can’t you—”

“What are you doing here, Mick?”

“Pardon me,” I said, and I was as amazed to hear my voice as they seemed to be. “If neither of you minds, we could have this conversation in the next room just as well. And if you’re going to shoot him,” I added to the woman named Frances, “I wish you wouldn’t do it in here.”

She stared at me, then took in the room with a quick shift of her gaze. I think, until then, she hadn’t really seen it. “Bless my soul,” she said at last. “It’s the lost graveyard of the Sonys.”

“If it was only a graveyard, I wouldn’t care,” I replied, though I hated to do it. “They all work.”

She looked the room over again, this time with more attention. Then she looked at me. I could almost hear her thinking, though not well enough to know in what direction. “Lead the way,” she ordered. So I did. She gestured Mick Skinner out behind me.

I walked into the middle room. The teakettle was lying on the floor in a small puddle; most of the water seemed to have disappeared between the floorboards. That, and a black smudge on the ceiling, were all that were left to remind me of La Maitresse and Mr. Lyle. I took the kettle to the sink and started pumping water into it. There was a calm and reasoned dialogue going on in my head, something like:

This is a ridiculous thing to be doing.

The whole business is ridiculous. What should I be doing that would make more sense?

She might shoot me.

For making tea? I suppose she might. She might shoot me for not making tea.

In other words, I can’t fix things no matter what I do, so I might as well do anything at all.

I think I’m so scared I can’t feel it.

When I turned back to face my houseguests, Mick Skinner was standing by one felt-covered window, watching me, bemused and a little alarmed. And he was Mick Skinner; I was surprised at how easy it was to think of him that way, independent of his looks.

The woman, Frances, was perched lightly on the arm of the leather slingshot chair, the rifle comfortable in the crook of her right arm, its barrel tracking Mick Skinner. A casual sweep of that arm, and both he and I would be perforated at the waist.