Ben was willing to use his child this way, as lure and rumor object, to trick his wife back home. Now the man’s gone, his rival; the school is closed, and the evidence, about ten thousand dollars, is zipped up and hidden away. It skulks like a cage in a basement, terrible but largely forgotten, as if it were just something he was told years ago, something he heard just once. Rachel’s feet bump up against him under the blanket, and by the time the vampire has the bride in thrall, the drinks are empty and the prattling movie tossed away as the couple laugh and undress on the floor. He would not, will not let her go. Ben has connived, as adulterers connive; he will keep her, and the secret too. He has to con her, a little, that he is as good a man as he is really when they are together. It leads to this, such a moment, the happiest in years of marriage. In weeks to come they will talk to Nicky, nervously and uselessly, about bad touch. This is good touch, pancakes and the right movie, drink and sex on the floor, a laugh and a kiss, a silly story and a stake through the heart.

Chapter Nine

CHAPTER 9

Padgett doesn’t want to be here, but not fiercely. She could go either way. The damp trail goes down, and Kitsune is way ahead of them, whooping with a stick, her half brother hurrying after her half alarmed. The afternoon has brought fog—they drove right into it—and as the sun packs its bags, the mist wets the trees and keeps dripping down. She lets go of Vic’s hand for a second, to shake off little drops.

It’s been a while. The city, a lot has changed. The Vic, for one thing, has had many stumbles, too numerous, too thorny, too dull to be recounted in their entirety. His move into entertainment was a bad scheme, it turns out. Lawyers and systems guys structured it for themselves, to vanish into the night, and her husband was not sharp enough—or anyway, that’s how it got told—to spot it in time. His weakness was blood in the water. He didn’t lose it all; he couldn’t. In the actual world he hardly fell down one rung. But he’s not “the Vic” anymore—younger, coarser men, teeming with sleazy hobbies and boyish, brutal politics, are the ones in the glossiest slots. Padgett doesn’t miss it. They stay home nights more; Padgett overheard, six months ago, her husband say at a school function, We got over ourselves. It is true. Tough when it happened, but it didn’t happen between them. If they were going to divorce, they’d be divorced now. Even the fortune they lost doesn’t feel gone, not to Padgett. It was imaginary, more or less.