But there was no wise foster father to guide his first baby steps into the world of slice and dice; no all-seeing Harry to teach him how to be all he could be, to help change him from an aimless child with a random urge to kill into a caped avenger; no one to carefully and patiently steer him past the pitfalls and into the gleaming knife blade of the future—no one at all for Cody, not if Dexter died here and now.

It would sound far too melodramatic for me to say, The thought spurred me to furious action, and I am only melodramatic on purpose, when there is an audience. However, as the realization of Cody’s true nature hit me, I also heard, almost like an echo, a deep unbodied voice saying, Undo the seat belt, Dexter. And somehow I managed to make my suddenly huge and clumsy fingers move to the belt’s lock and fumble with the release. It felt like trying to thread a needle with a ham, but I poked and pushed and finally felt something give. Of course this meant that I bumped down onto the ceiling on my head, a little hard considering that I was under water. But the shock of getting thumped on the head cleared away a few more cobwebs, and I righted myself and reached for the opening where the car’s door had been knocked away. I managed to pull myself through and face-first into several inches of muck on the bottom of the pond.

I righted myself and kicked hard for the surface. It was a fairly feeble kick, but quite good enough since the water was only about three feet deep. The kick sent me shooting up to my knees and then staggering to my feet, and I stood there in the water for just a moment retching and sucking in the wonderful air. A marvelous and underrated thing, air. How true it was that we never appreciate things until we must do without them. What a terrible thought to picture all the poor people of this world who must do without air, people like . . .

. . . Deborah?

A real human being might have thought of his drowning sister much sooner, but really, let’s be fair, one can only expect so much from an imitation after what I had been through. And I did actually think of her now, possibly still in time to do something meaningful. But although I was not really reluctant to rush to the rescue, I couldn’t help thinking that we were asking a bit much of Dutifully Dashing Dexter this evening, weren’t we? No sooner out of it than I had to go right back in again.