Rita bustled in beaming and before I could protect myself she wrapped herself around me, apparently intent on squeezing hard enough to interfere with my breathing. "Hi, handsome," she said. "How was your day?" "Gross," muttered Astor. "Absolutely wonderful," I said, fighting for breath. "Plenty of corpses for everybody today. And I got to use my cotton swabs, too." Rita made a face. "Ugh. That's-I don't know if you should talk like that around the children. What if they get bad dreams?"

If I had been a completely honest person, I would have told her that her children were far more likely to cause someone else bad dreams than to get them, but since I am not hampered by any need to tell the truth, I just patted her and said, "They hear worse than that on the cartoons every day. Isn't that right, kids?"

"No," said Cody softly, and I looked at him with surprise. He rarely said anything, and to have him not only speak but actually contradict me was disturbing. In fact, the whole day was turning out to be wildly askew, from the panicked flight of the Dark Passenger this morning and continuing on through Vince's catering tirade-and now this. What in the name of all that is dark and dreadful was going on? Was my aura out of balance? Had the moons of Jupiter aligned against me in Sagittarius?

"Cody," I said. And I do hope some hurt showed in my voice. "You're not going to have bad dreams about this, are you?" "He doesn't have bad dreams," Astor said, as if everyone who was not severely mentally challenged ought to know that. "He doesn't have any dreams at all." "Good to know," I said, since I almost never dream myself, either, and for some reason it seemed important to have as much as possible in common with Cody. But Rita was having none of it.

"Really, Astor, don't be silly," she said. "Of course Cody has dreams. Everybody has dreams." "I don't," Cody insisted. Now he was not only standing up to both of us, he was practically breaking his own record for chattiness at the same time. And even though I didn't have a heart, except for circulatory purposes, I felt an affection for him and wanted to come down on his side.

"Good for you," I said. "Stick with it. Dreams are very overrated. Interfere with getting a good night's sleep." "Dexter, really," Rita said. "I don't think we should encourage this." "Of course we should," I said, winking at Cody. "He's showing fire, spunk, and imagination." "Am not," he said, and I absolutely marveled at his verbal outpouring.

"Of course you're not," I said to him, lowering my voice. "But we have to say stuff like that to your mom, or she gets worried."