He knelt down in front of the dog crate again. He opened the door just enough to slide out the aluminum water dish, then took it to the bathroom and filled it. He returned it to the cage, then peeled the wrapper from his burger and crumbled it into the other dish.

“This may have to hold you for a while,” Nick said. “There’s something I need to take care of.”

He left the room and hurried back down to the lobby.

“Find your key?” Ralph asked as Nick headed out toward the parking lot.

“Yeah, thanks,” Nick said. “By the way—where’s the nearest hardware store?”

Nick pulled his car up close to the gate until his headlights illuminated the lock and chain. It was raining lightly; tinsel strands of water streaked through the brilliant light. He got out of the car and took a pair of red-and-gray bolt cutters from the backseat; he positioned the jaws on the hasp of the padlock and cut through it like butter. He dragged the chain off the poles with a ratcheting sound and tossed it aside; he swung the double gate open wide and got back into his car, then drove on into the witch’s lair.

The gravel road was just a single lane, and it wound back and forth like a snake with dense trees and thick brush surrounding it on both sides. The rain made visibility poor and Nick drove slowly. He had no idea where the road went, but he knew it was his best bet; roads are built to go somewhere, and he would get a lot farther driving through these woods than walking—he had learned that the hard way.

He had driven almost a mile when he sensed motion on his left; he looked and saw one of the huge black guard dogs lumbering along beside his car with its great jowls flapping like the canvas of a ship. Nick looked out the passenger window; there was the second dog, and he had no doubt that the third was close behind. He glanced down at his gas gauge and was relieved to see the needle on three-quarters of a tank.

About a quarter mile ahead, the road abruptly widened and Nick found himself driving into the center of a large circular clearing. On his right he found a series of kennels—narrow concrete slabs surrounded by chain-link fences, lined up side by side like the keys on a piano. Each of the kennels contained half a dozen dogs of various shapes and sizes, and every single dog began to bark furiously the moment Nick’s car came into view.