“Nice,” she said, drawing hard on her cigarette. The banty rooster started up again. Mindy Jo ignored the screeching. “Ya want grits and bacon?”

“Yeah.”

“Eggs?”

“’Course…hey…what the hell?” He saw something that just looked wrong. He’d gutted a helluva lot of alligators in his lifetime and never had he seen one of ’em’s stomach look so oddly shaped. “What the fuck you been feedin’ on, big fella?”

“Don’t you dare open up his guts here!” Mindy Jo screeched.

Too late. Boomer’s curiosity had already gotten the better of him. He slit the stomach wide and the inside, smelling of stomach acid and dead fish, opened up.

Boomer jumped back. “Holy shit!” He nearly threw up at the sight.

“What?” Mindy Jo asked.

“I think we’re in trouble,” he said, wondering how the hell he was going to explain the obviously poached alligator and already trying on several lies to save his own skin. But Boomer did have a conscience. “Big trouble.” How could he explain this? “Call the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” Mindy Jo’s slippers clipped down the two steps and along the brick path toward him.

“Do as I say. This gator ain’t been snackin’ on Fig Newtons, that’s fer sure.”

The clicking stopped and her shadow passed over him and onto the open belly of the dead reptile. “Lord, Jesus!” she whispered, her eyes bugging at the smelly contents of the gator’s gut. Amongst the crayfish, frogs, turtles, and fish lay an arm, a very human female arm and hand, painted fingernails and all.

Stroke, stroke, stroke.

Kristi cut through the water of the pool cleanly, breathing easily, feeling her muscles begin to strain. She’d been at it over half an hour, was going for forty minutes.

The smell of chlorine was everywhere and there was mist on the windows of the college’s pool house, but aside from an older guy several lanes over, she had the water to herself.

She hadn’t swum in over a month and it felt great. Energizing. Cleared her mind.

Stroke.

She thought of Jay and had to admit she liked seeing him again. But just as a friend…

Stroke.

She hadn’t found anything in Tara Atwater’s personal items, but she’d look again. There had to be some evidence about her disappearance in the same damned apartment in which she’d lived.

Stroke.

Ariel and Kristi’s father were still very much alive. So her black and white vision thing might just be a physical thing, not some kind of special ESP or visions of the future.

Stroke.

There were no such things as vampires. And she was going to talk to Professor Grotto and see what he had to say for himself. Then, perhaps, the police.

Stroke.

Maybe she should call Jay…. No way. She needed his help, yes, but that was it. She was not trying to start something up with him again.

Stroke.