The sun was gone now. The little ones had taken their costumed selves home, laden with teeth-rotting loot. A while later came a burst of three separate sirens: one fire, one cop, one EMT. Living in the neighborhood, Raymond had learned to tell them apart. Then they, too, faded.

A hooded figure came up to the porch. He rang the bell with a long, thin, green finger, then stood with a solemn watchfulness. The blade on his scythe glinted.

“Optimist,” Raymond hissed and crouched out of view. He gripped his gun.

An old nursery chant slipped off his drink-slicked lips:

Hinx, minx, the old witch winks.
The fat begins to fry.
Nobody’s home but Jumping Joan,
Father, Mother, and I.
Stick, stock, stone dead.
Blind men cannot see.
Every knave will have a slave,
You or I . . . must . . . be . . . he.

The hood, the Reaper—whatever he was—slinked away.

IV.

IV.

BLOOD EPIC

—

November 2006

to

January 2007

– 13 –

– 13 –

LIGHTS UP

It had to be done—this was tradition. Every Saturday morning after Halloween, the gnomish retirees and elfin Boy Scouts of Santa Claus Lane peeled themselves out of bed and got to work, undetected and without fanfare, driving trucks, snipping foliage, hiding cables behind thickets.

Mary-Sue arrived just in time to see these Christmas lights go up. Five years away and she’d almost forgotten how much she liked it here as the holidays approached. Santa Claus Lane seemed even more out of place and time—with its shaggy firs, wood cottages, and view of purple mountains. It was the only time of year the deodars were completely appropriate and not just endlessly shedding nuisances. Her lair in Homestead was so set apart from its neighbors that she’d forgotten what a normal street was like. The memories of raising Kate in her house came rushing back, brought on by cooking smells from next door. But of course, Kate was no longer her little girl, generous with hugs and laughter. Now, there wasn’t room enough in Rome; Mary-Sue found herself stepping out for air. She had to remind herself why she was back: it wasn’t Kate, it wasn’t California—it was the baby. The baby was going to reset everything.

Still on crutches, she hobbled along Santa Claus Lane, watching over the volunteers as they pruned the deodars, and shouting alerts to them whenever they missed a branch or something was dangling funny. She’d made herself enough of a nuisance that a smiling delegate from the neighborhood Holiday Committee approached her the next afternoon with a “very important” task: procuring a new Santa for the festivities now that Mr. Shields, the longtime go-to, had died. Mary-Sue was about to volunteer Larry, then remembered he was on the other coast and ached a little.