And the tricks, all the tricks today, they were fake. It was a trick when he woke an hour after his faint, ran panting from the house and saw Moses peering out from Billy’s bedroom window at him, waving at him with a leer when Sam turned his head to look up at the horror. It was a trick when the mouse-catching cat at number nine turned its head lazily to watch Sam stumble past, as it licked its new-born kittens in the snug nest its owner had made from a wool blanket in a dry crevice in the log pile. He’d stopped in his tracks when he saw the dark thing swirling inside the cat, saw a glimpse of the real animal struggling to break free, then watched in horror as the cat slowly tore the heads off each of its helpless screaming litter as if for Sam’s amusement. He’d stared at it, paralysed, until the sight of the second last kitten twitching as thick black blood pumped from its severed neck was too much, and he broke free and ran again. Tricks perhaps, but he knew the mess of five tiny kitten bodies would still be there when the cat’s owner came home from work tonight, and even Sam could not wish that one away.

And would these tricks pursue him to the grave? Right now it seemed likely. The thing whose existence he was trying and failing to deny was bent on his torment. He lowered his head and fought the urge to weep. He raised it again quickly when from the end of the street the howling of sirens rose and three police cars raced by, throwing snow up on the sidewalk as they passed. As the sirens died on the evening air, Sam could hear the blades of a chopper flying somewhere near the river and his heart that was already encased in lead, sank further.

That thing in Katie’s chair.

We must do some more of what we do best together.

As he thought of its filthy attempt at a human mouth forming the words, he realized with a rising nausea that he knew only too well what that thing they did together was. There was no point pretending any more. A scan at Calgary’s finest hospital wasn’t going to show jack shit in his head. Sam Hunting Wolf knew now why he was blacking out and he knew what happened when he did. So had they done it again, this team of two, this partnership from Hell? The RCs didn’t make that kind of show in this town for jaywalking, so it looked like the answer was yes. One hour. He’d been out this time for one hour. You could get a lot done in an hour, Sam thought. Especially if you’d waited nearly ninety years to do it.