The thunder, though, didn’t come. It just stayed hot and humid as we walked, my T-shirt sticking to my back, my hair drooping in heavy, wet curls in front of my eyes. But you could feel that a storm was going to happen. There weren’t many people out walking. Still Roger and I kept plodding stubbornly on—or I did, and he stayed by my side. We reached the front of the Governor Hopkins house. Roger took my arm.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go sit down.” We headed for the terraced garden next to the building.

Roger tried to open the gate, but the latch didn’t move.

“Why would they lock up this place on a Saturday morning?” he asked.

“Here,” I said, grabbing the latch and jiggling it so that it opened. Maddy, your accomplished tour guide. “This thing always sticks.”

We made our way to the bench we had sat on the first time I brought Roger here. It has the best view of the gold dome of the old State bank. For some reason just being able to open that gate made me feel a little less confused and anxious about things. It is funny how familiar things can be so reassuring. The smell of the hedges and the late summer flowers surrounded me, and I took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said to Roger. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Roger put his hand up to his chin and leaned forward to rest his elbow in the palm of his other hand. There was a little smile on his face as he did that, and I knew he was trying to make me smile too, by imitating the pose of a statue. It worked. I actually giggled.

“Okay,” he said. “Best way to deal with a monster hungry for your blood is to laugh at it.” His face became serious. “No kidding, though, Maddy. Whatever is happening, the worst thing to do is to panic. We gotta really think about what is going on here.”

“What is going on here?”

“First of all,” he said, “even though I just made you laugh, this is no joke.”

‘You’re right,” I agreed. “If it was just the phone calls or the message scratched on my door, it could just be a harmless prank.” I poked Roger in the arm. “Like the stuff you and I do to each other sometimes.”

Roger grinned briefly. My letters written to him in red ink and signed “Vampira,” his phone calls back to me using that Bela Lugosi voice.

“But it’s more than that,” he said.

“Way beyond that. Because of what was done to Bootsie.” I stared at the old bricks of the walkway under my feet. “I think if she hadn’t gotten under the shed, she would have been killed.”