He had a grudging admiration for the ones who’d executed the events of September 11. Those were actual people intent on chaos and disruption. Pulled it off all on their own without any help from the Edwin Nablers of the sliver world. You had to tip your hat to them. Enough types like that would put Nabler and his ilk out of business.

Thankfully, there were not.

That didn’t mean he didn’t have his work cut out for him these days. So many safeguards! Smoke detectors, seat belts, childproof outlet plugs, playgrounds with padded ground cover, parents who drove their moppets to school instead of letting them walk, the goddamn Food and Drug Administration, for Christ’s sake. No one worried about any of this forty or fifty or sixty years ago. It all made the work that much more important.

How did Nabler know something was up?

When a man blew himself up at a barbecue, a woman killed herself in the tub, a dog went mad, it was as though Nabler were there. His trains were his receivers, his eyes, transmitting information back to him, and not through some sophisticated surveillance software.

On top of that, Nabler himself had special gifts. When it suited his purposes, he could make those within his sphere of influence see and hear things that were not there. Whistles in the night. Creepy-crawlies. Lost loved ones. He could present himself as he wished to be seen, and often sensed what they were feeling.

Which was how he was so confident that someone was sniffing around. It was his own fault, getting lazy with Tanner, leaving his boneless carcass to be found. He’d run into a temporary glitch with the mini-cremation machine he had tucked into a secondary room back of the shop. Worked fine for Hillman, but then Nabler briefly lost his surreptitious hookup to the local power grid.

But it was more than that. His successes in Lucknow had been, if he could say this to himself modestly, a bit splashier than he might have hoped for.

Chief Harry Cook’s interest had been piqued.

Nabler would have to exercise greater caution. What worked in his favor was that if and when the chief started putting it together, he’d doubt himself. When the evidence led him to a theory so outside the realm of the possible, he would discount it. He would think he must be wrong, that there had to be some other explanation.

Nabler certainly hoped so. He’d grown weary of moving. There was still much he could accomplish here in Lucknow and environs. He could attract customers from as far away as Bennington and Montpelier and Burlington and Middlebury, even from some towns across the border into New York State. Spread the mayhem far and wide.

But if he had to pull up stakes, so be it.

Nabler was ready.