She's not looking so good," Kestrel said, peering over Rowan's shoulder.
Rowan said, "Oh,dear," and sat down
Great-aunt Opal was a mummy. Her skin was like leather: yellow-brown, hard, and smooth. Almost
shiny. And the skin was all there was to her, just a leathery frame stretched over bones. She didn't have
any hair. Her eye sockets were dark holes with dry tissue inside. Her nose was collapsed.
"Poor auntie," Rowan said. Her own brown eyes were wet.
"We're going to look like that when we die," Kestrel said musingly.
Jade stamped her foot. "No, look,you guys! You're both missing it completely. Look atthat!" She swung
a wild toe at the mummy's midsection. There, protruding from the blue-flowered housedress and the
leathery skin, was a gigantic splinter of wood. It was almost as long as an arrow, thick at the base and
tapered where it disappeared into Aunt Opal's chest. Flakes of white paint still clung to one side.
Several other pickets were lying on the cellar floor.
"Poor old thing," Rowan said. "She must havebeen carrying them when she fell."
Jade looked at Kestrel. Kestrel looked back withexasperated golden eyes. There were few things they
agreed on, but Rowan was one of them.
"Rowan," Kestrel said distinctly, "she wasstaked. "
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yes," Jade said. "Somebody killed her. And somebody who knew she was a vampire."
Rowan was shaking her head. "But who would know that?"
"Well ..." Jade thought. "Another vampire."
"Or a vampirehunter,"Kestrel said.
Rowan looked up, shocked. "Those aren't real.They're just stories to frighten kids-aren't they?"
Kestrel shrugged, but her golden eyes were dark.
Jade shifted uneasily. The freedom she'd felt on the road, the peace in the living room-and now this.
Suddenly she felt empty and isolated.
Rowan sat down on the stairs, looking too tired and preoccupied to push back the lock of hair plastered
to her forehead. "Maybe I shouldn't havebrought you here," she said softly. "Maybe it's worsehere." She
didn't say it, but Jade could sense her next thought. Maybe we should go back
"Nothingcould be worse," Jade said fiercely. "And I'd die before I'd go back." She meant it. Back to
waiting on every man in sight? Back to arranged marriages and endless restrictions? Back to all those
disapproving faces, so quick to condemn anything different, anything that wasn't done the way it had
been done four hundred years ago?
"Wecan't go back," she said.
"No, we can't," Kestrel said dryly. "Literally. Unless we want to end up like Great-aunt Opal.
Or"she paused significantly-"like Great-uncle Hodge."
Rowan looked up. "Don't even say that!"
Jade's stomach felt like a clenched fist. "They wouldn't, she said, shoving back at the memory that was
trying to emerge. "Not to their own grandkids. Not to us."
"The point," Kestrel said, "is that we can't go back,so we have to go forward. We've got to
figure out what we're going to do here without Aunt Opal tohelp us--especially if there's a vampire hunter
around. But first, what are we going to do withthat?" She nodded toward the body.
Rowan just shook her head helplessly. She lookedaround the cellar as if she might find an answer in a
comer. Her gaze fell on Jade. It stopped there, and Jade could see the sisterly radar system turn on.
"Jade. What's that in your jacket?"
Jade was too wrung-out to lie. She opened thejacket and showed Rowan the kittens. "I didn't know my
suitcase would kill them."
Rowan looked too wrung-out to be angry. She glanced heavenward, sighing. Then, looking back atJade
sharply: "But why were you bringing them downhere?"
"I wasn't. I was just looking for a shovel. I was going to bury them in the backyard."
There was a pause. Jade looked at her sisters and they looked at each other. Then all three of them
looked at the kittens.
Then they looked at Great-aunt Opal.
Mary-Lynnette was crying.
It was a beautiful night, a perfect night. An inversion layer was keeping the air overhead still and warm,
and the seeing was excellent. There was very little light pollution and no direct light. The Victorian
farmhouse just below Mary-Lynnette's hill wasmostly dark. Mrs. Burdock was always very consider ate
about that.
Above, the Milky Way cut diagonally across the sky like a river. To the south, where Mary-Lynnette
had just directed her telescope, was the constellation Sagittarius, which always looked. more like a
teapot than like an archer to her. And just above the spout of the teapot was a faintly pink patch of what
looked like steam.
It wasn't steam. It was clouds of stars. A star factory called the Lagoon Nebula. The dust and gas of
dead stars was being recycled into hot young stars, just being born.
It was four thousand and five hundred light-years away. And she was looking at it, right this minute. A
seventeen-year-old kid with a second-hand Newtonian reflector telescope was watching the light of stars
being born.
Sometimes she was filled with so much awe andand-and-and longing-that she thought she might break to
pieces.
Since there was nobody else around, she could let the tears roll down her cheeks without pretending it
was an allergy. After a while she had to sit back and wipe her nose and eyes on the shoulder of her
T-shirt.
Oh, come on, give it a rest now, she told herself.You're crazy, you know.
She wished she hadn't thought of Jeremy earlier. Because now, for some reason, she kept picturinghim
the way he'd looked that night when he came to watch the eclipse with her. His level brown eyes had
held a spark of excitement, as if he really cared about what he was seeing. As if, for that moment,
anyway, he understood.
I have been one acquainted with the night, amaudlin little voice inside her chanted romantically, trying to
get her to cry again.
Yeah, right, Mary-Lynnette told the voice cynically. She reached for the bag of Cheetos she kept under
her lawn chair. It was impossible to feel romantic and overwhelmed by grandeur while eating Cheetos.
Saturn next, she thought, and wiped sticky orangecrumbs off her fingers. It was a good night for Saturn
because its rings were just passing through theiredgewise position.
She had to hurry because the moon was rising at 11:16. But before she turned her telescope toward
Saturn, she took one last look at the Lagoon. Actuallyjust to the east of the Lagoon, trying to make out
the open cluster of fainter stars she knew was there.
She couldn't see it. Her eyes just weren't good enough. If she had a bigger telescope-if she lived inChile
where the air was dry-if she could get above the earth's atmosphere . . . then she might have a chance.
But for now . . . she was limited by the human eye. Human pupils just didn't open farther than 9
millimeters.
Nothing to be done about that.
She was just centering Saturn in the field of viewwhen a light went on behind the farmhouse below. Not
a little porch light. A barnyard vapor lamp. Itilluminated the back property of the house like a searchlight.
Mary-Lynnette sat back, annoyed. It didn't reallymatter-she could see Saturn anyway, see the rings that
tonight were just a delicate silver line cutting across the center of the planet. But it was strange.Mrs.
Burdock never turned the back light on at night.
The girls, Mary-Lynnette thought. The nieces. Theymust have gotten there and she must be giving them a
tour. Absently she reached for her binoculars. Shewas curious.
They were good binoculars, Celestron Ultimas,sleek and lightweight. She used them for looking at
everything from deep sky objects to the craters on the moon. Right now, they magnified the back of Mrs.
Burdock's house ten times.
She didn't see Mrs. Burdock, though. She could seethe garden. She could see the shed and the
fenced-in area where Mrs. Burdock kept her goats. And shecould see three girls, all well illuminated by
the vapor lamp. One had brown hair, one had golden hair, and one had hair the color of Jupiter's rings.
That silvery.Like starlight. They were carrying something wrapped in plastic between them. Black plastic.
Hefty garbage bags, if Mary-Lynnette wasn't mistaken.
Now, what on earth were they doing with that?
Burying it.
The short one with the silvery hair had a shovel. She was a good little digger, too. In a few minutesshe
had rooted up most of Mrs. Burdock's irises. Then the medium-sized one with the golden hairtook a turn,
and last of all the tall one with the brown hair.
Then they picked up the garbage-bagged objecteven though it was probably over five feet long, it
seemed very light-and put it in the hole they'd just made.
They began to shovel dirt back into the hole.
No, Mary-Lynnette told herself. No, don't be ridiculous. Don't be insane. There's some mundane, per
fectly commonplace explanation for this.
The problem was, she couldn't think of any.
No, no, no. This is notRear Window,we are not in the Twilight Zone. They're just burying-something.