After a couple more hours, I said, “Status report?”

  “I’ve got nothing,” he said. “I mean, he obviously used this computer a lot, and it’s full of files. I was even able to get into his online accounts, email, that kind of stuff, because he had a password manager and it’s still active. But besides those pictures, there’s nothing relevant.”

  “Well,” I said, “I figured out how to kill the hashok.”

  “What? How?”

  “Burn it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Whaley sounds pretty sure.”

  “Who’s Whaley?”

  I told him and said, “I guess he was a pretty serious ethnographer or whatever they call them, but he kind of went off the deep end before he died. He was convinced monsters were real. Told everyone he was being hunted. He lost his academic position, and it sounds like he hit rock bottom pretty fast. He sold all his papers to a tiny private college because he needed money.”

  “Jesus. What happened then?”

  “He died. Want to guess how?”

  Elien shook his head.

  “Animal attack,” I said. “Sound familiar?”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Not really. Look what happened to David when he got too close. Look what happened when you and I started poking around.”

  “I thought he figured out how to kill it,” Elien said.

  “Well, I guess that was in theory more than in practice.”

  “And what’s the theory?”

  “Fire.”

  “Ok.”

  “He talks about the grass of the field burning, the chaff consumed by the cleansing flame.”

  “Sounds Biblical,” Elien said. “Our monster isn’t Biblical.”

  “Maybe he just liked a nice turn of phrase.”

  “Ok, let’s assume he’s right. How do we find the hashok?”

  “Well, let’s think about this,” I said. “Process of elimination. We know it’s someone who’s connected to DuPage Behavioral, right?”

  “We don’t know that, but it’s a pretty safe bet. All of the victims have had connections there.”

  “And it’s not Zahra, because she’s dead. And it’s not Richard.”

  Shaking his head, Elien said, “I know you’re trying to spare me—”

  “I’m not, actually. Richard was in the hotel restaurant with that guy, remember? Even if he had somehow managed to get to Zahra’s house, attack us, and make his way back, he’s got that guy as his alibi for the whole night. I asked after they took us in to the station, and one of them finally told me. Richard was with that guy all night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry. It sucks to hear that.”

  “No, it’s just kind of confirmation.”

  “So,” I said, “who else from DuPage Behavioral has a connection to these victims? Can we find out which doctors they were seeing? Do you think that’s the pattern?”

  “No,” Elien said slowly, “remember? All the doctors in the practice see people with PTSD. Their money makers are addiction and ‘distressed executives,’ but they all take patients with PTSD.”

  “Do they all have access to each other’s records? If the records were computerized, anybody in the practice could have tracked victims easily.”

  “Maybe,” Elien said. “I don’t know how secure those records are.”

  “Somebody could have broken into Zahra’s office,” I said, “and examined the physical files.”

  Frowning, Elien opened his mouth, but his phone buzzed, and he glanced at it.

  “You can take it,” I said.

  “No, it’s Richard.”

  “You should take it.”

  He shook his head. “It’s just a text. Muriel’s there, and she’s telling him I asked for a ride, which is crazy because—” He faltered and then looked at me. “Oh Christ.”

  “What?”

  “She has access to all the records because she does administrative work on top of seeing patients.” His words tumbled out. “She lives out by me too, Dag. She lives past us, upstream on the Okhlili. Right on the edge of the bayou. She drove me to the support group a ton of times. She would have recognized everyone; she could have pulled their files easily. She had her own private herd.”

  “And now she’s cleaning house,” I said. “Making sure no one can point back to her.”

  “Oh shit,” Elien said, scrambling off the bed. “She’s there right now. She’s going to kill Richard.”

  ELIEN (5)

  When we got to the house, the front door was open. Muriel’s Subaru was nosed up to the garage.

  Dag caught my arm as I was unbuckling myself. “Will you please stay here?”

  “No.”

  “Will you at least let me go first since I have the gun?”

  After a moment, I nodded.

  We got out of the Escort. The St. Augustine grass was as neatly trimmed as ever; the magnolia trees and the black oaks and the sugar maples stood still. When I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, I could smell pine sap and freshly cut grass; Richard must have had the lawn-care guys out again. In the house, nothing moved. The windows held our reflection, and behind the reflection, I could make out the dark shapes of furniture.

  Then the door slammed shut.

  I jumped, and Dag shot around the car to put himself in front of me. One of his hands was on my chest; the other held a pistol. He wasn’t breathing fast or trembling or anything. After a moment, he said, “Fuck.”

  I didn’t sound quite as controlled when I muttered, “Holy fucking hell.”

  “Please stay here.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I know,” he said, “but a guy can hope, right?”

  He took slow, careful steps toward the house. I came after him, leaving a yard between us; I knew he might have to move fast, and I didn’t want to tangle him up. He’d given me a fixed-blade hunting knife before we left his house, and the fucker was about as long as my hand. If anything got close to me, I was going to stab the fuck out of it. My muscles were spasming, and my movements were jerky as I planned and lived halfway inside that future moment. I briefly considered that I was out of my goddamn mind.

  When Dag got to the front door, he did a silent three count on one hand and then kicked it open, charging into the front room. I came after him, slamming the door behind me, and I checked the corners the way he had told me on the drive up. Dag was still moving, passing the stairs and cutting across the living room and into the kitchen. He was still silent, but someone was screaming, and it took me a moment to realize that the sound was inside my head. I went after him, and it was like I was inside a stranger’s house: I cracked my shin against the coffee table, checked up against the couch, caught a cord with my sneaker and pulled a lamp down behind me.

  I was coming around living room, just getting a glimpse into the open-plan kitchen, when Dag flew through the air. He crashed into the windows, and glass shattered, but he didn’t go through them. The frames just buckled and splintered, and he fell to the ground. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  When I looked up, the hashok was there. This was the first really good look I’d had at it: a human form stripped of anything that might have identified it, nose and ears barely more than nubs, its skin ashen and its eyes black all the way across. Its frame and head were elongated, giving it a stretched-out look, but it had an easy, relaxed stance that reminded me of a basketball player—lots of muscle, and ready to move.

  “Shit,” I whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Holding out the knife, I grabbed my phone and called 911. I kept my eyes on the hashok, but it was still in the kitchen, still watching me. The dispatcher came on, and I shouted the address and officer down. I didn’t know if that was the right phrasing, but I figured it’d light a fire under their collective asses. Then I tossed the phone on the couch.

  The hashok sprinted, and I made an involuntary stab at the air, but it wasn’t moving toward me. It shot toward the back of the house, smashed through the door, and blurred across the grass. Then it was gone.

  I wasn’t ready to be tricked again. The damn thing had tried this last time. It liked to try to pick its victims off one at a time. It liked to try to sneak up behind you.

  Crouching by Dag, I checked him as quickly as I could. He was breathing, although something sounded wrong, a kind of whistling, and his eyes were half open. I whispered his name. “I need you with me, please. That thing is going to come back, and it’s going to try to get us again.”

  He moaned. He was bleeding in a dozen places, and when I rolled him over, I had to steady myself with one hand on the wall: part of the window frame had splintered and gone straight into his back. His lung, part of my brain informed me. That’s the whistling. He’s got a punctured lung.

  When he coughed, bloody froth spouted from his mouth.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God.”

  For a moment, I slipped back into memory: the weight of my hookup pinning me to the mattress, the smell of fried catfish, the taste of grass, the helplessness as he thrust into me, my brain playing out the horrible things happening just outside my door.

  Then, shuddering, I grabbed Dag under the arms and dragged him away from the windows. He screamed. I didn’t know if this was doing more damage, but I knew if I left him by the windows, the hashok would get him. We’d barely made it to the edge of the kitchen when my prediction came true: the hashok smashed through the glass where Dag had been lying. It let out a yowl of disappointment; it had obviously expected us to still be there, with me tending to Dag’s injuries. I released Dag, held up the knife, and flipped the bird.

  The hashok rocked side to side, its liquid black eyes watching.

  “Fuck off,” I said to it. “I know how to get rid of you. This is your one warning: fuck off right now, and never come back, and I won’t hunt you down and burn you to ash.”

  The hashok yowled again. For a moment, I thought it was going to charge. Then a soft sound behind me drew my attention, and I shot a glance over my shoulder. There was nothing. When I looked back, the hashok was gone, and splinters of glass trembled in the frame where it had run out of the house again.

  Playing with us, I thought. It’s playing with us the way a cat plays with a mouse.

  Seizing Dag under the arms, I dragged him back a few more feet. There wasn’t anywhere safe in the house, but if I could get into the pantry, at least I’d only have to defend one door, and maybe we could wait it out until help arrived. Unless the hashok just smashed through the wall or the door. Unless it decided it didn’t need the element of surprise anymore. I dragged Dag a few more feet, and he screamed again.

  I had to stop for a break. I had zero upper-body strength, and Dag was all fucking muscle, which was nice for sex and nice for having a tough boyfriend, but it was a real bitch right now. My back and arms ached. Sweat stung my eyes. Another sound, maybe nothing, made me check over my shoulder, but I still didn’t see anything. My brain was having a hard time making sense of everything. Part of me recognized this place: the same furniture, the same paintings, even the same bottle of wine, complete with corkscrew, that I had gotten out before I left. This had been my home for over a year. But part of me felt like I was in a funhouse, all the angles crooked, all the hallways mazes, all the glass a mirror.

  Grabbing Dag again, I shuffled back toward the pantry. It had been a few minutes now. Where was the hashok? Where was Richard? Was he bleeding out upstairs? Was he already dead? Had the hashok gutted him the way it had killed Zahra and David? Or had it toyed with him, torturing him, Muriel finally exacting payback for all the petty grievances of working under Richard?

  If he was alive, I thought, I had to help him. Maybe I could get Dag safely into the pantry, barricade the door somehow, and search upstairs. If there was even a chance, I owed Richard that much.

  Shards of glass chimed as a rush of air swept through the house. I guessed that it was from the hashok, but I couldn’t see it. Maybe it was sprinting past the house. Maybe it was looking for the best way to approach. The door to the pantry was less than five feet away. Slipping my arms under Dag’s, I groaned and hauled him for another yard. When I looked up, the hashok was standing ten feet away, watching.

  It stayed there, rocking side to side.

  “Come on,” I shouted, stabbing the air with the knife. “Come the fuck on!”

  That noise behind me again.

  Then something pricked me on my neck, and my brain said, jugular vein. The world incandesced, and then a filament in my brain burned out, and everything went dark.

  “Welcome home, Elien.”

  Richard’s whisper followed me as I fell.

  DAG (6)

  The world floated in a haze. I had only a blurry recollection of the hashok charging me, grabbing me, and hurling me across the house. When I struck the windows, the world had fragmented. I vaguely remembered sharp bursts of pain, movement, Elien’s labored breathing. My sense of self was coming back together now in bits and pieces. The pain in my head. The shortness of breath. Sharp zaps of lightning ran through my back every time I breathed. I’d hit my head a few times in my life, but I’d never been this disoriented before. The sound of air moving in my lungs was wrong; I could tell that much. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen, a small part of my brain informed me, but then the world disintegrated again, and I had to close my eyes.

  When I opened my eyes the next time, I could see more clearly. The first thing I noticed was Elien lying on the ground next to me. His eyes were closed, his face smushed against the tile, and a tiny bead of blood marked the side of his neck. One hand was outstretched and open; the hunting knife I had given him lay a few inches away, where it had fallen from his grip. The next thing I noticed was the red: a flood of it covered the tile. At first I thought it was Elien’s blood. Then I thought it was mine. Then I caught the bouquet of expensive red wine, and I spotted the broken glass, the corkscrew. Elien must have knocked everything off the counter when he fell.

  A loafer moved into my field of vision, kicking the hunting knife across the tile. Then the loafers came toward me and stopped. An angry shriek broke the stillness. I would have flinched, but I was still so deep in the haze of pain that the noise barely registered.

  “Calm down, Muriel,” Richard said. “They’re both still alive. We’ll have plenty of time to enjoy them.”

  Another shriek answered.

  “I don’t understand why you prefer that form,” Richard said, and the loafers moved away, splashing through the wine as he rounded the counter and moved out of the kitchen. For the moment, I was alone with Elien again. “It only makes you bloodthirsty.”

  The air seemed to warp; it reminded me of a sail filling with wind, the whole world becoming concave for an instant. Then everything was normal again, and a woman’s voice answered, “You’re being self-indulgent. Let’s kill them and be done with it.”

  “Self-indulgent? You’ve spent the last two weeks chasing them, pretending to hunt them, getting just close enough to kill and then letting them escape.”

  “It adds savor. They’re so bland otherwise. We don’t have time for that anymore, though. Let’s be done with them.”

  “Don’t be hasty. I’ve spent over a year nibbling the crumbs of his suffering. I’d like to enjoy a full course now.”

  “He called the police. They’re coming. You’ve got ten minutes, maybe. We need to kill them and be gone.”

  “No,” Richard snapped. “I won’t throw away all those months of listening to him whine and moan.”

  My eyes fell on the knife. It had slid under the cabinets, and it was no more than five feet from where I lay. Bracing myself for the pain, I dragged myself across the tile.

  I stopped almost immediately as the wound in my back flared to life. For a moment, all I could do was lie there, frozen by it, panting, my eyes stinging with tears. The pain ebbed slowly, and I looked at the knife again. Gritting my teeth, I dragged myself forward a few more inches.

  It was worse this time, but somehow I made it a full foot. Then I had to stop. I was on fire, every inch of me, sweat pouring down my face and dampening my shirt. The tile was cool against my cheek, and I focused on that as the pain twisted my gut. When I could breathe without fear of puking, I crawled forward again.

  The pain made me stop. Black pinpricks marked the edges of my vision. The knife was still three feet away, and I had to close my eyes and fight a sob.

  “I don’t know why,” Muriel said, “but you sound like you think you’re in charge.”

  “I am in charge,” Richard said. “This was my plan. I was the one that found Zahra. I was the one who put the thorn in her hand. It’s unfortunate that we had to get rid of her.”

  “She was becoming difficult,” Muriel said. “Unreliable. What else could you do?”

  “If it were up to you, we’d still be fool lights drifting in the bayou. We’d eat a few times a year at most. Do you remember? In a bad year, we might eat only once.”

  “It was never that bad,” Muriel said. “You’re exaggerating.”

  “It wasn’t like this.”

  “No. And I’m not saying it was. But I’m saying you can pretend to be the boss at work, but don’t forget that your game is just a game. I like an easy meal as much as the next, but you’re not lord and master. You should remember that.”

  “The boy will be delicious, Muriel. So much guilt and self-loathing and grief, all of it tangled up so he doesn’t know where to start. What I’ve tasted has been very . . . satisfying. He’ll be exquisite.”

  I pictured Elien’s hair, windswept. I pictured the shock on Elien’s face the first time we were in bed together. I pictured Elien sorting beans, and Elien with an earbud. Elien, the real Elien.

  Holding my breath, I scrabbled forward. My hand closed around the knife. Then I had to stop, trying to listen over the pounding of blood in my ears, trying to keep from puking as the pain turned in my gut.

  “—have it your way, then,” Muriel said. “You always do.”