In the other room, the wail of, “Mommy!”

  “I expected you to block it again.”

  “It’s fine, Lori. I’m fine. I’ll go put him back to sleep.”

  Fabler walked past her, heading for his son’s bedroom, hating that he lied to his wife.

  Because this isn’t fine.

  He touched his stinging cheek, devastated he missed blocking the slap.

  This isn’t fine at all.

  And neither am I.

  TOM

  Los Angeles, California

  “You dated her?” Joan phrased it less like a question and more like a judgmental accusation, similar to a parent saying, “Why did you stick that crayon up your nose?”

  Roy quietly slipped into the kitchen, and Tom wished he could, too.

  He blew out a slow breath. “We went out two or three times.”

  “Was it two or three?”

  “Why does it matter, Joan? This was before I even met you. I don’t question you about the men you dated before me.”

  “So you dated her?”

  “No. Not really. We just went out.”

  “Two or three times.”

  “We weren’t a good match, nothing came of it.”

  Joan put her hands on her hips. “You know I hate this woman. Even more than I hate spiders.”

  “Actually, I thought spiders edged her out.”

  “They don’t. But I would think, when I first mentioned this woman to the man I married, he’d volunteer that you went out two or three times.”

  “After hearing what you thought of her, I saw no positive benefits from bringing that up.”

  “So you hid it from me.”

  “Not mentioning who I dated—”

  “So you dated?”

  “—not mentioning who I saw, casually, a few times, is not hiding something from you. I’m an adult. I have a past. You consider Catherine your nemesis. I didn’t want to say anything. It would have been cruel, and served no purpose.”

  “So you figured I would never find out?”

  Tom nodded. “That was the hope. Yes.”

  “Did you kiss her?”

  Tom tried to look for Roy, who was pretending to study some cereal boxes while standing in the kitchen doorway, listening to every word.

  “I don’t want to discuss this anymore.” Tom winced, hoping it wasn’t too exaggerated. “My hand is killing me.”

  Joan squinted at him, then her eyes got big. “You slept with her.”

  Ah, hell.

  “It was years ago, Joan. I was single.”

  “How many times?”

  “Joan, jealousy is an ugly thing.”

  “How many times did you sleep with her?”

  “I don’t remember. We went out two or three times.”

  “So you slept with her two or three times?”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “How many times, Tom? Tell me.”

  “I don’t understand the question. Do you mean how many times we were intimate on different days? Or how many times total?”

  “That’s a thing?”

  “I’m not hiding this from you, Joan. I just want to give you a true reply.”

  “How many times total.”

  Tom shrugged. “I dunno. Six or seven.”

  “You had sex with Catherine Kolholm six or seven times?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  If we’re not counting oral.

  “How could you do that?”

  Tom stared at Joan and frowned, not speaking but conveying the thought, “You know how I do that. We do that all the time.”

  “She’s a terrible person, Tom. At the Golden Globes she had the waiter practically in tears with her belittling and pointless requests. She sent a water with lemon back because there was a seed in it.”

  “When I knew her, she wasn’t too bad.”

  “She got a handicapped parking sticker after getting a facelift.”

  “Maybe she’s changed. The woman I knew was smart and had a good sense of humor.”

  “Do you ever want to get laid again?”

  “The woman was a beast,” Tom declared. “Like a female Gollum, but uglier. Mean and awful and a pox upon humanity.”

  Joan turned around. “Roy, did you know about this?”

  Roy looked up, startled. “Uh, know about what? I’m in the kitchen, checking out your cereal selection.”

  “Maintain eye contact with me and name a single box of cereal we own.”

  Roy’s face pinched. “Uh… corn flakes?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Was I close? I thought there was some kind of flakes.”

  “No flakes of any kind.”

  “C’mon, man,” Tom whined. “You know I like Lucky Charms.”

  “You still eat that kiddie cereal?”

  “From the guy who eats Trix.”

  “Trix ain’t just for kids, Tom. We been through this.”

  “Does Trish know?” Joan asked, interrupting their attempt to change the subject.

  “Joanie, men don’t tell their wives about all that dirty, nasty shit we did before we got married. If we did, they wouldn’t marry us.”

  “You’re not helping, buddy,” Tom told him.

  Roy nodded and wagged a finger, as if contemplating something profound. “I remember now. Tom told me it was the worst sex he ever had, and she gave him that really bad disease. VTD.”

  “VTD?” Joan asked.

  “Very Tiny Dick.” Roy snorted and slapped his hip. “Ain’t no cure for that shit.”

  No one else laughed.

  Roy cleared his throat. “I’m gonna take Stallone over to my place. What time do I need to be back for the limo?”

  My buddy just keeps digging a deeper hole.

  “Catherine said her limo will be here at ten,” Joan kept her voice steady, but her eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets and kick Tom’s ass.

  “See you guys at two minutes to ten. Good luck, Tom.”

  “Thanks. See you in a few days, Stallone.”

  The Doberman padded over, licking Tom’s face as he scratched the hound’s head. Then the dobie went to Joan, and she gave him a hug.

  “Love you, boy. We’ll be back before you know it. Roy, don’t let Trish feed him junk food.”

  “No junk food in my house, Joanie.”

  “How about the Trix?”

  “Trix ain’t junk food. It’s an important part of a complete breakfast.”

  Roy left to take the dog to his home, and Tom decided he needed to man-up and end this stupidity. He closed the distance between them, reaching for his wife.

  Joan stepped away.

  “C’mon, Joan. I married you. Not Cathy.”

  “You call her Cathy? She doesn’t let anyone call her Cathy.”

  “She didn’t have a problem when I did.”

  “That makes things even worse.”

  “Joan…”

  Joan actually got teary-eyed. “I know I’m being stupid and emotional, Tom. But she’s a clone of Catherine the Great.”

  “You’re a clone of Joan of Arc. You’d kick Catherine the Great’s ass. And you’re everything to me. You’re my ICE, remember?”

  Joan had recently bought Tom a new cell phone, and had programmed herself in as ICE. She explained to Tom that stood for In Case of Emergency, so if something happened to him, rescue workers checking his phone would know to call her.

  Tom thought it was adorable, and for a while it became his pet name for her.

  “Maybe Catherine should be your ICE, not me.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I feel like crying right now, Tom. I’m on the verge. I have no idea why I feel so…”

  Joan trailed off in mid-sentence and put her hand over her mouth, her eyes getting big.

  “Joan? What’s up?”

  “Could I…?”

  “Joan? You’re freaking me out a little.”

  “I’m four days late.”

  “Late for what? A meeting?”

  Then Tom got it.

  They spent the next few minutes Googling how soon a pregnancy test was accurate after a missed period.

  Joan read the results off her phone. “So we can take a test now and it might be accurate, but best results are at least a week after missing a period.”

  “But it might tell us now.”

  “It might tell us now.”

  “We can go get one. We have time.”

  “I already bought some.”

  That surprised Tom. “You did? When?”

  “Right after we said we’d try.”

  This got very real, very fast. “So we can check now.”

  “We can check now.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “Do you have to pee?” Tom asked.

  Joan nodded, but stayed standing where she was.

  “We can wait until after New Mexico, if you want to.”

  Please don’t say yes to that. It would drive me nuts if I didn’t know.

  “Do you want to wait?” she asked.

  “I want to do whatever you want to do. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Should you go, if you’re pregnant?”

  “Bert needs our help,” Joan said.

  “Still…”

  “I may not be pregnant, Tom. And if I am, I’m only a few weeks. The USSR used to impregnate their female athletes before the Olympics so they’d perform better. It’s called abortion doping.”

  “I thought that was just a rumor.”

  “Maybe it is. But being pregnant doesn’t make me an invalid.”

  “I didn’t say that, babe. I just don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks.”

  Fear flashed across her face. “Are we going to change, Tom? If we become parents?”

  “I don’t know.” Tom reached out, and this time Joan walked into his arms.

  A perfect fit.

  “I’m nervous,” she said into his armpit.

  “Me, too.”

  “Would I be a good mom?”

  “You’d be the best mom to ever live. Would I be a good dad?”

  Joan looked up at him. “Meh.”

  The shared laugh made Tom relax a notch. But the tension came back really fast.

  Is this actually happening?

  Could I actually be a father?

  “I’m going to go pee on a stick.”

  “Okay. I’m going to take some ibuprofen.”

  “Meet you back here in two minutes.”

  “Make it ninety seconds.”

  Joan beelined for the bathroom, and Tom headed to the kitchen. He dry-swallowed some over-the-counter pain relievers then headed for the bathroom, waiting outside the door.

  The seconds stretched on into hours.

  Probably not actual hours, but that’s what it felt like.

  Am I ready to be a father?

  Is anyone ever ready?

  Can I be responsible enough to take care of another human being when lately I can barely take care of myself?

  Is it too late to be asking myself these questions?

  Tom knocked. “You okay?”

  The door opened. In Joan’s hand, the White Stick of Destiny.

  “I’m nervous we’re pregnant,” she confided.

  “So am I.”

  “And I’m nervous we’re not.”

  “So am I.”

  They held hands.

  “Jasmine if it’s a girl. Rochester if it’s a boy.”

  “Jasmine is a stripper name.”

  “What’s wrong with becoming an exotic dancer?”

  “Nothing. But if she goes to work at the Rump Shack, what would her dancer name be? Janet?”

  Joan pursed her lips. “I’m betting you have a problem with Rochester, too.”

  “Rochester is a kid who gets his ass kicked all through grade school.”

  “Rochester was my grandfather’s name.”

  “Did he get his ass kicked all through grade school?”

  Joan stuck out her lower lip. “My grandfather was a sensitive man.”

  “Sensitive is code for; everyone used to beat him up. Might as well tattoo PUNCH ME on his forehead right after he’s born.”

  “You have some better names, smart-ass?”

  “Tom if it’s a boy,” Tom said.

  “It’s egotistical to name a kid after yourself.”

  “I’m a raging egomaniac. I can’t help myself.”

  “How about if it’s a girl?”

  “We still go with Tom.”

  Joan made a face. “A girl with a boy’s name?”

  “My friend Jack has a boy’s name. Worked out fine for her.”

  Joan gripped his hand tighter. “Should we look?”

  “We should look.”

  Joan held up the stick, and they looked.

  BERT

  157 Kilometers South of Kirkstown, New Mexico

  They sped through the night like damned souls fleeing hell, and Bert stared out the back window and wondered if the headlights half a mile behind them were the same headlights that had been following them for the last ninety minutes.

  Pain and fatigue are making me paranoid.

  Or maybe I’ve earned the right to be paranoid.

  Or maybe someone is actually after us.

  Dr. Belgium’s wife, Sara, drove, and the molecular biologist sat next to Bert in the back seat of the pickup truck, trying to clean the dirt off of Bert’s road rash. What Bert really needed was a shower, but Frank was keen to get the hell away from his campsite as soon as they could.

  Away from my friends.

  Away from the woman I might be in love with.

  “So they used a a a type of photolithography.”

  “I don’t know what photolithography is.” Bert shifted, and winced.

  His hosts had given him four over-the-counter painkillers, but they hadn’t helped much. Besides the scrapes, Bert also had a whopper of a headache; understandable since he exited the Land Rover via a broken window.

  He double-checked his seatbelt for the third time since they’d left.

  “It’s a microfabrication process, but it can theoretically scale down. I’m guessing they took a photomask of the donor DNA, and and and used a photoresist substrate of amino acids to copy the genome.”

  That sounds close enough. “It’s more complicated, but that’s a good comparison. They only needed to do that with clones who didn’t have viable tissue samples. You obviously understand the principles of cloning.”

  “Of course. Replicating donor cells in host cells. I… um… remember when I I I mentioned using donor DNA to replace the genome in a brain-dead subject?”

  “Turning one person into another person.”

  “Yes yes yes. Well, I actually authored a paper on that, and consulted on a case. The bonding agent I mentioned, it’s a serum that comes from a very unique specimen. Something that utilizes cloning.”

  “We track demons.” Sara eyed Bert in the rearview mirror. She had brownish hair streaked with grey, and wore black Chuck Taylors, jeans, and a black Motörhead hoodie. “They can imitate other life forms.”

  Demons?

  Are my hosts crackpots?

  “Maybe we don’t unload the whole demon story on our our our new friend until I finish debriding his wound.”

  Sara nodded. “Right.” She itched the back of her hand, which Bert noted was scarred. “We normally never talk about it with people. We don’t want to sound crazy. My son, our son, he’s with my parents. We lied to them, said we were going on a cruise. If we told them about Esbat, they’d probably try to take him from us. We can trade war stories later.”

  Bert was happy to change the subject. He wanted to trust these two. “I can’t thank you both enough for saving me back there. And for immediately accepting me.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, Bert. Tell Bert about your cloning experience, honey.”

  Frank nodded. “Many years ago, I I I was approached to consult on a proposed experiment to clone a human being. A warrior from ancient times, his DNA taken from his tomb. I wasn’t part of the DNA recovery procedure, but photolithography makes sense.”

  “Who was the warrior?”

  Frank said the name, and Bert whistled in recognition. “How’d he turn out?”

  “I never met him, or the scientist who did it. But I heard the clone exceeded expectations.”

  “He didn’t become a psychotic, unstoppable killing machine?”

  Frank shrugged.

  More clones. And all this time I thought I was part of a small, special group.

  “We believed there were only twenty clones of famous people. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that there are more. Was he the only one?”

  Frank nodded. “We didn’t have any more serum. That came from a facility known as Monstrum. I don’t know what happened to the clone after I left the project. That team and I had… philosophical differences.”

  “Science versus ethics. An age old conflict.”

  “Parents who have lost a child, having the chance to to to bring them back. Cloning brilliant minds, like Stephen Hawking or Marie Curie, who died before they could contribute more to their fields. But at the same time, dictatorships growing armies of slaves. The rich and powerful making copies of themselves.”

  “That one hits home.”

  “There are moral implications. It isn’t as black and white as bringing back an extinct dodo.”

  Bert nodded. “When I cloned Stosh, I got his DNA from some dried skin preserved in a museum. Lots of trial and error, but it isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. Biology does most of the work. But you’re right, I wasn’t considering the morality. I did it to understand the process, and to better understand myself. At the same time, Stosh is the only one of his kind. He’s probably lonely.”

  “I love this bird.” Sara patted the dodo on the head. Stosh was buckled into his safety harness, perched on the front seat. “And he’s smart. He opened the glove compartment.”

  “He gets into all sorts of trouble on my ranch. And he can outrun the ostriches. I taught him a few tricks. Stosh, speak.”

  Stosh turned his large head Bert’s way and said, “Doooo-doooo.”

  Sara laughed, obviously delighted. “He sounds like a baritone pigeon.”

  “Stosh, are you a good bird?”

  Stosh nodded, bobbing his head up and down several times.

  “Stosh, play dead.”