Full Dark, No Stars

It al went exactly as she had visualized: the arrival, the tip added to the credit card slip, the walk up the flower-lined path (she asked Manuel to stay, il uminating her with his headlights, until she was inside), the sound of Fritzy meowing as she tilted the mailbox and fished the emergency key off its hook. Then she was inside and Fritzy was twining anxiously around her feet, wanting to be picked up and stroked, wanting to be fed. Tess did those things, but first she locked the front door behind her, then set the burglar alarm for the first time in months. When she saw ARMED flash in the little green window above the keypad, she at last began to feel something like her true self. She looked at the kitchen clock and was astounded to see it was only quarter past eleven.

While Fritzy was eating his Fancy Feast, she checked the doors to the backyard and the side patio, making sure they were both locked. Then the windows. The alarm’s command-box was supposed

to tel you if something was open, but she didn’t trust it. When she was positive everything was secure, she went to the front-hal closet and took down a box that had been on the top shelf so long there was a scrim of dust on the top.

Five years ago there had been a rash of burglaries and home invasions in northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts. The bad boys were mostly drug addicts hooked on eighties, which was

what its many New England fans cal ed OxyContin. Residents were warned to be particularly careful and “take reasonable precautions.” Tess had no strong feelings about handguns pro or con, nor had

she felt especial y worried about strange men breaking in at night (not then), but a gun seemed to come under the heading of reasonable precautions, and she had been meaning to educate herself about

pistols for the next Wil ow Grove book, anyway. The burglary scare had seemed like the perfect opportunity.

She went to the Hartford gun store that rated best on the Internet, and the clerk had recommended a Smith & Wesson .38 model he cal ed a Lemon Squeezer. She bought it mostly because she liked

that name. He also told her about a good shooting range on the outskirts of Stoke Vil age. Tess had dutiful y taken her gun there once the forty-eight-hour waiting period was up and she was actual y able to obtain it. She had fired off four hundred rounds or so over the course of a week, enjoying the thril of banging away at first but quickly becoming bored. The gun had been in the closet ever since, stored in its box along with fifty rounds of ammunition and her carry permit.

She loaded it, feeling better— safer —with each fil ed chamber. She put it on the kitchen counter, then checked the answering machine. There was one message. It was from Patsy McClain next door.

“I didn’t see any lights this evening, so I guess you decided to stay over in Chicopee. Or maybe you went to Boston? Anyway, I used the key behind the mailbox and fed Fritzy. Oh, and I put your mail on the hal table. Al adverts, sorry. Cal me tomorrow before I go to work, if you’re back. Just want to know you got in safe.”

“Hey, Fritz,” Tess said, bending over to stroke him. “I guess you got double rations tonight. Pretty clever of y—”

Wings of grayness came over her vision, and if she hadn’t caught hold of the kitchen table, she would have gone sprawling ful length on the linoleum. She uttered a cry of surprise that sounded faint

and faraway. Fritzy twitched his ears back, gave her a narrow, assessing look, seemed to decide she wasn’t going to fal over (at least not on him), and went back to his second supper.

Tess straightened up slowly, holding onto the table for safety’s sake, and opened the fridge. There was no tuna salad, but there was cottage cheese with strawberry jam. She ate it eagerly, scraping

the plastic container with her spoon to get every last curd. It was cool and smooth on her hurt throat. She wasn’t sure she could have eaten flesh, anyway. Not even tuna out of a can.

She drank apple juice straight from the bottle, belched, then trudged to the downstairs bathroom. She took the gun along, curling her fingers outside the trigger guard, as she had been taught.

There was an oval magnifying mirror standing on the shelf above the washbasin, a Christmas gift from her brother in New Mexico. Written in gold-gilt script above it were the words PRETTY ME. The

Old Tess had used it for tweezing her eyebrows and doing quick fixes to her makeup. The new one used it to examine her eyes. They were bloodshot, of course, but the pupils looked the same size. She

turned off the bathroom light, counted to twenty, then turned it back on and watched her pupils contract. That looked okay, too. So, probably no skul fracture. Maybe a concussion, a light concussion, but—