The Servants of Twilight

Both the cruise and the shop had radically changed her life.

And if spending too many evenings doing paperwork was better than working as a waitress, it was immeasurably better than the two years of her life that had preceded her jobs at the diner and Chez Lavelle. The Lost Years. That was how she thought of that time, now far in the past: the bleak, miserable, sad and stupid Lost Years.

Compared to that period of her life, paperwork was a pleasure, a delight, a veritable carnival of fun…

She had been at her desk more than an hour when she realized that Joey had been exceptionally quiet ever since she'd come into the den. Of course, he was never a noisy child. Often he played by himself for hours, hardly making a sound. But after the unnerving encounter with the old woman this afternoon, Christine was still a little jumpy, and even this perfectly ordinary silence suddenly seemed strange and threatening. She wasn't exactly frightened. Just anxious. If anything happened to Joey.

She put down her pen and switched off the softly humming adding machine.

She listened.

Nothing.

In an echo chamber of memory, she could hear the old woman's voice: He's got to die, he's got to die.

She rose, left the den, quickly crossed the living room, went down the hall to the boy's bedroom.

The door was open, the light on, and he was there, safe, playing on the floor with their dog, Brandy, a sweet-faced and infinitely patient golden retriever.

"Hey, Mom, wanna play Star Wars with us? I'm Han Solo, and Brandy's my buddy, Chewbacca the Wookie. You could be the princess if you want."

Brandy was sitting in the middle of the floor, between the bed and the sliding closet doors. He was wearing a baseball cup emblazoned with the words RETURN OF THE JEDI, and his long furry ears hung out from the sides of it. Joey had also strapped a bandoleer of plastic bullets around the pooch, plus a holster containing a futuristic-looking plastic gun. Panting, eyes bright, Brandy was taking it all in stride; he even seemed to be smiling.

"He makes a great Wookie," Christine said.

"Wanna play?"

"Sorry, Skipper, but I've got an awful lot of work to do. I just stopped by to see if. if you were okay."

"Well, what happened is that we almost got vaporized by an empire battle cruiser," Joey said." But we're okay now."

Brandy snuffled in agreement.

She smiled at Joey." Watch out for Darth Vader."

"Oh, yeah, sure, always. We're being super careful cause we know he's in this part of the galaxy somewhere."

"See you in a little while."

She took only one step toward the door before Joey said, "Mom? Are you afraid that crazy old lady's going to show up again?

Christine turned to him." No, no, she said, although that was precisely what had been in her mind." She can't possibly know who we are or where we live."

Joey's eyes were even a more brilliant shade of blue than usual; they met her own eyes unwaveringly, and there was disquiet in them." I told her my name, Mom. Remember? She asked me, and so I told her my name."

"Only your first name."

He frowned." Did I?"

"You just said, 'Joey."

'Yeah. That's right."

"Don't worry, honey. You'll never see her again. That's all over and done with. She was just a sad old woman who-"

"What about our license plate?"

" What about it?"

"Well, see, if she got the number, maybe there's some way she can use it. To find out who we are. Like they sometimes do on those detective shows on TV."

That possibility disconcerted her, but she said, "I doubt it. I think only policemen can track down a car's owner from the license number."

" But just maybe," the boy said worriedly.

"We pulled away from her so fast she didn't have time to memorize the number. Besides, she was hysterical. She wasn't thinking clearly enough to study the license plate. Like I told you, it's all over and done with. Really. Okay?"

He hesitated a moment, then said, "Okay. But, Mom, I been thinking.

"

"What?"

"That crazy old lady. could she've been. a witch?"

Christine almost laughed, but she saw that he was seriout She suppressed all evidence of her amusement, put on a sober

expression that matched the grave look on his face, and said, "Oh, I'm sure she wasn't a witch."

"I don't mean like Broom Hilda. I mean a real witch. A real witch wouldn't need our license number, you know? She wouldn't need anything.

She'd sniff us out. There's no place in the whole universe where you can hide when there's a witch after you. Witches have magic powers."

He was either already certain that the old woman was a witch or was rapidly convincing himself of it. Either way, he was scaring himself unnecessarily because, after all, they really never would see her again.