“Yes!” She opened even wider, bucking her hips at his hand. “Yes, Kane! Thank you, Kane!”

“You’re welcome, ichuta’a. Cum.”

She did, spasming wildly on his finger, and then sagging breathlessly back into her seat. When he held up his hand, she took his wrist and sucked her oils from him without him needing to speak a word.

“And if you’re very good,” Kane said mildly, watching her lips work around his knuckle. “I’ll give you back your eye.”

She started and stared at him.

He pulled his hand from her slack grip and open mouth and gave her cheek a pat. “Raven’s right about me,” he told her. “I take very good care of my tools. What do you say?”

“Thank you, Kane,” she whispered. She still looked stunned, but she was beginning to smile. “I’ll make you so proud of me! I’ll fuck a thousand men for you! Oh, thank you, Kane!”

Kane leaned back in his seat and smiled at Raven’s face in the forward mirror. She smiled back at him and he closed his eyes to doze. Everything was going to be fine.

*

She never would have thought waking up after only five hours of sleep could feel so good, but then, Tagen had a unique methodology. He was nibbling at her stomach. Her toes were curling even before her eyes were open. She laughed and ran her fingers lazily through his hair. “Already?” she sighed.

“I tried to break the news gently,” he said, and rolled away to stand.

She watched him go through satisfaction-slitted eyes, listening to her body still hum its happiness from the night’s work. “Ancient Jotan cure,” she said accusingly.

He laughed and went to release Grendel from the bathroom, calling back, “Ah, but it did work,” before shutting the door on her.

Daria indulged herself in a stretch and remained sprawling across the bed until the sound of water thundered up through the wall and Grendel came leaping up to lie with her. It was too tempting to shut her eyes again with a cat purring at her side. She found the remote control for the TV on the bedside table and switched it on. After thumbing through the cartoons and perky morning shows aimed at hausfraus, she finally found a local station broadcasting the news.

Suicide bombers in the Middle East, baby boomers bitching about pension fraud, gas prices still going up—just your basic news. No new bodies, or rather, no new unexplained cases of head trauma. There were plenty of bodies. Lots of gang violence going on over on the East coast, school shooting in the Midwest somewhere, some prostitute slashings down in California. Lots and lots of bodies.

Daria pulled Grendel onto her lap and petted him while the steady stream of gore washed over the screen, somberly narrated and subtitled and reduced to a sound bite. As she watched, she experienced an odd doubling effect in her own mind. The images were certainly no different from hundreds of others Daria had seen, but suddenly she was seeing it all through two sets of eyes. There was the Daria who was no stranger to morning news reports, to the smoke and riot of foreign streets, to crying children, to courtroom chaos and stone-faced defendants in clean navy suits. But there was also the Daria who saw all this as Tagen must see it, as an unbelievable deluge of violence. And for a moment, Daria was a little shocked with herself that she could watch this with even a shred of indifference.

She understood all of a sudden that this was how Tagen’s prisoner and all the others like him were able to make their money. Because no one was appalled anymore. Everyone turned on the news and watched blood and bombs and rubble while they drank their coffee and ate their doughnuts, and then they went to work like all the world was at rest. Even the people reporting the news acted like the things they were saying was happening in some other dimension, utterly removed from consequence. Oh yeah, six people died in Allan’s Pass this morning when a disgruntled office worker brought an automatic rifle to his company picnic, and in other news, the budget crisis at the planned community hospital worsens when administrators mislabeled donations meant to provide waiting room amenities. Like there was any comparison at all between the lives of six people and the loss of a coffee machine.

Daria put the remote down and picked the cat up, pressing her face into Grendel’s ample sides and breathing in through a filter of fur. Grendel hung heavy in her grip, his loud purrs effectively smothering the continued babble from the television.

When she let him drop again in the swaddled sheet around her hips, the desk jockeys were talking about the motel murders in Pinesborough. One of them even brought up the bar in Blue Ridge and the movie theater in Hillmark. “Is it just me,” this prescient little twerp asked of his co-anchor, “or is the heat wave here just making people crazy?”

“Don’t I wish, pal,” Daria muttered. “Crazy guys get caught.” She switched off the TV and tossed the remote off onto the floor, out of sight and therefore out of mind, like all the content it had just shown her.

What had E’Var been up to yesterday if it hadn’t been killing people, though? She was starting to think that maybe he really had headed back to his ship, all his little lunchboxes full up with brains. In which case, he might have traveled all through the night, loaded up, and hit that starry road by now.

Tagen came back into the bedroom with one towel around his waist and another rubbing at his damp hair. “What news?” he asked crisply.

“None.”

“Mm.” Tagen scowled at the dark screen, shaking his head-towel out and draping it over the back of the room’s complementary chair. “Well, what thoughts?”

“This is your balliwhack, not mine.”

“My what?”

“What I mean,” she said with a sigh, “is that chasing bad guys is what you do. You need your kitchen counters scrubbed, that’s when you ask my advice. Besides…I’m fresh out of ideas.”

There had been a frown growing on him from her first words, but now it smoothed away and he regarded her with open sympathy. At last, he even smiled faintly. “There is an ancient Jotan cure for lack of inspiration.”

“I’ll just bet there is.” Daria heaved Grendel off her lap and stood up, earning his full and appreciative attention as she walked naked to the bathroom door. “Probably the same cure for nervous energy, right?”

“And for lethargy, come to think.” Tagen removed his towel and bent to collect his uniform. “I suppose, seeing as the ancients knew so few females and so many ills, it only seemed sensible to have one common cure.”

“Kinda makes a girl wonder what they prescribed for hyper-sexuality.” She closed the door on his thoughtful expression and her own teasing smile soon faded. She met her reflection’s eyes in the mirror, but not for long. The bathroom was too small to share between two naked women, especially when they were both in such disturbing moods.

She stepped into the shower and turned on the water. Tagen liked his cool and Daria kept it there, scrubbing at the worst of herself with the little soap he’d left for her.

What thoughts? In other words, where to? Should she finish doubling back and re-checking all the hotels they’d passed since yesterday? Should she turn back around and head west again, on the grounds that he wouldn’t turn off onto another road until after he’d killed? Should she try to get in between him and his ship?

She concentrated and brought, with effort, a mental image of the map and where E’Var’s first kills had been. He’d been on foot and headed east, which meant his ship had to be reasonably close and to the west. If he really wanted to head home, the best way was still to go west to I-5 and then south to Highway 20. And that would be Daria’s best route, too. There might be shortcuts somewhere, but she didn’t think E’Var would use them. He hadn’t so far, anyway. She didn’t think his driver had a map.