He wanted to be long gone from the area when the Laguna Beach Police arrived, which they would-and soon. Being caught in the aftermath of the rave debacle would tie them up too long, maybe just long enough so they would lose their one and only chance at getting the drop on Ticktock.

"Where you going?" Connie asked.

"The Green House."

"Yeah. Maybe Sammy's still there."

"Sammy?"

"The b.u.m. That was his name."

"Oh, yeah. And the talking dog."

"Talking dog?" she said.

"Well, maybe he doesn't talk, but he's got something to tell us we need to know, that's for d.a.m.n sure, and maybe he does does talk, what the h.e.l.l, who knows any more, it's a crazy world, a crazy d.a.m.n night. There are talking animals in fairy tales, why not a talking dog in Laguna Beach?" Harry realized he was babbling, but he was driving so fast and recklessly that he didn't want to take his eyes off the road even to glance at Connie and see if she was giving him a skeptical look. She didn't sound worried about his sanity when she said, "What's the plan?" talk, what the h.e.l.l, who knows any more, it's a crazy world, a crazy d.a.m.n night. There are talking animals in fairy tales, why not a talking dog in Laguna Beach?" Harry realized he was babbling, but he was driving so fast and recklessly that he didn't want to take his eyes off the road even to glance at Connie and see if she was giving him a skeptical look. She didn't sound worried about his sanity when she said, "What's the plan?"

"I think we've got a narrow window of opportunity."

"Because he has to rest now and then. Like he told you on the car radio."

"Yeah. Especially after something like this. So far there's always been an hour or more between his ... appearances."

"Manifestations."

"Whatever."

After a few turns they were back in residential neighborhoods, working through Laguna toward the Pacific Coast Highway.

A police car and an ambulance, emergency beacons flashing, shot past them on a cross street, almost certainly answering a call to the warehouse.

"Fast response," Connie said.

"Someone with a car phone must have dialed 911."

Maybe help would arrive in time to save the girl who had lost an arm. Maybe the arm could even be saved, sewn back on. Yeah, and maybe Mother Goose was real.

Harry had been buoyant because they had escaped the Pause and the rave. But his adrenaline high faded swiftly as he recalled, too vividly, how savagely the golem had torn off the young woman's slender arm.

Despair crept back in at the edges of his thoughts.

"If there's a window of opportunity while he rests or even sleeps," Connie said, "how can we possibly find him fast enough?"

"Not with one of Nancy Quan's portraits, that's for sure. No time for that approach any more." She said, "I think next time he manifests, he'll kill us, no more playing around."

"I think so, too."

"Or at least kill me. Then you the time after that."

"By dawn. That's one promise our little boy will keep."

They were both silent for a moment, somber.

"So where does that leave us?" she asked.

"Maybe the b.u.m in front of The Green House-"

"Sammy."

"-maybe he knows something that will help us. Or if not . . . then . . . h.e.l.l, I don't know. It looks hopeless, doesn't it?"

"No," she said sharply. "Nothing's hopeless. Where there's life, there's hope. Where there's hope, it's always worth trying, worth going on."

He wheeled around another corner from one street full of dark houses to another, straightened out the van, let up on the accelerator a little, and looked at her in astonishment. "Nothing's hopeless? What's happened to you?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It's still happening."

6.

Although they had spent at least half of the hour-long Pause on the run before they had wound up in the warehouse at the end of that canyon, they didn't need nearly as long to get back to where they had started from. According to Connie's wrist.w.a.tch, they reached the coast highway less than five minutes after commandeering the nitrous-oxide dealers' wheels, partly because they took a more direct return route and partly because Harry drove fast enough to scare even her. In fact, when they slid to a stop in front of The Green House, with some still-unbroken Christmas lights clinking noisily along the sides of the van, the time was just thirty-five seconds past 1:37 in the morning. That was little more than eight minutes since the Pause had both begun and ended at 1:29, which meant they had taken about three minutes to fight their way out of the crowded warehouse and seize their transportation at gunpoint-though it sure had seemed a lot longer.

The tow truck and the Volvo, which had been frozen in the southbound lane, were gone. When time had started up again, their drivers had continued on with no realization that anything unusual had happened. Other traffic was moving north and south.

Connie was relieved to see Sammy standing on the sidewalk in front of The Green House. He was gesticulating wildly, arguing with the permed host in the Armani suit and hand-painted silk tie. One of the waiters was standing in the doorway, apparently prepared to help the boss if the confrontation got physical.

When Connie and Harry got out of the van, the host saw them and turned away from Sammy.

"You!" he said. "My G.o.d, it's you!" He came toward them purposefully, almost angrily, as if they had left without paying their check.

Bar patrons and other employees were at the windows, watching. Connie recognized some of them as the people who had been watching her and Harry with Sammy and the dog, and who had been frozen there, staring fixedly, after the Pause hit. They were no longer as rigid as stone, but they were still watching with fascination.

"What's going on here?" the host asked as he approached, an edge of hysteria in his voice. "How did that happen, where did you go? What is this . . . this . . . this van!" Connie had to remind herself that the man had seen them vanish in what seemed to him a split second. The dog had yelped and nipped the air and plunged for the shrubbery, alerting them that something was happening, which had spooked Sammy into sprinting for the alley. But Connie and Harry had remained on the sidewalk in full view of the people at the restaurant windows, the Pause had hit, they had been forced to run for their lives, then the Pause had ended without them where they originally had been on the sidewalk, and to the onlookers it had seemed as if two people had vanished into thin air. Only to turn up eight minutes later in a white van decorated with strings of red and green Christmas lights.

The host's exasperation and curiosity were understandable.

If their window of opportunity for finding and dealing with Ticktock had not been so small, if the ticking seconds had not been leading them inexorably closer to sudden death, the uproar in front of the restaurant might even have been funny. h.e.l.l, it was was funny, but that didn't mean she and Harry could take the time to laugh at it. Maybe later. If they lived. funny, but that didn't mean she and Harry could take the time to laugh at it. Maybe later. If they lived.

"What is this, what happened here, what's going on?" the host demanded. "I can't make heads or tails out of what your raving lunatic over there is telling me."

By "raving lunatic," he meant Sammy.

"He's not our raving lunatic," Harry said.

"Yes he is," Connie reminded Harry, "and you better go talk to him. I'll handle this." She was half afraid that Harry-as painfully aware of their time limit as she was-might pull his revolver on the host and threaten to blow his teeth out the back of his head if he didn't shut up and get inside. As much as she approved of Harry taking a more aggressive approach to certain problems, there was a proper time and place for aggression, and this was not it. Harry went off to talk with Sammy.

Connie put one arm around the host's shoulders and escorted him up the walkway to the front door of his restaurant, speaking in a soft but authoritative voice, informing him that she and Detective Lyon were in the middle of important and urgent police business, and sincerely a.s.suring him that she would return to explain everything, even what might seem to him inexplicable, "just as soon as the ongoing situation is resolved."

Considering that it was traditionally Harry's job to calm and placate people, her job to upset them, she had a lot of success with the restauranteur. She had no intention of ever returning to explain anything whatsoever to him, and she had no idea how he thought she could explain people vanishing into thin air. But he calmed down, and she persuaded him to go inside his restaurant with the bodyguard-waiter who was standing in the doorway.

She checked the shrubbery but confirmed what she already knew: the dog was not hiding there any more. He was gone.

She joined Harry and Sammy on the sidewalk in time to hear the hobo say, "How should I know where he lives? He's an alien, he's a long way from his planet, he must have a s.p.a.ceship hidden around here somewhere."

More patiently than Connie expected, Harry said, "Forget that stuff, he's no alien. He-" A dog barked, startling them.

Connie spun around and saw the flop-eared mutt. He was uphill, just turning the corner at the south end of the block. Following him were a woman and a boy of about five. As soon as the dog saw that he had gotten their attention, he s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of one cuff of the boy's jeans, and with his teeth impatiently pulled him along. After a couple of steps he let go, ran toward Connie, stopped halfway between his people and hers, barked at her, barked at the woman and boy, barked at Connie again, then just sat there looking left and right and left again, as if to say, Well, haven't I done enough? Well, haven't I done enough?

The woman and the boy appeared to be curious but frightened. The mother was attractive in a way, and the child was cute, neatly and cleanly dressed, but they both had the wary and haunted look of people who knew the streets too well.

Connie approached them slowly, with a smile. When she pa.s.sed the dog, he got off his b.u.t.t and padded along at her side, panting and grinning.

There was a quality of mystery and awe about the moment, and Connie knew that whatever connection they were about to make was going to mean life or death to her and Harry, maybe to all of them.

She had no idea what she was going to say to them until she was close enough to speak: "Have you had . . . also also had . . . a strange experience lately?" The woman blinked at her in surprise. "Strange experience? Oh, yes. Oh my, yes." had . . . a strange experience lately?" The woman blinked at her in surprise. "Strange experience? Oh, yes. Oh my, yes."

PART THREE.

A Scary Little Cottage in the Woods

Faraway in China, the people sometimes say, life is often bitter and all too seldom gay.

Bitter as dragon tears, great cascades of sorrow flood down all the years, drowning our tomorrows.

Faraway in China, the people also say, life is sometimes joyous if all too often gray.

Although life is seasoned with bitter dragon tears, seasoning is just a spice within our brew of years.

Bad times are only rice, tears are one more flavor, that gives us sustenance, something we can savor.

- The Book of Counted Sorrows The Book of Counted Sorrows

SIX.

1.

Now they know.

He is a good dog, good dog, good.

They are all together now. The woman and the boy, the stinky man, the not-so-stinky man, and the woman without a boy. All of them smelling of the touch of the thing-that-will-kill-you, which is why he knew they had to be together.

They know it, too. They know why they are together. They stand in front of the people food place, talking to each other, talking fast, all excited, sometimes all talking at once, while the women and the boy and the not-so-stinky man are always sure to keep the stinky man up-wind from them. They keep stooping down to pet him and scratch behind his ears and tell him he's a good dog, good, and they say other nice things about him that he can't really understand. This is the best. It is so good to be petted and scratched and liked by people who will, he is pretty sure, not set his fur on fire, and by people who do not have any cat smell on them, none.

Once, long after the little girl who called him Prince, there were some people who took him into their place and fed him and were nice to him, called him Max, but they had a cat. Big cat. Mean. The cat was called Fluffy. Max was nice to Fluffy. Max never once chased Fluffy. In those days Max never chased cats. Well, hardly ever. Some cats, he liked. But Fluffy did not like Max and did not want Max in the people place, so sometimes Fluffy stole Max's food, and other times Fluffy peed in Max's water bowl. During the day when the nice people were gone from their place to some other place, Max and Fluffy were left alone, and Fluffy would screech, all crazy and spitting, and scare Max and chase him around the place. Or jump off high things onto Max. Big cat. Screeching. Spitting. Crazy. So Max understood that it was Fluffy's place, not Max's and Fluffy's place, just Fluffy's, so he went away from the nice people and was just Fella again. Ever since, he worries that when he finds nice people who want to take him into their place and feed him forever, they will have cat smell on them, and when he goes to their place with them and walks in the door with them, there will be Fluffy. Big. Mean. Crazy.

So now it is nice that none none of these people has any cat smell, because if one of them wants to be a family with him, he will be safe, and he won't have to worry about pee in his water bowl. After a while, they are so excited talking to each other that they aren't petting him so much and saying how good he is, so he gets bored. Yawns. Lies down. Might sleep. He is tired. Busy day, being a good dog. of these people has any cat smell, because if one of them wants to be a family with him, he will be safe, and he won't have to worry about pee in his water bowl. After a while, they are so excited talking to each other that they aren't petting him so much and saying how good he is, so he gets bored. Yawns. Lies down. Might sleep. He is tired. Busy day, being a good dog.

But then he sees the people in the food place, looking out the windows of the food place. Interesting. At the windows, looking out. Looking at him.

Maybe they think he is cute.

Maybe they want to give him food.

Why wouldn't wouldn't they want to give him food? they want to give him food?

So he gets up and pads to the food place. Head high. Prance a little. Wag the tail. They like that. At the door, he waits. n.o.body opens it. He puts one paw on it. Waits. n.o.body. He scratches. n.o.body.

He goes out where the people at the window can see him. He wags his tail. He tilts his head, p.r.i.c.ks up one ear. They see him. He knows they see him.

He goes to the door again. Waits. Waits.

Waits.

Scratches. n.o.body.

Maybe they don't know he wants food. Or maybe they're scared of him, think he's a bad dog. He doesn't look like a bad dog. How could they be scared? Don't they know when to be scared, when not? He would never jump off high places on top of them or pee in their water bowls. Stupid people. Stupid.

Finally he decides he's not going to get any food, so he goes back to the nice people he brought together. On his way he keeps his head up, prances, wags his tail, just to show the people at the window what they're missing.

When he gets back to the women and the boy and the stinky man and the not-so-stinky man, something is wrong. He can feel it and smell it.

They are scared. This is not new. They have all been scared since he first smelled each of them. But this is a different scared. Worse scared.

And they have a little trace of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. Animals get that smell sometimes, when they're old, when they're very tired and sick. People, not so often. Though he knows a place where people have that smell. He was there earlier in the night with the woman and the boy.

Interesting.

But bad interesting.

He is worried that these nice people have even a little bit of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. What is wrong with them? Not sick. Maybe the stinky man, sick a little, but not the rest of them. Not old, either.