Jeffrey Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

And maybe I could clap my hands three times and bring Tinker-bell back to life, too. It was just as likely; Brian had lived his whole life on the Dark Path and he couldn't possibly change, not that much. He had to have some other reason for shoehorning into my nest, and sooner or later it would come out. I didn't think he would hurt my family — but I would watch him until I knew for certain what he was doing.

And of course, I thought about Samantha and her threat to tell all. Was it just a threat, an acting out of her large frustration at being alive and well and uneaten? Or would she really talk, tell everyone a vindictive version of what had happened? The moment that awful word «rape» was out, everything changed forever, and not for the better. It would be Dexter in the Docket, ground to a pulp beneath the wheels of the injustice system. It was horrible beyond measure, and completely unfair. No one who knew me could possibly think of me as a leering sex-mad ogre. I had always been a very different kind of ogre. But people believe cliches, even when they're untrue, and the older man with the teen girl qualified as one. It truly wasn't my fault — but who would hear that without a wink and a smirk? I hadn't willingly taken the drugs — would she really punish me for a situation in which I had been the real victim? It was hard to say for sure, but I thought she might. And that would destroy every piece of my carefully constructed life.

But what could I do? I could not avoid the idea that killing her would solve everything — and I could even get her to cooperate by promising to nibble a few small pieces before I finished her off. I wouldn't, of course — yuck — but if a small lie makes somebody happy, where's the harm?

It would never come to that, anyway. It seemed like another great irony, but I couldn't kill Samantha, as much as we both wanted it. Not that I had grown a conscience yet; it was just that it would be totally contrary to the Harry Code, and far too dangerous, too, since she was very much in the spotlight right now, much too closely watched for me to get close. No, it was too risky. I would have to think of some other way to save my life.

But what? The solution would not come to me, and neither would slumber, and the thoughts kept up their leaden tumbling across the soggy floor of my sleep-starved brain. Covens — who cared if it was led by a woman or a man? Kukarov was dead, and the coven was over.

Except for Bobby Acosta. Maybe I could find him and feed him Samantha. And then give him to Deborah. It would cheer them both up.

Debs really needed cheering: She had been acting very weird lately. Did it mean something? Or was it just the emotional hangover from her knife wound?

Knives — could I really give up my Dark Delights forever? For Lily Anne?

Lily Anne: I thought about her for what seemed like a long time, and then suddenly it was morning.

I took Rita's advice and slept late the next morning. I woke up to the sounds of an empty house; a distant drip in the shower, the air conditioner coming on, and the tick of the dishwasher switching gears down the hall in the kitchen. I lay there for a few minutes enjoying the relative quiet and the feeling of dopey fatigue that ran through me from my toes to my tongue. Yesterday had been quite a day and, on the whole, I thought it was a very good thing that I had survived it. My neck was still a little stiff, but the headache was gone and I felt a lot better than I should have — until I remembered Samantha.

So I lay there awhile longer wondering if there was anything at all I could do to persuade her not to talk. There was a very small chance that I could reason with her, I suppose. I had managed it once, in Club Fang's refrigerator, and reached soaring heights of emotive rhetoric I had never touched before. Could I do it again, and would it work on her a second time? I was not sure — and as I mulled my chances that moth-eaten line about "the tongues of men and of angels" popped into my head. I couldn't remember how it ended, but I didn't think it was happy. I wished I'd never read Shakespeare.

I heard the front door open and Rita hustled into the house, home from dropping the children at school. She went through the living room and into the kitchen making all the loud and distinct sounds of someone trying to be quiet. I heard her talking softly to Lily Anne as she changed a diaper, and then she went back into the kitchen and a moment later I heard the coffee machine clear its throat and begin to brew. Soon the smell of fresh coffee drifted into the bedroom, and I began to feel a little bit better. I was home, with Lily Anne, and all was well, at least for now. It was not really a rational feeling, but then, as I was learning, feelings never are, and you might as well enjoy the good ones while you can. There aren't very many of them, and they don't last long.

I sat up on the side of the bed at last, slowly rotating my neck to get the last of the soreness out of it. It didn't work, but it wasn't too bad. I stood up, which was a little harder than it should have been. My legs were stiff and a bit sore, too, and so I tottered into the shower and ran hot water all over myself for ten long and luxurious minutes, and it was a renewed and nearly normal Dexter who finally made his way into his clothes and all the way to the kitchen, where a medley of heavenly smells and sounds told me that Rita was hard at work.

"Oh, Dexter," she said, and she put down the spatula and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "I heard you in the shower, and so I thought — would you like some blueberry pancakes? I had to use the frozen berries, which aren't really as — But how are you feeling? Because it isn't — I could make you eggs instead and freeze the pancakes for — Oh, honey, sit down; you look exhausted."

I made it into a chair with Rita's help and said, "Pancakes would be wonderful," which they were. I ate far too many of them, telling myself that I had earned it, and trying not to listen to the wicked whisper in my inner ear saying that after all, this could be the last time, unless I did something final about Samantha.

After breakfast I sat in the chair and sipped several cups of coffee, in the vain hope that it would live up to the advertisement and fill me with energy. It was very good coffee, but it didn't quite wash away the fatigue, and so I dawdled around the house a bit longer. I sat and held Lily Anne for a while. She threw up on me once, and I thought how strange it was that it didn't bother me. And then she fell asleep in my arms and I just sat for a while longer and enjoyed that, too.

But finally the small and unwelcome voice of duty began to nag at me, and so I put Lily Anne in her basket, gave Rita a kiss, and headed out the door.

Traffic was light, and I let my mind wander a little bit as I headed up Dixie Highway, but as I nosed onto the Palmetto Expressway I began to get a very uneasy feeling that things were not what they should be and I brought Dexter's mighty brain back online and searched for what was wrong. It was a very quick search, not because of the power of my logic, but because of the power of the smell, which was coming from behind me, somewhere in the backseat of my car. It was a terrible smell, an odor of old and unnameable things decomposing and fermenting and growing deader and deader, and I could not say what it might be except that it was awful and getting worse.

I couldn't see anything behind me while driving, even when I tipped the mirror down, and as I drove north to work I pondered, until a school bus wandering across the road brought my attention back to driving. Even in light traffic it does not do to turn your thoughts away from the road, not in Miami, so I rolled down the window and concentrated on getting to work alive.