Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

"If you were my mother, I wouldn't be here."

These were the two most important women in the world to me; I loved each of them in a different way, and declining to do what they wanted, even in the interest of doing the right thing, was difficult.

The candlelight burnished their faces to the same golden glow, and they regarded me with an identical anxiety, as though by virtue of their female intuition they knew things that I could not perceive even with my sixth sense.

From the CD player, Elvis crooned, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" I consulted my wristwatch. "It's August fifteenth." When I tried to get to my feet, Stormy didn't restrain me as she had done previously. She, too, rose from her chair.

I said, "Terri, I guess you'll have to cover for me on the first shift- or get Poke to come in if he's willing."

"What-you can't cook and save the world at the same time?"

"Not unless you want the bacon burnt. Sorry to give you such short notice."

Terri accompanied us to the door. She hugged Stormy, then me. She boxed one of my ears. "You be here day after tomorrow, on time, at the griddle, flippin' those cakes, or I'm going to demote you to fountain jockey."

ACCORDING TO THE BIG DIGITAL SIGN AT THE BANK OF America, the temperature had fallen to a comparatively chilly ninety degrees here on the side of midnight when broomsticks are licensed to fly.

A lazy breeze stirred through town, repeatedly dying and rising again, as though rust inhibited the mechanisms of the wind gods. Hot and dry, it traveled in crisp and fitful whispers among ficuses, palms, and jacarandas.

The streets of Pico Mundo were quiet. When the breeze held its breath, I could hear the click of the switches in the traffic-signal control boxes as the lights changed from green to yellow to red at the intersections.

As we walked to Stormy's apartment, we remained alert, half expecting Bob Robertson to pop like a jack-in-the-box from behind a parked car, out of a doorway.

Other than the wind-licked leaves, the only movement was the dart-and-swoop of a swarm of bats pursuing a flurry of moths through the glow of a streetlamp, to the moon, and then out past Cassiopeia.

Stormy lives three blocks from the Pico Mundo Grille. We held hands and walked in silence.

My course was set irrevocably. In spite of her objections, she knew as well as I did that I had no choice but to do whatever I could to help Chief Porter stop Robertson before he committed the slaughter that had drenched my dreams for three years.

Anything that could be said on the subject now would be useless repetition. And here on the dark side of a threatening dawn, small talk had no charm.

The old, two-story Victorian house had been divided into four apartments. Stormy lives in the ground-floor unit on the right.

We didn't expect Robertson to be waiting there for us. Though he had somehow learned who I was, it didn't follow that he would easily discover Stormy's address.

If he was lying in wait for me, my apartment over Rosalia Sanchez's garage was a better bet than Stormy's place.

Prudence, however, made us cautious as we entered the foyer and then her apartment. Inside, the cool air had a faint peach scent. We left the Mojave far behind us when we closed the door.

She has three rooms, a bath, and a kitchen. Switching on lights, we went directly to her bedroom, where she keeps her 9-mm pistol.

She ejected the magazine, checked it to be sure that it was fully loaded, and snapped it back into the weapon.

I am wary of any gun, anywhere, anytime-except when it's in Stormy's hand. She could sit with her finger on the detonation button of a nuclear weapon, and I would feel safe enough to nap.

A quick check of the windows revealed that they were locked, as she had left them.

No boogeyman had taken up residence in any of the closets.

While Stormy brushed her teeth and changed for bed, I called Green Moon Lanes and listened to a recorded message regarding their hours, services, and prices. They opened for business at 11:00 a.m. Thursday through Sunday, and at 1:00 P.M. Monday through Wednesday.

The earliest that Robertson could walk into the bowling center with murder in mind was when they unlocked the doors at one o'clock.

Two multiplex cinemas with a total of twenty screens serve the greater Pico Mundo area. By phone, I learned that the movie to which Viola had intended to take her daughters was playing at two theaters in only one multiplex. I made a mental note of the show times, the earliest of which was 1:10p.m.

In the bedroom, I turned down the bedclothes, took off my shoes, and stretched out atop the thin blanket, waiting for Stormy

She has furnished her humble home with items from thrift shops run by Goodwill and the Salvation Army; however, the look is neither shabby nor without character. She has a talent for eclectic design and for discerning the magic in objects that others might see as merely old or peculiar, or even grotesque.

Floor lamps featuring silk shades with beaded fringes, chairs in the Stickley style paired with plump Victorian footstools upholstered in tapestries, Maxfield Parrish prints, colorful carnival-glass vases and bibelots: The mix should not work, but it does. Her rooms are the most welcoming that I have ever seen.

Time seems suspended in this place.

In these rooms I am at peace. I forget my worries. The problems of pancakes and poltergeists are lifted from me.

Here I cannot be harmed.

Here I know my destiny and am content with it.

Here Stormy lives, and where she lives, I flourish.

Above her bed, behind glass, in a frame, is the card from the fortune-telling machine: you are destined to be together forever.

Four years ago, on the midway of the county fair, a gaudy contrivance called Gypsy Mummy had waited in a shadowy back corner of an arcade tent filled with unusual games and macabre attractions.

The machine had resembled an old-fashioned phone booth and had stood seven feet high. The lower three feet were entirely enclosed. The upper four feet featured glass on three sides.

In the glass portion sat a dwarfish female figure attired in a Gypsy costume complete with garish jewelry and colorful headscarf. Her gnarled, bony, withered hands rested on her thighs, and the green of her fingernails looked less like polish than like mold.

A plaque at her feet claimed that this was the mummified corpse of a Gypsy dwarf. In eighteenth-century Europe, she had been renowned for the accuracy of her prognostications and foretellings.

The mottled skin of her face stretched tight over the skull. The eyelids were stitched shut with black thread, as were her lips.

Most likely this was not the art of Death working in the medium of flesh, as claimed, but instead the product of an artist who had been clever with plaster, paper, and latex.

As Stormy and I arrived at Gypsy Mummy, another couple fed a quarter to the machine. The woman leaned toward a round grill in the glass and asked her question aloud: "Gypsy Mummy tell us, will Johnny and I have a long and happy marriage?"

The man, evidently Johnny, pushed the answer button, and a card slid into a brass tray. He read it aloud: " A cold wind blows, and each night seems to last a thousand years."

Neither Johnny nor his bride-to-be regarded this as an answer to their question, so they tried again. He read the second card: "The fool leaps from the cliff, but the winter lake below is frozen."

The woman, believing that Gypsy Mummy had misheard the question, repeated it: "Will Johnny and I have a long and happy marriage?"

Johnny read the third card: "The orchard of blighted trees produces poisonous fruit."

And the fourth: "A stone can provide no nourishment nor will sand slake your thirst."