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She didn't know what to do. If it was a thief, the best plan would be to just walk around and turn on a few lights. But what if he wasn't a thief? What if he was something worse? What if he wanted
her?
Would turning on the lights draw him like a moth to flame? Did he have a scalpel hidden in a pocket? A butcher's knife?

She knew she was getting carried away, but couldn't stop herself. She thought of going downstairs to phone the police, but that would take him out of her sight and she couldn't face not knowing exactly where he was. Right now he simply stood there, watching. What if, when she went downstairs, he started across the street and broke into the house while she was still on the phone, or only just dialing? The police would never get there in time to stop him. She didn't even want to think about what they'd be stopping him from.

Throat dry, she seemed to sense another presence in the house already. She could still see the man, a slender dark shape in the shadows. Waiting. There wasn't anybody in her house, she knew. It was just the awful weight of his watching. You could always sense eyes upon you, the pressure of concentrated attention that could turn your head on a busy street. That was what she felt now. And, she realized, she'd felt this same presence before. Had the watcher taken up his post on other nights? Was he just trying to get up his nerve to—

She broke off that chain of thought. She had to decide. Turn on the lights? Call the police? Sit here in the dark and do nothing at all?

At that moment the pressure eased, the sense of impending doom rushing from her like air escaping a balloon. She saw the watcher slip along the side of the house and vanish into the alleyway behind it. Letting out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding, she sat weakly in the chair. Her legs were so watery that she couldn't have stood if she'd wanted to.

Now that the moment was over, she questioned her reaction to it. How much had been real and how much the workings of her own overactive imagination? God knows she was under a certain amount of stress as it was. For all she knew, what she'd taken for a prowler or worse— don't think about
that!—
could have been the fellow who lived in the house itself. Or someone who'd needed to relieve his bladder. How long had the whole incident taken anyway?

No. She shook her head. Whomever it had been, he
had
been watching her house, watching
her.
She was sure of it. Wasn't she?

Cat realized that about the only thing she was sure of was that she needed a friend. The pressure was beginning to tell on her. Her ghosts had left her alone for too long. She had to accept that she'd been deserted— by her friends in the Otherworld, or by her own imagination, or both— and if she didn't want to end up becoming some lunatic spinster locked away in a strange old house, she'd better do something about it. Now. Before it was too late.

Coming this early had been a mistake. He should have satisfied his hunger first. But Lysistratus was driven to this place, to the skimming of the woman's dreams and the heady euphoria they produced in him. It was more than the simple pleasure he took from her.

His gaze sought the window across the street and the woman behind it. She went to her sleep later each night, and tonight she had seen him. He wondered if it made a difference as he retreated from his vantage point and faded into the shadows.

He went across the river to Hull, where the clubs stayed open until three, two hours later than those in Ottawa. He moved from club to club, letting the pulse of Europop rhythms and dancing crowds wash through him. A dark-haired woman took him home. She had the face of one of Botticelli's angels and the body of a harlot sheathed in a silk blouse and red spandex trousers. As he brought her to orgasm, he swallowed the quick spurt of pure psychic energy that exploded through her, then put her to sleep. Skimming her dreams, he trailed his fingers lightly across her flushed cheek, then left quietly.

On the way home he hunted in downtown Ottawa, seeking the sleeping places of the tramps that haunted the same area by day with their hands stretched out for spare change, their eyes rimmed red from the consumption of too much alcohol, their bodies reeking of too many bathless weeks.

He came upon three sleeping in the tiered parking lot on Cooper near Kent. Feeding on their alcohol-sodden dreams, he took enough to sustain himself without utterly draining their souls. Come morning their psyches might have difficulty coping with the bizarre visions that their own addictions would inflict upon them in their weakened state, but he doubted that they would notice any difference.

And while he made love to the woman, and while he fed on the tramps, he thought of Cat, how he would stop by her house once more on his return. And if she slept, if she dreamed…

Her dreams were always a fitting nightcap, allowing him to sleep easier himself. He knew that his need for her particular essence was intensifying. One night he would drain her— take it all. He never doubted it for a moment.

But not yet. He would choose the moment in a rational manner, not have it forced upon him by a need that was no more couth than that of a junkie scrabbling for a fix.

A hangover riding like a white fire though his head tore Farley O'Dennehy from a fitful sleep. Flickering waves of disturbing images raced ahead of the pain…

…a shadow with eyes of ice sitting on his chest, stabbing at his face with talons of cold steel, its saurian tail wrapped around his throat… claws reaching inside his chest, ripping out his lungs… his heart… the pain white and hot… like lava sliding over his skin… hissing as it turned his sweat to steam… searing his flesh from his body in long burning strips—

"Jesus tuck…"

He sat up, shook his head to clear it. Bad mistake. Something like raw sewage churned in his stomach. Pain hammered at his temples. And the images… fucking DT nightmares… He lurched to his feet, stumbled over to the parking lot's low stone balustrade and looked down. Vertigo flooded him. His body shook with dry heaves, and he sank weakly to his knees.

It didn't make any sense. He'd split a twenty-sixer with Poke and Ron Wilson, then the bottom of a bottle, of Alcool mixed with some wine. Nothing they hadn't chugged down before. But his head. The hangover wouldn't quit. He held out his hand. He had the shakes so bad it was vibrating. There was an emptiness inside him, and he had the jeebies like he couldn't believe.

He looked to where Ron and Poke were lying, sleeping the sleep of the innocent or the damned— if you were innocent, you just didn't know any better, and if you were damned, you just didn't care. His vision blurred, doubled. He squeezed his eyes shut. The pain was lessening, but he kept getting flashes of ice-blue eyes and fire. Crawling to where his suitcase lay, he worked open the two worn clasps, dragging out his pajama top. He had one arm in a sleeve when he passed out again, falling across his suitcase.

The weatherman on the CBC Late News forecasted rain for Tuesday. It came as promised, disguised as a thin drizzle, and threatened to remain throughout the day. In the tiered parking lot on Cooper Street Farley still had his hangover when he woke up, but it was nothing special. Nothing a hair of the dog wouldn't cure. He only vaguely remembered the previous night's hallucinations. Sitting up, he rubbed the two days' worth of stubble on his chin and poked Ron with his foot.

"How's the moola holding out, Ron?"

Ron was a thin, red-haired man with prominent blue brachial veins on his forearms and red-rimmed eyes. He dug into the pocket of his corduroys— so aged that the ribs were worn flat— and came up with a dollar bill and a handful of change.

"Got me two… ah… two forty-three."

"I've got a dollar. Poke?"

Jimmy Pokupra was tall and big-boned, with a deep tan and no weight on his rangy frame. He unwrapped a sandwich that he'd just pulled out of the side pocket of his patched and torn Sears-special sports jacket which had come his way courtesy of the Sally Ann. He'd gotten the jacket in their store on Somerset. It had had a price tag of $5.25 on it, but didn't cost him more than the time it took him to put it on and walk out.

"I'm skint," he said. "Anybody want a bite?"

Farley and Ron shook their heads.

"We've got to be moving," Ron said. He looked out at the wet haze without any pleasure. "Bill-Boy doesn't mind us sleeping here, but if his boss catches us…" He drew a finger across his throat.

Farley tugged his pajama top off of the one arm it was on and stuffed it back into his suitcase.

"I tell you," he said. "I had the weirdest nightmare I ever did have last night. I thought I woke up and had these snakes crawling all over me— or maybe it was something that was like a snake, but a man at the same time…."

"Whoo-ee, who's got the DTs?" Poke grinned, showing a mouthful of half-chewed sandwich and the gap between his teeth.

"You need something hot and black," Ron advised Farley.

"Hell with that. I need something with a punch to put my head back together." He stood up, hefting his suitcase. "You guys coming?"

Ben didn't sleep well Monday night. By Tuesday morning he'd managed to shake yesterday's headache— at the cost of three Anacin— but he'd picked up a queasiness in his stomach that stayed with him overnight and into the morning. He'd tried reading some of
The Borderlord
last night, but the print kept swimming before his eyes. In the end he'd watched the late movie on Channel 12 out of Montreal—
Captain Blood,
the 1935 version which was Errol Flynn's first swashbuckler— and dozed off sometime after two.

In the morning he was able to keep down his toast and coffee and read yesterday's newspaper and two chapters of
The Borderlord.
By eleven he felt well enough to take out his cab and pick up a few fares. His rent was due and he was about fifty dollars short. That came from stopping in at Peter's store too often and buying all those pricey hardcovers. He glanced at Cat's book lying beside him on the seat, and shrugged. There were some things you just couldn't pass up.

He picked up his first fare in the Glebe— a real Mr. Jetsetter, bound for the airport in an outfit right out
of Esquire
— and listened to a blow-by-blow description of where, and with who, and how Mr. Jetsetter was planning to spend his next three weeks. The cab's wipers kept time to the man's droning voice.

"Nothing Disneylandesque, you understand. There's nothing that's more of a pain than a beach full of senior citizens basking in the golden sun with their golden years hanging out of their swimsuits— except maybe packs of noisy brats kicking sand in your cocktail…."

Ben changed the man's misnomer from Jetsetter to Joe Ritzy and promptly shut him off before they'd gone a mile, nodding once in a while or sticking in an odd "You don't say?" when it seemed appropriate.

"You just wouldn't
believe
what they're charging for an apartment in Paris this year," Joe Ritzy told him earnestly.

I probably would, Ben thought. But who cares?

That morning Cat woke from another dreamless sleep. By daylight, last night's fears seemed foolish. She tried to imagine what she would have said to the police if she
had
called them, and became embarrassed just thinking about it. Thank God she hadn't. They had more important things to worry about than illusory prowlers, while she… she had a novel to write.

Trying to ignore her usual morning headache, she made her way downstairs to put the kettle on for coffee. She could remember a time when she used to wake up inspired, but that was before—
when
she still dreamed. It seemed a very long time ago now. She stared out the kitchen window, watching the thin drizzle come down in her backyard, and waited for the water to boil. Briefly she wondered where Ginger and Pad were on a wet day like this, then decided they'd come in when they were ready and not before. It might be a wet day for her pets, but inspired or not, it was a perfect day for staying inside and getting something done. No more excuses.

After she'd washed and dressed and the first morning's caffeine was kicking through her system, she was ready to sit down and give it a try. She cleared off her desk, dug up a travel guide to Northern Ireland and Lady Gregory's
Gods and Fighting Men,
and tacked up a few pictures on the wall behind her typewriter. One was of an old Ulsterman, taken from an issue of
National Geographic,
two were photos of round towers that an Irish correspondent of hers had sent. The fourth was a drawing by another correspondent, who lived in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was of a raggedy elfin maid, curled up asleep in amongst the roots of an old oak tree. Tiddy Mun would like her, Cat decided as she pinned it up.

The pictures gave her something to settle her gaze on when she looked up from the typewriter, something that wouldn't distract her from the tale at hand. Even though her writing consisted of retelling Kothlen's stories, she still used the pictures and reference books, for Kothlen chose only certain details to enlarge upon, and while she wrote intuitively, she trusted neither intuition nor her memory to see that she got everything just right. The difference this time was that the pictures and books would have to serve as inspiration, without her dreams to point the way.

A poem by Yeats had come to her earlier while she was trying to convince the thicket that passed for her hair to be more reasonable. Looking up the poem now, she studied the lines that had brought it to mind:

She typed the words out and studied them some more, imagining what Kothlen might do with them, where they would take
his
fancy, and slowly the beginnings of a story took shape in her mind. The old man and the elfin woman. Was she once a daughter of Dana, one of the Tuatha de Danann, or had she always been of the
daoine sidhe?
Had the old man been young when they first met? Had the years drawn the youth from his flesh while they passed her by? Did they first meet by the tower, or were they parting there?