"We'll do it tonight," Rowan said. "After it's fully dark, before the moon rises. We'll move her to the forest."
Kestrel smiled magnanimously. She'd wonthe argument.
"We'll have to be careful," Jade said. "That thingI heard outside last night-it wasn't an animal. I think it was one of us."
"There aren't any other Night People aroundhere," Rowan said gently. "That was the whole pointof coming here in the first place."
"Maybe it was a vampire hunter," Kestrel said."Maybe the one that killed Aunt Opal."
"If avampire hunter killed Aunt Opal," Rowansaid. "We don't know that. Tomorrow we should look around town, see if we can at least get an ideawho mighthave done it."
"And when we find them, we'll take care ofthem," Jade said fiercely.
"And if the thing you heard in the garden turnsup, we'll take care of it, too," Kestrel said. She smiled, a hungry smile.
Twilight, and Mary-Lynnette was watching thedock. The rest of her family was comfortably, settledin for the night; her father reading a book about World War II, Claudine working conscientiously on a needlepoint project, Mark trying to tune up his oldguitar that had been sitting in the basement for years.
He was undoubtedly trying to think of words to rhyme with Jade.
Mary-Lynnette's father looked up from his book. "Going starwatching?"
"Yup. It should be a good night-no moon till aftermidnight. It's the last chance to see some Perseids."
She wasn't exactly lying. It would be a good night, and she could keep an eye out for stragglers from the Perseid meteor storm as she walked to Burdock Farm.
"Okay; just be careful," her father said.
Mary-Lynnette was surprised. He hadn't said anything like that for years. She glanced at Claudine, who jabbed with her needle, lips pursed.
"Maybe Mark should go with you," Claudine said, without looking up.
Oh, God, she thinks I'm unstable, Mary-Lynnette thought. I don't really blame her.
"No, no. I'll be fine. I'll be careful." She said it too quickly.
Mark's eyes narrowed. "Don't you need any help with your stuff?"
"No, I'll take the car. I'll be. fine. Really."Mary Lynnette fled to the garage before her family could come up with anything else.
She didn't pack her telescope. Instead, she put a shovel in the backseat. She looped the strap of her camera around her neck and stuck a pen flashlight in her pocket.
She parked at the foot of her hill. Before she gotthe shovel out, she paused a moment to look dutifully northeast, toward the constellation Perseus.
No meteors right this second. All right. Keys inhand, she turned to open the back of the station wagon-and jumped violently.
"Oh, God!"
She'd nearly walked into Ash.
Mary-Lynnette's pulse was racing and her knees felt weak. From fear, she told herself. And that's all.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack!" she said. "Doyou always creep up behind people like that?"
She expected some smart-ass answer of either the joking-menacing or the hey-baby variety. But Ashjust frowned at her moodily. "No. What are you doing out here?"
Mary-Lynnette's heart skipped several beats. But she heard her own voice answering flatly, "I'm starwatching. I do it every night. You might want to make a note of that for the thought police."
He looked at her, then at the station wagon. "Starwatching?"
"Of course. From that hill." She gestured.
Now he was looking at the camera looped around her neck. "No telescope," he commented skeptically.
"Or is that what's in the car?"
Mary-Lynnette realized she was still holding the keys, ready to open the back of the wagon. "I didn't bring a telescope tonight." She went around to the passenger side of the car, unlocked the door, reached in to pull out her binoculars. "You don't need a telescope to starwatch. You can see plenty with these."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes,really."Now, that was a mistake, Mary -Lynnette thought, suddenly grimly amused. Acting as if you don't believe me ... just you wait.
"You want to see light from four million yearsago?" she said. Then, without waiting for him to answer: "Okay. Face east." She rotated a finger at him. "Here, take the binoculars. Look at that line of fir trees on the horizon. Now pan up ..."She gavehim directions, rapping them out like a drill sergeant. "Now do you see a bright disk with a kind of smudgeall around it?"
"Um. Yeah."
"That's Andromeda. Another galaxy.But if you tried to look at it through a telescope, you couldn't seeit all at once. Looking through a telescope is like looking at the sky through a soda straw.
That's all the field of view you get."
................"All right. Okay. Point taken." He started to lower the binoculars. "Look, could we suspend the starwatching for just a minute? I wanted to talk toyou "Want tosee the center of ourgalaxy?" Mary -Lynnette interrupted. "Turn south."
She did everything but physically make him turn.She didn't dare touch him. There was so much adrenaline racing through her system already-if shemade contact she might go supercritical and explode.
"Turn," she said. He shut his eyes briefly, then turned, bringing the binoculars up again.
"You have to look in the constellation Sagittarius." She rattled off instructions. "See that? That's where the center of the Milky Way is. Where all the star clouds are."
"How nice."
"Yes, it is nice. Okay, now go up and eastyou should be able to find a little dim sort of glow...."
"The pink one?"
She gavehim a quick look. "Yeah, the pink one.Most people don't see that. That's the Trifid Nebula."
"What are those dark lines in it?" Mary-Lynnette stopped dead.
She forgot her drill sergeant manner. She stepped back. She stared at him. She could feel her breath coming quicker.
He lowered the binoculars and looked at her. "Something wrong?"
"They're dark nebulae. Lanes of dust in front of the hot gas. But ... you can't see them." "I just did."
"No. No. You can't see those. It's not possible, notwith binoculars. Even if you had nine millimeter pupils ..." She pulled the flashlight out of her pocket and trained it full in his face.