"Jade. What's that in your jacket?"
Jade was too wrung-out to lie. She opened thejacket and showed Rowan the kittens. "I didn't know my suitcase would kill them."
Rowan looked too wrung-out to be angry. She glanced heavenward, sighing. Then, looking back atJade sharply: "But why were you bringing them downhere?"
"I wasn't. I was just looking for a shovel. I was going to bury them in the backyard."
There was a pause. Jade looked at her sisters and they looked at each other. Then all three of them looked at the kittens.
Then they looked at Great-aunt Opal.
Mary-Lynnette was crying.
It was a beautiful night, a perfect night. An inversion layer was keeping the air overhead still and warm, and the seeing was excellent. There was very little light pollution and no direct light. The Victorian farmhouse just below Mary-Lynnette's hill wasmostly dark. Mrs. Burdock was always very consider ate about that.
Above, the Milky Way cut diagonally across the sky like a river. To the south, where Mary-Lynnette had just directed her telescope, was the constellation Sagittarius, which always looked. more like a teapot than like an archer to her. And just above the spout of the teapot was a faintly pink patch of what looked like steam.
It wasn't steam. It was clouds of stars. A star factory called the Lagoon Nebula. The dust and gas of dead stars was being recycled into hot young stars, just being born.
It was four thousand and five hundred light-years away. And she was looking at it, right this minute. a seventeen-year-old kid with a second-hand Newtonian reflector telescope was watching the light of stars being born.
Sometimes she was filled with so much awe andand-and-and longing-that she thought she might break to pieces.
Since there was nobody else around, she could let the tears roll down her cheeks without pretending it was an allergy. After a while she had to sit back and wipe her nose and eyes on the shoulder of her T-shirt.
Oh, come on, give it a rest now, she told herself.You're crazy, you know.
She wished she hadn't thought of Jeremy earlier. Because now, for some reason, she kept picturinghim the way he'd looked that night when he came to watch the eclipse with her. His level brown eyes had held a spark of excitement, as if he really cared about what he was seeing. As if, for that moment, anyway, he understood.
I have been one acquainted with the night, amaudlin little voice inside her chanted romantically, trying to get her to cry again.
Yeah, right, Mary-Lynnette told the voice cynically. She reached for the bag of Cheetos she kept under her lawn chair. It was impossible to feel romantic and overwhelmed by grandeur while eating Cheetos.
Saturn next, she thought, and wiped sticky orangecrumbs off her fingers. It was a good night for Saturn because its rings were just passing through theiredgewise position.
She had to hurry because the moon was rising at 11:16. But before she turned her telescope toward Saturn, she took one last look at the Lagoon. Actuallyjust to the east of the Lagoon, trying to make out the open cluster of fainter stars she knew was there.
She couldn't see it. Her eyes just weren't good enough. If she had a bigger telescope-if she lived inChile where the air was dry-if she could get above the earth's atmosphere . . . then she might have a chance.
But for now . . . she was limited by the human eye. Human pupils just didn't open farther than 9
millimeters.
Nothing to be done about that.
She was just centering Saturn in the field of viewwhen a light went on behind the farmhouse below. Not a little porch light. A barnyard vapor lamp. Itilluminated the back property of the house like a searchlight.
Mary-Lynnette sat back, annoyed. It didn't reallymatter-she could see Saturn anyway, see the rings that tonight were just a delicate silver line cutting across the center of the planet. But it was strange.Mrs.
Burdock never turned the back light on at night.
The girls, Mary-Lynnette thought. The nieces. Theymust have gotten there and she must be giving them a tour. Absently she reached for her binoculars. Shewas curious.
They were good binoculars, Celestron Ultimas,sleek and lightweight. She used them for looking at everything from deep sky objects to the craters on the moon. Right now, they magnified the back of Mrs.
Burdock's house ten times.
She didn't see Mrs. Burdock, though. She could seethe garden. She could see the shed and the fenced-in area where Mrs. Burdock kept her goats. And shecould see three girls, all well illuminated by the vapor lamp. One had brown hair, one had golden hair, and one had hair the color of Jupiter's rings.
That silvery.Like starlight. They were carrying something wrapped in plastic between them. Black plastic.
Hefty garbage bags, if Mary-Lynnette wasn't mistaken.
Now, what on earth were they doing with that?
Burying it.
The short one with the silvery hair had a shovel. She was a good little digger, too. In a few minutesshe had rooted up most of Mrs. Burdock's irises. Then the medium-sized one with the golden hairtook a turn, and last of all the tall one with the brown hair.
Then they picked up the garbage-bagged objecteven though it was probably over five feet long, it seemed very light-and put it in the hole they'd just made.
They began to shovel dirt back into the hole.
No, Mary-Lynnette told herself. No, don't be ridiculous. Don't be insane. There's some mundane, per fectly commonplace explanation for this.
The problem was, she couldn't think of any.
No, no, no. This is notRear Window,we are not in the Twilight Zone. They're just burying-something.
Some sort of ... ordinary ...
What else besides a dead body was five-feet-andsome-odd-inches long, rigid, and needed to be wrapped in garbage bags before burial?
And, Mary-Lynnette thought, feeling a rush ofadrenaline that made her heart beat hard. And.
And...
Where was Mrs. Burdock?
The adrenaline was tingling painfully in herpalms and feet. It made her feel out of control, which she hated. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to lower the binoculars.
Mrs. B.'s okay. She's all right. Things like thisdon'thappenin real life.
What would Nancy Drew do?
Suddenly, in the middle of her panic, MaryLynnette felt a tiny giggle try to escape like a burp. Nancy Drew, of course, would hike right down there and investigate. She'd eavesdrop on the girls from behind a bush and then dig up the garden once they went back inside the house.
But things like that didn't happen. Mary-Lynnette couldn't even imagine trying to dig up a neighbor's garden in the dead of night. She would get caught and it would be a humiliating farce. Mrs. Burdock would walk out of the house alive and alarmed, and Mary-Lynnette would dieof embarrassment trying to explain.