"Still." The reporter's voice followed them, as did the light. "You saw the haunted house.
Does it give rats, bats, snakes and spiders a bad rap? Do you believe these vermin are really our friends?"
Temple stopped to confront the following camera crew. "I believe that I would know some vermin with my eyes closed, and it's generally human. So, Crawford, I have no comment on those other creatures."
By now they had reached the gate. As new attraction-goers trick-led in, they had to pass a marching string of men and women bearing signs.
"He'll film us anyway," Temple muttered to Matt, her low voice sinking to an irritated growl.
"Just to be a pest."
So they plunged into the protesters' midst, still haloed by the blazing camera lights.
"Do you want to support the exploitation of helpless creatures?" a woman in a nylon parka asked. She lifted her cupped hands to reveal something small and furry. "Bats eat hundreds of thousands of insects, protecting our plants without chemicals. They don't deserve to be portrayed as bloodsucking sidekicks to vampires."
"Large spiders like this tarantula can live for twenty years, longer than the average domestic pet." A teenage boy held up a small glass terrarium occupied by the large desert spider known for never using Nair on its legs. "Would you want Lassie to be a figure of horror and distaste like Stella here?"
The spider's formidable legs worked against the confining glass.
"Maybe she's trying to tell us Timmie is down the well again," Temple suggested as she stared at an arachnid she'd never before seen up close and personal. "I'm sure she's an upstanding citizen and a model mother. But..."
"We don't want to see our friends made into monsters," the boy went on, his earnest adolescent face aimed at the camera, "just because some people are afraid to see them for what they are."
Thanks to the setup, Temple and Matt were cast as the ignorant creepy-crawly-haters.
Although, Temple thought, in fact she was an ignorant creepy-crawly-avoider, if nothing else.
"I couldn't kill a fly," she added in her own defense. "And I'm sure that few people take the Halloween image of these animals seriously, any more than people really think black cats are unlucky. I happen to have a black cat--"
"Do you know where your black cat is tonight?" A man had thrust his pale, intense face into the well-lit circle.
"Well, uh... sometimes he gets out."
"Out?" The first woman was back, more indignant. "Letting a cat roam is bad enough, but a black cat at this time of year? Are you crazy, lady? You want some Satanist to swoop him up and do some* thing horrible?"
"No! He isn't a cat you can swoop up easily. I mean, he's big, really big."
"What about the closet sadists who like to run over animals if they can? Who's going to see a black cat on the street?"
"I'm sure he'll be at home waiting for me. He always is."
"Until the day he doesn't come home," the woman said ominously.
The boy lifted his spider house. "Someday she won't come home and all the baby spiders will die."
"It's all right to kill things that we portray as horrible and scary," the man said. "We vilify creatures that we fear because they compete with us for something, or because they have defenses against us."
"Stop persecuting rats, bats, spiders and snakes," the woman sang out. The man and boy and other protesters joined her.
Matt and Temple stood by, silent vilifiers helpless to do anything, poor misrepresented creatures caught in a media trap with a relentless Crawford Buchanan hidden behind the camera.
Tiring, the protesters huffed off to march and shout other slogans.
"Well," came Crawford's deeply insincere baritone from beyond the hot circle of light. "Have you changed your mind about these creatures?"
"Yes, indeed," said Matt blandly. "We will definitely give them up for Lent in future."
With that they ducked past the camera crew and bustled down the sidewalk into the simple racket and bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip.
"Oh, that was ... intolerable journalism, trapping innocent bystanders between the devil behind the camera and those well-meaning protesters. Only Crawford Buchanan would pull such a stunt, and for Hot Heads, the sleaziest tabloid show on TV. Looks like the worm is still working for them, our bad luck."
Matt chuckled. "Worms. They forgot to include worms among the libeled victims of Halloween. We could have sworn off eating worms for Lent too."
"That was very wicked, but do you think everybody knows what Lent is?"
"Don't you?"
"Yes, but I did a lot of reporting for, a while. You sort of get a ... a catholic overview of different religious customs."
"I think they'll get the idea," he said a bit vaguely. "Temple, I didn't finish what I was going to say back there."
"Rats."
He smiled briefly, then sobered. "I may not know where I'm going yet, or what I'm about, but I do know I'm not going to accept a position of weakness again in any situation."
"You were just a kid then."
"I'm not now. So, although I can't say what I can offer ... any-one, or in what way, and though I need time to settle some old business before I can take on any new roles or relationship, I won't bow out just because someone else comes along and says this is the way it was or is. I won't walk away from what I believe in, no matter who says I should."
She couldn't quite believe what he was saying, though she could read in his eyes that he meant it. "You mean--?"
"Don't count me out. I've got to follow the path I started, but nothing says I've got to stay on it forever. He can't scare me away."
She nodded.
Even though it was almost Halloween, nobody she knew was much in the mood to be scared.
Chapter 9
... Need a Body Cry?
Temple was relieved to find Midnight Louie home alone when she got there, reclining regally on her zebra-striped coverlet, not a whisker out of place.
"Louie! I'm so glad to see you. Those protesters really had me worried."
She sat on the bed beside him, kicked off her shoes and stroked his sleek fur until his purr was droning louder than the buzz on her morning alarm.
"They do have a point, though," she told him meditatively. "Maybe I should close your bathroom-window escape hatch until Halloween is over. I don't know why I have this batty idea that you can take care of yourself. You're just a lit-tle kit-ty, after all."
Temple tried to bury her face in his neck fur, but Louie flattened his ears and tried to pull away, his purr on hold. She drew back to study his narrowed green eyes and air of deep affront.
Must not like too much petting. It couldn't have been something she said.
Knowing when to leave well enough alone, she changed into her fall fuzzies, a purple velour jogging suit and knitted slippers, then skated out to the kitchen on her slippery soft soles.
Time for a post supper snack. Temple hunted her cupboards, uninspired by anything she saw. Then she remembered her resolve and skated over the smooth parquet out the other side of the kitchen to her office. Papers fanned around the computer; she wrinkled her nose at the idea of tidying up tonight. After the stress of the haunted house, she just wanted to relax, but first...
She darted into the bathroom, pulled down the toilet-seat lids, climbed up on the closed seat, leaned out to reach the opposite wall, got both hands on the tiny window pulls and pushed it shut. No more Louie escapades until November!
Grunting satisfaction, she pushed herself away from the wall and clambered down from the seat. Something nagged at her, something she had forgotten to do ... a phone call? No.
Shaking her head, she sped back to the kitchen and resumed inspecting her shelves. Still nothing called to her, and she became aware that she was humming, humming something sort of familiar. Listening to herself, Temple finally found words popping into her mind ... that you do so well.
That old black magic won't work so well, she thought, whe
n Mr. Midnight tries to make a fast escape out his favorite window. Funny she had never thought to name him Magic.
Temple stared dully at an opened box of Fruity Patooti break-fast cereal. She had forgotten something important, she knew it! Something, just now, that should have made her realize ...
some-thing due for work ... no. She yanked open the freezer compartment of her refrigerator, staring at a carton of six-week-old frozen yogurt. It would be a rubber ice sculpture by now.
Maybe if she microwaved it... What was she missing? Missing. Louie. Something about the cat.
No. Something about the cat's escape hatch ... or the pathway to it. Yes!
Temple felt the tight expression of consternation on her face stretch into horrified comprehension. Holy banana fudge!
At that very moment she heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on the glass top of her coffee table.
She sped around the kitchen corner and took her first good look at the living room since she had come home.
Max Kinsella, dressed in cat-burglar black from neck to toe, was reclining full-length--
though not regally--on her living room sofa, browsing through a copy of Entertainment magazine.
He looked up, lifted his knuckles to the coffee table's glass top and rapped again. "I did knock, several times, but you didn't hear me.
"You were already inside!" she charged.
He shrugged and closed an article on Halloween disguises for celebrities (that he probably could have written) before sitting upright. Luckily, the reclining Max was long enough that his feet overhung the off-white sofa edge.
"You weren't home, and I make too good a target hanging around closed doors."
"You don't have a key anymore."
A duck of his head admitted the charge. "I can get in some places without keys." He smiled.
"Besides, I brought you something."
She watched him bend over and lift something from the floor. A small bag with an aluminum coating.
"You've been here a while," she suggested.
"What a detective!" He rose to hand her the bag. "I suppose you can tell just how long by checking the melting factor of the contents."
Temple hefted the bag, then rolled down the top to peek. "Oooh, caramel-pecan maple-marshmallow chocolate ripple, just the thing for a frosty October night. Too bad the manufacturer couldn't get any raspberry in there somehow."
She whisked it into the kitchen, not surprised to find that Max had followed when he lifted down a nest of glass saucers she was stretching to reach.
"So how did you figure out that I was here?" He leaned against the countertop while Temple used a serving spoon to pile colorful slabs of the low-fat frozen yogurt into two dishes. "And how did you know that I'd been here a while?"
"You won't be so smug when you find out. It's not my brilliant deducing faculties; it's one of your own unmistakable little ways."
"What? I need to know these things for future reference."
"Well, it'll only give you away to people who've lived with you. How many can that be?"
"Not many, and I'm certainly not going to give you statistics when you're holding out on me.
Stop teasing, Temple."
She handed him the filled dish and a tablespoon. Neither of them bothered eating ice cream with a teaspoon.
"You fell into that eternal masculine trap. The toilet seat lids were up, both of them. Ergo, you were here, and long enough to use the facilities. You never did get the hang of closing it."
Max made a face not produced by the tasty caramel-pecan maple-marshmallow chocolate ripple frozen low-fat yogurt he'd just sampled. "I tried, but new habits are hard to build. Why did you suddenly rush in there anyway?"
"I remembered to close Louie's exit window. He's a house cat until Halloween is over and any crazies who don't like black cats are off the streets."
He nodded. They were standing around eating in the kitchen like they used to, as easy as pie.
"What's the occasion for the treat?" Temple wondered after her third spoonful.
"I thought your throat could use something soft and cooling."
"My throat? I haven't got a sore throat, not even a sniffle."
"Maybe not inside, but outside."
Temple shut up. Her voice still sounded raspier than usual.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
"What should I have told you?"
"That you'd nearly been throttled to death by that muscleman."
"It wasn't that close a thing."
"Then I dragged you out on that shoe-scouting expedition to the Goliath, and you never said a word."
"Near-throttlings can't hold a candle to hunting magic shoes, and besides, it was your show.
So how did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Vanish from the Goliath gondola while Matt and I were gawking at the shoe."
"Are you sure it wasn't at each other?"
"Get real, Kinsella. You're a pretty effective chaperon. So, why don't you tell?"
"Professional secret"
"Matt doesn't think you just swam away. Maybe he thinks you're like Louie, and don't like to get wet."
"Maybe he's right."
Temple shook her head. "Louie sacrificed himself in my service, and took a bath in the Treasure Island's moat. Yes! He was aboard the pirate ship, even tipped open the chest so I could see inside. He was the last man overboard."
"Mine was a disappearing act," Max admitted. "There's a service vent in the ceiling near the emergency stop panel for the gondolas. It wasn't hard to slither up and out without either of you noticing. Those crystal shoes make a pretty good distraction."
"But why didn't you hang around for the applause? You deserved it for figuring out where the shoes were, and did Electra tell you I was after them?"
Max shrugged, finished his frozen yogurt and rinsed the dish in the sink. Some domestic habits had sunk in during their cohabitation.
"I didn't want to steal the thunder of your triumphal detective work."
"And you left Matt and me alone in the Tunnel of Love. I thought you were jealous."
"Not jealous, realistic. I can't be a stable factor in your life, not now, maybe not ever. Why should I be a dog in the manger?"
"Because you can growl? And why come around Matt and offer to help him?"
"Know thine enemy? He's an interesting guy. I sense I'm missing the key to his character.
He's too nice for his own good, but... I see darkness." He glanced at Temple with Louie-green eyes. "You could give me a clue, if you wanted to."
"If I had any right to."
"And I don't have any right to press you." Max thrust himself away from the counter like someone pushing himself from a Thanksgiving table when he has no appetite. "Temple, you can't depend on me now for anything you depended on me for previously, not even just being there."
He was leaving again, and she felt the same unreasoning panic she had felt when he had seemed to be gone for good.
"I have matters to attend to, which may never be settled," he said. "I wouldn't bother you, or your new neighbor, except that you've involved yourselves in them. Please don't anymore. I know it's not fair for me to bounce in and out of your life like a Ping-Pong ball. I'm disturbed to discover you've been risking your life. I'm here to tell you such risks aren't worth it. I did it once when I was young, and I've never been able to stop running. So. I'll try to stay away from you and yours. I'll hope you stay safe and sane from now on."
He had already eased to the door, leaving all the unanswered questions behind.
"Max!" She followed, catching him halfway out the door.
He put his fingers to his lips and shut the door as if vanishing into one of his own trick boxes.
When she jerked it open a half second later, the hall was empty.
"Max?"
But he was gone, and his frozen-yogurt carton was dribbling on the countertop.
Temple went back inside and put th
e carton in the freezer. Then she washed the dishes and cried into the soapy water in the sink. Then she picked up one of the bowls and smashed it in the sink. As the water drained, leaving a rainbow foam of suds, she stared at the shards glittering under the overhead light.
Something told her she was not alone. She turned her head to find Midnight Louie sitting on the drain board, staring with polite feline horror at the broken glass.
Temple fished out the surviving saucer, rinsed away the lukewarm suds and filled it with a few dollops of caramel-pecan maple-marshmallow chocolate-ripple yogurt.
"Eat up, my lad," she told him. "I'm not letting you out until I know that it's safe out there for cats, 'cuz it sure isn't for people."
Chapter 10
A Monstrous Notion
"I really feel silly," Temple said, "although that's nothing new lately."
"Nonsense, dear girl. Trust me. Muumuus cover all."
Temple turned in Electra's dimly lit entry hall, checking herself out in the mirrored vertical blinds.
A five-feet-tall woman in a floor-sweeping muumuu covered with fuchsia orchids the size of dinner plates was indeed an outre sight.
"This is Halloween," she said finally. "Maybe they'll think I'm going as the Incredible Shrinking Woman wearing her formerly fat wardrobe."
"Just who is this 'they' you get all hot and bothered about?"
"You know, Them. Everybody else who's too cool to be caught doing something silly, like looking as if they're going trick-or-treating when they're thirty years old!"
"Thirty is nothing. And if you don't want to wear my muumuu--"
"I'll wear it!"
Electra was resplendent in one of her own tropically lively muumuus, her hair sprayed a flaming red color that Temple found disconcertingly close to her own natural hue. She bent to peer at Temple's hem.
"Are you wearing your magnificent Midnight Louie high heels under there?"
"No. They're in here." Temple patted her trusty tote bag. Tonight's licorice-black patent leather model had genuine Halloween flavor. "Too nice for tramping through the haunted house; I'll put them on at the Phoenix afterward, when I take this off for the Crystal Ball."
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