"No, I didn't mean that." Josh needed to back out of this. Theo was trippin'. He'd had enough of adults trippin' for one night. Soon his mom would come home to find a bunch of cops in her house and the trip to beat all trips would start. "I mean he was really mad. You know, like glowing mad."

"That's not what you meant."

"It isn't?"

"He really glowed, didn't he?"

"Well, not constantly. Like, for a little while. Then he just stared at me."

"Why did he leave, Josh?"

"He said he had what he needed now."

"What was that? What did he take?"

"I don't know." Josh was beginning to worry about the constable. He looked like he might hurl any second. "You're sure you want to go with the glowing thing, Constable Crowe? I could be wrong. I'm a kid. We make notoriously unreliable witnesses."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"CSI."

"Those guys know everything."

"They have the coolest stuff."

"Yeah," said Theo wistfully.

"You don't get to use cool cop stuff like that, huh?"

"Nope." Theo was sounding really sad now.

"But you shot a guy, right?" Josh said cheerfully, trying to raise Theo's spirits.

"I was lying. I'm sorry, Josh. I'd better go. Your mom will be home soon. You just tell her everything. She'll look out for you. The deputies will stay with you until she gets here. See ya, kiddo." Theo ruffled his hair and started out of the kitchen.

Josh didn't want to tell her. And he didn't want Theo to go. "There's something else."

Theo turned and looked back at him. "Okay, Josh, I'll stick around—»

"Someone killed Santa Claus tonight," Josh blurted out.

"Childhood ends too soon, doesn't it, son?" Theo said, putting his hand on Josh's shoulder.

If Josh had had a gun, he'd have shot him, but being an unarmed kid, he decided that of all of these adults, the goofy constable might just be the one who would believe what he had seen happen to Santa.

The two deputies had come into the house with Josh's mother, Emily Barker. Theo waited until she had hugged most of the breath out of her son, then reassured her that everything was okay and made a quick escape. As he came down the porch steps, he saw something yellow shining by the front tire of his Volvo. He looked back to make sure that neither of the deputies was looking out, then he crouched before the front tire and reached up into the wheel well and pulled out a hank of yellow hair that had caught in the black vinyl dent molding. He quickly shoved it into his shirt pocket and climbed into the car, feeling the hair throbbing against his chest like a living thing.

The Warrior Babe of the Outland admitted that she was powerless without her medication and that her life had become unmanageable. Molly checked off the step in Theo's little blue Narcotics Anonymous book.

"Powerless," she muttered to herself, remembering the time when mutants had chained her to a rock in the den of the behemo-badger in Outland Steel: Kendra's Revenge. If not for the intervention of Selkirk, the rogue sand pirate, her entrails would even now be curing on the salt stalagmites of the badger's cave.

"That would sting, huh?" said the Narrator.

"Shut up, that didn't really happen." Did it? She remembered it like it did.

The Narrator was a problem. The problem, really. If it had just been a little erratic behavior, she might have been able to wing it until the first of the month and go back on her meds without Theo noticing, but when the Narrator showed up, she knew she needed help. She turned to the Narcotics Anonymous book that had been Theo's constant companion when he was battling his pot habit. He talked about working the steps all the time, and how he couldn't have done it without them. She needed to do something to reinforce the rapidly blurring line between Molly Michon, party planner, cookie baker, the retired actress, and Kendra, mutant slayer, head breaker, the warrior temptress.

"'Step two, " she read. "'Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. " She thought for a moment and looked out the front window of the cabin for the lights from Theo's car. She really hoped she could get through all twelve steps before he got home.

"Nigoth the Worm God shall be my higher power," she declared, snatching her broken broadsword from the coffee table and waving it in defiance at the Sony Wega TV that mocked her darkly from the corner. "In Nigoth's name shall I sally forth, and woe unto any mutant or sand pirate that crosses my path, for his life shall be sacrificed and his bloody balls shall decorate the totem tree of my lodge."

"And the wicked shall cower before the grandeur of your dirt-striped and well-shaped thighs," said the Narrator, with robust enthusiasm.

"Goes without saying," Molly said. "Okay, step three. 'Turn your life over to God as you understand Him. "

"Nigoth requires a sacrifice," cried the Narrator. "A limb! Cut it from your body and impale it still twitching upon the worm god's fiery purple horn."

Molly shook her head to rattle the Narrator around a little. "Dude," she said. Molly seldom «duded» anyone. Theo had picked up the word on his patrol of Pine Cove's skateboard park and now used it generally to express incredulity at the audacity of someone's statement or behavior — the correct inflection on the word would convey Doood, please, you've got to be joking or hallucinating, or both, to even suggest such a thing. (Lately Theo had been doing some testing on "Yo, dat's wack, yo." But Molly had forbade its use outside of the house, for, as she pointed out, there is little more off-putting than the sound of hip-hop vernacular coming out of the mouth of a white, fortysomething, goony bird of a man. "Albatross of a man, yo," Theo had corrected.)

Thusly duded, the Narrator bid devotion down. "A finger, then! The severed finger of a Warrior Babe — "

"Not a chance," Molly said.

'A lock of hair! Nigoth requires — "

"I was thinking I'd light a candle to symbolize that I'm turning myself over to my higher power." And to illustrate her sincerity, she took a disposable lighter off the coffee table and lit one of the scented candles she kept on a tray at the table's center.

"A snotty Kleenex, then!" tried the Narrator.

But Molly had moved on to step four in the book. "'Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. I have no idea what that means."

"Well, I'll be fucked in the ear by a blind spider monkey if I get it," said the Narrator.

Molly decided not even to acknowledge the Narrator on that one. After all, if the steps worked like she hoped they would, the Narrator was not going to be around for much longer. She dug into the little blue book in search of clarification.

Upon further reading, it appeared that you were supposed to make a list of all the things wrong with your character.

"Put down that you're fucking nuts," said the Narrator.

"Got it," Molly said. Then she noticed that the book recommended making a list of resentments. She wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to do with them, but in fifteen minutes she had filled three pages with all variety of resentments, including both parents, the IRS, algebra, premature ejaculators, good housekeepers, French automobiles, Italian luggage, lawyers, CD packaging, IQ tests, and the fucktard who wrote the "Caution, pastry may be hot when heated" warning on the Pop-Tarts box.

She paused for a breather and was reading ahead to step five when headlights swept across the yard and raked the front of the cabin. Theo was home.

" 'Step five, " Molly read. "'Confess to our higher power and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. "