No. He wasn’t ready to find that one out, not yet. He needed some time to be alone in the dark, to dwell in isolation and ignorance.

Sure, came a voice in his mind, his own voice, but sly and mocking. That’s how you spent the last twelve months. What’s one more afternoon?

When his eyes were used to the yawning shadows of The Pit, he spotted an empty corner booth where someone had eaten pizza, perhaps with kids; Ig noted plastic cups with bendy straws. A few wedges of the pizza remained. More important, the parent who had chaperoned this particular pizza party had left a half-full glass of pale beer. Ig slipped into the booth, the upholstery creaking, and helped himself. The beer was lukewarm. For all he knew, the last person to drink from the glass had had oozing cankers and a virulent case of hepatitis. After you’d grown horns from your temples, it seemed a little silly to be too fussy about possible exposure to germs.

A swinging door to the kitchen batted open, and a waitress came through, emerging from a white-tiled space, brightly lit by fluorescents, into the darkness. She had a bottle of cleaning fluid in one hand and a rag in the other and came briskly across the room, headed straight for him.

Ig knew her, of course. It was the same woman who had served him and Merrin drinks on their last night together. Her face was framed by two wings of lank black hair that curled under her long, pointed chin, so she looked like the female version of the wizard who was always giving Harry Potter such a hard time in the movies. Professor Snail or something. Ig had been waiting to read the books with the children he and Merrin planned to have together.

She wasn’t looking at the booth, and he shrank back into the red vinyl. It was already too late to slip out without being seen. He considered hiding under the table, then dismissed the idea as disturbing. In another moment she was bent over the table, collecting plates. A light hung directly above the booth, and even when he pressed himself all the way back into the seat, it still cast the shadow of his head, and the horns, upon the table. She saw the shadow first, then glanced up at him.

Her pupils shrank. Her face paled. She dropped the plates back on the table with a shocking crash, although it was perhaps more of a shock that none of them broke. She drew a sharp breath, preparing to cry out, and then her gaze found the horns. The shout seemed to die in her throat. She stood there.

“The sign said to please seat yourself,” Ig told her.

“Yes. All right. Let me clean your table off and…and I’ll bring you a menu.”

“Actually,” Ig said, “I’ve already eaten.” Gesturing at the plates before him.

Her eyes shifted from his horns to his face, back and forth, several times.

“You’re the guy,” she said. “Ig Perrish.”

Ig nodded. “You served my girlfriend and me a year ago, on our last evening together. I want to say I’m sorry for the things I said that night and the way I acted. I would tell you that you saw me at my worst, except who I was then is nothing compared to who I am now.”

“I don’t feel even a little bad about it.”

“Oh. Good. I thought I made a terrible impression.”

“No,” she said. “I mean I don’t feel even a little bad about lying to the police. I’m just sorry they didn’t believe me.”

Ig felt his insides clench. It was starting again. She was half talking to herself or, maybe more accurately, talking with her own private devil, a demon that just also happened to have Ig Perrish’s face. If he didn’t find a way to control it-to mute the effect of the horns-he would go out of his mind soon, if he wasn’t crazy already.

“What lies?”

“I told the police you threatened to strangle her. I said I watched you try to push her down.”

“Why would you tell them that?”

“So you wouldn’t get away with it. So you wouldn’t just walk away. And look at you. She’s dead, and here you are. You got away with it anyhow, just like my father got away with what he did to my mother and me. I wanted you to go to jail.” She gave her head an unconscious toss, flipping her hair out of her face. “Also, I wanted to be in the newspaper. I wanted to be a star witness. If they put you on trial, I would’ve been on TV.”

Ig stared.

“I tried my best,” she went on. “When you left that night, your girlfriend went hurrying out after you, and she forgot her coat. I carried it outside to give it back to her, and I saw you drive away without her. But that’s not what I told the police. I told them when I went outside I saw you pulling her into the car and then hauling ass out of here. That’s what screwed me up. I guess you hit a telephone pole, backing up, and one of the customers heard the crunch and looked out a window to see what happened. They told the police they saw you leave her. The detective asked me to take a polygraph to confirm my story, and I had to take back that part. Then they didn’t believe any of the other stuff I told them either. But I know what happened. I know you just turned around and came back to get her a couple minutes later.”

“You’ve got that wrong. Someone else picked her up.” When Ig thought who, he felt nauseated.

But the idea that she might’ve been wrong about him didn’t seem to interest the waitress. When she spoke again, it was as if Ig had said nothing. “I knew I’d see you again someday. Are you going to force me to go out in the parking lot with you? Are you going to take me somewhere to sodomize me?” Her tone was unmistakably hopeful.

“What? No. The fuck?”

Some of the excitement went out of her eyes. “Are you at least going to threaten me?”

“No.”

“I could say you did. I could tell Reggie you warned me to watch my back. That’d be a good story.” Her smile faded a little more, and she shot a glum look at the bodybuilder behind the bar. “He probably wouldn’t believe me, though. Reggie thinks I’m a compulsive liar. I guess I am. I like to tell my little stories. Still. I never should’ve told Reggie that my boyfriend, Gordon, died in the World Trade Tower, after I told Sarah-she’s another waitress here-that Gordy died in Iraq. I should’ve figured they’d swap notes. Still. Gordon could be dead somewhere. He’s dead to me. He broke up with me by e-mail, so fuck him. Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because you can’t help yourself.”

“That’s right. I can’t,” she said, and shivered, a response with unmistakably sexual connotations.

“What did your father do to your mother and you? Did he…did he hurt you?” Ig asked, not sure he really wanted to know.

“He told us he loved us, but he lied. He ran away to Washington with my fifth-grade teacher. They started a family, and he had another daughter, one he likes better than he ever liked me. If he really loved me, he would’ve taken me with him instead of leaving me with my mother, who is a depressing, angry old bitch. He said he would always be a part of my life, but he isn’t part of shit. I hate liars. Other liars, I mean. My own little stories don’t hurt anyone. Do you want to know the little story I tell about you and your girlfriend?”

The pizza Ig had eaten sat in his stomach in a heavy, doughy lump. “Probably not.”

Her face flushed with excitement, and her smile returned. “Sometimes people come in and ask about what you did to her. I can always tell in a glance how much they want to know, if they just want the basics or some nasty details. The college kids usually want to know something nasty. I tell them after you beat her brains in, you turned her over and sodomized the corpse.”

Ig tried to stand up, clubbed his knees against the underside of the table, and at the same time clashed his horns against the stained-glass lampshade hanging over the tabletop. The lamp started to swing, and his horned shadow plunged toward the waitress and then shrank away from her, toward and away. Ig had to sit back down, pain throbbing behind his kneecaps.