“Yes,” Ig said, pushing his will behind the horns again. “Come and get me. You know you want to do it. Don’t wait, do it, do it now.”

It was music to Hannity’s ears, and he lunged, not going around the island but coming straight at the pass-through window, his upper lip drawing back to show his teeth, bared in what was either a grimace of fury or a terrible grin. He put a hand on the counter and went up and headfirst through the window, and Ig took the pot by the handle and flung it.

Hannity was fast, got his free hand up to protect his face as half a gallon of scalding water hit him, dousing his arm, spraying past to spatter his big bald head. He screamed and pitched to the kitchen floor, and Ig was already moving, rushing for the door. Hannity still had time to get up and throw the club at him. It hit a lamp on an end table, and the lamp exploded. By then Ig was in the stairwell, flying down the steps, taking them five at a time, as if he had grown not horns but wings.

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF TOWN, he pulled over to the side of the road and got out to stand on the embankment, holding himself and waiting for the shakes to pass.

The tremors came in furious bursts, racking his limbs, but the longer he stood there, the longer between fits. After a while they had passed completely, leaving him weak and dizzy. He felt as light as a maple wing-and as likely to be sent spinning by the next stiff breeze. The locusts droned, a sci-fi sound: alien death ray.

So he was right, had read the situation correctly. Lee was in some way beyond the reach of the horns. Lee had not forgotten seeing Ig yesterday, as others had forgotten; he knew that Ig was a threat to him. He would be looking to get at Ig before Ig found a way to get at him. Ig needed a plan, which was bad news; so far he hadn’t even come up with a workable plan for breakfast, was light-headed with hunger.

He got back into the car and sat with his hands on the steering wheel, trying to decide where to go now. It came to him, almost randomly, that today was his grandmother’s eightieth birthday and that she was lucky to see it. His next thought was that it was already midday, and his entire family would be at the hospital to sing “Happy Birthday” and eat cake at her bedside, which meant that Mama’s fridge would be undefended. Home was the one place you could always count on for a meal when there was nowhere else to go-wasn’t that some kind of saying?

Of course, visiting hours might be later in the day, he thought, already turning the car back onto the road. There was no guarantee the house would be empty. But would it matter if his family was home? He could walk right past them and they would forget seeing him the moment he left the room. Which raised a good question: Would Eric Hannity forget what had just happened in Glenna’s apartment? After Ig had boiled his head? Ig didn’t know.

He didn’t know if he really could walk right past his family either. He knew he couldn’t walk right past Terry. He needed to deal with Lee Tourneau, yes, but he needed to see to Terry as well. It would be a mistake to leave him out of it, let him slide away back to his life in L.A. The notion of Terry returning to L.A. to play his razzy little show tunes on Hothouse and wink at movie stars appalled Ig and filled him with an inspiring hate. Fucking Terry had a few things to answer for. Wouldn’t it be something to find him home alone? That would be too much to hope for. That would be the luck of the devil.

Ig considered parking on the fire road a quarter of a mile away and hiking around to the back of the house, scaling the wall, sneaking in, but then said fuck it and steered the Gremlin right up the drive. It was too hot for stealth, and he was too hungry.

Terry’s rent-a-Mercedes was the only car in the driveway.

Ig pulled up alongside it and sat with the engine off, listening. A cloud of glittering dust had chased him up the hill and roiled around the Gremlin. He considered the house and the hot, drowsing stillness of the early afternoon. Perhaps Terry had left his car and gone to the hospital with his parents. That was the most likely thing, only Ig didn’t believe it, knew he was in there.

Ig made no effort to be quiet. In fact, when he got out of the car, he slammed the door of the Gremlin and then hesitated, watching the house. He thought he would see movement on the second floor, Terry twitching aside a curtain to look out, see who was there. But he observed no sign of anyone alive inside.

He let himself in. The TV was off in the media room, the computer shut down in his mother’s office. In the kitchen, stainless-steel appliances hushed efficiently. Ig pulled a stool up, opened the door, and ate straight from the refrigerator. He drank half a carton of cold milk in eight hard swallows and then waited out the inevitable dairy headache, a sharp rush of pain behind the horns and a momentary darkening of his vision. When the headache subsided and he could see clearly again, he discovered a platter of deviled eggs under Saran Wrap. His mother had probably made them up for Vera’s birthday, but she wasn’t going to need them. Ig assumed that Vera was having something nutritious through a tube this afternoon. He ate them all, stuffing them into his mouth with his fingers, one after the other. He was sure they were 666 times better than the boiled eggs he’d been making for himself at Glenna’s.

He was turning the plate in his hands like a steering wheel and running his tongue over it when he thought he heard a muttering male voice somewhere above. He froze, listening intently. After a bit he heard the voice again. He set the plate in the sink and took a kitchen knife from the magnetic strip on the wall, the biggest he could find. It came loose with a soft musical chime of steel against steel. He wasn’t sure what he planned to do with it, only that he felt better holding it. After what had happened in his apartment, he thought it was a mistake to go anywhere unarmed. He climbed the stairs. His brother’s old room was at the far end of the long second-floor gallery.

Ig held up in the partly open door with the knife. It had been made over into a guest room a few years earlier and was as coolly impersonal as a room at the Ramada. His brother slept on his back, a hand flung over his eyes. He made a muttering sound of disgust, and smacked his lips. Ig’s gaze swept the night table, and he saw a box of Benadryl. Ig had gotten the asthma, while his brother was allergic to everything: bees, peanuts, pollen, cat hair, New Hampshire, anonymity. The muttering and the mumbling-that was the allergy medication, which always put Terry into a heavy but curiously restless sleep. He made thoughtful humming sounds, as if coming to grave but important conclusions.

Ig crept to the bedside and sat on the night table, holding the knife. Without any heat or rage in him at all, he considered sinking it into Terry’s chest. He could conceptualize the act quite clearly, how he would put a knee on him first to pin him to the bed, find a space between two ribs, and push the knife in with both hands while Terry struggled up toward consciousness.

He wasn’t going to kill Terry. Couldn’t. Ig doubted he could even stab Lee Tourneau to death while he slept.

“Keith Richards,” Terry said quite clearly, and Ig was so surprised he jumped lightly to his feet. “Love the fuckin’ show.”

Ig studied him, waited for him to lift his arm away from his eyes and sit up, blinking blearily, but he wasn’t awake, just talking in his sleep. Talking about Hollywood, about his fucking job, rubbing elbows with famous rock stars, getting big ratings, nailing models. Vera was in the hospital, Ig had gone missing, and Terry was dreaming about the good times in the land of Hothouse. For a moment Ig was breathless with hate, his lungs struggling to fill with oxygen. Terry undoubtedly had a flight back to the West Coast tomorrow; he hated Bumpkinville, never stayed a minute longer than necessary even before Merrin died. Ig saw no reason to let him go back with all his fingers. Terry was so out of it that Ig could take his right hand, the trumpet hand, put it on the night table, and remove the fingers with one whack, all before he woke. If Ig had lost his great love, Terry could get by without his. Maybe he could learn to play the fucking kazoo.