"Very intelligent of you," Ru murmured.

"I wouldn't have stayed except we would have taken a terrible hit trying to sell our house—it was all through the news, and no one wanted to live next to that."

Ru made more encouraging noises.

"I can't believe those monsters were so close to my house—that I might have passed them in the car and looked them in the face."

"Have they caught any of the ones responsible?"

"No, no." She scanned the empty road, either becoming aware they were alone on the country lane, or looking for monsters in the form of men lurking in the bushes, or maybe both. Ironically, she'd probably mistake Ascii as an ally against the monstrous. What would she make of Atticus? "The police keep asking us, insisting we must have seen something. There were cars every now and then—and trucks of firewood—but I thought those were deliveries for someone farther down the road. The McBeals or the Henrys."

Ru showed her the artist sketches of the cult members, but she didn't recognize anyone.

"Is this drug related then?" She seemed incredulous, as if unmotivated murder was simpler to understand than drugs being sold in her neighborhood.

"That's what we're trying to find out."

In the end, she could enlighten them only about the aftermath, not about the murders themselves. She repeated her tale of calling the fire department, and expanded on the story, telling about the police canvassing the area to see if residents were missing, and how the local paper still carried stories each time a victim was identified. "They think there were thirty to forty bodies cremated there. Once the news came out, I called everyone I knew, just to check on them—even one thieving cousin I won't let in my house; he might be a bastard but I wouldn't wish that on him."

Was this where they had been taking Ukiah? Had the victims been other family members Atticus now would never meet? Or had they been humans who fell prey to the cult insanity?

Since they were operating on the assumption that their cover was blown, they gave her their business cards and asked her to call them if she remembered anything, or—in the way of a mild warning—noticed any new activity at the site.

The smell of coffee pulled Atticus out of the memory. Kyle had opened up a bag of instant coffee and poured it out into the filter of the hotel room's coffeemaker. The rich, dark aroma blossomed to fill the small room as few things could; it was a good thing that he liked the smell of coffee, if not the taste. Atticus shifted his attention to his room—Ru was up and in the shower.

"The police have apparently identified some of the victims of the cult," Atticus told Kyle. "Do you have the records on that?"

"Of course." Kyle transferred the water from the carafe to the coffeemaker, and started the coffee brewing. "But I haven't really done anything with them."

"Unless Zheng's come up with new leads, we're running out of options."

After the burn site, he and Ru worked their way south, hitting a house gutted by fire, an empty town house, and finally an empty storefront in Kendall Square that once housed the cult's recruitment center for Harvard and MIT students. The cult had only leased the last and the landlord more than willingly let them search the dusty interior. They found neither Zheng's supposed alien doomsday devices nor any leads to the cult's current location.

"There's a possibility, though, knowing the cult is behind the murders," Atticus said. "That we might be able to find a common factor among the victims which might pinpoint something not on Zheng's list."

Ru padded in from the adjoining room. He was naked except for the towel cinched around his slender waist, and a bejeweling of water. "You know, I was thinking in the shower," he said while scrubbing his fingers through his thick black hair, spiking it on end. He smelled of everything right and wonderful in Atticus's life. "It was listening to the boat horns this morning—we're on the coast."

"Doh," Kyle muttered at the keyboard.

"Salem is a harbor. What if Ice was going to meet them there with a boat, load Ukiah onto it, and abandon the car?"

They glanced at each other, weighing the idea.

"Yeah," Atticus said.

Kyle opened a search window and a moment later had a map and satellite photo for Salem displayed. "Bingo. This triangle here is the parking lot for the train station." He slid his finger over to a featureless gray area. "And this is open water."

"Deep enough for a boat?"

"Maybe; there are little pierlike things," Kyle murmured, tapping man-made structures jutting into the water. He zoomed in as much as the software allowed and panned northward from the train station. After a moment of fiddling, he swore, minimized that window, and started to call up others, quickly running through Salem Harbor Channel and then Danver River Channel and finally Collins Cove. "It would help if I knew anything about boating."

He hadn't minimized the lingerie ads, and they peeked around the edges of the other windows as he filtered through the massive information on the Internet, looking for the grain of data.

"What's with the panties and bras?" Ru whispered to Atticus.

"Our little boy is in love," Atticus whispered back.

"With who?"

"Agent Zheng."

Showing that Ru had heard Atticus singing earlier, he sang, "I want to love you madly; I want to love you now."

Atticus laughed. "You know, when I was growing up, I thought there was some weird affliction that made humans burst into song whenever they were in love."

" Kaiwaii!" Ru cried, which was Japanese for "cute." "Is this why you're so into karaoke?"

Was it?

Kyle sighed, apparently deciding that he had reached the balance point of time invested to payoff. "It's possible, but unlikely. Look at this chart. It shows the channels in and out of this river area. None of them point into this cove—although there are several rocks indicated. This document here talks about mooring field A located at the convergence of this channel and Collins Cove—which is the body of water beside the train station. It says there are roughly a hundred and eighty moorings—but that's up here at the mouth of the cove, and the train station is down here, but we're only talking . . . feet."

"Assuming there is a boat," Atticus said, "where did they get it, and where is it now? It's not on the list of purchases that Zheng had."

"And where were they going to take Ukiah?" Ru said.

"Legend has it that vampires can't cross running water," Kyle said.

Atticus looked at him with horrified dismay. "No, don't add vampires to this."

"I thought we might as well cover all bases."

"Don't even go there."

"But the cult might lump demons and vampires together," Ru said.

Kyle's laptop played a sound clip from a Japanese anime film; "Ringu, ringu, wakey, wakey."

"Ack." Kyle started to save information and close windows. "I still need to shower and shave before we meet with Indigo!"

***

At a quarter to eight, Atticus called time for heading downstairs to meet with Zheng. Kyle, for once, had his five-o'clock shadow in check and borrowed some of Ru's cologne.

"Are you sure this isn't going to . . . you know . . . weird you out?" Kyle asked as he dabbed it on. "I mean, me smelling like Ru?"

"It combines differently with your body chemistry." Atticus shrugged into his shoulder holster and then his leather jacket to hide his pistol. "You don't smell the same."