"I see you've met the local whore."

Jan Sanchez was a tall and lanky high school junior Kate had hired to help with the animals a few hours a week. It wasn't clear what the girl had meant until Kate saw her looking at the pea-brained hound from the night before, who was even now leaping and flopping bonelessly in the tall grass in pursuit of flying bugs.

"He just showed up last night," Kate said.

"Oh, he's a whore. He'll hang around 'til he gets tired of the grub and then move on. I've seen him at half a dozen places between here and Lompoc. I'm not sure if anybody really owns him. Dad says he's his own man."

I should name him Elijah, Kate thought with a smile.

"Thanks for the help getting the horses settled. I'll be here most of next week but will probably still need your help with odds and ends. You game?"

"Absolutely. If I'm not here helping you, my folks will put me to work doing the same, and they don't pay near as well."

She'd taken an immediate liking to Jan, who'd grown up with horses on a small ranch not far down the road. Kate's two horses had arrived mid-morning, and it had only taken about ninety minutes to check them out, exercise them, and feed and water them before going over what Jan's work schedule would be for the next month.

The youngster had declared Kate's facilities more than satisfactory and even had a few sage suggestions about what parts of the meadow to fence off for pasture. The girl had even gone so far as to volunteer her father and brothers' efforts when it was time to lay in the fencing.

As the young woman moved toward her truck, Kate suddenly remembered something.

"Oh, hold on." She returned from the barn in an instant. "Here's a key to the gate. I plan on keeping it open, but if this key doesn't work ...."

"You met Mr. Phelps, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah ... yesterday."

"He pulled that trick on somebody else." The girl looked over. "He's like that hound. Everybody knows him around here."

"Does everyone get such wonderful vibes?"

The girl laughed and shrugged. "No, not everyone. If you don't have business with him, he's a really nice and friendly man. If he thinks he's been wronged ... look out. He's been in pissing matches with seven or eight of his neighbors. But, please, whatever you do, don't bring him up with my dad," she said as she climbed into the seat of her pickup. "They do not get along."

"Thanks for everything, Jan. I'll give you a call if I have any change of plans."

The young woman hesitated before starting the engine and glanced back toward the barn. "Is that your boyfriend?" she asked with a sweet smile.

"Eli? Nah ... he's an old friend helping me get settled."

The kid laughed again and smiled as she started the engine. "Don't leave that laying around, then. Somebody's just liable to walk off with it .... Bye."

"Bye."

Sweet girl, she thought to herself. Better watch her, though, warned her little voice.

"Are you ready to go?" she called to Eli. All the work she'd intended to do was done, and she'd even had time for a short ride that morning. Jan would be around three times a day for the horses until she returned.

"I'm ready when you are." Eli tossed a bag in the back seat of the truck. "Do you have everything?"

She did a quick inventory and then another. She never used to be so deliberate but decided she needed to be now.

"Yep."

As they piled into his truck for the return trip, she mentioned her short conversation with Jan about the bothersome Mr. Phelps.

"It sounds like the same thing Leona Munson told you on the phone," Eli replied. "I'm glad you have people looking after you here." He paused and made an awkward noise. "I worry about you being here alone next week."

"Eli, you are a dove, but this place isn't Somalia. The county sheriff's office is twenty minutes away, and there's a state police barracks not much farther. But I will admit, I'll feel better when the phone gets put in. I don't like climbing up the side of the hill to get a signal."

"I'll feel better too." He reached over and touched her arm before starting his truck and pulling down the drive.

"Should I get a gun?" It was topic about which she'd never thought.

"Have you ever fired one before?"

"Dad taught me how to shoot a shotgun, but I haven't fired one in ages."

"A shotgun would be perfect, and not just for burglars and the Chupacabra. There's all manner of pests that you might use it on."

"Coyotes?" she asked, ignoring the Chupacabra reference.

"Oh, yes. They're everywhere. And Bigfeet ... or is it Bigfoots?"

"I'll have to look that up."

"You'll want it spelled right on your tombstone."

"Funny ... asshole."

"You still want to stop for something to eat?"

"Yes, but let's go to our place near Santa Ynez," she suggested. "And if I get a shotgun, do you think you could give me lessons?"

"Sure. If you've done it before, it should be easy. But I've got to warn you, I'm one of those people who's an asshole about gun safety." He pointed down toward the scar on his right leg.

"As you are in many other things," she replied sweetly, and then she became more serious. "I want to be able to protect myself and my property."

"Funny, I've got that same impulse. It must be an Illinois thing."

"Or a Catholic thing."

"Are you still worried I might be a demon?"

"No. Not enough to shoot you. Cause if you are, you're an awfully nice demon ... at least you have been to me. But I think I understand why you chose to study that."

"I'm glad you figured it out so quick. It took me a while. I guess I just needed the catharsis. After I finished the thesis, which was a nightmare, I felt like something important was behind me."

"In a good way?"

"Oh, definitely."

"I wish I could figure out how it all goes together," she said. "Flying Guys, demons, Bigfeet ... foots, Chupacabras ... all of it."

"Do you have to?"

"What? Figure it out?"

"Yeah. Does it all have to piece together in some way?"

"Oh, Eli, honey ... I'm just beginning to pull my life back together after ... after so much. All I can think about is sorting things out ... trying to make sense of everything. It isn't something I ever thought about in my life ... ever. But now it seems like the most important thing. Why is all this going on? What's the sense of it?"

"We both grew up Catholic, didn't we?" he asked. "Isn't Catholicism all about mystery? Look ... I'm not saying you have to turn to the Church for answers. But ... I've been thinking about the same things you have lately. Almost fifteen years ago, I saw something that I couldn't explain. But instead of trying to explain it, I shrugged my shoulders. I pretended the world was perfectly normal, because, as far as I knew, maybe it was. Maybe ... just maybe the Monkey Man was a trick of my eyes in poor light, or maybe I'd just imagined the whole thing."

"Kate, I don't think that's true now. I think I saw something in Baghdad. And I think you saw something too. But there is nothing to say that what I saw and what you saw are both part of some greater whole. It may be, or it may not be. It's been my experience that there's seldom a single silver bullet that resolves all questions. The existence of demons, if such things actually exist, or the existence of the Monkey Man, may have nothing to do with the existence of the Flying Guy."

"Life may just be chaotic?"

"No, I don't think so, at least not completely chaotic. Just for a second, say we believe what the demon in Regensburg IX said about there being no God. Even if that were true, why presume there's no guiding principle of some sort?"

"What kind of principle?" she asked.

"The laws of nature. And just because the law of gravity doesn't apply to a Flying Guy doesn't mean there aren't some laws that apply to him. The universe is complex ... that's the word I was looking for ... but it's not complete chaos, otherwise we would see that chaos in our daily lives. There are still a good-many things upon which we can depend."

"Such as?"

"Death and taxes?"

She found herself laughing despite the bad joke. "Okay, you've got me there."

"Kate, all I'm trying to say is that the existence of the exceptional need not upturn all that we know about the universe. It merely signals to us that the exceptional exists. The universe otherwise hums on."

"Pitt-Rivers, you can be an insufferable ass, sometimes. But you can also be an incredible comfort to me."

She wasn't sure if what he said was true, but the idea of the universe humming along made her feel better for the moment. He had a way of soothing her, and as their drive progressed it reminded her how much being around him meant to her.

But there was something else afoot, something she desperately had fought to keep at bay. Maybe it was the way young Jan had looked at Eli, and that certain something in the kid's voice.

In the sexless years just before Otto died, her libido had nearly run riot over her life and very nearly had led her to seek her comfort outside the bonds of marriage. But something had happened in the grief and bedlam of her husband's death. Sexual desire fell off her map entirely. No. Perhaps those weren't the right words. She was just as famished for human contact as she had been before, but somehow that fact had become ... disentangled from her daily life. Her sexuality hadn't disappeared, it merely had been biding its time in the next room. It was always there, thirsting, but it was out of her immediate line of vision.

She even had managed to pretend it wasn't there when she'd first started spending time with Eli, as if he wasn't a subject, the subject, of her carnal urges. It was one of those many lies she'd told herself and had oh-so gladly believed.

Over the last few weeks, though, as she'd sorted out her feelings for him, other things had begun to come clear.

The fact of the matter was that she was now positively consumed with lust for him. But like her deep and budding affection for him, she knew she had to keep in in check, to leash it, tame it, neuter it ... whatever it took. The idea that Eli ever knowingly would disappoint her now seemed absurd, but the thought that her friend, the confirmed celibate, might reject her sexually was too much. That was a thought she simply couldn't bear.

So, she reminded herself, once again, of her promise not to screw up their friendship. After a moment, she wrestled her feelings back under her full control. The thought of teasing him over Jan's apparent crush came to mind, but she ruled that out immediately. The clever bastard would just find some way to turn it around on her. You clever bastard, she whispered inwardly. You clever, clever bastard.

Reaching over, she smiled and began to doodle with that lock of hair over his ear.