I'm in the kitchen.  Nikki is trying to get at the bread I made, which is on top of the refrigerator where it ought not to be, the heat from the fridge will make it stale.  I could reach it for her, but instead of asking for help she's dragged one of the big heavy chairs in from the dining room to stand on.  She's stubborn about being short.  "You're such a little bulldog girl," I tell her, watching her cut her bread and spread jelly on it.  "Nothing's ever going to stop you, if you don't let it.  No matter how difficult, or horrible." 

"I don't think moving a chair is a very good representation of my entire life," she says, wrapping the rest of the loaf up.  "How's the car coming?"

"I'll have to go and get a body this week. Want to come with?"  That reminds me of Marion's Packard and I all but fall off the chair in excitement.  "Oh, wow!  I almost forgot!  Treasure!  I have to show you what I found."  I bounce up and beckon Nikki to follow. 

Nikki puts her bread and jam on a paper towel like the fastidious little cutie she is, brushes her skirt even though nothing is clinging to it, and follows me to the front door.  "Outside?" she asks, disappointment in her voice.

"Oh yes, oh yes.  Some of the most wonderful things are outside, you know..." I say, opening the front door.

"Let's put coats on first, Lexi.  You're some kind of fucking penguin."

"Penguin?   Hardly.  I'm better dressed," I say, and do a little sexy dance, apropos of nothing.

"Nice day for a walk," Gray says suddenly.  She's on the second floor landing, looking enigmatically down at us.  Nikki looks startled, sees her up there, and looks even more startled.

I take my time in recognizing her.  "Every day is a nice day for a walk," I say, hoping I don't trigger another homicidal rage.  "If you know where to walk."

The weather isn't any warmer, of course.  The sky's sunless, and a solid ceiling of clouds threatens more snow.  The Weather Channel will probably back me up on that.  If it snows much more, Nikki won't be able to leave the porch without ending up neck-deep in snow. 

For the moment, though, the white stuff is only up to her waist, and she can flounder about well enough.  I take her to the carriage house and show her the Packard, which she's only moderately impressed by.  Actually it seems to creep her out a bit, and while I'm looking under the hood (it is a twelve-cylinder) she's looking at the floor.  "Lexi," she says.  "Do you know the floor in here's fucking collapsing?"

I go to where she is and see a deep crack in the concrete-slab floor.  It's half an inch wide and widens to several inches on its way to the wall.  The floor is sagging toward the gaping crack.  "You certainly are, aren't you?  What's wrong with you?" I ask it.  I go to the wall and give the floor an experimental tap, then squat and put my hand in the crack.  It's deep, and I can feel the slab moving up and down a bit.

"Maybe there's a basement."

"Carriage houses didn't usually have them, but this is a weird house.  Maybe there is," I concur.  "At any rate, I need to drag this six-thousand pound shithead out of here before he falls through the floor.  I'll get Furious to drag him out.  What shall I name you?" I ask the car.  It certainly needs a name.

"What do you mean, you'll need to get furious?"

That makes me laugh.  "Oh, no no no.  Furious is our--my--Suburban.  He can tow anything, even a certain three-ton car with its drivetrain frozen solid."

Nikki narrows her eyes at me.  "You laugh all the time but you have a cat named Malice, a car named Furious.  A shrink would fucking love to peel your brain."

"Many have tried," I tell her.  "Most have gone mad themselves.  Walk not down that path."

"And speaking of frozen solid," Nikki says, laughing, "can we go back inside now?"  My fingers agree with her; inside is a good thing.  I follow Nikki back to the kitchen and sit while she makes soup.  I rearranged all of the cans in the pantry by color instead of content a while back, to confuse Doctor Edward, but he never gave me the satisfaction of noticing.  When Nikki asked me why, I told her it was so the French wouldn't be able to find anything if they invaded, and she found that funny.

My mind starts racing, thinking about the Packard, and Ren's car in the library, and it's not long before I have to put my head down on the table and cry for a while.  When I get started doing that, I can't stop.  Nikki holds me for a while, and that's nice, and soon Doctor Edward is there, too, and he urges me to eat a bowl of soup which undoubtedly has a pill in it, and the crying goes away.  I think.  I'm not really sure.  I don't feel any better, but I do feel less, and that's an improvement.

I think.

I'm not really sure.

Swish-click.  Ian's here again, he's dropped in to say hi and I shall make chili for everyone.  I like making chili.  Molly's a better cook than I am but I have my moments.  I ask Ian if Molly is coming and he gives me a patient smile that says no.

I go into the pantry (I like having a pantry that is its own little room, it reminds me of the house I grew up in) to look for the kidney beans.  There should be tomato sauce in here too, somewhere with the other red things, but someone's moved it.  I suspect Mister Doctor Edward Sharp,  because he's apparently incapable of putting things back where he found them.  Nikki and I have bonded over this.  While I'm squatting on the floor, Ian shuts the door behind me and everything goes dark.

I jump up to complain, because who likes being locked in a closet?  But Ian's talking to Doctor Edward, and I realize it was a mistake; he must think I've gone upstairs or something.  From the way they talk I can tell that Doctor Edward and Ian are friends from way back, which makes sense in a way.

"I've got to get that goddamn place cleared out, Eddie," he says.  His voice is all twisty, like it gets when he's agitated.  "They're moving guns.  Guns!  I was there, and I saw them, and when I asked what the hell was going on, they threatened me, Eddie!"

"Did they?"

"This greasy European bastard stuck a gun in my face!  I practically pissed myself."  The notion of someone sticking a gun in tweedy little Ian's face is actually kind of amusing.  I imagine his eyes getting enormous, and his cheeks quivering.  Ian's saying, "I told them I wasn't the property owner, just managing it, and I was only passing on the owner's wishes, and that got them to back down.  I can't be associated with these people any more.  They said they're watching all of us.  They told me they know where we all live."

"Standard pushing," Eddie said.  "Don't worry, they're just scare tactics.  Don't forget,  Ian, they have as much to lose as you do.  How did you hook up with this crowd again?  This isn't your usual social circle."

Oh, there's the tomato sauce.  Wonderful.  I choose two cans and I'm down to two left so I should get some more, and am I feeling dexterous enough to carry four cans at once?  It appears that I am.  Ian is saying,  "I can't believe I've screwed this up so badly," and he's probably shaking his head.

"Let me see what I can do," Doctor Edward says.  He doesn't sound quite like himself.  "What's the guy's name again?  Not the one who threatened you.  His faceman, the one who originally approached you and signed the paperwork.  The name is probably false, but I just need his number."

"What do you mean the name's probably false?"

"They wouldn't use their real names, Ian.  What if this ends up in court…oh, hell, your name's on the paperwork, isn't it?"

Ian throws a New Jersey hissy-fit.  "Shit!  Shit!"

Doctor Edward says a bunch of things to calm him down.  That can be a difficult task.  I've seen Ian flip out before, more than once while we were pulling together the funding for the car company, and sometimes the only thing that will shut him up is single malt Scotch.

I can't hear what they're saying, until Ian mutters, "Maybe I should use it to leave the goddamn country."

"Oh, sure.  That wouldn't look suspicious," Doctor Edward says.  "Shut up and I'll handle it, okay?"

"But what if they do something?"

"I said I'd handle it."

Ian sounds like a little kid as he asks, "Do you think they really know that it's her--" and that's when I get bored of standing in the dark and come out of the pantry.  He stops talking immediately and clears his throat and looks like he's about to piss himself with surprise.  "Lexi!  How long have you been in there?"

"I'm not locking any use of language in the wife of your presence," I tell him.  He wouldn't recognize a Fibber McGee quote if you tattooed it on his forehead (Ren would) and so it should be clear to him that I didn't care what he was talking about, and have no intention of caring.  Of course, what it probably makes him think is that I'm just cuckoo, and that's fine, too.  I'm kind of irritated about being locked in the pantry, after all.

Dinner is a success, even with Gray and Martin attending.  Ian and Martin seem to get along well.  Nikki and I pass notes back and forth, and she draws silly drawings while Doctor Edward tells a story that seems to end with him riding a pig into a barbed wire fence.  I can't have heard that right, but he's a good storyteller and I like hearing his voice swell and fade in my ears as it spins around my head. 

I watch Gray and eat chili.  She watches Nikki and doesn't eat anything.  She's got a look of animated interest on her face but it looks like it's only skin-deep, her brain is off somewhere else.  "You're not eating," I say to her.

"I am sorry," she says in her Italian accent, which I don't think is real.  Did I hear her talking without it some time?  I can't remember.  I remember that she choked me for teasing her though, and that's just not right.  "I am not used to dinner so late.  My stomach, it is..." she trails off, seesawing a hand in the air.

"Tch!  That explains why you didn't eat last night, either."

"It does."

"Ian," I say all joking-whiny,  "I don't think it's quite fair that I'm the only one who gets yelled at for not eating."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, don't pretend you didn't hear me.  There's a clear imbalance of respect here."

Gray's suddenly gone.  I didn't notice her getting up, but she must have because I hear her going up the steps.  When she gets there a few seconds later, there's a big ker-BLAM of something lifting up and dropping on the floor.  Something big.  I think of the dresser in the room Martin and Gray are staying in, that sounds about right sizewise.  Everyone at the table jumps, Nikki most of all.  Gray shouts, a short shocked "Ah!" of surprise.  It startles me, too, but then I remember Marion.

"Jesus," Martin says.  "Your cats are hard at work."

"No, they aren't," I say, and cram a cracker into my mouth.  Everyone's looking at me, but I make them wait till I've finished my chili cracker.  "The house is haunted.  Get used to it.  By the way, I don't think my ghost likes your girlfriend," I tell Martin.

He cocks an eyebrow.  "If anything, Gray should be jealous of a pretty little thing like you," he says.  That's about the lamest thing I ever heard, and I get up to go upstairs.  I'm getting better at not swaying when I stand.

When I get to the door of Gray and Martin's room, she's there.  Not Marion.  Gray.  She grabs me and drags me through the door, and she's got a crazy knife, a double-edged thing with a big split down the middle.  I suddenly know the meaning of the word transfixed, because I can't move, staring at that knife in front of my eyes.

"I'm going to kill you, snipwit," Gray says.  She's forgotten her Italian accent again.  "I'm weary of the tricks and I'm going to kill you now--"

And something slaps her.

I can hear it, and see her react to it, can almost see the flesh on her face rippling as she's hit, but there's nothing there.  The unseen hand strikes her across the face, on her head, on her shoulder and side and hip.  They're loud, Three Stooges slaps, flesh on flesh, and Gray's suddenly got handprints on her face and neck.  She lets me go and staggers back, making a big show of fussing with her hair as she regains herself.  The knife has disappeared and I didn't see where it went.  When I check it's not sticking out of me anywhere, which is a good thing.

Gray looks at me, and she looks scared and enraged.  She starts to say something, then turns and walks quickly out of the room.

I feel like I've dodged a bullet, with a bit of help that is.