little packets like candy for jealous children who would scream if they got one chewy less. And then there's Sasha and Ernest—" "Who are you talking about?" Tom asked. "My husbands." She shook her head dolefully. "To find five more difficult men would be positively Martian." Tom's mind backtracked frantically, searching all conversations at Tosker-Brown for gossip about cultists in the neighborhood. It found nothing and embarked on a wider search. There were the Mormons (was that the word that had sounded like Martian?) but it wasn't the Mormon husbands who were plural. And then there was Oneida (weren't husbands and wives both plural there?) but that was 19th century New England. "Five husbands?" he repeated. She nodded. He went on, "Do you mean to say five men have got you alone somewhere up here?" "To be sure not," she replied. "There are my kwives." "Kwives?" "Co-wives," she said more slowly. "They can be fascinerously exasperating, too." Tom's mind did some more searching. "And yet you believe in monogamy?" She smiled. "Only when I'm having tantrums. It was civilized of you to agree with me." "But I actually do believe in monogamy," he protested. She gave his hand a little squeeze. "You are nice, but let's rush now. I've finished my tantrum and I want you to meet my group. You can fresh yourself with us." As they hurried across the heated sands, Tom Dorset felt for the first time a twinge of uneasiness. There was something about this girl, more than her strange clothes and the odd words she used now and then, something almost—though ghosts don't wear digitals—spectral. They scrambled up a little rise, digging their footgear into the sand, until they stood on a long flat. And there, serpentining around two great clumps of rock, was a many-windowed adobe ranch house with a roof like fresh soot. "Oh, they've put on their clothes," his companion exclaimed with pleasure. "They've decided to make it a holiday after all." Tom spotted a beard in the group swarming out to meet them. Its
Prev.
Back
Top