Nightfall

  * * * * * * *

  It wasn’t quite five a.m. when Cameron heard a loud knock on the front door and sat up in bed sleepily. It was still awfully hard for him to get used to thinking of himself as Philip, and there were times when he didn’t feel like trying.

  “Who could that be, I wonder?” he muttered to himself, getting up to put on a robe. Joan was still asleep, and he hurried downstairs in his bare feet to see who it was before the noise could wake her. Rain had been falling off and on for hours, but it seemed to have more or less stopped for a while at the moment, leaving the house quiet as death.

  He saw nothing through the fish-eye, and was tempted to think it might have been one of the neighborhood kids playing a silly prank in the middle of the night. He almost dismissed it and went back to bed without opening the door at all, but then thought better of it.

  He fumbled with the latches and chains, then turned the knob and stepped outside.

  And there, standing alone on the dark steps in the drizzling rain, was his nephew Tycho. The kid was soaking wet and smelled of salt, and around his neck was (of all things) a dog collar and a leash, which someone had tied to the step rail. For a split second, Philip stared at him in astonishment.

  “Where did you come from, champ?” he finally asked, scanning the yard and then squatting down in front of the boy when he saw no one. Tyke looked at him solemnly with his big brown eyes, but said nothing. Then Philip spotted a note tied to the collar, and thought to himself that it reminded him of the way people used to drop off orphans on a stranger’s doorstep. The paper was wet, and the ink had run pretty badly in places, but there was no mistaking what it said.

  Ask no questions.

  Philip stood up swiftly and looked around again, but still saw nothing unusual. He felt a twinge of fear in his gut, and untied the collar as quickly as his shaking fingers would work. Then he scooped up his soaking nephew and carried him swiftly inside, out of sight of prying eyes, leaving nothing behind on the steps but a nylon leash and a puddle of salty water.