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Benny said, “I thought you were going to disrupt the current and demagnetize the lock.”

“My fundamental nature,” Spike said, “is to be direct, blunt, and physical.”

“Evidently so. Won’t that have set off an alarm?”

“The gate isn’t alarmed. The doors and windows of the house itself will be. But with so many lights on, it’s likely that Mr. Duroc hasn’t yet set the alarm for the night.” He pushed open the gate and smiled at Harper and said, “You first, little lady.”

Benny followed Harper into the courtyard, where more palm trees were up lit. Three life-size dolphins, carved out of white marble, spouted water from their blowholes into a surrounding fountain.

She said, “You know who Spike reminds me of?”

“I’ve no idea. Samson? Hercules?”

“John Wayne.”

“He doesn’t look anything like John Wayne.”

“No, but he’s got that John Wayne smile, that courtliness, that sort of sideways walk, and how he says ‘little lady.’”

“I’ve seen maybe three John Wayne movies,” Benny said. “The comparison wouldn’t have occurred to me.”

“You’ve gotta see more. Like a year ago, most girls my age, we were swept up in this intense John Wayne craze, binged on dozens of his movies. There aren’t a lot of guys like him these days. If there were, you’d see a heck of a lot more babies, babies everywhere you looked.” As Spike closed the damaged gate and joined them, Harper said to him, “You remind me of John Wayne.”

“That is a high compliment, ma’am.”

“Do you date?” she asked.

“Indeed. I date back eighteen hundred and fifty years.”

Harper frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“It means I’m eighteen hundred and fifty years old.”

“Huh. You sure don’t look it.”

“A craggle is what he always was. We always are how we came into the world. The year I came into the world was a bad year for nice people. They needed us.”

“Okay, but by ‘date,’” she said, “I meant like with girls.”

Spike smiled—Benny had to agree—like John Wayne. He patted Harper on the head and said, “That’s not the craggle way, Miss Harper. Like others of my species, I’ve no interest in reproducing.”

“Maybe you haven’t met the right girl,” she said, as if the previous two millennia were known to have been lousy for romance.

“It’s simpler than that. A craggle has no reproductive organs. That kind of thing would distract us from our vital mission, which is championing those people who are so nice that by their niceness they can make this a better world—if they can stay alive.”

Benny felt an unworthy but not at all mean satisfaction when he saw the look of disappointment that overcame Harper.

“Now,” said Spike, “let’s go terrify Mr. Duroc.”

“But not torture,” Benny said.

“Not physically,” Spike concurred.

“Intimidation,” Benny said.

“Big time,” Spike said, and he grinned more like Jack Nicholson inThe Shiningthan like John Wayne in anything.

INTIMIDATION