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“This chippy must be somethin’,” Trott says.

“How do you mean?”

“Takes four men to handle her?”

“She’s given us reason to think maybe so.”

“She a witch or somethin’?”

“Why would you ask is she a witch?” Vector wonders.

“Iffen she ain’t some kind of witch, how’s she make grown men disappear?”

“Probably pretty much the same way we’ve done more than a time or two.”

“She ain’t got the muscle we got.”

“Sometimes brains beat muscle.”

Frank Trott is having none of that. “Not so I ever seen. Brains or not, she’s just another skirt.”

“Not just another.”

“How’s she special?”

“You’ve never seen her?”

“Not so I remember.”

“You’d remember.”

“How special could she be, bangin’ Nochelobo’s kind?”

“From what I can tell, theirs was a clean, true love.”

“Heard such a thing talked about, but I ain’t never stood witness to it.”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking she’s loose and dumb.”

“So then she ain’t a woman after all?”

“Frank, you’re lucky some righteous lady hasn’t put a knife in you as a matter of principle.”

Beyond the town limits, the county road is deserted, a black ribbon unraveling through the moon-washed land. The lack of traffic at this hour isn’t unusual, but something about the way the lonely highway rolls across the undulant valley floor, disappearing and reappearing, disquiets Galen Vector, though it never has before.

Frank Trott says, “How we supposed to break the bitch, find out what she done, what she knows?”

“Do whatever it takes.”

“No limits?”

“None. Too much is at stake.”

“Was just you and me, I’d say let’s make good use of this chippy before we break her. But I never want to see the brothers Frankenstein with their pants dropped.”

Behind them, Monger engages in a noisy clearing of his throat. He’s not preparing to speak, and he hasn’t taken offense, because that isn’t in his nature regarding a matter like this. The noise he makes is just an issue of phlegm.

“Belden, now Nash,” Trott says. “So is this chippy takin’ out who she thinks had somethin’ to do with Nochelobo gettin’ dead?”