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y’know?”
    “I suppose that’s one way of seeing things.” Serena paused and gave Ken a piercing look. “Can he bring back my babies?”
    “Babies? You mean the snakes? No. No, he can’t do that. But he said to tell you he has a line on a couple of pythons just like Clem and Clementine. A little younger, but just the right age for you to train. You’ll be back onstage in no time.”
    “I don’t think so,” Serena said.
    “But…”
    “No buts. And no snakes are just like Clem and Clementine.”
    “Well, I’m sure the cap’n didn’t mean anything bad when he said that. He doesn’t know much about snakes, I guess.”
    “I’m tired of talking to you,” Serena said, and she let the knife drop down from her sleeve into her hand.
    Ken saw it. “Wha…?” was all he could say before the knife slit his shirt and slid into his stomach and ripped upward though his skin and muscle as if it were slicing through a loaf of bread.
    Serena pulled out the knife, stepped away, and looked at him. Blood ran down the knife blade and dripped on the ground.
    “Y…you…” Ken said, or tried to say as he tried to hold in his intestines with both hands.
    “Can’t you finish a fucking sentence?”
    “I…I…sh…shit.” Ken sank to his knees.
    “You surely did,” Serena said. “Or maybe that’s just your guts. It stinks, whatever it is. I’ll be leaving you now.”
    Serena walked around behind him and kicked him forward onto his face.
    “There aren’t any other snakes that are anything at all like Clem and Clementine,” she said, not that Ken gave a damn about that or about anything else, being pretty much dead by then.
    Serena wiped the knife blade on the leg of her jeans and left him there.

CHAPTER TEN
    Matt continued his patrol of the carnival grounds. He was passing the Ferris wheel when he saw Gloria heading in his direction. Matt smiled. She wore her gypsy duds. The show must go on. He stopped smiling when he saw the look of fear in her eyes.
    “Something very bad is about to happen,” she said.
    “What is it?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s already begun. It can’t be stopped.”
    But Matt knew better than that. In his own way, he saw the future too, every time he looked into the decaying face of someone eaten alive by evil.
    “That’s what he wants you to think,” Matt said.
    He brushed past Gloria and headed for his trailer. Gloria reached out to touch him, but he ignored her. When he got to the trailer, he looked back. She was right behind him. Matt went inside. Gloria followed. He didn’t try to stop her.
    Matt pulled his duffel bag from under the bed.
    And took out his ax.
    Whatever game Mr. Dark was playing was entering another phase. Matt felt like a checker that was being pushed across the board from one square to the next.
    He’d had that feeling before.
    He hated it.
    “Go back to your trailer,” he said. “You don’t want to be a part of this.”
    “You’re right, I don’t, but I am whether I like it or not. Hiding from it isn’t going to change anything.”
    “OK, but it’s going to be ugly.”
    “I know,” she said.
    They walked out together, Matt holding the ax at his side. He didn’t care who saw the ax. It was more important to him to have it handy and ready.
    They had gone only a few steps when they heard dogs growling and snarling. Snapping teeth clicked together.
    “What’s that?” Gloria asked.
    The ruckus was coming from somewhere between the nearby trailers. Matt moved cautiously in the direction of the sound, his ax raised, Gloria safely behind him.
    He rounded the edge of a trailer and stopped cold.
    Three mongrels were tearing at something that had been a man. They’d ripped away most of its stomach, and bits of flesh lay on the ground. The dogs were chewing busily. One of them stopped and turned to look at Matt, its snout bloody, its teeth bared, its eyes blazing.
    “Ken,” Gloria said at Matt’s shoulder. “That’s Ken.”
    The