Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 by Christopher Golden Page B

the water doing their best not to look at him. They were too close. Jack felt foolish for a second, but then he just couldn’t bring himself to care.
    “Talk to people on your side. A priest, maybe a medium. Turns out some of them are actually for real. Somebody’s got to know something about this thing, where it came from, how to hurt it. But we’ve got to stop it, Jack.” With a kick of his feet, Jack swam a short way from the couple, and Artie followed.

    “Absolutely,” he told the ghost. “Before it gets you.”
    Artie only stared at him. “If we don’t destroy this thing, it’s going to be waiting for all of us eventually.” The ghost began to rise up from the water again. Through his gossamer form, Jack could see a sailboat out on the ocean. “I’m sorry I startled you. I know it’s my fault. If she really does know, and you think it would help her to talk to me . . .” Then Artie wasn’t there anymore. He disappeared like the spray from the breaking waves. Jack turned and rode the next one in, bodysurfing until he found himself on his knees in six inches of water.
    It wasn’t anger. At least, not entirely. But the chaos of clashing emotions inside Molly could not be calmed, could not be made sense of. So though anger wasn’t really what it was all about, that was how it came out, as a bitter, cold rage at the only person close enough for her to hurt.
    Jack stayed down in the water for several minutes, swimming a little, talking to the air.
    Not the air. She knew that. But that was how it looked.
    When he dove into the water and then swam for shore, Molly stood and picked up her towel. She had the urge to hit someone. Or cry. But crying would just have pissed her off even more.
    By the time Jack jogged over to her, she was taking apart the two pieces of the rented umbrella. He stood behind her and said her name, soft and with great tenderness. The same voice that had caused so much confusion for her of late.
    “Molly,” he said again.
    She bent and picked up his towel with one hand, the pieces of the umbrella under her arm. She shook the towel once and thrust it at him without meeting his gaze. Jack took it, threw it over his shoulder.
    “Don’t you think we should talk?”
    Her lips pressed together and she cringed, shook her head slowly. Forced the tears to stay away.
    “No. I’ve got nothing to say to you right now.”
    “You must have a ton of questions.”
    At last she turned to glare up at him, the hurt so deep in her that it felt as though it was almost blocking the words from coming out. She swallowed and her stomach hurt. “Not now, Jack. I can’t talk to you right now.” He shook his head, lifted his hands as if they might heal her. “You knew. You can’t tell me you didn’t.”
    Molly glanced away. “Maybe I suspected. But I asked you, Jack. And you put me off. You told me no. You said he was gone! Then . . . we kissed. I feel things I already felt horrible for feeling, but now . . . what am I supposed to do now, Jack?” She spun away from him and stormed away up the sand toward the pavement and the shops and restaurants. People stared openly, but Molly didn’t care. Who were these people anyway? Certainly no one she would ever see again. She didn’t know them.
    At the moment she wondered if there was anyone she really knew.
    The long August day was only beginning to wane, dusk still several hours off. The sun angled down with a golden hue only found this time of day, this time of year. Arm in arm, Dallas and Valerie wandered through Quincy Market, suffused with the good feeling of the people all around them. Balloon sellers in clownface did a stellar business. In the Cityside restaurant, its patio open to the cobblestone walk, a lanky scarecrow of a man played Billy Joel songs on the piano.
    Dallas knew that his current employer, Jasmine, had been part of Owen Tanzer’s movement to draw together the scattered Prowlers of the world, to try to take over. He thought it was