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  “One of my many areas of expertise,” Autumn said. She ran a finger along the gator’s ridged dorsal scutes. “I’m monitoring the old Apex farms as the Everglades reclaims them.”

  “Maybe you can tell me what this bad boy was doing on CR 12 in the middle of the night.”

  Autumn paused her inspection. “Really? That’s odd. There’s abundant new habitat with the Apex land flooded. He should not have had to travel that far for good hunting, especially this time of year. Even juveniles haven’t seen any habitat stress.”

  Andy gave the dead gator a sad look. “It’s a shame.”

  Autumn was impressed. The universal description locals had for an alligator was invariably either “pest” or “profit” depending on whether you were a poodle-loving homeowner or a hunter. They walked back to the front of the vehicles. She pulled a business card from her ID case.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If you come across one without a Firestone tread pattern, let me know. A nice dissection will sure add to my survey results.”

  Andy tucked the card into his shirt pocket. “Will do.”

  Behind Autumn, Oscar surfaced in the RV’s driver’s side window, two white-tipped paws on the door edge. He eyed Andy with suspicion and let out a low meow.

  Autumn’s face turned red. “Sorry. He thinks you are keeping me from restocking his personal food pantry.”

  “And apparently I am,” Andy said. He reached up and touched an index finger to the glass. Oscar sniffed it as if he could smell it through the glass. He closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his face against the window.

  “Looks like you’re forgiven,” Autumn said in shock.

  “I’ve got to get to the dump before Tick-Tock here starts to ripen,” Andy said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Same here,” Autumn said. The white pickup pulled away and Autumn turned to face Oscar, who was still in the car window. “And what’s with Mr. Anti-Social being so friendly all of a sudden?”

  Oscar managed a small exculpatory meow.

  She turned and watched the truck drive off. “And what’s with a guy who can reference Peter Pan off the cuff?”

  It might be time to spend more time in town.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mayor Flora Diaz was sure the latest addition to Citrus Glade was a good thing. Reverend Rusty Wright of the First Baptist Church was certainly no fan. But Flora wasn’t one to look at any new business in her withered town with too jaundiced an eye. Other than Vicente Ferrer’s car business, Citrus Glade had the commercial traffic of a ghost town. After the minor orange and grapefruit harvests, everyone kind of hunkered down for the rest of the year. This could be the first of dozens of shops that refill the shuttered stores on Main Street, the start of a regular renaissance after the NSA embarrassment.

  And that return to small town greatness was her dream. She had been raised here, back when Apex money sloshed around town like swirling water in a bucket. She missed the place when she lived in Coral Gables. When she inherited her mother’s house, she moved back and friends convinced her to run for mayor. The job was mostly PR and she didn’t mind the tiny pay to do her part to try and resuscitate her hometown.

  She and Reverend Wright stood outside the refurbished Magic Shop. Reverend Wright was a good half-foot taller than the mayor. He had thin angular features with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His full head of silver hair was all that kept him from looking cadaverous. He wore a shiny light gray suit with a bright yellow tie. Reverend Rusty was always dressed like the TV preacher he’d longed to be, no matter what the weather dictated. He pointed a long finger at the Magic Shop window.

  “That there is the work of Satan,” he said. He spit the last word out like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Witchcraft has come to town and we need to crush it before it spreads.”

  Flora looked at him askance. She had the elected political power, but Reverend Rusty had an hour-long weekly conduit to most of the townspeople. She had learned how willing he was to fan the flames of public opinion when something ran afoul of one of his Biblical interpretations. When he’d called her about the “abomination” in the center of town, she knew better than to ignore him.

  “Reverend,” she said. “It’s a magic shop. Kids’ toys.”

  “A conduit to the Devil himself,” the Reverend said. He clutched a black leather-bound Bible to his chest.

  The excess drama made Flora sigh. “Now, Rusty. He’s just a normal shop owner. He did a benefit show at the retirement home for Pete’s sake. We’ll talk to the man.”

  They entered the store with the ring of a bell. A big brass cash register from the 1920s sat on the end of a poorly stocked display counter. There wasn’t much inventory on display elsewhere either. A set of shelves along the back wall held boxed kids’ magic sets and several different books on stage craft. A mannequin stood in the corner wearing a black silk top hat and a short black cape with a bright red lining. Lyle Miller stepped out from the back room, artificial smile already in place, hand extended.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he said. “I’m Lyle Miller.”

  “Mayor Flora Diaz,” Flora said as she shook his hand. “And Reverend Rusty Wright.”

  The Reverend shunned Lyle’s proffered handshake. The magician’s eyes narrowed and he pulled back his hand.

  “What can I do for you this morning, Mayor?”

  “We’re just checking out your store,” she said. “The opening was kind of a surprise.”

  “Yes, well, I did all the paperwork over the phone. The owner was happy to find a tenant.”

  Flora didn’t doubt it. The buildings on both sides of the street were mostly vacant.

  “The Reverend here has some concerns,” Flora said, voice tinged with dismissive sweetness, “that you will be directing our youth to the dark side.”

  Lyle laughed with a bit too much emotion. “No, no. Rest assured, good Reverend. Everything here is just stage magic.”

  “Stage magic?” the Reverend said.

  “Of course,” Lyle said. “Illusion, prestidigitation, sleight-of-hand. Simple tricks made amazing with a bit of showmanship. Allow me.”

  Lyle stepped behind the counter. He pulled out three cups and a red ball. He placed the ball under the center cup.

  “We all know where the ball is,” he said. He gave the cups a lazy shuffle in a figure-eight pattern. “And it seems easy enough to follow. In fact right now…” He paused the shuffle. “…it should be in the center spot again. But through the use of stage magic…”

  He raised the cup. No ball. He stacked the three cups. The ball was gone.

  “…it has vanished.”

  The mayor raised an eyebrow. The corners of Reverend Rusty’s mouth drooped in boredom.

  “But we know the ball didn’t vanish,” Lyle said. He flipped one hand over and the ball popped out from the wrist of his shirt. “It’s just a little trick. Hand-eye coordination and audience misdirection.”

  Flora turned to Reverend Rusty and batted her long eyelashes. “See, children’s toys.”

  The Reverend appeared unmoved.

  “Kids learn that practice makes perfect and that there’s an art to showmanship,” Lyle said. “All clean fun.”

  “And the kind of magic that isn’t stage magic, Mr. Miller?” the Reverend asked.

  “Ah, ritual magic,” Lyle said. “Witchcraft and wiccans. Conjuring the powers of nature, practicing the black arts. None of that happens behind these doors.”

  “All clean fun,” Flora repeated. “Happy, Reverend?” She already knew the answer.

  “I’ll keep my eye on you,” Reverend Rusty said to Lyle.

  “I look forward to it,” Lyle said. There was a look in his eye that Flora didn’t quite like, but it disappeared in an instant.

  Lyle offered the Reverend his hand again. The Reverend looked down in derision. Lyle offered it to Flora instead.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mayor.” He gave her a true politician’s handshake, firm
grip with the right, his left hand at her wrist.

  “Good luck, Mr. Miller,” she said as she directed the Reverend to the door. “I love to see new business downtown.”

  As soon as they were outside, she turned to the Reverend.

  “Please, Rusty. This fellow has just invested more in this town than anyone else in years. His place could be the start of something wonderful. More shops could follow. People traveling between Miami and Naples will start to see Citrus Glade as a destination.”

  Reverend Rusty looked back at the storefront window. The sun’s glare masked the narrow view of the store beyond it. He drew himself up and gripped his Bible.

  “I’ll be watching him,” he said. “The good Lord will be my guide and I shall watch Mr. Miller.”

  From inside the shop, Lyle had a perfect view of Reverend Rusty, the sanctimonious bastard. He’d seen his type over and over through the centuries. Whether following Jesus or Osiris, they were all the same. He was just the kind of pinprick that tended to become infected. If the old man began to act on his convictions, Lyle would need to respond.

  The mayor, on the other hand, would be no problem at all. Her dim whapna wasn’t worth his worry. She had the eternally sunny disposition that blinded her to the kind of work Lyle liked to do. She’d blithely smile as the whole world collapsed around her.

  Lyle couldn’t wait to watch her do it. But for now he had to gather one more unwitting recruit for the Grand Adventure.

  Chapter Twenty

  An hour later, Lyle pulled his long black convertible up to the front door of Ferrer Motors. He could feel that the whapna he sought was inside.

  The four boys in town would only wage half the battle to come. They would generate the magic his plan needed. But if experience told him anything, and he had thousands of years of it, a little defense never hurt. When he was deep into the incantations, he had no time to man the gates against any do-gooder town folk. Ah, for the days when mercenary knights were a dime a dozen or brown-shirt storm troopers were free. Why in the Dark Ages, he could spin a whole village of peasants into loyal defenders. He’d need nothing so grand in Citrus Glade. By the time they sensed he was a danger, they would be too preoccupied saving their own lives. Lyle would not need a large quantity of minions, just high quality. The whapna of Shane Hudson had that dark powerful quality. The man now walking out the front door of Ferrer Motors had it as well.

  Vicente approached with a broad, fake smile that Lyle truly appreciated. He flashed back the same empty grin and stepped out of his car.

  They introduced themselves and shook hands. Lyle could feel that this was his man.

  “1975 El Dorado,” Vicente marveled as he eyed Lyle’s car. “That is one fine ride. Don’t get me wrong, technology has advanced since then, but for its time, wow. I can make you a great deal on trading it in.”

  Right to the high pressure, Lyle thought.

  “That newer Cadillac caught my eye,” Lyle said. He pointed at a glossy Escalade SUV with enormous chrome wheels.

  “You have great taste. This car is here for you and you alone. Low mileage, one owner. Decent on gas. A real head turner.”

  All lies. Centuries among mortal humans had enabled him to spot a lie the way a hawk spies a mouse in a wheat field. But the prevarications rolled off Vicente’s tongue with impressive conviction.

  They walked over to the vehicle. Lyle feigned interest and ran a finger along the top of the fender.

  “I need to cut my inventory and I’m ready to make a deal today,” Vicente said. “I can take two thousand off this baby this afternoon to get it to move. I’ll also do right by you on your trade.” He offered Lyle less than half the El Dorado’s value. “I can even finance you right here at a competitive weekly rate.”

  “This will be a strictly cash deal,” Lyle said. “And I’ll need you to leave the title paperwork blank for me.”

  Vicente nudged Lyle in the ribs with his elbow. “Say no more. The taxman makes more than his fair share anyhow. I sell you the car and what you do with it then is none of my business.”

  Lyle liked his ethics. But his whapna was too black, too rich to be sustained with mere cheating of customers. This business fronted something much more sinister. Trafficking illegals. Trafficking drugs. Prostitution. Perhaps all of the above. Whatever it was, it earned a place on Lyle’s team, whether he knew he signed up or not. Lyle clapped him on the shoulder.

  “That sounds interesting,” he said. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  As he pulled his hand away he pinched two hairs from the shoulder of Vicente’s shirt. Vicente did a poor job at masking the disappointment generated by his escaping pigeon.

  “Sure you don’t want to drive her? Is there anything else I can tell you about the car?”

  Lyle clenched the hairs in his palm. “I’ve got everything I need, thanks.”

  When he pulled away, he watched a faded red truck pull in behind him, a real rust bucket beater with Lake County tags. Vicente pounced on the new victim and steered him straight to the Escalade that moments ago had been the car for Lyle alone.

  Lyle slipped the two black hairs into an envelope with the two silver strands from Shane Hudson. He began to hum a song he learned as a boy, about excited hoplite soldiers approaching battlements on the eve of war.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Autumn returned to the Everglades, but to the next spot in her rotation, a few miles south of where she had been before. She pulled off CR 12 and through the rotting fence that had once enclosed acres of Apex sugar cane. She particularly liked this location. A flat patch of white concrete surfaced where some building had once stood. The RV fit perfectly on it and she never feared that rain would mire her tires in the muck.

  Oscar manned his co-pilot position. Back paws in the passenger seat, front paws on the dashboard. He swayed with the motion of the RV, as if his head was gyroscopically leveled. Though, or perhaps because, his previous life had been with a homebound senior, the big boxy tabby had taken to travel, provided that Autumn didn’t make him leave his home on wheels.

  “Damn it,” Autumn said. She jabbed the brake and the RV crunched to a halt on the gravel road well short of the concrete pad.

  A brown and black Burmese python stretched out on the sunny pad. The snake had to be a dozen feet long. The middle of the snake bulged like the weak spot in a garden hose. This snake had just eaten something big.

  Autumn loved all animals, but she loved the Everglades more. The python was an ocean away from where it belonged in southeast Asia. Stupid people bought them as pets, unaware that the little reptiles would grow to eight feet within a year. A snake that could wrap around your wrist was cute. A snake that could wrap around your waist was scary. Panicked owners released the snakes into their backyards and they found their way to the Everglades, where an absence of natural predators and an abundance of prey created a population explosion. Wildlife officers killed hundreds a year, but the consensus was that the genie was out of the bottle.

  “Keep an eye on things, Oscar.” Autumn pulled on some blue latex gloves, grabbed a square-tipped shovel and exited the RV. The humidity draped her like a hot, wet blanket.

  The torpid snake lay motionless as she approached. Its scales reflected the sun and fostered an illusion of wetness. Like a guest at Thanksgiving dinner, the snake had seriously overeaten and was resting through the digestive process, recharging its internal heat pump with solar power. With the ability to unhinge its jaw, there was little limit to what the big snake could swallow after it crushed the creature to death.

  The python could strike with speed when it hunted from its coiled ambush. In its current bloated state, that wasn’t going to happen. Autumn approached from the rear. The snake was bigger than she had thought, at least sixteen feet, and the bulge in its midsection was easily three feet around. This snake was a pig. It had to go.

  She raised the shovel over her head, sharpened edge pointing down. The snake flicked out its tongue to give her a sen
sory once over. Too late. Autumn brought the shovel down like a guillotine. It caught the snake a foot behind its head and severed it. The snake’s jaws made one spastic snap and went still. Blood puddled in the gap between snake parts.

  She reached down and inspected the head. It was so large it took both hands to lift it. This one had been years in the Everglades. She tossed the head aside and pulled a large knife from her belt.

  “Let’s see what damage you have done.”

  She rolled the snake over on its back. Female. At up to thirty-six eggs per clutch, this one had probably added over a hundred invaders to the struggling Everglades. Autumn pierced the lower end of the snake and slit the skin up to where the head had once been. She peeled away the scales like she was shucking a huge ear of corn.

  “Well, I’ll be damned…”

  Curled up inside the snake, as if ready for the reptile to birth it, lay a deer. The snake’s digestion hadn’t fully kicked into overdrive and the deer was complete. Autumn yanked it out and guessed its weight at seventy-five pounds. She had heard that a python could take down a deer, even alligators, but hadn’t seen it herself. All the more reason to eradicate these invaders.

  She stood and surveyed the mess. It looked like an Animal Planet crime scene. She could bury the two pieces, but why do what Nature would better take care of? Scavengers would be on this feast minutes after she left, starting with ants and working their way up to vultures. Even buried, the scent would draw all sorts of creatures that would skew her observations. There were other waypoints she needed to check, anyhow.

  She reentered the RV. Oscar peered around the side of the passenger seat, round head like a giant creamsicle tennis ball with whiskers.

  “Hey, puffball. Did you catch all that action?”

  She extended a gloved hand to Oscar. He sniffed the glove and then gave a violent shake to eradicate the scent. He bounded onto the dashboard. Autumn snapped off the sweat-filled gloves and tossed them in the trash.