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him? I was struggling to achieve a sense of spiritual well-being through abstract meditation. It hardly seems right that an innocent bystander should die because of it. Unless, of course, that was his karma,” she added on a hopeful note.
    Alaina Montgomery-Harrison blew up into her chestnut bangs and planted her elegantly manicured hands at the waist of her brown trousers as she stared at the body. “I hope you’re insured. This guy could sue your butt off.”
    “Spoken with all the compassion of an attorney,”Jayne scolded, winding her hands into the bottom of her purple T-shirt.
    “Sorry, but all my compassion went down the john this morning with my breakfast,” Alaina grumbled, slumping down to sit on an overturned crate, careful not to get her alligator wingtips in the dirty water.
    Faith kneeled down beside the man on the floor and pressed two fingers to his throat. Her shoulders dropping in relief, she rocked back on the heels of her canvas sneakers and dragged a hand back through her mop of red-gold curls. “I think he’s just knocked out.”
    “Thank heaven,” Jayne said, joining her friend on the floor. Her hands were shaking as she tried to push her hair back behind her ears. She hooked the fingers of her right hand beneath her bracelet and slid it around and around her wrist, hoping for a stronger sign of what this all meant, but her source had gone abruptly silent. That in itself seemed a very bad sign. “Do you think I should call an ambulance?”
    The man moaned and stirred a bit, his movement rippling the surface of the dirty puddle around him.
    “Looks like he’s coming around,” Alaina commented. “Now, Jayne, whatever you do,
don’t
apologize. It’s as good as an admission of guilt.He’ll take you for every nickel you’ve got, and then you won’t be able to afford to pay my fee for representing you.”
    Jayne shot her a look of disgust. Alaina in her normal state was business-minded. Alaina in her newly pregnant state was a shark, a virago, a tigress.
    “Ooohhh …,” the man moaned.
    Jayne pressed her fingers to her pale cheeks and moaned along with him. “Ooohhh … I’m so sorry, mister! I didn’t mean to crack your skull with that bucket! I’m
so
sorry!”
    Alaina rolled her eyes and muttered an expletive.
    Jayne leaned down closer to get a better look at her victim. He seemed vaguely, disturbingly familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. She had the distinct feeling she might have known him if his hair had been lighter or if he hadn’t had a beard. And there was something about his nose that looked very strange, almost as if it wasn’t real.
    “Cripes, Jayne, what was in that bucket, battery acid?” Alaina questioned. “This guy’s face is coming off.”
    “What?!”
    “She’s right,” Faith said, frowning. She pulled a packet of baby wipes out of her purse and yanked out half a dozen, which she applied gingerly to the man’s face. “I think he’s wearing makeup.”
    “Pervert,” Alaina pronounced.
    Jayne and Faith rolled the man onto his back, and Jayne’s eyes widened impossibly as she stared. The right side of his face had been lying in the water, and his hair on that side had turned blond, the dark color washing out of it to stain the wooden floor. His beard had slid down the side of his face, making him look distorted, like something from a cheap horror movie. Grimacing, she reached out and hesitantly plucked at the limp swatch of fake whiskers. The false beard peeled off and hung from her fingertips like a drowned muskrat.
    “Eeeewwww!” she squealed, dropping the dripping mat of hair to the floor.
    Alaina sat back and fanned herself with her hand. “Brother, this is getting weird.”
    “It’s just like in
Dawn of the Double Damned,”
Jayne whispered, worried, twisting her suddenly silent bracelet. “That part where Emilio Gustave has turned into one of the pod creatures but Brigette Egbert doesn’t know it. And then she realizes it, but