Phillip has been cleared of murder. Nicholas is back, ready to make trouble. Derek has disapperaed, or has he? Barnbas lost control when he found out that David and Amy had been dealing drugs, and attacked Amy, only to be injured by Chris. He is now recovering from his broken collarbone. David is locked up, as a dangerous drug addicted werewolf... And so it begins...

MEMORY

Chapter 1

Willie drove Barnabas to his office, not so much Barnabas needed transportation as because he needed moral support to face the backlog at his office.

"So you think that Carolyn will commit Roger?" Barnabas asked Willie.

"It is a good bet she will." Willie shrugged.

"I was afraid that it would happen."

"It is best this way, and you know it. Roger and guns...that's a nasty combination. If left untreated, he'll kill someone and that will mean an institution for the criminally insane."

"I know...I know..." Barnabas was evidently unhappy with the solution. "What about Phillip? He's free now, isn't he?"

"Got a lecture delivered to him on the evils of associating with nuts and con-men. But except that, the law has nothing on him."

"Good. What about Derek? Got any idea where he might be?"

"Nobody does. George thinks that with luck, he'll get himself killed in somebody else's district."

"He saved Phillip's life, in the end. It seems somewhat strange."

"On the contrary. Perfectly in character. What is strange in him was giving Roger a gun. He's scared of guns to start with. In his opinion the best way to ruin a simple caper is to get a gun in it. Because with a gun you get a trigger-happy nut, and before you know it, a corpse on your hands."

"He seems to have talked to you a lot."

"Yes. We had plenty of time to talk. He's quite a jailhouse lawyer. The best one I ever found. Thanks to him I got an early parole."

"You were in jail with him?" There was a hint of strangeness in Barnabas' voice.

"Of course" He noticed Barnabas tensing up and added "don't tell me you've forgotten I am an ex-con."

"Yes...of course..." Barnabas' eyes acquired a faraway look "You must have told me...in 67, wasn't it? I wish I could remember."

"It doesn't matter." Willie cursed himself for getting Barnabas thinking about 1967. "Anyway, I think that you are going at it wrong with Derek. You think of him in terms of yourself, and of course, that way he does not make sense. How would you like to have your kneecaps broken?"

"My kneecaps broken? Why?"

"See? You think that I am being quaint. But that's a serious question, and a very likely possibility. There are many places where that happens often. And that's where Pearce comes from. He's had to survive there, and learned a number of reflexes. He's not going to abandon them as long as they keep working."

They had reached the building. Barnabas braced himself for what was coming. The pile on his desk would still be there, just as he had left it. If he was lucky.

All that he had gotten from his explosion was an aching shoulder and the knowledge that he had made a fool of himself with Amy.

"Willie, you know something? Those papers in my desk...they are alive. They reproduce.

"What you mean?: Little boy papers and little girl papers?"

"No. I think that it is asexual. Like amoebas."

"Hey!" Frank's voice came from inside the office. "you might be right, you know."

"What are you doing here?" Barnabas stared at Frank, surprised.

"Giving you a hand. And for the looks of it, you need it."

"It is not so bad, really...I manage." Barnabas was defensive "It is just that I have been away."

Frank shook his head. "Don't try to con a veteran. You are badly in need of a survival course."


The lights shone in the big ballroom as she danced. Her long white gown brushed the floor with a slight rustling every time she moved.

"Let's stop." she begged the man dancing with her. "I am tired."

The man said nothing and moved faster. The lights brightened, blinding her. Her gown constricted her, making it difficult to breathe.

"Please.." she said.

"Don't you like dancing, Josette?" Barnabas asked.

The bodice of her gown contracted, crushing her ribs. She screamed as Barnabas dragged her across the ballroom floor...

Maggie woke screaming.


"Will I ever be able to leave this place?" Phillip asked, annoyed.

"Is it my fault that you decide to run cross country in the middle of the winter?" Delia Harding was a little testy that day. "You'll be out of here when the doctor says you can go, not before."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Trying to get out of paying your hospital bill. weren't you?"

"It wasn't that...I believed what Roger told me."

"What Roger Collins told you? What the town nut told you, that you believed? You know that he's being committed?"

"He is?"

"Of course. Mrs. Hawkes didn't want to, but the sheriff convinced her. She's making the arrangements now."

"What about the other one... Pearce?"

"Him?" there was a slight hesitancy in her voice that Phillip missed "He's disappeared. Say, you want to see your wife or not?"

"I...I am not sure."

"She could refuse to pay your hospital bill if you don't see her."


"Yes, Iris." Willie tried to conceal his nerves "What can I do for you? Need a new TV set?"

"You know what I want. I won't ask you where Barnabas is. Just tell me, when will he be out?"

"Megan said in about a week." Willie lied, hoping that Iris would not catch him at it.

"I hope she knows what she is doing."

"She is." The order had been clear. Keep Barnabas away from Iris's sexual demands until he could handle them properly.

"You know that it does not do any good to his mind to be locked in a coffin."

"He isn't locked up. I mean, the lid is open and he watches TV. He saw 'Casablanca' the other night and loved it."

"I still think he should be let out."


It was warm outside. But Carolyn didn't care for it. Roger was out there, enjoying his freedom for a little while longer...

But then...Then he'd be taken away and she'd be all alone. Only the servants would be left... And they were so busy plotting how to steal from her...

If only Jeb hadn't been killed...If at least she had a child by him...

But there was no child now. The nursery had joined the locked rooms in the house. Spiders built their webs there. The wallpaper detached itself by tenths of an inch every day. The paint chipped off the crib...

It was the end of the line for the Collins family. At last she had full control of the company, after Roger had signed the papers disinheriting David. With the kind of charges he was facing, David would never be able to contest that.

But what was the point of owning the factory? She had no one to leave it to. Who would get it when she died? David's children? Some cousin out of the boondocks? Or...the thought chilled her...Barnabas?

Unlike Angelique she didn't have all the time in the world. She'd better have a kid now. Married or single, it didn't matter. But she had to do it before the odds were too great that he'd have Downs syndrome...

"It will be a beautiful kid" she said to herself "And I'll raise him right. No cheap stuff for him."

The Collins were so cheap...like her mother, running away with her daughter's fiancé. Like Quentin, the Jesus Freak. Like Barnabas, the social worker.

But they were not meant to be cheap. And her child would no be.


Maggie watched as her staff mailed the newsletter to her constituents. They would all be in the mail tomorrow.

Newsletters were very useful. For one thing, they reminded the voters that you were still around and working "for their sake". For another, they provided her with a means of communicating with Megan without drawing attention.

She had with her the newsletter over which she had written with invisible ink. She only had to add that envelope to the pile.

Joe. It was because of Joe that he had had that nightmare. And she'd have more for at least a week. It always happened that way.

Maybe she should have confronted Barnabas with it long ago. Well, she'd lost her chance for that. And now it would be inconvenient to lose the power she had over him.

Why had Joe sent her the card?

Joe has to be taken care of. Maybe that card meant nothing, but maybe Joe wanted to make trouble. Maybe he wanted her to remember that they had been engaged once. He had forgotten that she was on the way up, while he was a released mental patient.

As a political liability he was even worse than Barnabas. And unlike Barnabas he was not useful.

Maybe he should be sent back to Wyncliffe. A relapse. Megan could arrange that. After all, it would be the same thing that sent him a way the first time...

It should be done quickly. Before someone noticed the name Maggie Evans among the Wyncliffe patients.

Better tell Megan to clean up those records, too...

She went to the girl closing envelopes at the end of the room.

"You've done quite a lot."

"Thank you, Ms. Evans" the girl said.

"I know that it is a pit that with a B.S. you have to spend so much time doing this kind of chores. But they must be done. And it is good to understand that little details count a lot.

"Yeah, I am learning all about the little details."

The edge of her voice told Maggie that after one more month of that kind of chores she'd start leaking that Representative Evans treated her female staffers no better than male Representatives did.

"There is a research project I'd like you to start work on, as soon as those letters are in the mail. Take it home to study it." She handed the folder to her. "See if you can come up with any ideas."

"For me?" she asked Maggie, not believing her luck.

She turned around so that she could read it better, and so enraptured she was with the documents that she never saw Maggie slip the Megan Todd envelope into the pile.