They had retrieved Fi's computer and set it up by the time either realized they had really not the first idea how to start looking. They were usually the skeptics to whom she presented her results, which were usually summarily dismissed on the grounds that they were implausible, crazy, silly, downright insane. But it was a place to start. Once the implausible had been ruled out, all that would be left was the plausible. Right?

Molly took the first crack; Fi's "Life is so weird" site was also her browser's home page, so that was lucky. She typed hesitantly into the search engine, as she had seen Fi do on occasion: Invisibility. "How to turn yourself invisible, invisible dead pets, the secret of invisible ink... yeah, that isn't going to do it." She got up and presented the laptop to Jack. "Your turn."

"So what is it that's invisible? A ghost?" he asked.

"I don't think a ghost would have claws," Molly pointed out seriously.

"A monster, then."

"Monsters live under your bed and in your closet." And in your head, perhaps. "Try... 'demon.'"

"Okay, invisible demon it is." Searching. Searching. Searching........

"Here's something," he said, and she bent down to examine his results. "I mean, it's insane, but it's something."

This is what he found:

"Drac is described as an enormous and lizard like monster who is more than just a monster. It is a evil sorcerer and a demon. It is naked as a worm, willowy as a lamprey, with two fins of transparent blue lace on his back, webbed feet like the flamingo of the Camargue, and long greenish hair which floated like algae on the waves. Aside from the power of shapeshifting, The Drac also can make himself invisible.

"The Drac has a taste for human flesh and blood. He lures a young new mother to his underwater home to nurse Drac's frail child. She does this for seven years, made to forget her life as a human being. After rubbing the magic balm made from human fat and water cresses which enables the Drac to be invisible on the Drac child's eyes (her nightly responsibility), the woman sometimes forgets to wash her hands and gains the ability to see the true form of the Drac when he is in disguise or invisible. When the woman is released back home, everything in the past seven years is made like a dream to her. When next the Drac comes in town and is spotted by the woman, this powerful sorcerer casts a spell so that the woman loses her ability to spot Drac. This is the story told by the woman."

"What the hell is a lamprey?" Molly wondered aloud.

"That's just crazy, though. Right?"

"Of course it is. But, you know, so is a car stopping and being tossed into a ditch by... something. I mean, it wasn't the wind."

"I just..."

"I don't want to believe it either," she said wearily. "But at this point, what else is there? The police didn't find any evidence of any other person near the site of the accident. No other footprints anywhere."

"So we're going with the Drac."

"We're going with the Drac. But now where are we supposed to go with it?"

"The library?"

"Research with books? How old-fashioned."

"I've found they're more reliable," he said. "Think it's open yet?"

It wasn't, so they waited. Three hours. In the car, silently, neither wanting to articulate their respective thoughts, Molly's regarding just why her family was such a magnet for awful, unbelievable events like this, and Jack's regarding, among other things, just why Fiona and Clu had been out in such a desolate place alone in the middle of the night to begin with.

They searched through books of demon folklore and dragon tales all morning, and were just about to give up when he found exactly what they had been looking for: an expanded version of the Drac's story as well as a clue as to how to defeat it. It was assumed that no one could really kill the monster, since it had survived for centuries, but its effect and attraction to certain victims could be deterred by utilizing a simple ritual described in just one of the dozens of books they had gone through.

The book described the events that occurred after the woman told her story to the villagers: they captured and tortured the Drac, under her watch, for kidnapping her, stealing her child's mother, her husband's wife. This went on for weeks until the woman could take no more of it, sympathizing too strongly with the plight of the creature whose fate she was responsible for. She waited until the villagers had abandoned him one evening and set him loose. He killed her immediately, then went after his torturers. After justice had been meted out, he returned to his home to find that his child had also been killed as a result of the woman's story. Since that discovery, the Drac is said to have become a recluse, never leaving his home, building his strength and plotting his revenge, for hundreds of years. And now he seeks out victims who are plagued by anger or fear, the two attributes that led to the demise of both his son and the woman he loved, and attempts to cleanse them.

So the ritual for repelling him is really quite simple. All that's required is an absence of anger and fear. Not many people are able to present that to him, so his list of victims since his emergence from his home is a hundred miles long. Clu and Fi, lost together in the middle of the night, were sitting ducks.

What, Jack wondered, were they so afraid of?

Molly knew the answer to that, though she didn't share it with him. (Being discovered, obviously.)

They made photocopies of the relevant pages and set out for the hospital with a battle plan in mind: they would obtain the exact location of the attack and search there, serving as monster bait. Would it even be possible to kill the demon now, after so many years? If it was possible, how on earth could they possibly be the appropriate people for the task? And what if the demon had followed his victims in search of new flesh and blood to sustain him?

They tried not to think about the possibilities.