"So, we went on. " Heather continued "Lawson kept doing the tests for me, which meant that I did not have to doit. Any experiments I wanted to carry out in the sanitarium had to be approved by Midler.. because he was in charge of doctoring the records to show that the protocols to experiment on people were followed…. And there was a price for it… and the price was collaborating in his own experiments… I thought that going through Lawson meant I could keep it out of his control… and I also hoped that I could find a way to get out from his power… "

She was silent again. She would not talk about what collaborating with Midler meant. No. not now. Maybe later… maybe...

Amos knew that she was struggling. He knew what weighed on her mind, and sighed. So many regrets…

"As for myself working for Wendy opened a new world for me… Yes, I still had to go out. I still had to feed. Still had to fly through windows and fasten to throats… But then I could sit down with my... my victim and ask all those questions, very businesslike. And then when I came back, I had to write the results… It was a breath of… of normalcy… It grounded me. And after a couple of weeks of that, after a couple of weeks of being almost a normal person again, I decided it was time to become officially a part of Benchleytown."

"I introduced myself to Leonore Grady, as a descendent of the original Amos Benchley who had been run out of town by Jacob Benchley. That I wanted to reconnect with the family as all of my relatives were gone. She accepted it. It helped that Jacob had disinherited me and so any descendant would have no claim on the estate. Still, she was wary… I understand now that she did not like strangers poking into her affairs… and I was too much of a wild card. But all I could think was that she sensed what I was… it took me a while to understand that EVERYONE has secrets to protect, and that I was treading on hers."

"I told her that of course, I did not expect her to put me up in her home… I had my own accommodations. But I said that I was interested in the old property. It was run down but it could be made habitable. I offered to fix it up if she let me stay there."

"she said that it was not habitable but reassured her that I was used to roughing it up and that I looked upon it as an adventure. And later when it was fixed, we could come to a financial arrangement. That I'd pay rent and that if it was fixed enough, I could make it pay for itself."

"Bring in tourists?" she was hostile.

"Only there. Your home would be out of bounds." Because I sensed she did not want her home invaded.

She hesitated. I used some hypnosis in her… not too much. I was tempted to bite her and put her under my control, but something told me that it could be dangerous… Too much raw emotion there."

"Why it would be dangerous? To her?"

"No, to me." He explained. "The link is a two-way street. I can command them, but then their emotions can flood me. And if the emotions are too strong, I end up feeling them and… and end up being caught in their drama. I tend to feel what they feel, and start thinking I am them. It happened me in the early days. I had fed on a young woman who was going to a crisis… unrequited love. So, I felt this unrequited love and this…. This lust for a young man who had seduced her and she still yearned for his touch…It shook me that I could lust after a man that way and then I came to my senses…. So yes, it is dangerous to me."

"Curious… So, Mrs. Grady let you stay?"

"Yes, and she introduced me to the rest of the family. Beverly pretended she met e for the first time and I also played the part. But Charlie he looked at me quizzically. You see I once when I had been getting information from Beverly Charlie had come upon us. He was quiet, but my senses are very sharp. I caught him, and hypnotized him. I told him that he was dreaming. There were elephants in Beverly's room. And a penguin was loose on the stairs… He went back to his bed and did dream of elephants and penguins, and that was it..."

"But then he saw your face:

"I looked familiar and he came to believe that I had been there before…"

"So he decided to take a look. He followed me… he was good at that. And then he sneaked in and found my coffin…:

"And he told anyone about it:

"No. Not him. What he did was build an incendiary bomb… I do not know how he learned to do it, and laid it on top of my coffin. When I tried getting up the next dusk it would blow up, and me with it."