Free Tales from the Nightside by Charles L. Grant

but he refused to turn around and look up at the clock; instead, he stared at the flames as he finished the second glass, wondering what it would be like to stick his finger into the fire. He read somewhere . . . he thought he’d read somewhere that the blue near the center was the hottest part and it wasn’t so bad elsewhere. His hand wavered, but he changed his mind, not wanting to risk a burn on something he only thought he had read; besides, he decided as he headed into the living room, the way things were going these days, he probably had it backward.
    He sat in an armchair flanking the television, took out a magazine from the rack at his side and had just found the table of contents when he heard a car door slam in the drive. He waited, looked up and smiled when the front door swung open and Susan rushed in. She blew him a distant kiss, mouthed  I’ll be back in a second,  and ran up the stairs. She was much shorter than he, her hair waist-long black and left free to fan in the wind of her own making. She’d been taking vocal lessons for several years now, and when they’d moved to the Station when Damon was five, she had landed a job singing at the Chancellor Inn. Torch songs, love songs, slow songs, sinner songs; she was liked well enough to be asked to stay on after the first night, but she began so late that Damon had never heard her. And for the last six months, the two-nights-a-week became four, and Frank became adept at cooking supper.
    When she returned, her makeup was gone and she was in a shimmering green robe. She flopped on the sofa opposite him and rubbed her knees, her thighs, her upper arms. “If that creep drummer tries to pinch me again, so help me I’ll castrate him.”
    “That is hardly the way for a lady to talk,” he said, smiling. “If you’re not careful, I’ll have to punish you. Whips at thirty paces.”
    In the old days—the very old days, he thought—she would have laughed and entered a game that would last for nearly an hour. Lately, however, and tonight, she only frowned at him as though she were dealing with a dense, unlettered child. He ignored it, and listened politely as she detailed her evening, the customers, the compliments, the raise she was looking for so she could buy her own car.
    “You don’t need a car,” he said without thinking.
    “But aren’t you tired of walking home every night?”
    He closed the magazine and dropped it on the floor. “Lawyers, my dear, are a sedentary breed. I could use the exercise.”
    “If you didn’t work so late on those damned briefs,” she said without looking at him, “and came to bed on time, I’d give you all the exercise you need.”
    He looked at his watch. It was going on two.
    “The cat’s gone.”
    “Oh no,” she said. “No wonder you look so tired. You go out after him?”
    He nodded, and she rolled herself suddenly into a sitting position. “Not with Damon.”
    “No. He was in bed when I came home.”
    She said nothing more, only examined her nails. He watched her closely, the play of her hair falling over her face, the squint that told him her contact lenses were still on her dresser. And he knew she meant:  did you take Damon with you?  She was asking if Damon had followed him. Like the night in the fog, with the woman; like the times at the office; like the dozens of other instances when the boy just happened to show up at the courthouse, in the park while Frank was eating lunch under a tree, at a nearby friend’s house late one evening, claiming to have had a nightmare and the sitter wouldn’t help him.
    Like a shadow.
    Like a conscience.
    “Are you going to replace it?” He blinked. “The cat, stupid. Are you going to get him a new cat?”
    He shook his head. “We’ve had too much bad luck with animals. I don’t think he could take it again.”
    She swung herself off the sofa and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips, her lips taut, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t care about him, do