Wake to Darkness by MAGGIE SHAYNE

cold. “I wonder why Myrt didn’t come down to greet us?”
    He pulled his gun. I wanted to say, “Oh, quit being so melodramatic,” except I knew he wasn’t. After what we’d both seen today, he had good reason to be scared. The fucking organ snatcher would be coming for me, sooner or later, and my niece, best friend and bulldog had been home alone.
    I was an idiot to have left them.
    Don’t be stupid. I didn’t know... Not for sure, anyway.
    I still don’t.
    Yeah, I do.
    He moved past me and went sneaking up the stairs like a TV cop, gun pointed up at the ceiling. I snagged my favorite baseball bat from the coat closet and hurried to catch up, walking on tiptoe with my heart in my throat, trying not to imagine my sister’s gorgeous daughter with her eyes gouged out of her head because the ghost-killer didn’t know the difference.
    We got to the top of the stairs, and I suddenly wondered why the hell we hadn’t turned on the light. There was a switch right there, so I reached for it.
    Like a flash, Mason covered my hand with his, stopping me. He had eyes in the back of his freaking head, I thought. But I left the light off and started wishing I had a better weapon than the baseball bat I’d been keeping in that downstairs closet since the last serial killer started fucking up my life.
    What the hell was that about, anyway? How come I was attracting serial killers like a porch light attracts bugs?
    ’Cause you’ve got a killer’s eyes in your head, dumbass. Technically, you’re part serial killer yourself.
    Mason moved silently down the hall toward my bedroom. The door was open, the night-light I never turned off emitting a soft glow from within. He moved closer, took a quick peek in, ducked back, then took a slower look.
    “Grrrruff!”
    Myrtle. The surge of relief that flooded me almost made my knees weak, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I leaned past him and looked into my bedroom.
    Misty was lying in my bed, curled up in one corner. Myrt was sprawled everywhere else, somehow making her two-foot-long body take up the entire bed. But her head was up and she was facing us in the doorway, sniffing, ears cocked and alert.
    “It’s okay, Myrt, it’s only me.”
    She let out a far happier woof, then scrambled to her feet and down the little stairs I’d bought to give her easy bed access. She was at my feet in a second, so I crouched to love her up thoroughly as Mason backtracked and turned on the hall light, allowing me to verify that Misty was alive and well.
    I stood up and looked at her.
    There was red swelling around her closed eyes that made my heart freeze in my chest.
    “Misty!” I lunged to the bed, gripping her shoulders, turning her onto her back, expecting to see blood-soaked pillows and empty eye sockets.
    She blinked and scrunched up her face, shielded her squinting eyes and said, “What the hell? Oh, hey, Aunt Rache.”
    I frowned and searched her face more closely. Smeared makeup. Red puffy eyes. Tear tracks, not bloodstains. She’d been crying.
    “What’s wrong? What happened, Misty?”
    She swiped her eyes, and I heard footsteps in the hall and glanced back to see Amy in her Goth girl jammies. “Her douchebag boyfriend dumped her. Hi, Mason.”
    “Hello, Amy. Sorry to wake you.”
    “He dumped you?” I was dumbfounded. What sort of eighteen-year-old boy dumped a future runway model like my niece?
    “After I gave up Christmas in paradise for him,” Misty muttered, and wiped at her eyes again.
    “Why, for heaven’s sake?”
    “He wanted a blow job and she wouldn’t cave,” Amy said.
    “Whoa.” Mason was holding up a hand as if to deflect the chick-talk going on in my bedroom.
    “When I’m ready for sex, it’ll be a two-way street, not all for the guy. Just like you told me, Aunt Rache.”
    “That’s my girl. I didn’t like him, anyway. I promise you, we’re going to have such a great time that you won’t miss the Bahamas at all. Now that you don’t have that lead