Dexter in the Dark Read Online Free Page B

playfully just outside the window, pulling at me like a soft yellow freight train hitched to my brain.
    “I’m not, uh—” I started to say, meaning to deny everything. But they looked up at me with such an endearing expression of cold certainty that I stopped. “No,” I said at last. “He’s much too young.”
    They exchanged a quick glance, no more, but there was an entire conversation in it. “I told him you would say that,” Astor said.
    “You were right,” I said.
    “But Dexter,” she said, “you said you would show us stuff.”
    “I will,” I said, feeling the shadowy fingers crawl slowly up my spine and prodding for control, urging me out the door, “but not now.”
    “When?” Astor demanded.
    I looked at the two of them and felt the oddest combination of wild impatience to be off and cutting mixed with an urge to wrap them both in a soft blanket and kill anything that came near them. And nibbling at the edges, just to round out the blend, a desire to smack their thick little heads together.
    Was this fatherhood at last?
    The entire surface of my body was tingling with cold fire from my need to be gone, to begin, to do the mighty unmentionable, but instead I took a very deep breath and put on a neutral face. “This is a school night,” I said, “and it is almost your bedtime.”
    They looked at me as if I had betrayed them, and I supposed I had by changing the rules and playing Daddy Dexter when they thought they were talking to Demon Dexter. Still, it was true enough. One really can’t take small children along on a late-night evisceration and expect them to remember their ABCs the next day. It was hard enough for me to show up at work the morning after one of my little adventures, and I had the advantage of all the Cuban coffee I wanted. Besides, they really were much too young.
    “Now you’re just being a grown-up,” Astor said with a withering ten-year-old sneer.
    “But I am a grown-up,” I said. “And I am trying to be the right one for you.” Even though I said it with my teeth hurting from fighting back the rising need, I meant it—which did nothing at all to soften the identical looks of bleak contempt I got from both of them.
    “We thought you were different,” she said.
    “I can’t imagine how I could be any more different and still look human,” I said.
    “Not fair,” Cody said, and I locked eyes with him, seeing a tiny dark beast raise its head and roar at me.
    “No, it’s not fair,” I said. “Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I’ll thank you not to use that language around me.”
    Cody looked hard at me for a moment, a look of disappointed calculation I had never seen from him before, and I didn’t know if I wanted to swat him or give him a cookie.
    “Not fair,” he repeated.
    “Listen,” I said, “this is something I know about. And this is the first lesson. Normal children go to bed on time on school nights.”
    “Not normal,” he said, sticking his lower lip out far enough to hold his schoolbooks.
    “Exactly the point,” I told him. “That’s why you always have to look normal, act normal, make everyone else think you are normal. And the other thing you have to do is exactly what I tell you, or I won’t do this.” He didn’t look quite convinced, but he was weakening. “Cody,” I said. “You have to trust me, and you have to do it my way.”
    “ Have to,” he said.
    “Yes,” I said. “Have to.”
    He looked at me for a very long moment, then switched his stare to his sister, who looked back at him. It was a marvel of sub-vocal communication; I could tell that they were having a long, very intricate conversation, but they didn’t make a sound until Astor shrugged and turned back to me. “You have to promise,” she said to me.
    “All right,” I said. “Promise what?”
    “That you’ll start teaching us,” she said, and Cody nodded. “Soon.”
    I took a deep breath. I had never really had any chance of going to