offended. One hand tugged at the clump of white hair at his temple. “I keep my word.”
“No. You don’t. Laura came here. She said something was calling her here. And what about the coincidence that brought Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton here, on the same night? I don’t believe in coincidence any more.
“Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton. Two people who both knew who I really was, and that there were people out there looking for me. I guess if one of them failed, there was always the other. And if all of them had failed, who else was on their way to Lakeside, Hinzelmann? My old prison warden, up here for a weekend’s ice-fishing? Laura’s mother?” Shadow realized that he was angry. “You wanted me out of your town. You just didn’t want to have to tell Wednesday that was what you were doing.”
In the firelight, Hinzelmann seemed more like a gargoyle than an imp. “This is a good town,” he said. Without his smile he looked waxen and corpse-like. “You could have attracted too much attention. Not good for the town.”
“You should have left me back there on the ice,” said Shadow. “You should have left me in the lake. I opened the trunk of the klunker. Right now Alison is still iced into the trunk. But the ice will melt, and her body’ll float out and up to the surface. And then they’ll go down and look and see what else they can find down there. Find your whole stash of kids. I guess some of those bodies are pretty well preserved.”
Hinzelmann reached down and picked up the poker. He made no pretense of stirring the fire with it any longer; he held it like a sword, or a baton, the glowing orange-white tip of it waving in the air. It smoked. Shadow was very aware that he was next-to-naked, and he was still tired, and clumsy, and far from able to defend himself.
“You want to kill me?” said Shadow. “Go ahead. Do it. I’m a dead man anyway. I know you own this town—it’s your little world. But if you think no one’s going to come looking for me, you’re living in a dream world. It’s over, Hinzelmann. One way or another, it’s done.”
Hinzelmann pushed himself to his feet, using the poker as a walking stick. The carpet charred and smoked where he rested the red-hot tip as he got up. He looked at Shadow and there were tears in his pale blue eyes. “I love this town,” he said. “I really like being a cranky old man, and telling my stories and driving Tessie and ice-fishing. Remember what I told you, it’s not the fish you bring home from a day’s fishing. It’s the peace of mind.”
He extended the tip of the poker in Shadow’s direction: Shadow could feel the heat of it from a foot away.
“I could kill you,” said Hinzelmann, “I could fix it. I’ve done it before. You’re not the first to figure it out. Chad Mulligan’s father, he figured it out. I fixed him. I can fix you.”
“Maybe,” said Shadow. “But for how long, Hinzelmann? Another year? Another decade? They have computers. They aren’t stupid. They pick up on patterns. Every year a kid’s going to vanish. They’ll come sniffing about here. Just like they’ll come looking for me. Tell me—how old are you?” He curled his fingers around a sofa cushion, and prepared to pull it over his head: it would deflect a first blow.
Hinzelmann’s face was expressionless. “They were giving their children to me before the Romans came to the Black Forest,” he said. “I was a god before ever I was a kobold.”
“Maybe it’s time to move on,” said Shadow. He wondered what a kobold was.
Hinzelmann stared at him. Then he took the poker, and pushed the tip of it back into the burning embers. “Maybe it is, at that,” he said. “But it’s not that simple. What makes you think I can leave this town, even if I want to, Shadow? I’m part of this town. You going to make me go, Shadow? You ready to kill me? So I can leave?”
Shadow looked down at the floor. There were still glimmers and sparks in the carpet, where the poker-tip had rested. Hinzelmann followed the look with his own, and crushed the embers out with his foot, twisting. In Shadow’s mind came, unbidden, children, hundreds of them, staring at him with bone-blind eyes, the hair twisting slowly