Nessa and Isabeau looked at each other.
Nessa looked at the piece of paper again. The email that was from [email protected].
That was not her email address.
The paper floated to the ground.
Her name. Her address. Her troll had broken through the fourth wall and had invited every freak within five hundred miles to come to her house and rape her in her bed.
When the patrol car pulled up in front of the house, the would--be rapist was hauled to his feet, crying and choking out excuses and explanations to the cop, who cuffed him and took the piece of paper from him.
Once the cops left, Nessa went into her bedroom and dialed Marlon.
“I need a shot,” she said, then told him what happened.
“Are you drinking now?” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately.
“No.”
“Did you drink before you called?”
“No,” she said.
“You did the right thing—-you called your sponsor before, not after, you took the first drink. I’m going to throw another AA aphorism at you, and I want you to think hard on it. ‘Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ You know what it means, right?”
“Yes,” she said. But she knew he was going to tell her anyway, and that made her smile.
“It means that you can’t handle this. You really can’t. But God can, and you need to let him. But you still need to do your part. First, don’t drink. Second, you need to get a security system out there. This is insane.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“You can do what you can do, and God will do the rest.”
Would He though?
“Thank you, Marlon,” she said. She did feel better, especially with an action plan. “I’m going to go to the locksmith Monday and see if they do security systems too. The cop who came out here to arrest the guy told me he’d see to it that a patrol car is sent out here for the next several days.”
“Excellent,” he said. He yawned into the phone. “And now I’m going back to sleep.”
“Good night,” she said, and clicked off.
She went back downstairs and Isabeau was sitting on the living room couch clacking away on her laptop keyboard. Nessa got hers, sat down next to her nanny, and typed the Fantasy Island website URL into her browser. She searched the site for the ad the creep had brought with him.
“I can’t find the ad,” Nessa said.
“I know,” Isabeau said. “I think whoever posted it took it down. We could try to get the owners of the site to turn over the IP address the troll’s using to post this shit, but I’m guessing they’re not exactly paragons of virtue.”
“Can we use the email address to try to lure him out of hiding somehow?” Nessa said. “How would we do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do some research and see what I can come up with.”
“By the way,” Nessa said. “What you did tonight was totally badass.”
Isabeau smiled at her, pleased. “Thanks.”
“Where did you get that knife?”
“I have a whole collection of them,” Isabeau said. “I used to throw knives competitively when I lived in Alaska.”
This blew Nessa’s mind. “You threw knives?”
Isabeau nodded.
“And you lived in Alaska?”
“Yup. In a tipi.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You’ve never asked,” Isabeau said. “I keep them right upstairs in my room.”
“You—-what?” Nessa said.
“Don’t worry,” Isabeau said. “I keep them way up high in the closet where Daltrey could never get to them.”
“You know,” Nessa said. “Maybe we should keep them in the kitchen pantry up high. Just in case, with all this crap going on around here.”
“Okay,” Isabeau said. “You want to see the set?”
“Definitely,” Nessa said, and Isabeau’s smile widened as she bounded up the stairs.
She returned with a black nylon carrying case, which she unrolled. Six purple metal handles protruded from pockets in the sheath. She slid one out and handed it handle--first to Nessa. It was much lighter than Nessa would have expected.
“They’re titanium,” Isabeau said. “I can show you a video of one of my competitions if you want.”
She rolled the knives back up, then got her laptop and set it on the coffee table. She typed into it and spun it toward Nessa, then clicked on the play button of the YouTube video.
The camera swung toward Isabeau, who held her knives and did an outstretched arm curtsy before turning toward six archery targets attached to an outdoor wall.
The camera focused on the targets, and one by one, each was pierced by a knife, most of them near the bull’s--eye.
“Cool, huh?” Isabeau said, waggling her eyebrows, her wide smile proud and delighted.
“That’s amazing,” Nessa said with real admiration. “You are a woman of many talents.” She reached forward and grasped Isabeau’s hand. “Thank you so much. You saved me tonight. You really did.”
“You’re welcome,” Isabeau said, then got up and went in the kitchen. Nessa heard the pantry door open and close.