"Not a day goes by that I don't think of him, wondering how he'd look now, things he'd say, what he'd be interested in. He was a great kid, handsome like his daddy, biggest brownest eyes you ever saw… and one afternoon he was at school, it was recess, he was out in the yard messing around with his pals, swapping baseball cards, talking 'bout comics, whatever, doing boy stuff — and the monster got him."

"Monster?" said Fred Tsang. "Which one?"

"The Lamia. Goddamn bloodsucking, child-murdering bitch. Ethan's elementary school was right on the shore of Lake Michigan. Lamia came out of the lake, went into the schoolyard, grabbed a kid, one kid only — mine — and picked him up and drained the life out of him, right there in front of the whole class. Threw his empty body back down like it was a Coke can and was gone, back into the water before anybody could so much as move."

"I lost a child too," said a man in his early forties with salt-and-pepper hair. A product of the English boarding school system by the look and sound of him. Imprinted with the classics, corners knocked off him on the rugby pitch, licked into shape by the headmaster's cane. "A daughter. My wife along with her. We were on holiday. Crete. Poseidon and Zeus were having a blazing row, somewhere down the coast from us. One of their spats, you know how those two are — Poseidon feeling unappreciated, his old complaint about when the gods were dividing up the earthly regions all he got was the sea and none of the land, kicking up a fuss about that and Zeus having to read the riot act, bring him back into line. Poseidon went off in a huff. Decided to end the argument with a tidal wave. I was taking a nap in the hotel at the time, blissfully unaware of what was happening just a few miles to the west. Debs — my wife — she and Megan were down on the beach. Beautiful hot day. Then suddenly this noise, this enormous roar of water. By the time I'd got to the balcony to look out, the beach was gone. Just… swept away. Sucked out to sea, leaving bare rock behind. The sand all gone, and everyone on it as well. It's Chisholm, by the way. Nigel Chisholm. I used to be a pilot. Still am, technically, though I haven't flown a plane in years."