“Look like something normal,” Astor said grudgingly. “But Dexter, fish aren’t people.”

“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Because people survive by recognizing things that look dangerous. And fish get caught. We don’t want to.” They looked at me solemnly, then back at the fish. “So what else have we learned today?” I asked after a moment.

DEXTER IN THE DARK

121

“Don’t get caught,” Astor said.

I sighed. At least it was a start, but there was much work yet to do. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s see some of th

e other exhibits.”

I was not really very familiar with the museum, perhaps because until recently I’d had no children to drag in there. So I was definitely improvising, looking for things that might get them started toward thinking and learning the right things. The piranha had been a stroke of luck, I admit—they had simply popped into view and my giant brain had supplied the correct lesson. Finding the next piece of happy coincidence was not as easy, and it was half an hour of trudging grimly through the murderous crowd of kids and their vicious parents before we came to the lion exhibit.

Once again, the ferocious appearance and reputation proved ir-resistible to Cody and Astor, and they came to a halt in front of the exhibit. It was a stuffed lion, of course, what I think they call a dio-rama, but it held their attention. The male lion stood proudly over the body of a gazelle, mouth wide and fangs gleaming. Beside him were two females and a cub. There was a two-page explanation that went with the exhibit, and about halfway down the second page I found what I needed.

“Well now,” I said brightly. “Aren’t we glad we’re not lions?”

“No,” said Cody.

“It says here,” I said, “that when a male lion takes over a lion family—”

“It’s called a pride, Dexter,” Astor said. “It was in Lion King.”

“All right,” I said. “When a new daddy lion takes over a pride, he kills all the cubs.”

“That’s horrible,” Astor said.

I smiled to show her my sharp teeth. “No, it’s perfectly natural,” I said. “To protect his own and make sure that it’s his cubs that rule the roost. Lots of predators do that.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Astor said. “You’re not going to kill us when you marry Mom, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “You are my cubs now.”

“Then so what?” she said.

I opened my mouth to explain to her and then felt all the air 122

JEFF LINDSAY

rush out of me. My mouth hung open but I couldn’t speak, because my brain was whirling with a thought so far-fetched that I didn’t even bother to deny it. Lots of predators do that, I heard myself say. To protect his own, I had said.

Whatever made me a predator, its home was in the Dark Passenger. And now something had scared away the Passenger. Was it possible that, that—

That what? A new daddy Passenger was threatening my Passenger? I had run into many people in my life who had the shadow of something similar to mine hung over them, and nothing had ever happened with them except mutual recognition and a bit of inaudible snarling. This was too stupid even to think about—Passengers didn’t have daddies.

Did they?

“Dexter,” Astor said. “You’re scaring us.”

I admit that I was scaring me, too. The thought that the Passenger could have a parent stalking it with lethal intentions was ap-pallingly stupid—but then, after all, where had the Passenger really come from? I was reasonably sure that it was more than a psychotic figment of my disordered brain. I was not schizophrenic—both of us were sure of that. The fact that it was now gone proved that it had an independent existence.

And this meant that the Passenger had come from somewhere.

It had existed before me. It had a source, whether you called it a parent or anything else.

“Earth to Dexter,” Astor said, and I realized that I still stood in front of them frozen in my unlikely, foolish openmouthed pose like a pedantic zombie.

Tags: Jeff Lindsay Dexter Mystery
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