"How is everything," she asked with a well rehearsed and well delivered grin. Her cheeks were pulled back in the same way Pembrow pulled off. His smile was feminine enough to disarm, but his teeth meshed in the jagged way reptile teeth matched, spine to gap, with a force of mechanical perfection one finds when watching rolls of razors shred paper into perfectly neat slips of refuse. A mechanical perfection so well geared to turning order into charming chaos it was a wonder to see it work. I blinked. Was it Pembrow towering over me from the corner of my eye? His face was the same, but where Larry and I hit our ceiling, all he did was grow taller, larger, thick necked in his time away. The snap of the fireplace lighter's switch brought me back to the table,
