“I’ll be fit again very soon,” I told her. “I have physical therapy tomorrow morning. You’re the first here. Did you have any trouble convincing JJ to stay home?”

“He’s downstairs walking the river path. Patrolling is more like it.”

“This will be easier if we keep it girl talk. Less embarrassing that way. My friend Allie is hiding in my office. She’s an ex-cop if we need her to talk about self-defense.”

The clang of footsteps on the metal stairs alerted me to the arrival of more guests. Four more, all I could find in a hurry for this impromptu meeting of a potential support group. Two of the other women, like Raquel, were pregnant. The other two carried tiny infants, no more than two months old. Squishy had sent them.

Scrap flitted about cooing and making funny faces at the babies. Both of them reached tiny hands up to touch him. No one else could see him. Interesting. Did the dark elf blood in the children allow them to see the imp, or just their innocence?

Raquel took charge when we were all seated in the living room with coffee (decaf in consideration of the pregnancies and nursing babies) and small pieces of rich chocolate cake, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and trail mix with chocolate nuggets. Hard topics always go down easier with chocolate.

“I don’t want my baby stolen,” Michelle whispered a little later, clutching her tiny boy against her shoulder where he drowsed, wrapped in the cocoon of a brightly colored blanket. She barely looked old enough or large enough to have given birth. Her perky short hair and rounded cheeks gave her a cherubic look. She was the mother who’d delivered in the ER with Squishy assisting.

“None of us wants the Nörglein to steal any more babies,” I affirmed. I passed around photocopies of the dark elf from the field guide.

Michelle and Annie, the two mothers, took one look at the woodcut picture and shuddered. Both dropped their papers, as if touching them was like touching the monster himself.

“I can’t believe I actually let him make love to me,” Annie said, burying her face in her daughter’s blanket.

“I knew he wasn’t my husband the moment he walked in the door,” Caroline said. At six months along, she and Raquel must have been victimized about the same time.

“How?” I asked.

“It was like my husband rode on top of a new core body. I can’t explain it any other way. He looked, talked and, moved just like Jeff. But, I don’t know, something was off. Then he sort of solidified and I forgot what I saw.” She shook her head.

Ask her what the guy smelled like, Scrap said, hovering in front of the athletic woman in her mid-thirties with stunning blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

I did.

“Smell ... I never thought about that. But come to think on it, he smelled of pine. Jeff doesn’t use that aftershave anymore. Not since I turned up allergic to evergreens. We can’t have a real Christmas tree anymore because of it.” She paused to gulp back tears. “My baby will never have a Christmas tree.”

“But the Nörglein made you forget your allergies, made you forget that something was wrong,” I said. “He made you all forget that abortion is still a legal option for you.”

“You make it sound like magic,” Donna said. Clearly she didn’t believe in magic. Dark hair, trendy dark-framed glasses, her designer maternity jeans and turtleneck proclaimed her professional social situation. Raquel said she was an accountant.

I needed her to believe in magic before the evening was over.

“It was magic,” Raquel butted in. “I know our science oriented society, our churches, our logic tell us that magic and dark elves don’t exist. We all have proof it does.” She cupped her swollen belly for emphasis.

“I can’t believe our doctors didn’t put two and two together,” Donna continued.

“Did any of you have the same doctor?” I asked.

They compared notes and shook their heads. Only two of them had even been in the same hospital. Squishy encountered one in the ER and the other in the psych ward. No connections except a bit of skin that sloughed off barklike scales. Allie was even now trying to track down the other postpartum hysteria patients.

“What can we do?” Michelle asked. “How do we fight magic?”

“You don’t. I do,” I replied.

Four sets of puzzled eyes riveted on me.

“Believe her,” Raquel said. “She knows what to do.”

I wish I did. “Michelle and Annie, are you in a position to uproot and move out of town? As far away as you can get.”

“I can,” Annie said. “I telecommute. I can work anywhere.”

“What about your husband?” Caroline asked.

“I’m not married. I’ll take a loss on my house if I sell now, but I can move. You think that will keep my baby safe?”

“I’m not certain. But I think so. The Nörglein seems desperate. That means he’ll make a mistake. If he has to chase you halfway across the country, he’s vulnerable. But he only takes the children after their second birthday. You’ve got a little time.”

“My husband just lost his job. I suppose we could make an excuse to go live with my mom in LA,” Michelle said.

“I’m not going anywhere. I intend to fight this guy,” Raquel said. She sat straight, chin jutting in determination. “I’ve already started self-defense classes. As soon as I deliver I’m taking up martial arts. JJ is too. We’re going after him every chance we get.”

“Let’s back up a moment.” I needed to get away from the idea of these women aggressively hunting the monster. Danger lay on that course, for them, not the Nörglein. “Annie, you said you weren’t married. How did the Nörglein trap you if he didn’t impersonate a husband?”

“I was hiking, alone. I had a backpack with essentials, so I didn’t panic when the paths just disappeared. I dug out my compass and headed downhill. But it rapidly became uphill and the damn compass started swinging round and round, never settling on a direction.”

“Then you blacked out and didn’t remember anything until you walked out at the trailhead the next morning,” I prompted her.

“I thought I just slept in the lee of a hollow log. When I woke up, the path was back in place, straight and clear.”

“What did you think when you turned up pregnant?” From the quivering chins and rapidly blinking eyes I knew I ventured into territory these women didn’t want to remember. “I need to know, Annie. The Nörglein varied from his usual MO by taking an unmarried woman. He’s from a different era and culture. He feels that what he does is okay because he has the enchanted cooperation of a husband.”

“I ... have a couple of boyfriends. I figured that when I got a little tipsy one night not long after my night in the woods I’d been indiscreet enough to overlook an essential condom.” Annie flushed with embarrassment. “When I went looking for the one I thought I remembered, I discovered he’d left town two months before the ... um ... incident.”

“Something is wrong for the dark elf to go out of pattern twice. Once with you and once with Raquel,” I mused. “I need to do more research.”

“And we need to arrange our next support group meeting. With the men in our lives. And we need to find the other victims. I’m certain we aren’t the only ones.” Raquel said.

They set about arranging it.

I decamped to the balcony to think. No moon peeking through the clouds tonight to suggest a silver river that marked an ending and a beginning.

Why had the dark elf varied his pattern? A pattern that had worked well for centuries.

What had changed beyond women thinking for themselves and refusing to be treated as tradable property?