Steve snorted with laughter. "If we're followed by dancing munchkins, I'm out of here." She seemed to be wearing some subtle, rather beguiling perfume, and was a little unsteady on her feet, leaning against him as they made their way toward the French doors at the back of the house.<br/><br/>Out back there was a swimming pool - a seriously big one, orders of magnitude above the usual sorts that one found in middle-income developments like this one. Steve was startled to see about a dozen of his neighbors splashing and frolicking in the water. Some of them were in bathing suits, but one or two still had their clothes on, and there were a couple leaning against the side of the pool just under the low diving board in nothing but extremely damp cotton underwear.<br/><br/>"Wow," said Steve, turning to Kellis to see what her reaction was. "I didn't expect..."<br/><br/>He was cut off in mid-sentence by a curious sound. It was a human voice, cutting through the night, crying out or moaning in what could have been pain or ecstasy, from somewhere in the darkness out beyond the tiki lamps that circled the edges of the backyard.<br/><br/>