(Because of the potential for fictional violence and mature situations as this SL develops, I have decided to place an 18+ rating on the thread. We will try to keep this as "PG-13"-friendly as possible.)

Prologue

Let me just say this about dying: it hurts. And I should know, because I?ve died three times now, I think.

There may have been one or two other ?departures from this plane,? I guess you might call them if you were into all of that psychic connection crap ? oh, and let me just add before everyone starts asking that there are ghosts. I?ve met plenty of them. And you don?t need some special 99-cent-per minute gal with a bandana and a phone line to the beyond to tell you what they are saying. Unless they were the unsocial sort in life, they will yammer on and on and on to anyone who will listen to them about the most inane B.S. you will ever hear. I mean ? who cares if they forgot to turn the stove off before they left to visit their wife?s aunt in Sheboygan in 1955, right?

All you have to do is believe, Dorothy; but if you want to waste your money on the middle man, go right ahead. You?re not in Kansas anymore, I?m just saying.

Anyway. There may have been a couple of other ? incidents ? but my memory is so full of holes that what I do recall about this last time is too garbled to be certain. One time or a hundred, it doesn?t make that much difference.

What I do know is that someone wants me dead. Completely.

I wish I could remember why.

The snow was coming down pretty hard by the time the entourage prepared to leave. The horses stomped and snorted as they waited for the show to get on the road, their breath roiling from their nostrils in great clouds of white vapor that made them look like they were smoking. Combined with the scaled armor and the crimson and black ecclesiastical regalia draping them, they could have been dragons. That was ironic, I thought, since I had done a little research on our dearly departed, and the particular sect he was affiliated with advocated temperance and chastity among its members. This was probably why it held only a relatively small group of adherents in this part of the countryside. Rhydinians weren?t especially renowned for either virtue.

I knew I probably shouldn?t be there at the scene of the crime, so to speak, but I couldn?t resist the urge to watch and see if the person who really murdered the old priest was also in attendance. The throng of the grieving faithful and the morbidly curious was packed as tightly around the caravan as the armed guards in church colors would let them be, some sobbing, shouting and straining to reach the black fabric draping the hybrid carriage that bore the remains. Others were less emotionally wrought, and conversed cheerfully with their companions, or bought meat pies and draughts of the steaming black tea industrious peddlers offered around in communal tin cups. It was altogether a riotous scene, which is why I was just as glad to be observing it from about 200 yards up the hillside that bordered the road, crouched and hidden with my cloak wrapped around me against the wind, in the branches of a stout evergreen.

The carriage itself was an ingenious device. The church had haggled with the victim?s family about where the man?s remains would ultimately be laid to rest. To the credit of the family, they didn?t budge, insisting that he be interred with his late wife and two children who had died in infancy, in the small village where he had started out as the community priest. However, to satisfy the Council, they did concede to first having his body paraded from town to town around the countryside in all of the pomp and nonsense befitting a man of his religious and political stature. To accomplish this feat in the dead of winter, the flat-bottomed wagon they called a carriage had been fitted with heavy, iron-studded wheels ? and, more interestingly ? a set of wide steel runners that could be raised or lowered and locked in place. Essentially, the wagon was a convertible sled.

Accordingly, the horses hitched to the vehicle were bedecked with dozens of silver bells of every size and shape. It was the jangling that ensued when the cortege struck out to bear the Bishop on his final pilgrimage that brought my attention back to the reason I was there at all. Someone had murdered the man, strangling him with a heavy prayer chain that was so tightly wrapped around his neck when I came upon his body that his head had nearly been severed.

It was the smell that had drawn me to investigate in the first place. There was just so much blood. Remembering it made me whimper in the back of my throat, and the horses, already aware that I was somewhere nearby, whinnied their own echoing fear back to me. A couple of the more experienced guardsmen noticed, and began scanning the rooftops and tree line. One man drew a cross bolt from his quiver, held it ready to nock. I shrank back into the shade of the dense green needles until they relaxed.

I really shouldn?t be here, I thought again, for the hundredth time since I left Tara?s apartment. ?Idiot,? I grumbled aloud.

Of course, if you insisted on observing technicalities, I shouldn?t have been anywhere near that particular cathedral the night the priest died, either. Except that I had to be. Because I shouldn?t have been anywhere near the cathedral or the adjacent church cemetery two weeks ago, when I woke, aching and frozen and terrifyingly ravenous, and realized someone had buried me. Again.

No one who saw me the night I clawed my way out of the dirt, fingers torn from the struggle and every inch of me caked in filth, would have known who I was, and that was just as well because I wasn?t sure of that myself. All I knew at first was the hunger, which was so fierce that the next few days were a blur of rending violence. When at last I began to come to myself again, I knew my name, Fionna, and I knew that this was not the first time this had happened to me. Beyond that, trying to remember anything was like trying to put together a ten-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture to guide me, just random, 30-second flashes of faces and events, all out of synch.

As I am sure you can imagine, that can be very upsetting.

The singsong chanting of the acolytes escorting the body was starting to fade into the distance, and the interest of the crowd waned. Most of them were already departing down the warren of alleyways and cross-streets that marked the area between Rhydin City and WestEnd. I continued to scan the crowd, glancing now and then to the diminishing tail of the funerary procession.

?Who killed you?? I whispered after the corpse, wishing he could save me the heap of trouble I knew was waiting for me, point a transparent finger at the villain and have done with it. Of course, nothing for me was ever that easy.

No, whoever murdered that priest was still out there, faceless. Just like whoever had tried to kill me. And I had the nagging suspicion that somehow, the two events were related.

It had been a bad night.

The nightmares were back, flashes of what I suspected were old memories blended with dreams in such a painful and surreal jumble that sleep left me shaking and feeling sick on the edge of my bed when I finally pulled free from their grasp.

Tara?s schedule felt normal to me, and out of consideration for my hostess ? who also happened to consistently be the best friend I?d had in any of my lives ? I?d fallen into its rhythm, sleeping days and doing most of my moving around at night. I didn?t seem to be bound by some of her lifestyle?s more restrictive limitations, however; and so it was that I found myself awake and owlishly pacing around the apartment with only my unpleasant thoughts for company in the middle of a gray, snowy afternoon.

I should exposit a bit here; ?apartment? is simply Tara?s description of the place I was sharing with her for now. In reality (which tends to be in flux around Tara even on her best days), the place resembles the sort of two or three bedroom flat most of us are used to like the Taj Mahal resembles a Quik-E-Mart. All of which means that, when I woke up, I had a lot of real estate in which to pace around in my underpants and t-shirt, and a lot of servants to make nervous by doing it.

I roamed the place for an hour or so, playing with bric-a-brac in the parlor, staring moodily out from the tall windows of what appeared to be the breakfast room, and reading row after row of book titles ? some in languages I didn?t recognize ? in a dark, paneled study, accompanied by the relentless ?tick ?tick ? tick? of an enormous grandfather clock.

I might have continued on like that until Tara woke, but after the fourth time I?d made someone yelp in surprise by being in a room they?d expected to find unoccupied, I dressed myself (to the great annoyance of one of the maids, who seemed to think me an invalid needing her assistance in every detail of my personal grooming), donning corduroy trousers, a flannel smock and a pair of fleece-lined boots. While she continued to follow me around the apartment, alternating between pleas for me to let her re-dress me and a sulky silence, I bound my hair in a thong, grabbed my cloak and stalked outside, determined to spend the remainder of the daylight hours in my studio alone, away from the incessant chatter of the overly-attentive staff.

The neighborhood was busy, and got busier and rougher the closer I drew to my destination. I didn?t pay a lot of attention to the streets or the passersby as I made my solitary trek toward the living, twisting alleys of WestEnd. That probably wasn?t wise, given everything that was going on; fortunately, I was lucky not to acquire the particular attention of the watch, the seekers, or the dozen or so gangs that populated the less savory areas of town, and managed to make my way wholly unmolested. Of course, my perpetual scowl and habit of talking to myself probably helped.

The cold air cleared my head enough that a few things started clicking into place. I started asking some questions I?d been avoiding.

Like what the hell had happened to me. Because whatever it was, (click) I had expected it.

The studio told me that.

I?ve decided that if there?s anything good that can be said about the way my head works right now, it is this: I don?t feel obliged these days to live up to anyone?s expectations. Don?t get me wrong ? most of the time I am perfectly aware that something is out of sync, and that sucks. Really, really sucks. But there is a kind of logic to my thought processes. I just don?t happen to follow the patterns most other people take for granted in waking hours. It?s more like dream-logic. I can be chugging along with everyone around me in a fairly linear direction, and suddenly reality takes a left when I turn right. I haven?t ended up someplace wrong, necessarily. Just someplace different than I expected.

You could say that I?m taking the scenic route through life this time around.

It?s a little like the old stories-that-aren?t-just-stories. We like to think that our myths and crib-fables are make-believe, but I?ve come to figure out (maybe the hard way) that there is a little nugget of truth underlying just about every one of them. The problem is, you can?t get at the truth of a myth by pursuing logic.

Let me give you an example. Remember the three weird sisters in Macbeth? They dance around in the first act carrying on about some sailor?s wife who wouldn?t share a handful of nuts, and the next thing you know, they?re conjuring storms to torment her husband at sea. Then Macbeth runs into them, and they stir up trouble with him, just for the hell of it, cackling and flitting around like demented fairies. We all know what happened after that.

You take the same three lunatic women, and plop them down in Greece, and suddenly, they aren?t witches anymore ? they?ve become the Moirai, the Fates. And you discover, if you read enough, that this time they have names (Clothos, Lachesis and Atropos) and a mother (Nyx). But they?re still all up in everyone else?s business because they can?t help themselves; they're nosy wenches and it?s what they were made to do. So in this story, they spin the thread that makes up people?s lives. They measure and weave it, and at some point, they cut it.

I figure at this point, my thread is a jumbled-up pile of little snips. Or maybe they keep changing their minds and knotting the pieces back together.

Anyway, keep digging at it ? in other lands, they aren?t witches or old women, they?re giantesses, and they sit around the well of life all day drawing water and mucking about with sand. Or, in others, they are the literal embodiment of Time ? past, present and future ? given hands and feet and set loose, ultimately, to screw the rest of us up.

I could go on and on, but it?s time to make a point. There are just two common threads in all of the stories that are salient here. One: in every instance, there are three of them. And, two: they?re crazy as hell.

There are some memories a tangled mind can?t unfold in the order in which they should be told, during waking hours. But in sleep ?


The way it all began seemed too clever, too coincidental, too perfect.

It was one of those late, snowy afternoons in January, the time of year when the dock trade was slow anyway. She was sitting on a stool near the end of the bar, taking the occasional sip of a Bloody Mary as she doodled in the margins of one of her notebooks. Business was slow, but that was fine by her. She was only there to cover for one of the regular daytime barmaids; it was a last-minute call, and since everyone else in the House was either still sleeping or out, she had grudgingly taken the shift. The dearth of customers suited her just fine.

She looked nothing like the Fionna that presided over the evening trade, and maybe that was important. The dramatic little dresses had given way to a worn pair of tight, faded denims and one of Lars' old shirts, the sleeves of the billowing white garment rolled to her elbows. Her hair was clipped back by an antiqued gold barrette, and the vivid red nails of her bare feet were in serious need of a touch-up.

Her shoes lay at haphazard angles on the floor beneath her stool, and when she heard the door open, she slid to her feet and fumbled to slip them on.

He didn?t enter right away, so when she looked up, what she saw was the black silhouette of a man framed by the luminous blue-gray of the snowy street. He was holding the doorjamb for balance as he kicked snow off of his boots. She thought it was funny, in a way, that he was so careful about not tracking snow into the bar. It got her attention.

That was when he glanced up.

She caught her breath, even then. It was something in his eyes, she decided much later, dissecting their first meeting again and again on nights when she couldn?t sleep. Something about the way he looked at her, even when he didn?t know her.

Like he cared.

She flipped the notebook shut and tossed it on the bar as she walked back around to the working side of things.

?Hi. You want something to drink??

?Sure. A beer??

Rubbing his hands together vigorously, the man approached the bar. Everything he wore was black, the kind of inky black that had depth to it. Black leather gloves, black wool overcoat, black trousers, black tunic, black boots ... even his neat-cropped hair was black. He pulled his gloves off while she got the beer, and she watched, half-expecting the hands beneath the gloves to be similarly-hued.

She wiped the top of the bottle and popped the cap for him, setting it alongside a mug on a second coaster. The paper novelties read "Get Bloody at the Joint" and pictured a voluptuous woman holding a long-necked bottle.

Classy.

While he dealt with his ale, she started filling bowls of pretzels from the bag under the counter and setting them along the bar. She put one on the counter in front of him, as she made her rounds.

?It's pretty quiet today. Not many ships in harbor or something,? She took a rusty stab at small-talk while she worked. ?Not sure what's going on.?

"Could be the wild snowstorm out there," He looked at her again with a dry smile, and she forgot to breathe until he popped a pretzel into his mouth.

?Yeah.?

?Actually,? he washed the pretzel down with a swig straight from the bottle, ?I wasn?t even sure you were open. It looked dark at first.?

?Dark?? Her puzzlement became a frown as she glanced toward the front. ?Oh, no. I forgot to turn on the sign again!?

Leaving him chewing another pretzel, Fio hurried through the bar toward the door. ?Lars is going to kill me!?

The switches were hidden behind one of the thick velvet curtains framing the portrait window, which was shaded by a heavy, black, oiled-canvas blind. She flipped the switch that powered the techno-magical sign hung between the window and the blind. It had the same woman depicted in the coasters, with ?OPEN? scrawled in huge neon script across her ample chest.

She checked, to make sure it lit, let the blinds swing back against the glass, and ambled over to plug in the jukebox, next. The machine whirred to life with a flash of light and color and a hint of feedback on the speakers hidden around the room.

?Any preferences?? she asked. ?I can set it for the House dime so we don't have to pay for it.?

?Not really, no,? He sounded like he was smiling, and she glanced up quickly. He was. Great, she thought. Fantastic impression. She stretched her arm behind the machine and flipped the toggle on the back; the selections began to rotate. Soon, a thudding bass line kicked in.

?I like this.?

She started to comment on the song, when she realized he was holding her notebook and casually flipping through it.

?You drew these?? he pressed on. Maybe he mistook her silence for permission.

?Yes.?

?You enjoy art??

She started back toward the bar slowly. ?I suppose you could say that.?

?I suppose I did,? he corrected, grinning like a schoolboy as he continued to leaf through her book. He paused on a page. ?You paint, too. I like the watercolor.?

He was cheeky. She had to give him that.

?Who are you??

?Oh, sorry.? He held out his hand for a shake.? I?m Michael. Mike. Um. Gallagher.? He fumbled over his name at her expression, and held the notebook out with the other hand. ?Mike Gallagher.?

?Thanks.?

His stammer checked her desire to take her book back. He wasn?t hurting anything by looking, and if he didn?t like the nature of some the contents, well, he shouldn?t be looking. She took the right hand, instead.

His eyes were blue, the fact struck her. So pale, they were nearly gray.

?I?m Fionna Helston,? she paused. ?Most people call me Fio, or Fi.?

?I?m glad to meet you,? and he did, too. ?Fionna.? He gave her hand a little squeeze before releasing her so he could turn back to the bar, where he opened the notebook again.

?You know, I consider myself a bit of an art aficionado.?

?Huh.? It sounded like a line, and she had heard thousands. She walked back to the business side of the bar and pretended to be busy while she watched him look at her sketches and doodles.

?Have you ever studied, formally?? He didn?t look up from his examination of a portrait, in graphite, she?d done of Lucien.

?Actually, I paint for a living.?

?No kidding?? He did look up at that.

She tried not to sound affronted. ?No kidding. Oils. Portraits and commissioned pieces, mainly. But I have studied, informally.?

?What?s your favorite piece?? he asked, pouring his eyes over another page.

?My own, or another?s??

?In general,? He flashed her a quick grin. ?Please? I am curious.?

She leaned against the counter on her elbows, considering.

?I have many favorites,? she began. But I am particularly drawn to a nude by Renoir; Baigneuse aux Cheveaux Longs. It?s a woman, bathing in a stream. Do you know it??

?You like the impressionists, then.?

It didn?t sound like a question, so she didn?t respond, waiting for him to continue.

?Pierre Renoir ?? his expression was far away. ?I don?t know that one,? he finally admitted. ?But I do remember seeing one painted after he?d visited Italy. Les Parapluies. It?s the only one of his I recall off-hand.?

?Mm.?

?Gauguin?? he asked, apparently fishing for another opinion.

?What is this, a test?? She laughed nervously.

?No,? he said, smiling. ?I just want to know what you think. It?s been a long time since I?ve had an intelligent conversation with a beautiful woman about art.?

Fionna eyed him uncertainly.

?Okay,? she drawled out slowly. ?But remember you asked for it.?

He laughed again, gesturing for her to continue.

?He was self-indulgent,? she began. ?I?m not entirely enchanted with the forms, and I think some of what he painted was ?? She hesitated to be pissy.

?Go on,? he tipped his chin, waiting for the rest. He was staring at her now.

?Well, his landscapes are ? some of them ? absolutely stunning. He knew how to capture light and color, and he certainly wasn?t afraid to be vivid.? Once she launched into it, her interest overcame her caution, and she rattled along. ?The work he did in Bretony was really unparalleled. But ? may I be blunt??

She checked his eyes again, to see if he was with her. He rolled his hand for her to continue.

?His Tahitian work was done, I think, to shock, titillate and incite the critics. In the end, he was a whore to his own reputation.?

There. He wanted to know what she thought? He got it. She hazarded another glance, and found him gaping at her.

?Are you married?? he finally asked.

?Oh heavens, no!? She exclaimed with what was nearly a laugh. Not anymore.

He reached to take her hand, this time with his left, and that was when she saw the ring. She snatched her hand away like he?d been about to burn her.

?You?re a priest??

And that was how they met.

?No!?

Pietr slammed his hand down on the table, scattering silver and upending the salt ewer. He was halfway out of his seat before the unfortunate messenger could complete what he was saying.

?The-the body was discovered this morning, as the acolytes were going to the refectory after the Ou?trenya services.? The younger man stammered forward, in a rush to get the words out of his mouth before the Fre Father did anything ? rash. ?Much of the blood was, was taken, as before. And,? he added delicately, ?he was disturbed.?

Just like the others hung unspoken in the air.

?Does anyone outside know about this yet?? The older priest?s face was a thundercloud.

?No, Fre Pietr. Fre Joachin sent me straight for you, and ordered the gates kept closed until he heard word back from you.

?Keep them closed. If supplicants come, have the guards tell them that we have been commanded by the Triad to observe a day of fasting and seclusion,? he began to pace, his fists clenching and unclenching as he thought. ?Do not let anyone enter or leave the grounds, for any reason, until we?ve conducted our search.?

The monster was likely already melted to shadows again, but they might get lucky, the gods willing.

?And tell Demos that I need to see him at once.?

?Yes, Fre Father,? the younger priest responded at once and turned to leave, fervently eager to be gone from those chambers before the dam of the man?s temper broke.

Pietr stopped at a tall window, stared out into the thick fog bank that obscured the center of town, just across the river. He could not find what his eyes sought, but he knew exactly where that infernal Inn lay, and the sound he made in his throat was a close to a snarl as there was.

The Watch had been clumsy in their handling of the girl, not bringing her directly to him. The woman knew something, he was sure of it. How she had managed to evade those questions so far rankled him more than he was willing to admit. And the message scrawled on the table where the men holding her had been slaughtered for their stupidity burned in his thoughts now. ?Took my elf back, a****** ? Love, Sin.? Damn them. Damn and rot them all if they kept him from getting to the bottom of this!

It was time to start tipping the pieces.

II. Grace

?Marriage? No; I don?t believe in it. Good for the man ? lousy for the woman. She dies; she suffocates. I?ve seen it. And then the husband runs around complaining he?s f ?ing a dead person. And he?s the one who killed her.?
~ John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick

No one appreciates an honest woman these days.

Take me, for instance.

I don?t sugarcoat things. Never had much patience for that. Oh, I?ll play with someone, don?t get me wrong. A little verbal sparring is pretty much the best foreplay there is. And I know when to keep a secret, too. We have plenty of those. But when real things need to be said, I don?t sugarcoat the truth.

No point in it.

Antony appreciated that about me once, until it became inconvenient. When I stopped being amusing and started holding that mirror up to his behavior a little too closely for comfort, he stopped finding me so appealing. The tragedy of the trophy wife. Cry me a river.

You want to know the really sad thing? I could have lived with the other women. I?d made my bed, and if I had to share it, well, I should have been more careful about the terms of the original contract. But when you don?t feel safe in your own skin anymore, it?s time to cut your losses and run. He shouldn?t have tried to broker a business deal with me as the collateral. That I couldn?t live with, no matter how much I loved him.

And I did love him.

The bastard.

There are some memories a tangled mind can?t unfold in the order in which they should be told, during waking hours?

?Fionna??

?Mm?? She hadn?t heard him speaking to her. When she looked up, he was rounding his desk and coming toward her.

?I pity them,? she said, when he didn?t immediately answer. Holding the edge of the curtain, her eyes fixed on some distant point above the roofs of the old city, across the river from the Palais.

?Who?? He frowned as he came up behind her. ?Who do you pity??

?The stars,? she murmured. The sky was awash with silvered pinpricks tonight, some hanging low and bright along the indigo line of the horizon. ?They always look so cold and alone.?

?You are so foolish sometimes.? He stopped beside her, gazing through the window and into the night.

She studied him in the glass, rather than face him directly; the universe swam in his reflected eyes. A pang of something ? grief ? pity ... longing ? swelled beneath the cage of her ribs. It almost found voice.

?Your pity would be better spent on yourself,? he continued, his tone resentful, mean. ?Anyway, aren?t you being a little sentimental for a demon??

She didn?t flinch. How many times had they had this same argument, in this very room?

?By all of your accounts, I am a monster,? she answered simply. ?I will not dispute that. It is entirely likely I no longer have a soul; I may very well be damned. But I tell you again, I am no demon. Not as you mean it.? She loosed her grip on the curtain, and went to stand before a bookcase, scowling at the titles after a moment.

Was she sentimental? She avoided the question like a barb in her finger.

?You do not have to resign yourself so easily to that fate,? he challenged. ?You could let me see what can be done. The Church ? ?

?Done? Done?? she shook her head, turning her scowl loose on him. ?You claim to love me, insist you want me, and yet you insist on treating who I am as if it is a problem to be solved! Feyd is right. I should never have come back here. This is exactly why I refuse your confessional.?

?You condemn yourself with every word, Fionna,? he interjected. ?With every syllable. What if this plan of yours fails, hm? What if your death finds you after all?? He reached for her shoulder.

She shrugged him off. ?Then at least I won?t have to listen to your bile anymore.?

Grace

I forget how to move, when my mouth is this dry,
And my eyes are bursting hearts in a bloodstained sky;
Oh, but it was sweet and wild.
~The Cure, Homesick

Sinjin asked me the other night why I drink this stuff when no one is looking. You know, Tara?s ?red pop,? as Missie likes to call it. Truth is, it?s not the same as pulling straight from the source, but it helps take the edge off, for all that it tastes like crap.

We don?t have to feed anymore, in that way, to survive; Fi?s always quick to point that out. One of the rather dubious gifts Feyd gave to us, before the wedding, to try and increase our chances of surviving life with Antony. If it had been up to me, I would have refused it. Alexandra?s gift to the human child who stumbled into her notice all those years ago had been terrible, yes, but beautiful. We were an elegant, efficient, gorgeous little monster. An apex predator, if you will, one with a defined place. But Feyd ? Feyd made us into something that doesn?t really fit completely into any niche. Traded one set of vulnerabilities for another.

As I said, we don?t have to drink, but not doing so makes us feel tired and, I suppose this is the best analogy, arthritic. It?s painful in a maddening way that builds on itself, the longer we abstain. That?s one reason why, when Fi?s driving, she?s always a little distracted; we walk around most of the time in a sort of blur of grinding achiness. Because she won?t. You know. Feed.

She says it?s our atonement.

We let love change us, in terrible ways.

The route into and through the building itself is laborious. For those who have not made the journey, there is no sense in recounting the path here. For those who have done, repetition is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that there are many traps to avoid, and a number of tests to pass, before one hears the magic words presaging admission.


?Are you sure you want to come in? It?s a mess,? Missy asked in her sing-song chant. Eyes the glossy dark of beetles? wings watched them, lips parted in anticipation of their answer, hand lingering on the knob.

Say ?yes,? oh, say ?yes,? the Prisoner inside whispered.

?Yes,? came the answer back.

?Alright,? she smiled, ?but don?t say I didn?t warn you.?

The lights came up on the converted flour warehouse with the flash and sparkle of a million rainbows. Mobiles hanging from the cavernous ceiling cast light and color like jeweled fairies over the vast workspace. They were made of up of the flotsam of everyday life in WestEnd ? bits of broken bottles and mirrors, silver spoons, old keys, metallic trim from abandoned vehicles. On one, a whistle belonging to one of the Watchmen dangled and swung in the wake of Missy?s passing like a pendulum. Whatever caught Fi?s fancy as she walked the streets ended up hanging on the walls or dangling from the ceiling in the studio.

She carried the little wooden box holding the daemon Sinjin had given her carefully, clutching it to her chest as she picked a path through the chaotic jumble. Everywhere there was paper or canvas, on tables, on the floor, on the backs of the overhead doors, there were paintings and sketches of people, some quite large, others small, and all done feverishly. It was as if she couldn't work quickly enough to put them down before they drifted away again. A sea of faces.

But the faces weren?t alone.

Nearly every inch of wall in the vast open space was covered in writing, some tiny and cramped, some spiraling lines like the insides of shells, some in thick, angry bold strokes. Black on white, like being inside the pages of a book.

Little of it was in common. The languages, like the handwriting, varied. Some things on the wall were in codes of a sort, or written oddly. Some were in common, in Spanish, in Italian, in Greek. Some were in verse, like she couldn't get the words to cooperate unless she imposed an extra layer of order upon them. Some spots were just smears of ink on the wall, handprints, as if whoever had been writing was too inarticulate, or too stricken, to put what was felt into something as limiting as words.

?Oh man,? one of them whispered.

?I told you so,? she replied, as she started for the ladder leading up through the trapdoor to her living space. She needed to put the little daemon away.

The others were ringed around the easel, holding a low discussion. She couldn?t make out much of it, but that didn?t bother her. She was used to people talking. Generally, she didn?t let it trouble her.

And then one of them said the Bad Name.

?I?ve always regretted that my work hasn?t been more accepted among my own people. There?s so much I could teach them,? he commented mildly as he prepared his canvas, slicing the clothes away carefully so as not to cut the young man in the process. It was too soon for that.

?Hold still, please. I don?t want to mar your skin with the knife,? he glanced across the room as he continued to work, pointing casually with the blade-tip at the acolyte?s throat. ?Are you sure you aren?t hungry enough yet??

The lad?s eyes grew wider in the dim torchlight, flickering with fear as he shook his head to beseech them. The gag muted his pleas into squeaks and grunts. He stank of terror.

She didn?t answer.

?Suit yourself.? He shrugged. ?But never say I wasn?t a solicitous host.?

His attention returned to his current project, his pale blue gaze considering. ?Now then,? he mused as he selected an instrument. ?Where shall we start??

He twisted his hand in her hair and yanked her back forcefully, tearing her mouth from the lad?s neck. In her apparent pity for the boy, she?d tried to rip it out as she fed. Air bubbled from the open wound in his throat.

Good. He was still breathing.

?Now, now.? He chided his companion through gritted teeth as he thrust her back into the wall, slamming his arm across her while he wrestled with the iron chains that held her in place against the stone.

Wresting an arm free, she slashed her nails across his cheek, digging a deep gouge in his flesh and drawing blood. Her legs kicking and body twisting in her efforts to break free, the vitae gave her a boost of energy she?d not felt for weeks. She fought like a wildcat; he?d give her that. Cocking his arm, he backhanded her hard. And again.

And again.

By the time he had her secured, the breath puffed from his lungs, his blue eyes flashing viciously. He tested the back of his hand against his cheek, snarling when it came back red.

Grinding the heels of his palms into her shoulders, he pressed her mercilessly back into the unrelenting stone, and leaned in until his cool breath fanned over her face.

?Lick it,? he hissed.

She turned her battered face from his, but he caught her chin in his hand and forced it back around, his eyes boring into hers, as he repeated the command.

?I said, lick it.?

She clenched her mouth shut, and his thumb dug into her chin, pushing down.

?Do it, or I will make sure that he survives for another week of this.? His nostrils flared, his lips pulled back in a snarl as he stared her down, daring her to test him on his word.

With a shuddery sob, she closed her eyes and leaned in to lap at the wound. Cleaning it. Healing it. Sharing his blood.

?Good girl,? he crooned, caressing her cheek gently. ?Good girl.?

Time was a particularly fickle bitch.

When you had so much of it stretched out before you, it was easy to trace events in your mind back to their initial terminus points and find the catalysts that changed the direction of the rails they plummeted along. Any little thing could do that: alter the course. There were so many what ifs.

He stood in the center of the Studio and sucked the smell in with a snarl of rage. No more than six hours earlier, and he?d have arrived in time to find the one whose scent now marred the purity of his personal sacristy. Just six hours, and he might have collected a key to the door he very much wanted to open.

He?s smelled this one before, mingled with the trails of others. She had friends now, not that it would help her. It never had, before. She burrowed herself into the knot of them like a mouse in a thicket. He was going to have to play the fire to flush her out again; he could already see that. But this was a new and interesting development. This one had come back alone, and more than once. This one had lingered. Looked at things that were not his to see. Knew, perhaps, things that were not his to know.

The Beast roared in his head at the outrage of the violation. She was his, and she always would be. Why didn?t she understand that?

He followed the stench outside, into the broken pavement of the street and across it. Before he?d gone very many yards he was struck motionless by the force of another of Time?s surprises, this one fresher. She?d been here. Only an hour ago; at the most, two. If he?d concluded his lessons just an hour earlier, he might have arrived in time to catch her alone and she?d know the truth of things. He would show her what he?d done for her this time, and it would finally be enough. Together, they would make her see.

A quarter of a turn, a shift of time and air, and the scents mingled and converged ? the red rose in him like a Fury the moment he realized it ? to point like a compass toward the brick face of a building just a few doors up from the Eye. The face of it was dark, for the first three floors. Gold blazed like the beacon of a lighthouse from windows of the fourth. Here we are, the shine mocked him. Come and get us. He climbed, heading for the nearest one, while her Eye watched on.

It was two weeks to the day that Sinjin had woken him to give him the news of Gem?s death. He?d spent a part of every day at the studio, taking meticulous notes on everything written or painted on the third-floor walls. He?d run every day, learning the city, befriending the guards. He?d begun to think about his future: now that Gem?s accumulated wealth no longer supported him, what was he to do? Sinjin was furnishing the flat, but he had to go on eating, and he had only so much of his own hoarded gold left. What did he want the rest of his life to look like? What sort of person was he going to become, with half his life over and nothing but a great lot of books to show for it? He?d put together an idea, of buying and selling antiquities: a storefront, perhaps, and an acquisitions element. He was to make his presentation to the venture capitalist two days hence.

It was while he was in this state of mind that he?d left the studio, gone to the Inn, and had the fight with Fio.

?I know her type,? Sinjin had told him. ?She's Kindred, Ali, and unwillingly sired. That's what they're always afraid of. Hurting people they care about. What she doesn't realize?what anyone in her position never realizes?is that the risk is one that people who care about her accept.? And: ?She needs to know that she isn't a goddamned monster like she's convinced herself she is. I don't give a f**k about your romantic interests in her. Right now, she's half-sure you hate her because of what she is and who you are.?

And so, in continuing proof of his idiocy, he?d charged into the inn, told her that he?d missed her, and launched straight into an argument with her. Sinjin had been right: Fio did believe that he hated her, did believe that he didn?t trust her. She?d attempted to couch her words in tactful ways, but beneath it all was the plain belief that he was incapable of change, and that he would always see her as a monster.

Frustration had driven him out of the common room and into the kitchen. He wasn?t sure quite what had happened after that; only much later was it explained to him that his sudden entrance had frightened Rekah. Rekah, it turned out, had a promising future as a fast-pitch softballer ahead of her: she?d hit him in the head with a hardcover recipe book, so hard that it had knocked him out cold. When he?d come to, Fio had left, and no one could tell him where she?d gone.

Once the regenerative qualities of his nature had cleared the concussion, he took his time going home. As bleak and empty as the six years prior to his move to Rhydin the previous November had been...at least he'd had a sense of certainty. Every day in Rhydin had washed a little more of his understanding of himself and the world out from under him. And he tried to tell himself that it wasn?t a bad thing. He would never have met her, otherwise. He wouldn't have seen himself in this new and not-especially-flattering light.

He set Duck Soup to play on the screen in the front room, debated whether he really wanted to drink coffee at this ungodly hour. He was, he realized, quite lonely. Perhaps, he thought, he ought to move out of town completely. Give up this idea of antiquities and artifacts that would make his father crow with the irony of it. Take up a position at the spaceport, start piloting again. On the screen, Rufus T. Firefly was saying: Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth. He felt like Chicolini.

Perhaps he ought to stop pacing in these increasingly small circles, and start working on the presentation. He dropped to the floor beside the table in the front room and pushed his presentation notes around, only to discover his notebook, full of notes from the studio walls. He?d found a copy of the poem she'd been reading, the Borges piece about longing and transformation, and had transcribed it longhand into the notebook. He read it again, and again, and turned the page, and read a note from the wall of her studio: I turn you into f**king dust, you hear me?

And suddenly he understood. The room should have been leveled with the force of it; it was like a bomb going off inside his skull, a soundless and mighty whiteout that left afterimages dancing in front of his unseeing eyes. No man had ever cared about her, before, simply for herself. No one had ever seen her save through the lens of their own needs and desires. It explained everything about her interactions with him, with all the men around her. Everyone in her past had to have seen her as a thing, as property, as something to be bartered and bought and sold. It was the only explanation that made sense.

Be good to her. That was it. That was the key. He ground the heel of a hand into his forehead, dropped the notebook, and got to his feet.

He ran out into the night, intending to?what? Go to Skid?s cave and stand about yelling for her until someone heard him or his voice gave out? Go back to the inn and beg until someone told him where she?d gone? He hardly knew, but it was a moot point: when he reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the street, she was there waiting for him.

"Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open." ~Agnes de Mille


In all those weeks together, out of all of that time, it was the first time he?d kissed her. Kisses are promises and promises are magic, Missie had singsonged once upon a time. And this kiss had followed on the heels of her confession about Lexa and Feyd. Was this why she was suddenly so unsure of herself? Tentatively, her right hand rose, until she'd curled it flush along the line of his waist just above the jut of his hipbone. The fingers of her left curled and uncurled. She wanted to touch him. So why was she so hesitant?

In the end, it didn?t matter, because it was magic, and they were learning the incantations together, and it was perfect and lovely and ? there was a pressure in the back of her skull that was growing more and more insistent. She had something to say. Her eyes slitted open, and she began the glide back. And she froze.

Her fingernails bit into his back and after a bewildering moment, her eyes opened fully. Surprise and desire and the surreal juxtaposition of fear and wanting slowed her reaction and turned the shout into a squeak. In the back of her head, Missie was screaming, Run! Four facts registered in sequence:

Someone was looking in the window.

Four stories up.

From the outside.

And he wasn't transparent.

?Fio?? Ali lifted his head from her neck and followed her silent coaxing to look behind him.

What they both saw, for only an instant, was his face: pale, wreathed in shadows and dark cloth. One minute he was there, staring in at them with an angry - no, furious - twist to his thin mouth. The next, he'd dropped out of the line of the window leaving only their shocked reflections gaping back at them.

And then Ali exploded into something huge and black, the stuff of nightmares. Before she could even register that fact, he?d ripped a hole in reality and growled an order.

?Stay here.? And then he was gone and she was alone. It had only taken five seconds.

Five seconds, and now, five breaths.

On the first inhale, which followed on the heels of his snarled command, she simply stared, witless, at the place where the hole in the universe had been a moment before. The spirits that haunted her every step, sensing the shift, spilled and tumbled over each other at the window outside in their haste to get at it, but none made it, that she could tell. She exhaled. How could she tell?

On the second breath in, she found herself spinning in place, eyes checking each nook, cranny and corner for any other means of entrance to the room, any sign of company. She only exhaled when she'd reassured herself she was alone. For now.

On the third, she swung an arm down to grab at her clothes. One of her shoes went flying in the process and the bra was missed, but she got the pants. Breathe out.

The forth shuddery inhale of breath found her struggling to get into the jeans, and in her panic, failing. She spat out a curse of frustrated terror on the exhale.

She tried again, with the fifth, and managed to get one leg in before her feet slipped from under her on that cheerful dhurry rug, and she landed with a loud thunk on her arse on the floor, forcing the breath out.

Five breaths in five seconds. She was close to hyperventilating. Her teeth started to chatter.

Outside on the street, there was a roar that rattled the glass in the windows. The sound startled her back into action, and, sprawled on the floor, she tugged furiously on her jeans, sliding low enough to zip them up. F**k the button. Throwing herself onto her hands and knees, she grabbed at the closest shoe, claimed it, and then skittered across the floor for the other, rucking up the carpet and shoving the folds back against the pedestal of the bed with her haste. Across from that disaster, she spun to sit on the span of bare wood she?d cleared. The sneakers she tugged on without lacing, and pulled herself up with a white-knuckled grip on the doorknob.

She yanked it open, only to come face-to-face with a crowd of pale ghosts crammed into his living room now, all staring, all accusing. Her first thought had been to go to the kitchen and find something she could use as a defensive weapon, but, Stay here, he had said. With another little cry, she fell back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut again.

Trapped. She hated feeling so boxed in. In the back of her head, Missie was sobbing, Run, run, run! Outside the door, the spirits that chased her were whispering things she couldn?t make out, with insistent, incessant, voices like dead leaves. It was noise all around her and she couldn?t get away from it. She couldn?t get away. The thought backed her into the center of the room, where she clutched her arms around her stomach like she was in pain.

?Shut up!? she shrieked at them all. ?Shut UP!?

?Hello??

?Check Missie. Make sure she doesn't have any of those f**king tattoos on her."

?What? Why??

"Because that box of temporary tattoos she found on the bar was from f**king Michael. I just spent the last ten minutes bleeding Sal dry from cold iron shavings and possibly something else, so how about you stop asking questions and just check her."

?None on her, but her hands stink?she says he's been stabbed. Yellow eyes? The drow??

"Unrelated. Doesn't matter. It's the f**king stupid tattoos that did it, which, by the way, also have Fio's blood in them."

?How could Michael?what? How could he get her blood? How could he know to use cold iron? Is Salvador going to be all right??

"He?d better be."

?Is there anything that you need me to do??

"Yes. When Fio's back in control we need to sit down and f**king talk. I want this bastard dead."

?Not Fio. I think?I think we need to talk to Fionna.?

"Then get her out for some face time. We can't sit on this s**t any longer, Ali."

?All right. Call me if anything changes.?

"You call me if he tries anything tonight. I want to see him bleed."

Immediately following the ceremony in which Tormay Eludes and Taneth Mercer were wed, after taking the portal back into town, Salvador prowled through the front door of the Red Dragon Inn. He still looked rumpled and dirty in that same suit jacket and dress shirt that had once been white but was now nice and stained. He held the door open for someone. "I really appreciate this, Skid."

Skid followed him in, still wearing a suit that was altogether reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln. Stovepipe hat, too. "No trouble at all. I'm happy to be of assistance." Despite the jovial dress and speech, he held the air of a predator at the moment. Dwelling on it had brought his own hunger on, and he made for the kitchen almost immediately.

Salvador followed after the masked man in the top hat. He glanced aside, noticing certain individuals, but not saying anything as of yet. The glance along the way counted as a silent hello. "I really hate this sh*t," he grumbled, taking on the role of Skid's shadow.

"It's natural," Skid said. As they passed through the door and into relative? Dualitute. "For some of us, at least." Once he passed into the walk-in, and worked around several little hiding places that had already been cleaned out, he found the sizable, black Ziploc and came back out. He held it out to Salvador, waiting his turn.

"Gracias," he mumbled sourly, accepting the bag. He set it on one of the counters between them. It was Skid's stash, after all, and he should share. "It is natural to me, but I still don't like it," he confided, plucking out the first sweet treat.

The food talk could wait. Better yet, Sal might find it easier to concentrate on something else while he ate. An idea! "So, how'd you get Fio mad at you?"

Trying hard not to just stick his face in the bag and nom ravenously, Sal took up as casual a lean as he could manage against the counter beside. "Oooh. I don't approve of her being married." To answer the question. "Not half as hard as Sin disapproves, but she's not happy that we're not happy for her. Said something like: 'why's it okay for Taneth and Tormay.' But not her and Ali."

Skid's eye ridges twisted up, and he took a piece from the bag. "With the happiness, you know, if you're at least happy that they're happy, situation aside, you could just tell them that. S'what I did. Kind of. Half-way." Salvador got to see the bottom half of his face, then. The mask unraveled, and there it was. Bolts in either side of the lips, with ringed pins holding them shut. The entire right side covered in runes, no square inch spared. His teeth were like needles and razorblades, far too white to be anything but zealously manicured.

That, in Salvador?s opinion, was hot. He paused with some meat near his lips, mouth open a little, and tilted his head to see up under the shadow of the mask. What he saw only made him grin appreciatively before he popped that morsel into his mouth.

"Though I can't say I disagree with either of you, really. But for the sake of argument, and curiosity -- I've got a lot of it -- what's your take?" His happiness in Fio's regard was a rather complex structure, and outside opinions were always incredibly interesting.

"M'take'sh it'sh a shtupid idea," Salvador said while chewing. Gulping it down quick after those few words. "Stupid that they did it in public like they did. Either stupid or genius there." He reached aside to grab another piece out of the bag. "Sin says all around stupid, but I don't know. They painted a big *** target on their backs, and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not. But now... Now the f*cker's more active." He frowned severely.

Skid nodded after the bit that could only have been about Michael, perceptively. "I'd wondered about that, after I got over the initial shock of being told." The meat didn't stand a chance. He'd been made to dissemble it and the things it came from, after all. He smiled for Sal when he caught him looking. All those teeth shined, like blood over fresh snow. "Seems a little far-fetched with all the surprising and suddenness of it all, but do you think they did it to draw him out?"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking," he said, popping in that next morsel, taking the time to chew before speaking again, as well as admiring all those sharp pointy teeth. Someone he could share one dirty little secret in common with was kind of relieving. "But doing it the way they did is still stupid. Sin's the one who said it; that they hardly even know each other."

Skid nodded, a little faraway, and spoke in the equivalent of a verbal shrug. "That's true, but only time will tell."

That thought had Sal scratching his chest with a distant thought in his eyes, hissing after a tick and quickly withdrawing his hand with a scowl. "Not really a marriage guy myself," he added. Skipping that, he dropped back on the Michael subject and unbuttoned his shirt some, pushing it aside to point out a nice raw red burn scar, very recent, in the shape of a frog on his chest. "See that?"

A moment passed while Skid eyed the mark. His face screwed up when he asked, as if certain he?d be corrected to something contrary. "Is that a.. Frog?"

"Frog," he confirmed bitterly. "Fairy. Hippo. Gopher. I don't know what half of them were." He tried not to scratch the edges of the burn scab; busied his hand by grabbing out another piece from the bag. "Only one thing that leaves a lasting scar like that on me, Skid, and that assh*le knows what it is. Three nights back he delivered it in a pretty little package with Missie's name on it. And she, like the rest of us, stupidly had a ball."

"He's either more dangerous than I could have possibly imagined, or incredibly resourceful." Skid sounded worried about the situation more than he had before. More than when Michael had been some ravenous beast, cunning though he was. Something he could pick apart and comprehend. "Do you remember the night when he locked Fio in the freezer?" Could just be coincidence, said the logical side. Could be a scary truth, said another. "You remember what he left on the door? What it did to me?" His right hand's fingers tightened and loosened, one after another, in an unthinking reaction.

"Exactly what iron does to me if I hold it long enough." Salvador nodded. Yeah, he remembered, because he had been the one who had scrubbed Skid goo off that nail and took a glimpse into its past. "I'd say resourceful." Which is more polite than he could've said. He popped another piece of meat in his mouth.

It only took a moment for Skid to move on. "So he moved three nights ago. Was that the first time since the freezer that he'd surfaced?" A little bit of a detached fog came to his lone eye, while he shredded another piece of meat betwixt his teeth

"No." Three pieces was never enough, but Salvador paused, taking it casual and slow for a change. Crossing his arms to think and frown. "There was another night after that. I could sense him here, taste his scent in the air. I thought maybe she'd be safe in here with Rekah, so I sent her in to make some sandwiches. To do something so I could feel him out." His fingertips drummed a rhythm against his forearm. "There were a lot of people here to swim through, though. Wasn't easy to do. All I could tell was there was someone else in the kitchen here with them, someone who shouldn't have been." He frowned at himself for having failed. Still beating himself up over that. "So I came in ready to kill, and it was just some old man. But it wasn't just some old man. Not until I let him go and checked the alley did I know the old man I had -- right in my f*cking hands -- was a dead man." He bared his teeth at his own two hands, lifting them like everything was their fault.

"You and I both know that the--" Skid inserted something incredibly impolite in the Damned Tongue here "--could be sitting on the counter and smell like nothing more than a loaf of bread in every sense. You've learned better, now." His arms settled, and the pensive look in his eye left him again. Nothing in thought, eye on Sal. "So he's either capable of possession, or able to make puppets from corpses. Or, of course, both. The question shifts almost completely from how did he slip away, to how do we use this against him?"

Salvador lifted a hand to his forehead and rubbed a sore spot out of his brow. The headache he'd had over this for the past few weeks was annoying. "Yes, but I can See him. I've spent a lot of time in Fio's studio, after that one night. I went back, and then ... went back. I can look into the past of things." He does not know technical terms, like psychometry.

"That's a rather chancy burden to bear, Sal." Skid eyed him like he'd come into something uncertain, yet familiar. Unsettling in the least, but different from what he knew. He scratched self-consciously at the patch over his left eye.

Dropping his hand, Sal plucked another piece out of the bag. "I can See where he was, but not where he is. And the corpse I found was recent. Unmolested. I think what he does is copy the shape or something." He shook his head. "I don't know." Then he popped the meat in his mouth.

"The only certainty is his return to her." A twist of his lips into a frown, before he took to nibbling at the next piece. Skid never nibbled.

"Yeah," Salvador agreed, somewhat distantly. "There is that." Absently he scratched at another sore spot, lower down on his stomach, through the shirt. He broke the scab and hissed, not even really noticing that it left a little stain from the pressure. "I don't want to use her as bait, though, Skid. She doesn't want to be used as bait either. She's scared. All of her is."

"She can't be used as bait." He nearly spit the words out, as though the mere suggestion of it was insulting and appalling to him all at once. "Ever." After a moment, he sighed, and leveled his gaze again. "Ali could, perhaps. It would try to use him as leverage to get to her, maybe. Some kind of ambush could be arranged." Skid continued spewing ideas, while he made it about a third of the way through the meat chunklet.

"He's already painted a big *** target on his back thanks to that stupid wedding." Being grumpy and annoyed made him hungry. Salvador shoveled a bigger handful of Skid's special treats into his mouth and chewed.

"Which is what would make him such an appealing catch to the scum, no?" Two-thirds.

"Mm," he grunted agreeably, nodding. "Which is what I think was maybe their idea. I'm just pissed they didn't think to share it with any of us, if so." Sal was hard pressed to believe it had anything to do with twu wuv.

Since the bag was nearly empty, and Skid wasn't feeling particularly ravenous, he nudged it closer to Sal while he thought. "Perhaps they saw it as a joint-opportunity. Get married, and bring the business of the monstrosity to a head. If they have to sacrifice the time to get to know each other more deeply, I think they figured they could deal with that. Their feelings for each other are quite strong, at the least. Something to keep It from suspecting anything more than a lapse in logic driven by passion and lustful desires. Kills.... Somewhere around six birds with one stone. Good throw." He pulled the number out of his *** and everyone knew it. Well, Sal did. "Not to mention that by pissing everyone off, it makes it far more convincing." Skid added as an afterthought.

Even though it was a crapped out number, it was a pretty fair estimate. Salvador smirked while finishing off what was left in the bag, and kept a sharp grin while licking his fingers clean. But it soon faded while other thoughts flooded in. "Not a very good strategy if the general doesn't inform the rest of the army of the overall plan, though," he mused.

Skid couldn?t help but to interject. "When the plan lines up with something the general keeps close to home, they oftentimes make those little mistakes that aren't really little." Skid wore a sardonic smile, before the long, forked, flat, prehensile tongue slithered from his lips to clean his fingers.

"Thanks," Salvador added in reference to the shared meal. He brushed his hands together and pushed out of his lean. "Sin and I are going to infiltrate the Palais soon," he also thought to mention. "I have a suspicion that one of their priests is Michael in disguise."

The mask began to reweave as Skid spoke. "I wish I could accompany you both.? The sigh of lost opportunities to search It out punctuated him just right. "But I tend to get rather ill in those kinds of places." He took the bag, looked around, and threw it into the Stew before heading back. In elaboration, he said, "That thing loves the stuff. Don't tell anyone, though."

Salvador watched the Stew burble and hungrily lap up plastic goodness for a moment, grinning sharply. He had to admire a sentient, ravenous pile of goop.

Then back to business, as he finally noticed the minute stain on Salvador's shirt from earlier. "Is there nothing that can hasten the process, with those?"

Catching Skid's point of interest, he looked down at the stain and tsked just for the sake of it. "Tch. No. These'll have to heal the good old fashioned way. My armor won't even patch over it." He frowned at the annoyance and his fingers twitched from resisting scratching. "Thanks for the concern, but I'll be fine. Sin got to it before it got ... worse."

"I'd offer to try anyways, but I rather literally have to lick my wounds clean." Skid smirked, changing the subject and lightening the mood alike as he headed for the kitchen door. "Come on. Have a cup of my best tea and find out why I'm religious about the stuff."

"I'd probably enjoy you trying too much," he admitted with a hissing little chuckle. Eating. Venting about some of this crap. Y'know? He actually felt better. Good enough to even sit down for a cup of tea, which really wasn't Sal's thing, but he followed Skid back into the common room regardless.


____________________________________
(Adapted from live play with much thanks to Necromesh.)

Ali stared at the cell door and admitted to himself that he?d made some mistakes.

Michael was capering in the dark somewhere, biding his time. A meeting had been arranged between a priest, Sinjin and Salvador, Fio and himself; presumably it had to do with Michael?s murder of a legion of priests. Salvador told him that Michael used the sewers to travel. Michael could make himself look like anyone, smell like anyone. Fionna told him that after she?d made him into a vampire, she?d put Michael down into one of the tunnels under the E.C.C.?s Palais.

These things had been rattling around the interior of his skull when he?d walked into the inn and seen a man with a familiar face talking to Taneth. Memory surfaced through the mess in his head: this very man, speaking with Taneth at a charity auction; Gem beside him, whispering into his ear, ?His name is Fre Pietr. He is the one who is after Fio.?

He thought about that, as he went to the bar and poured himself a glassful of bourbon. This priest wanted to talk to Fio. This priest thought she knew who the killer was. This priest was based at the Palais. Salvador was playing a masturbatory game of chess with himself at a table alongside Pietr?s, the boy?s head bent so emphatic as a shout over the board. He had to be listening to everything the priest said.

Ali watched, and waited, and an idea bloomed through the chaos in his skull, borne of the daredevil within him. Push him, it whispered. It made sense: if the priest saw him with Fio at the meeting, if he hinted at further knowledge, they might take him in. Inside the Palais, he could part the Veil and step into the other world?investigate?look at those tunnels. Find Michael. End this. Sinjin still wasn?t speaking to him, but he knew he could trust the Spaniard to watch over Fio for him; their disagreements aside, Sinjin loved her, and he was cannier than Salvador when it came to seeing through Michael?s machinations.

His first mistake had been to assume that the priest was earnest and sincere in his desire to find the murderer of his brethren. He?d been wrong: the man had toyed with him through their entire conversation, sardonic and wry by turns. Making mock of him. Taunting him. He couldn?t think why; it would have to wait for later.

His second mistake had been his belief that it would take time and effort on his part to persuade the priest that he was valuable. After the priest had walked out of the inn, Salvador had touched Pietr?s glass, read it, and said, ?he?s a magic user.? He?d gone thundering off, intending to go home to tell Fio what he?d learned?all he could recall after that was a burst of light and pain scorching his scattered thoughts to ashes. They?d knocked his head in as soon as he?d stepped through the inn?s front door, so far as he could tell when he woke up.

His third mistake had been his assumption that he would be able to part the Veil and step through as soon as he had a moment free to himself in this place. Something in the stones of the Palais prevented it?he could feel the Veil stretching around his fingers like an impossibly fine spider?s web, but he could not split it open. Likewise, his attempts to use the disjointed bits of necromancy he?d learned from Antony?s books were failures.

So. A bed, a table, a chair. A large holy symbol on the wall, wrought in iron. Cut stone walls, floors, ceiling. Wine, bread, butter, cheese on a tray on the table, along with a fork and spoon. No knife. A massive iron-bound wooden door, with a big two-sided keyhole and a covered slot that could be used to look in or pass items through. The priests Pietr and Amisoz had come in, taunted him, left again.

They?d taken his guns, his knives, his spare clips. Even his favorite folding knife, curse them. No one had been by in the two hours since Pietr and Amisoz had instructed him to meditate on the errors of his ways and recant his sins. He had his glasses. He had a fork, a spoon, a tray of food. He ate?it was a part of his Bubasti nature that he could not turn aside from food and drink laid before him. He sat and considered his options, as the silver fork made his fingers throb like a bad sunburn.

He could wait for someone to open the door and rush them. He could hang from his claws above the door, and drop on or behind someone coming into the cell. He could Change and wait, then dart out into the hallway. His ideas required someone else to open the door, though. No guns to try to shoot out the lock; too much noise, anyway. No magic. It was a big lock, though, and he could see right through it?

He looked at the lock.

He looked at the soft silver metal of the fork in his hand.

?Thank you, Gem,? he breathed, and set to work. Five minutes later, he was out.

Five minutes after that, he was small and black, running soundlessly along the ill-lit dungeon halls, following a dank breeze and hints of old blood toward the stairs leading into the tunnels below.

"Impossible," he'd breathed out his denial in a hiss, when they'd found the cell empty. Amisoz, damn his eyes, had the gall to look amused. Amused!

"I locked the door myself." How did he get out? his frantic mind raced. But he had no answer. For the first time in days, the mad fever abated. He began to feel afraid.

The dogs picked up a scent, followed it down the corridor, down a long flight of stairs and through an iron gate. And then they stopped. Between them, questions and answers, and directions given. Fai's boy sent the other fiend off on his own. "Go then." He said, turning back to the priests. "I have a gift for our friends here."

He clasped Pietr's hand tightly in his, two middle fingers resting against his wrist. Something bit or cut, razor thin and agile as a serpent, and everything was pain and horror as their blood mingled, and with it, visions.

Pietr's eyes flew wide, and he jerked like he'd grabbed an electrical wire that wouldn't let him go. His teeth clacked together, in a stuttering rattle. For those who could hear it, his heart galloped, staggered, pounded like one of the enormous signal drums of the northern mountains.

"Lies," he managed to hiss out before he bit his tongue. He slumped where he stood, the veins popping at his temples, as a pain lanced through him sharper than anything he'd ever felt, searing behind his eyeballs. And then he crumpled where he'd stood, and the stumbling beat of his heart crashed and faded.

It was the last thing he ever said.

Found in a box full of photographs:


~*FH*~



My Klashie,

If you are in possession of this stone, then something has happened to me, either by my hand or his. I am sorry, sweetling, I never wanted to leave you like this. But things are as they are and sometimes we are forced into choices we would rather not make.

I am sure you can tell already that this is no ordinary opal. But to explain it, I must tell you a little story; one that I have kept secret for many years.

When I became pregnant with the boys, it was not by choice. Antony forced the pregnancy on me?for some reason it became imperative for him to have the twins. And they must be boys. He had the names picked out before I knew I was even pregnant. He didn't even bed me to conceive them?he simply willed it so.

Throughout the pregnancy, he was quite cold. There was some plan in his mind, but he would not tell me what it was. On the day he determined, he took me up in front of a room full of his people and induced the labor. But Klashie?there were not two babies?there were three. We had a daughter too. He never even let me hold her. He took her from me, opened a rift in the void, and cast our daughter? the child he didn't want?into the Abyss. And before he did that, he captured her soul and placed it inside the opal which you now possess.

Now that I am gone, she will be safe from him?he will not expect that any would still have the stone, nor realize what it is. Klash?I give to you my daughter with the hope that she might become yours, when you are ready. Perish would help you create a body for her to reside in. But she will need someone to love her. I cannot think of anyone I trust in this more than you.

If you feel you cannot do this, I understand. She will remain perfectly preserved in the case; she does not suffer, nor is she aware of her condition. I simply hoped to leave you with some part of me.

I love you, my sister. Never forget that.

~Fio~

He had seen it once before, from a turret in the city wall: House Helston.

The House was a sprawling place, a mansion of the old order. The four stories were solid and forbidding, and the wings loomed like the hulking shoulders of a giant. The gray stone was covered in moss and ivy, age and fear. The grounds ranged up into the hills overlooking WestEnd and the harbor. Tunnels under the structure ran down the hillside and met up with the Joint, a private run from business to home. There were outbuildings, stables, and a large family graveyard, surrounded by woods?old growth forest.

To part the Veil, step through and down into the Tempest, and from there back into the real?what she had experienced before as the long icy tunnel into death?required that he had seen the place. They fell into a cold dark infinity together, the two of them wrapped tightly around one another; and they stepped out into a startlingly bright morning, shaded by those monstrous old trees. Damp and fallen leaves conspired to muffle their footsteps. The dew outlining each leaf sparkled like a million jewels. Every breath had never been so fine, and his heart thundered loudly enough for both of them.

Daylight, she had told him, was a good thing. Once upon a time, she?d told him, there were dogs loosed on the grounds, vicious animals bred with hellhounds. Daylight was one small advantage: if the dogs still ranged, they would not be out. To have them serve as guards then seemed an odd thing, because the family typically slept during the day?or had. But the staff walked at all hours. And the vampiric brood that formed the Helston coven were long gone. So they had the crisp air and shockingly cheerful sunlight in which to walk the grounds.

?I don't think I've ever seen the place, this time of day,? Fio whispered. It was a beautiful place, but there was a sense that prickled the back of one?s neck and bade them keep their voices down. There were things other than dogs that roamed the grounds, once upon a time.

?I encourage new perspectives, bien-aim?e,? he whispered back, and: ?Anything?? He blinked once, the wedjat on his left eye blinking with him, and looked around again. His hand was still knotted in hers.

?I don't know. Let's keep to the trees until we get closer to the graveyard.? She was breathing hard?the fast panting of fear. She would never willingly have come back here for anything less that the object they desired today, had admitted as much before taking the step through the Veil with him.

He nodded, glanced down at her. A frown preceded his bending and whispering right into her ear, ?You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you.? And he brushed his lips over the shell-curve of it, before turning and limping toward the graveyard she'd pointed out to him earlier.

She didn?t loose his hand. After he took one step, she launched herself after him, beside him. ?I never knew who was buried here, really,? she sighed. ?The graves are so old,? ancient, some of them, by the weathering and lichen visible on them, ?but there are things in them, still.? She wasn't being deliberately vague. Dark shapes hovered within the bounds of the graveyard, less than spirits, more than ghosts.

?Let's not dig up anything we don't have to, then.? The wedjat, Horus' Eye painted over his own left eye in kohl, shed the light of truth on the shadows. It was a fight not to let them know that he could see them, but he suspected that recognition gave power to those sorts of creatures.

?She buried the dolls behind the crypt.? A nod was cast toward the ornately carved granite structure, They approached the building from the front. A black iron gate barred the entrance, but it was not locked. Carved above the lintel was some long-forgotten family motto, so eroded by time that the Latin?if it was Latin?was nearly unreadable. The building was large for its type. Whoever was buried in the ground around it, this?this?was meant for family.

He'd seen this place before, in more than one sense. It had been visible from the tower on the city wall. There had been a sketch of on one of the tables on the third floor of the Studio, once. The fingers of his free hand itch to trail over the heavy stone, even as he felt her leaning away from it.

?Promise we won't get shut in,? she whispered. Before he could answer, the creaking of a wheelbarrow and the crunch of boots on the far side of the cemetery drifted their way. A groundskeeper. Well. He?d meant to tell her that his curiosity could wait until they?d had the chance to find the necklace, meant to lead her past and on to the doll graveyard, meant to fist his fingers and ignore the desire to touch the stone. But the groundskeeper?s appearance narrowed their options to two: hide, or run.

He decided, and nudged the crypt gate open, praying it was well-oiled enough not to give them away. One step in, and he pulled her through on an exhaled commitment. ?I promise.? The gate gave the lie to his hope and squeaked a protest loud enough to wake any occupants of the building, but the half-ogre pushing the barrow was singing a vile song to himself and didn't seem to notice. Ali set the gate closed, and stepped into the crypt proper. They weren?t cornered; in a pinch, they could step through the Veil and be gone.

The inside of the crypt was cool, dim and vaguely spicy-smelling, like old cinnamon and rat poison, or a pungent furniture polish. There were two ?stories,? with niches for bodies below and above. Twenty-four spots, he counted. In the center of the crypt was a statue, a marble daemon, well over two meters and intricately carved. On either side stood two pedestals where bodies could be displayed. On the floor was a ritual bowl that looked like it had some sort of residue left inside of it, laid at the foot of one pedestal.

He was staring at the statue with utter fascination. The gleaming black marble was menacing, for all that it was merely stone. The wings were half-furled, the expression on the horrific visage was truly arrogant, cruel, dreadful. He?the statue was definitely male?was?doubly endowed. Lovely. ?Bien-aim?e, is this supposed...to be...?? He cut a look her way, hand lifted to gesture at the statue as his question shaped itself; at her expression he trailed off into silence, his hand floating uselessly in mid-air.

She was staring at the brazier and the bowl, clearly too busy trying to remember how to breathe to respond immediately to him. Her pale face was whiter still, arms stiff at her sides. She set her jaw and tore her eyes from it, made herself look up at his question. ?What??

?What?? he echoed her.

She gestured at the equipment on the floor with her head, without looking at it. Her hand rose, fell on the stone pedestal. ?I was here.? Stepping around it, she walked back toward the statue. ?It's supposed to be Lars.? She murmured softly, lest the gardener hear.

He dropped to a crouch beside the brazier and the bowl, ran a finger around the rim of the latter. Whatever coated it broke away in little black flecks as his finger passed over it. A residue of something sooty and foul clung to his skin. Tallow, char, blood, among other things. He rose, examined the sooty fingertip. Old, decades old magic. It left a vague smudge behind when he ran his hand down the top of the bier where she once lay, head cocked to catch the sound of the groundskeeper's cheerfully foul musical rampage. He heard nothing. The sound had disappeared with its creator into the woods.

?I love you,? he whispered to the stone. A sense of the flood of time between then and now swept over him, as he stared down at it. How strange, the alchemies of the universe, that they had lived through so much separate unhappiness to be brought together to now, this, this instant. He fought off a shiver.

?I love you,? she whispered from the other side of the room. She?d begun pacing, looking at all of the empty niches. There were cobwebs, dust and leaves that had blown in from outside to make the crypt their final resting place. There was a sense of loss and melancholy so distant that it barely whispered to the subconscious. But no bodies. No spirits. Not even the things that lingered and lurked outside.

Thinking to ask a question, he abandoned the bier in a susurrus of denim and French serge and went to her. It was only a matter of a few paces to reach her, to offer his hands as a bedrock against the cruel vagaries of memory. That he had to offer it was reason enough, he realized, not to ask the question after all. Not then. Maybe later. ?Shall we see if he?s departed?? At her silent assent he whispered, ?Come on, then.? And out they went, keeping the gate's screech to a sullen snarl, peering around the corner and checking the coast.

The coast appeared to be clear. Maybe the ogre wasn't a groundskeeper at all. Maybe he was a trespasser, or a visitor, or a mystery shopper. She didn't let go of his hand. There were things that slid along the periphery of his vision that weren't quite there when he looked straight at them. There were things whispering without words. He ignored them, twisted back to her. ?Where??

?In the back.? She led him around the crypt. Together they wended their way toward the doll graveyard. His boots were absolutely silent in the grass. The steadily rising sun was beginning to burn off the dew, but there was still plenty to soak the hem of his jeans. He looked back over his shoulder, scanned the area around them, returned his attention to her.

The doll graveyard was an unprepossessing stretch of lawn, the grass grown over any hint of the individual tiny graves. ?She used to mark the graves with the doll's heads on popsicle sticks.? The memory made her smile, unexpectedly.

?What a fascinating person she must be.?

?She was?is, I hope.? She glanced at him, as if unsure whether he was mocking her; but he was completely serious, no sarcasm whatever. She?d do well, he said with a wry glance, to recall that she was looking at the man who?d married Missie. ?She was a dryad,? she went on, after a moment. ?I don't know how Lars got hold of her. Utterly mad, losing her place. She married an honest-to-god pirate.

?I loved her. She was...honest. She didn't want things from me that I didn't want to give her.? Her voice softened. ?She was innocent, in a way. Anyway...I'm not sure...what do we do? There could be a hundred of them here. I don't know where to start digging.?

They looked around. The area itself was a patch about a meter and a half deep and ran the length of the crypt's back wall?ten meters, perhaps. He dropped to a crouch to get nearer the ground...though he didn't let go. There were no markers whatever. ?Beloved.? he whispered?still whispering, yes, the air was oppressive within the estate walls, even in broad daylight, and who knew who might be listening? Or, just as important, what might be listening? ?How deep are they??

She crouched with him. ?No more than a foot, surely. Eighteen inches at the most. She used a garden handtrowel.?

He tented his fingers, pressed them lightly into the soil to get a feel for it. If it was too mineral-rich, would this not work? Had he any idea? ?Well.? He said finally, softly, after a glance down at his now-dirty fingertips. ?The only way out is through.?

After a deep breath he deliberately slid his eyes out of focus in the way that he did when he sought a soul to search. There was no body to confront, no layers of flesh to metaphorically peel back, nothing to stop him but the earth's bones. It threw him off, made his search briefly uncertain. Then the necromantic ability met the wedjat, the spell he was taught to see through the Veil and into death. Two hundred plastic eyes opened and blinked at him. One hundred tiny mouths opened in a single silent scream. He stiffened, throttled a gasp before it could do more than rattle in his throat. His grip on her hand was abruptly more pain than comfort, he knew, but he couldn?t help himself. A glance at her face showed it washed in a cold green fire, the kind of eyeshine reflected from his eyes that he normally only displayed in near darkness. He couldn?t imagine what his own face looked like.

?What?? she hissed, rocking back on her heels.

?They're all alive.? It was suddenly hard to breathe. He shut his eyes, but he could see them against his closed lids, outlined in that phantasmagorical fire. ?All of them, buried alive.?

She breathed out a slow sigh into the dark on the other side of his lids. ?Oh.?

He resisted the urge to rub his eyes?smearing the wedjat would break the spell?and slowly opened them again, bracing himself against the shock of seeing two hundred?people?buried alive. Forever and ever, world without end. They?re not people, he told himself. They?re golems. It didn?t help.

?We should dig them up.? She said finally. ?Or unspell them.?

A migraine threatened, as he bent the sight to his will and went looking for one specific soul. ?I don't know how to break that spell. Would Tara??

?She should.? After a moment's thought. ?Tara animated Arthur.?

He panned across the space she'd indicated in slow strokes of his eerily glowing eyes, and discovered that there was a pattern to the dolls' placement. Straight lines bent to a radiating circle, like ripples in a lake. And towards that center, they grew denser, like circled wagons, or the tight bud of a flower. He moved slowly, slowly toward the center. Afraid to stand, to do anything that might lose him the sense of what he was looking at, he moved in an awkward half-crouch that he nevertheless managed to make graceful. Might have been the military training. Might have been the yoga. Might just have been Ali.

The dolls spiraled in on themselves at the center. He arced toward it, vividly reluctant to step on any of those upturned, wordlessly wailing faces. ?If there's anything, it's here.? Below his palm, the damp grass yielded the heart of the spiral. ?I can dig bare-handed, or we can come back.?

?If we bring Tara, it will have to be night, and the dogs should be out. We could come with shovels and bring them to her.? In her voice was the strain of a fierce attempt to be reasonable, logical. ?Do you think she?s there??

?I don't know.? He breathed out a sigh. ?All the?graves?pinwheel inward to this point. But I can't see anything. It could be the wedjat interfering. I've never seen...never seen golems before. Not like this.? His lambent gaze lifted, fixed on her. ?It could be the necklace, in the middle.?

?We have to dig.? The urgency in her voice tore at him. She couldn?t wait. ?Please.?

He nodded once, curtly, pulled his fingers from hers and did exactly that. It was slow going: he tried to disturb the grass as little as possible, so that it could be laid back in enough of a piece to fool the unsuspecting eye. This entailed going at it from one side, pulling the sod up and laying it over before digging in earnest. It was also dirty.

When the little faces of the dolls at the center hit daylight, they started coughing on the dirt, then the whining and complaining began. Poor dollies, heads separated from their bodies. Layers of them. Beside him Fio hesitated, and then she was in there with him, on her hands and knees, digging away. It told him how desperate she really was?Fio never got her hands dirty. Never. And then, there was a glint of something metallic beneath. She drew back, looking over at him with a mixture of hope and despair. ?I can't?will you? Please??

?All right.? He was careful, now that he had gotten down to the heart of it. ?Will you?will you do something with them? Get them to be quiet before they call the dogs down on us?? He brushed the dirt away with exacting, agonizing slowness; it would hardly do to get so far and destroy the necklace for impatience.

She scooped the doll heads up and hissed at them, ?Shut up! Shut up and I'll buy you all shoes!?

He eased it out of the ground at last, and looked at it. And bit down hard on his lower lip to stop a bout of near-hysterical laughter at what he was holding. ?It's...it's a rubber plug on the end of a chain. You didn't tell me it looked like this, bien-aim?e.?

Her disappointment was a tangible thing, when she saw what he had unearthed. ?It doesn't. That's not it.? She batted some of the heads back into the hole in an excess of frustration. ?That's a bath stopper.?

?The Holy Grail of bath stoppers.? He lifted it a little higher, admired the glow from a different angle. He was grinning. He couldn?t help it. A moment later, he caught sight of her face and the grin faded. ?You can?t see it? Hold out your hands.?

Around them, the dolls were shrieking again and some of the shadow-wraiths in the graveyard were interested and restless. She stared at him as if he were mad, and held her hands out. He very carefully piled the stopper and its length of chain into her hands, and cradled them with his own. He had no idea how any of this magic worked?perhaps touch would transfer the sight. ?Can you see it now??

A glance limned in cold fire was sent over his shoulder toward the wraiths behind him. Before him she stared, and wanted to see what he did. She clearly wanted to, so badly; and when he looked back at her, it was just as clear that she did not.

?It's shining,? he told her. ?You are holding a little sun in your hands, Fio.?

?She's in there?? Her whisper skirted the edges of belief.

?It looks like I would imagine a baby's would look,? he whispered back. ?The lines are blurred, and they...they don't write words.? Someday he was going to adopt, or invent, or discover a vocabulary to describe what he sees. Someday. ?Hang onto it. I'm going to fill in the hole and gather up these dolls.?

Her fingers curled around it, her dirt caked nails and grubby fingers, and she crawled backwards on her knees until she was out of his way. When he was finished fishing the shrieking heads out of the hole and filling it in, he looked her way again. She had the plug cradled in both hands protectively. She was staring over her shoulder like one of those grave carvings, the French mourning women, as the shifting shadows hovered nearer.

To his still-burning vision, the mere act of the shadows? collective existence produced a sound like sleet on a windowpane, or sizzling bacon. How it was that he was seeing the sound, and not hearing it, was utterly beyond him. Was a thought for another time. He murmured to her, ?Let's get back into the trees and go. Double-time it.?

She nodded, and somehow she managed to get to her feet without loosing her two-fisted hold on the treasure in her cupped palms. Into the trees she went. He followed with a deliberately short stride, to keep himself from overtaking her. Behind them a face appeared in an upstairs window. It watched for a moment, then disappeared. So focused was he on their immediate surroundings, and she on the chain in her hands, that they missed their watcher completely.

They plunged into the cooler air of the trees together. The quiet of the verge enveloped them; it was eerily silent?no birdsong, no insects. The leaves themselves seemed mute, avoiding so much as a rustle. Even the dolls seemed shocked into silence. It was a marvelous, glorious thing. Their tinny little voices were rapidly draining away the sense of horror he'd experienced earlier, sucking up all his pity.

?Ready?? he asked, drawing to a halt.

?No,? she said with a breathless and scattered little laugh, but she stepped closer, relinquishing one hand over to him. ?Bath,? she demanded. ?When we get home, I want a bath.?

He squeezed her dirty hand with his own dirty hand, and ripped open a hole into the everafter. In the next instant, he pulled her through. The hole closed, and the trees were left to their silence.

Continued from Good Morning, Ali's House! (18+)

It was a dismal end to a dismal day. The horses stamped and steamed in the clearing at the edge of the trees. They'd unhitched them from the wagon, and hobbled them to graze. A misty rain gathered on the branches and what leaves still hung, falling with a soft pat-pat-pat on the wet leaf-mould and mud.

A little way from the wagon, Ernesto was trying to get a fire going, and cursing over the tinder like a monk murmbling matins. Everything was too wet, but they?d learned long ago to carry a couple of bundles of tinder and wood with them, for nights like this. The problem was, there had been too many nights like this lately. Half of what he was using was culled from the tree line skirting the Glen. Julio kept vigil while Ernesto worked. He struck a match against the wagon step, cupping a hand around a home-rolled cigarette, his shirt collar turned up to the rain.

?Don't suppose that note said anything about what time they were supposed to be here with that big offer?" 'Nesto glanced up at Julio with a scowl.

?You read it, too, ya git,? Julio countered easily. ?Just ?three days after All Hallows, in the Glen after dusk.??

Ernesto grunted. ?Well, it?s after dusk.?

?So it is,? the woman?s voice drifted toward them. Julio sharpened. A figure moved through the rain toward the wagon, from the East. The gray of the day muted the colors, weight of the rain dragging at the skirt and painting the bodice to the woman's skin as she walked barefoot towards their camp. Her dark lips were smiling, like someone had just told her a fine secret. It made the hair on the back of Julio?s neck rise in response.

Effing leech, was his first thought. Julio tipped his chin up to 'Nesto in a sort of silent warning and cut his eyes back to the woman. A wreath of gray smoke warmed the air around him and blended in with the gray-black of near-twilight, masking his expression. Swinging a leg around, he stood and turned toward her approach.

Even in the thin light afforded by the lantern and Ernesto?s efforts at a fire, her jade eyes were arresting. They skipped between the men as she came closer and closer. Dark hair dangled in wet rivulets around her face and shoulders as she stepped beneath the tree which sheltered men and wagon.

?Good eve,? she murmured. Her hand lifted to pluck the lit cigarette from Julio and bring it to her lips for a deep inhale. Her eyes laughed at him.

Ernesto left the smoldering campfire to its own devices and ambled toward the wagon. Both of Julio's brows rose, but a smirk settled itself comfortably across his lips like an old friend. She was bold; he could appreciate that, just as he could appreciate the way her wet clothing mimicked her body?s curves. He flexed his fingers restlessly.

?Evening,? he was the first to speak.

Her exhale sent more of the silver smoke to wreath his head. ?Which one are you??

He chuffed a silent laugh and shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. ?'m Julio. The boy over there is 'Nesto.? His eyes traveled from her mouth down. ?What's your name, pretty lady??

Those jade eyes moved over 'Nesto just as Julio's were moving over her. ?Claire,? she answered in a throaty purr.

As if she?d bid him closer, Ernesto shifted slowly toward the woman until the three of them formed an intimate circle. He rolled his lips and stared a particular affection over her wet blouse.

?You th' one who sent that messenger??Julio asked, edging half a step closer to the center.

Another long drag, and she flicked the remains of the handrolled smoke to the rain. The eyes upon her did not seem to make her wary in the least. If anything, she slowed her movements, showing off for them both. ?Yes, the message was mine. I am in the position to offer you fellows a hefty reward.?

Julio was nothing if not businesslike when it came to coin. His eyes gave her curves a final caress before drifting back up to her face. ?Is that so??

?Mmm,? she agreed. ?That is, if you two have the?fortitude to take on the challenge.?

?She doesn't look like she's got two coppers,? Ernesto murmured softly.

She swiveled with a roll of her hip to more fully face Ernesto, leaning slightly back toward Julio in the process. Her shoulders were white marble beneath the sinuous black of her hair. He couldn?t see her brow arch as she faced off with Ernesto. But he could hear the crack in his ?brother?s? voice.

?Go on,? Ernesto grumbled, his feet shifting nervously.

Julio jumped in before ?Nesto could get himself into it any deeper, rumbling in her ear. ?Sweetheart, we have the stones to do whatever you need done; but why us??

?Word upon the streets is that the pair of you were run off like scared little rats by a single man,? She cocked a look back over her shoulder at Julio.

?Aw, hell. You should know better'n to listen to street gossip, ladybug,? he cracked a charming smile, and leaned in close enough he could breath her scent from the crook of her neck. Patchouli and rain rode in heady waves upon her skin. ?We gave as good as we got with that'un.?

?Then you wouldn't balk at the opportunity to give him grief again??

Both men looked extremely interested in that idea, actually.

?Go on,? Julio grinned, smelling blood in the water.

I smelled him before he?d even come in. The stench was horrific; it bled through the minuscule gaps between the front door and its frame as his key ring clattered against it. It washed through the room in a great slobbering wave as he pushed the door open and stepped in. How do I describe it, so at odds with my sense-memories of my husband? It was thick and black and foul and ichorous. He smelled like someone crushed a million ants and rubbed him in their formic-acidified bodies, then tossed him into a sewer full of bilge-water.

And there was blood. Plenty of blood. His. Others. It was all over him, that stink: head to toe.

It was probably foolish of me to announce my presence in the face of that wave by stepping out of the shrine and into the hallway as he came clattering in, but to be fair, the stench hadn?t really registered tangibly yet. For a nanosecond, I didn?t recognize him. He looked exhausted ? eyes ringed with weariness and shock, his hair plastered with globs of unidentifiable goo. He was standing there, looking our front room over as if he'd never seen it before.

?Ali?? That fight-or-flight instinct ignited in my belly as I inched closer. But the way he pushed his hair out of his face with the back of one hand when he turned to look at me convinced me it was him.

In his other hand, he was holding something small wrapped in burlap away from his body, and I could see then that his shirt had been ripped to hell and back: there was a gash in the fabric along his ribs on the left side, and the back of it hung in tatters that fluttered incongruously when he moved. I saw some bruises, through the gaps, but no open wounds.

?Hello, Fio,? he was looking at the couch when he spoke. ?I'm home. You'll never guess who dropped by the office.?

My fingers went cold and numb: Michael. ?No, no, no,? I wanted to shout. I reached for him, despite the gore. I couldn't help myself. He very deliberately sidestepped out of the way and offered me the bundle instead.

?Don't touch me. I'm covered in bug goo.?

?But --?

?I?m fine,? he must have seen something in my too-white face that alarmed him out of his own shock. My imagination was already spinning off every kind of possible scenario for what happened. ?Really, I swear it.?

?I?ll believe you when I can touch you,? I said, when he pushed the burlap bundle into my hands. ?Let me get the shower going.?

I was halfway down the hall when it hit me and I stopped mid-stride. ?Bug goo??

?Yes, and let me tell you, watching Lucien Mallorek stab a giant bug in the head past the time even the village idiot could tell it was dead was terrific fun. I need you to smell that piece of fabric and tell me if you recognize the scent. Go to the other side of the house if you have to. I know I stink.?

?We can do that when I'm sure you're okay. What were you and Lucien doing stabbing ... giant bugs??

?It?s a long story.?

?I?m not going anywhere.? I dropped the burlap on the floor inside our bedroom door, and continued straight into the bath, flipping on lights. I got the shower going, and pulled a stack of towels out of the closet, setting them on the vanity. Giant bugs. Long story. Right. ?Let me go get a trash bag for your clothes. I don't think they're salvageable.?

It took us a while to peel the remains of his clothing off. Some of it was immediately discarded: strips of gore-drenched fabric. His pants. His boots. Some things, like his holstered guns, his wallet, the contents of his pockets, were set on the counter. Maybe they could be salvaged, although the leather items were probably a loss, stained as they were with ichor. The belt ? it was new ? drew a resigned grimace from him as he dropped it into the bag with a heavy thunk.

While he did this, I took inventory of each newly exposed bit of him. His torso was a work of art. The hole from the stab wound on his ribcage was closed, but obviously new. That tellingly shiny new strip of reddened skin? New. The bruises along his back, his ribcage, his right arm? All new. The whole of it was painted with more of the black insect blood. Very pretty. I clenched my lips tight and reminded myself again and again that he was alive. That was the important thing.

?So,? I managed to get out in what I hoped was a conversational tone. ?Lucien came to the office, and said, 'Hey Ali, let's go kill some giant bugs???

?I was down in the sewers. Mapping them, looking for that shipping container you told me about. And I came across Lucien and Ewan.?

?Of course you did. Makes perfect sense for them to be down there.? He?d dropped a religious medal of some sort on the counter when he?d cleaned out his pockets. I frowned at it, so he wouldn?t think I was frowning at him.

?Ewan was the person Lucien had engaged to hunt Michael in the sewers. He had some people doing the searching for him, and one of them had gone missing.?

?So what happened??

His wedding ring winked at me as he scratched his belly and limped toward the shower. How had he managed to keep that clean, when everything else was coated with gore? I shook my head to clear it, and tied up the bag.

?We met up. Ewan was looking for someone named Sunny.? He hobbled into the shower, continuing after a pause to let the needle-sting of the spray rinse his face. ?That gang we fought once, do you remember??

?Yes. The ones with the church symbols??

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead. ?Right. They had her. They'd killed her and were bleeding her out when we found them all.?

That got my attention on a different level than he had it before. ?Why would they be doing that, I wonder?? It made no sense. I leaned a shoulder against the tiled edge of the wall dividing the shower from the rest of the room and watched him, but my mind was gnawing on this new puzzle.

?I don't know. They were taking it to Michael.?

Even more bewildering. He could feed anytime he wanted. ?He's killing all of these people. Why would he need those boys to bring him blood??

?I don?t know. You need to smell that fabric, Fionna.?

The rustle of plastic momentarily derailed my train of thought; Siva was poking cautiously at the trash bag with a murderous expression. Any moment now, and she?d be shredding the thing open. ?Fine. But let me take that stuff out to the trash, first, before we have a mess. Siva?s after it.?

He nodded, his face full of water again, one hand braced flat against the wall to stop himself from falling over. Rather than wait, I gathered the bag up and dodged the cat on my way down the hall. I went out the front, and straight to the big dumpster in the alley next to our building.

You know the feeling? The one that made my granmere exclaim, ?Someone just walked over my grave!? when the shiver caught her? It starts with a prickling along the base of your scalp before it turns into a full shudder, and I had that prickly feeling before I turned. I hadn?t seen him there, when I came down. The old man next door was standing on his porch, staring at me with the strangest expression. It was freezing, the wind flapping the hem of his robe vigorously, but the cold didn?t seem to touch him. He just stood there on the porch, staring and staring.

?Hi!? I shivered out on a puff of white. ?You startled me. Everything okay??

He didn?t answer.

?Do you need help with something?? I asked, before that prickle turned into a chatter of my teeth. I glanced upstairs toward our apartment, and called to Ali, though I knew he couldn?t possibly hear me. ?Ali? Come here, a minute??

When I turned back, the old man was gone, and his door was closing. Weird.

The heebee-jeebies chased me all the way back upstairs.

?I didn?t see it happen,? he said, and caught my hip with one hand, sliding the other down my ribs the way one might gentle a horse. I was close to hyperventilating. ?But the two rushed me, and I let them go thinking they'd make it out alive. Then the bugs came, and we heard one of the boys scream. We followed the sound down to the tunnel...?

My breathing finally made itself apparent over the hiss and shush of the water hitting us; he let me go long enough to wipe it out of his eyes, then pulled me down to sit on his lap, my back against his chest, and wound his arms around me. Solid and safe, was the message. I tried to take it to heart.

?And then you killed giant bugs??

?That was later. We tracked the sound down to this ... he's built a shrine. That's the only way I know to describe it. There's a little hallway leading into it that's got skulls lined up on the sides of it.? As he said this, his arms tightened another notch, affirming my essential place in the world: right here, right now. As I said before, he knows me well, my shadowcat.

?A shrine. In the sewers.? It wasn?t real until I said it.

?Inside the room, there were things he'd stolen from the Eye. From you. Crates full of clothes, and chains on the walls that were spelled, somehow. Two of the crates were made up to look like beds and one of them had that piece of cloth I brought you in it. Ewan found a Helston House ring in a niche in the wall.?

I would have fallen out of his lap, just then, if he hadn?t been holding me. ?It can?t be my ring. Kitty has it.?

?It matched the scent on the cloth,? he was very gentle, when he said that. ?Bien-aim?e, Lucien has it right now. He recognized it, I think. There?s an inscription inside it.?

?What does it say?? Lucien has it. Lucien wanted to kill a boy in cold blood tonight. Lucien is losing his bloody mind.

He whispered, ?Toujours, ma soeur,? and I went boneless.

?You know.? It wasn't a question. He could feel the recognition flash over my skin like electricity.

?Yes,? I couldn?t breathe. ?There?s two of them.?

?Which two?? His hands, crossed over me, slid up and down my arms to warm me.

?Starr ? and ? Celeste Llynx. No. Helston.? I corrected myself. I told him the story, while he shut the water off and toweled us both dry, of how I came to sire them, how they joined the House after I left Antony. He was silent until I finally stopped.

?They?re his sisters, then, so to speak,? he said, tucking a towel around his waist.

?Yes.? The stolen jug of blood suddenly made sense. His holsters, wallet and other salvages from the ruins of his clothing still stank. The ring, the blood, the stench. It all made me think about that wad of burlap again. ?I?ll be right back.?

I left it on the floor in the bedroom and it was still there when I went looking for it. He hadn?t told me there were things wrapped in it, though. When I bent to pick it up, they spilled across the floor like a scattering of dice.

I found myself staring down at a picture of myself that I didn't remember. I was ... was I naked? Who were all of the people blurred around me? Before I could open my mouth, Ali?s hand reached across my field of vision and scooped it up. I couldn?t find the words to form the question I wanted to ask, somehow. I didn?t need to.

?He stole photographs of you. I presume they're from the boxes of pictures I found in the Eye.? His voice was very quiet and measured. A thumb passed over my cheek; then he gathered up the other pictures, straightened, and dropped a kiss where his thumb last rested. ?We found your diary, and a comb that I assume is yours.?

Every time he bent to pick something up, I felt a shock of recognition like cold water dashed across my heart. The photos. A little box I carved that was to be a gift for Flea. The comb. Personal things. Intimate things.

?A couple of other things,? he said, making sure that box stayed closed as he set it atop our dresser.

?Like what?? I couldn?t seem to make myself move.

The struggle played itself out in his eyes, in the cast of his mouth. He wouldn?t lie to me, but I could tell he wished that he could. ?Locks of your hair,? he answered reluctantly, leaving my stolen possessions long enough to find a pair of drawstring pants in a drawer and put them on.

?My hair,? I repeated, as if it would make more sense a second time. That tingling buzzed in my extremities again. ?How could he cut my hair without me knowing it??

Ali didn?t answer. He gave me the few seconds it took for it to click. ?Oh.?

?Come here, bien-aim?e.? He?d found one of his long-sleeved thermal shirts, the soft, waffle-knit type, and held his arms out for me. In my head, the things Michael had stolen all spun around and around, caught in my personal, peculiar, gravity. My hair. My child?s ring. The photos. The comb. The box. They wanted to tell me something, but I couldn?t quite make out the words. I tried to listen, and he dressed me in the shirt he?d worn for yoga that morning. I wanted to drift after them, and puzzle them out, but he wrapped me in his scent, anchoring me there, in our room, with him. Clever, clever man.

The burlap was on the bed next to him, I saw. He pulled me into his lap and cradled me against his chest before he handed me the scrap. I let him, and brought it up to my nose to inhale, breathing it in, again and again. The mingled scents of damp and death and my childe assailed me. I kept my eyes closed and whuffled into the cloth. ?Celeste. I think. It's been so long.?

He nodded, and carefully worked the fabric out of my fingers, setting it aside. ?Get into bed; I'll comb out your hair and braid it for you.?