"Now, is that so," Malim sneers and goes back to staring at the fiery glow where the sea meets the night sky. "Well, then maybe someone needs to be tellin' that to the Dragon, 'cause he seems to have gotten the wrong impression altogether."

"I didn't do that," Niki says very quietly, and she leans against the aftermast, because she's pretty sure her legs have gone too weak to hold her up. "Scarborough, please tell me I didn't do that."

Malim raises one beetling eyebrow and looks down at Scarborough. "It's sure a strange sort of savior you got yourself here, Mr. Pentecost. Me, I 'spected someone with a little more steel in her gut."

"How about you just stick a G.o.dd.a.m.n sock in it," Scarborough growls at Malim and stumbles slowly to his feet.

"You didn't do it, Vietnam, but I'm afraid you're the reason it's been done."

289.

"They're all dead?"

"Yeah," Scarborough says. "Well, most of them." Then the ship rolls to port, and he almost loses his balance and sits down quickly on a small barrel marked OIL: DO NOT DRINK. He covers his face with both hands and rubs at his temples. "Jesus, I f.u.c.king hate boats," he moans.

"Because of me. All those people, all of them are dead because of me."

"By Dagon's left t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e," Malim grunts, grinning a broad grin to show off a mouthful of teeth the color of wal-nut sh.e.l.ls, and he puts an arm around Niki. "This is rich as sow's milk churned to b.u.t.ter, it is. I wouldn't 'ave missed this for the world. What in blue blazes did you think, missy? That maybe that old serpent was just gonna roll over, pretty as you please, and show you where to stick your shiv?"

"Leave her alone," Scarborough says and glares at Malim. The fat man in the red vest frowns and takes his arm from around Niki's shoulders.

"What about Spyder?" Niki asks. "Is she . . . is she dead, too?"

"The Weaver's been in worse spots than this," Scarborough says, then hides his face in his hands again. "I expect we haven't seen the last of her."

"And more's the bleedin' pity, if you asks me," Malim grumbles, "which, o'course, you 'aven't," and then he waddles away, leaving them alone on the barque's narrow p.o.o.p deck. The sails rustle and flap loudly above them like the leathery wings of monsters, and the wind whistles through the rigging.

"I'm sorry," Scarborough says. "But it ain't some Disney movie, this mess you've gotten yourself into. It's a war, a real war, or at least it's the beginnings of a war, and it's going to be just as ugly as any war back home."

Niki rubs at her eyes, hoping that Scarborough hasn't noticed the tears, and she takes a deep breath of the warm, salty air. Maybe she catches a hint of smoke on the breeze, but she can't be sure.

290.

"G.o.d, I f.u.c.king hate boats," Scarborough moans again; he gags, and a thick stream of spittle drips from his lips, but he doesn't vomit.

"Do you know that I'm insane," Niki says to him. "Psych wards, happy pills, the whole bit. Did Spyder even bother to tell any of you about that?"

"No," Scarborough says, "but it kinda f.u.c.king figures,"

and then he gags again.

"So, just where the h.e.l.l is Captain Kidd smuggling us to?" Niki asks, and she takes one last, long look at the bright spot marking the flaming ruins of Padnee, before she turns her back on the western horizon. Maybe turning her back on Spyder, too, Spyder's deceitfully white ghost that's dragged her here, to this place, so that more people will die because of her. Spyder who couldn't be bothered to tell her what's going on or why or what the f.u.c.k she's supposed to do about any of it.

"Auber," Scarborough says. "He's taking us to Auber and the ghouls," and then he starts throwing up again.

"Right," Niki says, wondering what the ghouls are and what they'll do with her, and then she goes to Scarborough and holds his head until he stops vomiting.

Daria Parker is sitting alone in a mostly empty smoker's lounge in the Birmingham International Airport, impatiently waiting for Alex to finish taking a p.i.s.s.

The late morning sun shines too brightly through the curved Plexiglas wall that affords her a view of the runway, the big jets coming and going, taxiing or waiting to take on pa.s.sengers via retractable, telescopic corridors, or just sitting there, idling on the tarmac. Even through her sungla.s.ses, the day's too bright, and she turns away, facing the entrance to the lounge instead of the runway. She fishes another Marlboro from the pack in her leather jacket, and if Alex wants to give her s.h.i.t for smoking so much he can go right on the h.e.l.l ahead and do it. She's so very far past caring now, the last thirty-five or forty hours there to break apart whatever discretion she might have 291.

had left in her, whatever sense of self-preservation; all the racing time and pain and insanity since she sat in an Atlanta hotel room Monday night, checking her voice mail.

The man who left his cryptic, threatful message and then her last, desperate conversation with Niki, the airplane and her heart attack-a f.u.c.king heart attack and she's only thirty-four years old-the dream of Niki and the white bird, the thing on a dark Colorado highway that tried to get her killed, the rusted ball bearing hidden in a case of Kansas fossils- Dot to dot to dot to dot.

And now she's right here, here again, back in this wasteland, h.e.l.lhole of a city where it all began ten years before, when she was only a barista in a Morris Avenue coffeehouse, when she was only a ba.s.s player and singer for a dead-end punk band, when Niki was just a lost girl pa.s.sing through town, unlucky enough to break down before she reached the other side, unlucky enough to meet her, and Spyder Baxter.

Daria lights her cigarette and takes a deep drag, wondering how many of these stand between her and the next heart attack. But the smoke feels good, the nicotine seeping rapidly into her bloodstream, so maybe it won't be the cigarettes that get her. Maybe it'll be the alcohol, or the pills, or the news that the label's finally dumping her because she's just too big a flake, too big a risk. Maybe it'll be Niki's funeral, if she lives that long.

Daria exhales, watching the smoke and the sun shining through it, the sun getting past her silhouette and cutting shafts in the gray haze from her nostrils. And she thinks how strange it is that her head feels clearer than it's felt in days, more days or weeks than she can count. Alex made her sleep on the plane from Denver, and there were no dreams to wake her or undo whatever good the sleep may have done. She only woke when the plane touched down in Birmingham, the machine-beast roar of deceleration, the furious b.u.mp and rubber squeal when the 747's wheels touched asphalt, and "We're here," he said. "We're here."

292.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Are you Daria Parker?" a woman asks, and Daria looks up, expecting a fan wanting an auto-graph and a handshake and conversation, and already she's trying to think of anything polite to say, anything to excuse her appearance.

There's a young black woman standing at the entrance to the lounge, and Daria guesses that she must be an em-ployee from the food court because she's wearing a Chick-fil-A smock.

"Yeah," Daria says, and tries to smile for the girl. "That's me."

"Well, you got a call on one of the pay phones over there," the woman says, and points back at a bank of phones mounted along the wall outside and opposite the lounge.

"Thank you," Daria replies uncertainly, and the woman shrugs and walks away.

And at first there's only relief and surprise, that the girl didn't recognize her, and she doesn't have to play Daria Parker, Rock Star, at 10:30 A.M. in the G.o.dd.a.m.n Birmingham airport. But then the questions: Who the h.e.l.l would be calling her on the pay phone? Who the h.e.l.l knows she's here except Alex? And they've both turned off their cells.

But maybe Jarod Parris has managed to track her down, maybe he put two and eight together and got Birmingham, or maybe it's someone from Sony, or maybe it's just all a big f.u.c.king mistake, and the phone call isn't even for her.

Daria takes another long drag off her Marlboro and squints at the phones, at the one with its handset dangling off the hook, wondering how long she'd have to sit here before the caller hangs up, and wondering if he or she would bother to try again. She touches the ball bearing through the fabric of her satiny jacket lining, the strangely rea.s.suring weight and solidity of it still there, like all the things the old man at the gas station said to her the night before, words for insurance she doesn't yet understand. Words that might add up to something more than everything she's lost.

293.

She said the Hierophant would need it again one day.

And Niki is the Hierophant, Daria thinks and almost laughs out loud.

She stubs out the half-smoked Marlboro in an ashtray filled with cigarette b.u.t.ts and sand and leaves the smoky sanctuary of the lounge, stepping into cleaner, less-welcoming air. She crosses the corridor and stands in front of the pay phones.

If Alex would come out now, she thinks and looks over her shoulder at the men's room a few feet farther down the corridor. Right now, and then he could talk to whoever it is, or he could just hang up on them.

And then she reaches down and picks up the black handset, because she knows no one's going to do it for her, not Alex Singer or anyone else. "h.e.l.lo," she says, and at first Daria thinks that maybe they've hung up already, whoever it is, whoever it was, because n.o.body answers her.

But there's no dial tone, just a slightly staticky quiet, so she says h.e.l.lo again.

And then a female voice, a voice that makes her think of the time in Boulder that Niki caught strep throat and had a h.e.l.l of a time getting over it. A voice that weak and scratchy, that strained. A voice that hurts just to hear.

"Ms. Parker," the woman says. "You took your time. You act like you have all the time in the world."

"Who is this?" Daria demands and glances anxiously at the restroom again. What the f.u.c.k are you doing in there, Alex? You could have drained f.u.c.king Lake Michigan by now.

"My name is Archer," the woman says. "That's all you need to know. I'm waiting for you at the house on Cullom Street, and Niki's here."

"Niki . . ." Daria whispers, and suddenly her heart's beating too fast, too hard, hammering away at her chest like something that wants out. Her head is filled with the murmur of voices and the oily stench of jet fuel underlying everything, the frying, roasting smells from the food court, and some part of her mind that isn't busy trying to make 294 sense of what the woman on the phone's just said thinks that maybe she's about to faint.

Or maybe this is the next heart attack.

The next one and the last one.

"Niki," she says again, "Nicolan Ky," and "Yes," the woman a.s.sures her.

"Niki's dead, " Daria says, and she sits down on the carpeted floor, sits down before her legs give out and she falls.

"I don't know who the f.u.c.k you are, or what you think you're doing-"

"You have the philtre," the woman says. "I have Niki.

Bring me the talisman the old man gave you, and we'll call it even."

Daria shuts her eyes tightly and leans back against the wall. Nausea and panic and the pain in her chest, the terrible, labored ache in the woman's voice for counterbalance, and a cold sweat breaks out on Daria's face and arms.

"Don't do this to me," she whispers into the mouthpiece.

"Please, don't do this to me."

"Don't you f.u.c.k around with me," the woman says.

"There's still a chance that you can save her, if you do exactly as I say. All I want is the talisman. It's nothing that concerns you, anyway."

"No," Daria says. "No, it isn't, is it? Let me talk to Niki.

If she's really there, please, just for a second."

"Don't you trust me?" the woman named Archer asks.

"You know the way, Ms. Parker. You've been here before.

If I were you, I wouldn't waste any more time." And then she hangs up, and there's only the shrill drone of the dial tone in Daria's ear.

"Dar, what the h.e.l.l's going on?" Alex asks, and she opens her eyes, looks up and he's standing there above her.

She can smell marijuana smoke coming off him, spicy and skunky and familiar, and Well, that answers one question, she thinks. And then she closes her eyes again and waits for the pain in her chest to stop.

295.

Marvin opens his eyes, and there's sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window, sunlight to sting his pupils, and he winces and shuts them again. Kaleidoscope bits of a dream breaking apart in his head, dissolving in the twin solvents of consciousness and morning, and then he remembers what happened to Niki and Daria, remembering now like hearing the news for the first time the day before, and he only wants to crawl back down into sleep and hide in unknowing folds of dream.

Niki is dead, he thinks, the fact beyond all dispute or reason, Niki lying on that cold steel slab, and by now they've probably finished the autopsy, all their requisite, clinical violations of her violated flesh, and in a few more days, Niki will be nothing but ashes waiting to be scattered.

"I want my ashes scattered in the bay," she told him once, a year or two ago. "I want my ashes scattered in the bay so the currents will carry me far away, far out to sea.

Some of me might make it as far as Hawaii, or even Malaysia, or I might go all the way around the world. I might even wash up on a sh.o.r.e in Vietnam someplace, and wouldn't that be ironic," she said.

So she threw herself into the bay, and the bay spit her out again, and now she'll have to be poured into the Pacific a second time. And that, he thinks, is irony.

Everything is irony.

All the things he could have done, while there was still time to act, the things that Daria might have done; could'a, would'a, should'a, and he ought to know better than to play that game. He ought to, but he doesn't, and Maybe, he thinks, it's time to learn the rules.

There's a noise from the foot of the bed, something falling to the hardwood floor, and Marvin opens his eyes again, this time taking care to shield them from the incon-siderate sun.

The thing standing in front of Niki's dressing table has its back to him, but he can see its face in the mirror. It's busy rummaging noisily through an open drawer, and 296 Marvin covers his mouth and grits his teeth against the scream building inside his chest.

No, I'm still dreaming, he promises himself, a frantic scramble for any way to make this sane, any way to make it something besides exactly what it is. In a moment, it'll turn around, and I'll have to look directly in its eyes, but then I'll wake up. I'll wake up and have to remember that Niki's dead.

The thing at the dressing table makes a disappointed, snorfling sound and drops a handful of lipsticks and eyelin-ers to the bedroom floor.

And then it sees him in the mirror, and its wet white eyes, like two halves of a boiled egg, grow very wide, and it jabs a long finger at the looking gla.s.s.

"You," it growls, the guttural voice of a thousand horror-movie werewolves and demons. "Where did you come from?" And the thing taps the gla.s.s with the tip of a razor claw and then leans closer to the mirror. The muscles along its misshapen back ripple and twitch, and the thick auburn fur at the base of its bald skull bristles.

"The Weaver, she sent you here?" it asks and taps the gla.s.s again. "She sent you here to stop me?"

Only a dream, Marvin thinks again, wringing nothing like comfort from the possibility. There's not a monster in Niki's bedroom, and it's not talking to me.

"Whas' wrong? You got no tongue, blackie?" the thing asks, and now its wide, porcine nose is pressed smack against the mirror, steaming up the gla.s.s. "Did the Weaver take your tongue so you couldn't go telling me her secrets?"

"I don't know who the Weaver is," Marvin replies, because it's only a dream, and surely it's okay to talk to monsters in bad dreams. "I'm afraid I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"You're afraid?" it grunts and c.o.c.ks its head to one side, smearing its nostrils across the mirror. "If not the Weaver, then the red witches, those filthy wh.o.r.es in their filthy white towers."

297.

"Strike two," Marvin says, and he laughs; the monster snorts and taps hard at the smudged gla.s.s again. "You're going to break that," Marvin says. "It's an antique."

"I bet it is the witches," the thing says, arching its right eyebrow in such a way that the dead-white eye on that side of its face bulges halfway from the socket. "I bet you my hide and eyeteeth it's the witches who sent you here."

"The only witch I ever knew ran a New Age bookshop down on Castro-"

"Liar," the monster snarls, and specks of thick black saliva fly from its lips and add to the mess on the mirror.

"They sent you here, just like the Dragon sent me, to find a piece of her and take it back. They want the same thing, the Dragon and the red witches, to stop the Weaver, only they want it for different reasons."

"A piece of her?" Marvin asks the thing at the dressing table.