"That sounds wonderful, Alice. What would I do without you?"

"Don't have to flatter me, none, Sarah. I'm here. You know that. I'll always be here."

Alice stopped her dishwashing, looked down into the water.

Sarah went to the library, glanced at the open book on the green ink blotter of the oak desk, then retrieved the port from the dry bar nestled amongst the volumes.

The gallery was dark as Sarah walked up to the second floor where her room, the bathroom she'd just bathed Franny in, and her mother's room were located. Around the other side of the gallery were two more rooms, one a ladies' den and the other an unused guest room. At her mother's door, she knocked.

There was no answer. Sarah rapped again, louder. Again no answer.

Sarah pushed her way in to the room, totally black except for the blue light coming from a big open bay window, ruffling the sheer drapes in the breeze. Sarah's mind went briefly back to the night that Franny went missing. Sometimes, the sensation of her fright and pure terror of that night came back to her unwillingly and unwanted, catching in her chest and making her breath come in hard gasps.

She moved to her mother's bed, realized it was empty, and looked around. In the shadow by the window, her mother sat on a padded bench, pulled from her vanity. She stared out the window, looking at something in the yard, or the field beyond it. Sarah came closer, walking up behind her mother. The old woman's hair shone whitish blue from the moonlight streaming in through the window. Her shoulders slumped a little, but otherwise she looked at ease. As Sarah drew near, she could make out black shapes moving in the yard.

"Momma?" Sarah whispered.

Sarah's mother muttered something she couldn't make out, words in a low tone that hovered just beyond understanding. Sarah turned away, placed the tray of Wellings down on the bedside table, and returned to her mother.

"Momma? Are you okay?"

Sarah walked as softly as she could, rolling on each foot ball to toe, ball to toe. She paused, squatting, trying to hear the mutterings her mother made. But they were nonsense, breathy and unintelligible, like the Pentecostals speaking in tongues that she'd seen at a tent revival as a child. She tried to read her mother's lips, but the older woman's wild white hair covered her mouth. Sarah reached out and softly touched her mother's hand, white with age, thin as parchment.

The moment Sarah's hand came into contact with her mother's, the old woman whipped her head around, snarling. Sarah, startled, fell backward, onto her haunches, sitting down heavily.

For an instant-a fleeting moment like the after image of a photographer's flash-her mother's face had been vicious, enraged. Her eyes appeared totally black, her cheeks mottled, her lips pulled back like those of a feral, savage dog, showing yellow teeth in black gums.

But then the image passed and Sarah wasn't sure what had happened, what she had seen. She rose up from her seat on the floor.

"Sarah, don't sneak up on your mother like that, goddammit. At least Alice has got the sense to just leave when I'm in my reverie." The old woman smoothed the empty bust of her dress. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm not feeling too well, so I'm gonna be a little short. And sneaking up on me like that! I was lost in my own thoughts, staring out at the moon in the yard."

"Momma, I knocked twice. Then I called your name a couple of times too. You didn't answer. What were you saying?"

Sarah's mother looked at her with narrowed eyes. "That's none of your business, missy. You ought to let an old lady have her secrets. Anywho, I was just sitting here-"

"In the dark."

"That's right, in the dark, watching the peafowl out in the yard. If I turn on the light, they can see my silhouette and they know I'm watching them, which won't do at all. Not at all."

She turned toward Sarah, white hair a tangled spray in the blue light. Her dark eyes brightened. "Did you bring my sip?"

Sarah nodded and retrieved the tray by the bed.

"No, come help me get back in bed and then pour one."

Sarah started back across the room, and her mother hissed, "Turn on the damned light, you ninny, so I can see." Sarah turned once more, switched on the beside lamp, and then returned to her mother. She helped the old woman rise, and led her back to bed. Once her mother was comfortable, tucked under a goose down comforter, she poured a glass of the port. Her mother downed it immediately and held out the glass for another. She downed that one as well, and then sipped the third.

"Tell me, daughter. Why hasn't that miscreant child of yours come to see me more often since she's been here? I can hear her and Alice's brood tromping up and down the halls-"

"Have they been bothering you, Momma? If they've been bothering you, we'll stop them from coming up on this floor."

"It's not that, girl. Why hasn't my granddaughter come to see me more?" Her mother stuck out a gnarled finger and jabbed it at Sarah. "More to the point, why haven't you brought her to me? Hmm?"

Sarah remembered the years growing up in this house, her mother's fierce interrogations, her rants, her rages. Elizabeth Rheinhart Werner had neither respect nor tolerance for timidity or shyness.

"She's scared of you, mother. Franny thinks you're turning into a wolf, to gobble her up. A stupid play on words that Jim made planted that idea in her head."

Sarah's mother gave a thick, wheezing laugh that quickly turned into a cough. When the coughs died, the old woman smiled, tears streaming down the sides of her withered, discolored face.

She laughed again, and said, "Whoo-ee, I'm starting to like that girl. I watch her from my window, you know. She's a wild thing, not like you or your father. She's like me." Sarah's mother tapped her ribcage with a gnarled finger. "Tell that little dumpling that I was born a wolf, and after many years, I'm finally becoming human."

At that, Elizabeth settled into her cushions and asked Sarah to read to her from the volume of Dickens at her bedside table.

"I've been trying to finish Bleak House for months, my eyes are becoming so bad. And it's not really a good book for right now, now that the big house isn't so bleak anymore, eh? How bout young master Copperfield, or Great Expectations?"

Sarah poured her mother another port, leaned back in the chair beside the bed, and picked up Great Expectations.

After the first page, her mother asked for more port, which Sarah gave her, then started to snore, making a light chuffing sound. Sarah remained still, looking at her mother, hands in her lap, lightly holding the big book. Finally, she rubbed away the tears at the corners of her eyes and stood. Sarah carefully maneuvered the bookmark to the right page and quietly crept from her mother's room.

On the gallery, it was darker than earlier, and a hush had fallen over the old house. The quiet made Sarah uneasy. In some ways coming home had been the most natural thing she'd done in years, but in other ways she felt dislocated, separated from her life and world and daughter.

I can't compete for her affections against other children. They fill her world now, I only constrain it. If I try and supplant those kids, she'll never forgive me... and she'd be right not to. But what do I do with-for-myself? Drinking gallons of coffee with Alice every morning and sneaking cigarettes on the sleeping porch... well, it just ain't cutting it, as Jim would say.

She thought about Jim then, playing with the idea of going home to visit, just her, just to see how he was. He hadn't called or written in the weeks they'd been here, and every one of her phone calls went unanswered. None of her letters had been returned, though. So he was still receiving the mail.

She lightly touched her breast, shivering in the dark of the gallery, goose bumps rippling over her skin.

Then she noticed the black figure standing in a spill of shadow at the foot of the stairs. A silhouette, jet black, looked up at her, head cocked and staring intently, silent, eyes like flecks of obsidian.

Sarah's breath caught in her chest, and the goose bumps of pleasure quickly turned to those of fear. She dropped her arms to her sides, not knowing what to do. A clock ticked somewhere and the old timbers of the house settled around her. The black thing below stared, its eyes fierce and black.

Then Alice passed in the doorway of the kitchen, beneath Sarah, blocking the spray of light slanting into the atrium below, changing the configuration of shadows.

And the thing was gone, if it had ever really been there at all.

Sarah exhaled suddenly. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath.

She went downstairs and into the kitchen.

Alice turned to look at her, then said, "Humph. She must've been real bad. I've got the water hot. You go on into the library, I'll bring your toddy in to you." Alice pointed to a bowl in a far corner of the counter. "I'm gonna be up for a bit, got some dough rising. I'll come check on you in a bit. Go on, girl. I know you been waiting."

In the library, Opusculus Noctis was open on the desk, and as she sat down in front of it, Sarah took a deep breath, placed a hand on the yellowed sheet, and turned over her page of translation from the night before. It read: the little book of shadows or the little night book a glance look into the shadows demands requires many things if one wishes would like to converse bargain with the animals creatures kept locked beyond the stars or the vorago?

admonitio admonition? warning a warning do not call up that which you haven't pulli sent away don't call up what you cannot put down all sermons converse with the prodigious must begin start with a payment tithe of inculpatis innocent? blood in addition to also the will intention to bargain, the caller is helped assisted by the intention to do necessity the necessary things?

Sarah had managed the translation with great effort, flipping backward and forward in the Latin English dictionary. The fact it made no sense depressed her, but she felt, for the first time in years, a desire to know, to understand. What was the meaning behind the words? They blended together on each line of the pamphlet, having no spaces between letters to indicate the beginning or end of a thought or phrase. There were certain words, like vorago and prodigium, that were not provided for in the library's poor dictionary. She couldn't tell if it was some religious manual or an ancient recipe book. She knew she'd committed mistakes in the translation, but hoped the gist of it was right. She couldn't be sure without consulting someone who knew better.

Sarah frowned and nibbled on the eraser of her pencil. When she looked up, she noticed that Alice had entered the library, placed the toddy in front of her, and left with her none the wiser.

Sarah picked up the glass and felt the warmth of the golden drink, took a swallow, and shivered. Alice had made this one strong.

Sarah smiled and turned back to her translation.

Chapter 9.

Rabbit came to the Royale Hotel to pick up Ingram at five in the afternoon, dressed in dark blue slacks and a silky white shirt. A gold chain gleamed in the V of his open collar, and his hair was smoothed back.

Rabbit walked into Ingram's hotel room, filling the small space with the scent of pomade. Ingram raised his eyebrows and said, "Well, you sure are sparkly. You fall into a vat of perfume?"

Rabbit cocked an eyebrow at Ingram. His hair was darker now that the pomade kept it tight against his head. "Naw, I ain't fell into no vat o' perfume. Yet. Maybe later. Maybe it ain't something you can appreciate but the ladies will be ready for me, and the smell-good is just part of the program."

Ingram thought for a moment. "Turn around."

Rabbit hesitated, then smiled, turning around, rotating slowly. "Nice, ain't they? Got 'em in Little Rock. That's real imported silk."

"Nice. Real nice. So where's your gun?"

Rabbit's smile vanished. "It's in the coupe, under the driver's seat."

"Caliber?"

".25."

Ingram smiled. "It is Saturday night."

"Ain't no Saturday night pistol. It's a good piece, chrome plated, real sweet."

"Semi or revolver?"

"Semi."

"It's a Saturday Night Pistol, but that's okay. We're gonna be in a bar. You gotta shoot somebody, stick it in his stomach or his face and pull the trigger. It should probably do the trick."

Ingram went to his suitcase, picked up a rumpled jacket, put it on. He followed that with a Morley .38 and slipped it into the jacket pocket. He rummaged around in his suitcase a little more, then threw a small leather holster at Rabbit, who snatched it out of the air.

"If it looks rough, just stay in the coupe, Rabbit. You don't have to deal with any trouble."

"Wait in the car? Not with all the ladies waiting inside. What's this?"

"Ankle holster. For your not-a-Saturday-Night-pistol."

"All right then, I'm your man. Let's get on."

Ingram stretched in the hall, reached up and touched the ceiling, then bent over to touch his toes. Rabbit watched him with a puzzled look on his face.

"What're you doing, Bull?"

"Working out the kinks."

His hand throbbed horribly, and he held it above his head to ease the swelling as they went downstairs, out of the lobby, and into the parking lot.

It was hot in the coupe, rumbling over asphalt and potholes, motor humming.

Rabbit cranked down the driver's side window all the way and hung his silk-clad arm out the side. Ingram popped the smoker's window and angled it inward, so that the breeze blew directly on him. He was breaking out in cold sweats and feverish heats alternately; two days of whiskey and pills had taken its toll.

They passed through deep delta, low country interspersed with fields and farms that gave way to forests and scrub-brush. They trundled down dusty roads, rolling in an out of cane breaks, past amber fields, through the late sunny haze of afternoon.

Rabbit told Ingram about the layout of Ruby's.

"Big long building, it is, lemme tell you. Got a stage in the back. When you come in the front door, you got an aisle going between tables, got your bar-a real long one-on your right with stools. They's an office at the back, back of the kitchen, I think but can't be sure." Rabbit took his hands off the coupe's wheel and adjusted the rear view mirror. "There's a hallway to the right of the stage, just beyond the bar, that leads back to a back door where they take deliveries from the pier. Got some storerooms and closets and a pisser back there too."

"Pier? So it's on a wharf?"

Rabbit gave a sharp look to Ingram, then nodded. "Sure. Named Ruby's on the Bayou, ain't it? When I was a youngun, working in the cotton fields, after harvest we'd put them cotton bales on barges-shallow rafts back then-and pole the barges down the bayou until we'd hit Ruby's. It was called McFeely's Wharf back then. We'd load the bales on the pier, and after a little bit a steamer or one of the new diesel freighters would come pick it up, float it down the Arkansas to the Mississippi. To Helena or Natchez or New Orleans." He sighed and looked off into the tree line. "That was some hard work."

After another pause, he said, "I remember Ruby made good etoufee. Heard that ole girl died a while back, so we'll find out about the grub."

Ingram snorted. "Last thing on my mind is food."

"Better eat. A body wants food, and your mind ain't gone work right if you don't. If bad things happen, you'll need to have ate. That's a fact."

"Yeah. Okay."

They drove on in silence. It was nearing dark when they rejoined pavement. Rabbit steered for ten or twenty miles down the unmarked highway, then took a left toward a large wood with smoke rising behind the trees. Oily-leafed magnolia trees lined the gravel road, their white blossoms filling the coupe with a sweet, cloying scent. Well graveled, the road was twice as wide as the highway, and the rocks crunched heavily under the coupe's tires.

Once they passed the tree line, Ingram smelled the bayou and the river beyond, a thick muddy scent, wet and filled with life. He bummed another smoke from Rabbit, and blew billows out the window. The wind whisked the smoke away behind them. Through the trees, Ingram noticed thin yellow light from a building, and heard the slamming of car doors. The sun had extinguished itself in the waters of the bayou and sent up pink and purple streamers into the night air.

Rabbit steered the coupe into a large gravel area next to a dark brown building on the edge of a muddy expanse of water. The trees didn't crowd so close here. Ingram judged there to be twenty or thirty cars clustered around the building. He watched as two couples walked to the front doors of the building, noticed another couple sitting in a darkened car, either smoking or drinking. Or something else.

The building itself was wooden with brick work around what Ingram assumed was the kitchen area. On a wrap-around porch, kerosene lanterns cast guttering pools of yellow light, except for the far side of the building, where a pier stretched a good thirty or forty yards into the waters of Bayou Bartholomew.

Rabbit parked the coupe, wheels crunching on the gravel, and the men exited. Ingram checked his gun and put on his rumpled jacket. He motioned Rabbit to follow and walked around to the side of the building to the pier. A couple of big flat john-boats with outboard motors were moored there, along with a skiff that looked unstable and carious as a rotten tooth. At the very end of the pier sat a large river tug, heavy in the water, painted black and silhouetted against the last vestiges of the dying sun, stars salting the sky around its stacks. It was a big boat, made for pushing heavy barges up and down the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, barges filled with coal, or granite, or other dense materials. The boat had three decks, the main, a second deck, and then the pilot's roost, with a big smokestack sprouting behind it. Antennae poked skyward from along the main stack, giving the tug a jagged, insectile appearance.

Ingram walked up the access stairs to the pier. Drowsy waves washed onto the muddy shore with low, gurgling sounds. The moored boats knocked and bumped against the pilings. Ingram's feet echoed loudly on the tarred planks. The air was filled with the smell of burning kerosene and dead fish.

As he drew closer to the end of the pier, the word Hellion painted in white on the hull of the boat became clear. He could make out the word Natchez a little further down the gunwale. Ingram scratched his head.