"Here. I don't need it anymore." He handed it to her. She took another swallow.

"What was it?"

"What?"

"The sword."

He scratched the back of his hand and then let his hands fall limply on his knees.

"A gladius. Jefferson Davis was a fiend for the glory of Rome, the goddamned prat. Anyway, for the first few months of the war, he had foundries in Atlanta pumping out these flat, short Roman gladii. Larger than the largest dagger, but not as long as a saber. These were made for chopping and stabbing. Clunky and heavier than shit. First thing the Rebs threw away on any extended march. It's stored away in the library somewhere."

Sarah shifted on the bench. The spirits from the flask had warmed her but she found herself getting more discomfited with the story.

"They found the sword on the kitchen floor covered in blood. Bloody bare footprints all over the house leading from there-" He pointed to the kitchen. "And coming to right here." Gregor jabbed his finger at the front door. "And Wilhelm was missing."

"Wilhelm?"

"The other brother. My brother, who I'll never know." He shook his head. "They didn't find his body. The hand prints on the sword and the footprints on the floor were small. A boy's."

Confused, Sarah asked, "What does that mean? I don't understand."

"Wilhelm Rheinhart, by all accounts, was dying of tuberculosis. He couldn't even get out of bed without coughing up a lungful of blood. However, it looks like he got out of his death-bed, murdered his mother and brother and a serving woman, removed his brother's heart, and walked out of the house, never to be heard from again."

"Jesus. That's horrible."

"Yes. Horrible. And now James is gone. I always tried to be the best brother I could be to him. I never wanted to be like... like Wilhelm." He barked a short, bitter laugh. "Or Karl for that matter."

Sarah patted his hand, not knowing what else to do. She smiled at him.

"You were a good brother, Geeg. Of course you were. Daddy loved you."

He bowed his head, and Sarah saw tears streaming down his face, disappearing in his beard. He balled his fists, and Sarah remembered her father doing the same thing, in frustration at the wheelchair. Gregor sniffed-a snort really-and wiped his face with his sleeve in that awkward, halting way men had of dealing with tears.

"We tried to find him. James and I. We tried to find Wilhelm. Of course this was forty years later, but we searched. We had field-hands hunting through all of the woods with poles, jabbing at the ground, looking for a boy's remains. We searched the town records of every burg in Arkansas, looking for the tubercular deaths of children, or orphans. He couldn't have lived much longer. We found nothing; or the leads we did find turned out to be worthless. Wilhelm Rheinhart disappeared." He held his hand and flared his fingers, like holding a feather to the wind and letting go.

"He probably died in the woods and no one found his body before it rotted or was eaten by animals," Sarah offered.

Gregor nodded, eyes red. "There was always that possibility. But how did the boy get the strength to slaughter three people? Why did he do it? Where did he go? Sar-baby... I couldn't just let it lie. Wilhelm is-or was-my brother! I needed to know what happened to him. So we searched until we both were accepted and went to Heidelberg, to the University. And we forgot about Wilhelm."

He raised the flask again, bringing it to his lips. Finding it empty, he shook the flask as if pouring the contents on the floor, then smiled ruefully.

"Ah. It's probably better I'm not stinking drunk."

He stood uneasily, and staggered a few steps away.

"You're pretty drunk. Let me help you, Geeg."

"No, I'm fine." He shooed her away. Frowning, he said, "We had forgotten all about our half brother during the years in Heidelberg, until I got my hands on an old book of German lore. We were crazy for the stuff then; James and I dreamt of being the new Brothers Grimm, or at least Aarne and Thompson. This particular tome was written in the sixteenth century by a syphilitic goliard slowly going crazy."

He wiped his lips and looked around. "I need something to drink."

"I can get you some... I don't know, port, I think. Mama has a bottle somewhere."

"No, I need water and coffee. And a shower."

"Yes. You're right," Sarah said, then paused. "But what about the book?"

"Eh? Oh. One of the tales told a story about a dying girl, sick with the plague. As she lies on her death bed, surrounded by her dying family, she's approached by an elf. Not the nice, girly elves that ladies like to believe traipse around the English countryside. We're talking about an Old World spirit, a vaettir, a creature of blood and stone and hate. She begs him to heal her, and her family. He refuses. She pleads, tearing her hair. He refuses. Finally, throwing herself at his feet, she makes one last request for healing. He tells her he can heal her, but only her. She cries, of course, because she loves her parents and her sister. But as a payment, he demands her sister's heart. She refuses, horrified. He tells the girl she will die anyway, so why not? She refuses, once again, hoping against hope that her sister will recover. But the girl's sister is listening from her bed and offers up her heart to save the girl. The elf laughs and cuts out the sister's heart. Holding the still-warm thing in front of the girl, he says that she must eat it, take the strength of it into herself, if she wants to be cured. The girl refuses, and the elf disappears with the heart. The girl dies of grief, alongside the body of her sister."

"How sad. Surely people didn't tell these stories, did they? They're... they're hideous."

"They ate them up like hotcakes. Loved them." He walked back toward the kitchen, at first unsteady but getting more sure-footed as he went.

"But what does this have to do with Wilhelm?"

"You won't believe me."

"Uh..."

He stopped, turned to her. "In our studies, James and I found this story repeated in every culture known to man. Sometimes the heart gets eaten, sometimes it doesn't. The further we looked into it, we found more books, ones that take this myth seriously, books that tell of making bargains with... with... things you'd rather not know about."

Confused and not a little frightened by Gregor's tone and the strange look on his face, Sarah asked, "But what about Wilhelm?"

He cleared his throat, hocking up phlegm. He looked around helplessly for somewhere to spit. He stood there for a little while, as if making up his mind about telling her. Then he swallowed, and Sarah, despite herself, shuddered.

He said, "You should know this, because when I'm gone... well... you'll be the last Rheinhart. The last with any of my blood, at least, except for Wilhelm, if he's still out there. So remember and don't think of me as a lunatic."

She smiled and turned her head coyly, as if she was five again, begging for candy. "I've always thought of you as a lunatic, Geeg. Whatever you tell me won't change that."

He laughed, the sound a big rumble like casks of ale being rolled across a hardwood floor.

"Okay. I warned you, Sar-baby. I think something came to Wilhelm on his deathbed." He waved his hands at the old timbers of the Big House. "I think something old-something very old-walked out of the swamps, or the river, or the woods and tempted Wilhelm with life in exchange for his family's death. Unlike the story, he accepted. I think Wilhelm ate his brother's heart. Now I've got to get ready to put my brother in the earth."

He turned and walked into the kitchen.

Sarah remembered.

These memories, unbidden and frightening, had remained deep underneath the still pool of her experience, only to come to the surface now. It had been seven years since that conversation. And now, seven years later, she was as scared and confused as she was then and surprised at the memories, memories she'd put into the ground with her father's body.

Once James Ware Rheinhart was in the ground, Gregor took his share of the farm and money, sold everything he could, and moved to Munich for further study. At fifty, Gregor started a new life. For the first time in his life-old or new-he married, a woman named Brigitte who baked him cakes and made him stop drinking, everything except wine. He lost weight and shaved his beard and rolled his own cigarettes. He wrote Sarah regularly, long discursive letters slipping into and out of German and French that-quite honestly-Sarah had not paid much attention to. She'd been heavily pregnant with Franny, and Jim had already begun to drink himself into insensibility every night. Letters from Gregor seemed unreal and arcane. And he had left. Sarah tried as hard as she could to ignore the fact that Gregor-her Gregor, her Geeg-had left her to deal with life without him.

She sent Gregor a letter telling him of Franny's birth, but he never responded. She discovered he had been walking in the fields by the Neckar River when the stroke hit him, dropping him in his tracks. He was the same age as his brother when James had died. Gregor lived on, though, as an invalid, without movement or voice. His wife hired a translator and sent Sarah a telegram saying Gregor was comfortable, sitting in the sun every day, and was able to take soup and drink wine, if she helped him. He couldn't write, his body was too damaged by the stroke for that.

Sarah rubbed her eyes, sitting cramped at the desk, and pushed Opusculis Noctis away from her.

Standing, she moved around the desk, toward the bookcases.

"Wait a second..."

Bending down, she rapped on the wooden foot panels of the bookcases, listening. She went around the room knocking each wooden rectangle. She couldn't tell any difference between the sound of one panel to the other. She stood, rolled up her sleeves, and turned to the bar. There she pulled each bottle out of the enclosed space and put them on the green blotter of the desk. Scotch, gin, whiskey. Mimi's port. The virulent green bottle of Creme de Menthe. Le Roi's Peppermint Schnapps.

Jesus. Who drinks this stuff?

The dry-bar mirror glared at her, mocking. She went to the kitchen, and, surprised to find Alice gone, dug through the junk drawer, returning to the library with a flat-head screwdriver. Carefully, Sarah popped the mirror off the back of the bar, its silvered hide coming away with a ripping sound. The adhesive that fixed it left an ugly curlicue on the wall. She propped it against the paneling by the door.

Sarah put her hands on her hips and huffed in exasperation, riffling her bangs. Even though the air in the Big House was cool, her forehead beaded with sweat. Going to the far left wall, closest to the window, she pulled the stepladder to the bookcase.

Very carefully, she removed each volume, turning each book over and fanning the pages so that any paper, string, or thread fell from the book. Soon, a confetti of bookmarks, playing cards, ribbons, and flakes of old parchment littered the library floor. She made individual stacks of books around the room's baseboards, each stack a small tower of arcane knowledge.

On the shelf that held the massive volume titled Quanoon-e-Islam she found the sword, wrapped in a chamois and twine and stored in the empty space behind the row of books, out of sight but not exactly hidden.

What had Andrez said? Hiding in plain sight?

She knew she had found it the moment her hands touched the covering, fingers rapping on the steel even through the chamois. She brought it down and untied the twine, holding the bundle to the light. As the chamois fell away, Sarah looked at the sharp metal leaf of steel jutting from the darker, leather-wrapped hilt. The base of the blade, where the thin cross guard met sharp edges and center ridge, was covered with a black grime. Old blood.

A sense of dread washed over her. She carefully put the sword on the desk, full of reverence and loathing for such a deadly thing. All weapons hold the possibility of violence but this one had a history of it, and Sarah found herself uncomfortable and wary of its potential.

Standing on back on the stool, she groped behind the books remaining on the shelf, afraid of what more she might find. And then she felt it-tucked away in the corner, a small packet of papers wrapped with a strip of leather. The letters crackled in her hands as she lifted them, filling her nose with a scent of tobacco and vinegar.

She brought them to the desk and gingerly untied the leather strip. She turned the small stack over in her hand.

Gregor's script, she'd know it anywhere. Taking off a sheet and unfolding it, she read the letter.

1923 - Salzburg, Austria Brother Ware, I'm writing you now from the courtyard of an inn outside Salzburg where Beethoven reputedly wrote one of his symphonies. They serve rich wine here, and as I write this, I sit in a sun-dappled nook of the tabled courtyard, the trellis above me covered in ripening grapes and leaves. Truly, an idyllic little spot. I plan on getting drunk, drunk as sin, drunk as a lord, drunk as Cooter Brown sitting on the fence. I have found the item that we have often spoken of, lusted after, and dreaded finding. The mad Arab's treatise, Quanoon-e-Islam.

I've spent the last month combing through the estate of one Frau Kuester, who responded to our ad in the Kronen Zeitung regarding books. Her husband, who disappeared walking in the Tyrolean foothills-very mysteriously, Adala assures me-seemed to have a fondness for the blacker arts. I've found various books from that boorish English "magician" and sodomite which are pure bullshit, as they say back in Arkansas. In the Kuester shelves I've found a very early version of the Key of Solomon-a proto-version maybe, I haven't finished the translation and the manuscript is in very poor condition so a comparative read is impossible currently.

Yes, I know of your opinion of the Lemegeton. But I went ahead and acquired the volume just in case.

That was the first week.

The enormous amount of books to sort through and the private papers of Herr Kuester-a very successful engraver-have occupied my time almost constantly. I spent two weeks more rifling through them until I found the volume. Strangely, it's not titled Necronomicon. The content is not the Arabic but a Greek translation so the Quanoon-e-Islam is somewhat of a misnomer. And slanderous to the noble Bedouin tribes. That old argument between us.

It's hand-lettered and illuminated, if you can call it that, illumination. It is a good stroke of fortune to have found a Greek translation of that vile treatise; I've arranged for an expatriated Macedonian scholar in Vienna to take a look at it and give me a quote for translation. I don't know what I would have done if it had been in Arabic.

I'm uncomfortable with the Quanoon in my room. I sleep poorly and have bad dreams. Last night, after beginning my translation of the Lemegeton, I fancied something was at the window, peering in at me. Of course, this was silly; I've taken rooms on the second floor. But the feeling persisted, all because of the book. The illustrations alone are like windows into the worst hells imaginable. Tomorrow I will take it to the Austrian National Bank and place it in a safety box there and maybe I can get some rest.

I placed an advert in the Venice paper regarding the acquisition of old tomes of historical and occult bent, and I hope we can make some headway though I fear it might be expensive. I've found no other volumes, pamphlets, scrolls that might help us determine what happened to, or became of, our unknown murderous kin.

I need more money, brother. Adverts don't grow on trees, and everything here in Austria is getting more expensive now that the League of Nations have set up shop in Vienna. Send the funds to the Salzburg branch of the Austrian National Bank, where I'll be storing the Quanoon. Five hundred dollars should suffice.

I've been contacted by a priest, recently, who says he has some volumes of interest. I must travel to Florence next week to meet him. I have high hopes for the meeting. He tells me the work is called Opusculis Noctis. And another called the Book Eibon. I've never heard of either of these works before, so I am excited. Maybe it will hold a clue as to what happened to Wilhelm.

I will write again soon. I should be home by the end of the summer, gods willing, just in time for harvest. Kiss young Baird and little Sar for me and tell them I'll be bringing presents.

Gregor Sarah put down the letter and walked over to the stack that held the Quanoon. She picked up the dense book, weighing it in her hand. A wisp of her hair crept into her mouth, and she began to chew.

She opened the book to a random page, and her breath caught in her throat.

She lurched over to the desk and set the book down, pages open to the illustration, a picture rendered in simple brush-strokes with the faintest of coloration: black outlines, red gore, brown background. The illustration depicted a woman or a girl-her age was indeterminate-lying spread eagle on a poorly drawn table while two men assaulted her, one ramming a disproportionate horned phallus in her mouth and the other ejaculating onto-no, into-the bloody expanse of what once might have been stomach but was now, in the rough yet expressive way the illustrator had with line, a mass of guts. They'd split the girl open like gutting a fish, splayed her across the table, spilling roughly drawn entrails and innards outward from her torso. The men possessed faces-illustrated in the same rudimentary yet detailed fashion-resembling wolves. And in the gaping wound of the woman's stomach and chest, a demonic face and hands appeared. The hands held a scepter and a crown. Blocks of Greek text surrounded the picture.

As she looked at the illustration she felt herself becoming divorced from the person she had been only moments before. The person she had been when she took down the sword.

She shook her head. I don't understand, she thought madly. I thought it was all just crazy people, crazy talk.

I don't even have to be able to read the Greek to understand what's going on here. The knowledge of the image suffused her, possessed her.

What other ways are there of making bargains? Opusculus Noctis said innocence and the will to do what was necessary was all you need to deal with ...with... the Prodigium. If I took Fisk or Lenora and the sword down to the river...

She shuddered, horrified at what she'd been thinking. She walked to the phone and picked it up.

"Phyllis?" She clicked the receiver twice. "Phyllis?"

"Yeah, honey? That you, Sarah?"

"Yes. Please connect me to Father Andrez in Stuttgart."

"Oh? You two hit it off? I guess you just got back."

Sarah looked down at the Quanoon, staring at the hideous illustration.

Has it only been a few hours since I left Andrez?

She ground her teeth and could feel the muscles in her cheek tightening, her jaw locking down. She growled, "Whatever I've done or said is none of your business. I would like to remind you that my father was a major shareholder in the Bell Corporation, who I believe is your employer. If I look around here hard enough, I might be able to find the schedule for the next shareholders meeting. From there it will be an easy matter to make sure you never pick up a call again. Do you understand, Phyllis? From this moment on, you will neither listen in, nor repeat anything that I say, or any other person on this circuit."

"Well, Sarah, I just can't see why-"

"Do you understand? I will make sure that you lose your job if I ever hear that you've repeated anything said on this party line."

"Sarah... I-"

"All you need to say is, 'I understand.' And then connect me to Father Andrez."

"I... I understand."

Sarah breathed into the phone, staring at the gruesome rendering. She turned the page. And gasped again. Another illustration, this time of two toddlers, each one gouging out the eyes of the other. Men and women watched the gory combat, their faces like gargoyles. Blood ran from the children's eyes, down their bodies, pooling on the floor. One gargoyle-faced man used the blood to draw an enormous picture of a clawed hand with thirty coins in the palm. Sarah turned another page. A woman standing at a bench, a knife in her fist and her own severed hand lying on the floor. A horrible silent O for a mouth, as if she was singing. Through the door, a field. On the field, a black figure, watching. Sarah turned the page. A gigantic face with a dog in its gaping mouth. The dog's maw held a serpent, and the serpent's tail punched a hole in the back of the face, curved around underneath and became a gigantic phallus with a miniature face at the tip. In the face's mouth stood a dog. Sarah turned the page. A monstrous octopus-like creature looking up from the bottom of a well, eyes black and liquid. Around the rim of the well, tiny people hurled children into the abyss, to plummet to their deaths.

Sarah felt uneasy on her feet, and the room began to distort and skew perspective. Her stomach tightened and her limbs ached as if she had a fever.

The phone clicked twice and in the receiver, she could hear the buzzing to indicate a ring. After a long time, he came on the line.

"Yes? This is Father Andrez."

Sarah remained silent, breathing heavy. Trembling, she reached forward-her limbs like lead-and slowly shut the book. She took a deep breath.

"Sarah?" Andrez's worried voice came through the receiver.

She swallowed and pushed the book away from her.