Well, not only for the dead. Undertakers reaped a hefty profit from disposal of corpses. Fucking bloodsuckers. They had bled him white when he had buried his father.

But Maxwell and Son had never had a place like this. The mortuary had been on a busy street in the Detroit slums, and he had been too poor and unimportant to rate attention. He had been shuttled to Daniel Maxwell, the son. He had been filled with helpless rage as he had sat there while that acne-scarred pipsqueak tried to steal every dollar he could from him.

He had wanted to squeeze the bastard's throat until his eyes popped.

But that was before he had found the knife.

The door of the mortuary was opening and a number of people were streaming out. Swollen eyes, quiet voices, furtive relief at leaving the dead and joining the living again.

He checked his watch. Nine o'clock. Closing time. He'd give the stragglers fifteen more minutes.

He watched the mourners get into their cars in the parking lot and drive away. He had been a mourner. He had loved his father. It should have been his mother who had died, the vicious bitch. He had not meant it to happen. He had just pushed his father a little and he'd fallen down those steps. It should have been her.

A young man in a dark suit came out of the mortuary and cut across the lawn to the employee parking. A trainee to the vampire? Or maybe Birnbaum had a son too. The kid was whistling as he jumped into a blue Oldsmobile parked beside a sleek Cadillac hearse.

A new hearse, one that had been purchased in cash a week after the Calder woman's supposed cremation.

Maritz had found the record of that purchase very interesting.

The entry lights went out in the vestibule.

Maritz waited until the Oldsmobile had disappeared around the corner before he got out of the car and walked across the street. He rang the doorbell.

No answer.

He rang it again.

He waited a minute and rang it again.

The entry lights went on, the door opened. Cool air and the heavy scent of flowers surrounded Maritz.

John Birnbaum stood in the doorway-sleek gray hair, a little plump, dressed in a sober gray suit. "Do you wish to view the body? I'm sorry, we're closed."

Maritz shook his head. "I need to ask you some questions. I know it's late, but may I come in?"

Birnbaum hesitated. Maritz could almost see the wheels turning in his head and coming up dollar signs. Birnbaum stepped aside. "Have you had a loss?"

Maritz entered the foyer and closed the door. He smiled. "Yes, I've had a loss. We need to talk about it."

Nell stood watching Michaela from the doorway of the kitchen. The woman's arms were smeared with flour as she rolled out a circle of dough on the butcher block. Every movement was swift, graceful, economical.

"You want something?" Michaela asked without looking up.

Nell jumped. She said the first thing that came to her head. "What are you making?"

"Biscuits."

"The ones we had for breakfast were wonderful."

"I know."

This wasn't going to be easy. "You're very busy."

Michaela nodded.

"It's very kind of you and your husband to let Peter stay with you at the ranch for a while."

"He won't be in the way." She put aside the rolling pin and began to cut out the biscuits. "If he'd been trouble, we wouldn't have done it. Jean has no time for fools. The boy has the mind of a child, not a fool. Children can be taught." The words were spoken as crisply as the movement of the cutter in the dough. "Now, what do you want?"

"Your face."

Michaela's gaze lifted. "I'd say yours was good enough."

"I mean ... I'd like to sketch you."

Michaela began to put the biscuits into a pan. "I've no time for posing."

"I could sketch you while you're working. I might not need you very much at first."

Michaela didn't speak for a moment. "You're an artist?"

"Not really. I don't have the time. I do it only when I'm not-" She stopped as she realized she was automatically giving the same answer she had given everyone before Medas. But there was no Jill or Richard to occupy her time now. She smothered the jab of pain. "Yes, I'm an artist." The words sounded strange and lonely to her own ears.

Michaela studied her and then nodded curtly. "Sketch away. Just don't get in my way."

Nell didn't give her a chance to change her mind. "I'll go get my sketch pad."

"I'm not going to stay still."

"I'll work around you ..."

It was easier said than done, she realized after an hour of trying to capture Michaela's features. The woman was never still. For a woman whose face had the serenity of a Nefertiti, she was a dynamo of energy. After discarding several full-face sheets in despair, Nell decided to concentrate on one feature at a time. She started on those deepset eyes.

That was better. She was getting it. Maybe she could combine the features later....

"Why are you here?"

Nell looked up. It was the first time Michaela had spoken for over an hour. "I'm just visiting."

Michaela shook her head. "Nicholas said you were staying through the winter. That's not a visit."

"I'll try not to be a bother to you."

"If Nicholas wants you here, I'll put up with a little bother."

"Nicholas said that you and Jean belonged here more than he did."

"We do, but he's getting there. He needs only a little more seasoning."

"Seasoning?"

Michaela shrugged. "I think it's hard for him to belong anywhere, but he wants it. We'll see."

"You want him to stay?"

She nodded. "He understands us and lets us go our way. The next owner might be stupid and untrainable."

She smiled. "And you're training Nicholas?"

"Of course. He's not difficult. He has great strength of mind and will. He will meld with this country, given time."

"I'd think strength of will would keep one from melding."

"This land is strong. It doesn't like weaklings." She looked at Nell. "It chews them up and spits them out."

Her pencil stopped in mid-motion. "You think I'm a weakling?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

"No."

"Then you have nothing to worry about."

"You don't want me here, do you?"

"It doesn't matter to me if you're here." She took the biscuits out of the oven. "As long as you don't try to take Nicholas away. Talk to him. Smile at him. Sleep with him." She set the pan on the butcher block. "But when you go, leave him here."

She felt a ripple of shock. "I don't intend to sleep with him. That's not why I came."

Michaela shrugged. "It will happen. He's a man and you're closer than the women in town." She took a spatula and gently pried the biscuits from the pan. "And you're the kind of woman who would stir a man."

"He doesn't see me like that."

"All men see women like that. It's their first reaction. It's only later that they see us as people with minds as well as bodies."

"And he's the only one who has anything to say about it?"

"You like to look at him. You watch him."

Did she? Dammit, of course she looked at him. He was a man who drew attention. He had stood out like a lighthouse in that crowded ballroom. "That doesn't mean anything. There's nothing between us."

"If you say so." She turned away. "I've no more time to talk. It's nearly lunchtime. I have to get this food on the table."

Nell breathed a sigh of relief. Michaela was entirely wrong, but the conversation had been disconcerting. "May I help? I could set the table."

"No." She opened the cabinet and took down the plates. "But you can go to the stable and get Nicholas."

Nell set her sketchbook down and hopped off the stool. "Right away."

Nicholas was grooming a bay stallion when she entered the stable. She stopped just inside the door. "Lunch is ready."

"I'll be there in a minute."

She watched him as he brushed the stallion with long, clean strokes. He did everything with that same power and clean economy, she thought. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and he looked totally at home doing the menial task. If she hadn't known better, she would have assumed he'd been born to it. It was hard to connect the Tanek on Medas to this man.

He didn't look up. "You're very quiet. What are you thinking?"

"That you do that very well. Do you know a lot about horses?"

He smiled. "I'm learning. I'd never seen any horse before I came here but the ones the British moguls at the polo club rode."

"You belonged to the polo club?"

"Not likely. I was a dishwasher in the kitchens when I was a boy."

"I can't see you as a dishwasher."

"No? I looked on it as a step up. My job before that was scrubbing floors in the whorehouse where my mother worked."

"Oh."

He looked over his shoulder. "What a polite little exclamation. Did I embarrass you?"

"No, but I-" She was stammering, she realized in annoyance. "It's none of my business. I didn't mean to intrude."

"No intrusion. I scarcely knew my mother. I was closer to the other whores than I was to her. She was an American hippie who came to China to seek the true light. Unfortunately, the only light she saw was when she was stoned. So she stayed stoned. She died of an overdose when I was six."

"How old were you when you left there?"

He thought about it. "I guess I was eight when I started at the polo club. I was kicked out of the job when I was twelve."

"Why?"

"The cook said I'd stolen three cases of caviar and sold it on the black market."

"Did you?"

"No, he did it himself, but I was a convenient target. Actually, he was very clever to choose me." His tone was coolly objective. "I was the most vulnerable. I had no one to protect me and I wasn't capable of protecting myself."

"You don't seem angry about it."

"It's over. It taught me a valuable lesson. I was never that vulnerable again and I learned to keep what was mine."

"What happened to you after you left? Did you have somewhere to go?"

"The streets." He put down the brush and patted the horse's nose. "The lessons I learned there were even more valuable, but you wouldn't want to hear about them." He left the stall and closed the half-door. "Or maybe you would. Quite a few of them dealt with dirty tricks and mayhem."

She could not even imagine what it would be like surviving on the streets, and he had been only a boy at the time.