Down And Dirty

"DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!"

"Go, child." George/Victor coaxed him with a gentle hand. "It will all be all right." Blaise gripped the older man in a fierce hug, then ran from the room.

Tachyon flung himself across the room and poured a brandy with hands that shook with fear and shock.

"You! I thought you were out of my life! You told me you were retiring. It was finished. You lied-"

"Lied! Let's talk about lying! You withheld something I needed. Something which cost me everything!"

"I… I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, come now, Dancer, I trained you better than that. You deliberately withheld the information about Blaise. You have enough tradecraft to have known the value of that little piece of information."

Hamburg, 1956. A shabby but clean boarding house, and victor doling out booze and women in limited doses while he trained and questioned the shattered Takisian. A few years, and they had kicked him loose to continue his descent into the gutter. He had given them all that he had, and it hadn't been enough. The secret had gnawed at him for years, but thirty years was a long time, and he had begun to think himself safe. And then had come the phone call during the final leg of the World Health Organization tour, and his KGB control was back in his life.

"My superiors learned of Blaise, his potential and power, but I who trained you and ran you was left ignorant. They did not assume it was stupidity, but rather duplicity. They drew the only conclusion." His raised eyebrows drew the answer from his former pupil:

"They assumed you had rolled over, become a double agent."

Victor grimaced a bit at the theatrical phrase. The brandy exploded in the back of his throat as Tachyon tossed it down. Some explanation, some justification seemed necessary.

"I wanted him safe from you."

"I would say I am the least of his problems."

"What do you mean? What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

"Is that a comment on me?"

"Good god, no. I merely point out that we live in dangerous times."

"Victor, are they looking for you?" Tachyon asked, not certain if he referred to the Russian's KGB masters or to the CIA.

"No, they all think I'm dead. All that remains is a charred car and a pair of corpses burned past recognition."

"You killed them."

"Don't look so shocked, Dancer. You too are a killer. In fact we have more in common then you might think. Like that child."

"I want you out of my life!"

"I'm in your life for good. You better get used to it."

"I'll fire you!"

Demyenov's voice froze him before he had taken three steps. "Ask Blaise."

Tachyon remembered the hug. Never in the weeks since he had smuggled Blaise out of France had the child given him so affectionate a gesture. The boy obviously loved the grizzled Russian. What would it do to Tach and the boy's relationship if he now abruptly removed this man? He sank onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.

"Oh, Victor, why?" He didn't really expect an answer, and he didn't get one.

"Oh, yes, since we're going to be friends you should know my true name. Friends don't lie to each other. My name is Georgi Vladamirovich Polyakov. But you can call me George. Victor is dead-you killed him."

Addicted to Love by Pat Cadigan

The view of the city from Aces High was breathtaking, even inspirational. Beached on the shores of the afternoon, Jane stared blindly down at it from the kitchen window, frustration and unhappiness doing their usual waltz in her stomach. Behind her the kitchen staff worked away at winding down the afternoon luncheon service before preparing for the dinner custom, politely ignoring the fact that she'd left the salad they'd made for her untouched. Her appetite was poor these days. Lately she had even abandoned the pretense of wrapping the food up for later and tossing it out on the sly.

She knew there were whispers that she'd gone anorexic, not exactly the best advertisement for a place such as Aces High. It was like a bad joke on Hiram, after he'd increased her responsibilities at the restaurant from hostessing to pinchhit supervising. Hiram was pretty weird himself these days, but he wasn't shedding any weight. He'd been on a roundthe-world goodwill tour. Hiram Worchester, Goodwill Ambassador. It beat the hell out of Jane Dow, Mafia Dupe.

Memories of the time with Rosemary drove her deeper into depression. She missed her; rather, she missed the person she'd thought Rosemary had been and the work she'd thought she'd been doing for her. It had all sounded so fine and noble trying to counteract the antiace, antijoker hysteria that had been building up, fueled by hysterical extremist politicians and evangelists. Rosemary had been a real hero to her, someone with a shining light around her; she'd needed a hero very badly after all the nastiness with the Masons and the terrible, grotesque murder of Kid Dinosaur. Her own brush with death had not left much of an impression on her, except for the contact with that horrible, evil little creature called the Astronomer. She had seldom thought of it afterward, and Rosemary had been the antidote to the Astronomer's poison.

Until March, when she began to find herself thinking that it might have been better if Hiram had just let her plummet to the street.

She seemed to have an unerring instinct for getting mixed up with exactly the wrong people. Maybe that was her real ace power, not the water-calling ability. She could hire herself out as a bad-guys detector, she thought sourly, change her name from Water Lily to Dowsing Rod. Yes, I just love these people, I'd follow them anywhere, do anything for them-call the cops, they must be white slavers and kiddie pornographers.

Her mind gave her an image of Rosemary Muldoon, smiling at her, praising her for her hard work, and she felt a pang of disloyalty and guilt. There was no way she could think of Rosemary as a truly bad person. A big part of her still wanted to believe that Rosemary had been sincere about the work, that whatever else she had been involved with as the head of a Mafia family, Rosemary really had wanted to do something for the victims of the wild card virus.

Yes, she thought fiercely, there was plenty of good in Rosemary, she wasn't like all the others. Maybe something awful had happened to her that had driven her to accept and embrace the Mafia. She could understand that; God, could she understand it.

Her mind shoved aside the memory and came to rest on the man named Croyd. She still had the phone numbers he'd given her. Anytime you want some company, someone to talk to… I bet I could listen to you for hours. Maybe even all night, but that would be up to you, Bright Eyes. No one had ever showed quite so much panache flirting with her. Mirrorshades Croyd, calling her Bright Eyes; she was unaware of smiling at the memory. There had been no link exposed between him and Rosemary's organization, Either it was buried too deeply or he'd been another idealist like herself. Since she wanted to believe it was the latter, that most likely meant it was the former-and she was still tempted to take out those phone numbers and surprise him by calling him. There was no way she could ever really bring herself to do it, which could well have been why he'd given her the numbers in the first place.

Her whole life was upside down and backward. Maybe that was what the wild card virus had really done to her, fixed it so she would live as the butt of every practical joke the world could play on her.

Abruptly Sal's voice seemed to be speaking to her in her head: You're not being fair with yourself. You never believed the Masons were good, you weren't blind to what the Astronomer really was. And as for Rosemary, she was just a whole lot smarter than you, street smart-she took advantage of you and that should be her shame, not yours. If she even has the capacity to feel shame.

Yeah, Salvatore Carbone would have said something very like that to her if he'd been alive. The fact that she could come up with it herself must have meant she wasn't completely hopeless, she thought. But the idea didn't improve her mood or bring her appetite back.

"Excuse me, Jane," said a voice behind her. It was Emile, who had started at Aces High not long before she had and was now the new maitre d'. She wiped at her wet face hastily, glad that she had managed to gain more control over her tendency to pull enormous amounts of water out of the air when under stress, and turned around, trying to smile at him politely. "I think you'd better come down to the loading dock."

She blinked at him in confusion. "Pardon?"

"A situation has developed and we think you're the only one who could handle it."

"Mr. Worchester always-"

"Hiram isn't here and frankly we doubt he'd be much use if he were."

She stared up at Emile tensely. Emile was one of the most vocal (and unforgiving) critics of Hiram's behavior, a group that seemed to gain more members every day, all of them disgruntled employees and all of them, to her complete dismay, more in the right than she wanted to admit.

Ever since his return from the tour Hiram had been… strange. He seemed to have little real interest and no enthusiasm for Aces High these days, acting as if the restaurant were some awful albatross around his neck, a burdensome annoyance that was keeping him from something of greater importance. And he was behaving abominably toward his staff, his almost courtly manners had disappeared, and he ranged from distracted to abusively rude. Except for herself. Hiram was still friendly toward her, though it seemed to be an enormous and obvious effort to control himself and focus his attention. He had always been attracted to her; she'd known that since the night he had saved her life; and she felt guilty for not feeling the same way toward him. Being obligated to someone who cared for her when she couldn't return the affection was one of the most uncomfortable situations she could imagine. She had repaid him for the expensive clothes, and she had made every effort to be the best employee he could have asked for in exchange for the security of the job (and the generous salary) he'd given her. Lately that meant taking up for him, even against people who had known him far longer than she had and supposedly had many more reasons to be devoted to him. Some of these were the most virulent, maybe because they had so many more better days to remember at Aces High. If only she could get through to Hiram, she thought, looking into Emile's cold green eyes. If only she could make him understand how badly he was eroding his own authority and credibility and respect, he would be able to halt this terrible decline, turn it around, and become Hiram Worchester, Grand Master Restauranteur, again. Right now, it was as if he were dying.

"What kind of situation?" she asked carefully.

Emile shook his head in a small, tight way that was more shudder than anything. "It's easier if you just come," he said. "What we need right now is quick, decisive action from someone who has the authority to take it. Please. Just come down with me."

Taking a deep breath, she forced composure on herself and went with Emile to the elevator.

The scene on the loading dock was like something out of a Marx Brothers movie, only not quite so funny-like something out of a remake of a Marx Brothers movie, she thought, watching the dock crew work furiously at reloading a truck while two employees of the Brightwater Fish Market kept unloading it (or perhaps re-unloading it, while a third Brightwater employee stood on a box nose to nose with Tomoyuki Shigeta, the new sushi chef. Brightwater's man was a short, stocky nat who appeared to have high blood pressure; Tomoyuki was a slender seven-foot ace who, during the period of the new moon, lived as a dolphin between the hours of eleven P.M. and three A.M. Together they looked like a comedy team rehearsing an act, although Brightwater's man was doing all the yelling, with Tomoyuki occasionally putting in a couple of soft words that seemed to provoke the other man to higher volume.

"What's going on here?" Jane asked in her most businesslike voice. No one heard her. She sighed, glanced at Emile, and then hollered, "Everybody, shut up!"

This time her voice cut through the air, and everyone did shut up, turning toward her almost as one.

"What's going on?" she asked again, looking up at Tomoyuki. He made a slight bow.

"Brightwater has delivered a shipment of bad fish. The entire load has gone over, and it went over quite some time ago." Tomoyuki's cultured, Boston Brahmin tones held no hostility or impatience. Jane thought he was the most professional person she had ever met, and she wished she were more like him. "Some time before it was loaded onto this truck for delivery here. Unless Hiram has another source, we will be unable to offer the twilight sushi bar this evening."

Jane tried to sniff the air without being obvious about it. All she could smell was overwhelming fish, as though the greater part of the ocean had been caught and dumped in the immediate vicinity. She could not tell whether the odor was good or bad, only that it was offensively strong, and if the load stayed on the dock much longer, it would go bad if it weren't already.

"Look, lady, this is fish and fish stinks," said Brightwater's man, rubbing his upper lip directly under his nose, as though to emphasize the point. "Now, I been deliverin' loads of stinkin' fish to Hiram Worchester and a good many other people for a long, long time, and the stuff always smells like this. I don't like the way it smells, either, but that's just how it is." He glanced up at Tomoyuki in disgust. "Fish is supposed to smell bad. Nobody's gonna tell me different. And nobody's gonna tell me to take my load back unless it's Hiram Worchester himself."

Jane nodded very slightly. "Are you aware that Mr. Worchester has empowered me to act as his agent for all business transactions having to do with the Aces High menu?"

Brightwater's man-Aaron was the name on his shirt pocket-tilted his wide head and looked at her through half-closed eyes. "Just say it, okay? Don't try and jack me around with double-talk, just look me in the eye and spit it out."

"What I meant," Jane said, slightly embarrassed, "is that any decision I make is a Hiram Worchester decision. He will back it one hundred percent."

Aaron's gaze traveled from Jane to Emile to one of the dock crew and came to rest on Tomoyuki, who stared down at him impassively. "Oh, for chrissakes, what am I lookin at you for? You'll back her up a hundred percent."

Tomoyuki turned to Jane, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

"Is the fish bad, Tom," she said quietly. "Yes. Definitely."

"Is that what you would tell Mr. Worchester?"

"In a minute."

She nodded. "Then it goes back to Brightwater. No arguments," she added as Aaron opened his mouth to protest. "If it isn't off this loading dock in fifteen minutes, I'll call the police."

Aaron's broad face twisted into an expression of hostile disbelief. "You'll call the cops? On what charge?"

This time Jane's sniff was as audible as she could make it. "Littering. Illegal dumping. Air pollution. Any of those would stick. Good day to you." She turned sharply and fled back into the building with her hand over her mouth and nose. The smell had suddenly become too nauseating to bear.

"Well done, Jane," Tom said as he and Emile caught up with her at the elevator. "Hiram himself couldn't have carried it off much better."

"Hiram couldn't carry it off, period," Emile muttered darkly.

"Don't, Emile," she said, and felt him staring at her in surprise.

"Don't what?"

The elevator doors slid open and they all got in.

"Don't badmouth Hiram. Mr. Worchester, I mean." She pushed the button for Aces High. "It's bad for morale." "Hiram's bad for morale, in case you hadn't noticed. If he'd been on top of things, Brightwater wouldn't have even thought of trying to pass their rotted stuff off on us. It just shows the word must be out on him, everyone must know he's no good anymore-"

"Please, Emile." She put a hand on his slender arm, looking into his face imploringly. "We all know something's wrong, but every time you or one of the other employees says something like that, it diminishes the chances of his being able to put it right again. He can't recover from whatever is wearing on him if we're all against him."

Emile actually looked mildly ashamed of himself. "God knows if anyone wishes him well, I do, Jane. But the way he is these days, he reminds me of a-well, a junkie," He shuddered. "I detest junkies. And all addicts."

"What you say is very true, Jane," said Tom, from the opposite corner of the elevator where he was standing with his arms folded against his sleek body, "but none of it gets us a twilight sushi bar for this evening, and Hiram never saw fit to let me in on his backup plan for this kind of eventuality. So unless you know what to do, or can find Hiram and get him to tell you, Aces High is actually going to renege on an offering. Which may well be its ruination. A little bird told me Mr. Dining Out has reservations here tonight, specifically to review the sushi bar for New York Gourmet. I don't have to tell you what it would mean for Aces High to get a bad review."

Jane rubbed her forehead tiredly. This must be what they call black comedy, she thought. When everything just gets worse and worse and you think you might start laughing and never stop till they take you away.

Casually Tom moved to the other side of the elevator to stand near Emile. Just as casually she turned away so they could touch without her seeing. No one was supposed to know they were lovers, but she wasn't sure why they were so fanatical about keeping it secret. Something to do with AIDS perhaps, she thought. The perception of all gays as AIDS carriers had brought renewed persecution to homosexuals. She could almost be glad that Sal hadn't lived to see that.

"I can find Hiram," she said after a bit. "I'm pretty sure I know where he is. Emile, you keep order until I get back." She handed Emile the spare key to Hiram's office. "You won't need this, but just in case of something. When I come back, we'll have a sushi bar. The selection might be a little more limited than we'd like, but we can carry it off if we do it with enough… um… panache. Can we, Tom?"

"I am panache," Tomoyuki said, his face completely impassive while Emile suppressed a smile. The sight of the two of them made her feel suddenly and unbearably alone.

"Good," she said miserably. "I'll just get my purse and be on my way." The elevator stopped to let them off at the Aces High dining room. "With any luck you'll hear from me in about an hour."

"And without any luck?" said Emile, pressing, but, she could tell, not unkindly.

"Without any luck," she said thoughtfully, "do you think you could get sick, Tom?"

"I could have done that to begin with," he said, a little curtly.

"Yes, but then we would not have tried. Would we." She tried to look up at him as if they were eye to eye. "We'll continue to try until there's nothing to try for. Do you understand?"

Both men nodded.

"And one more thing," she said as they started to turn away. "From now on, refer to him as Mr. Worchester." Emile frowned slightly. "To everyone, even to me. It will help morale. Even ours."

Emile bit his lip tensely and then, to her relief, nodded. "Understood, Jane. Or should that be Ms. Dow?"

She let her gaze drop for a moment. "I'm not power mad, Emile. If you really understand, you know that. I'm trying to save him. Mr. Worchester. I owe him that." She looked up at him again. "We all do, in our own particular ways."

Tom was staring at her, and for the first time she saw a fondness in his smooth, cold face. Feeling awkward, she excused herself to retrieve her purse from Hiram's office and call a cab. There was a sense of victory within her as she rode down in the elevator again. The temperamental Tomoyuki liked her, no small achievement, and she had managed to get Emile on her side, at least for a while. He must like her, too, she thought, almost giddy. Perhaps it was a terrible weakness to want to be liked so much, but she certainly was getting a lot accomplished because of it. Or she would if she could just get Hiram to come through on the promises she'd made, or implied.

The cab was waiting in front of the entrance for her; she climbed in and gave the driver an address in Jokertown, ignoring the double-take he gave her. I know, I don't look like much beyond a bite for the Big Bad Wolf, she thought at him acidly as she settled back in the seat. Wouldn't you be surprised to know that I've killed people-and that I could return you to the dust, too, if you gave me any trouble.

She suppressed the thought, feeling ashamed. She'd lied when she'd said she wasn't power mad. Of course she was-it was hard not to be when you had an ace ability. It was the dark side of her talent, and she had to struggle against that all the time, or she might become like that awful Astronomer, or poor Fortunato. She wondered briefly where he was now and if he remembered the way she did.

They stopped at a red light and a ragged joker with enormous donkey ears threw himself halfway onto the hood to wash the windshield. Blocking out the sound of the cab driver's yelling at him, she tried to compose herself for the inevitable confrontation with Hiram. She wasn't supposed to have this address, and she wasn't supposed to know whose address it was. Hiram might just fire her and throw her out without letting her get a word in edgewise, while Ezili stood behind him laughing.

Jane dreaded facing Ezili-Ezili Rouge everyone called her. The scuttlebutt around Aces High was that she had been some kind of superprostitute in Haiti whom Hiram had 'rescued' from the crushing poverty of the slums-i.e., she was virtually an ace in the sex department and any man (or woman) who had ever had the experience was spoiled for anyone else. And Hiram had supposedly had the experience. There were other rumors-she was the ex-toy of a superdrug kingpin, in hiding; she was a drug kingpin herself; she had blackmailed Hiram or somebody into bringing her to the States; and any number of other things.

Whatever the truth might have been, Jane didn't like her and the feeling was mutual. The one time Ezili had come to Aces High, it had been hate at first sight for both of them. She'd been completely taken aback by the overbearing heat that seemed to pour out of her, and she was completely intimidated by her strange eyes-what should have been whites were blood red instead. Ezili haughtily addressed her as Ms. Dow, mispronouncing it to rhyme with cow instead of low, with a sneering intonation that produced an instant rise in her. What made it worse was the fact that Hiram really did seem to be under her influence. Whenever he had looked at her or even mentioned her, Jane could read a bizarre mixture of desire, subservience, and helplessness in his face, although occasionally an expression of pure loathing surfaced, making Jane suspect that at heart Hiram really didn't like Ezili any more than she did.

"Hey, gorgeous!"

She looked up, startled, to see the joker pressing his face against the back window.

"Get on outta that cab, baby, and I'll take you to heaven! I got more than just the ears of a donkey!"

The light changed and the cab lurched forward, knocking the joker away. In spite of herself Jane found herself almost wanting to laugh. There was no comparison between the joker's crudeness and the genteel come-ons she politely turned away at Aces High, but for some reason something about it had touched her. Maybe just because it was so funny, or because the joker was a victim refusing to kneel to his affliction, or because he hadn't actually come out and said what else it was he had. Someone earthier than she would have laughed out loud. I'm just a hothouse flower, she thought, a bit ruefully. A hothouse killer-flower.

The cab turned a corner sharply and went down two blocks before pulling over in the middle of the third. "This's it," the driver said sullenly. "You mind hurrying?"

She looked at the meter and pushed several bills through the slot in front of her. "Keep the change." The door was stuck, but the driver showed no inclination to get out and help her. Disgusted, she kicked it open on the second try and got out. "Just for that, I won't bother telling you to have a nice day," she muttered as the cab roared away from the curb, and then she turned to look at the building in front of her.

It had been renovated at least twice, but nothing had helped; it was just plain ugly and shabby though obviously solid. It wasn't going to fall down unless the Great Ape kicked it down, except, she remembered, the Great Ape didn't exist anymore. Five stories, and the place she wanted was on the top floor. She'd grown up in an apartment on the top floor of a seven-story tenement building, the kind with no elevators, and she'd sprinted up and down all seven flights without stopping several times every day of her young life. Five floors wouldn't give her any problem, she thought.

Her sprinting gave out in the middle of the second flight, but she did manage to keep going without pause, albeit more slowly, catching her breath on each landing. The darkness was relieved by the frosted skylight directly over the squaredoff spiral of the stairs, but the light was anemic and depressing.

There was only one apartment on the top floor. Hiram might as well have had his name on it, she thought as she paused at the head of the stairs, panting a little. Instead of the drab, grayish door that all the other apartments had, there was a custom hardwood job with an ornate brass knocker and an old-fashioned handle instead of a doorknob. The lock above it was completely modern and secure but made to look just as refined. Hiram, Hiram, she thought sadly, does it pay to advertise in a place like this?

What would he say when he opened the door and saw her? What would he think? It didn't matter. She had to make him see what was happening because then it would save him-save his life. It would be a bit different from the way he had saved hers, but Aces High was his life, and if she could save that for him, then she would have repaid him for her own life. The balance between them would be restored after all, whereas before she hadn't thought there'd be any way to do that.

No way but one, and she couldn't. The feeling wasn't there. She knew Hiram would have welcomed her regardless, that he would be considerate and tender and funny and loving and everything a woman could want in a lover. But ultimately it would be horribly unjust to him, and when it came to its inevitable end, it would be painful and scarring to both of them. Hiram deserved better. Such a good man deserved someone whose devotion would match his, someone who would enter fully into every part of his life and give him all the pleasures of attachment. He needed someone who could not live without him.

Instead of someone who would have died without him? her mind whispered nastily, and she felt another hard pang of guilt. All right, all right, I'm a bitch and an ingrate, she scolded herself silently. Maybe it's some fatal flaw in me that

I don't love him, as good as he is. Maybe if gratitude could make me fall in love with him, I'd be a better person.

And maybe he wouldn't be holed up in a Jokertown apartment with poison like Ezili Rouge, either.

God, Jane thought. She had to talk to Hiram. She couldn't believe he would really want to keep company with such a creature. She had to help him get away from her, find some way to bar her from Aces High. Whatever she had to do to help him, anything, anything at all, she would do it especially if saving Hiram meant she never had to see that woman again.

She forced herself to walk along the landing to the apartment and gave the brass knocker three sharp taps. To her dismay, it was Ezili who answered.

Ezili was dressed, if that was the word for it, in a whisper of transparent gold material over nothing. Jane looked steadily into Ezili's face, refusing to let her gaze fall below the woman's chin, and said in her driest, most controlled voice, "I've come for Hiram. I know that he's here, and it's imperative that I see him."

A slow hot smile spread across Ezili's face as if Jane had said the one thing in the world she could possibly have wanted to hear. Swaying a little, as though dancing to some inner music she moved back and gestured gracefully for ane to enter.

The apartment was a surprise. The living room had been carefully decorated in a completely Haitian motif that also reflected Hiram's high tastes. Jane found herself unable to look at anything except the deep brown carpet, exactly like the one in Hiram's office. The place was so Hiram, but Hiram changed, Hiram the stranger who had come back from the tour. With Ezili, who was moving leisurely around her like some sort of predatory creature whose favorite dinner had walked obligingly into its claws.

"Hiram's in the bedroom," she said. "I guess if it's imperative that you see him, then you can see him there." Standing in front of Jane, she lifted her arms to run her hands along the back of her own neck, practically thrusting her large breasts into Jane's face. Jane maintained her steady, even gaze, refusing to look. Something shiny flashed on Ezili's right hand as she brought it around.

Blood. Jane's severe composure almost broke. Blood? What in God's name could Hiram have gotten himself into? Ezili's reddened hand undulated through the air in a pointing gesture. "That way. Just walk in and you'll see him. In bed."

Jane marched past her to the shadowy doorway and stepped into the bedroom. She cleared her throat, started to speak, and then froze.

He was not in bed but kneeling on the floor next to it in an attitude of prayer. But he was definitely not praying.

At first she thought she had surprised him in the act of giving a piggyback ride to a small child, and it flashed through her mind that it was his child by Ezili, the pregnancy, birth, and growth drastically foreshortened by the wild card infection, which had also made the child a hideously deformed joker.

She took a step toward him, her eyes filling with tears of pity. "Oh, Hiram, I…"

The look on Hiram's face went from rage to agonized sorrow, and she saw what it really was on his back. "H-H-Hiram…"

Her voice died away as a bizarrely alien expression of curiosity spread over Hiram's face. It was not the expression of a father interrupted while tending to his child, and no child would have been fastened to a father's neck by the mouth. The wizened creature on Hiram's back quivered in a way that reminded her of Ezili's movements. Even as she turned to bolt for the door, she knew it was too late.

She thought she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds when she hit the floor.

Later on, when she thought of it, when she could bring herself to think of it, she knew that it could have been at most half a minute before Hiram moved from the bed to where she was anchored to the floor on her stomach. It was completely silent in the apartment for what seemed to Jane like an excruciating stretch of time before Hiram finally rose and came to stand over her where she lay with water pouring off her, soaking her clothes and the carpet.

She tried to say something to him, but all the breath had been knocked out of her by the fall. In a minute, when she could talk, she would tell him he hadn't had to do that, that no matter what kind of trouble he was in, she wouldn't give him away to anyone, and she would try to help him in any way she could-

There was a quiet rustle as Hiram lay down on the carpet next to her, facing her with that same peculiar expression of curiosity. He doesn't recognize me, she thought with horrified amazement. The creature was still on his back, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the sight.

"In a few moments you won't find me so hard to look at," Hiram said. His voice sounded strange, as if someone were doing a creditable imitation of him.

"Hi-Hiram," she managed in a whisper. "I-I w-wouldn't-h-hurt-"

Small fingers touched her back, and she realized what was happening. She opened her eyes,

"No, Hiram," she begged, her voice getting stronger, "don't let it-don't let it-"

Hiram's curious look had vanished. In its place was an expression so griefstricken, she automatically tried to reach out to him, but the weight barely let her move her hand. He looked into her eyes and she had the impression he was struggling with something.

The thing was fully on her back now, nestling in; she could feel something moving along her neck.

Suddenly the weight was gone. Tears glittered in Hiram's eyes, and she thought she heard him whisper, Run.

And then something stabbed her neck.

She must have blacked out at the first contact; she felt as though she were swimming through the air, or being carried to and fro by air currents. The weight's gone, she thought, Hiram's made me weightless and I'm floating through the room. Then her vision cleared and she saw she was still lying on the floor. Hiram was reaching for her, intending to gather her to him in an embrace.

"Stop:" It was her voice, but she had no control over it. Something else was speaking through her. The panic that rose in her at the realization transmuted into a mild pleasure that began to grow more intense.

Hiram hesitated for a moment and then continued to pull her close.

"I said, stop!" The command in her voice stopped Hiram cold. From the last tiny part of her that was still herself, Jane watched as her hand lifted and paused; a small waterfall congealed out of the air and splashed down on the carpet. A wave of pleasure swept through her, overruling that little bit of her that was horrified. It was as though she had been split into two people, one very large one full of irresistible pleasure and energetic appetites, and one very, very small Jane Dow confined in a cage and buried too deeply to surface and regain control, but able to observe-and feel-everything the large one did. The large one, she realized, was the creature on her back.

She got to her feet and stretched, feeling her muscles. Hiram sat up and watched her with hurt, suspicious eyes. "You promised," he said sulkily, as though he were a little boy deprived of a treat.

"I promised you pleasure beyond anything in your artificial, white world," the creature said with her voice. "You have that. Please do not disturb me when I am getting the feel of a new mount." The little tiny Jane gave a surge of outrage but was quickly subdued. Somewhere in her mind she felt the presence of humiliation and panic, but it was so far away, it might as well have been happening to someone else. The pure pleasure coursing through her body in everstrengthening waves, that was the only thing really happening to her.

"Why not?" Hiram said, sounding almost whiny. "Haven't I been good to you? Don't I give you everything and everyone you ask for? I even gave you her. I wanted her all to myself, but I didn't hold out on you."

The creature used Jane's laugh. There was another surge of outrage that turned to pleasure even more quickly than before. "You're in love with this little white flower?"

Hiram dropped his gaze for a moment and muttered something she couldn't hear. It might have been yes. There was a part of her that was important to, but the rising pleasure displaced everything. Nothing could be important next to that.

"Ah, but you love me more. Don't you."

Hiram raised his head. "Yes," he said tonelessly.

Jane felt the creature move her hand to touch Hiram's head with the benevolence of superiority, noblesse oblige, and every movement sent new waves of pleasure through her.

She had not thought it possible that just simple movement could suffuse her with pure ecstasy. That was the only word for it: ecstasy. "And I love you, too, of course." The creature was feeling around in her mind for all her thoughts of Hiram. She had a faint, distant sense of wanting to shut him off, evict him, how dare he-but the pleasure. No. He could take what he wanted, take anything he wanted, take it all if it meant that she could go on feeling like this. "How could I not love such tastes and appetites, such a capacity to enjoy life?" The creature probed more deeply, and Jane thought she must be ringing like a bell, vibrating with heaven. "I'm quite-attached to you. I couldn't live without you."

She knelt down beside him and touched his face. Hiram looked as though he were about to cry. "Is it hard for you to hear those words from this mouth?" The creature poured its knowledge into her mind and she wanted to be sorrowful, but it seemed that even the chemical reactions in her brain cells detonated more pleasure within her. How could someone feel so much of this without dying, she wondered. Perhaps she was dying. If so, that was fine, she would die, too, if it felt this good. Whatever, she promised the creature, begging it to like her, love her. Whatever. Always. She was telling it something it already knew, and such a superior form of life could hardly be bothered with her supplications, but she made the offering anyway. It deserved no less.

"We must always do whatever is in our best interests," the creature told Hiram through her, and she felt herself wiggling inwardly like a delighted puppy because it had chosen to acknowledge her by using her words. "Hiram, my own. This is a mount with everything to discover. Everything." Yes, everything, anything, she gibbered. Whatever. Always. "This will be a new pleasure for me, the pleasure of discovery, of gratification finally taken." The creature using her face to smile was a sun shining within her. "Call Ezili to us."

Hiram went to the doorway. Jane pulled herself up onto the bed, enjoying each separate part of the movement and all of it together. How was it she had never realized what a good body she had, how much feeling it was capable of? Well, she would not waste any more time. The world was full of pleasure.

"Ah. As I thought."

She turned at the sound of Ezili's voice and laughed. "Ezili-je-rouge, my own. See this unexpected pleasure." Jane stood up, rejoicing in the sensation, and smoothed her hands over her hips.

Ezili walked over to her and looked her up and down. "Does it please you, then?"

She was looking into Ezili's face as though it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. How could she have ever thought Ezili's eyes were evil? The red in those eyes was pleasurable to see; seeing was another act of pleasure, and seeing Ezili was even more pleasure because she pleased him so much. She could only love Ezili helplessly because Ezili made her Master so happy, and her Master's happiness meant more ecstasy for herself. "It pleases me so much."

Jane's hand moved toward Ezili and then paused, shaking a little. Her vision swam and darkened, and for a moment she was thinking. What am I doing, no, stop, STOP!

And then the pleasure was back, bringing with it the anticipation of even greater pleasures, and her hand was moving on Ezili's breast. Ezili quickly pulled down the front of her dress.

Jane looked over at Hiram with a smile. "Here's something I bet you never thought you'd see." Moisture condensed out of the air and fell on herself and Ezili in a gentle mist, moving over them selectively. She bent her head to Ezili's breast. The wet flesh was soft and firm and very warm. Hiram made a small noise. It registered on her only as the vague noting that hearing, too, could turn the pleasure up higher and higher.

Absolute pleasure, she discovered, could make a person swoon. At least it did her. Sometimes it seemed she was nearly at the point of blacking out, and then she would find herself following a smooth curve of hip, or gazing down at Ezili's face. The pleasure pulsing through her would grow again until it overwhelmed her.

Once she found herself staring into Hiram's eyes while Ezili knelt before her, and she felt an almost psychic connection with him. He was hungry for her, for Ezili, for both of them, but even more for the thing on her back. He felt a bit bewildered and abandoned. He knew this pleasure, not just the pleasure of Ezili's body but of this contact, the ecstasy of the kiss. The kiss. Ezili's mouth, skilled as it was, paled next to the real kiss.

Absently she pushed Ezili away and gave herself over fully to the creature, obeying its silent commands, reveling in what it could do for her all by itself.

Eventually she found herself languid on the bed, drifting in half-consciousness, still aglow with pleasure. She was aware of the way the covers felt against her skin, of the wetness between her thighs and the water still slowly caressing her body, of the murmur of Hiram and Ezili's talking. It should have been uncomfortable with her Master on her back (Ti Malice, her mind told her, and she accepted the name), but it felt perfectly natural there, as though it were something that always should have been there and had been missing until now. She sighed with contentment. How had she gone all her life without the comfort of the weight there, the sweet pressure at her neck? She had been incomplete before, pathetically unfinished. Now she was whole, more than whole; perhaps even more than human.

Yes, much more than human. She had been waiting for this all her life without knowing it, to be ridden by this creature of beauty that could bring her spirit to new heights of awareness. This was living a plane above human. All the new thoughts it gave her… but most of all, the pleasure. She had been made for pleasure, she thought happily; how fortunate that she had been able to find that out.

"Ezili," her voice said. Somewhere out of the range of her vision she felt Ezili snap to attention.

"I have been waiting," Ezili said, sounding acquiescent and yet petulant all at once.

"It is not done yet."

Ezili sighed. A moment later she felt the touch of Ezili's hand.

"No, not that. Is your traveling cloak here? We wish to… travel." Jane heard herself laugh softly.

"What about me?" Hiram said.

"You can help me dress." Jane's hand lifted in his direction. "Come, help me up."

The traveling cloak was a long, flowing cape with a cowl and a large collar in layered rules. The rules hid the hump the creature would have made under the more conventional covering of a sweater or a jacket. The cloak itself was a bit ostentatious, but on the streets of wild card New York, it wouldn't cause much comment. The shrouded forms of jokers hiding some prominent feature or another had been commonplace for years.

Ezili pulled up the cowl so that it hid Jane's face completely. Jane gathered the cloak about herself, enjoying the small pleasure of the way it touched her.

"Somewhere interesting," she told Ezili. "Something in a man this time."

"And I just stay here and wait for you?" Hiram said. His tone was satisfyingly servile.

"You know I will come back for you later. Be here."

"Yes," said Hiram. "Always." He kept his gaze on the carpet. "I'll phone for the car."

Jane was delighted to see that Hiram was traveling by private limo these days, with a driver who left the soundproofed partition up at all times. It gave her the privacy she wanted, with Ezili or anyone else.

It was like being a queen, Jane thought; a queen or an empress. Now she could understand what it must have been like to be the Astronomer, the way he was. She had been calling him poison and resisting certain aspects of her own power-it was to laugh. What she had thought of as evil was just a matter of power. There wasn't really even such a thing as evil or good-only power and the pleasure that it brought. And anything could be sacrificed for that, anything at all, and everything if necessary. Whatever. Always.

They passed a newsstand and she had a glimpse of a magazine with a picture of Jumpin' Jack Flash on the cover. Something twanged within her. How nice it would have been to have him now. But there were plenty of good-looking men in the world, red-haired or not. And what did good-looking have to do with it anyway? There were whispers about jokers, about how sometimes the more grotesque the deformity, the more endowed and skilled they were for certain things…

Hey, baby, I got more than just the ears of a donkey! She gave Ezili an attention-getting pinch, once more generating a burst of pleasure just in the movement, and told her where she wanted to go. Then she sat back while Ezili told the driver, experiencing the ecstasy of just breathing in and out. In and out.

If the joker with the donkey ears recognized her, he gave no sign. He stood gawking with his squirt bottle in one hand and a filthy rag in the other as Jane beckoned through the open door to him. For a moment he looked as though he were going to climb in, but when he saw Ezili, he suddenly bolted. Surprise and anger surged through Jane, and that, too, was great pleasure to feel. From now on she would feel every emotion there was to feel, anything that pleased her Master. Whatever. Always.

Ezili shut the door and told the driver to go on. "Don't worry," she purred, to Jane or to Ti Malice, it didn't matter. Sound was exquisite. "We'll find another that isn't all talk."

The next joker they found was eyeless, but he had no problem climbing into the back of the limo. Jane studied him; his head was elongated, bullet-shaped, with just a blank expanse of skin running from the straight hairline to his nose. Seeing deformity was as delicious as seeing Ezili naked.

The joker sniffed suspiciously and turned his face to her. "How many of you are there?" he said in a ridiculously high voice. Jane reached down between his legs and he jumped. Ezili held him back against the seat.

"Hey, hey," the joker shrilled. "You don't have to pin me down, I know what you want." He began to undo his baggy trousers.

Her Master rode her awe as if it were a wave. "Is that… standard equipment?" she was allowed to ask.

The joker gave a high laugh. "It is on this model. God bless the wild card, hey, ladies?"

Her Master bent her head for her; even the anticipation of pleasure was a whole pleasure in itself. As was having Ezili watch.

The bar was dark, except for the hot, white spotlight on the small stage where a many-breasted hermaphroditic joker and a normal man did unusual things to each other in time to music. Jane watched through her new eyes, embracing the experience of curiosity and interest. Even more interesting was the way the other patrons cruised her and Ezili. They moved past their corner table, ostensibly on their way to the bar or to the rest room, slowing to make eye contact. It was exhilirating to find she could dismiss someone with a look. They all wanted her; some of them stared at Ezili, but they all looked at her, nestled in her cloak, hiding the spirit of power on her back. They knew, she thought. They all knew that she was the real presence and Ezili wasn't much more than her servant, if that. Servant to the thing on her back, yes, but it was on her back. No matter what happened later, it was on her back now, and even if it should leave, if she should never have it again, she had been the Queen of Pleasure for a little while and she could not imagine not feeling that way ever again.

There was a young man standing in front of the table expectantly. Her Master told Jane to appraise him-skinny, young, probably not more than seventeen or eighteen. No visible distinguishing characteristics other than his shaggy red hair. A little pretty boy. She leaned forward.

"You're blocking our view. Why don't you sit down?" She indicated the chair beside her.

The boy sat down, staring at her intently. Then, without a word, he slid off the chair and knelt in front of her. When she pulled up her dress, she knew it was the creature moving her arms, but she poured all her enthusiasm into it, going with him joyfully, accepting the pleasure of her fingers twisting in the boy's hair. Red hair, she thought dreamily; I'll pretend it's him, Jumpin' Jack Flash…

There was a mild ripple in the pleasure running through her, as though something in her had been distracted. Without volition she looked over her shoulder at Ezili.

"It's starting to bore me," she heard herself say in a flat voice. "Perhaps it doesn't fight me enough, or perhaps it just doesn't have enough ideas of its own. Take the cape, Ezili." Ezili's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness.

"Move carefully, my own."

Ezili whispered something in French and slipped under the side of the cloak, putting one arm around Jane.

Jane held tighter to the boy's head, feeling something like hurt surprise. It was leaving her? Now? Even as she thought it, she felt it withdraw from her neck. There was a moment of sharp pain, followed by a sudden blankness, as if a switch had been thrown to off. She was aware of the creature's moving from her back to Ezili's, and she wanted to turn and grab it back, but she couldn't move.

And the cloak was resettled around Ezili's shoulders and she was now the Queen of Pleasure.

Ezili rose from her chair as if she were levitating and looked down at Jane with scornful triumph.

"Why?" Jane pleaded. "I thought-I thought-"

Ezili stroked Jane's head roughly, as if she were a dog. "Old favorites are not forgotten. New pleasures bring great thrills, yes, but the old favorites such as this mount, it knows how to please me. And the richness of its appetites-you have far to go, little mount, before you can compare with this." Ezili cupped her hands around her breasts and held them out proudly.

Jane turned away, starting to tremble. Ezili bent down and put her mouth close to her ear. "Goes right to the pleasure place in your brain, did you know that?" she said in her own, hateful Ezili-voice. "Yeah. Maybe you can get hold of some drug does the same. Might get you through the hours without him. You can try that, might help. And maybe you be a lot nicer to me now, white meat. If you want the kiss again." She thrust her tongue into Jane's ear, and Jane gave a little screech, slapping at her. Ezili laughed and moved around the table, going toward the exit.

"Wait!" Jane shouted over the music. "Where are you going?", Ezili paused, sneering at her. "Out for some real action."

"What about me?" she cried desperately.

Ezili laughed again; the cape swirled gracefully as she headed for the exit.

Jane sat frozen for a moment. Drown her! she thought, but her mind shied away from the necessary concentration. The pleasure that had been thrumming all through her like the vibrations from some smooth-running engine were gone, and in its place was a terrible hollowness as if, when the creature had pulled away from her, it had taken everything inside of her with it.

Then she looked down and saw the boy between her legs, grinning up at her, his mouth and chin shining wetly in the faint light.

"Get away!" she shrieked and beat at him madly, horrified at herself and him and at the way the creature had left her.

"Hey, hey!" the boy yelled, trying to fend off her flailing hands. "Handyman, help! Cunt gone crazy!"

Several arms grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Let me go!" She tried to twist away and the arms hugged her tighter, threatening to crush her rib cage. She tried to call water to dash it into her captor's face, but her ability seemed to have deserted her; there was only hollowness where it had once been. Panic jumped in her. "Help, police, somebody!"

"Shut your fucking mouth, cunt," said a deep male voice close to her ear, the same ear where Ezili had stuck her tongue. Jane squirmed in revulsion and the arms squeezed again painfully. She forced herself to go limp. After a moment the arms relaxed slightly, ready to tighten again if she started to struggle.

"Now what were you saying about the police? Maybe you seen a crime being committed?"

Jane looked around. They were all staring at her, all the people at the little tables spread through the room, but there was no emotion in most of the faces. On stage the hermaphrodite and the man had paused, sitting on a platform with legs entwined, squinting out at the room in annoyance. The hermaphrodite shielded his/her eyes from the spotlights with one hand, searching for the cause of the disturbance.

"Hey, do you fucking mind?" s/he yelled, his/her face turned in Jane's direction. "I'm trying to concentrate up here. You think this she-male shit's easy or something?"

"Go fuck yourself!" someone yelled hoarsely. "That's the late show, sweetheart!"

"Okay, cunt, let's go," said the male voice in Jane's ear. "You ruined the show," The arms lifted her and dragged her across the back of the room to a different exit than the one Ezili had taken. The red-haired kid ran to open the door, and Jane was shoved out into a narrow, dirty alley. She hit the ground on hands and knees, crying out in rage and pain.

"Blow, cunt. And don't bring it around here again."

She scrambled up, ready to protest, and then jumped back, falling against some garbage cans. The man standing in the doorway was no taller than she was, but his torso was wide and misshapen, to accommodate the three pairs of arms.

Behind him the red-haired boy glowered at her and wiped his mouth showily. "She didn't pay, Handyman," he said.

The man glanced at the kid and then came at Jane, moving more quickly than she had thought he would have been able to. "Nobody stiffs one of my boys," he said, "especially not some skinny fucking cunt who yells for the cops. Give it up, dickhole, and you're free to go." Before she could run, he was on her, running all of his hands over her body in a rough search. "Come on, where do you keep your wad?" One hand clamped between her legs. Jane opened her mouth to scream, and another hand clamped over it while four hands continued to pat her down.

"Shut up. You keep it down there, in the safety deposit box? I'll give you one chance to get it yourself and then I go in after it."

Jane stared at him pleadingly; he pulled the hand at her mouth away.

"Well?"

"I don't have anything," she whispered. "They left me here with nothing."

The man picked her up and tossed her away. She landed heavily on her side in a spill of garbage.

"Tough stuff, cunt. But I'll let you off with a warning. This time. Don't bring it back here, I mean it."

Jane raised herself slowly to a sitting position, drawing her legs up protectively. The man started to turn away and then feigned a lunge at her. She gave a small yelp and he laughed at her, the red-haired boy joining in from where he stood at the doorway, hanging on the jamb by one arm as though this were some idle, late-summer afternoon and he was being entertained by the antics of his friends. In the light it was obvious that he was younger than she'd thought. Revulsion and pity for him began to well up in her and suddenly cut off as it met the great hollowness of Ti Malice's absence from her body and mind. She burst into tears and something in her gave. Suddenly she was covered with water.

"What the fuck is that?" the man shouted at her. "What the fuck are you?" He backed away from her. The sight of the six-armed joker flinching from her water-calling power gave her small, bitter amusement; she concentrated and this time found the power, pulling a couple of gallons of water out of the air to fling in his face. Then, while he was still sputtering and roaring with anger, she got up and ran.

She called the water out of her clothing as best she could, but the power was weak and she stayed moderately damp as she wandered aimlessly through Jokertown in the deepening twilight. Aimless? Not quite lifeless, perhaps, lifeless and empty, but on the lookout for Hiram's car. Perhaps Ezili had gone back to Hiram, or Hiram had gone back to Aces High. If she called Hiram, he might send someone out for her-

The memory of what had happened with Hiram was like a fist in her stomach. She could see his face, the sorrow, the anger, the despair, that alien curiosity, and then Ezili, Ezili and herself…

She bent over, choking and gagging, unmindful of the stares from people passing by. Oh, God, how could she have, what had made her-with Ezili, Ezili-she must have been mad, crazed, possessed

Someone bumped into her and she staggered against the side of a building, sobbing into her hands. Possessed, yes, but now it was gone, leaving her worse than alone. The hollowness inside of her seemed to swell, and she had an image of herself being sucked down a huge drain. To live without the fullness the creature brought her, to exist with no pleasure at all, was unbearable.

Trembling doubled her over again and she sobbed harder. More. She needed more, she needed to feel herself whole again, nestled in the glow of pleasure that only the creature could give her, and if she had to go to Ezili again, to Ezili and Hiram together, if she had to go to that bar and walk up onstage to the hermaphrodite and the man and the six-armed joker and the red-haired boy all at the same time, it would not have been too much to ask of herself, if the thing asked her to cut her own throat at the end of it-

"Hey. Hey. Easy, now."

Gentle hands were on her shoulders. She twisted around, desperate hope rising and then plummeting to despair as she looked into the grotesque clown face. "Go away," she said, pushing at the strange man feebly.

"There, now, I'm just trying to help you. Don't let the face put you off. I know it's silly. Just my bad luck to be in makeup when the virus showed, now I can't get it off. Not the worst thing that could happen, I guess, just looking at you." The man hauled her to her feet and stood her against the wall, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief. The sadness in his eyes made the clown white and the big red nose even more absurd, but she didn't feel much like laughing.

"Go away," she moaned, "you can't help me, no one can help me, only him. I have to find him." Weeping, she looked down at her arms. Dry. She touched her face; it, too, was dry. She couldn't even call her own tears anymore. Had that been the last of it, back there in the alley?

"Water!" she cried. "I want the water!"

"Shh, shh, we'll get you some water," said the clown man, trying to hold her still.

"Please! He's taken the water!" She collapsed against the man, crying weakly, but still without tears.

Curled up on the bed in the fetal position, she heard the clown man talking to one of the clinic nurses without really listening to what he was saying. Every so often her body gave an uncontrollable shudder, but she remained dry. Dried up, she thought; all dried up without him, without the kiss and the pleasure and the fullness.

".. something about water," the clown man was saying. "Hysterical," said the nurse. "Hysteria seems to be the condition of the moment around here."

"Nah, it's more than that. I've got a bad feeling. She oughta be watched."

The nurse sighed. "Maybe, but we just don't have the people. The new cases are coming in almost faster than we can log them, all jokers and worse. If we don't find the cause, the whole city could get infected. You're running a pretty bad risk yourself, Boze."

The clown man grunted. "What's a joker got to lose?"

"You'd know the answer to that if you saw the locked ward."

"That's just a small locked ward you got here. Out there, it's a big locked ward, and we're all locked into it. And when I walk around it, I just see my brother again, turned inside out. Screaming every time his heart beat. Hell, you don't have the people to stay with her, I'll stay with her, watch her for signs that she's been infected."

A fresh bout of shuddering racked Jane's body; she tried to quell it and listen to what they were saying.

"That's big of you, Boze, but just from the quick exam we gave her in the emergency room, I'd say she's suffering from drug withdrawal, not a new wild card infection."

The idea seemed to flood Jane's mind with a bright light. She sat up and turned to the nurse. "Drugs. I need a drug." The nurse glanced at the clown man. "What'd I tell you, Boze? Just another junkie courting AIDS."

"I am NOT a junkie, you bitch, I am an ACE and I demand to see Dr. Tachyon AT ONCE!"The scream tore out of Jane's throat, leaving it raw; she imagined she could hear her words echoing all through the clinic, reaching all the way to Tachyon himself, wherever he was.

And apparently she had imagined it right; a few moments later Tachyon appeared in the doorway, alarm large on his drawn, tired face.

The nurse started to speak to him; he waved away her words and went to the bed, taking Jane's hand in his. "Water Lily," he said, his voice full of compassion. "What has happened to you?"

This undid her completely and she clung to him, sobbing dryly. He held her, letting her get it all out, and then gently pushed her back down on the bed.

"Don't leave me like this!" she cried, grabbing at his hands.

"Shh, Jane, I won't leave you, not for a few minutes anyway."

She saw that he was not just weary but near complete exhaustion; then she brushed the fact aside. He was here to help her. He had to help her. It was all his fault to begin with, and if that meant he had to work exhausted once in a while, that was his tough stuff, which was nothing compared to what she was going through.

"I need a drug," she said shakily. " I was given somethingit wasn't my fault, I didn't want to take it, it was forced on me. I don't want it anymore but I have to have it. I might die without it. I don't know-"

"What was it?" he asked quietly, pushing her down as she tried to rise.

"I don't know!" she snapped impatiently. "Just something, it goes right to the pleasure place, it makes-it does-I had to-but you must have a drug. Something you can make from your world. Something that will cure me, or replace it, like methadone-"

"You need methadone?" His expression was stricken. "No, no, not methadone, something like methadone, but from your world, something that will make me stop craving-" Tachyon wiped a hand over his face. "Please. You're babbling. Please try to calm down. If you're addicted to a drug I can send you to another clinic-"

"It's not a drug!" she screamed, and Tachyon put his hands over his ears. "I'm sorry, oh, I'm so sorry," she went on in a whisper, "but it's not a drug, not exactly, but it's like a drug-"

Tachyon pulled away from her, pressing his palms against his forehead. "Jane, please. I've lost count of the number of hours I've been up. I can't even put forth my mind to calm you. The nurse will give you a sedative and we'll transfer you to another hospital."

"No, please, don't send me away!" She grabbed at his arm and he twisted away from her.

"You can't stay here. We need the beds for the new cases."

"But… But…"

Tachyon pulled away from her firmly. "The nurse can give the name of a clinic not far from here. They can help you. Or just outside, I'm sure there's someone who can give you the name of a source, if that's what you're really after." He got up and walked wearily to the door, pausing to look back at her. "I had expected you to end up differently, Water Lily. You must be a great disappointment to Hiram Worchester." He was gone.

Speechless, Jane fell back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. He was tired, so exhausted that he saw her as just another drug addict. A great disappointment to Hiram Worchester. At the thought of Hiram the craving burst upon her with an intensity that brought her up out of the bed and sent her charging for the doorway.

Just at the threshold she collided with the nurse. "Whoa, wait a minute," the nurse said, thrusting a piece of paper at her. "Dr. Tachyon told me to give you the name of this clinic-"

Jane snatched the paper from her and stared at it, trying to drown it in a gout of water that would turn it to mush, but the terrible need blocked her again. She looked up at the nurse.

"No drug?" she said belligerently.

The nurse's eyes were hard. "Not here, lady."

She could still call a little water, albeit in a rather conventional way. She spat on the paper and flung it in the nurse's face. Then she turned and ran down the hall to the exit.

On the fourth number she dialed, the answering machine message cut off and a low voice said, "It better be good." Jane's voice suddenly deserted her. She hung on the pay phone in the telephone booth, her mouth opening and closing impotently.

"Okay, kid. We had Prince Albert in a can but we let him out last week. Now go call your mommy," She heard him start to hang up.

"Croyd!" she wailed.

She could actually sense him shifting gears at the sound of a female voice. "Go ahead, I'm listening."

"It's-it's me, Jane. Jane Dow," she added, trying to force herself to sound calm.

"Jane. Well." His pleasure-filled laugh grated on her painfully. "So you didn't throw away the numbers I gave you. You sound a little breathless. Everything okay?"

"No. Yes. I mean-" She slumped against the wall of the phone booth, gripping the receiver with both hands. "Jane? You still there?"

"Yes. Of course." Slowly she straightened up and tried to compose herself into the Aces High hostess who flirted so easily with the man with the faceted eyes. The overwhelming emptiness inside of her made that woman a stranger to her now. "I'm still here and you're there. I think that means one of us is definitely in the wrong place." Her voice broke on the last word, and she jammed her knuckles into her mouth to smother the sound of her crying.

"If you're saying you'd like to rectify that situation, that's the best thing I've heard today." He paused. "Are you sure everything's okay?"

Something in the back of her mind was trying to tell her Croyd sounded as though he were on the thin edge himself, but she ignored it. If there was anyone who could get her a drug, it was Croyd. Whatever she had to do for him in return was not too much to ask.

"Everything will be okay when you give me your address," she said shakily. When he didn't answer, she added, "I really want to see you. Please?"

"I never could resist a woman who said please. Tell me where you are and I'll tell you the best way to get to where I am…"

The door opened a wide crack to reveal the mirrorshades, gleaming at her with an insectile coldness. Croyd licked his lips and opened the door wider. "Come into my parlor, Bright Eyes. If you'll pardon the expression. I'm afraid parlor is all there is." The voice was different; the man was taller and his skin was white all over, but the words were pure Croyd.

She stepped into a shabby one-room apartment lit only with a few small lamps scattered in odd spots. The furniture was negligible-a bureau that might have come from the same flea market as the lamps, an old wooden table and a couple of chairs, a broken-down sofa near the windows. It was not the most reassuring place she had ever come to, but, she reminded herself, she had not come for reassurance.

"This is not the place I usually choose to entertain in," Croyd was saying as he shut the door and ran down a line of four locks. He turned to her, raisipg a hand to his mirrorshades, and licked his lips again. "So. I'm afraid I don't have a lot to offer you in the way of refreshment, but I can make any kind of gin and tonic you like."

She laughed nervously, hugging herself. "How many kinds are there?"

"Well, there's gin and tonic, of course. Tonic and gin," he said, moving closer to her. She made a countermove farther into the room, hugging herself tighter. "Gin and not much tonic. Gin and no tonic at all. Gin and an ice cube. Which sounds great to me. You think it over." He licked his lips for the third time in as many minutes and went to the kitchenette.

Jane turned away, trying to get the shudder building inside of her under control. In the company of this man who wanted her, the void was eating away at her like acid. It would make no difference if Croyd's latest persona were the god of eros. Just being in the same room with him was an excruciating reminder that pleasure could only be Ti Malice; anything else was a pale, crude substitution to force time to pass.

"Decided?"

She jumped as he touched her shoulder and moved away from him, rubbing the spot as if it were bruised. "No, Inothing for me, I guess." She gave another nervous laugh and winced. He tilted his head curiously and she saw two Janes in the mirrorshades. The distortion made her look as if she were trying to disappear into herself.

"You sure?" Croyd upended the glass and took a couple of ice cubes into his mouth, crunching them noisily. There were only ice cubes in his glass, she saw. "Nothing at all?"

"Well, not nothing…" She made a face, giving a long sigh. "God, I'm no good at this."

"At what?" Croyd had another ice cube. "What is it you're not good at, Bright Eyes?" He came a little closer and she backed away. "And why is it so important to be good at it?"

Something caught her abruptly behind the knees, and she plumped down hard on the couch. Croyd moved in quickly beside her, rolling another ice cube around in his mouth. His left arm slid along the back of the sofa and she shrank away from him. His knee touched hers just as his hand went from the couch to her shoulder, moving very lightly. He reached over and set the glass on the windowsill behind the couch, disturbing the drawn shade; his hand, she saw, was trembling slightly. Jane looked from the glass to Croyd. His tongue flicked out and ran along his lips every few seconds now. It was more like a tic than an expression of desire.

"Talk to me, Jane," he said gently as she reached the corner of the couch. He put his other hand on her arm. She flinched at the contact; there was another sensation under the displeasure of a touch that was not Ti Malice's, a tremor, as if he were running a long distance and going as fast as he could instead of sitting here on the couch trying to take her in his arms. "Come on, talk to me. Tell me."

The words came to her unbidden. "`Sleeper speeding, people bleeding."'

He froze. Jane looked into the mirrorshades, seeing only her twin reflections. Impulsively she reached for the glasses and he pulled back. "Don't." He twisted around, looking for the ice cubes, and Jane nodded at the windowsill. "Thanks. Speed dries you out."

"Where do you get it?" she asked.

"What, the speed? Why?" He crunched a couple of ice cubes. "You planning to stay up all night?"

"I was just wondering if whoever you got it from might… well, stock other things." She took a deep breath. "Other kinds of drugs."

He looked at her sharply for a moment and then suddenly lunged at her, grabbing her upper arm to pull her close. "Stop, you're hurting me!" Jane flinched from the mirrorshades thrusting themselves into her face and tried to pry his fingers off her arm.

"Are you strung out? Is that why you came here?" He was almost laughing. She twisted away from him, started to get up, and stumbled, landing on the floor in a heap.

"Get up." He pulled her back onto the couch roughly. "Talk to me, and this time, tell me something I don't know. Are you strung out."

"It's not what you think," she said, not looking at him. "It never is, Bright Eyes." He was licking his lips again. It was beginning to drive her crazy. "So, what kind of drug were you shopping for-horse? Lady? Blue dreamers? Reds? White crossroads? Black bombers, screaming yellow zonkers? What's your pleasure?" His voice was hard and ugly and she was aware, with no little amazement, that he was as disappointed in what he thought she was as Tachyon had been.

"God, what am I supposed to be, everyone's idea of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Sweet Virgin Ace?" she shouted at him. "Am I supposed to stand up here on my pedestal, playing God's Good Girl, just so you can all pat me on the head and call me virtuous in between your own debaucheries? Dear little Water Lily, lily white Water Lily, virgin-white Water Lily! It doesn't work that way! You all had to drag me into this, you had to involve me in your stupid games, in your fucking gang wars, you all had to use me for your own purposes, and now everyone's so shocked because I've turned up with the same filth you wallow in splashed all over me. What did you expect!".

She realized she was kneeling over him on the couch, screaming into his face. A few flecks of saliva were spattered on the mirrorshades. He stared up at her openmouthed.

"I guess," he said, pausing to lick his lips, "speed isn't the only thing that can dry you out."

Jane doubled over with a sob as the aching emptiness renewed its attack on her. She felt Croyd's hand lightly on her hair and shouted, "Don't touch me, it hurts!"

"I thought it was kind of strange that you weren't, ah, moist, but I wasn't sure. Everything seems a little strange at this point." He crunched the last of the ice cubes. "What is it? Plain old heroin, or something more exotic?"

She raised her head from the musty cushion. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me. Tell me what you're looking for."

With great effort she pulled herself all the way up and sat with her legs tucked under her. "I need something that goes directly to the pleasure center of the brain and stimulates it continuously."

"Don't we all," Croyd said grimly, tapping the last drop of water from his empty glass.

"Well?" she said after a moment. "Well what?"

"Do you know of anyone who has such a drug and will sell it to me?"

He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Hell, no."

She stared at him, feeling the void consume her hope along with the rest of her, and then, absurdly, she sneezed. "Gesundheit," he said automatically. "Listen, there's no such thing, not animal, vegetable, or mineral. Except maybe about five hours of good, dirty sex, and frankly I'm not up to more than an hour at a time. Terrible to have to admit that-"

She was off the couch, heading for the door. "Hey, wait!"

She stopped and turned, looking at him questioningly. "Where are you going?"

"The only place I can go."

"And where might that be?"

She shook her head. "You're wrong, Croyd. There is such a thing. It exists. I know it. And I hope you never do. It's the worst thing in the world."

He licked his lips again and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. "I doubt that, Bright Eyes."

"Good," she said. "I hope you always will. Stay where you are. I'll let myself out."

But she couldn't. She had to wait patiently while he undid all four locks before she could rush away from the 'twin reflections of her own hopeless face.

Hiram opened the door to her this time, Hiram all alone in the empty apartment. She didn't have to ask to be let in. "It left you," he said quietly.

"Yes." Her voice was a whisper as she stood with her head bowed.

"Are you…" his voice failed him for a moment. "Are you… all right?"

She looked up at him and his eyes reflected the emptiness she felt inside. "You know I'm not, Hiram. And neither are you."

"No. I suppose we're not." He paused. "Can I get you anything? A glass of water or something to eat or…" His words hung in the air between them, futile absurdities. He was offering a teardrop to a forest fire.

It was too painful to leave at that. Jane raised her head with as much dignity as she could muster. "A cup of hot tea would be nice, thank you." It would be no such thing, and she almost never drank hot tea anyway, but it would be something they could do besides just stand there and ache together.

He busied himself in the kitchenette while she sat at the small table, staring at nothing. If pleasure was real, then the absence of pleasure was a palpable thing as well; where there had been rapture in every movement there was now the pain of the void he had left. Mg Master, she thought with dull revulsion. I called him Mg Master.

"I couldn't let you go after you'd seen," Hiram said abruptly. He didn't turn around and she didn't look up. "I'm sure you understand that, now that you know."

She made a small murmur but said nothing else.

"And he'd seen you in my thoughts many times as well. So when you showed up…" Pause. "Why did you come here?" The memory made her burst out laughing. Alarmed, Hiram turned around from the counter where the tea was brewing and stared at her. He looked so frightened that she tried to stem her laughter, but she had no control. She only laughed harder, shaking her head and waving him away as he made a move toward her.

"It's all right," she gasped after a while. "Really. It's just just so-" She was off again for nearly a minute while he stood watching her, misery emanating from him in waves she could almost feel.

"It's just so… insignificant," she said when she could finally speak again. "Brightwater delivered a load of rotten fish and I had to send it back. Nobody knew what to do about getting in a replacement shipment for the sushi bar, and Tomoyuki said that Mr. Dining Out was coming from New York Gourmet to review the twilight sushi bar-" She laughed again but weakly this time. "I guess we wont be offering the sushi bar tonight. I told Tom to get sick if I weren't back in an hour. That was-I don't know. What time is it?"

Hiram didn't answer.

"No, I guess it doesn't matter, does it?" she said, staring at him. "I got the address off the back of your desk blotter, but I wasn't going to use it unless I really had to, and I felt like I did. They're all turning against you, Hiram. Emile's walking around saying he thinks you're a junkie."

"I am," Hiram said bleakly. He checked the teapot and then set it on the table with two cups. "And so are you. And Ezili. And everyone else he's kissed."

"Is that what you call it?" she said as he poured the tea. "Do you have a better word for it?"

"No."

"It's an instant, permanent addiction," Hiram went on, almost matter-of-factly. "He connects directly to the pleasure center of your brain. That's why everything feels so good. Eating. Moving. Making love. Just breathing. And when he leaves you-it's like death. There's no cure, no relief. Except the kiss. I'll do anything for it. And so will you."

"No."

Hiram paused in the act of raising his teacup.

"We've got to pull ourselves together. There must be some kind of cure we could take, or even a drug that could act as a block or a replacement-"

"No, nothing." Hiram shook his head with finality. "There must be. We could look for it together, you and I. I went to Tachyon's clinic-"

Hiram's cup clattered into the saucer. "You what? You went to Tachyon?" His face had actually gone gray; she thought he might drop dead of horror.

"Don't worry, I didn't tell him. And he didn't find out."

"He's swamped with new wild card cases. He didn't bother reading my mind. But if you went back there with me and talked to him-"

"No!" he roared, and she jumped, spilling tea all over the table. Hiram immediately went for a dish towel and began wiping up the mess. "No," he said again, much more quietly. "If anyone finds out, they'll kill him. He can't survive without a human host. We'd lose him and we still wouldn't have a cure. We'd have to be like this for the rest of our lives. Could you stand that?"

"God, no," she whispered, putting her forehead in her hand.

"Then don't talk crazy." Hiram tossed the dish towel at the sink and took her hand. "It'll be all right. Really. It's not so bad a lot of the time. Not really. I mean, does he demand that much for the pleasure he gives? And he does leave you alone a lot, and it's not like he's evil, not really. If you were the only mount, could you deny him his life? If you knew he would die without you, could you let that happen?"

She pulled her hand away, shaking her head. "Hiram, you don't know what's happened to me."

"You don't know what's happened to me!" he cried. He knelt down to look into her face, and she was horrified to see tears in his eyes. "Whatever you've done is nothing compared to what I've done! Don't you think it's been horrible for me? The fear of detection, the powerlessness-I've considered suicide, don't think I haven't, but the awful part is, there might be an afterlife and he wouldn't be there and that really would be hell! What happened to you-! Know what happened to me? I let him take a friend! I swore I would not, and I did it anyway! I let him take you!"

She pulled away from him. "Oh, Jesus, Hiram, I wish I'd died that night when the Astronomer came to Aces High. I wish you had let me fall!"

"I wish I had, too!" he bellowed at her.

Hiram's statement seemed to echo in the silence that followed. It was over, she realized wonderingly. Aces High, her obligation to Hiram, her life as an ace if she'd ever really had one, everything. It had all been wiped out, leaving both of them with nothing.

"You're not wet," Hiram said, belatedly aware.

Before she could answer him, there was a knock at the door.

Hiram jerked his head at the bedroom and she went without protest, pulling herself into a huddle on the floor next to the bed. Whatever was coming next, she wasn't ready for it.

Exhaustion suddenly swept over her; she leaned her head against the side of the mattress and let herself fall into a strange half-sleep. She heard the voices in the other room, but they made no impression on her, even when Hiram's rose angrily. Some uncounted time later she sensed someone's approaching and she tried to push down into unconsciousness, away from the presence, fantasizing again that Hiram had made her weightless so she could drift off into the sky.

But strong hands pulled her up and flung her down on the bed. She struggled feebly, her eyelids fluttering with- groggy alarm. Then she felt the feather touch of small fingers along her back, and she stretched her neck obligingly for the kiss.

The scene in the living room was troublesome, but she was far above it, riding in a state of transport with her Master. There was Hiram of course, and Ezili, and two men she didn't recognize and couldn't be bothered to care about, and Emile, of all people, bound and gagged and lying on the carpet. Her Master forced her attention to him and she acquiesced, all the while reveling in the renewed contact.

"Jane," Hiram said tensely. She turned to look at him through pleasure-glazed eyes. He seemed to be having some difficulty keeping his gaze on her, or perhaps on her Master. It didn't matter, though. Everything was all right again.

"jane."

"Heard you," she said, completely happy. "What is it?"

"Why did you give Emile the spare key to my office?" Her Master commanded that she answer, and it was exquisite to obey. " I put him in charge while I was gone. It seemed to be the logical thing to do."

"When I gave you that key, I told you no one- no one-but you was to have it, for any reason."

"You gave me that key ages ago, before you left on the trip, and after you came back, I thought you'd forgotten all about it. It just didn't seem to make any difference because you didn't seem to care anymore." She smiled dreamily.

Hiram's fist was clenched but she wasn't worried. With Her Master there was nothing to worry about. She marveled at how the surrender could be so much more profound on the second time. On the third time she would probably lose herself to him completely and that would be absolute perfection. She could hardly wait.

"You don't understand what you've done, Water Lily," Hiram said miserably. "You've killed this man."

Something in her started at the use of her ace name, but she let it go. Her Master liked it. He liked the water that was trickling down her face and running from her hair, saturating her clothes and soaking the carpet around her feet.

"If she was responsible," her voice said at her Master's command, "then she can take care of it, yes, Hiram?"

"It will kill her," Hiram said. "Or drive her mad."

"She's already mad." Her Master had her laugh for him. "And she's not really so terribly interesting, except for her power." Her face turned to Emile. His eyes widened, and he made desperate little noises against the gag.

"Get him ready for her, Ezili," said her Master. " I am so curious as to what it will be like."

Ezili struggled to pull down Emile's trousers while he tried to wiggle away from her. One of the men Jane didn't know forced Emile over onto his back, crushing his bound hands against the floor, and knelt on his shoulders. Emile began to scream against the gag, but it came out as muffled bleats. His bound legs kicked upward, and the man pressed harder on his shoulders until he was still.

After a while Ezili got up, wiping her mouth delicately. "Show him a good time, little girl."

Jane moved to Emile and knelt beside him. Her Master had already explained wordlessly what was required of her. It wasn't too much to ask. He wanted to know how it would feel; her only mission in life was to show him. She pulled up her dress and casually ripped away her underpants.

The horror in Emile's eyes fed her sensation as she straddled his body and lowered herself onto him. He stiffened and she heard him grunt in pain. Water poured down on him in rhythmic splashes. More sensation. She gave herself over to it, letting her consciousness dissolve so that it, too, was like fluid. Somewhere lost in the pleasure was the little tiny Jane screaming against this atrocity, but little tiny Jane didn't count for much in the face of this magnificent pleasure-power. What had to be sacrificed for Ti Malice's enjoyment would be; if Emile could have known, he might have offered himself up willingly. It was more than an honor. It was a blessing; it was a state of grace. It was-

Her eyes met Emile's. Motionless and stiff beneath her, he was staring at Ti Malice. The waves of pleasure parted suddenly, and for a moment there was a small rift between her and her Master. She opened her mouth to scream, and then the waves crashed together again and she fell forward. Water poured over her and Emile in a small flood.

Ti Malice was talking to her as he rifled through her sensations and thoughts. He laughed at the memory of the clinic and Dr. Tachyon (No, little mount, there is no drug that could go directly to the pleasure place, as you call it) and took special note of the information about the contagious virus (You would never expose me to that, little mount, you will give your life before you allow that to happen to me). Even as her body moved and twisted and reveled, she worshiped the thing at her neck, promising everything to it, offering everything she had. Whatever. Always.

She felt him bring her up to full awareness to concentrate on Emile.

Whatever. Always. He had her bring tears to Emile's eyes, and together they watched as he struggled, trying to blink them away. Her Master found the calling of the water a wonderful sensation and wanted more. She did more, calling the water only from his body and not out of the air around him, because her Master liked it so much. He made another suggestion, and pleasure surged anew as Emile bucked beneath her, the involuntary action turning quickly to pain for him. If he only knew what his body was serving, she thought.

The power seemed easier to wield now than it ever had before. Because she was whole again, she thought, watching with Ti Malice's pleasure as the blood swelled from Emile's pores and he screamed against the gag. She had never realized how good it felt to do that, to call the moisture from a living being instead of the lifeless air. If she really let herself go with it, it was better than anything, even better than the sex Ti Malice enjoyed so much.

And at last the permission was given and she did let herself go with it, all the way to finality. Whatever. Always. It was an explosion that went beyond pleasure, into something that was completely alien, a ripping away of whatever humanity had been left to her and Ti Malice, leaving the hard, bright, burning thing that had thrust itself upon them in an act of irrevocable conquest. For one single eternal instant they were purely the living wild card virus, not just living but sentient.

Then she was herself again, watching through a haze of dying sensation as Ti Malice himself trembled under this new awareness. This had almost been too much even for him. She cold not even raise a protest as he left her for Ezili again.

A little later she realized she had been blinded by the last of the fluids she had called out of Emile's body, and there were only his clothes and some substance that looked like a spill of powder on the floor where he had been.

She took a long fall into blackness, screaming all the way down.

Faces came out of the darkness at her; she made them fade away. At some point she was looking at Hiram's face, and try as she would, she couldn't make him vanish. He seemed to be trying to explain something to her, but none of it made any sense. I quit, she told him at last, and that finally made him go.

Clean her up, get her some clothes, and get her out of here. For now, said Ezili in her own voice. She makes me… uncomfortable. Laughter.

Then the craving hit her and the lack of Ti Malice was too much to bear. Her mind folded itself up into a tiny little box and flushed itself away.

She was walking through a bizarre, wasted wonderland and Sal was at her side. She was only mildly surprised that he was there with her; she thought it might have been because Ti Malice had left her with so little that she wasn't completely in existence anymore. But it was nice that of all the ghosts she could have run into, she had somehow met up with Sal. Meeting Emile would have been terribly unpleasant; perhaps he hadn't been dead long enough to have become a ghost yet. She covered everything that had happened within the first few minutes they were together, all the degradation, the lies, the broken promises.

Sal asked her what broken promises those were.

Why, that I was done leaning on anyone, Sal. Remember? I promised that after the Cloisters. And now look at me. I'm leaning so hard I'm tipped over. Then she realized he'd known and he'd just wanted her to say it, to admit it.

All right. I admit it. I admit it all. I said I'd never kill anyone' again, no matter how bad they were, even if it meant they'd kill me first. And I killed Emile because he wanted to watch how he'd die. She didn't have to explain who he was; Sal knew that, too.

And I always promised I'd be… responsible with my body. Maybe it was easier to lock myself up than finally accept that we would never be together.

Sal thought that was kind of funny. After all, he wasn't just gay, he was gay and dead; been that way for quite some time, too.

Well, Sal, being dead, you wouldn't have any idea how easy it can be to remain faithful to someone's memory. It's real easy when you're too scared to face a living person. Live men are real intimidating, Sal.

Sal said he knew what she meant.

Yeah, I guess you would, wouldn't you. I guess it's kind of a funny coincidence, then, that the first time I'd be with a woman, and then the first man I ever really had would also be gay.

Sal said he didn't see what that had to do with anything. Well, it's like a recurring theme.

Sal said he still couldn't see it.

Never mind. I'm just glad now that you didn't live to see what I've come to. That's something you missed by drowning in the bathtub, Sal, that and the big AIDS epidemic. I mean, if you really had to go and die, drowning was the better way. You wouldn't want to die of AIDS. Or of me.

Sal said he'd never been that paranoid.

Well, there's plenty to be paranoid about these days. I found out there's a contagious form of the wild card virus. No one knows how it's being transmitted. And most people die from it.

Sal said that certainly was a revolting development. Yes, it certainly is. And you know what else, Sal?

Sal asked her what that was.

There's no way to tell if you've been exposed. Till it happens. Maybe I've been exposed. Maybe I'll get it and die. I just hope I can't give it to anyone else.

"Honey, you're not the only one."

Jane was about to answer when she realized she had heard Sal's voice for real. But it didn't sound very much like Sal. She turned to him in surprise and found it hadn't been Sal beside her after all but some stranger, a skinny man with a ratlike face, down to the mangy fur covering his cheeks, the pointed nose, and the whiskers.

"It's a mouse face, lady, not a rat face," the man said wearily. "You can tell by the teeth, if you know anything about rodents. I used to be an exterminator, okay? Gimme a hard time about it, why doncha. I tagged along with you to see what a little piece of chicken could want wandering around in Jokertown at this hour of the night. Frankly, lady, you got a lot more problems than I have, and I don't want none of them."

He was gone and she was standing in the middle of a sidewalk under a buzzing streetlamp.

"Sal?" she asked the air. There was no answer.

At first she'd been afraid she'd come back to the same bar, but then she saw it was different. No stage set up for a live sex show, for one thing, and the clientele was a lot livelier, more brightly dressed, some of them even in costumes and masks.

When she saw the eyeless man behind the bar, she panicked, and then she realized it couldn't be the same one she'd taken into the limousine. When had that been? At least a thousand years ago. Like a sleepwalker she moved to the bar and took one of the high stools. The eyeless bartender, working expertly, suddenly straightened up and turned his face in her direction.

"Trouble, Sascha?" A dwarf materialized at her side and clamped one thick hand on her arm.

The bartender backed away. " I don't want to be near her. Get her away from me."

"Come on, honey. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." The dwarf started to pull her off the stool. "No, please," she said, trying to twist her arm out of his grasp. " I have to see someone." She knew where she was now and it was the only place she could have come to find what she needed; Chrysalis or someone around Chrysalis would know where she could get a drug that would fill in the void Ti Malice had eaten away in her. She turned to look at the bartender. "Please, I'm not going to hurt anyone-"

"Get her out," the bartender said urgently. "I can't stand the way she feels."

Jane looked around wildly and then spotted Chrysalis at a corner table. She gave a mighty tug and slipped out of the dwarf's grip.

"Hey!" he yelled.

Ignoring the stares of the other patrons, she darted between the tables to the corner where Chrysalis was sitting, watching with those strange, floating blue eyes.

"Gotcha!" The dwarf seized her around the waist, and she fell to her knees, crawling the last few feet to Chrysalis's chair, dragging the man with her.

Chrysalis lifted a finger. The dwarfs arms loosened but he didn't let go of her completely.

"I need information, Jane said in a low voice. `About a drug."

Chrysalis didn't answer. Whatever expression might have been on her peculiar face was impossible to read.

"I've been addicted to something against my will. I need-I need-" She dug in her pants pocket and miraculously there was money there, a small, flat fold of bills. Hurriedly she unfolded them and held them out. " I can pay, I can pay for-"

Chrysalis flicked briefly at the bills Jane was thrusting at her. Jane looked; there were three bills, two tens and a twenty. Forty dollars. Bad joke.

Chrysalis shook her head and waved a hand.

"Like I said, honey," the dwarf said, "you were just leaving."

She leaned against the side of the building with the bills crumpled in her hand. The void in her widened until she thought the craving had to split her open right there. "Excuse me."

Kim Toy.

She blinked and then realized it wasn't Kim Toy after all. This woman was younger and taller and her features were different.

"I saw Chrysalis give you the bum's rush. Some nerve she's got, huh. The twerp took you by my table, and I couldn't help thinking I knew you from somewhere."

Jane turned away from her. "Leave me alone," she muttered, but the woman moved closer.

"Like, I think you used to work for Rosemary Muldoon. Didn't you?"

Jane stumbled away from the woman and then fell to her hands and knees, shaking all over. Underneath the ache she felt something else, a sickness that was more physical. As if she were coming down with the flu or something worse. The idea was so absurd she could almost have laughed.

"Hey, are you sick or something?" The woman bent down, putting concerned hands on her shoulders. "You strung out?" she asked in a low voice.

Jane could feel herself weeping without tears.

"Come on," said the woman, helping Jane to her feet. "Any friend of Rosemary Muldoon's is a friend of mine. I think I can help you out."

In spite of the hollowness eating away at her, Jane was overwhelmed by the luxurious apartment. The sunken living room was as large as a ballroom. The predominant color was a delicate, pearlized pink, even to the silk wallpaper and the enormous crystal chandelier.

The woman led her down the steps and sat her on an overstuffed sofa. "It's something; isn't it? Looks like a dump on the outside and heaven on the inside. Had to grease a lot of palms to keep the CONDEMNED sign out front. just finished the place last week, and I've been dying to entertain. What are you drinking?"

"Water," Jane said weakly.

Across the room, at the ornate wet bar, the woman looked over her shoulder with a near smile. "Thought you could get your own."

Jane stiffened. "You-you know-?"

"Didn't I say I knew you? You think I'd really bring anyone here I wasn't sure of?" The woman brought her a cut-glass goblet of ice water and sat down next to her. "Of course, it isn't all mine. It really belongs to the people I work for. Best job I ever had, needless to say."

Jane sipped her water. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably, and she handed the goblet to the woman before she could spill it. The physical illness was crawling over her again, like a cramp, except it was all over her body. She held very still until it subsided.

"Whatever you've got, I hope it isn't catching," the woman said, not unkindly. "What happened-you fall in with one of those sleaze-bags around Rosemary and get turned on to junk?"

Jane shook her head. "Not Rosemary."

"Oh? That's too bad. I mean, I was sort of hoping you were still in touch with Rosemary because I'd like to see her again." She leaned over to open a pink laquered box on the oversize coffee table. "Joint? It'll take the edge off. It really will. This is like nothing you've ever had before."

"No, it isn't," Jane said, looking away from the proffered joint.

"What are you on, anyway?"

"It's something that goes straight to the pleasure center of the brain. You don't want to know." Or perhaps she would, Jane thought suddenly. Her thoughts began to coil toward a plan. What if she could get this woman to go back to the apartment with her and offered her to Ti Malice? He loved new mounts, she knew that…

"Oh, that's easy," the woman said. "What?" Jane looked at her, startled.

The woman tilted her head to one side, eyeing her curiously. "I've got an associate who's developed something that'll go straight for the pleasure center of the brain."

"Who is it?" Jane said, grabbing the woman's shoulder. "Can I meet him? Where can I find him? How-"

"Whoa, whoa now. Slow down." The woman plucked Jane's hand off herself and moved away slightly. "This is top secret stuff. Stupid of me to mention it, but you being a friend of Rosemary's and all, I kind of forgot myself. Come on. Mellow out and let's talk about Rosemary," She lit the joint with a crystal table lighter, took a deep drag, and offered it to Jane.

She accepted the joint and tried to do exactly as she'd seen the woman do. The smoke burned in her lungs, and she coughed it out.

"Keep practicing," the woman said, laughing a little. "It'll really take the edge off."

A few drags later she had gotten more than just the hang of it. So this was what they meant by getting a buzz on, she thought. It was a buzz you felt rather than heard, and it would have been pleasant, except that it couldn't get between herself and the gnawing void. She tried to give the joint back to the woman, but she told Jane to keep at it, she needed it more. Instead she put it out carefully in the cut-glass ashtray on the table.

"Don't like it?" the woman said in surprise.

"It's… okay," Jane said, and her voice seemed to stretch out and out and out like long, slow elastic. Her head felt ready to float off her shoulders like a helium balloon and rise up to the ceiling. She wondered if Hiram knew about this.

But the woman wanted to talk about Rosemary, and between trying to keep her head on her shoulders and fighting against the need for Ti Malice, it was hard to keep track of what she was saying. If the woman would just shut up, she might achieve some kind of equilibrium, something that would steady her long enough to break the water glass on the table and use one of the shards on her throat. That was the only answer now; the dope was helping her see that. She would never be free of the need for Ti Malice, and if she went back-when she went back-she could only look forward to worse things, more degradation, more killings, all done willingly, just to feel the bliss of his presence within her. All the things she had wished for Hiram, that he would find someone to make his life complete, she had inadvertently gotten for herself, except it was Ti Malice instead of the vague, unidentifiable man she had always dreamed of, who had sometimes resembled Sal and sometimes Jumpin' Jack Flash and sometimes even Croyd. Another bad joke in an ongoing series. It had to end.

The woman kept on talking and talking. Occasionally there were long periods of silence, and Jane came out of her fog to find that the woman was no longer on the couch with her. She would lie back against the cushion, glad of the silence, and then the woman would magically rematerialize next to her, going on and on and on about Rosemary Muldoon until she thought she might cut her throat just to get away from that voice.

But that was awfully ungrateful. The woman was just trying to help her. She knew that. She should do something in return. Offer her something.

Rosemary's phone number swam to the surface of her mind and waited for her to pick it up. And after a while she did, and the woman disappeared for the longest time ever.

Someone was shaking her awake. The first thing that hit her was the need, and she doubled over, beating her fist on the couch cushion because it wasn't Ti Malice there but a slender Oriental man kneeling on the carpet next to her, smiling polite concern at her.

"This is the associate I was telling you about," the woman said, pulling her to a sitting position. "Roll up your sleeve."

"What? Why?" Jane looked around, but the room wouldn't come clear yet. Her head felt heavy and thick.

"Just my way of saying thanks."

"For what?" She felt her sleeve being pushed up and something cold and wet on the inside of her arm.

"For Rosemary's phone number."

"You called her?"

"Oh, no. You're going to do that for me." The woman tied a piece of rubber around Jane's upper arm and pulled it tight. "And in return, you get a trip to heaven."

The Oriental man held up a syringe and grinned as though he were a game show host showing off a prize. "But-"

The woman was shoving a cordless receiver into her hand. "You'd like to see her again, wouldn't you?"

Jane let the phone drop to her lap and wiped her face tiredly. "I'm not so sure, really."

"Then maybe you'd better get sure." The woman's voice hardened. Jane looked up at her in surprise. "I mean, I'm sure. I have a lot to talk about with Rosemary. The sooner you contact her, the sooner you go to heaven. You want to go to heaven, don't you?"

"I don't know if I can-I don't know if she'll even take my call-"

The woman leaned down and spoke directly into her face. "I don't see where you've got a choice. You're strung out and you've got nowhere to go. I can't let you stay here indefinitely, you know. The company that owns this place might not want me to have a roommate. Of course, they'd feel differently if you did something for me."

Jane drew back a little. "Who do you work for?"

"Don't be so nosy. Just make the call. Get her to meet you here, if possible, anywhere else if necessary."

She was about to say no when the craving gnawed at her again, shutting off the word in her throat. "This drug," she said, looking at the syringe. "It's-good?"

"The best." The woman's face was expressionless. "You want me to dial?"

"No," she said, picking up the phone. "I'll do it."

The man put the point of the needle to the inside of her elbow and then held it there, waiting, still wearing his wide, game-show-host grin.

She could hardly keep her mind on Rosemary's voice; there was no way she could keep her own voice steady. At first she tried to sound friendly, but Rosemary got it out of her that she was in trouble. The man and the woman didn't seem to mind what she said, so she plunged on, begging Rosemary to come to her.

But maddeningly, Rosemary kept telling her she would send someone to pick her up, and she had to insist over and over that that wouldn't do at all, she didn't want anyone but Rosemary. Nobody else, especially no men. She would run away if she saw any men. This seemed to please the man and the woman a great deal.

And at last she got Rosemary's consent and read the address to her off a card the woman held in front of her. Rosemary hesitated, but she pleaded again, and Rosemary gave in. But not there, not at that address. Someplace out in the open. Sheridan Square. A glance told Jane that would be fine with her new friends, and she told Rosemary she would be there.

"Once a social worker, always a social worker," the woman said, hanging up the phone. She nodded at the man. "Give it to her."

"Wait," Jane said weakly. "How can I get there if-"

"Don't worry about a thing," said the woman. "You'll be there."

The needle went in and the lights went out.

The lights came up dimly and she saw she was leaning against the side of a building. It was the Ridiculous Theatre Company, and she was waiting to get in to see a play. Late performance, very late, but she didn't care. She loved the Ridiculous Theatre Company best and she'd been to lots of theatres, the small ones in Soho and the Village and the Jokertown Playhouse, which had closed down shortly before she'd gone to work for Rosemary…

Rosemary. There was something she had to remember about Rosemary. Rosemary had betrayed her trust. But perhaps that was only fair, since she was such a great disappointment to Hiram.

It hit her so powerfully she thought it had to knock her down, but her body didn't move. Warm maple syrup was running through her veins. But underneath the warmth and the ianguor the void remained, wide open, eating away at her, and whatever this lassitude was only made it possible for the wanting to crunch at her bones without a struggle. Her stomach did a slow forward roll and her head began to pound.

A shadow by her feet chittered softly. She looked down. A squirrel was staring up at her as if it were actually considering her in some way. Squirrels were just rats with fancier tails, she remembered uneasily, and tried to edge away from it, but her body still wasn't moving. Another squirrel chittered somewhere above her head, and something else ran past, almost brushing her legs.

When was the theatre going to open so she could get away from all this vermin? Sheridan Square had gotten really bad since she'd last been there, to see the late Charles Ludlam in a revival of Bluebeard. Charles Ludlam-she'd loved him, too, and it had been so unfair that he'd had to die of AIDS…

She sighed and a voice said, "Jane?"

Rosemary's voice. She perked up. Had she been going to the theatre with Rosemary? Or was this just a happy coincidence? No matter, she'd be so happy to see her.

She tried to look around. It was so dark. Was there really a performance this late? And the squirrels, cbittering and chittering to the point of madness-it would have been exquisite with Ti Malice, but by herself it was only excruciating.

A thin flashlight beam cut through the darkness and she winced.

"Jane?" Rosemary asked again. She was closer now. "Jane, you look awful. What happened? Did someone-"

There was the sound of claws scratching on the side of the building. Jane turned in the direction of the sound and saw Rosemary standing a few yards away. The dim illumination from the streetlamps made her little more than a detailed silhouette. Funny, Jane thought suddenly, that the theatre had no outside security lights to discourage burglars or vandals. A darker shadow was flowing back and forth around Rosemary's ankles; it eventually resolved itself into a cat. Rosemary looked down at the cat and then up at Jane again.

"What kind of trouble are you in, Jane?" she asked, and her voice had a slight edge to it.

"The worst," said a man's voice. "Just like you, Miss Muldoon."

Jane shook her head, trying to clear it. Something was coming back to her, something about an Oriental woman who was not Kim Toy, and a man with a needle, and dialing the telephone…

A larger shadow swept up behind Rosemary, and suddenly she was standing with an arm around her throat and the barrel of a gun jammed up against the side of her face.

"It is appropriate we meet in the shadows," a man's voice said. Rosemary stood perfectly still, staring past Jane. Jane followed her gaze and saw the other man leaning casually at the opposite end of the building with his own pistol up and ready. Jane felt herself starting to nod out and forced herself to hold her head up. Her face felt itchy and uncomfortable and the craving for Ti Malice burst on her with a strength that made her want to double over. But her body could manage no more than a mild spasm. They lied, she thought miserably. The woman and her friend lied. How can people lie so easily?

There were more people, more men, melting out of the darkness to surround her and Rosemary. Even through the soupy fog that was her mind, Jane could sense the weapons and the malignant intent. The woman who had taken her home had been no friend of Rosemary's, or hers, either. But it was a little late for clever deductions.

"Aren't junkies funny, Ms. Muldoon?" said the man holding Rosemary. "That one sold you out for a mere dime of garden-variety heroin."

No, no, it isn't true! she wanted to scream, but her voice was stuck in the craving. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, and she could see that Rosemary was staring at her with a stricken expression.

"Jane," she said, "if there's anything left of the person you used to be, you could turn this around-"

"N-not… junkie," Jane said heavily. Her eyes began to roll up.

"Hopheads don't make great aces," the man said with a laugh. "She's not about to-" There was the sound of wings and something whirred out of the night, fluttering and flapping directly onto his head.

"Hey!" he yelled, letting go of Rosemary, who pushed away from him. She tripped and went down on her hands and knees just as several other things raced past Jane, parted themselves fluidly around Rosemary, and launched themselves at the men.

"Bagabond-" Rosemary said breathlessly, and then there was an explosion of angry cries and wails, both human and not. The man who had been standing so insouciantly at the other end of the building was now batting at a pigeon flapping around his head while he tried to kick something loose from his pant leg. Rat, Jane realized dully. She had never seen a rat so bold.

Rosemary had gotten to her feet and was backing away from the embattled group of men. More shapes of various sizes were streaking out of the night to throw themselves onto the men, hissing, screeching, howling with unmistakable anger. Someone tore himself loose from the group and ran past Rosemary and Jane, screaming as he tried to shake the rat off his arm and pull the squirrel away from his neck. Something clattered at Jane's feet, and she looked down at it: a gun.

Her legs gave out and she slid down the building onto her knees. She picked the gun up and stared at it for a moment. Then Rosemary was shaking her.

"Come on," she said, pulling Jane to her feet and forcing her to run along the walk in front of the theatre, out to the sidewalk on the other side of Sheridan Square.

Several large stray dogs were waiting for them in a strange, loose formation. Jane blinked at them groggily, barely aware of Rosemary's arms around her. After a moment the dogs broke and ran back the way she and Rosemary had come. The shouts of the men turned to screams over the sounds of growling and baying.

Jane staggered along the street, still in Rosemary's grasp. "Goddamn you, run," Rosemary said close to her ear. On the edge of consciousness, she stumbled along until the awful noise began to fade behind them. The absence of Ti Malice was gaining on her again, countering the drug in her system, making each step more painful than the last as it brought her back into full awareness.

She gave Rosemary a mighty shove and broke away from her, staggering up. against a lightpole. Catching herself, she looked around; the streets were deserted except for the two of them.

"Jane," Rosemary said tensely. "I'll take you somewhere you'll be safe. And then you can explain-"

"Stay away from me!" she shouted, raising her hand. Rosemary backed off quickly and she saw why; she still had the gun and she was pointing it at the other woman. Her first impulse was to toss it away and tell Rosemary she meant her no harm, she'd been tricked and she hadn't even realized she'd been holding a gun. But it didn't matter whether she meant Rosemary any harm or not-anyone around her would be in terrible danger for as long as she lived.

"You get out of here, Rosemary," she said shakily, keeping the gun on her. "You go someplace you'll be safe, and you thank God there still is such a place for you. Because there's no place Like that for me anymore!"

Rosemary opened her mouth to say something, and Jane thrust her gun hand forward.

"Go on!"

Rosemary backed away a few steps, then turned and broke into a run.

Still hanging on the lamppost as if she were some kind of comical, innocent drunk, Jane studied the gun in her hand. She didn't know anything about guns except for what was generally known. But that would be enough.

You just put it in your mouth. Aim the barrel toward the top of your head and count to three and you'll be free. Nothing could be easier.

Her hand turned very slowly, as if there was still some reluctance somewhere in her.

Unless, of course, you want to walk around like this for the next forty or so years. The craving flared in her and her hand moved quickly. Barrel in the mouth. Just turn it around so the trigger faces the sky. The metal tasted sour and made her lower teeth ache. She swallowed openmouthed and took a firmer grip on the gun.

Count to three and you'll be free. She remembered how it felt the first time Ti Malice had climbed onto her back, the way his small hands had touched her, eager, greedy, confident. She must have looked at Hiram the way Rosemary had been looking at her. (A spasm of shuddering swept over her, the strange, physical sickness she'd been feeling, but she managed to keep the gun in place.)

Count to three and you'll be free. She remembered the feel of Ezili's skin and the taste of her. Ezili would have enjoyed the sight of her standing on a deserted street with a gun in her mouth. (Now there was a prickly sensation crawling over her shoulders and down her arms, her torso, her legs, as though a small fire had broken out in her skin.)

Count to three and you'll be free. She remembered Croyd; she remembered walking with Sal only to have him turn into a man with a mouse's head. It was Sal she was a great disappointment to, not Hiram Worchester. Sal had believed in what she was. Hiram had never really known her. (Her flesh began to simmer.)

Count to three and you'll be free. She remembered that none of it would matter if someone would bring Ti Malice to her right now, right this very second, and set him on her shoulders. She would toss the gun away and welcome his blissful presence inside of her, and he would make all of it unimportant in the universe of pleasure that he could pour into the void widening in her even as she stood there, feeling the hardness of the pistol against the roof of her mouth. (She was broiling alive now.)

Count to three and you'll be free. A small movement caught her eye; on the curb a squirrel was staring up at her with bright, curious little eyes. She swallowed openmouthed again and counted without hurrying.

One. Two. Three.

Her fingers squeezed the trigger. Absurdly, Sal's voice spoke in her mind. Hey, cara mia, now what the hell you doin'?

In the total silence of the street the click was deafening.

Misfire.

She sank down to the pavement, and the warm dark tide of the fever covered her over.

She was in a soft realm of many colors. They came and went, conversing in human voices, sometimes speaking directly to her. She couldn't answer; this wasn't her realm, she was just waiting here. Besides, they said such funny things. Things like, The coma is unmistakable, it doesn't happen that way to all of them, but when it does, we know what it is, and Why don't we just put her in a bathtub and be done with it. The way the water's pouring off her, her skin will rot before she has a chance to die, and oddest of all, Jane, why couldn't I have helped. I should not have let my fatigue cause me to fail you. That was the brightest color, an extraordinary shade of red, sometimes with bright yellow accents.

A little later all the colors went away (Unplug the machines and get them out of here, she's not going to wake up), and there was only peace for a while. Then, somewhere far away, a phone rang. It's for you, someone said, and she imagined that meant her.

Jane. It's time.

She roused to a strange, soft awareness that reminded her of a lucid dream. The voice that had spoken sounded familiar. That you, Sal? I've been looking all over for you. Where are you?

Never mind that now. It's time. Time for what, Sal?

Time for you to get up. There's something very important you have to do. Come on now, open your eyes and get out of bed.

She sat up, looking around. Tachyon's clinic; how had she ended up back here? she wondered.

Don't worry about that. You have to hurry. All right, Sal.

She slipped out of bed and padded across the room to the door barefoot. Just at the doorway she turned to look back at the bed. There was a pale shape on the mattress, slowly fading away like trick photography.

Was that me, Sal?

It was you. It isn't you anymore. Go down the hall. Quickly now, there's no time to lose.

She seemed to float down the hall, her bare toes just a few inches above the cold floor. It was a great way to travel, she thought. Being dead had a lot to recommend it in the comfort department.

You're not dead.

She accepted that with equanimity. It didn't seem to be worth arguing about.

This door. On your right. Go into that room.

She wafted into the room and hovered next to one of the two beds, looking down at the occupant. Once she might have found his appearance frightening and pitiable. Now she looked down at him with complete and rational calm, taking in the sight of the enormous head on the pillow, cratered like the moon, except each crater was filled with an eye, most of them open. They watched her just as calmly, or so it seemed.

A small hole near one of the craters opened, and she heard a whistle of breath. "Who are you? Are you a doctor?" Listen very carefully, because I have to leave now and you must remember this.

She felt a small pang of fear. Leaving me again? Do you have to?

Yes. But I am leaving you with a gift. It's a very important gift. It's a gift that Croyd gave you.

What is it? You'll find out.

Something in the soft air around her changed, and she knew she was alone with the joker.

Acting without her volition, her hand pulled the sheet back, exposing the rest of the joker's body, which was cratered with more eyes, almost all over. They seemed to be forming as she watched. She would have to work fast so as not to hurt him.

She climbed onto the mattress next to him and smiled. One area, fortunately, had been spared so far, and it was there that she began, moving with gentleness.

"Lady, what the hell are you doing?"

She couldn't answer him, but it wasn't necessary. Certainly he could see very well what she was doing.

"Hammond. Hey, Hammond! Wake up! Tell me this isn't a dream!"

She ignored the sounds from the next bed, ignored everything except the task at hand, except task was entirely the wrong word for it. Loving someone was not a task. Loving someone could perform miracles.

She felt his hands moving carefully on her, felt him quiver with pain. The eyes. How they all must hurt when anything touches him, she thought, and wondered who had been so thoughtless as to cover him with a sheet. Perhaps they'd just been waiting for him to die; this was the terminal ward, after all.

"Don't worry," she told him. "I'll do it all."

"Do anything you like!" he said, and groaned with enjoyment as he felt her enfold him.

It was different when it was love, she thought happily. When it was love, there was no pain, no shame; of course. When it was love, you wanted to heal the other person of all hurts. And when it was love, that was really possible.

She smoothed her hands over his chest and laid her head down on it to listen to his heartbeat. His arms went around her, and she could feel the new strength in them as they rocked together. Next to this, Ti Malice was a sad, sorry imitation of a kiss.

And with that thought, she realized that the terrible void within her had vanished and she was free. She rose up and gave a shout of joy.

A roomful of voices answered her.

It was like a switch being thrown-suddenly she was awake, really awake, and she realized she was straddling a man in a hospital bed, a perfectly normal man with two, only two, green eyes, and sandy hair, who was looking up at her with a beatific smile on his young, plain face.

"Lady," he said, "this is what I call medication!"

She twisted around and saw that the room behind her was filled with jokers of every variety, and among them, forcibly restrained, were two nurses and a doctor.

They broke loose from their captors and rushed the bed, pulling her off and examining the man.

"I saw it, but I don't believe it!"

"Right before my very eyes-"

"I thought this one was already dead-"

"Who are you? What room are you in?"

She backed away from their questions, into the waiting arms of the jokers. A misshapen man whose features had been scrambled thrust his distorted face into hers and demanded, "Can I be next?"

"No, me!" shouted someone else, and then hands were grabbing at her, pulling her every which way, trying to throw her down on the floor.

"SAL!" she screamed.

The room was suddenly filled with fog, and then a wall of water crashed through the door, slapping them all down. Jane let it carry her across the room, onto the ex joker's bed. She rolled into the headboard and slipped down to the floor. More fog poured into the room as she crawled around the confused, shouting, drenched mob splashing about in the ankle-deep water, and she fled through the open doorway.

By the time the alarms went off, she had already left the building.

The luncheonette was a far cry from Aces High, and the clientele didn't tip nearly as well, but they didn't expect a whole lot. Most of them hardly looked at her-a waitress with a short, punkish haircut and an ill-fitting, baggy white uniform wasn't especially noteworthy in that part of town. The owner was a big motherly woman named Giselle who called her Lamb and asked nothing more of her help than their being on time and trying to remember any good jokes they overheard from the customers. Giselle collected jokes, and the regulars were always happy to supply them.

Like the two-headed man who came in every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning for a bacon-and-egg sandwich. He/they always had a new one to offer.

"Hey, have you heard the latest?" he/they said as she was setting the dish down in front of him/them. "There's good news and there's better news."

She smiled at each head politely. The two-headed man was one/two of the better tippers.

"The good news is, there's this woman that can turn you back into a nat by screwing you!"

Her smile froze, but he/they didn't seem to notice. "You know what the better news is?"

She shook her head, unable to speak.

"She's really good-looking!" Both heads roared with laughter, accidently bonking into each other. She tried to laugh with them, but she couldn't manage even a mild ha-ha-ha.

The heads sobered and looked up at her, slightly disappointed in her lack of reaction. "Hey, we guess you gotta be a joker-"

"-to really appreciate it," finished the other head, and giggled a little more.

"It's-it's very good, really," she said in a too-cheery voice. "I'll have to remember to tell it to Giselle when she comes in. I don't think she's heard it yet."

"Well, don't forget-"

"-to tell her where-"

"-you heard it first!"

"I won't," she said, still smiling her frozen smile at each head. "I won't forget. I promise."

Takedown by Leanne C. Harper

Rosemary stared out into the spring rain. Gray and dirty, outside it looked more like winter. Chris Mazzucchelli droned on in the background. Christ, how had she ever gotten involved with a jerk like him? Living underground with him had shown her the difference between dealing with Chris on an occasional basis and being together nearly twenty-four hours a day. He was no longer a romantic rebel in her eyes; he was a vicious punk. The problem was he was her vicious punk.

She returned her attention to the crisis at hand, but her eyes were immediately caught by the sight of Chris's rattail bouncing up and down on his back as he paced the dingy little Alphabet City hotel room they were using as a safe house.

"We lost eight capos to this double cross. Fiore, Baldacci, Schiaparelli, Hancock, and my brother. Dead. Vince Schiaparelli looked like he had been turned inside out. Fiore's skin turned into stone and he choked to death. Hancock and Baldacci weren't there anymore-just puddles with bones sticking out. My brother-" Here even he gagged and hesitated. "Three more, worse than dead. Matriona and Cheng walked away. They're fine, just fine. Since then we've been able to do nothing more than stay even, if that."

"And what did we get? Siu Ma. We already knew about her. We've tried to kidnap her twice, for Christ's sake. We know who's behind the Immaculate Egrets. But we still don't know who the ultimate leader is." Rosemary Gambione shook her head. "Even if Croyd knew something truly useful, they didn't get it out of him. Great. The Shadow Fists must have gotten to him. We hit a few more Shadow Fist operations, lose some more of our people, and we're just as far away as ever. Even worse, they've started using some kind of biological warfare against us. I wonder whose side this Croyd is really on."

"Well, O fearless leader, any ideas? I've done everything I can think of," Chris spun on her, anger and fear mixed evenly on his face. "And do me a favor, don't bring up your fucking father again. I've had about all I can take of that, too."

"Find your informer, this Croyd. Maybe he does have something more. Let's try to find out how the Shadow Fists got hold of this wild card virus they used. If they have it, we need it." Rosemary thought but did not voice' her apprehension that if the Families were this far behind, they had already lost the war. She was the sole surviving don. The Shadow Fists had gotten all the others. This war had begun to feel like Vietnam, and they weren't on the right side.

"I'll do what I can. By this time he's probably in Outer fucking Mongolia." Chris looked unimpressed by her request. "Chris. Get him." Rosemary used the drill sergeant tone deliberately. She suspected that he did not always follow her orders. She wondered at the speed with which the papers had gotten hold of her true background and whether the source could have been within the Family. Mazzucchelli looked back at her with swiftly concealed loathing.

"Anything you say. Dear." Chris stalked across the room before turning back at the door. "By the way, you might find it amusing that our boy Bludgeon apparently beat the shit out of Sewer Jack Robicheaux a few nights ago. He found out that Jack turned us down, I guess, and took it upon himself to teach the dirty little Cajun a lesson in manners. I gave him a little bonus for the job, in your name, of course."

Rosemary sat on the bed. It wasn't supposed to be this way. She was completely isolated from her people. Chris told her it was the only way to guarantee her security, but the situation was getting to her. She looked across the room to the door. She didn't feel like an all-powerful Mafia don. She felt like a prisoner.

Bagabond let herself into C.C. Ryder's loft expecting that C.C. would be in the studio. Instead, Cordelia was bothering C.C. again. She wondered what Cordelia wanted this time. Bagabond had had to dodge around even more people wearing the useless surgical masks. She had no sympathy for those panicked by this new outbreak of the wild card virus. Maybe it would do them some good. Paced by the ginger cat, Bagabond walked over to the couch and sat down on the floor beside C. C. The ginger put her head in Bagabond's lap. Both women nodded to her before continuing their discussion.

"There's something weird about that Shrike. I can feel it." Cordelia leaned forward to make her point. "And what they're doin' to Buddy just isn't right. He wrote those songs!"

"Cordelia, Shrike Music is a perfectly legitimate business. I know people who record for them. They're good business people. If Holley gave up the rights to his songs, that was his decision to make." C.C. shook her head wearily. "This business is full of trade-offs. That's the way it works. You know that by now. Buddy's got his new songs. They're good. Let it be."

"But I can tell by talking to Buddy that it wasn't his decision. He jus' won't tell me what happened." Cordelia got that look on her face that told Bagabond that she was not about to give up. Bagabond got up and went into the kitchen. Cordelia's obsession with saving the world reminded her uncomfortably of some of the younger nuns she'd met as a child. They had all wanted to be saints, real ones.

"The old-timers got ripped off. Look at Little Richard. It wasn't right; it wasn't fair. But it was legal. You can't do anything about that. Buddy has other preoccupations now. The concert went fine. Leave it."

"But you saw him a few weeks ago. Playing in a Holiday Inn in New Jersey! Somebody has to help him, and I'm going to do it." Cordelia's eyes shone with the fervor of the converted.

"Let Buddy get on with his life."

"Hey, it's not even my idea dis time. They want to see me." Cordelia waved her hands innocently in the air.

C.C. shook her head in resignation. "So what's this great plan of yours?"

Bagabond hacked off a chunk of cheddar cheese for herself and another for the cat. Nibbling at hers, she walked back into the living room.

"I have an appointment to meet a Shrike exec tomorrow. I put him off until well after the concert." Cordelia scooted down on the couch and put her arms around her knees. "And I need to know what to ask him."

"Me." C.C. sighed and reached down for a bite of Bagabond's cheese.

"Right. You. My expert on recording contracts." Cordelia bounced once in triumph and grinned over at C.C. "I want to see the original contracts, right?"

"I guarantee you that they are not going to let you see Holley's contract."

"I'll find a way." Cordelia grinned unself-consciously. "Woo, hey, I gotta go."

Cordelia was up and headed for the door. "I see you two later. Bye, y'all."

Chris Mazzucchelli burst into the room to face Rosemary's drawn Walther. He waved both hands in the air languidly, then dropped them and threw himself down on the bed.

"Put that silly thing away before you shoot yourself. Jesus Christ, woman."

"I haven't seen you for days. Where the hell have you been?" Rosemary lowered the pistol but did not holster it.

"I've been a good little boy. I've been out finding Croyd just like you wanted." Chris rolled over onto his elbows. "I've got an address all ready for you."

"Don't be ridiculous, Chris. I'm not leaving this room." Rosemary sat down on a chair across the narrow room from Chris. "It's too dangerous."

"Maybe if you exposed yourself to a little `danger,' you'd get some idea what we're up against. You sure as hell don't know anything now." Chris sat all the way up on the bed. "Or is that more than your heart would take? Your father would never be caught dead hiding his face like this."

"All right." Rosemary knew she was being baited, but the question was whether Chris had the guts to kill her. "Where?"

"In jokertown, in a hotel near the docks." Chris smiled openly in triumph. "Fitting, don't you think?"

Chris got up and walked over to her. He stroked her cheek. She tensed but did not pull away.

"C'mon, baby, we've got until tomorrow."

It took hours to get rid of him. When he finally left-to make final preparations for her security, or so he said-she went to the bathroom and pried open the window. With one foot on the sink and the other on the water tank, she levered herself outside onto the fire escape.

Rosemary climbed the fire escape to the roof, silently cursing at the least rusty squeak it gave. On the roof she walked as quietly as possible to a small flock of pigeons cooing on the edge of the building. When they did not fly off at her approach, she scattered some crumbs from the sandwiches she had been eating for weeks.

"Bagabond, help me." She tried to catch the eyes of each pigeon, wondering how long it could carry her image in its tiny brain. There was no other chance. "Bagabond, I need you. Chris is going to kill me."

Bagabond was her last hope. Chris wouldn't dare just shoot her. It would be too obvious to the few mafiosi still loyal to her father and the Gambione name. He had had to find another way. This was it, she could feel it.

Bagabond pulled off her headphones. Something, like a fading echo within her mind, had broken her concentration on C.C.'s newest tapes. She tracked it back through the lines of consciousness that intersected in her mind, identified the medium as a bird's mind, then found the pigeon who carried the vision. Rosemary called to her again out of the pigeon's memory.

Rosemary had given her address. Bagabond knew the area. She sat stroking the ginger's back as she debated meeting Rosemary. She couldn't trust the woman anymore. In the message she had left among the pigeons, Rosemary promised to tell Bagabond who really killed Paul. The Mafia leader sounded sincere, but Bagabond had seen her in action before. She was a lawyer. She was trained to say whatever would best serve her purposes at that moment.

But even Rosemary's training could not hide the fear that was carried by every pigeon she had reached. Rosemary was terrified. Bagabond remembered the first time they had met.

The social worker, frightened then but frightened of not being able to help, had done everything she could for the street people. Bagabond remembered Rosemary's teasing questions about her dates with Paul and going shopping together for just the right outfit to impress him. Rosemary had given her back part of her life.

But she had paid that debt. She'd already saved Rosemary's life once when Water Lily had betrayed her. Betrayal. What about Paul? Wasn't helping Rosemary betraying Paul? Bagabond still suspected that Rosemary was more involved in his death than she would admit.

Bagabond stood up and dumped the cat onto the floor. She picked up her old coats and wrapped them around her. If she decided that Rosemary was lying about Paul's death, she had meant too much to her for too long to abandon her now. She turned off the tape deck and amplifier. The green telltales that had illuminated the room dimly faded to black. Bagabond's eyes adjusted almost instantly as she walked unhesitatingly across the loft toward the door and the New York City night.

Down on the street she began gathering her forces. Bagabond contacted the pigeons, the cats and the dogs, and the rarer ones: the pair of peregrine falcons, the wolf who had escaped from his would-be owners, and the ocelot who spent her time prowling the parks for stray dogs. The wild ones listened to her call and were ready to follow her.

Rosemary was north near Jokertown. It would be a long walk to this hotel where she would be meeting someone who planned to harm her. Bagabond slipped into a subway entrance and began working her way through the tunnels toward Jokertown. She had gone almost a mile underground when Jack called.

Jack had been missing since the night of the concert. Cordelia had been concerned, but she had assumed that he was doing what he wanted and had not tried to find him. He and Bagabond continued to avoid each other, and she had not tracked him down either. The strength of his sending was incredible. Bagabond fell to one knee, then collapsed under the weight of it.

She caught snatches of images. It was enough to tell her she was in a hospital. But that was not the message. Jack was cycling through the human-alligator as fast as he could, using the alligator-persona to contact her and the human to communicate. It was Cordelia. She was in trouble. Filtered through Jack's perceptions, Bagabond understood that Cordelia had called for Jack but he was physically unable to help her.

Not only was he switching between alligator and human, he was alternating between consciousness and coma. Jack was expending all the energy he could muster to ask her for help.

Bagabond concentrated. Cordelia's fear resonated through everything Jack sent. Images cascaded through Bagabond's mind. A needle, the pain of an injection. A street empty of pedestrians or traffic. Anonymous buildings. They looked like apartments, but Bagabond did not recognize the neighborhood.

"Where, Jack? Where?" Somewhere else rough concrete cut into her hands and knees. It was to the north, it had to be. She could tell that much from what she had seen of the apartment houses crowded onto hills. With part of her fragmented mind she tried to match what she had seen with the views of the birds and the animals in the north end of Manhattan. Abruptly she lost Jack.

"Jack!" For long seconds he was gone entirely. He was dead to her and she feared that his efforts had been fatal. Then abruptly she was seeing the numbers over the building's front door through Cordelia's eyes. "The street, Cordelia, the street?"

She did not know if Cordelia had heard her or not, but corner street signs appeared. Washington Heights. She also felt the rough hands on her arms and the gun at her head. There was a haze across the images that she recognized. Cordelia had been drugged with something psychoactive and disorienting that would prevent Cordelia from concentrating enough to harm her attackers even if she would betray her principles.

Cordelia's face floated in her mind shaded by both her own memories and Jack's. Cordelia's young enthusiasms and energy, her devotion to life and helping others, pulled Bagabond north toward her. But Cordelia's face was overlaid by Rosemary's. The ginger screamed her empathy with the turmoil in Bagabond's brain.

She had promised to help Rosemary. Cordelia had the ability to help herself, if she would use it. But could she, drugged, and would using it destroy the girl, as Bagabond had been destroyed. Rosemary had killed Paul, or caused his death. Bagabond knew that as well as she knew anything. She had been blinding herself to it because of her overwhelming desire to keep Rosemary as her friend. Rosemary had chosen her path. Cordelia had not had time to choose hers.

The falcons wheeled in midflight and headed north, and the ocelot bounded after them.

Her bodyguards followed Rosemary down the filthy hallway of the flophouse where Croyd was hiding. If Croyd was there at all. Rosemary remembered the men she had seen in prison movies being escorted to their deaths. The two big mafiosi said nothing to her. She didn't even know their names. Chris had told her he would wait outside to keep watch. The walls were mildewed and stained, and the hallway smelled of cigarette smoke and urine. Abruptly the two men stopped. The dark-haired man on her right motioned her forward.

She couldn't tell if Bagabond was there, watching and waiting. Rosemary had come up with a plan to take care of two of her problems. She knew she could convince Bagabond that Paul's death had all been Chris's doing. Bagabond would kill Chris in revenge. With Chris out of the way maybe she could make some kind of deal with the shadow Fists. Get out alive. Maybe.

Please, God, Bagabond, be here.

Bagabond found one of Jack's underground motorized carts. He had made her memorize the tunnel system underlying the entire island. She silently thanked him as she switched from one passage to another, risking a crash by pushing the cart as fast as it would go. The markings on the walls passed as she sped north. Above her and through the tunnels paralleling her route, her animals kept pace as best they could.

The hawks arrived first and circled the building. Through their eyes Bagabond could see the motions of the men inside. Cordelia was huddled in a corner but still alive. Bagabond tried to send that information to Jack, but she got no response. Ignoring Jack's silence with difficulty, she began setting up her warriors before she arrived.

There was a broken window at the top of the 1940s apartment building. She sent the hawks through it to wait at the top of the stairwell. The ocelot was almost there. She had used roofs as well as streets and had outpaced the others. The wolf was blocks back, trying to avoid being seen. The black and calico she kept with her, but she sent the ginger into the building to be two of her eyes. For the others she called rats from the surrounding buildings. Many waited to be renovated and housed her creatures. As her animals converged, she felt the warmth of her strength build.

By the time she climbed up the stairs of the subway station at Two hundredth, she was in place. She cycled through the consciousnesses of her animals, controlling them and holding them ready, and as she did, she tried to touch Cordelia. The girl was a blank without Jack to amplify her mind. With the part of herself that remained human and aware of why she was here, Bagabond urged Cordelia to use what she had been given to protect herself.

The black she had left to guard her car. He had been unhappy but she refused to risk him. The younger calico she took along but left up the block from the building. A combination of points of view told her that two men loitered at the main entrance of the partially renovated red-brick apartment house. The ocelot paced restlessly back and forth in the darkness of an alley beside the apartments. At the touch of a thought she sprang out and raced for the men, running silently for the hunt. She leaped for the closest guard and tore out his throat before he realized that he was being attacked. The other human was fast enough to pull his pistol, but his first shot was wild. He never got a chance for another. As she slunk into the five-story building, Bagabond made sure that no one was taking any notice of the noise or the bag lady. She jerked her head as the rhythmic wail of a car alarm began a few blocks away, but no one else reacted to it except the nervous ocelot.

Still trying vainly to get something from Cordelia, Bagabond sent the ocelot and the ginger ahead of her up the fire stairs. Moving quietly, she followed while tracking the presence of her creatures within and without the building. She spread a living net centered on Cordelia and a well-dressed Oriental man, confronting each other in a fourth-floor apartment. The rats scuttling through the walls and across the floors told her that the teenager was still alive.

As she climbed the fourth flight of stairs, she heard the voices echoing through the open door. The Oriental was interrogating Cordelia. She could not understand the words. Disrupting her concentration, Rosemary's face flashed across her mind. She mentally thrust it and the accompanying guilt away from her down into the submerged, fully human part of herself.

Rats broke from side rooms and ran down the hallway. Three guards stood outside in the bright light cast by the bare light bulbs in the ceiling. Heavy hitters in expensive tailored suits that normally hid the guns they had drawn. Bagabond wondered what these people feared from Cordelia.

The wolf was making his way up the stairs at the far end of the hall. The ocelot strained at her side. The sight of the rats had made the well-dressed killers nervous. She used her other eyes to look into the room where Cordelia still lay curled up on the floor as she was questioned. Damn her Catholic-martyr syndrome. Bagabond could not sense even stirrings of Cordelia's power. The girl was keeping her promise to herself or she was incapable of acting. A huge man who looked like a sumo wrestler and wore a Man Mountain Gentian T-shirt stood silently in the corner, but even through the rat's dim vision Bagabond could see the bloodlust in the way he moved constantly, clenching and unclenching his fists as he looked at Cordelia.

Abruptly Bagabond sent the ginger cat yowling down the hall. As she had hoped, the three men pulled their guns but held their shots when they saw it was just a cat.

"Goin' after the rats. Great!," One of the men voiced his hope as he reholstered his weapon. The other two were agreeing when the ocelot sprang away from Bagabond's side. One swipe of the ocelot's paw tore away most of a face and ripped the jugular before she used the shoulder of the dead man as a platform for her leap to the next. On the opposite side, one of the guards shot at the gray shape lunging across the scarred wooden floor, claws scrabbling for purchase. Only one shot creased the wolf's hindquarter before he was on his enemy, jaws closing on the mans throat. The last man had managed to wedge his forearm into the ocelot's mouth and was beating her with the butt of his gun when the wolf caught his free arm.

Bagabond knew the noise would alert the men inside. She could only hope that Cordelia would use the distraction to advantage in the short time before she could get there. The sumo was too close to Cordelia to stop.

When she slid behind the remains of the guards and into the apartment where they had been interrogating Cordelia,

Bagabond saw only a sharply tailored pants leg and an Italian shoe disappear into a connecting room. She didn't see the wrestler. Cordelia was wavering to her feet, saying something as Bagabond started forward to free her. The huge hand around her throat stopped her.

"Forget about me, you crazy bitch?" The sumo spoke with an English accent. Stepping completely out of a closet, he spun her toward him. Bagabond's breath was cut off and she felt her windpipe closing underneath his inhuman strength. She attacked him directly but her telepathy did not affect him. He was too human, she realized, in a part of her darkening mind that could still perceive irony. The ginger had already fastened her claws into his leg, but it had no effect. Bagabond called for the ocelot and the wolf, but her mental power was fading with her physical. She could not seem to override their desire to feast on their kills. As she considered all the deaths she had felt, she wondered how her own would be received by the wild ones. Would they remember her? She kicked at her tormentor, but she couldn't seem to get her legs untangled from her skirts and coat.

The wind of the hawks' passing brought her back to consciousness long enough to hear their hunting screams. She felt blood drip onto her face before she was flung away. She was blind, but through the eyes of the ginger lying across the room, she saw her attacker driven back toward the window. The shattering glass showered her as he crashed through to plunge forty feet to the ground. Bagabond thought she felt the building rock when he hit, but she decided that it had to be a hallucination from the oxygen deprivation.

The ocelot and the wolf crawled contritely over to her and leaned against her to give her strength. She could feel the rats running rampant throughout the building as the cats ran among them, scattering but not killing the vermin. As far as she could reach, her wild animals were going crazy. She did her best to bring them back to normal and sent those she could touch to their homes before returning to the bare apartment. Opening her eyes, she saw Cordelia, arms still tied behind her back, leaning over her.

"Girl, you got to take responsibility for yourself and what you are. I ain't goin' through this again. Not even for Jack. Either learn to use what you have or go live in a convent." Bagabond started to slide into the warm darkness again. She was not sure whether she had actually spoken to Cordelia or whether she had imagined it.

Rosemary was feeling increasingly afraid of the entire situation. Chris was up to something; she could feel it. She did not have to be a telepath like Bagabond to sense that she was in trouble. She had not seen any animals around her, not even a rat. It was not a good sign. Where the hell was Bagabond?

She deliberately slowed as she walked down the hallway. She tried to focus on her danger and use it. What was waiting for her in the filthy little room she was about to enter? Rosemary drew her own gun.

She tried the knob. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open onto the room and its occupant. The man who had been described to her as Croyd stood there, about to leave.

"Who the hell are you?" He was obviously surprised to see a woman. With the gun Rosemary gestured for him to sit back down on the iron-framed bed. She kept her back against the wall beside the door. "Christ, you're Maria Gambione!"

"I need to know what you actually found out." Rosemary leveled the gun on the man across the tiny room, holding it firmly just as she had always practiced. "You're not going anywhere."

Outside on the fire escape Chris waited for Rosemary to go down with the virus. Mentally he urged her to get closer to Croyd. He could not hear what they were saying. It did not matter as long as Croyd did to her what he had done to the capos. Chris knew Croyd had to have access to the virus somehow. Nothing else could have done that. Why didn't she close in?

He saw her gun go up. Croyd moved faster. Before Chris could get out of the way, Croyd had thrown the bedside lamp through the window and followed it out onto the fire escape. Chris scrambled backward, but in his haste to get away from Rosemary, Croyd was across the iron grating of the landing. Seeing Chris at last, Croyd tackled him and threw him down the next flight of steps. Chris gagged and tried to crawl away down the steps. A shot narrowly missed Croyd, and he clambered up the ladder two steps at a time.

Rosemary had frozen when Croyd went through the window. As the echoes of the crash rang through the flophouse, she heard her bodyguards coming for her. She followed Croyd out the broken window and saw him start up the fire escape. She fired at him more to keep him moving than to kill him. The only way out was down the escape. Chris was coughing and convulsing on the landing below her. As she heard her men break down the door behind her, she was running down the steps and jumping over her lover. She did not stop.

"Bastard!" she hissed at him as she left him behind. She was headed for the ground. She knew now that Chris's men would kill her on sight. It would take luck and fast moves, but there was just a chance she could lose the bodyguards and the men out front. It was her only chance.

Concerto for Siren and Serotonin