“To be honest, I have no idea. I fell in with a group of meth heads. They had a van. One night I woke up in the bayous.” She downed her mezcal in one gulp, then looked at Monroe. “That carving in the wall behind the waterfall—the triangle with the tail.”

“That’s an alchemical symbol for sulfur. Why do you ask?”

Lucy shrugged. “No reason. I thought I’d seen something like that before.”

“Unless you were studying alchemy, that’s highly unlikely.”

She picked up a wedge of lime, squeezed the juice onto her food, then popped it into her mouth, chewed reflectively for a moment. Spitting out what was left of the lime, she said, “The image I saw was voodoo—at least that’s what the locals claimed. I saw it first carved into a tree, then, later, painted on the side of a church that had been deserted by its flock. Others had moved in. At midnight it was lit up by flares and torches. I didn’t see the inside, at least not then, but I watched the people as they filtered through the brush to get to it. Ugly folk, sick-looking.”

“You mean the halt and the lame. A preacher inside claimed to be a faith healer.”

Lucy shook her head. “I mean sick inside—like they saw the world differently than you or me.”

“How in the world could you know that?”

“The people I shared a van with. They had that same look. Sick as rats been fed poison.”

Monroe looked disconcerted. “You must be wrong about the sigil. I don’t see how it would show up in the Louisiana bayous.”

Lucy fell silent for so long Monroe called for more mezcal, watched her down it in one gulp all over again, and asked for the bottle to stay with them. This time, he leaned over, refilled her glass himself. Then he took a sip. Their food was growing cold.

“Lucy,” he said softly, “something’s clearly on your mind.”

Her eyes rose to the level of his. For a moment they were out of focus. Her thoughts seemed to be locked in an incident in the past. “I was lost for some time.”

He nodded. “Luther told me a bit of that. As much as he knew, I suppose, which wasn’t much.”

“No one knows,” Lucy whispered. “No one knows.”

Monroe waited, then decided to take another tack. “I’m known as Monroe, but you can call me—”

“Mr. Tibbs.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You do have a wicked sense of humor, my dear. But, no. My name is Albin White. I’d be pleased if you called me Albin.”

She cocked her head. “Albin. I like that.”

“Lucy,” he said softly, “tell me what happened to you.”

“Why should I?” She said this not defiantly, not defensively, but out of genuine curiosity.