“Smoke was rising behind the thick lace. A woman was crying softly, brokenheartedly. The child’s sobs came like coughs. But the woman beside me was smiling.

“ ‘I’m light, I’m little,’ she said. ‘See my small waist? See how small I am. Carry me up the stairs.’

“Round and round and up and up. You can’t fall down from dizziness if you are going up and up. Never in my life had I felt such exultation. Never had I felt so strong.

“We were in a bedroom, and though the configuration of the walls and the archway made it seem that it was my room, it wasn’t, it was hers, and we were lying under her lace canopy and the bed was airy and the breeze was coming in from the windows and the lace was moving in the air.

“ ‘Now, my big boy,’ she said as she opened my pants and pushed to get them down and lifted up her skirts. Her skin was hot. ‘It’s perfect now.’ I slid inside of her! First time! The heat, the pressure, the tight sheath. I came in her, I flooded into her, I came, and felt her shivering and pushing her hips up against me, and her sex holding me, and then she was dying back, spent, with a short gasping laugh coming from her lips.

“I lay back. It didn’t matter, the smell of smoke, the sight of it. It didn’t matter, people rushing. She turned to me, and, rising up on her elbow, she said,

“ ‘Find what’s left of me out there, Quinn. Find the island. Find what they did to me.’ How passionate and exquisite she was, how wronged and frail. The cameo earrings shivered beside her delicate face. I touched her ear. I touched the place where the gold pierced it. I touched the handsome black-and-white cameo at her throat.

“ ‘Rebecca,’ I said. Beyond her stood Goblin shaking his head No. Goblin was so vivid, Goblin was using all his power.

“ ‘Do that for me,’ she said. ‘Do that and I’ll come back to you, Quinn. And it will be sweet, always so sweet. I was a creature born to make others happy. That’s what I believe in, Quinn. I’ve given you your first time, Quinn. Don’t ever forget me. To give pleasure. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.’

“The cameo at her throat, it was so like those in Aunt Queen’s collection yet it was different. But all of this made sense. She’d died out there wearing this cameo. Yes. I reached out to touch her soft brown hair.

“ ‘Tawquin, Tawquin, Taw-quin,’ Jasmine shouted. She was running up the steps. I could feel it, the vibration of the floorboards.

“I was alone.