“I lay back, tired to the point of stupor, and she was the one now looking down at me.

“ ‘Be my vengeance, Quinn,’ she said softly. ‘Tell the world my story, yes, but be my vengeance, too.’

“ ‘But how, Rebecca? How can I do that when those who hurt you are gone?’ I sat up, gently forcing her backwards.

“She looked urgent.

“We sat together. ‘Tell me truly, Rebecca, what can I do to make your spirit rest?’

“The horror of the earlier scene came back to me, the grim picture of her hanging on the hook, naked and helpless, and of those two evil ones who had done it to her.

“ ‘It was Manfred himself, wasn’t it?’ I asked her. ‘What can I do, Rebecca, to send your soul to peace?’

“She said nothing. She only kissed me again.

“ ‘You know you’re gone too, Rebecca,’ I said. ‘Along with those who did the deed, however awful it was.’ I had to say it. I had to tell her. ‘Rebecca, there is no one alive now who can suffer for what is done.’

“ ‘No, Quinn, I’m here,’ she said sweetly, ‘I’m always here, I see you always, I see everything. Be my vengeance, Quinn. Fight for me.’

“I kissed her again. I covered her breasts with kisses. We lay tangled and I felt the velvet of her burgundy dress. Her hair came loose, tumbled disgracefully in our lovemaking, and then I sighed, and, kissing her cheeks, again I passed into a blackness that was cool and enveloping as if I had drifted bodiless into the sex act itself.

“Sleep. How long? Hours upon hours.

“Then suddenly I was awake. I knew the heat, the sweat.

“And the darkness! Good Lord, the darkness!

“Nighttime on Sugar Devil Island. Nighttime in Sugar Devil Swamp. Oh, of all the idiot mistakes to have made, to have fallen into a drunken sleep here one good hour from home, with all the swamp creatures waking and hungry. What good was a pistol? What good a rifle if a snake drops on you from an overhanging tree? I didn’t mind poking at the gators to scare them off, but what about everything else, including the bobcats, that came out to feast after dark?

“I rose up, furious with myself. And I had been so sure that I wouldn’t be tricked by her, that I knew her for the evil thing that she was.

“Then it all came crashing back to me, what they’d done to her, and I gasped aloud.

“Vengeance? Oh, it had been enough to make a vengeful spirit of a choirboy, what they’d done. And she had died like that, I knew it. She had died and rotted there, but did she mean her vengeance to be on me?