“Ah, yes, she was your daughter, of course,” I said, and though there was a great distance between us, and Jasmine was looking up at me uncomprehending, he nodded and he made a very sad little smile.

“What are you saying, you crazy Little Boss?” said Jasmine. “You punchy as I am?”

“I don’t know, darling,” I answered. “I just see things, always have. Seems the living and the dead have turned out for Aunt Queen. Don’t expect me to explain it. But it’s fitting, all things considered, don’t you think?”

As I watched him, Julien’s expression gradually changed, sharpening and strengthening and then becoming almost bitter. I felt the chills coming up my neck. He shook his head in a subtle but stern negation. I felt the words coming from him soundlessly over the distance. Never my beloved Mona.

I drew in my breath. A flood of assurances came from that part of me which could reach him without words.

“Come around, Little Boss,” said Jasmine. I felt her lips on my cheek and the hard press of her vigilant fingers.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Julien, but his face was softening. It went blank.

He began to fade. And then dissolve just as Rowan and Michael, along with Dr. Winn Mayfair, came out of the nearest doorway. And who should be with them now but Stirling Oliver, Stirling who knew what I was, Stirling whom I had almost killed the night before, Stirling—gazing at me as if he accepted me when that was utterly morally impossible, Stirling whom I had so loved as my friend. I couldn’t bear their scrutiny—any of them. I couldn’t talk common talk of Mona, as if my soul didn’t hunger for her, as if I didn’t know that I could never see her again, even if they thought that I could, as if Julien’s ghost hadn’t just threatened me. I had to make a hasty exit.

And I did.

It was a night for a special killing. I pounded the hot pavements. I left the great trees of the Garden District behind me. I crossed the Avenue. I knew where to go.

I wanted a drug dealer, a wanton killer, a fine repast, and I knew where to find one; I had passed his door on gentler nights. I knew his habits. I had saved him for a time of vengeance. I had saved him for now.

It was a big two-story house on Carondolet Street, shabby to the world and rich inside with his electronic gadgets and wall-to-wall carpets, a padded cell from which he ordered executions and purchases and even put the mark on children who refused to run deliveries for him, having their tennis shoes tied together and thrown up over the electric wires to let others know that they had been killed.