“Safety?”

“I may be too late. Pombagira may already have her.”

“Who,” I asked with a stirring of unwelcome alarm, “is Pombagira?”

“She is the wife of Eshu. Some call her Red-eyed Erzulie. You will see her in the bar, in the whorehouse, wearing her tight red dress, smoking her cigarette. She likes liquor and blood, and in her service there is power and money, but no lasting joy.”

I pleated the lettuce leaf, and heard the center rib pop with each fold. “You can’t Deal with joy,” I muttered, but she heard me. She turned her back on the counter and stared at me.

“No. You can Deal with power and money, and shame and pain. Do you want your friend to have those?”

“I have no friends,” I said, and walked blindly away.

Pantry, power shed, garage. I stood staring at the limo, barely visible in the near darkness; the sun was dipping its toes in the river, to the west, and the garage windows faced east. Did Albrecht have a limo? Had Theo ridden in it, to the Underbridge, even, and dusted the smell of wealth off at the door to keep the secret? But it had been no secret for Sherrea. Just for me.

I didn’t want to think about either of them. I hoped Frances the Serial Killer was scaring the wits out of Theo, along with the information she wanted. Was this why Albrecht wanted the Horseman movie? Not because it was rare, but because he had a damned good reason for wanting to know about the Horsemen, no matter how unreliable the source? Because he was suffering an infestation of Tom Worecski?

Or maybe he was a willing accomplice. I thought of that money-pale face in the light of his desk lamp, the profile repeated on the coins he gave me. He’d sent me to find a copy of Singin’ in the Rain. Maybe Gilles de Rais would have loved Singin’ in the Rain. But if A. A. Albrecht was delighted with Tom Worecski, why had he wanted the Horseman movie?

My thoughts were as productive as peas in a rattle: they made a lot of noise, and went nowhere. My eyes had adjusted enough to see the garage door, so I left by it.

Evening, in that garden, seemed to bloom like one of its plants. Clinging to the garage wall was a vine with flowers like the bells of trumpets, milk-white and luminous in the dusk, lavishly scented. Bats rose in a translucent cloud from the eaves of an outbuilding and set to hunting with brisk, irregular darts. A slow spark fired and disappeared in the shrubbery across the grass, and another: fireflies. I crunched along the gravel path to round the garage and see the last of the sunset.

It was down to turquoise, watery gold, and indigo. “Going someplace?” said someone behind me.

“Nope.” I glanced over my shoulder. It was Mick Skinner. I wasn’t familiar with the timbre of his new voice, though I noticed that he’d brought the hint of Texas with him when he’d switched bodies. The light warmed his features, delicate and angular under the well-kept copper-brown skin. The whole body was well kept, I realized, and young. “Was that one trying to kill himself?” I asked.