“She's feeling kind of low,” Chutsky muttered to me. “Happens sometimes after you get chopped up.” From the number of scars all over Chutsky's face and body I had to assume he knew what he was talking about, so I just nodded and approached Deborah.

“Hey sis” I said, in the kind of artificially cheerful voice I had always understood you were supposed to use at an invalid's bedside.

She turned to look at me, and in the deadness of her face and the deep blue emptiness of her eyes, I saw an echo of her father Harry; I had seen that look before, in Harry's eyes, and out of those blue depths a memory came out and wrapped itself all around me.

Harry lay dying. It was an awkward thing for all of us, like watching Superman in the throes of kryptonite. He was supposed to be above that kind of common weakness. But for the last year and a half he had been dying, slowly, in fits and starts, and now he was very close to the finish line. Harry was dying, beyond any doubt, and as he lay there in his hospice bed his nurse had decided to help. She had been deliberately and lethally increasing the dose of his pain medicine and feeding on Harry's death, savoring his shrinking away, and he had known it and told me. Oh the joy and bliss, Harry had given me permission to make this nurse my very first real live human playmate, the first I had ever taken away with me to the Dark Playground.

And I had done so. First Nurse became the very first small drop of blood on the original glass slide in my brand new collection. It had been several hours of wonder, exploration and ecstacy, before First Nurse went the way of all flesh, and the next morning when I went to the hospice to report to Harry, the experience still filled me with brilliant darkness.

I came into Harry's room on feet that barely touched the ground, and as Harry opened his eyes and looked into mine he saw this, saw that I had changed and become the thing that he had made me, and as he watched me the deadness came into his eyes.

I sat anxiously beside him, thinking he might be at some new crisis. “Are you okay?” I said. “Should I call the doctor?” He closed his eyes and slowly, fragilely, shook his head.

“What's wrong?” I insisted, thinking that since I felt better than I ever had before, everyone else really ought to cheer up a little, too.

“Nothing wrong,” he said, in his soft, careful, dying voice. And he opened his eyes again and looked at me with that same glazed look of blue-eyed emptiness. “So you did it?” I nodded, almost blushing, feeling that talking about it was somehow embarrassing.

“And after?” he said.

“All cleaned up,” I said. I was really careful.”