"From the artistic point of view? Not much," Keller said, looking down at the bull's head by the body. "It looks like it was done in a mold, and then baked in a fairly primitive kiln. Maybe even just a big oven. But historically, it's much more interesting."

"What do you mean interesting?" Deborah snapped at him, and he shrugged. "Well, it's not perfect," Keller said. "But somebody tried to recreate a very old stylized design."

"How old?" Deborah said. Keller raised an eyebrow and shrugged, as if to say she had asked the wrong question, but he answered. "Three or four thousand years old," he said. "That's very old," I offered helpfully, and they both looked at me, which made me think I ought to add something halfway clever, so I said, "And what part of the world would it be from?"

Keller nodded. I was clever again. "Middle East," he said. "We see a similar motif in Babylonia, and even earlier around Jerusalem. The bull head appears to be attached to the worship of one of the elder gods. A particularly nasty one, really."

"Moloch," I said, and it hurt my throat to say that name. Deborah glared at me, absolutely certain now that I had been holding out on her, but she looked back at Keller as he continued to talk. "Yes, that's right," he said. "Moloch liked human sacrifice. Especially children. It was the standard deal: sacrifice your child and he would guarantee a good harvest, or victory over your enemies." "Well, then, I think we can look forward to a very good harvest this year," I said, but neither one of them appeared to think that was worth even a tiny smile. Ah well, you do what you can to bring a little cheer into this dreary world, and if people refuse to respond to your efforts it's their loss. "What's the point of burning the bodies?" Deborah demanded. Keller smiled briefly, kind of a professorial thanks-for-asking smile. "That's the whole key to the ritual," he said. "There was a huge bull-headed statue of Moloch that was actually a furnace."

I thought of Halpern and his "dream." Had he known about Moloch beforehand, or had it come to him the way the music came to me? Or was Deborah right all along and he had actually been to the statue and killed the girls-as unlikely as that seemed now?

"A furnace," said Deborah, and Keller nodded. "And they toss the bodies in there?" she said, with an expression that indicated she was having trouble believing it, and it was all his fault.