Awareness returned slowly. Torches blazed. A weight pressed against his shoulders. He realized after a second’s confusion that the weight was his own head. He breathed through heavy lips and a swollen nose. Eve crouched over him, shaking him by the lapels of his coat. “Margot? Edmond? Say something.” Behind her a circle of concerned faces and staring eyes limned the board roof of the Rest. He sat up so fast he hit Eve’s forehead with his own. His mouth was full of sand, more sand sweat-plastered to the right side of his face. He hurt. Running one hand down his body he found new rips in the shirt, blissfully hidden by jacket and vest. Eve pointed to someone out of his field of vision and snapped a finger. A waiter thrust a glass of water into Margot’s face. He took it, swished a mouthful in his mouth, spit onto the sand, coughed, and this time drank.

“Are you okay?” Eve again.

“I have to go,” he said, and lurched to his feet.

She held out a hand to stop him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I will.” He laughed when he realized what he was about to say. “I must find my Lady.”

She reached for his arm, but he pulled back. No one else tried to stop him as he forced through the staring crowd, away from the spotlight and the man-shaped depression in the sand where he’d fallen, out into the dark, questing. Eve watched him go. He glanced back over his shoulder once, when he reached the edge of the torchlight. She stood still, a vision in black—then waved the audience back to their seats. On with the show.

Margot stumbled into the night. His ankle hurt, but still he walked, drawn like a filing to a magnet by the voice he’d lost.

Chapter 13

13

A waist-high bamboo fence surrounded Kai’s yard. Across the quarter-acre of grass and behind a row of palm trees stood her bungalow, pink walled and slope roofed, a clever investment in a criminal real estate auction; after a few years’ occupancy and regular cleaning, it no longer stank of weed. A dog barked down the street. A carriage rolled past, bearing passengers to revelry and the shore.

She opened the gate and stepped inside. Wards prickled over her skin, recognizing her. She swayed up the steps and leaned against the wall as she searched her purse for her keys and unlocked the door. After a slow count of ten she pushed herself off the wall, turned the knob, and lurched into her dark living room. She swung the door shut behind her, dropped her keys in the wood bowl on the table by the entrance, set her hand on the table, sagged.