I lost track of how many nights Vera came to me, how many nights she drained me. It was just as well I was tied to the bed, because my groin itched and stung so horribly, I’d have scratched myself to ribbons trying to relieve it. There wasn’t much left of me now—I had been sucked nearly dry. I didn’t even dream of Caz any more, but floated between two kinds of being half-asleep, with brief interludes of searing pain and then the wretchedness that followed, and bouts of weakness that lasted longer each time, broken by desperate sawing at the thick leather strap. Soon Vera would feast on me one last time, take the rest of me, and that would be it. Belle had already told me that I was going into the furnace when I was through, that she didn’t want anything left for her mistress to become sentimental about.

I no longer dreamed of Caz, but I did dream a little, the kind of sickly fantasies you have when you’re in the grip of a fever, complicated but basically meaningless. That was why it took me quite a while on this night to realize that I was actually awake, and something really was kneeling beside me on the bed, resting a splayed hand on my chest.

I was so weak that for a long moment I just stared at it, blinking against the light of the single small candle that lit the room. In one sense I had never truly examined the face that now swung down close to my own, staring at me with an intensity that seemed as hungry as Vera’s; in another sense, I knew it better than I knew mine, that dead gray expanse of shrunken flesh, the jutting lower jaw, the tiny teeth like pieces of gravel, the glittering little shark’s eyes. Smyler.

“It look for you.” The voice was a scratchy whisper. “It look for you so long, Bobby Bad Angel. Now it find you.”

The scrawny thing climbed onto my torso and then began to poke solemnly at the skin of my face with the depressingly familiar four-sided blade, each little stab as painful as a botched injection. The murdering creature looked different somehow, his skin darker, body thinner, the ropy musculature more exaggerated than before.

“What . . . what do you want?” I shifted my weight, trying to get into a position where I could throw all my force against the frayed strap. I didn’t think I had done enough damage to break it yet, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of choices. My movement irritated Smyler. He pushed his blade against my upper eyelid. I went very still. A drop of blood caught in my lashes and began to leak into my eye, but I didn’t dare blink.