"Look," David said, rising from his knees and wiping the dust from his pants. "These are all simple legal papers on the purchases, everything here is clean, apparently, or has been laundered; there are dozens of receipts, certificates of authentication. I say we take all of this out of here now."

"Yes, but how, and to where?"

"Think, what's the safest place? Your rooms in New Orleans are certainly not safe.

We can't trust these things to a warehouse in a city like New York."

"Exactly. I do have rooms here at a little hotel across from the park but that...."

"Yes, I remember, that's where the Body Thief followed you. You mean you didn't change that address?"

"Doesn't matter. It wouldn't hold all this."

"But you realize that our sizable quarters in the Olympic Tower would hold all this,"

he said.

"You serious?" I asked.

"Of course I am. What could be more secure? Now we've work to do. We can't have any mortal connections with this. We're going to do all this toiling ourselves."

"Ah!" I gave a disgusted sigh. "You mean wrap all this and move it?"

He laughed. "Yes! Hercules had to do such things, and so have angels. How do you think Michael felt when he had to go from door to door in Egypt slaying the First Born of every house? Come on. You don't realize how simple it is to cushion all these items with modern plastics. I say we move it ourselves. It will be a venture. Why not go over the roofs."

"Ah, there is nothing more irritating than the energy of a fledgling vampire," I said wearily. But I knew he was right. And our strength was incalculably greater than that of any mortal helper. We could have all this cleared out perhaps within the night.

Some night!

I will say in retrospect that labor is an antidote for angst and general misery, and the fear that the Devil is going to grab you by the throat at any moment and bring you down into the fiery pit!

We amassed a huge supply of an insulating material made with bubbles of air trappedin plastic, which could indeed bind the most fragile relic in a harmless embrace. I removed the financial papers and the books of Wynken, carefully examining each to make sure I was right about what I had, and then we proceeded to the heavy labor.

Sack by sack we transported all the smaller objects, going over the rooftops as David had suggested, unnoticed by mortals, two stealthy black figures flying as witches might to the Sabbath.

The larger objects we had to take more lovingly, each of us toting one at a time in our arms. I deliberately avoided the great white marble angel. But David loved it, talking to it all the way until we reached our destination. And all this was slipped into the secure rooms of the Olympic Tower in a rather proper way through the freight stairways, with the obligatory mortal pace.