He cruises the strip of seedy motels on East Van Buren, the ones that rent rooms by the hour and show dirty movies on the TVs. There’s hardly anyone on the street. A jitterbugging speed freak swatting at imaginary insects, two alkies grappling under a neon cactus, a cop walking from his patrol car into a diner. No rovers.

A dark-haired skeleton wobbling down the sidewalk makes him ease off the throttle. She resembles the girl from the mountain. As he rolls slowly past, she yanks the neck of her T-shirt down to flash her tits, and he sees it’s just some whore, some dope fiend. He feels like killing her anyway, feels like watching someone die. Problem is, the sun’ll be up before he could do her and get rid of the body.

Even so, he pulls over and waits for her to catch up.

“Hey, Daddy,” she says.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says.

“You looking to party?”

“You looking to die?”

The whore recoils. “Get the fuck out of here, man, before I call a cop,” she screeches.

Bob roars off, leaving her spewing curses.

He gets back to his room right before daybreak. As he lies down on the bed, the phone rings.

“Any luck?” Elijah says.

“Nope,” he replies.

“We’ll find them tonight, don’t worry.”

Elijah hangs up the phone and pulls the curtains tighter to keep out the rising sun. Antonia is reading on the bed. Her nose is always in a book, which delights Elijah. He views it as something special about her, as he’s never in his life known anyone else who read for pleasure.

And a long life it’s been. He’s the oldest of the Fiends, born in 1757 in Madrid as Diego Mateo Casal. His father was a wealthy trader and confidant of the king, but all Elijah remembers about growing up is learning to hunt. Boar, deer, mouflon, pheasant. Until he turned, stalking game with a rifle was his greatest passion, and he still finds it funny that a man who once lived to hunt now hunts to live.

He eventually went to work for his father, who sent him to New Orleans and put him in charge of the family company’s office there. He fell in with a crowd of dissipated expatriates, including a wild, troubled Creole girl, a rover, who introduced him to opium and persuaded him to turn. She killed herself a year later, dashing, in the throes of a drug frenzy, out of their room and into the sun-blasted courtyard at high noon one day, and he fled New Orleans bereft, disowned, and under suspicion. He changed his name and roamed the growing towns, swelling cities, and endless wildernesses of the new country of America. He met Antonia in Boston in 1842. She was the smartest and most beautiful rover he’d ever encountered, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.