Did she need Susannah for the brief time she would be in this overcrowded and disorienting city, which was so different from the quiet rooms of the castle and the quiet streets of Fedic? Just to get from here to Sixty-first Street and Lexingworth?

Lexington, said the woman trapped inside her. Lexington. You keep forgetting that, don’t you?

Yes. Yes, she did. And there was no reason to forget such a simple thing, maybe she hadn’t been to Morehouse, Morehouse or no house, but she wasn’t stupid. So why—

What? she demanded suddenly. What are you smiling about?

Nothing, said the woman inside … but she was still smiling. Almost grinning. Mia could feel it, and she didn’t like it. Upstairs in Room 1919, Susannah had been screaming at her in a mixture of terror and fury, accusing Mia of betraying the man she loved and the one she followed. Which had been true enough to make Mia ashamed. She didn’t enjoy feeling that way, but she’d liked the woman inside better when she was howling and crying and totally discombobulated. The smile made her nervous. This version of the brown-skinned woman was trying to turn the tables on her; maybe thought she had turned the tables. Which was impossible, of course, she was under the protection of the King, but …

Tell me why you’re smiling!

Oh, it don’t amount to much, Susannah said, only now she sounded like the other one, whose name was Detta. Mia did more than dislike that one. She was a little afraid of that one. It’s just that there was this fella named Sigmund Freud, honeychile—honky muhfuh, but not stupid. And he said that when someone always be f’gittin sump’in, might be because that person want to be f’gittin it.

That’s stupid, Mia said coldly. Beyond the stall where she was having this mental conversation, the door opened and two more ladies came in—no, at least three and maybe four—twittering in their birdy-language and giggling in a way that made Mia clamp her teeth together. Why would I want to forget the place where they’re waiting to help me have my baby?

Well, dis Freud—dis smart cigar-smoking Viennese honky muhfuh—he claim dat we got dis mind under our mind, he call it the unconscious or subconscious or some fuckin conscious. Now I ain’t claimin dere is such a thing, only dat he say dere was.

(Burn up the day, Eddie had told her, that much she was sure of, and she would do her best, only hoping that she wasn’t working on getting Jake and Callahan killed by doing it.)

Ole Honky Freud, Detta went on, he say in lots of ways de subconscious or unconscious mind smarter dan de one on top. Cut through de bullshit faster dan de one on top. An maybe yours understand what I been tellin you all along, that yo’ frien Sayre nothin but a lyin rat-ass muhfuh goan steal yo baby and, I dunno, maybe cut it up in dis bowl and den feed it to the vampires like dey was dawgs an dat baby nuffin but a big-ass bowl o’ Alpo or Purina Vampire Ch—