Unfortunately, she had never learned Thai, so she was at a disadvantage here. “Will you hurry, you stupid creature,” she growled at the driver in English. He sped up. Her tone needed no common language to make itself understood.

The spires of the temple district rose all around her now. The district bore an ancient enchantment, for it was sacred to her kind, too. Here in the deep eons they had met, ten thousand years ago, fifteen thousand . . . when the world had been their toy and man a mute race of cattle. Look at the pavements left by her kind, still perfect after all this time. Look at the foundations of Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Chet Yot—no human engineer could fashion such precision in stone. Stars curse what had happened among her kind, to make them vagrants in their own world. Give me opium, let me smoke. Let me forget.

She touched the golden key that lay at the bottom of her new purse, the key that would let her into the sanctum in the cellar of the Moonlight Bar. The purse was a Gucci bought at the local night market for 2500 baht. It was a luxurious item and finely made. She didn’t need another purse, but she loved to shop and she’d been unable to resist. Every Keeper loved exquisite leather, and calfskin was deliciously close to human . . . which was very taboo to wear outside the home. The prey might notice something—the remains of a tattoo or a human birthmark on your gloves or your pocketbook. Personally, she never wore leather from human skin. They might be prey, but they were sensitive, conscious beings and that had to be respected. But their skins tanned très softly, the flay off a smooth back or buttock.

The samlor driver hunched forward as if some deep instinct was drawing him away from her. The thought again crossed her mind to just jump him. She’d ride him like a little bullock. He would shriek and buck, and it would be a thrill.

His living scent stung the flower-sweet air. Then he turned the samlor, going down a narrow street. It was little more than a passageway, very quiet.

She shoved another cigarette into her mouth and lit it. Closer they came to the ancient temple of Wat Chiang Man, the chedi within it buttressed to the four corners of the world by four gilded elephants.

The samlor stopped. Beneath the chedi, in a cellar no human being had ever entered, was the ancient ho trai of the Asian clans, a place founded before Siddh¯artha was Buddha, indeed before Siddh¯artha was born. “Stay,” Miriam said. “Wait.”

An eye took her in. The slightest of nods. She knew that this temple had a reputation among the ghost-conscious Thai. He sat with his head bowed and his feet clicking his pedals.