“One of my shorts paid off,” Sarah said after Luis had pulled into traf-fic and Miriam had settled back with a cigarette.

“How much?”

“It was BMC Software. We made thirty-three percent.”

“On what?”

“Six hundred thousand.”

Miriam smoked, gazed out the window. Sarah had heard the little grunt of approval that the awareness that she had made nearly two hundred thousand dollars had drawn from her.

Suddenly she snatched off the big hat, which she had been wearing since Paris. Then she said, “My head is warm.” She inclined it toward Sarah, who set about removing the wig. Even when Sarah had bathed her in the enormous tub at the Crillon, she had not allowed this wig to be taken off.

“Are you ready for this, Luis,” Miriam called, her voice tart with angry irony.

The silky blond strands of hair that had waved in the wind like fronds in the sea were gone. The effect was so disturbing that Sarah drew back. Miriam smiled, her face looking utterly false and improbably small on her strange, long head. In Egypt, they had concealed their heads beneath tall headdresses. Raise the crown from Nefertiti, and you would see Miriam’s mother with the same long head. She was called Lamia only among her own kind, and in myth. In the nations she had ruled, she had been many queens.

Miriam’s eyes were wet. The baldness embarrassed her, even before Sarah, who knew every intimate stroke of her being.

“Oh, my love! My love, what—what—”

“They tried to burn me to death,” she said.

“The other Keepers? My dear God!”

Miriam’s eyes bored into Sarah’s. In that moment, she seemed more profoundly alien than ever before. They were the eyes of a goddess . . . or a predatory insect. Glassy, cruel, and way too quick, the way they flickered about.

Sarah’s heart broke for her. Lamia had died by fire, and Miriam had spent many a Sleep with her head in Sarah’s lap, crying out as she helplessly relived the horror of that day.

Sarah threw her arms around Miriam. “Miri,” she whispered, “Miri, I will never let that happen to you, never!”

“We’re in terrible trouble, child.”

“I know it, oh, God, I know it.”

Miriam came close to her, took her hand. They remained like that—both silent, Sarah weeping—on the long, traffic-choked drive home.

TWELVE: Sourball Express

TWELVE

Sourball Express

Paul watched Justin Turk fool with his pipe. You weren’t supposed to light up inside the building. Langley was a nonsmoking facility. Justin lit up. “You know,” he said, “you’re a good ten grades away from the use of exclusive air transport.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”