Miriam smiled up at her, then watched her carefully as she disappeared into the back of the club. She was watching the way the shoulders were held, and the head. A slave’s posture was very subtly different from that of a free man. Not that they were bowed, but there was in the way they moved the aimlessness of somebody who has not planned their own actions. Sarah walked with decision.

Miriam sighed. Sarah was perhaps too much in love to be a good slave. A lover sought constantly to remake the beloved in the image of her dream. A slave accepted mastery.

“Sarah,” she said.

Sarah turned back. Miriam noticed that there were tears in the edges of her eyes. “Yes, Miri?”

“Turn on the veils, dear!”

“God, I forgot!”

Sarah turned the doorway on, causing the back of the club to disappear behind what appeared to be a dark mirror.

Doug Henning had designed the doorways for her, using his unique skills with light and mirrors. People seemed to disappear into a shimmering black haze when they left one room of the club, and come into view just as uncannily in the next. Thus the Veils.

She sat smoking and waiting. Miriam could wait well. She could wait for days, weeks.

She wondered if the hunter had as yet done any of his evil work in the United States. At the last conclave, held in January of 1900, there had been nine Keepers in America. Perhaps a few more had come over the past century, but probably not. They were not a migratory people. They had divided the corners of the world when they first arrived here, and nobody had wanted the Americas—there had been no indigenous population to work with there.

Two American Keepers had been killed in the airplane collision at Tenerife Airport in 1977. It was thus possible that there were only seven Americans left, including herself. It was also possible, if the murderers had already been here, that she was alone.

Even alone in all the world. That was possible, too.

She was contemplating this eerie thought when she heard a male voice, pleasantly strong, say, “I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Ellen Wunderling?”

He stood at the bar, a tall man with penetrating eyes, smiling at Bill with a detective’s careful eyes.

Miriam’s heart never beat with excitement. At least, it hadn’t in so many years that she could not remember the last time. It was humming now.

“That’s him,” Leo hissed excitedly, “that’s him!”

“Have you done Luis?” “Miriam, do I have to?”

“Go! Now!”