He had been dreaming again, the same dream. It had been coming to him more often in recent months. In his dream he stood by a lake and watched the dead immerse themselves in its waters, wading deeper and deeper, farther and farther, until finally they were lost to the great sea. Beside him stood a little girl: Jennifer, the dead child of the detective Charlie Parker, whom Louis had watched being buried. She held his hand. Her touch was warm against the coldness of his skin. In life, he had known her only from a distance. Now death had made intimates of them.

why are we here?

His voice seemed no longer his own. He heard it as a faded whisper. Only the girl spoke without distortion, for this was her dominion.

‘We’re waiting,’ she said.

for what?

‘For the others to join us.’

and then?

She laughed.

‘We shall set black flags in the firmament.’

And he would wake to the memory of her touch.

None of this he chose to share with Angel. They had few secrets from each other, but those they had, they kept close. Had Louis spoken of his dream to Mrs Bondarchuk, she might have advised him to be very wary, and gifted him a cross of aspen. But he had no intention of discussing his recurring dream with her, just as he had elected not to mention it to Angel.

Which was unfortunate, because Angel had been having a very similar dream.

Chapter II

The old man walking the quiet, dark stretch of the Herengracht in Amsterdam no longer dreamed; or perhaps, given his knowledge of the peculiarities of the human consciousness, both waking and sleeping, it would have been more correct to say that he did not recall his dreams. Maybe, he thought, he simply preferred not to do so, and had managed to communicate this to his psyche during the accumulated decades of his time on earth. By this stage of his life, he was happy just to enjoy some semblance of a night’s sleep, even one destined to be disturbed by the call of his poor, failing bladder.