His gaze shifted. There, beside the outer scene, to the right of it, was Sophia’s reflection, thrown by her bedside lamp. And she was buttoning her blouse, and looking down at the floor with her hair falling forward, and smiling to herself in a way that made his heart fill up with wine. He had the memory of her breasts on her lips, and the memory of her shudder in his fingertips, of her last cry, ecstatic and triumphant, in his ears.

And she said softly now, “Well,” glancing up at him, “you’ve certainly got me in a complete fog, Mr. Storm. This day … you’ve got me so confused. I don’t know where I am anymore. I hope you’re happy.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. Maybe he was. Happy. Maybe. He had his movie set, he had his girl, he had a feeling in his balls like hearthlight. Only a slight weakness in his left arm, only a suggestion of pain in the side of his head. Who knew? Maybe this was happy, happy enough. Maybe with this you could check out of the Life Motel and say hey, babe, enjoyed the stay—and then carry the grace out with you like a stolen towel. Who really knew? Maybe there was even more than this, more chances worth taking, some operation, some dread medieval torture of an experimental technique, that stuff they were doing in Baltimore, a one-percent chance of survival—hey, you could go for one percent, maybe, if you had grace on your side …

For a moment, a gray haze seemed to deepen before his eyes, the weakness in his arm seemed to threaten to spread through his whole body. But the sensation passed. It passed and, at the same time, his emotions overflowed. He was going to turn to Sophia, he was just about to turn, to turn maybe even with tears in his eyes, to tell her she was the world to him now, that she was the flavor of the world, and that he had forgotten—that he had never really known—how sweet it was, how incredibly sweet.

He was about to turn and say that when, looking dreamily out through the window, he saw something that baffled his imagination, that defied belief.

Storm’s hands froze at the collar of his shirt. His lips parted, and he stared—stared through the glass as through a torn curtain at another world revealed.

He saw—did he? Yes—he saw a figure out there—a human figure draped in the mist, silhouetted by the moonlight, raven black, so black it seemed less a being than an absence of existence. It was tall. Its head was bent as if in prayer. Its profile was obscured either by a cowl or by flowing hair. And it was moving with slow and awful majesty among the churchyard stones.