He bared his few remaining teeth in a smile Eddie found extraordinarily gruesome.

“Ah can still wind a bah,” he said, “and sumpin tells me yer brownie could be taught to throw a dish, shor’ legs or no.”

The old man looked off into the darkness.

“Let ’un come,” he said softly. “Last time pays fer all, yer-bugger. Last time pays fer all.”

Chapter VII

Nocturne, Hunger

One

Mia was in the castle again, but this time was different. This time she did not move slowly, toying with her hunger, knowing that soon it would be fed and fed completely, that both she and her chap would be satisfied. This time what she felt inside was ravenous desperation, as if some wild animal had been caged up inside her belly. She understood that what she had felt on all those previous expeditions hadn’t been hunger at all, not true hunger, but only healthy appetite. This was different.

His time is coming,she thought. He needs to eat more, in order to get his strength. And so do I.

Yet she was afraid—she was terrified —that it wasn’t just a matter of needing to eat more. There was something she needed to eat, something forspecial. The chap needed it in order to…well, to…

To finish the becoming.

Yes! Yes, that was it, the becoming! And surely she would find it in the banquet hall, because everything was in the banquet hall—a thousand dishes, each more succulent than the last. She would graze the table, and when she found the right thing—the right vegetable or spice or meat or fish-roe—her guts and nerves would cry out for it and she would eat…oh she would gobble …

She began to hurry along faster yet, and then to run. She was vaguely aware that her legs were swishing together because she was wearing pants. Denim pants, like a cowboy. And instead of slippers she was wearing boots.

Shor’boots,her mind whispered to her mind. Shor’boots, may they do ya fine.

But none of this mattered. What mattered was eating, gorging (oh she was so hungry), and finding the right thing for the chap. Finding the thing that would both make him strong and bring on her labor.

She pelted down the broad staircase, into the steady beating murmur of the slo-trans engines. Wonderful smells should have overwhelmed her by now—roasted meats, barbecued poultry, herbed fish—but she couldn’t smell food at all.

Maybe I have a cold,she thought as her shor’boots stut-tuttuttered on the stairs. That must be it, I must have a cold. My sinuses are all swollen and I can’t smell anything —

But she could . She could smell the dust and age of this place. She could smell damp seepage, and the faint tang of engine oil, and the mildew eating relentlessly into tapestries and curtains hung in the rooms of ruin.

Those things, but no food.