A/N No copyright infringement intended.

Chapter 12

The raven perched on the tree bough, gripping tightly with its talons, every few seconds extending its wings and flapping as if it were just about to take off. Then lifting one wing, the raven turned its head and groomed the underside of its wing, catching mites in its bill.

Another raven joined it, they cried out to one another, then launched themselves forward, through the night sky, straight into a waterfall...

"Carly?" Eric rubbed her shoulders. "You seem so far away. Are you all right?"

"I thought you could read my mind now." Carly closed her eyes at Eric's touch and leaned her head back against him.

"To be honest, I've been afraid to try after feeding from you. I hope you're not upset with me or Godric or both of us..."

Eric sat down next to her, facing the interior of the room. After the guests and donors left, Carly turned to face the wall so that she could reassemble herself, and she'd remained there even after Godric rushed out with Eric close behind him. For some time, she'd just sat, staring at the wall, listening to Cataliades chew, until the dining room, and the palace all faded away and she found herself contemplating birds in a forest. Were they Huginn and Munnin? Thought and Memory? When the vampires left her, it was as if both those things went with them and left her behind.

"Maybe I'm processing?" Resting her head on his shoulder, she opened her eyes. Maybe it was the wallpaper? She focused on the gold doves perched on the vines that encircled the white columns of the wallpaper. "But I feel empty."

Carly straightened to support her own weight and looked Eric in the eye. "You called me your mate."

"You are. We are one." Eric kissed her forehead. "None of that has changed in the last hour and a half."

"In Godric's study, I felt like a cable, or a pipe between you, like a conduit...I couldn't latch onto anything myself. I had no agency, no power." Carly felt herself tearing up and breathed deeply to keep her eyes dry. "I guess I've just become accustomed to feeling powerful, like I have choices."

"I understand. Once Godric finishes his phone calls, I'm sure he'll explain what he heard from Salome, explain why he put this claim on you."

Panic surged up into Carly's throat. "It isn't true, is it? He doesn't expect us to be his consort, somehow, together?"

"No, of course not, Carly." Eric kissed her deeply, holding her head to him tightly, his thumb caressing her throat. You are mine...all mine...my mate. Nothing will change that...we are one...forever... As soon as he felt Carly's desperation to breathe, Eric released her from his kiss, but leaned his forehead against hers.

"So on the sofa? I mean..."

With his fingertips, Eric traced the muscles in her neck until they reached her clavicle, then across, to the center of her chest, and down to the top of her breast. "Pleasures of the flesh, Carly, and may I remind you, my pleasures came from your flesh, not Godric's."

"The kissing and holding hands was pretty convincing."

"I can't deny the appeal, Carly. Godric and I have taken comfort and pleasure in one another's bodies, and shared the pleasures of a third many times, so I freely admit I took advantage of that moment to indulge in some fantasy. But that doesn't diminish my love for you, or mean that I will seek out those pleasures with others...even with him."

"And you won't expect me to be the third?"

"Neither he nor I will impose on you...without your consent."

Carly pushed Eric away slightly. "But you would like me to do that?"

"No...Carly. I know that you don't wish to, but I also know, right now, that something troubles you, something you aren't admitting to me."

Carly's head hung a little, and she replied, "I feel a little bit like my body betrayed me, that, in that moment, it was willing to do things my mind wasn't."

"Arousal is complicated and largely involuntary, lover." Eric leaned down so his lips were barely half an inch from her ear. "With me behind you, rubbing against you, pressing against your hips, and Godric lying across your body, licking between your breasts, our fangs ready to plunge into you, front and back..."

"Okay! I get it!" Carly started to laugh and felt present once again. "I get it. You're..."

"...so sexy you can't contain yourself?"

"Something like that."

They kissed again, and Carly felt joy, and comfort, and relief.

"Can we go back to our room?" Carly smiled a mischievously. "I want to test just how much your whispering will do to me."

"Alas," Eric rubbed his nose against hers, "we need to wait for Godric and then strategize."

As they waited, they embraced, and Carly finally rested, drifting off into something approximating sleep.

"Dr. Michael, Mr. Northman," Marcus called to them from the double doors into the dining room. "The king needs you to return to his study."

Both somewhat disoriented, Eric and Carly brushed off sleepiness and headed back to the library. When they entered, they found Godric on the floor, laying out the books that Carly had brought down from the shelves while she searched for the talisman, so that they were all open to their title page. A few of the books had been knocked out of their boards by the impact of the fall, or by rough treatment when they were stacked up at the top of the passage into the dungeon.

"My children-Carly," Godric hopped up and Carly noticed he was wearing clean clothes, "I am so sorry I left you without explanation of what transpired. Come in, shut the door."

Godric backed up to his desk and leaned against it. "Please, forgive me, Carly. I hope that I have not broken your trust too much, or that I have broken your trust in Eric."

"I think I've come to terms with it." Carly smiled, more weakly than she intended. "After it happened, I kept thinking about what they saw, about how silent and empty I seemed the whole time—in here and in the dining room. Like I was a piece of furniture, or a dog."

Godric winced. "I am sorry. Truly. Perhaps if I could have shared with you what Salome was plotting, I could have prepared you, but even that information might have been too little. Shall I tell you? Can you sit?" Godric pointed toward their sofa, and Carly found herself, once again, on the ground without even intending. "You do not need to have a submissive pose, my child."

Laughing, Carly explained, "I'm getting used to it." She wrapped her arms around Eric's legs and added, "It feels safe. And there is so much I don't understand, I'm a little overwhelmed."

Godric looked at the mantel clock in the center of his bookshelf. "We have a little over two and a half hours. Are you able to stay here overnight?"

"I could," Eric replied, "but I think that Carly has to go to work."

Carly nodded.

"Yes, then you should return. Until Salome makes her next play, you should stay as close together as possible. So, Carly, where shall we begin?"

Carly ran through the inventory of questions that she had from the night's conversations and accusations, categorizing them into the monumental, the trivial, the legal...and then she realized she didn't have sufficient information to make those classifications.

"I don't even really understand what this Authority—this Council—really is. What is the source of its power? And how can Cataliades stroll in here and up-end all their plans?"

Stretching his back and then crossing his arms, Godric affirmed her confusion. "Yes, I understand why you would be confused—on both accounts. The Authority is a conglomeration of things—and the name is a short-hand to explain all of them. I believe in the 1960s, young people called the whole of civil institutions, 'The Man,' and there is some comparison one can make."

Eric contributed, "Originally, the Council began as something like a diplomatic corps—vampires who continued to have access to human institutions, to royal courts, to universities, to the Church, or to government bureaucracies."

"And," Godric continued, "they offered monarchs something other than a state of constant war, constant battle over the fealty of vampires within a territory. They codified practices into laws, maintained records, and arbitrated disputes."

"Like the UN," Carly offered the comparison.

Godric shook his head in an ambivalent gesture. "In a way. But the councilors also sought out their own power—some by amassing wealth, others by acquiring information, and, Salome and Roman, by building a cult that promised forbidden knowledge."

"So now," Carly speculated, "they're trying to convert that soft power into real power by acting as the go-between for humans and vampires."

"Yes," Godric agreed, "and, we see, tonight, by reducing the numbers of monarchs and spreading us thinner to minimize our influence."

"Okay—" Carly felt like she understood a little more. "But I thought Cataliades was supposed to be neutral, and he totally threw Salome under the bus."

"Ah..." Godric smiled widely, "the Cataliades! They are, perhaps, the most remarkable example of 'institutionalists' that one could hope to find. As you may have deduced, Sarai and I are both Desmond's clients—as is Eric—and, so, when he had the opportunity to assist us, he did. Had we not asked him to be involved in the contract, he would not have acted on his own. He would have held onto his brother's information and done nothing."

"So, typical lawyers."

"Yes. He sends his regards, by the way," Eric said as he stroked Carly's hair. "He said he didn't want to disturb you when he left."

A wave of embarassment passed over her as she recalled that Cataliades witnessed "the show." "Will he tell his brothers about all of that? About what he saw?"

"Perhaps," Godric admitted grudgingly, "but I doubt it would be relevant to any of their negotiations."

"Okay," Carly shivered a little, imagining all of the roly-poly demons chuckling over the scene. "Another thing that has been bothering me is why Salome didn't just come in and retrieve the talisman after Sophie-Ann died. You weren't here. Wasn't the Authority in control of the building?"

"Nominally, but once the Magister had removed Sophie-Ann and Andre's remains, he had Desmond and Octavia seal the building. And when he secured Edgington's estate, he did the same, although I believe the witch he works with there is named Mabel. Only the next monarch could pass the threshold without bursting into flames. Again, this is an ancient custom, and one that the Council would be unwilling to disrupt."

With her mind racing through her list of questions, Carly landed on something frightful. "Was giving you Sarai's territory a trick? Was she trying to kill you?"

"No," Godric laughed, although he laughed cynically, "she was just laying the groundwork for Sarai's assasination. My first calls tonight were to the kings of Georgia and the Caribbean, and they have no designs on her territory, but a number of fears about Salome's motives. We briefly discussed a summit, but we don't know how to come together without becoming a ripe target."

Carly waved her hand dismissively. "I can just zap you all together...not a problem."

"Except you'd reveal yourself to all of them." Eric squeezed her shoulder and made his concern apparent. "Even if they are Godric's allies, they can't know what you can do."

"We will consider alternatives when we require them," Godric concluded their discussion of that topic. "My next calls were to Jean-Jacques and the king of Arkansas to remind them of our conversations about Salome."

"Real conversations?" Eric asked with a lilt in his voice.

"With respect to Peter, yes, but mere presumption on my part with Jean-Jacques. The last time Peter came to Texas, the king designated me as his escort, and we had a number of conversations. I really do like him quite a bit. But he told me that in the 1920s, Salome had proposed that he could extend his territories if he had a persuasive consort, and that she was that consort. Unluckily for Salome (and for him), he carried a torch for Sophie-Ann and rejected Salome's attentions entirely."

"Did you tell them," Carly paused, "that you intended to make us..."

"Consorts? Yes, Carly, I am afraid I had to, although I am certain from what he said that Jean-Jacques sees through the ruse. For one, he knows that you cannot be transformed into a vampire."

"That's another thing that bothered me, Godric. Why did you tell her I was 27? I'm 26. And, really, I don't even know if it's relevant anymore. It's not like I had a plan for my birthday party."

Godric nodded, "Yes, this is the point where I don't know if I can explain my actions without telling you what I heard her think. I regret that I couldn't share more with you as we went, but the whole enterprise did, honestly, strain my capabilities. I don't know how you do it, Carly. I am in awe."

"Vampires are a lot harder," Carly conceded, "especially when they know lots of languages. You all seem to think about four or five things at a time, and they aren't always in language, but then if you know lots languages? It's rough."

"I'm curious to know what language she thinks in," Eric said. "Despite her fame, I don't know much about her real history."

"It varied...mostly Greek, not unlike that spoken in Rome when I was enslaved there, but also Aramaic. My knowledge of that language is rudimentary, but I think I understood most of what she thought. And then there were the images—the sacrifices, but also her visions, hallucinations..." Godric seemed troubled by the recollection of them. "The blood has some hallucinogenic effect so that she sees Lilith, hears her...although I doubt that the creature she communes with is actually the Lilith of the Talmud."

"She saw her while she was here?" Carly squirmed at the thought that Salome was trying to channel that mythical creature while she was with them.

"No..." Godric shook his head in denial, "but she hoped that I would, or that I would be motivated to seek sexual union with her after consuming the blood. That seems to have been one of her strategies with others, including Roman. And that is part of the reason for my ostentatious display. I wanted to undermine her confidence that she has special access to Lilith."

"I'm sorry, Godric, but I don't understand why that has anything to do with my birthday."

"I believe that we only witnessed a part of the process of the sacrifice when we saw what you learned from collecting the energy from those poor souls." Godric leaned over to retrieve one of the books that fell on the floor. "This is a book by a Polish alchemist, Michael Sendivogius, translated in 1650, and it appears as if someone, perhaps Sophie-Ann, has annotated passages. This is the first: 'Now that blood may be preserved of itself from putrefaction, and stinking, and not as a quintessence, and so as it may preserve the blood of the living (as we now said) thou must follow this process.' I think that describes the feeding of the blood that you witnessed. But there is another passage that is marked: 'This fruit after boiling becomes to be immortal, having life, and blood, which blood makes all the trees bring forth fruit of the same nature with the Apple.'"

"I saw one of Nora's memories," Carly recollected. "Salome told her that humans would serve them once again in a garden."

"Yes," Godric stretched again, clearly uncomfortable, "she believes that she can resurrect Lilith, who will lead them into a new Eden, where humans are merely livestock. But what frightens me most, my children," Godric paused, "is that all her fantasies are bathed in daylight. Somehow, she believes that Lilith will lead vampires who daywalk."

"That explains her fixation on fairies." Eric continued, "We need to ensure that she doesn't follow Compton's trail."

"She wants to find him," Carly explained, "and she wants to see if I'm really a fairy. Does that have something to do with my age? I heard her think 'the wrong multiple.'"

"Yes." Godric retrieved another old book and flipped through it until landing on a dog-eared page. "She seems to have created some numerologically complex system that she believes will assist her in resurrecting Lilith. In ancient Hebrew practices, eighteen was associated with life, nine with birth, three with the Patriarchs. And she seems to have built some parody of the second temple and its stone of sacrifice."

Carly recollected the sacrifice stone and the perfectly square room made of huge stone blocks and the blood that spilled over the stone into a crystal vessel.

"I'm sorry, Godric, I still don't understand what this has to do with me?"

"I wanted to see if we could bait her into revealing herself." Godric smiled and continued, "The last time I met with Jean-Jacques—about ten years ago—we talked about the records the Authority maintained, and he told me about a very clever witch he had befriended, and, more remarkably, transformed—"

"What!" Eric exclaimed and pushed Carly forward suddenly so that he could rise. "Has she retained her abilities?"

"Yes, she has, and they are impressive, and the Authority knows nothing of them, or of her. She has been a vampire for twenty years, and she lives with two of Jean-Jacques's other progeny beneath the Octagon on Roosevelt Island. Now that the Revelation has taken place, an apartment building will open above them, and they may well re-integrate into society. Although Salk will likely have the most difficulty entering public life."

"My mom told me about him. I guess Jean-Jacques is quite proud."

"As he should be—for his powers of persuasion if nothing else. Salk was eager to leave his pain behind and welcomed death." Godric self-corrected, "But we digress. Maureen, the witch, is also a computer scientist, and her specialty are spells that leave traces that may be followed. She has mastered their use with information, and, as of," Godric looked at the clock, "one hour ago, every piece of information that exists that includes your name, your birth date, your education, your home address—or any address you have ever had—is bespelled."

"Wow..." Carly paused to think and then speculated. "So you think that Salome will try to find out exactly when I was born so she can figure out when the twenty-seventh day after my twenty-seventh birthday is."

"Yes." With a small laugh, Godric added, "We should have a party as well. When is it?"

"November 29—half the time it interrupts Thanksgiving holidays, so I've had lots of birthday pies over the years."

"Then we have a little time. We won't expect her to try to capture you until the middle of December."

"Merry Christmas," Eric said cynically. "And Compton? Should we allow him to reappear?"

Godric began to stack the books more neatly, leaving one open. "I hesitate to allow it, even though I know that we can alter his memories significantly. Even if he doesn't jeopardize Sookie and her family, Salome would not be satisfied if he suddenly has no intelligence about fairies. I refuse to risk anyone's safety. We risk quite a bit if we send her on some goose-chase into Arkansas."

"Did you learn anything else of value from her?" Eric returned to sit beside Carly and played absently with her hair.

"Certainly things of interest..." Godric closed his eyes and took an unnecessary breath. "We run short on time. Could I share them more rapidly with you?"

"Maybe?" Carly looked over her shoulder to Eric. "Could we sit together? I know it's faster when I'm in contact with the person I'm listening to. I haven't tried it with vampires yet."

Godric and Eric gathered close to her and each took a hand.

The memory of sitting at a small wooden desk, slowly turning the pages of an old book, although not an ancient one, turning them until finding an illuminated page...Adam and Eve on their knees before a woman, a woman covered in blood, wrapped with snake...more pages...more pages...another image...a man, radiant with halo and gold, kneeling before the bloodied woman, baring his neck...her fangs out...more pages and an image of a pool of blood within a cave, a woman with her throat slit, the blood falling into the pool beneath her...

Another memory, the smell of burnt sugar, dancing about a reclined figure...

"Edgington and Leticia—I saw this! When I met her in New York! Edgington isn't her maker though..."

A young man...beautiful, but with one damaged eye...stands over her body... Salome, why would I let you go there? They bleed vampires there...some meet the true death...I love you so much...his back turns, she stakes her maker...

The three disengaged from one another. "Perhaps that is the only thing that we have in common," Godric spoke quietly, "although I saw no fear, no hatred in her mind, just anger, anger that he was an obstacle..."

"Maybe that's why she's attached to Nora?" Eric suggested. "Nora managed to leave without killing you."

"That's a horrible thought." Carly wondered out loud, "Do we know when she wound up with the blood in the jar?"

"Not from anything that I saw." Godric took her hand again and asked, "Do you think you could reconstruct who the first victim was?"

Carly winced, but admitted, "Probably. There are so many, but maybe I can get some guidance. No one seemed ancient, and all of them seemed as if they had been Christian."

Reaching for the last book, Godric said, "This is the only one that I require assistance with, but Jean-Jacques shared the cover page with another of his progeny. It's a copy of the Alphabet of Ben Sira, but in Hebrew. Jean-Jacques's child says that it is notable for being the first extended reference to Lililth, but it is a medieval text. So perhaps she came to this about the same time this was written. The book within her memory can't be older than twelfth or thirteen century, at the earliest. Most likely later."

"It may sound strange, but I take some comfort in knowing that Edgington had no part in this cult," Eric admitted.

"And he had little use for the Authority. If he knew Salome was responsible for his progeny's death, perhaps that is why." Godric placed the Alphabet on the top of the stack of books and rose to his feet. "You should probably return to Shreveport. Please call me when you rise tomorrow, Eric. And if you have any concerns, Carly, please call Melissa. I somehow doubt she will be willing to speak long, but I feel I need to speak to Sookie before I go to my rest."

"Have everything you came with, Eric?"

"Since I only had my phone and you, yes." Eric embraced Carly tightly and they returned to their bedroom in Shreveport.

The next morning, Carly awoke and felt stiff, tired, and considerably less immortal than she had the day before. She had a knot in the center of her stomach and realized that she had expended too much of herself in her burlesqure routine with Eric and Godric and with the travel back to Shreveport. Despite an overwhelming desire to rouse Eric from his rest and share blood with him, she showered and dressed, locking up the house securely before she departed.

After a few minutes on the road, Carly saw a glimmer out of the corner of her eye, the tell-tale sign that energy lingered behind after a death. She turned off the thoroughfare and down a side-street, lined with modest one-story houses, wood-framed bungalows. Even though she saw the glimmer from the main road, it was at least a football field's distance from where she'd turned.

The energy rose out of the bushes beside a dilapidated house whose entrance had been boarded over, a "notice of sheriff's sale" sign blazing its orange warning out to the world. As she walked toward the house, she also smelled a combination of old cabbage, rotten meat, feces, and garlic, and knew that the energy clung to a body that had been there some time but had neither been discovered nor disturbed. She moved through the high grass close enough to step into the energy field, although she could only see discolored soil and a darkened shoe.

Everything shifted perspective and her vision was foggy, overcome with nausea, Gotta get home...grandma will help...shoulda called her first...she'll understand. Why aren't there any lights on? Maybe I can get a window open? I'm gonna puke...then pain and silence.

Carly held onto the energy tightly and let it move through each of her limbs, and slowly she knew that Aaron Carter was an addict who'd sought out his grandmother's house, his grandmother's help—really, just the contents of his grandmother's pocketbook, which he'd emptied on occasion before. But he found the house boarded up and inaccessible just as his heart failed because of the electrolyte imbalance brought on by acute withdrawal from heroin.

The energy churned through her, with every pass through her body, she saw happier memories from Aaron's life. His grandmother's macaroni and cheese, her sweet potato pie, hunting with his grandfather. But she also saw the moments of tragedy that drove him toward drugs. His parents' death in a car accident; his father had drunk too much before leaving a bowling alley and his mother had been too trusting in her husband's judgment.

Just as she took out her cellphone to call the police, she realized she didn't have any good reason for being at the house. Sheriff's sale—it will be going up for auction. Eric's decided to invest. I was just checking it out in daylight.

After calling the non-emergency number, she called Tracy to let her know that she might be delayed, although she was bringing work with her to the office.

Detective Andrews arrived within about ten minutes, along with two patrol cars, the crime scene investigation team, and the "refrigerator"—that's what Ellen called the ambulance contracted specifically for the transportation of bodies dead at the scene.

"Carly," Detective Andrews walked over to her, visibly shaking his head, "you can't catch a break? What were you doing here?"

She pointed to the sign. "Eric asked me to take a look at it on the way to work. He's thinking about picking up a few more properties that are going up for auction. But when I walked up to the corner of the house, I smelled the body."

"Have you taken a look at it?" As Detective Andrews asked, the crime scene investigator trudged by with a massive toolbox, a roll of crime scene tape, and a camera around his neck.

"I don't deal with them when they're like this, remember." Carly tried to smile, but she was still a little nauseated—she still held tightly to Aaron's energies, reluctant to let them go in such a public place, to be honest, reluctant to let them go at all. "Do you need anything from me? I didn't touch anything."

"No," Andrews replied, "you can head off. I know where to find you if I have any questions."

Within the time it took her to start her car, the crime scene investigator waved Andrews over and began taking down the crime scene tape.

As Carly drove into work, she rolled down the window and breathed out new life, willing it to float through the air and find where it was needed.

Renewed, Carly prepared herself to return to the bones in the examination room. The two unidentified sets of remains from Catahoula Parish could no longer be ignored and her experience of their deaths could no longer be delayed. Uncertain of what she would find, apart from extraordinary violence, Carly brought a folding chair up to the side of the examination table so that she could sit. Both people had been stabbed over sixty times. She knew—intellectually—that no one would have survived to experience all sixty wounds—they would have bled out or passed out from shock much earlier—but she still felt fear at facing their deaths so intentionally. Perhaps her experience from the night before, reliving the deaths of a thousand victims of ritual sacrifice all at once, left her reluctant to experience such horror again.

She closed the door into the examination room, sat beside the table, and moved the skull to the edge so that it sat before her. She placed the fingers of both hands along the temporal bones and rested her thumbs beneath the eye sockets, and waited. As with Marie-Clare, a face slowly formed around the skull, but the eyes of that face wept in fear. Carly took a deep breath and whispered, "It's okay. You can tell me who you are, tell me what happened to you."

And with that entreaty, Carly was beside a car, broken down on the edge of a dirt road in a pine forest, the smell of damp, of swampland, redolent in her nostrils. A man bent into the engine compartment, but he was obscured from her view by the hood. Carly felt words form in judgment and disappointment. "I told you this was a bad idea."

"It's just a vacuum hose. If I had just a little bit more light..." The sound of something falling into the engine. "Fuck!" The man stood quickly in his rage and hit his head. And she laughed.

"Serves you right." She turned and started walking back up the road.

"Beth, come on. Give me some help!"

Beth...yes, Beth Schultz...this had all been her boyfriend's clever idea...get away from his parent's house for a little while...they didn't approve of them living together...living in Little Rock...living in sin...

Sound of gravel crunching, sound of tires splashing in mud followed her closely and then stopped.

"Beth, these guys will give us a ride to a shop."

"Are you sure this is a good idea? You don't know where they're taking us."

"It will be fine...these are good people down here. These are my people."

Pushed to the ground, her blouse torn, pants torn, crying out, "Joe! Where are you?" The weight, the smell of a body, not Joe's, biting an ear, mouth full of blood, struck across the face, kicking, connecting to a soft spot, the rapist's retreat, a moment where she can rise and escape out a door, still half-naked, bloodied, then knocked down by an impact, can't breathe, rolled over, flashlight in her eyes, but a spike to her belly, and again, and again, the top of her leg, her chest, the blackness.

Joe...Joe...his parents' house...Jonesville...the smell, the flowers on her future mother-in-law's window sill, the same as her street...Jasmine Street...Jasmine...around the corner from their church...

"Carly," Clovis Thibodeaux broke her away from her reverie, "what are you doing?"

Carly let go of Beth's skull and tried to return into the present moment, into the daylight hours of the Shreveport, Louisiana, coroner's office, but she struggled to extricate herself from the scene of Beth's death, from Beth's memories. The flashlight in Beth's eyes still plagued Carly's own eyes, and she tipped her head one way and then the other, and blinked, before she could hold Clovis's kindly face in focus.

"I'm just getting ready to do the reconstruction on the unidentified woman's remains." Carly reflexively wiped her hands on her jeans.

Clovis laughed briefly, taking his magnifiers off his nose, and said, "Well, that's good, because I could have sworn you were having a conversation with that skull. And it looked like a serious one!"

"I'm sorry?"

"You weren't saying anything out loud, but your eyes were wide as days and your lips were moving." He laughed again, "I was about to go up and get Tracy."

So not even through the week...she couldn't even make it through the week before she had to explain, once again, what she could do, or make up some story about what she could do.

"My advisors trained me to be really tactile. I'm sorry. I know it's weird to see."

"Touching bones, that I understand, but muttering to them?"

"I wasn't muttering." What was she doing? She had to think quickly, try to keep from getting defensive. "I was just sort of thinking aloud, wondering whether she was heavy or slender, how old she was when she had her wisdom teeth excised. That sort of thing. I know its disquieting. I should have warned you more that I'm a little weird with this sort of thing."

Clovis smiled, but it was a sad smile, the sad smile of a professional who had been lied to hundreds of times by families who denied their children were drug addicts, who denied their fathers drank too much, who denied their mothers had been suicidal. And seeing that smile on his face, Carly's heart melted. She couldn't add another lie to the weight he carried.

"I touch the bones and experience their deaths." Carly spit out the truth before she could stop herself.

The medical examiner walked into the room and sat on the high stool that was pushed out of the way, against the wall. "From the inside? From their memories?"

"Yes," Carly answered but waited for his disbelief to come into focus within his thoughts, but they didn't.

Clovis Thibodeaux sat with her, his mind blank, but full of compassion somehow, until a strange memory passed across his mind. He sat in a church pew, a fellow congregant leaning toward him, fragrant with lilacs and jasmine. You're gonna meet the death collector up there in Shreveport. Don't be afraid of her. You need her.

"Nobody's called me that yet." The moment those words passed through her lips, Carly knew she had stepped further than she had intended.

Clovis chuckled. "Well, she didn't tell me about that! Although we've always suspected it of Audrey herself." The fragrant woman came into focus—a devout Catholic who also ran the local metaphysical bookstore, candle, herb, and rock shop, full of love-spells and binding spells, and books by California women whose author photos had been taken through too many filters. He stood and looked over the bones. "I don't envy you, Carly. What do you know about her?"

"Her name is Beth Schultz, and his name," she pointed at the male remains, "is Joe, although I don't know his last name. They were last seen in Jonesville, but their residence was in Little Rock, Arkansas. His family lived on Jasmine Street, near a church, probably a fundamentalist one of some type, because his parents disapproved of their relationship."

"Can you get a good image of her face? If you're inside?"

"Yeah," Carly touched the skull along the cheekbone, "I think I was muttering because she was talking to me. I saw her face around her bones. That's kind of new..."

"Carly," Clovis shook his head, "I have a feeling if you tell me any more, I'm going to have to reconsider the validity of my sacraments, so I would be grateful if you stopped where you are." He laughed again, more deeply this time, and added, "No wonder you have the clearance rate you do! Take it slow, because if it gets faster, it will attract attention."

"I know." Carly shrugged, "I tried to stretch it out as long as I could."

Clovis pointed toward the child's bone. "What about our little dancer?"

"Mary Louise Pecaro, dead in late June 1968. She was running and frightened, but I don't know how she died."

"That's a blessing. I doubt there would be anyone to prosecute forty-years after the crime, anyway."

"And no preserved crime-scene." Carly pointed toward the bags she'd packed full of soil and artifacts. "We don't know if they were buried in some mass grave, or how they came to be in one assemblage. There is probably fifteen to twenty years between these deaths."

"So your guess is early 1980s for Beth and Joe?"

"Yes." Carly remembered Joe's description of his car. "His car had vacuum hoses, although I don't know enough about cars to make sense of that."

"It couldn't have been new. Do you see any details from the car?"

Carly thought back to her vision and, beyond the rough outline of the car, she couldn't remember anything. "No, I don't know enough about cars."

"No matter," Clovis concluded. "Once you have a rough sketch of her, you can enter it in the database and then get the missing persons files for 1980-1985. Then we'll just sift. I'd like to give Aliya a little bit more to do than just answer the phone. She seems to have some curiosity about what we do down here in the bowels. Healthy curiosity, that is."

Without trying, Carly saw the face of Ambrose, the crime scene investigator pass through Thibodeaux's mind.

With a little smile, he added, "Tracy doesn't want him in the house, so he'll stay with the police."

Carly started to laugh and said, "I'm sure she's happy that you defer to her judgment."

"It seems prudent. Between her tongue and her hitting arm, Tracy is a force to be reckoned with." With almost a benediction, Clovis put his hand on her head and said, "Take care, Carly."

"I will."

Depositing Beth Schultz's skull in a specimen tray, Carly returned to her studio upstairs to make the cast of the skull for the 3-D reconstruction. She might as well proceed through standard practice, since she had to kill the time anyway. She connected the mandible to the skull with wax, packed the eye sockets with clay, painted the whole thing with latex, and then mixed the plaster for the mould. As she poured the plaster over the skull, she saw a little red sphere hovering above her phone. It took everything she could muster to hold the plaster steady and not spill it over her work surface, but she managed to.

She grabbed her digital camera and took a picture—nothing unusual displayed on the screen. She rotated the phone and the sphere continued to hover, right over the receiver.

Despite her overwhelming impulse to find a stick and poke at it, Carly left the sphere alone. Maybe Tracy can see it too.

Leaning her head out of the door, Carly called out, "Tracy! Can you come in here for a second."

"Gimme one minute!" Tracy replied before coming down to the office. When she stopped at the doorway, sucked in a breath, and then looked at Carly, Tracy made it clear without saying that she too saw the red sphere.

"What is it?" Carly whispered.

Tracy shut the door and moved closer to the phone. "Anybody good putting a spell on you?"

Her first impulse was to say no, but then Carly remembered the "information spell" that Jean-Jacques's progeny had placed on anything having to do with Carly. "Yeah, well, no, not on me, but on information about me."

"Well, then, I guess somebody found your phone number here." Tracy picked up a pencil and fiddled with the menu that displayed the call log. "Know anybody in the 312 area code?"

"I don't know where that is."

Tracy pointed to the phone book that Carly had moved to the top of her filing cabinet. "It's old, but there should be a legend in the back pages."

Carly thumbed through the dusty book until she found the area code legend. "Chicago."

With a few pencil strokes, Tracy copied down the phone number. "My guess this red light's a warning to you that whoever is looking knows where you are."

"I think that was inevitable."

"That king needs to get you over to see my cousin and quick." Tracy handed Carly the number and then patted her on the shoulder. "I'll talk to Clovie to see if I can set up a cot somewhere inconspicuous."

"Why?"

"If I 'move in,' we don't have to let just anybody in, if you understand me. All it takes is one night." Tracy smiled broadly. "I can always sharpen up one end of that bat if I need to."