Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

The Sweet of Bitter Bark and Burning Clove Doris Egan

AS ALWAYS, ANTICIPATION WAS half the fun. Bailey touched his forehead to the window of the sixteen-seat commuter plane and looked down at the white, pink, and apple-green houses of San Cristobel, set around a blue lagoon speckled with boats. He smiled. He hadn’t expected anything to come of his latest e-mail; he’d sent it off on Thursday more in a spirit of keeping to the rules of the game than in any real hope of an answer. Galera Cay was a tropical island, after all; not Lilith’s style.

“Galera Cay, arrive San Cristobel February 2. Not sure how long. Bailey.” And three hours later, thanks to the glory of the Internet, he read: “I’m in San Cristobel doing some work. Come stay with me. Lilith.” An address followed.

Doing some work? Lilith was an investment banker; her work took her to New York, London, and the Far East — what was she doing on a Caribbean island? But then, the place was notorious for money laundering, and he supposed that not all the clients of Rockville Perkins were spotless in the eyes of the IRS.

So casual: Come stay with me. Like an unexpected Christmas present. This time it had only been ten months and two weeks. The first time it had been thirteen months, and the next, exactly a year.

And damn, last time it had been almost two years, and he’d been so restless at the end he’d been that close to calling Rockville Perkins to find out where the hell she was. That would’ve been way out of bounds, though, and with good reason. As it was, he’d called and asked for “Ms. Belizaire’s number,” then hung up, feeling like a jerk. At least she apparently still had an office, she was still around somewhere …

It wasn’t that bad, though. You adjusted.

He remembered that first time — more than five years ago, now. She’d come to his office and explained that she’d heard of him through a friend, and hoped he could help her with a problem. It was so like a noir movie; the expensively dressed goddess in the cheap vinyl chair opposite his desk, the offer of a retainer — he was half expecting to hear she wanted him to murder her husband. Although even then it was hard to imagine Lilith Belizaire with a husband.

But no, it was more prosaic than that. An accountant had dropped out of sight with other people’s money — not Lilith’s, but a friend’s; and she had promised to locate him. Bailey was human, and his first impulse was to seize any excuse to, well, just have this creature return to his office as frequently as possible. But he was realistic. From her story, the accountant would be hard to find, and from his own good sense, Bailey saw no suggestion on Ms. Belizaire’s part that the pleasure she brought into his life would be anything but visual.

And visual paid no estimated taxes. He saw this case going nowhere, while there were two others out of town that looked to be more long-term and more promising. He refused, he thought, very courteously; and she left.

That night he stopped at Morell’s for a drink.

Jesus. He hadn’t been picked up in a bar since he was, what, twenty-five, twenty-six? He rather suspected that the look on his face in most bars showed exactly what he felt: That he wanted to get a drink and go up to his hotel room — usually it was a hotel room, anyway — and get some damned sleep before the phone calls of the previous day started bouncing back. And how the hell had Lilith found out where he drank when he was in town, anyway?

And then the next morning he’d gone to the mirror to look at the marks, and found a post it stuck there — like she’d known it was the first place he’d check:

Drink plenty of fluids. OJ’s in the refrigerator.

So he’d opened the refrigerator door and found two gallons of it. She must have stopped at the deli across the street before she left. But then, she was always considerate.

That had kicked off a hell of a six weeks, that first time. He’d even managed to concentrate on her case long enough to solve it, unearthing her missing accountant in Sebring, Florida, where he’d bought a condominium in his girlfriend’s name.

Bailey had been careful not to find out what happened to him.

There was a faintly British feel to the island, strange in a place of heavy sunlight and pastels. San Cristobel airport was full of vigorous, dark-skinned men and women in crisp, white, short-sleeved shirts, offering information, baggage handling, tour guide cards, and pamphlets on everything from motorbike rentals to scuba gear. Bailey ignored them, till a man in a chauffeur’s cap stepped forward and addressed him in a deep, courteous voice.

“Sir? Ms. Belizaire sent me to pick you up.” The accent was half British, half lilting. Bailey was not surprised that the driver could identify him; he was the only unattached person on the entire commuter flight of families and couples. It was still winter, prime tourist season in the Caribbean. And Lilith, he thought, always made sure her people were briefed.

Hiring a car for him was efficient, considerate, and expensive — just like Lilith. And pretty much the opposite of him, he supposed.

“Shall I fetch the rest of your baggage, sir?”

“This is it,” said Bailey, holding his battered gray duffel. The driver reached for it. Bailey retained the handle.

He smiled at the driver, a smile of blinding innocence he’d perfected through years of work in his chosen profession. The driver retreated, puzzled. “This way, sir.”

Bailey did not check his luggage; Bailey was paranoid, and proudly so. There were diskettes in that duffel he just felt better not handing over to people, even people who said they were from Lilith.

A long gray limousine was waiting at the curb outside. Bailey grabbed the door handle before the driver could, then shrugged apologetically. Bailey, those Ford Taurus reflexes are just way too obvious. As the driver circled back to the front, Bailey looked into the dimness of the interior and stopped short.

Two long, long legs in perfect beige stockings; crossed, shoeless, lapped by a wide skirt of white linen. He felt a huge and stupid grin come over his face: She’d come out to meet him. A sweet gesture — he knew how much Lilith hated sun glare.

His pause of surprise had been noted. A humorous “tsk-tsk” floated from within, the voice detached and friendly. “Don’t just stand there. Come in, and let’s get you out of all this nasty sunlight.”

He laughed and tossed his duffel onto the floor, then followed it inside.

Ten months and two weeks since he’d last seen her, and he hadn’t been in good shape then, of course. Now he had the energy to appreciate the visuals. She was wearing all white linen, with a thin bracelet of white gold on one pale wrist. Waves of red-gold hair poured over her shoulders. And folded like this into the back of a car seat, even a limo, her tall form translated into legs that went on for years.

“Long time, Bailey.”

“Three hundred and twenty days. But who’s counting?”

She smiled and he wondered if it would be a little more cool to try and wipe this grin off his face. Oh, fuck it. Then she leaned over and kissed him — on his mouth, but just a welcome kiss, a taste; and his grin faded as he found himself trying to pinpoint just what fruit her lips reminded him of; something cool and heavy with summer sweetness. Already his concentration was shot to hell — probably the effect of all this tropical sun.

She shifted her legs, moving further away from the window as the car pulled out. “I take it you’re here on a case?”

He nodded. She glanced at the driver, then back at him. “Below the line or above?” She meant, legal or shady? Could they talk about it in front of someone else?

“Below.”

“Ah.”

They moved out of the airport and all of three minutes later they were in San Cristobel proper; Bailey divided his attention between the wrist just touching his thigh, the bare foot resting against his shoe, and the town passing by the limousine windows. He should really pay more attention to the last, he supposed, but it was always a little disorienting, the first day back with Lilith.

Sunlight, and a two-lane street, and everywhere buildings saturated with color; electric pastels, blue and pink and violet; even the whites were blinding. Was that all really paint, or just the stage lighting of the tropical sun? There was a vague confusion of tourist signs; ice cream, hotels, boarding houses, bars, dance clubs.

And banks. Lots of banks. No wonder Lilith had business here. In addition to the National Bank of Galera Cay, there were branches of Credit Suisse, Barclay’s, First Tokyo …

Money center or not, it wasn’t exactly New York. Fifteen minutes later they were out of town, running along a slightly less well-paved road, past one-story houses set among flowers and small blue swimming pools.

“Bailey.”

“What?”

She lifted the hand beside hers on the seat, as coolly as if she were lifting papers from a briefcase, and touched her tongue to the center of his palm. Christ. It was like a slight electrical charge. He glanced toward the driver, but she’d done it so casually he didn’t seem to have noticed. She took Bailey’s index and middle finger into her mouth for a moment, sucked, and men nipped the ends in a playful reminder. Then she laid his hand back on the seat.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said.

Ten months and two weeks. His heart started jack-hammering.

The house was a long, white, L-shaped rectangle, set on a package of neatly landscaped ground on the top of a hill. A vista of blue water curved in the distance. A stand of ferns, elephant ears, and orchids screened the back; there was probably a small swimming pool somewhere behind it. Purple-red bougainvillea surrounded the patio.

And there was a porte-cochere. No wonder Lilith liked it.

She opened the door, retrieving a briefcase from the floor as she did. “I had to attend a meeting in town this morning,” she explained, gesturing with the case. She fished around for the umbrella she habitually used as a parasol, and Bailey handed it to her, along with the white sandals he found thrust, typically, under the front seat.

“Sure, crush my feeble hopes. I thought you’d come out into all this evil solar radiation for my sake alone.”

She smiled. “I hired the car for you, anyway. Teej took the convertible into town, and I didn’t want you wandering around on your own. I’d probably find you sitting here in the bougainvillea when I got back.”

“And you figured I’d bring down the property values.”

She turned and dropped a kiss from those cool lips on his cheek. Papaya? “As a renter,” she whispered, and he felt her smile, “it’s not a problem for me. But I have a duty to the neighbors.”

She got out of the car, all six-feet-four of her, and he grabbed his bag while she dismissed the driver. She looked serene and untouched in the shade of the porte-cochere, like some kind of flavored ice impervious to melting; it was the white linen suit with that swirl of a skirt that did it, he thought, and he regretted it. Too bad she dressed for the climate, too bad she couldn’t wear that black leather thing she’d worn sometimes in New York, plunging neckline and hem up to there; with her coloring, it was spectacular.

The fact was, thought Bailey, as the car pulled slowly out of the porte-cochere and made its way down the gravel drive, you could analyze this relationship any way you liked; but the plain truth was that he was a thirty-five-year-old man who’d never gotten over his crush on Julie Newmar as the Catwoman, back at the age of twelve.

“I like it,” he said, skidding his duffel across the floor. Everything was clean and open; terra-cotta tiles, white shutters, and the breeze off the ocean running unobstructed over the hilltop through the bank of windows and French doors. He walked through a doorway and found himself in the kitchen. “Nice,” he said, looking around at the cupboards and the clean wall of whitewashed stone that held the oven. He opened the refrigerator, grinning. “I guess we better send out for some orange ju—” He stopped.

There were two gallons of Tropicana in there, one of them already opened. Nearly empty, in fact. Being Bailey, he couldn’t stop himself from checking the date, from lifting the used carton to see how light it was.

He shut the door. “Who’s the lucky guy?” he asked, his voice suddenly gone toneless.

Lilidi put her briefcase down on the table. She turned, not hurrying, and looked at him without expression. Bailey said, “Is he still here? Are we going to be bunking together like good campers?”

Still no anger from Lilith; just that careful, judging look. Bailey heard the echo of his own voice hang in the silence and felt like an idiot. Of course there had been someone else, there had been a lot of someone elses over the last five years. It was a necessity. He’d just never run into such timely evidence before.

Damn fine work, Bailey, you’ve managed to be stupid and offensive simultaneously.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in another tone entirely. “It’s none of my business who else you choose to see. I’m being a jerk. Can we ignore the last thirty seconds?”

She hitched herself up on the table. “Come over here, Bailey, so I can explain something to you.” He came; at the periphery of their personal space, he hesitated, and she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in. He felt her calves pressing into his ass and her odd, faintly spicy bream on his face, like the wind through an orange grove. “Nobody else counts,” she said, “now that you’re here.” She kissed him then.

Bailey’s head started to buzz. No more polite dishes of cool strawberries, lips against alien lips; this was imperative and absolute, a single-minded dipping into the water of the soul. Christ, he thought, as he felt her tongue seek him out, ten months. How could I forget what this was like?

There was a voice, and he felt a start run through the body holding his. Lilith pulled away and he stepped back, slightly disoriented. He looked for the interruption: a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, Hispanic-looking, in wrinkled white trousers and a cotton shirt. He stared at Bailey hard, then spoke to Lilith in Spanish, clearly registering a complaint. The marks on his neck showed black against the olive skin.

Jesus! He really is still here, thought Bailey. This was not her style at all.

Apparently it was not her idea, either; now she was answering him in Spanish, curtly, and with the faint discomfort of one who has been forced into a social faux pas. The kid answered her back, gesturing with his arms, a defensive whine in his tone. I’m sure that’ll go over real well. Bailey leaned back against the refrigerator, folded his arms, and waited to see how the play turned out.

“Basta!” said Lilith then. She sighed and looked to Bailey to see how he was taking it. He raised an eyebrow coolly: Your business, right?

She smiled, the irony not escaping her. “Perhaps you’d like to throw him out?” she suggested.

He felt a grin break over his face and shook his head in delighted disbelief. You don’t have to do this just to make me feel better. But what the hell …

He advanced toward the problem in their midst, still grinning, and the young man’s eyes widened. Bailey was not an enthusiast of brawls, as a rule, but he had a pretty good sense that this would be more like stamping your foot to scare a yapping Peke, and at this moment, boy did that concept hold appeal.

The puppy in question ducked suddenly beyond the doorway and came back with a packed suitcase — evidently he had not had great expectations for this encounter. He made a dash for the kitchen door and was through it in about three seconds, the exit only marred by the fact that in his nervousness working the lock he’d dropped the suitcase inside. Bailey helpfully threw it after him. He turned to Lilith.

“Well, that felt nice. Thank you.”

A pleased chuckle, as if they’d been talking about theater tickets. “It was the least I could do.”

Before he could reply there was the sound of a car pulling up in the gravel driveway outside, and more voices. The play wasn’t over, then. A second later the kitchen door was flung open and another young man appeared, rather breathless and slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Lilith; he said he’d be gone, and then I got stuck at the bank — The apologetic look was replaced with a blinding grin. “Bailey!”

Bailey’s sense of proper melodrama suggested that a wealthy vampire ought to have a retainer who was elderly and European, wearing a butler’s uniform, and preferably with a name like Maximilian; not a sandy-haired kid in a Hard Rock T-shirt who seemed so genuinely happy to see you it was impossible not to take his hand, grin back, and say, “Hiya, Teej.”

TJ had been nineteen the first time Bailey met him; now he must be twenty-two. Bailey wasn’t sure just what the relationship was between him and Lilith, but it obviously wasn’t sexual — the fact the kid was still here, and alive, pretty much made that clear.

“Shoot, I wanted to get the room ready before you got here. Don’t go in there, Bailey, it’s a mess and the sheets smell like bad pot.”

Bailey gathered from the tone that the Peke hadn’t been popular with Teej.

“Don’t worry, I’m not keeping score.” And I probably won’t be sleeping in there tonight anyway. “You’re looking good.”

There was that wide Teej-smile. Given the kid’s natural good humor, the Peke must have worked hard to irritate him. “I’ve been trying free weights. You look tired.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Teej laughed. “Man, it’s good to see you. You had dinner? It’s nearly five, and I brought fried chicken back with me. Spicy enough to take the roof off your mouth.”

They ate, or at least Teej and Bailey did, while Lilith sat with them, talking about San Cristobel and the last elections in Washington and whether the London cast of the new production of Tom Jones would come to New York. This was custom too, this delicate avoidance of anything personal, like the first steps of a dance. Teej had developed some opinions, Bailey saw, since they’d last spoken; opinions on drama, mostly — he’d fallen into George Bernard Shaw’s plays, apparently, with the naive joy of someone who’d never heard of them before, and a dozen library books later he was frighteningly and narrowly well-informed.

It was almost funny when you thought of what he’d been like when Bailey had first met him, scarfing down a bag of McDonalds in Lilith’s living room. Teej hadn’t been especially promising, back in those days, with a dislike of personal questions, no visible means of support and a tendency to sleep around with older men. He’d come on to Bailey almost immediately. Bailey hadn’t mentioned it to Lilith, but the next day Teej had apologized a little sheepishly. It was a tribute to the kid’s natural personality — which had been a little squashed, granted, by the life he’d been living — that he’d managed to be so damned likable underneath the bullshit.

After dinner, they carried the dishes into the kitchen and put them in the washer, still talking. Teej made coffee in thin china cups and they sat in the living room as the darkness of the black vista of ocean surrounded them, beyond the open shutters. Eventually Teej excused himself, with one last pleased smile at Bailey, and vanished into his room.

Lilith sat on the white sofa, legs curled up beside her. Bailey was in a club chair on the other side of the unused fireplace. The sound of crickets and cicadas came from outside. To Bailey, who had often imagined variations of this, it was dreamlike; he felt his own blood pulse in time to the rhythm of natural sounds, his own desire, but it held no urgency. It was going to happen now. There was no point in any further effort or anticipation on his part; it wasn’t necessary. This was more like daylight coming up in the morning.

After half an hour Lilith rose, took his hand, and led him to the bedroom.

It was light and cool there; another bank of shutters let in the night breeze. The room was uncluttered, and like all Lilith’s rooms, neither feminine nor masculine. There were a couple of low bureaus, a table with papers and books stacked on it. The bed was a wide four-poster with clean white cotton sheets and a lemon-colored thermal blanket neatly folded at the bottom. He shivered, and although she knew quite well why he did, she closed some of the shutters and lit a hurricane lamp. The light flickered over her face and his throat went dry.

She pulled him over to the bed, sat down on the edge, and began unbuttoning his shirt. Her fingers caressed his skin as she undid each one, and he stood there, still dreamlike, watching as she bent her head to his chest and placed her lips where a button had been. Her tongue flicked out and back. She looked up at him.

“I never forget your taste,” she said. He felt himself sigh.

The shirt went onto the floor. She unzipped his trousers and gave a brief stroke, through his shorts, to the erection already there. “Always so timely, Bailey,” she said, amused; and then she moved back in one quick motion, took his arms and pulled him onto the bed with her the way a cat might lift a mouse.

It broke the spell. He laughed and was suddenly aware again, behind the sound, of how long he’d waited. Desire, always breathing down the back of his neck, moved for the reins. It was good that she was against him right then, her thigh between his and her arms curled round him like a leaf, but he wanted her closer still. He tried to roll them both over, needing to press the whole weight of his body into her. She halted the roll while she was on top and pinned him down effortlessly. “We have to be careful,” she rebuked. “You know that.”

He nodded, breathing hard. He did know. It was dangerous to provoke Lilith to lose control; it was fatal, in fact. Fortunately that had never happened, or he wouldn’t have lasted a night, let alone six weeks. He pushed back a handful of her hair and found his mouth conveniently near her ear.

“Please don’t leave your tour guide,” he said, the first thing that came into his head. “We cannot be responsible for any accidents. Hand in all waivers before boarding the bus.”

He felt chuckles shaking her body as he kissed her, and wondered at his own flippancy. How could he want something this badly and still be making fun of himself?

He tasted her then, kissing her face all over, unbuttoning the white blouse, moving his hands under her skirt. Lilith would stop him if he pushed it too hard, if it got dangerous. She gasped and then, abruptly, shoved him back on the bed.

He heard his own breath. Now.

Her lips touched the side of his neck and he felt the familiar tingle that went right down into his brain and his cock. Then came the nick and the first sharp pain. It was brief, just another tease, accustoming him to the start of the dance, then leaving off to let it be swallowed up in the haze of pleasure that surrounded it.

She moved back to see how he’d taken it. He smiled.

She lifted one hand to stroke the side of his cheek and he flinched; then he deliberately took the hand that had reached for him and kissed it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know what it’s like the first time.”

“I know,” she replied.

The first time was always the sweetest, before his body’s reaction kicked in. And the scariest, in some ways; there was always that sharp blossom of pain, at least in the beginning; and although once his nervous system had relearned its lessons, it wouldn’t care, that didn’t apply to tonight. The addictive process had to be re-started.

She slid her hand from his and a second later he felt her stroke his cock, as though she were petting a housecat. He closed his eyes.

His breathing became ragged. Out of his hands, now, literally.

The rhythm built; he opened his eyes to find hers directly above his, dark and intent. Running an equation while he spiraled out of control. He was panting, on the edge of desperation, and she was judging that edge to a fraction. He felt like a deer after a long run through the forest. He nodded.

The teeth penetrated his skin deeply this time. It was like a tidal pull, lifting out his soul.

He closed his eyes, shuddering. There were no defenses against pleasure like this; go with it, or it would tear you to shreds.

Then he felt his body pumping from both ends, as wave after wave of pure sensation swallowed him, pulling him helplessly down to the ocean floor, and she took him into herself. His soul stretched apart, unable to contain the unbearable sharpness of the delight. His brain told him that nothing human could live through this, or maybe without this; it was impossible to tell.

And then he seemed to be getting weaker. He wondered, vaguely, if he were dying; it seemed only logical. Then awareness left him.

This was tradition, too; to hold each other afterward, then finally to lie apart and talk. It was as though they’d crossed a bridge to some kind of safety, recognized each other at last in a crowd of masked strangers.

Lilith’s hair lay like a rainfall over the pillow. Her expression was one of relief — like his own, he suspected. “So tell me what you’ve been doing in the last ten months,” she said, and the prosaic nature of her tone was a comfort.

He decided to go for the danger. “Oh, like you don’t know,” he said, raising an eyebrow. He sat up on one elbow so they could see each other’s faces clearly.

“How would I know, Bailey? All I have are your e-mail addresses. I don’t keep tabs on you.”

He made a sound in his throat that could have been disagreement, should anyone wish to take it that way.

Lilith sighed and said, “It would be against the rules.”

“Yeah, well, the rules are a little more binding on me than they are on you.”

She looked at him speculatively, a gaze heavy as a touch. “You say that the way women talk about birth control.”

He burst out laughing. She smiled. After a minute he said, “It’s a good analogy. So this is what it’s like to get the prudent end of the biological stick.”

“I don’t know how you spend your time, Bailey, you have my word. So tell me. What about that hotel address in Boise? You weren’t there long.”

“It was an easy case.” She was still looking at him. He hesitated, then lay down again, so he couldn’t see those eyes. “Parents in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Wanted me to find their kid.”

Her body made an exasperated movement. “You don’t do children, Bailey.”

“Yeah, well, he was borderline — seventeen.”

“When parents are involved, it’s never borderline. You told me this.”

He pursed his lips, tilted his head slightly, and made half a shrug. She burst out laughing; rolling, affectionate laughter, and he turned to stare at her.

She said, “God, I’ve missed that.”

“What?”

“That thing you do, that gesture. That ‘So, I was a schmuck.’ ”

He felt his own lips curve. “ ‘He was armed, he was dangerous. He was an agent for the forces of good—’ ”

“He was a schmuck,” she said, agreeing. “Tell me about the kid.”

His smile disappeared. “I went through his room. Eight by ten, Ralph Lauren wallpaper — I think his mother picked it out. Desk with a spare kitchen chair. Bed by the window.”

Her hand began stroking his forehead, and he took a minute to get his thoughts together again. “I opened the Venetian blinds. You could lie on the bed, look out and see a hill, where a patch of woods started. People like to commit suicide in high places. I knew he was unhappy—”

“How did you know?”

“Christ, talk to his parents for ten minutes. So I hiked up to the hill and searched around in the woods. I found what was left of him.” He ran his hand along her arm, cool and reassuring. “Less than an hour and a half. I told you it was an easy case.”

“Yeah. And you told me you found ‘what was left of him.’ How long were the cops searching, before you showed up?”

“Three months.” He shook his head impatiently. “But that means nothing. They were doing all the cop things, like showing his picture and talking to his friends. They did that, so I didn’t have to.”

“Bailey.” She rolled over suddenly and was on top of him, brown and gold eyes a foot away. “One day you must accept the fact you’re some kind of perverse genius.”

Perverse genius? He was about to make a remark about mad scientists, when she brought down those smooth lips over his, and he lost interest in discussing word choices. When she lifted her head he was thinking: sweet and cool, sweet and cool, like … “Watermelon,” he said.

She sighed. “This is where the ‘perverse’ comes in.”

His lips felt as though they belonged to someone else, and he was starting to get that dizziness around the edges again. He looked into eyes of warm amber, skin of deadly snow. “I thought I was a schmuck,” he heard himself say, distantly.

He felt the laughter against his chest.

It had been an easy case. There were plenty that weren’t; plenty that never did reach any kind of resolution, enough to keep him away from children’s cases. But he had to acknowledge there were a lot of others where an educated leap could do wonders. Not that they ever felt like wonders; there was always a simple reason behind each one, so it was more like stage magic — the explanation, once heard, was almost a disappointment. How did you do that? Well, son, there was a trapdoor over here … Is that all?

His very first case, when Jonathan was showing him the ropes … They were looking for an ex-mercenary, recently returned from a lucrative tour of South America; he must have known something was up, for he’d never shown at his New York apartment, leaving one tiny bank account at Chemical and no money trace at all.

No money trace. Fake papers. A three-month head start. “This one’s gonna take a while,” Jonathan had said. He went out and brought them back two coldcut sandwiches from the deli, and while they ate, Bailey had asked if he could try something.

Jonathan looked at him through those thick, black nerd-glasses and grinned. “Knock yourself out. I’m not paying you for lunch.”

Bailey had reasoned that a man can change his identity, but not his self; at least, not without years of effort. And why bother to try? You can’t trace a missing person’s self. But in a world based on birth certificates and social security numbers, he thought that the sorcerers of primitive tribes had it right: You didn’t send sickness to confound an enemy by way of his zip code. You focused your power on a person, a soul, an inner core.

He’d walked through their target’s apartment. He’d talked to their target’s ex-wife. She met him at the address, letting him in with her spare set of keys — that surprised him, but she merely said, bitterly, that her husband never kept anything important in the apartment. She took him through each room, keeping up a continuous stream of information about her ex as they went. She thought he had some kind of shady friends in Arizona. Or was it Wyoming? One of those western places. He’d talked about retiring to a cabin there …

In the den, above the PC, there was a framed poster of Edward Hopper’s “Gas.” A lonely road in Cape Cod, shivery in the gathering darkness. In the foreground a man stood beside the lit pumps of a Shell station; in the background, the road wove into the dark trees and waving grass. A moment from the Fifties, frozen in its disquietude.

“I wouldn’t let him keep it in the living room,” said their target’s wife. “I was sick of looking at it. He had it in the bedroom in our old place — I couldn’t get away from it. I wanted Impressionists, you know? Was that too much to ask? I’m telling you—” she paused.

“Bailey.”

“Bailey. The man never learned how to compromise. That’s his problem, in a nutshell.”

She said a number of other things, but that day at lunch, Bailey called the fine arts department at Columbia University. Then he called the Museum of Modern Art, identifying himself as an officer with the fifth precinct. He’d thought it would be more difficult than that, but the person he spoke with at the museum simply went away, came back, and told him that yes, they had shipped a copy of “Gas” to Morant, Wyoming, three weeks ago. They had the address waiting to go into the database for future delivery of sale catalogues. No, only two other copies of that print had been shipped outside the New York area in the last three months — and the man named a woman in California and one in Texas.

Bailey hung up the phone feeling completely disoriented. It must have shown, because his eyes met Jonathan’s, who was sitting on the edge of his desk, and a wry grin sneaked over Jonathan’s face. He said, “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”

Bailey lay there, feeling the late morning breeze ruffle the sheets. Lilith had opened the shutters for him before she left, which probably meant she wasn’t coming back to the room. Most likely she was in the study now, working at her computer terminal.

Six weeks. This was February second; he had till mid-March.

“What if she doesn’t throw you out after six weeks, Bailey?”

He remembered his friend Marianne’s voice, the open window that looked out over the campus, the sound of birdsong and drifting conversation from passing Barnard students. That last crash-and-burn had been particularly bad. He’d needed to talk … when he was able to talk.

“She has to throw me out, I told you; I’d die, otherwise.” And by the time it got that far, he was no longer psychologically able to leave on his own. Jesus, that got embarrassing, sometimes, that final week or so: Are you having any symptoms, Bailey? — Cough, cough. Oh, no. As he’d start to shift all his weight onto his hands as he rose from a chair, to try to hide the growing weakness. Perfectly fine. Not yet, don’t do it yet, I don’t want to come home and find the place empty—

“And you just trust her to do it.”

“I trust her, yes.”

“Does she know how bad it is for you, afterward?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“We don’t talk about it.”

“What do you mean, you don’t talk about it?”

“You know, it’s like personal death or nuclear war. We live in the present.”

“Alcoholics live in the present, Bailey. Drug addicts live in the present.”

“Zen buddhists live in the present.”

She sighed. “Bailey, don’t you think you should see a therapist instead of an anthropologist?”

He gave her his most innocent smile. “Anthropologists make fewer assumptions.”

He suspected the change, whatever it was, went right down to his blood chemistry. He wondered what his cells looked like under a microscope, after six weeks with Lilith. And what if he stopped reverting, afterward? Built up or destroyed some kind of immunity? What if the damage were cumulative?

Yeah, like that would stop you.

Lilith had said she didn’t think it worked that way. But he didn’t discuss her past with her; what was she basing that on? She didn’t let many people come back, the way she did Bailey. In fact, so far as he knew, he was the only one.

So: One day in mid-March, without any warning, she would be gone. And she wouldn’t be at the New York address, or any other address he knew about; and if he ever broke the rules and sent her a personal letter, or got her on the phone, he had a pretty good idea that this arrangement would be over permanently.

The soft air through the shutters felt glorious. It could be worse, he supposed, as he burrowed back into the sheets for an extra hour’s sleep. There are a lot of ways for people to go missing. One of the things he liked best about Lilith was knowing that he was never going to find her component parts stuffed in a Dumpster in some alley. Just one of the many benefits, he thought drowsily, of sleeping with the most efficient predator he’d ever met …

“Check it out,” said Teej. “I’m learning to cook.”

He brought the pan right out to Bailey’s plate, on the wicker table on the patio. The sun was straight up, dead noon, and the wind rippled through the fringe of the overhead umbrella.

And the omelet wasn’t bad at all; carefully browned on the outside, with bits of fruit and sour cream within. It was a professional job, though Bailey couldn’t help but wonder, once again, when Teej was going to do something with his life besides run Lilith’s daytime errands. Although … he looked again. The Teej of three years ago had been battered-looking, closed-off; a pinched face and a bad haircut. This Teej was confident, relaxed, consistently charming. Bailey would be willing to bet that this Teej used a condom. And it occurred to him to wonder who owned the Columbia College catalogue he’d seen in the bathroom.

“So,” said Teej. He pulled out the other chair and sat down, elbows on the table. “You here on a case?”

Bailey smiled. “Yes, Teej, I’m here on a case.” He finished up the last of the omelet, wiped up the residue of butter with his croissant, and raised the cup of Jamaican Blue coffee. Damn, the kid was definitely spending more time in the gourmet aisle of the supermarket. Bailey remembered when he’d come home with bags of Cheese Doodles and Hostess cupcakes.

“You’re not going to tell me about it?” That slight edge of hurt, as though he couldn’t quite believe Bailey would disappoint him.

“It’s a missing persons case.”

“Well, no kidding.”

When he did not seem disposed to go further, Teej sighed. “You’re no fun when you’re being responsible.”

Bailey smiled. Teej probably just wanted to talk for a while, maybe show off a little about the stuff he’d learned in the last year. Bailey didn’t mind; the kid didn’t seem to have any family to bring home report cards to.

“Are you on a schedule?” Teej asked. “We’ve got a deck of cards, and I found a Trivial Pursuit game in the closet when we moved in. Or we can play when you get back.”

It was tempting in a way, but—“No, I probably shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Damn, he shouldn’t have phrased it that way — now Teej was looking at him strangely, and Bailey had to figure out how to answer that question.

“I like a nice, friendly game—”

“I play a nice, friendly game!” Teej protested.

Bailey looked at him. “I don’t.”

The silence held for several beats. Internally, Bailey sighed. If only he were one of those people who liked being compulsive. If the cells of his nervous system ever got the vote, he’d be spending that portion of his life not already defaced on his back, lying beside a stream with a cooler of beer. Or he would be, if only he weren’t constitutionally unable to walk away from unfinished business.

Of course his clients loved him. He was a fucking neurotic.

Change the subject.

“New car, huh?”

Teej accepted it, bless him. “We’re leasing it from a local dealer.”

“But a convertible?” Bailey inquired. He glanced sunward meaningfully.

“New toy,” said Teej, grinning again. “She likes to drive it around at night.”

She wasn’t the only one who liked to play with it, apparently. Bailey grinned himself. “Great,” he said, “it’ll save me the price of a rental.”

Teej stared at him in melodramatic betrayal for a moment, then laughed and handed him the keys.

It was Bailey’s theory that there was always something a person wouldn’t give up, even if it was bad for them. He drove the convertible to the north side of the island, up over Buttercream Hill Road and down to the marina, sparkling with fishing boats and pleasure craft. He parked in the lot, as close to the street as possible; fast exits had been imprinted on his mental list of things to do for a number of years now.

He walked out past a civilized little stand with a blue-and-white striped awning, where iced tea, beer, frozen yogurt, and hot dogs were sold. A mixed crowd, he noted; kids, holiday fishermen, and a somewhat more well-heeled set who probably belonged with those sleek craft he saw in the prime slips just after the refreshment stand.

Nobody who looked like Ron Zygmore, with or without beard.

It was funny how drug-dealers fell into the same sub-groups the rest of society did. The three men who hired him in Atlanta were not Miami-Vice type criminal overlords; they were businessmen, members of the Jaycees, the Masons, and the Knights of Columbus. And twenty years ago, when they’d run a thriving illegal business, they hadn’t been chic cocaine dealers passing merchandise in clubs to a soundtrack of throbbing rock; they’d been four college students running marijuana up from

Mexico on a secondhand boat, playing Jimmy Buffet and exchanging dreams in roadhouse cafes.

It was the most exciting time in their lives. Bailey heard that, in their voices; Bailey always listened, and watched, and took in everything. You never knew what would work, later.

The most exciting time, and the most pure. Their friendship had been a sacred thing. They believed in it the way some motorcycle gangs believed in the brotherhood of the road, the way officers and gentlemen believed in the concept of honor.

Bailey respected their sincerity. It was the kind of thing he did not consider himself capable of.

“It’s not like we really think there’s anything wrong,” Alan Tillman said. Tillman did most of the talking; he owned a computer supply company and wore his usual business suit when he spoke to Bailey.

“No,” agreed the other two men. It was probably a coincidence, they told him. You could hear the embarrassment in their voices at even bringing it up.

It was probably a coincidence that Ron Zygmore, D’Artagnan to the other three, had disappeared just after retrieving the last cache of money from their first, shared business.

“We always planned to retire on that money, you see,” Tillman explained. “We’d made about three-quarters of a million dollars, altogether — way too much to explain to anyone how we’d gotten it. And we didn’t want to use a bank. So we found …” He hesitated. “A place to store it. And we agreed that every ten years or so, one of us would go and retrieve another portion. Well, inflation being what it is—” The others nodded at this, “—this was going to be the last trip. There was about four hundred thousand left. We were going to split it four ways.”

It was odd, in a way, Bailey thought. You could listen to these middle-class businessmen talk and you could still hear the country boys underneath, like some kind of skeleton. They’d used their stakes to open supply stores and car dealerships and they’d forgotten about retiring, giving up their dreams to paperwork. But you could still hear the distant clank, under the words, of rebuilt cars and bar brawls where somebody pulled a knife.

“Ron went to pick it up on a Saturday afternoon,” said Tillman. “On Sunday he was dead.”

“Maybe,” said one of the others under his breath. No one commented.

Ron Zygmore, classmate and owner of the Elly Ann, the old wooden fishing boat whose hold they’d once stuffed with bags of Mexican Gold.

Two months ago he’d bought a spanking new fiberglass boat, that he’d taken out into a tropical storm off the coast of Florida. Now the boat was gone, and so was Ron. So was the four hundred thousand, and even though the money rankled, Bailey suspected that what rankled more was the possibility that they’d been made fools of by one of their own.

So Bailey had checked: Zygmore had been divorced one year previously. He had one child in college, with whom he was not very close. Another child had been killed in a car accident years ago. And the boat that had presumably gone down with Zygmore had not even been paid for.

Not Zygmore. Ron. Bailey preferred to start thinking of the people he searched for by their first names as soon as possible. It seemed to help the process.

“I’ll take it,” he said, interrupting another homage to coincidence from Alan Tillman.

Tillman looked at him. “We don’t just want the money,” he said finally.

“I know what you want,” said Bailey.

There was always something they couldn’t give up. There were two Monterey Clippers in the marina; one was a newer boat, of fiberglass, and he passed it by to walk out along the last pier to the wooden vessel moored there. He looked at the photograph he’d brought with him, then back at the boat. A new paint job; a new name, obviously — it wasn’t the Elly Ann any more. This one was white with green trim, and its name in cheerful green script on the back: Bastard Luck. Gee, we weren’t a little bitter, were we?

Three months ago, his sources told him, Ron had finally parted with his beloved boat, selling her to a buyer on Galera Cay. Bailey wasn’t really familiar with any form of transportation that didn’t keep four wheels on the ground, but he’d called the Coast Guard while he was still in Georgia and asked for the hull number. Now he walked around to the bow and checked the numbers there against his information.

Not a match. Well, you wouldn’t expect life to be that convenient.

He scanned the area; no one seemed to be watching or caring. He stepped over the gunwale and onto the deck.

Someone had taken loving care of this boat, and recently. The deck was clean, sanded, and had a fresh coat of green paint. They were a little messy with their possessions, though; Bailey moved aside a tangle of gear from the back of the boat and found the brass plaque with manufacturer’s name and date: Bowman and Sons, 1951.

Also not a match. Damn. Because if it wasn’t a match, this wildcard theory was going nowhere, and he really ought to say goodbye to Lilith and fly out of here tonight and see what he could pick up back in Atlanta—

— Which he was about as likely to do as he would be to flap his arms and fly out under his own power. Which meant blowing this case and giving the retainer back to his clients, or at best postponing the fieldwork and jeopardizing the possibilities of success.

Bailey was not happy, and he found himself looking over the evidence again, as though it might suddenly change from the last moment he’d seen it. Good thinking, Phillip Marlowe. Except … now that he was down on his knees examining the damned thing, didn’t those brass screws holding the plaque look bright and shiny and new? Almost unseemly in their contrast to the darkened plaque itself.

He stood up and brushed off his jeans, then headed for the stairs to the hold. A few steps down and he was standing in the dim light of a galley — well, there was a tiny stove and a sink, anyway. A toilet sat on the floor opposite, unencumbered by so much as a shower curtain. Either the owner lived here alone, or the concept of physical privacy was not much regarded. A bunk was set back in the rear of the boat. There was a pile of waterproof clothing, but nothing else in the way of personal possessions. No books or papers saying “Ron Zygmore owns me. And he banks at Credit Lyonnais …”

Bailey didn’t know boats, but he knew how to research. He pulled out his penlight and examined the overhead beam supporting the deck above … hull numbers on older boats were often carved into the rafter. A library is a useful thing, God wot. But damn, Mr. New-Paint-Job had gotten here first, too. High-gloss white, applied with enthusiasm. You could see the brush strokes against the rough grain of the wood.

Well, screw that, he refused, he refused to go back to Atlanta just because the universe was conspiring against him. There had to be …

… There was a smooth, shiny spot on the beam near his head, as though a couple of coats had suddenly been deemed necessary. He lifted his hand and ran his fingers over the spot; beneath the paint there was a pattern of inconsistencies in the surface, almost the suggestion of a bas-relief. Hmmm. He’d never done this, but it always seemed to work on television …

He took out a piece of paper, held it against the beam, and rubbed with the side of the pencil.

Three … four … two … no, that was it, the rest was too messed up to read. Evidently Ron had filled in the numbers with putty, but he hadn’t been very good at it.

Three-four-two were the first three digits of the old Elly Ann’s hull number. There was a point at which coincidence went too far, and Bailey was sure in his own mind that Ron Zygmore was alive and somewhere on his way to San Cristobel. Certainly Bailey had enough to justify a prolonged stay (sweet, heavy breath, and her heels pressing into his ass, and that tongue on his neck; no, that was for later, let’s get off this damned boat first) — he could call his clients tomorrow. They could decide for themselves whether they wanted to move ahead on his recommendation or get a sight-confirmation. Now that he had evidence, Bailey felt more than justified in billing them for the time he’d spend waiting for Ron to show up.

As he climbed over the gunwale, a hand grabbed his arm. Bailey looked into the face of a black man, about six feet, well-muscled, in a light jacket and chinos.

“Can I help you?”

Righteousness and threat were in the voice; Bailey decided not to pretend the Bastard Luck was his. “Maybe you can. I’m Roger McAdams, with the Bureau of Marine Tourism—”

“The what?”

That’s what happens, Bailey thought, when you don’t know shit about boats. His smile remained unshaken, with a surface confidence that only years of asking strangers for private information could give.

“Marine Tourism. We’re trying to promote the use of San Cristobel Harbor among tourists targeted for the Caribbean market. That means making it more attractive for Europeans—”

“Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, mister.” Bailey noted the bulge in the man’s jacket, as well as the simple fact that the man was wearing a jacket on this sunny day. Of course, Bailey had a jacket himself, and for much the same reason. “But I think you better get out of here before I call the police.”

“Hey, look, no offense. We’re just trying to talk to some of the tour captains—”

“This ain’t no tour boat. You see a sign saying TOUR?”

“Not everybody has signs posted—”

“Out of here, mister. Now.”

Bailey went, trying to look aggrieved. He felt the man’s eyes on his back, all the way down the pier.

Walking away, it occurred to him that for a forty-five-year-old floating house of wood, the thing was very well maintained, and the paint job was the least of it. It was too bad, in a way; too bad Ron’s love for this boat would go unrequited.

Bailey remembered the old Polaroid of the four men in a roadhouse, with “June ’73” in faded magic marker on the back. He could see the gangly, dark-haired kid with the beer and bandanna; he could see him lying on the deck here and looking up at the stars, dreaming about … about not even the big score; the moderate score. About retiring to this boat and never having to chain himself up from nine to five again.

Not a yacht in New York Harbor or a string of clubs in LA; innocent, working-class dreams for working-class drug runners. And what did the decades bring him instead? A divorce, one dead child, and the seduction of a decent 401k plan. The kind of thing that seems bearable until suddenly you look back and wonder …

Still, it was never nice when one of the four musketeers dumped the others over the side.

Bailey took his time making his way back to the car, checking periodically to see that his interrogator wasn’t following. When he reached Lilith’s convertible he was still drinking about it. Okay, treachery, pain, and a failed life; but at least, no bodies in the woods this time.

Well, no doubt there would be a body eventually …

It was for his clients in Atlanta to deal with that. Fortunately Bailey had ceased to believe in God some years before he went into this line of work; otherwise, he would have felt terribly betrayed.

When he got back to the house he found Teej lying on the sofa, reading. Lilith was still closeted in her office, no surprise there; she’d brought three phones and two fax machines with her, and took her work seriously.

Bailey took off his jacket; Teej was used to the gun. “Is there a television around here?”

“There’s one in my room. You can watch it, if you want.”

“Thanks.” Lilith was oblivious to much of popular media, but this case looked like a short one, she spent a lot of time working, and as far as Bailey was concerned, he was just glad to know the Queen of Air and Darkness had cable.

“Red Stripe beer in the fridge,” offered Teej, making the immediate connection between pay-per-view movies, hockey games, and grain alcohol. Teej was more into oddball PBS stations himself, but he was perceptive about the needs of others.

Bailey opened the refrigerator and pulled out one of the Red Stripes. As he straightened up, he found Teej standing behind the door. “What?” Bailey said.

“Um … do I get the convertible tomorrow?” Teej asked.

Bailey sighed. “I should never have taught you to drive. That’s the problem, right there.” He handed over the beer.

It was a beautiful night; he supposed they were all beautiful nights here. Bailey sat on the patio behind the house, his back against the wall of the kitchen, knees up. A breeze stirred the ferns and orchids that screened the driveway and the pool lay like a submerged grotto, lit from below. Teej was in his room watching the Discovery channel, or some such thing; Bailey could hear occasional scraps of television, very faint in the distance.

Footsteps tapped on the flagstones of the patio; Lilith deliberately making noise in her sandals, to let him know she was coming. She brought a bottle of champagne and a single glass, which she gave to Bailey.

“I know you like to watch me open these,” she said. And without benefit of corkscrew and no apparent effort, she pulled off the wrapper and the cork in one smooth gesture.

“I’m amused by simple things,” he said, holding out the glass for her to pour. He didn’t much like dry champagne, but he’d drink it anyway. She sat down beside him in her jeans and halter top, skin like snow under moonlight.

He was a thirty-five-year-old atheist sleeping with a Jewish vampire of indeterminate age, and he was drinking champagne because Lilith liked the tang. Work that one out, Ann Landers. Or maybe the Penthouse letters column would be more appropriate …

She rested one hand on his thigh as he drank. This was cozy, like coming home; the closest he’d ever come, anyway. The soft wind that ran up the hill from the ocean was like raw silk, a few degrees colder man usual. He’d worry about rain, except the night was so damned clear.

She was thinking the same thing, apparently, because she glanced upward, smiled, and said, “‘Look, how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold.’”

“What’s that from?”

“Merchant of Venice.” She poured him more champagne. Get that blood alcohol level up past.08, where she could taste it. He smiled; God, he was easy.

“And it means?”

“Come on, Bailey, you never see stars like this in the city.”

“Ah, stars. I thought you said ‘pattens.’ I wondered why the floor of heaven was covered with shoes.”

She looked at him. “You’re just asking for it, aren’t you, Bailey?”

He nodded, not even trying to beat back his grin.

She reached up and pinched his neck, suddenly, as though testing readiness for the oven. “Ouch!” He let go of the champagne glass. Her tongue followed a second later, laving the vein, playing with the hollow, tracing its way to his ear. His breathing become ragged. She touched tongue-tip to the mapped roads of his ear and began running fingers through his hair, nails trailing the scalp, just above that ear. He gasped and his body jolted very slightly, as though a current had run head to toe. He turned into her touch, then turned further, facing her. He took that hand and kissed the palm, his gaze steady, leaping deliberately into those eyes.

Some time later she said, “Bailey …”

“What?”

“Why is the floor of heaven covered with shoes?”

He knew this game and smiled through the haze. “Well, it would make sense, you know.” Her lips were playing with his neck now; and the longer he could spin out this nonsense, the longer the beautiful torture would go on. “The floor of heaven is painful.”

“How do you figure?” Her breath was warm spice in his ear. She ran her palm over his forehead and he sighed.

“It shifts under your feet.” She moved on top of him, covering him with cool heat. “You need rubber-soled shoes.” Her hair swept past his neck like living silk. “Enjoy it while you can.” She’d zipped down his shorts and now she was playing with both ends of him, caressing his cock while she let the tip of her teeth remind his neck what it liked. So much for his concentration.

“Bailey?”

“Umm.”

“I liked that.”

“Umm.” Fortunately, the change in tone seemed to be carrying his response, because it was the best he could do just now.

She’d shifted position, her knee between his legs, just touching his cock, the extra contact making him dizzy. A new breeze rolled in off the ocean, unexpectedly cold, and Jesus, on his sensitized skin it was as erotic as the rest, making him shiver with pain and pleasure. He didn’t know the wind could do that.

He clutched her shoulders as the first touch of desperation took him. She held him then, rocking him through it, as his body, reminded now of what it had lacked for the last ten months, convulsed.

Lilith never took him after the first one. She could spin this out for hours, on a good night, and for most of those hours he’d be right there with her, delighting in the ride. Even delighting in the sudden, sickening descents of the roller coaster, because he knew what followed. But these moments, these were the hardest, when his body didn’t care about games or what came first or followed after.

Then it passed, and he was breathing hard. The cool, healing lips were on his, as though she could pass that inhuman strength into him, keep him going long enough for a dance humans weren’t designed to live through.

He sucked it in, opening his mouth, welcoming her tongue and its invasion. That army was on his side, boys. The cavalry was here for him …

There was a sudden change in her body. She pulled her mouth away, pushing him back.

He murmured, confused, “What …?”

She rolled away from him, staring toward the kitchen door. From which Teej emerged, looking as if he were about to be sick. His hands were clasped behind his head and he stumbled as he came through the door. A nine-millimeter automatic was about an inch from the back of his skull, held there by a man in a T-shirt and light nautical windbreaker.

Ron.

Shit. Bailey stared, appalled, as the knowledge cut through the haze in his mind like an icepick. Someone had gotten the license plate. Ron had more than one person helping him, and Bailey had missed the second confederate. He’d been careful, sure, just not careful enough to keep someone from putting an automatic to the head of a kid who was silly enough to think Bailey knew what he was doing.

Ron looked grim and nervous. Bailey zipped up his shorts hastily and rose to his feet. Lilith stood too, her eyes not leaving the gun. Ron’s gaze went to her and widened with surprise; then he turned back to Bailey.

You’re the guy who was on the boat. Let him say that.

“You’re the guy from Atlanta,” said Ron. “I heard about you.”

Death sentence. Ron would have to make sure he didn’t report back; it was too easy to trace someone off this tiny island, and Ron would have to change tactics and ditch the boat. And even then — once they knew, people would never stop looking for him.

“You called in yet?” Ron asked.

“This evening,” said Bailey.

Ron grinned. “That’s a lie. If you’d called in, I’d know about it.”

That would be an interesting statement, if the gun weren’t such a distraction. And Ron looked jumpy. He was holding the automatic like it might explode if he loosened his grip. Maybe he’d been nervous for a while; he had a few day’s growth of beard, and it occurred to Bailey in one of his compulsive empathic jumps, that maybe it wasn’t just for disguise. This guy looked like he didn’t trust his hands around razors.

Teej was starting to shake, and Lilith shifted on her feet, her predator’s gaze locked on Ron. No, she’d never make it. Not even a jaguar could take out Ron’s throat before that gun went off. Did she realize?

She did, thank God. She wasn’t moving.

“Maybe I’d be better off with your girlfriend,” Ron commented, following his glance. For a second Bailey almost smiled. Ron’s eyes shifted back and forth between them, deciding on his best move.

“Okay,” he said suddenly, looking at Bailey. “You’re with me. Get over here.”

So he wants to switch me for Teej, Bailey thought. This was marginally better, but not a stunning improvement. What was the score supposed to be here? Drive Bailey somewhere, put a nine millimeter through his skull, then come back for Lilith and Teej? Because he would want everyone.

No, not convenient, Bailey thought, moving slowly toward Ron. Better to take them all out now. First Bailey, whom he incorrectly considered the greatest threat. Then Teej. Then the unarmed woman in the halter top last. Damn, and they could have done something with the opposite order.

When he was close enough, Ron pushed Teej out of the way and grabbed Bailey.

He heard Teej sob. He felt the cold barrel against his scalp, Ron’s way of telling him not to move. It was moderately eloquent. Bailey faced Lilith — good, she was watching him. He threw everything he could into his expression. Do it. Do it. He’s only going to shoot Teej next, there’s nothing to gain by waiting, just do it.

She looked at him warily. Lilith, please, just—

She drew herself up to her full height and transferred her gaze to Ron with the air of one discarding the irrelevant. A low sound motored through the night: Lilith was growling. It made Bailey’s hair stand on end. He felt Ron’s start of surprise, felt the barrel move from his head.

Her fangs were enormous. Or maybe it was the fear that sound from her throat created in your guts, making those razors look like what they were.

“What the f—” said Ron.

Then she was on top of him. And the gun went off.

Pain tore through Bailey. He kept his head enough to move out of Lilith’s way.

He retreated against the other end of the L-wall of the house, putting his hand down to his leg to feel the wetness there. “Fuck.” The bullet had gone through his outer thigh. Nice that it hadn’t passed through his torso instead, but it stung like a bitch, and it was only going to get worse.

And Lilith hadn’t torn Ron’s throat out after all. That was mildly surprising. Teej lay on the grass, trying to cry very quietly. Lilith had backed Ron against the other wall and was holding him by his collar, several inches off the ground. His face looked sick in the light of the kitchen window.

Lilith, on the other hand, looked thoroughly inhuman, and outraged. You didn’t need to see fangs to feel the threat, and the alienness, pouring off her. “Who do you think you are?” she inquired of the deer, the stoat, the weasel she held in her grasp. “To come in my house, with a gun. To make someone here cry.”

Bailey heard a pause in Teej’s gasps, at that; heard him try to control his sobs.

Ron made a choking sound. She let his toes touch just the ground, taking some of the weight off his neck. He feet scrabbled for purchase.

Bailey hadn’t heard that in a long time — that edge of anger and hostility — of death, really — in Lilith’s voice. It was not anything he’d ever been on the receiving end of, nor did he want to be.

“Bailey, if there’s a reason you need this man alive, tell me now.”

Ron Zygmore had been a condemned man for weeks, ever since he cut out his partners; it wasn’t Bailey’s place to try and resurrect him, especially now that he’d seen Lilith in action. “I need his bank account number.”

She glanced back toward him, disagreement in her face. “Bailey, you’re bleeding. I can smell it from here.” Let me kill him now.

“It’s not serious. I want the account.” He met her glance with one of his own. Lilith considered Ron as Bailey’s prey, by right of professional courtesy — clearly she wanted to overrule him, but thought it would be rude.

“Christ,” said Ron. The voice came out hoarse. “Christ. Dear God.” He looked at Bailey in wonder. “How do you control her?”

Control her? What was that, some gender thing, or did he believe Lilith was some kind of demon Bailey’d called out of Hell and needed to be on the right side of a chalk circle to keep from being devoured by?

Shit, that bullet wound stung. “Sheer force of personality,” he heard himself saying, with perfect seriousness.

Lilith looked at him briefly. “And purity of heart. You forgot that.”

“Yeah, I do tend to forget that one.”

Ron stared at them both. “God,” he said again, softly. Lilith ran her fingernail gently across his throat, forcing him to turn to her. “Cariad,” she said softly. “My heart’s desire.” There was a kind of passion in her voice, and Bailey didn’t blame Ron for the way he paled. She kissed him, the way you’d kiss a seventeen-year-old who was a little shy and charming in his gawkiness. He’d moved his head back, as far away as he could, and Lilith chuckled, deep in her throat. The kiss went on for a moment, then her lips moved over his neck, his chin, up over his cheekbones; she bestowed one on each eyelid, with awful tenderness, as she passed; and then finally his forehead. When she drew back he followed her, trying to regain contact.

Her fingers were delicate, holding the line of his jaw, thumb under his chin. Bailey saw nicks of blood from the skin where her fingernails rested. Ron didn’t seem to notice.

She withdrew her hands and waited for his eyes to clear. She said, with that same terrible gentleness, “Bailey tells us you have a bank account number. It would be best to give it now, cariad.”

Cariad. A Welsh endearment, Bailey thought; why? Had her first prey been Welsh? Her first surviving lover? He put the question aside with the ruthlessness of practice — he was never going to know; the rules that allowed them to live safely together did not permit questions about the past.

Ron looked at the three people before him in the backyard as though somehow this would all make sense, in a minute. Confusion and fear were plain on his face, but he said nothing, pressing himself further against the wall of the house as though to remove himself from this entire nightmare. She sighed and moved in on him again.

Bailey couldn’t stop watching. Her breasts against Ron’s chest, her leg between his — as Bailey stared, she lifted her toy’s wrists, thumbs rubbing against each pulse-point, and held him outspread against the wall as though she couldn’t decide whether to fuck him or crucify him. Bailey was vaguely aware of a choking sound from Teej, kneeling in the grass.

Her tongue played with neck and collarbone and she took her first nick. A gasp of pain; then Ron’s expression changed, evening out, letting go. He moaned and sank down an inch or two, and Bailey knew from experience just what that extra bit of his own weight, rubbing his cock against Lilith’s knee, was doing to the man. That clamp of Lilith’s hands on his wrists was doing the bulk of holding him up now.

Bailey found his own cock getting hard. Great, he was wounded in the line of duty and he was getting turned on by watching a six-foot-four-inch vampire torture an embezzling drug runner. He definitely had problems. Maybe he should seek therapy after this six weeks were over.

She made a sound in her throat as she kissed the vein in her prey’s neck, a sound Bailey had often heard before. His knees weakened sympathetically.

— On the other hand, maybe this was good, maybe he was diverting the flow of blood away from the injured area. Maybe hard-ons were recommended for gunshot wounds.

Then she pulled back again and waited. The return to clarity took longer this time. After a minute or two, Ron asked, bewildered, “What are you doing—”

She spoke to a lover. “Heart of my heart. Tell us what we want to know.”

He gasped, half in despair. He still didn’t know what was happening, but the fear and loss of control were obvious. “No,” he said, like someone who held to a route through enemy territory.

But none of his maps were working. Lilith reached for him again, and tears were running down his face. She caressed his cheek, ran her hands through his hair, comforting him; then she kissed his mouth, long and hard, and when she moved back again to his neck there was blood on his lips. His eyes rolled back with ecstasy, then closed. When she finally let go of him, he sank to the ground, sitting aimlessly for several minutes. Eventually he looked up, trying to focus on her. He reached for her hand. She stepped back and said, “Bailey, come here.”

Walking wasn’t easy for him, but she was too concentrated to notice that right now. His leg throbbed with the effort, pain meeting each pulse of his blood, a connection he was not unaccustomed to. He was sweating by the time he reached her. He waited. She touched Ron’s cheek, getting his attention. “Tell him,” she said, gesturing to Bailey.

Ron looked at him blankly. Bailey said, “The four hundred thousand dollars. Where is it?”

Ron continued to regard him as though he were a stranger. Then, after a few seconds, he frowned. “They’re not dollars. They’re bearer bonds.”

“Where are they?” Bailey repeated. It was like talking to a six-year-old.

“A safety deposit box at the Bank of San Cristobel.”

Lilith knelt beside him. She didn’t know Bailey’s case, but she could see where this was going. “Do you have a key?”

He blinked at her, then reached into his jacket pocket and took it out. Bailey didn’t know why he was surprised; naturally Ron wouldn’t let that out of his sight. Lilith took the key, then held his face in her hands again. “Do you remember the box number?”

He whispered it, hoarsely, and she let go of him. “Do you need to write that down?” she asked Bailey, not looking at him.

He could replay every beat of that hoarse voice. “I really don’t think either of us will forget it.”

She ignored that. She stood up, lifting Ron with ease. She walked him back against the wall.

He said, “No more, please.” She kissed his hair.

Bailey looked away briefly. They had the information, but he supposed it was hard for Lilith not to play with the things she killed.

He barely looked back in time to see her break his neck.

Bailey sank down on the patio, reflecting that shock seemed to be catching up with him. The world around him, stars and breeze and nightbirds, seemed to be unnaturally silent.

They were all beautiful nights in San Cristobel. Except, he thought vaguely, for the sound of weeping that came from someone unhappy, nearby.

“Teej, stop it.” Lilith’s voice cut through the thick silk of the night like a blade. There was a catch in Teej’s breath. “Bailey needs us now.”

Another long gasp for breath from Teej, and then a slower, more deliberate one; he was obviously forcing himself to come down. Ten seconds; fifteen. Then he spoke. “The car,” he said, surprising Bailey. “He came in a car. It’s down the hill. We can’t leave it there.”

Good kid, thought Bailey. Maybe it was time to stop underestimating him.

“You’re right,” said Lilith. “And we can’t leave him here, either. I’m not worried about his friends, but I do wonder if the police will come.”

She spoke as though it were a hypothetical question in philosophy; nevertheless she came over to Bailey and squatted down beside him. “Bailey?”

“He was never really here on the island, anyway. Good chance he won’t be missed.” What an epitaph, he thought, belatedly. She was still thinking it through, a serious expression on her face. She turned to Teej.

“Take the car into town. Park it behind one of the clubs … Deadeye Dick’s, if you can find a spot. It’ll be weeks before they notice it there. I’ll drive Bailey to the hospital. We’ll explain that he was mugged.”

Teej’s gaze went to the dead man. Lilith said, “I’ll take care of the body when I get back.”

Teej’s eyes were wide and strained, with the look of someone who’s heard too many artillery shells. He said, “What … what will you do with the body?”

She moved to him, stooped down beside him, and lifted his chin in her hand. “Teej. Worry about the car.”

He let out another breath, and nodded.

After a moment Bailey saw him rise and vanish into the house. Lilith walked over to the pool, cupped some handfuls of water, and began washing blood from her face.

Bailey sank back on the patio, resting. Anything else was beginning to seem too much effort. He was vaguely aware that she’d gone to the driveway and returned. He waited.

He heard sandals on gravel, felt the cold reassurance of it as Lilith’s arms lifted him up and carried him to the back seat of the convertible.

“Lilith,” he said, “don’t ever call me ‘heart of your heart.’”

Her voice was amused. “You are,” she said, “but I won’t call you that if you don’t want me to.”

She opened the door and helped him to lie down. A bowl of stars hung over him, diamond-edged and painfully clear. He said, “You know, maybe you could do that thing with me, later.”

“What?” Lilith closed the door.

“You know. That thing with the wall. Watch out for my neck, though.”

“Bailey, you four-star schmuck. You sickest of puppies. Shut up, I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

He laughed. The floor of heaven was thick inlaid with patins of bright gold, and March was a lifetime away.