Dead. All of them dead. There was a hole in Monique Palmer's life now, a piece missing that she hadn't even realized meant everything to her until it was suddenly gone. They had been her friends, her teammates, her coach, the only ones who understood her the way she longed to be understood. She wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but she could make out pity when she saw it, and that was how most New Yorkers looked at her. Yes, they thought she was a sweet girl, someone they could rely on to haul freight or walk their dogs. But she knew that they talked about her behind her back; she knew what the rumors were. Not right in the head, they said about her. It was the ban, they explained to each other as if she were deaf. She's a sweet kid. She's so innocent. She rides in cabs. As if it were a bad thing that she relied on cabs to get into streets where her truck couldn't pass!

It had taken a week of extra jobs and begging for a couple of favors, but she had saved up enough to buy a sextet of the finest candles available in the city. In her hodgepodge of a room, she had a collection of pictures that would have been the envy of any hardcore fan. Any New Yorker, on the other hand, would have burned them to ashes when Britney took over, and pissed on the ashes when the Lone Wolves rose to power in Westchester. But she had been one of them once, and she cherished the memories like precious jewels, like priceless treasures.

To each candle, she assigned a picture, and she prayed to something or someone- who or what, she wasn't exactly sure anymore- for their salvation and peace in an afterlife of questionable existence. There wasn't much else she could do for them; she had tried to come to Rye and claim the bodies for a proper burial, but she had been rebuffed. "Let 'em rot," O'Rourke's deputy had said brusquely to her. "Beasts, they were, and a sweet lass like you should never have anything to do with their like." Even her tears hadn't been able to convince him otherwise, so the bodies lay unclaimed.

She lit the first candle. Of all the memories she had carried out of her college years, those of her coach were the most enduring. His personality was not one easily forgotten. He had a certain charm and charisma about him that drew close everyone that he dealt with, made them feel special. He was a father figure sometimes, like an older brother at other times, and as impossible as it seemed he was always one of the girls. They trusted him with everything, all the little secrets they gossiped about in their dorm rooms late at night when they were supposed to be studiying their next opponent or their class notes. More than one of them had spent her freshman year sighing over those blue eyes and that saucy smile. Monique sheepishly remembered doing the same thing herself.

She lit the second candle. Chiara D'Alessandro had always been good to her and her teammates. It was rare to see her without a cocky grin, or for a conversation to pass without her infectious laughter filling the room. She made everyone feel like her best friend, as if they and they alone had been let in on some big secret. Monique's memory neatly erased the times their paths had crossed professionally, when Chiara had metamorphed into Sister D, the stern Catholic nun who never smiled, the cruel taskmistress of the Order of the Blessed Virgin, her heart as cold as desert night and her signature passion dry as sand. Chiara's mark had been so infamously made in college that it was hard for Monique to think of her as anything but an NCAA heroine, struck down in her prime.

She lit the third candle. Wherever Chiara was, Lily Merrill had also been. It was an equation simpler than freshman math. One day it might be Lily cracking the joke and Chiara guffawing so loud and long that campus security came to find out what had happened; the next day, it might be Chiara passing a sly remark that made Lily break into a silver peal of giggles. But it always became serious at game time; her hazel eyes stopped sparkling with mischief and started watching the court as if she could see everything at once if she tried hard enough. Lily had become much more serious and less fun-loving when she went professional, a change only heightened after her near-dynastic marriage.

She lit the fourth candle. Tiffani Harris had been a combination den mother and chivvying older sister to her younger teammates. To her, they were eternally deficient in style, and it was her bounden duty to make them presentable when they had to be out in public. She took them in hand and taught them the secret ways of colors and flattering fits. Always girly, always elegant and dignified, she had turned into a rebounding demon on the court, fierce and tenacious. Her love of the game had surpassed everything, so it had surprised Monique, and a lot of her former teammates, when she had abruptly left the game for a job on the production line in the city that had adopted her and a husband whose love she had always denied having. As many of the girls had lost sleep over her as over anyone, though they knew they could never have her.

She lit the fifth candle. Linda Wolfe had been a legend even by Monique's time at the school, universally adored and virtually canonized. She was what they all strived to be, at least on the collegiate level; she wouldn't have wished her disastrous professional career on even her worst enemy. Her witty observations about everything and anything made her popular among the younger set with whom she practiced in order to stay in shape. Monique paused briefly to ponder the irony of the eldest's fate; a writer with a facility for language rendered mute, her words forever trapped in what was left of her mind. But the thought was too unpleasant to linger on: better to remember Linda as she had been when Monique first met her, a star still seeking her chance to shine.

She lit the last candle. In truth, she hadn't known Roz Jennings all that well in her playing days; the point guard had been almost ten years ahead of her, too removed for even the seniors she knew to have played with her. All she had heard were second-hand stories from Linda and from some of the more well-connected alumnae. Of course, she had heard about her work as a coach and an agent for the government. The scandal at Teaneck had resonated through New York like the ringing of a bell. Monique had never been impressed with the stories that she had heard, and she had never found any reason to change her impression of the lady in red. But she had been part of the family, one of the few loyal enough to return home when she was most needed, and that was all that really mattered.

Six candles burning bright and six sets of memories: that was all Monique Palmer's loyalty had gotten her in the end, and yet there was nothing in the world she would trade it for.

Linda is dead. As much as Nikeh thought the words, as many times as she knifed invisibly through the crowd to see the still face in the open coffin, as true as she knew the fact to be, she couldn't make herself believe that it was real. She half-expected Linda to stroll up to her and make some careless casual remark that would make her laugh inappropriately. But those days had long since passed, even before the gray had crept into her braids; for years, Nikeh would have been invisible to Linda's eyes and anathema to her mind, the very concept of her enough to make the writer shudder and spew vitriol into her mic for Roy and Dale to parrot.

Nikeh regarded the cross around her neck, handling it with callused fingers. It was the remnant of a faith she could not make herself sacrifice, a belief in all the good she had seen done in His name, one last connection to the home and family she had been forced to abandon. Though the medallion of New York's Lady hung over her heart, though she wore the purple band of a Historian, she could not give up the church that had succored when death broke her heart. Instead, she turned to the God she had always known. Had her cross been a rosary, she would have counted prayers off on its beads in honor of the born Catholic whom they mourned under false pretenses; as it was, she lost herself in the words without caring how many of them there were.

She could not in good conscience pray for 50, psychotic sociopath cannibal, cruel and twisted executioner for the Lone Wolves. She could not in good conscience pray for Linda Balliard, blind slave of the system, the journalist whose rapier wit and biting rhetoric had aided in the lynching of one friend and the Channel 4 conversion of another. But she could pray for Linda Wolfe, quick-witted chronicler of the strange, one of the few who had publicly stood by the White Widow and defended the city's actions at Times Square.

Across the aisle, she heard the familiar guttural sound of Hebrew, a voice speaking softly in prayer. She looked away from her cross to spot who dared to disturb the Christian peace. The woman who stood opposite her wore a long-sleeved, floor-length black dress, a small rip in the right sleeve; a veil obscured her eyes, but Nikeh still recognized the round-cheeked face, the mouth that had been destined for an impish smile and a lifetime of gentle kisses, and she could intuit woolly black hair and brown eyes. She made a move across the aisle, and from the sudden interruption of the prayer, she knew that she had been seen.

"You're dead," she breathed, unable to believe her eyes. "After all this time, you can't be real."

The other woman came to her first, pushing both of them to the back of the assembled crowd. No one could see them. "I doubt you remember me," she said in a barely audible hiss. Nikeh recoiled at the harsh, alien accent in her friend's voice. As she was about to protest that she did remember her friend, to speak a name that had always been much on her mind, the other woman added quickly, "My name is Shamira Rubin."

"Forgive me. I must have mistaken you for a friend of mine who died at Times Square." The bitterness in Nikeh's tone surprised them both.

"You know what I was involved with. I had to disappear. I changed my name when I converted, so Yehudit could put my former name on the death rolls from Times Square."

Nikeh laughed low in her throat. "You must be real. A ghost wouldn't equivocate the way you do. Ten years it's been, and you couldn't once write a letter? You couldn't find some way to let me know you were alive? We were friends. We were more than friends."

"This is not about me, or us. This is about Linda. A funeral is no place to catch up on gossip." Shamira gazed towards the front of the hall, her eyes flickering to the larger of the two coffins. "There are few I would have come out of hiding for."

"Few left, you mean." Nikeh spat the words out as if they tasted bad, knowing that they would draw no attention from the gathering.

"I meant what I said, Nikeh. Don't twist what little I say. Not after all these years. Linda Wolfe was a friend, and so I come to mourn her, as is proper." Shamira drew the veil back across her eyes, making it crystal clear that she wanted no further part of the conversation, but Nikeh wasn't having any part of that.

"Tally-"

"That name is no longer mine. Even if it were, we are no longer at the stage where you can use that nickname. Another claims that place in my heart now."

"I had noticed that, Shamira." Nikeh threw the name back with a mocking note in her voice, irked at the younger woman for her calculated indifference and defilement of memories, irked at herself for letting the other get under her skin in ways that no one else had ever managed. "All the N-names in the Hebrew tongue, and you choose to name yourself after the little girl? An interesting choice. I always thought you-"

"I wished to honor her memory after she moved back to Little Rock at Linda's urging. Some part of who she was would live on through me. I wish now I had not done it. I should have made the cut clean."

Nikeh turned away, her jaw set, at those words. Salt on a wound, they were; she was a Historian, oathbound to never forget the past, to preserve it for future generations, and here was the last, truest link to her own halycon days trying to renounce everything both of them had once stood for. Whatever friendship and love there had been between her and the woman who now called herself Shamira Rubin, it was turned to ashes, dead and gone like the tight-knit circle of friends she had watched disintegrate.

She bent her head back to her cross, and Shamira returned to her prayers, and the space between them steadily grew greater.

Blood and moonlight, blinding white and blinding shadow, a song of triumph ringing in her ears, the wolf's cry ripping from her throat as she stood over the mangled body of her enemy, the glorious scent of fear and death in the air, a coppery tang lingering on her tongue and her lips: this was her life, the life that had been chosen for her, the life she would not trade for any other.

Elemental fury was she, a tearing slashing ripping dancer of death, a tool of destruction turned now on her masters with primal savagery and all the mechanical efficiency trained into her. Without their deaths she had no life; without their deaths, she could not scream out the name that meant everything to her.

Tiffani Harris. The dark-skinned beauty so few could see and fewer could come near. Elegant, regal, distant, divine Tiffani Harris-

Pierce.

Harris! Tiffani Harris!

She married Ron Pierce. She accepted him when she wouldn't come close to you.

Harris! Harrisharrisharrisharris! "Harris, damn it!" Her voice echoed in anguish, in rage, in choking grief, off the flat, lifeless walls that limned the filthy litter-strewn alleyway where she lurked to heal her broken soul. Dry-eyed, she screamed out again like a wounded animal.

A blonde couple walked past her lair, oblivious to anything around them that wasn't each other. Her natural prey. Hatred bloomed inside her, the taste as sweet as mother's milk, an exultation like fire in her blood, purifying her, preparing her. So possessed by the spirit, she pounced, taking his throat out with one quick motion. His heart beat faster, a drumbeat that only spurred her on; when it stopped, a momentary pang of disappointment sliced her to the quick. The puling girl-child fainted as he fell, and she smiled at the sight. This would be perfect for her purposes, but of course it was because the spirits were with her. Meticulously, she licked the blood from her fingers before reaching for the candles she kept in her pocket. Though the blonde who lay at her feet was unworthy of a sacrifice's honor now, she would make the pale creature a worthy gift to the spirit who guided her.

Fire sputtered and sprung to life in her hands, giving depth to the careworn lines of her face, lighting her eyes until they looked like the gates of the hell she had once been deluded into believing in. Those who looked at her and knew nothing of her would see the dilated pupils and bloodshot whites and believe her mad; they couldn't even imagine the world she saw, and she no longer wanted any part of their pallid world. They had beaten down and destroyed beautiful, noble Tiffani, so she would beat down and destroy them in their turn to please the perfect princess she had never in life been able to woo.

The knife in her hand sparkled in the candlelight, the signs etched into its handle seeming almost to come to life. A little moan from the chosen sacrifice reminded her that her time was limited; she could spend no more of it on thoughts of the woman she so cherished. She set the candles in a circle around the soft, useless body and sang out spells of binding and conjure, prayers that would make the sacrifice fully acceptable and that would dispel some of the tearing grief she felt at Tiffani's loss.

Eyes flickered open, a sickly green that lost all life in the candle's wavering light. The sight of the pathetic child whining incessantly was enough to drive her mad if she hadn't already gotten well past that point. Pleas for mercy had no effect, not when they were directed to empty air instead of the one who held the power of life and death. She had no patience for such fools. She intoned the prayers again, the magics that would keep the sacrifice from escaping, then plunged the knife into living flesh. Its blade now whetted with blood, she could properly bind the sacrifice. Let the child believe that it was fear that held her paralyzed, unable to escape; it was fate, the workings of the spirit world, that controlled her now.

The screams as she removed the child's still-beating heart were sweet to her ears and her urge for vengeance. She moved systematically, removing and arranging the soft organs in a neat circle around the slowly cooling body. She could almost feel soft arms around her now, her reward for the risks she took; she could smell sweet jasmine perfume on the air, taste the salt of a kiss that could never happen in life, hear a breathy, feminine voice telling her how well she had done. Her gift had been accepted, and with that knowledge she felt alive again.

But she had to leave this place. She could smell her hunters even now, those who knew the heavy scent and metallic taste of blood almost as well as she did. They knew who she was, something that she could not say about either them or herself, but yet they had no idea who she truly was. To them, the name was everything: a name, a face, a legend, a string of acts that they considered brutal and illegal but were necessary to her as breath.

She would let them hunt her, for it amused her to watch them bumble. They would seek her in the lighted places of the city, in the urban wilderness they had built up to keep out what they most feared. They would watch for her among the the crowds of people that were so much alike that only one would have been enough. They would think that she thought like they thought, and that was a mistake she was now immune from.

Let them hunt her. She would melt into the shadows, into the darkness where they could not, would not, see. She would pass in front of them like a ghost, and they would see nothing; though they might hear her or smell her or sense her, they would tell themselves that she wasn't there. She would become one with the night, and become closer to the lady she worshipped and adored.

Those who had seen Sister Alysa called her an angel; in the pristine, glittering white she chose to wear whenever she set foot outside the cloister, she seemed unreal, a vision sent from Heaven. Angel of mercy, angel of charity, angel of kindness: all these sobriquets she'd heard, and a dozen more, and none of those who spoke so kindly of her understood the reason for her inscrutable, serene smile. Angel, they called her, and none of them knew that she might as well have been the daughter of the devil himself.

Her secular marriage had lasted less than a year before the friction had become too much and she had to admit to herself that she could not get by in American society, but the name he had given to her was a disguise and a shield. No one had ever looked twice at the woman who signed her name Alysa Girardi; there was no reason to be suspicious of her. Her maiden name was a sealed secret, and with time she had been able to consign thoughts of her family to the same oblivion. Eventually, she was even able to hear tales of her father's calumny without batting an eyelash.

But now he was dead, shot in a battle royale, and she had no idea whether her first reaction should have been grief that her father was dead or relief that such a sinister man was at last dead. And from that came guilt, good Catholic guilt that was more familiar than a lover's touch, an untempered emotion that she could expiate with so many Hail Marys and Our Fathers. She wasn't sure what would smooth down to nothing first, her fingertips or the beads of the rosary.

There was solace in the ancient rituals, in the sonorous Latin and archaic phrasing, in the words that she knew so well that they had blurred into a meaningless drone that emptied her mind. She could almost sense centuries of history echoing in the words, hundreds of voices reciting along with her. But as she continued trying to drown out her pain and sort out her feelings, the voice in her imagination dwindled down to her father's voice, telling the beads upon the death of her grandmother.

That released a level of emotion that she hadn't been aware she could access anymore, brought tears to her clear blue eyes- her father's blue eyes- and reduced her to a sobbing mess huddled on her cot. Yes, she had lived her life as if her father had been dead these last ten years, and by 2020 she had even made herself believe it, but to have the truth thrown at her so abruptly hurt. She had always treasured the hope that there was some way to cure him of his madness and bring him to the city she reluctantly called hers. Now that hope was completely dashed, that dream utterly destroyed.

The memories came upon her in a rush, an unexpected avalanche. All the things she had tried to put out of her mind, all the good times she had enjoyed as a pampered princess, the love and caring that had been a family hallmark before the change had come in the wake of Richardson's election, hit her like a ton of bricks. As deeply as she had buried her past, it was not, could never be, deep enough. Ringleader of a pack of psychopaths or not, he had still been her father, and he had once loved her; the least she owed him was a period of proper mourning that no one else could give him.

No matter how little he deserved it.

"Chiya..."

Danielle jumped. "You scared the shit out of me, Uncle Barry! I thought you'd stopped reading Carisa's cheap fantasy when she moved out. Trust me, that's the only reason I never asked you to stop using that nickname for me."

"I'm sorry, Danielle. You know I wouldn't have used it if I knew you didn't like it. It's just that the resemblance grows stronger every year."

"Or your memory gets worse every year." Mockingly, Danielle coiled her dark brown hair into a bun at the back of her head and posed with a toothy grin. Only the visible wince that crossed Barry's face made her drop the façade. "How was Rye?"

Barry shuddered. "The next time we go bastard-hunting, Emily goes. What I saw with my own eyes and what I heard from their own mouths would turn your hair white, and I don't think it was even the worst of what they've done. I thought I had seen everything in my life, but none of it held a candle to their trophies." He turned to Danielle, allowing her to see the haunted, drawn lines of his face. "And still I wouldn't have wished on her the death she received. I took a chance to view the body, to make sure she was really dead, and I'll see the expression on her face in my dreams for the rest of my life. She broke her neck on impact. At least her death was quick."

"You should know better than I that her death was anything but quick. She was dying for years before this, and she might as well have been dead since last year. The only real question is when she really died, ten years ago or one year ago. That's when the woman we knew and adored died. Since when are you so concerned about a woman's face?"

Barry forced a smile. "Point taken. But there's a difference between crazy and dead. Crazy, you can come back from. Dead, not so much."

"You honestly thought there was a chance for her to get her shit together and come to New York? I thought it was the kid who was supposed to be the foolish optimist and the adult who was supposed to be the hard-bitten realist."

"We're Jewish. Neither of us is supposed to be the foolish optimist, don't you know? We're the most pessimistic people on the planet. We just manage to laugh at it."

"So remind me again why you expected her to suddenly regain her sanity and come join the drinking parties you pretend I don't know about."

"She was a good kid, Dani. You know that as much as I do. You knew it longer than I did. I wish things didn't have to go the way they did."

"Next thing I know, you'll be wanting to go back there and sit shiva for her."

"Don't joke about that, Danielle." The ice in Barry's voice was so unexpected that it cowed Danielle into silence. "If you can mock that, then I've obviously failed in the promise I made to your father, that I would raise you in the proper traditions if anything ever happened to your parents. Perhaps I should send you back to them."

"No! Not that! I'm sorry I spoke the way I did, honest." Danielle flailed about to find a new thread for the conversation, frustrated at being so flustered about something that should have happened long before. After all that they had done... and that suggested the perfect change of topic. "I don't suppose you told Scarlet before you came in here to surprise me?"

"You must not have been out of your room in the last few hours if you didn't see her dancing through the hallways like someone had slipped her some of Light in the Dark's stash. The last I saw of her, she was humming her alma mater and trying to kiss everyone in sight. I shouldn't have to tell you that that didn't go over well with Brian."

"I don't understand why; you're gay, and you don't mind having women kiss you, so why should he get all wound up about it?"

Barry shrugged. "The ways of men are mysterious, almost as much as the ways of women." He took a glance at his watch and bit back an expletive. "I'm sorry, Dani, but I have to go. There's a conference at City Hall that everyone of any importance in the city has to attend- we've got to set everything up for Yonkers, make sure we've got mental health experts on hand for the newcomers, the whole nine yards." A pensive look passed over his face, and he looked appraisingly at Danielle. "Dani, I'm almost certain that every major group in the city will be asked to send an observer to Westchester County to see what's going on and to offer whatever aid is applicable. Would you like me to nominate you as ours?"

Danielle's face lit up. "Would you? That would be wonderful!"

"I can't promise anything. I have to run it by Emily and probably Wraith first, and Emily may well decide to go herself, or have one of the Amazons go to write the whole thing up for the Times. But I'll do my best to convince them that you're the perfect person for the job."

"Thank you. Thank you so much. You don't know how much this would mean to me. As much as you're sure it would, even more. So much more." She hugged him tightly, and only let him go when he again protested that he had to leave. Once the door had closed, she jumped up and punched the air in joyous triumph.

She would never reveal this to her surrogate father, of course, because children never revealed weaknesses to parents, but she was guilty of indulging in the very vice that she had just mocked in him. She had written her parents off the same way she had written off her childhood idols, lost to whatever sick seductions came from the television and the computer, but while she had been willing to dismiss and forget people she never knew, she could not do the same to the parents who had raised her with such loving care. She couldn't count the number of nights when she had dreamed of her parents coming to New York, coming back to admit that they loved her more than whatever illusions of normalcy they had succumbed to. For the barest chance of seeing family and friends again, she would have done more than Barry could imagine; she would have participated in the secret rites of the sirens, streaked her hair blonde in full sight of the Gray Lady, come naked and unarmed to the hideout of Los Metros, fed the dogs of Broadway with her own two hands. Stupid, foolish, disgusting, immoral, or dangerous, it wouldn't have mattered: life and family were infinitely more important than pride and dignity.

For the first time in a long time, her faith in the goodness of God was restored. She felt like she could walk on air; is this what rapture feels like? she wondered. And for once in her life, she genuinely felt impelled to pray. The words of the Kaddish tumbled from her lips. Let others believe that she recited the mourner's prayer in twisted respect for those who had fallen in Rye. She knew better. She knew the meaning of the words, and spoke them to glorify a God to whom she had never before been so thankful.

It had been years since Shimmy had set foot in a church. There once was a time when she was pious, when she believed, when she addressed honest prayers to a God she was sure listened. That unswerving, unwavering faith had been the steady nucleus of her unstable life in a world where nothing ever stayed the same. No matter where she was, God was there; no matter who she was with, God was with her.

But then she had seen faith devour and destroy the woman she loved. She learned to doubt. If God were a kind and caring God, why hadn't He stepped in to save one of his own from needless suicide? Doubt led to outright questioning, and as the most reliable aspects of her career and her world fell apart around her, that questioning turned into flat-out rejection. Without friends, without a homeland, trapped in a world that wanted to deny her existence, she was left with nothing to believe in, so she believed in nothing and held fast only to her memories.

So it was strange to find her tall, lanky figure silhouetted against the doors of First Baptist Church, strange to find her foot upon the step, even if that foot did hesitate in its motion towards the hallowed sanctuary. But she had no friends that she could turn to: Danielle was immured in her room, Anna was dealing with Chiara's death, and Christine was swamped with refugees from confused Connecticut. She was immersed enough in the ebb and flow of the city's gossip to have heard that the pastor at First Baptist was a good man, and never mind his religious affiliation. She doubted that he would judge her solely on her love for women. Yet she paused as if some invisible barrier prevented her from entering.

A slim figure whose ebony skin contrasted sharply with his white robes emerged. "Are you in need, my child?" he asked, ignoring the fact that she was nearly old enough to be his mother. Somehow that didn't matter to her, either; he radiated such an air of authority that made his age immaterial.

"Yeah, Reverend. An old friend of mine just passed on, and my heart is broken and my poor old brain is confused, and I haven't a friend in this world I can turn to."

"Fair enough. Come inside, my child. I've got a bottle of rum that seems right for an occasion like this." He gestured that she should follow him through the door, and she did, ducking her head as she passed through the doorway.

Like any of the churches Shimmy had ever been in, it was dark inside, like a lair, like a womb. The only light came from the stained glass windows, tinted in rainbow colors. She didn't get a chance to study the main congregational area at leisure; before she could make out very much about it, the reverend led her down a side hallway to an office of a jarring modernity. The bright lights and white walls almost blinded her after the comfortable darkness of the antechamber.

The reverend opened a cabinet behind his desk. "Here's the rum I mentioned. I prefer a good Tennessee bourbon myself, but then I'm an old-fashioned Southern boy at heart." Shimmy hadn't noticed it before, but now that she knew to listen for it, she could hear the drawl in his voice. It had faded a bit, or perhaps he consciously tried to minimize it; the South wasn't exactly popular in the city.

She accepted the glass that he poured for her and took a cautious sip. It was good rum, perhaps even one of the bottles she occasionally smuggled into the city when she had extra space. She found her reticence melting away and her tongue loosening up. "Reverend, it's a cruel thing to say of a friend, but there were times when I wondered if Lily was even human- that was her name, Lily, a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. Yeah, ten years ago now, after all that happened in fall of '09, I thought she died- forgive me, not quite ten years, not until October. One of my sisters I never knew, she went and she drove a car full of C-4 into an old school, and it was Lily's school, and I was sure that it was her, mon. Months I mourned her, and then suddenly she just appeared on some man's arm, and I tell you, Reverend, Lily Merrill never wanted no part of no man."

He sat bolt upright in his chair. "Did you say Merrill?" he demanded.

"Yeah, Reverend, she was a friend of mine going back many years. We worked real close together. She stopped talking to me after she took up with that gentleman friend of hers, and I didn't hear nothing from her for years. I kept track of her, because she was still my friend and I cared. Wasn't till last year when she showed up again, and this time it was a girlfriend she had in tow, pretty thing she'd always been half in love with anyway. Now I hear from Westchester that she's gone again, but how can I know if it's real or not?"

The reverend took a sip of his bourbon. "Her kind never die," he said, trying to find a way to express what he wanted to say without gravely offending the injured woman who sat before him. "Somethin' of them always lives on, no matter how hard the world tries to destroy it."

"Yeah, but I don't know whether I should cry or laugh. She did terrible things, Reverend, before and after she came to New York both. A dear friend of mine, they beat her, and Lily and that girl of hers, they-"

"I heard 'bout Scarlet," he interrupted to save her from having to discuss carnal acts with a man of the cloth. "I see your division, child, but I don't understand why there's still doubt within your soul. Lilith was a fiend and a temptress, the kind of woman who makes seem true all the preaching of hate towards women. That was the change in her. The woman you knew-"

"The woman I knew was still in there!" Shimmy interrupted in her turn. "And yeah, part of me is happy she's gone so she can't do to anyone else what she and her girl did to Scarlet. But I don't have it in me to dance and sing for a funeral. Not when I'm still not sure if she'll return or not. I did not close the grave. No one closed the grave, so how can I be sure she won't return? That's what I'm wishing for, Reverend, a little finality. I don't even know what kind of confused I should be. At least help me with that if you can."

"I'd start by not doubtin' what you heard from folks as were there. You came from the Refuge, right? You talked 'bout Scarlet like you knew her, 's why I make that leap. Barry Levine's a good man, and as honest as you'd expect from a lawyer. If he's heard of Lilith's death, then I wouldn't doubt it. It's a cruel thing to say, but without Lilith Hilton, this world's a better place."

Shimmy's eyes narrowed, and an unfamiliar expression of the blackest fury came over her face. "If you had known Lily Merrill as long as I did, you wouldn't never say such a cruel thing. A sweeter soul there never was in the world, no, even when she was a star, she was good as gold to her fans, and I won't hear of you talking ill of her!" She got up to walk out.

"My child, don't that mean you decided whether you're gonna laugh or gonna cry?" he asked as she hit the doorway. Her stunned pause and slow-dawning smile were answer enough for him, and he smiled back at her. "If you're headin' on back to the Refuge, would you kindly tell Treesha Head to give her brother back his skin mags? Life does go on in this city, after all."

"I'll tell her, Reverend. Thank you for helping me talk things through." As she left the room, there were tears trickling along the corners of her smile.

Sleep had eluded Nicole since she had seen the news report about the Lone Wolves. A woman's voice had whispered in her mind all night long, even after Matthew had turned off the television and gone to sleep. The faint familiarity had kept her up as she worried at the problem. Still, she rose shortly after seven to tend to her daughters and start the Davis family's day; whatever discomfort she felt was unimportant compared to the tasks ahead of her.

A strange, unfamiliar void yawned within her heart, a sense that she remained unfulfilled despite her handsome husband and beautiful daughters, her perfect home and her perfect life. Strange that she had never felt this way before. Strange that as the television blared on about the funerals of Roz Jennings and Linda Wolfe, her mouth went sudenly dry, and when she licked her lips...

cinnamon and sugary and fear like pure lemon juice on the back of your tongue... I am you, the way you should be...

...she shook herself to get back to her routine, irritated at how she had so easily been distracted. She set to work cooking breakfast: the eggs were runny, the toast burned, the bacon barely browned, and Matthew's coffee salted instead of sugared, but no one noticed any difference. Nicole observed the scene with eerie detachment, as if these were someone else's children, someone else's lover...

...an ethereal blonde whose head barely cleared Nicole's shoulder, her gray eyes coquettishly half-lidded, her mouth in a sensuous pout, one sure hand teasing Nicole's breast as the other eased the skirt over her hips...

She banished the sinful, perverted vision almost as quickly as it had invaded her mind. Absently, she packed Annemarie and Louisa's lunches for their summer camps and handed each girl the wrong bag. Before Matthew got to the door, she handed him the hat he was about to forget and kissed him farewell. She got into her minivan with the girls; he was left standing nonplussed on the walk, sure that he had forgotten something but also sure that he had everything that he needed.

At the gymnastics camp, she watched Louisa walk off chattering with her best friend, Clara Norton, and she waved to Clara's mother Mary...

...a sly, toothy smile, outthrust pert breasts and lickably creamy skin, and the sight inflamed her so that she seized the other woman's mouth in a fiery kiss...

"Nicole Davis, I can't remember the last time I saw you!" Mary exclaimed. "Oh, wasn't it awful what happened to Mrs. Wolfe and Mrs. Jennings? Those horrible beasts! To say nothing of poor Brenda- isn't it horrible when they die so young?"

"I know! We had the funeral coverage on all day yesterday. Matthew wouldn't even let the girls switch to Channel 2. He wanted us all to mourn together, you know? Such a tragedy."

"I remember when I was growing up just down the road, watching them. Before the damned dykes came in and took it over, of course..."

...a stern, silent guide, a tall silhouette whose hand glittered with moonlight reflected from the blade of the knife she held, sparkling green eyes and a half-smile of greeting to welcome them home...

"...so Gabe wants to have something less festive than roast beef, and that means I have to make an extra shopping trip, but it's all right, of course. Whatever he wants is just fine with me." Mary didn't seem to realize that Nicole had momentarily checked out.

"She couldn't have been Mrs. Wolfe. That was her maiden name. He was Roy Balliard," Nicole said dreamily, blue eyes focused on some unknown point in the distance.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. Hey, do you want to go out to lunch at O'Reilly's later? Do something special for a change?"

"I'd love to, but I just don't have the time. You know how it is. I've still got to get Drew to his baseball practice, and then there's the grocery shopping and housecleaning..."

"All right. I'll see you around, then." Nicole got back into the car to drop Annemarie off at soccer camp, and noticed for the first time that her daughters' schools were very close together, and both less than half a mile from her house. Maybe when Annemarie was old enough, in a year or so, Nicole could deputize her to walk her sister to school; that would leave Nicole with a few precious extra minutes for housework.

Which reminded her that there was still grocery shopping to do. But as she thought about it, she came to the conclusion that for one day she could skip. They had more than enough in the house to last them until the next day, and she had a migraine that was making her vision waver...

...the dark lady of the night greeted her, a figure beautiful and strong, cruel and cold, like a finely forged sword blade, half-disappearing into the shadows if Nicole didn't focus on her properly, smiling indulgently as she said, "We need to do something about those frumpy rags of yours..."

She blinked, putting fingers to her temple to try and ease the pain. For a moment she had seen a black man emptying the garbage can on the street corner, but that was impossible; jobs like that were done when decent people weren't around. She stepped on the gas to get home before she lost control and crashed the car. Her head was pounding like an entire army was marching across her brain, and she was hearing a medley of voices in her mind. But the television will drown them out. The television can protect me from everything.

As soon as she was in the house, she turned every television they owned to Channel 1: the kitchen, the living room, her bedroom, the girls' room. She was sure the girls would forgive her for switching their TV off Channel 2 in a situation like this. She prayed that what she was trying to do would work to protect her from the infernal forces now torturing her mind.

"Hey, little sister."

The multitude of voices competing for her attention were gone; only one survived. But to her confusion, that last voice didn't belong to anyone she knew, but to Roz Jennings. She'd heard it enough on the stock footage that the news reports used to recognize the sound. She shivered, dropping the broom in her hands, and collapsed into a chair.

"Hey, little sister," the elegant woman in red said warmly to her, the smile on her face never quite reaching her sharp dark eyes, pointed chin held high in the air, a curl of graying brown hair hanging flirtatiously to one side of her face...

Nicole swept and vacuumed, dusted and scrubbed, in a frenzy of activity, taking care of her week's chores in a single morning, desperate to empty her mind. The televisions all blared, but it still wasn't enough to quell the visions that rose up in her mind, scenes with all the clarity and detail of memories, but of such unspeakable depravity that she was nearly sick in the bathroom. She clutched at the cross around her neck, hoping that through it God would give her some guidance and protect her from the devil's work.

She held the cross of the woman who had once been her lover, watching the firelight reflect off it in glittering golden darts, then unfastened the catch and and put the necklace around the other woman's milk-white throat, listening with an attentive ear for the screams as the hot metal seared the delicate skin, and laughed at her victim's pain, even as her lover declared the tall, lanky blonde's fate...

Her hand fell away from the cross as if it burned her. "God, what have I done to upset You?" she implored the heavens. But she received no answer. God didn't seem to care much whether she was in emotional and spiritual turmoil or not. Then she looked in the mirror...

A tall, slender figure, fair hair in an efficient ponytail, a smile on her impossibly young face, and 21 across the chest of the white and blue uniform she wore, but of course it was 21: she was Blackjack Black, always the first to gamble, the first to double down, and she was young, she was strong, she was the next big thing, heir to ten years of tradition...

A petite brunette, dark hair in a curly ponytail, directing everyone where to go, and they jumped to listen, because she was Coach's proxy on the floor; she was the chosen one, she would lead them to the land of perfection and titles, and 21 blazed across the chest of the white and blue uniform she wore: she was the trailblazer who would open the way for generations after her...

...she saw a housewife in a sweatsuit that did nothing to disguise her wide hips, her love handles, the way her thighs shook when she stepped towards the reflected image in order to deny its existence. She saw a double chin, flab on her once-toned arms, excess flesh everywhere she looked. She saw a woman who had given up on everything she had ever wanted, who had settled for a life that wasn't really hers to live.

And though the mirror started lying to her a few seconds later, showing her the cool beauty which Matthew had so often praised to her, the image she had seen of herself was indelible.

"Hey, little sister. Why do you have to go back?" the lady in red asked her one night as she and her lover drew apart to return home.

Why did she have to go back? She looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost time to get into the car and pick up the girls. She cast a glance at her blouse and skirt tossed on the couch, then smiled. Just for once, she could skip dressing up. The girls needed a real reason to complain to their friends about her, anyway. She put her sneakers on and went out to the car. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized how permanent this had to be. She went back for some of their other clothes. Once she had gotten the basic necessities into the car, she went to pick up the girls and put her plan into motion. But to do it properly, she would have to make one more stop.

"Mommy, where are we going? " Louisa protested.

"I have to stop by the Nortons'." Nicole kept her voice level, even as her heart beat faster.

"Couldn't you have done it earlier?" Annemarie complained.

"Calm down, sweetie." Nicole's hands were steady on the wheel, even as the color rose in her pale face.

"Mommy, are you okay?"

"Never better, honey." Nicole pulled up in front of the Nortons', locked the back doors, and got out of the car. As she looked closely at herself, she realized that the sweatsuit she had always thought was black was actually navy blue in full sunlight. As she rang the doorbell, she smoothed the fabric of the sweatshirt with one perfectly manicured hand. The fleece was soft against her skin, stuck there by nervous summer sweat. She had never felt so comfortable in her skirt and blouse as she did in this ratty old sweatsuit, and her hair in a ponytail.

Mary answered the door. "Mrs. Davis, what a pleasant surprise..."

"...a pleasant surprise, Nicky, I thought you had class. Not that I mind, of course. Let met slip into something more comfortable and see what I can do for you..."

"What can I do for you?"

"Let's get out of here, Maria. I've got my grocery money and the girls' valuables. We'll make a traveling party out of it. Clara's home already, and we can pick Drew up on our way out of town. Think about it, we can be in Westchester in time for a late dinner!" copper tang lingering in her mouth, salt on her tongue, cinnamon and sugar on her lips

"What? Nicole Davis, have you lost your mind?"

Nicole shook her head. "No. Not Davis anymore. Don't you remember? I'm Blackjack Black. That's my name. Always has been. Come on, Maria, we don't have much time until Gabe and Matthew come back. We can't make a clean escape of it if they're around asking questions, and tomorrow I might not be sane enough to even think of this."

"You poor, overstressed thing! Come in and watch a little TV for a while."

"No. No more TV. No more shutting off my brain. God, Maria, what happened to us? We got fat, we're getting old, and we've got these kids we have no right to at all. We used to be so young and strong. Don't you remember the way things used to be? Come with me! Get off your knees! We can make a whole new start of it in New York- together!"

Mary stared at her, disgust and horror mingling in her expression. "You've been infected by the devil's lust, haven't you? And you're trying to make me into a cursed dyke! I know this isn't you, Nicole, just the demon inside you, so don't do anything you'll regret."

"So I'm gay. Does it make me bad?" Nicole opened her arms. "Come back to me, Maria. Light up the night with me, the way we did in Storrs. Keep me warm. I chose you over Ann all those years ago, I'm choosing you again, you've got to come with me."

"I wouldn't, but anyway I can't."

"I can't, Nicky, not when I'm on the staff, we'd never hear the end of it, it's not right. I love you, just not right now. Maybe when we're older..."

"You never were good at keeping your promises," Nicole hissed. Before Mary could deny her, deny her name, deny herself, again, she turned from the door and stalked back to the car. "Okay, girls, we're going to New York."

"Without Daddy?"

"Yes, Lou, without Daddy. We don't need him for this trip. It'll be our little secret, something just for us girls." She turned the key in the ignition. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard the whisper of a hint of a memory.

Welcome home, little sister.