From the corners of my eyes I noted the other women watching to see how long it would take me to catch on—and if it would matter. Maybe with a touch more malice toward me than toward Kayne Prose. In some ways they might live vicariously through Kayne. Kayne wasn't afraid to indulge herself.

She let me look and think for a while, probably so I could reflect on what I was talking myself out of, before she said, "Yeah. Play, take Mr. Garrett over to my place. Rhafi can show you guys where Bic used to hole up. And if the creep is still there, break a couple limbs for me. All of them if he don't give Kip back."

I was about to explain that it wasn't likely the false Bic Gonlit had the boy. Playmate nudged me. That was irrelevant. It was time to go.

Good idea, too. Because, atop everything else, Kayne Prose had a kind of narcotic quality to her. I could see myself sliding into addiction. Just like my dusky pal.

I kept thinking that, if she hadn't had so many incompatible personality quirks, she could've set herself up for life by getting into the mistress racket. In a prime position.

That she was where she was, looking as good as she did, never having done better, was one more warning flag about the woman inside that marvellously attractive shell.

A long time ago, almost a whole day now, Playmate had told me that Cypres Prose's mom was different and had pointed to his temple. Based on information gleaned, I'd say the man was right. But that didn't stop me from wanting to turn right around and go back and try to score some points for the future.

Playmate asked, "What did you think of Kayne?"

"Honest answer, Play? I never saw her before in my life. But I wanted to trip her and beat her to the floor. And ten seconds after that I just wanted to beat her. And ten seconds after that I was completely confused about what I wanted. And right now the animal side of my soul is screaming at me not to walk away from this wonderful chance. There's a perverse, self-destructive urge in there somewhere that she just shrieks out to."

He wasn't offended. "That's how a lot of men react. You a little faster than most, but that's just you being you. And after years of studying Kayne Prose I think it's all because of what's going on inside her. She doesn't just hurt herself in these doomed relationships. And the harder it is on the guys, the harder they try to make it work."

We were strolling. Playmate needed to air out some thoughts. It was clear that he was a Kayne Prose addict and willing to risk destruction. And maybe Kayne Prose thought too much of Playmate to give him a hit of poison.

People are the strangest creatures.

"What's it all mean?" I asked, just to keep open the windows of his mental house.

"I think it means that Kayne has a low-grade form of what the Dead Man has. The mind thing." Which could mean another wizard in the woodpile, a generation further back. "Just enough to read you faintly and to touch you just as weakly. Without knowing it on a conscious level. But using it all the time when men are around. In such a way that whatever is going on inside her will be reflected right back at her from outside. And maybe it'll feed on itself if it starts running into something dark."

I considered. "You could be right." I started trying to compare, in my head, Kayne Prose's impact with the jolt my friend Katie could deliver. Katie can reduce this man to jelly with just a look. When Katie gets interested there are no distractions. Katie is the closest I've ever come to having had a religious epiphany.

I'd just considered that to be a matter of focus. But maybe it was something more. Maybe there was a weak, crude mental connection involved.

Playmate said, "It's just a hypothesis." With a tone so defensive that an apology was implied.

"A damned good hypothesis, I'd say. You ought to get completely alone with her sometime, no distractions whatsoever, and test it out."

He sputtered.

"Play? You're embarrassed?"

"I'm not that kind of guy, Garrett."

"Maybe you ought to be. Tell me about Kayne's other kids. Are they problem folks like their mother and brother?"

"Not like their mother and brother. But problems enough. You'll like Cassie."

He didn't tell me much more. But he was right about Cassie. Cassie was a very likeable child indeed.

Cassie Doap was nineteen. Physically, Cassie was her mother a decade and a half younger, with the overpowering sensuality less controlled. Cassie Doap would break hearts just by going out where men could see her and understand that they would live out their years never having gotten any closer than they were at the moment when first they spotted her. Cassie Doap filled up a room with her presence but didn't spark the confusion that came with being around her mother.

Cassie Doap was smarter than Kayne, too. She understood the impact she had on men but had no intention of letting that define who and what she was. If Kayne Prose had done one useful thing for her daughter it was to set an example of how not to live her life.

All that I understood before Cassie Doap and I exchanged a word. Because Cassie Doap was an easy read. She wanted it that way.

I wondered what hidden, horrible flaw had a poor woman as gorgeous as this still living with her mother at her age. A hyperactive sense of self-worth?

Playmate performed the introductions. I managed to shake hands while avoiding stepping on my tongue, distracting myself by concentrating on business. I'm able to do that occasionally, though there're some who would have the world believe otherwise. It's just that the Kaynes and Cassies of the world make it so hard.

With Cassie there I almost overlooked her brother Rhafi. He wasn't the sort to attract much attention.

I told Cassie, "We're trying to find Kip. We think... "

"If Play hadn't guaranteed it was the real thing I would've bet the little twerp staged the whole damned thing."

"Why would you think that?" I noted that, unlike her mother, Cassie did nothing to make sure I understood just how much woman she was.

"Because that's the way his evil little pea brain works." Brother Rhafi nodded his head vigorously. "He lives inside his own imagination. Everything in there is high drama. Perilous chases, deadly duels, narrow escapes, beautiful princesses, and monstrous villains."

Playmate chuckled. "Sounds like your life, Garrett," he quipped.

"Except for a severe shortage of princesses, beautiful or otherwise. You wouldn't be a long-lost princess, left in a basket on your mother's doorstep, would you, Cassie?"

"Long-lost, anyway. If that was intended to be a compliment you get points for being a little more subtle than the usual, ‘Gods, you're beautiful. Lie down because I think I love you.' "

"Must've been army type guys. Marines are all smooth and crafty." Had we just gotten a hint of why Cassie Doap hadn't wriggled her way into the sweet life? Everybody knows that's a girl's easiest way out of the poor side of town. Or was she in a constant rage because Fate had decreed she should be so beautiful that everybody wanted her? I don't recall ever having run into a woman who resented her own appeal, only women who hated their sisters for having more of it than they did. But I could understand the notion, in principle. In someone who could, genuinely, separate self from body.

Possibly Kayne's past behavior had loaded Cassie up with outside expectations as well. Perhaps the whole neighborhood figured like mother, like daughter. That's the sort of ignorant thinking you can expect from human type beings. And the sort that would park a big old chip on somebody's shoulder.