Everyone except Candy and Malingo looked extremely confused.

“Oh, I love reunions,” Candy said, and proceeded to make a round of introductions.

Once everyone had become acquainted, everyone decided that eating would be the next order of business, and proceeded up through the streets of Qualm Hah. At the top of one street, a market with all manner of things for sale: the produce of an Hour blessed by sun and showers; the endless balm of late spring morning; there were even some fruits here Candy knew and could name—Abaratian specialties like tuntarunts and doemanna rotts and kuthuries—but there were far more that she did not know.

“Forbidden fruits,” Legitimate Eddie said, plucking one very lushly shaped fruit from a pile. “She’s a big girl, this one,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Looks like you, Betty.”

The fruit did indeed resemble a very curvaceous woman. Betty was not offended.

“If it’s me then I’ll take it,” she said.

“They’re the best moriana we’ve had in a very long time,” the stallkeeper said.

“What’s the big deal?” Candy said.

“You tell her,” Betty said, biting the head off the moriana, then the upper body. The smell that spread from the coral-pink flesh of the fruit was so delicious it made Candy dizzy with pleasure.

“Oh wow,” she said.

“Aren’t they good? And no you can’t have a bite. Ask Eddie to buy you one,” said Betty.

“Why should I—?”

“You bought me one,” Betty said.

“I’m paying for that?”

“You’d better,” the wood-toothed stallkeeper said.

“I’ll pay for one,” Eddie said, putting up a single, stubby green finger.

“Uno moriana is seven paterzem.”

“Seven?” said Candy. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Where have you been?” the stallkeeper asked. “Paterzem ain’t worth what they used to be.”

As Eddie paid for Betty’s meal, Candy searched her pockets. She had two patterzem and some change.

“Where’s Malingo?” she said more to herself than anyone. “He’s got all our cash.”

She told everyone that she was going to look for Malingo and headed off along the line of stalls, assuming he’d wandered on ahead. She was surprised to find that he wasn’t just a few paces farther on, but had apparently gone on to explore the more elaborate stalls farther on, and more particularly, knowing Malingo, he’d headed for the marionette show that was playing for a crowd of adults and children at the very end of the street. She started to make her way through the throng toward the puppet theater, standing on tiptoe now and then or jumping up and down on the spot in the hope of catching a glimpse of him.

The third time she tried jumping she saw him. He was no longer on the street, however. He’d had a bad experience in Babilonium when he and Candy had been separated from each other. It had scarred him, causing him to feel uncomfortable in large crowds, and he’d apparently decided to get out of the press of people for a little while. Now he was standing in a narrow alleyway, barely more than a vague form beckoning to her from the shadows.

“There you are!” she yelled to him as she made her way across the street. Once on the other side she slid cautiously between two stalls piled high with produce. Then she stepped out of the bright, noisy street into the hushed, shadowy alley.

“I thought for sure you’d be watching the puppet show,” Candy said to him.

“I took a quick look,” Malingo said. “But it was the same old story. You know . . .”

“Not really,” Candy said, a little mystified.

“Yes, you do. Love and Death. It’s always Love and Death. Though at least with puppets you see things the way they really are. Everything has strings attached.”

It was unusual for Malingo to make a joke. And this one actually made Candy laugh, though there seemed to be some significance in the remark that she couldn’t connect with Malingo and his life.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked him.

It was Malingo who laughed now: though there was something about the echo in the alleyway that made the sound darker and deeper than it should have been. Candy slowed her approach. Now she stopped.

“What secret would I have from you?” Malingo said. “You of all people.”

“I don’t know,” Candy said.

“Then why are you asking?”

“Just that you were talking about love.”

“Ah,” he said softly. “Yes, and I was talking as though I’d actually experienced it. Yes. As though I knew how it felt to fall for somebody. And then to hear them making all the right promises. That they’d love you forever if you’d just give them . . .” He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Something inconsequential.”

Candy felt an icy nail run down her spine. This wasn’t Malingo.

“I’m sorry,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from betraying her fear. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

“It’s not you who needs to apologize, Candy,” the figure in the shadows said. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” she said, still attempting to sound as though there was nothing of great importance here, simply a misunderstanding. “I have to go. I have friends . . . waiting . . .” She made an attempt to look back, but her gaze returned to the stranger.

Except, of course, he wasn’t a stranger.

“I thought you were dead,” she said very quietly.

“So did I,” Christopher Carrion replied.

Chapter 34

Unfinished

“I WOULD HAVE DIED,” HE said, “except that I knew you were still here, Princess. I think that’s what kept me from giving up completely. The thought of finding my way back to you. Oh, and my nightmares, of course.”

As he spoke, two of the filament creatures slid out of hiding among the tattered robes Carrion was wearing, and encircled his neck. Though they were not as bright as they’d once been, the phosphorescence they gave off was still enough to offer her a glimpse of Carrion’s face. He looked like something that had been thumbed out of mud and excrement, his eyes little more than pits in which there were slivers of light, his lips ragged strips of dirt and sinew that could not conceal his dead bone smile.

“Don’t look at me, Princess,” he said. He tried to turn away from her, to conceal his diminished state but he did so too quickly for his mismade legs. They failed him, and he stumbled. He would have fallen in the filth underfoot had he not reached out and forced his fingers—which for all their crude form, did not lack strength—into the rotted plaster and fractured stone.

“I’m ashamed that you should see me like this. But I needed to be in your presence, just for a little time. When you next see me—”

“She isn’t here,” Candy said.

“What?”

“We parted ways.”

“You drove her out?”

“Not all by myself. I needed help to be sure I had the details right. But she is gone. See for yourself. Look in my mind.” She approached his hunched-over figure as she spoke to him, raising her arm as she did so, offering contact. “Go on. Do whatever you need to do. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

It was true. The Lord of Midnight who’d stalked her in the Dead Man’s House was nowhere visible in this frail shadow figure that stood before her now. He glanced at her face, his raw features riddled with suspicion. Then he reached out and touched her, fingertips to fingertips. She felt his inquiring presence in her, like ice water swallowed on a baking-hot day.

“She’d used you up,” she said to him. “So she left.”

She seemed to hear him calling for his Princess in her head. Just her name. No endearments. No filigrees. Just that plaintive crying out.

“You loved her, didn’t you?” Candy said. “You still do.”

Carrion raised his head a few inches and turned to look at Candy. There was such despair in that broken face, and such rage there too, mingled with it.