Blood upon a needle, turning toward my door.

I stood and paced, knife in hand, and turned my thoughts to finer things, Darla Tomas chief among them.

Had it really been a day, since we’d kissed goodbye?

Had I really been too busy to go to her house, even once?

I vowed I’d remedy that, come tomorrow. I vowed I’d see her, halfdead plots or no. Bring the wine, she’d said.

“I certainly will,” I spoke aloud. “Something with a fancy label. Something with a cork.”

Only then did I realize what I felt hadn’t all been whorehouse mojo, that day I met Darla at the Velvet. No, it was an older magic, a magic that needed no cauldrons, no muttered words.

I paced, I pondered and I planned. Yes, come tomorrow, Darla and I-we’d make mojo all our own, and let the wide wicked world be damned.

Even so, my room got cold. Cold and colder and then colder still. I quickened my pace. I blew into my cupped hands. I cursed Rannit’s fickle springs.

The Big Bell clanged out midnight.

Hex-paws scampered sudden up and down my spine. My breath steamed out, hanging in a fog in the still, frigid air.

A whippoorwill cried out. And another.

I stopped my pacing, stood still. Because in that dead cold air, between the notes of the whippoorwill’s cry, I smelled, strong and warm, the scent of Darla’s hair.

“Oh God, no.” I said it aloud. I said it, and I gripped my knife tight. I’d taken one single useless step toward my door when something was hurled hard against it.

Hurled hard. Then it fell and was still.

I charged. I cursed and struck the door and fumbled with the bolt. Finally, I flung it open.

Horror fell inside, head lolling, blood spilling.

I may have screamed, even then. For an instant, I saw Allie Sands again, expected the ruined form before me to rise jerkily to its feet, moving like a badly played puppet, dark fluids leaking and spewing with each small exertion.

But this blood was red. Red and still warm.

Blood covered her nude body, covered skin and wounds alike, left a long smear oozing down my door.

She had no hands. No hands. Her wrists were gnawed stumps. Her lower jaw was gone, too, grasped, pulled and torn away. Gone like her eyes, like her hair and her ears-bitten or torn but bloody and gone. She had no face.

And just like Allie Sands, her abdomen hung open-open and empty, save the broken ends of splintered white ribs.

But I knew. Knew her name. The tiny butterfly tattoo, one she’d shown me in a fit of giggles just two days ago, was there bright and sad beneath the blood at the small of her back.

I tried to deny it. Tried to tell myself lots of woman have tattoos. Tried to tell myself she had no face, had no way to be identified. But all the while, I knew. Knew it was Darla. Knew it as I knelt down, as I reached out to take her hand, cried out when my fingers closed on the warm stump of her arm.

I did scream, then. I screamed, and I caught her up. Mama said I was just standing there screaming when she heard and she came and she saw.

I don’t recall anything else, until Mama pulled the sheets from my bed and took Darla from me and wrapped her in them and laid her out at the foot of my bed.

All the while, the whippoorwills sang.

I will speak no more of that night, save to say that I awoke to dim daylight, and the sound of Mama’s brush scrubbing dark blood off my door.

I rose. I rose, I bathed and I dressed. Mama watched me go to the bathhouse, watched me return, never spoke a word.

Tomorrow had come. I sat at my desk and recalled my promise from the night before. A bottle of wine, and the wide wicked world be damned.

And so, I reflected, it was. Damned.

And more to come.

The Watch came, with their black wagon, and Mama saw Darla off. The number of bite wounds covering her left no question to her fate. Darla would rise, unless the crematorium’s flames consumed her first. Rise not like Evis, but like Allie Sands-a ruined, shrieking thing gone mad with pain and hunger. Those who slew her had surely known that.

I listened to the dead wagon rattle off, heard the driver cackle and shout. As the sound of him faded away I closed my eyes, clenched my fists and began to count my breaths.

Evis sent men, and Mama sent them away. More came, and she flailed at them with her ragged broom and screeched and cussed and they fled.

Ethel Hoobin came and was admitted. I spoke to him. Mama says I was calm and coherent. That I had assured him my trap was set to spring upon Martha’s abductors, and he was to gather his troops and wait for Mama’s call.

Ethel may have known about Darla, or maybe not, but he asked his questions and nodded once at my reply. He got up and left without another word.

Finally, Mama came inside, propped her broom by my door and threw my bolt.

She sat. I felt her eyes upon me, though I did not open my own.

“Boy,” she said, at last. “Boy, I’m so sorry.”

I clenched my jaw.

“She’d have been good for you. And you’d have been good to her. I seen that much. Didn’t see no further.”

Mama’s voice broke. She bit back a sob, and I opened my eyes.

“We’ll never know that.”

“I saw death a comin’. I swear I never saw it comin’ for her.” She brought up a hand, to mop at her eyes. “Boy, I’m so damned sorry.”

We sat for a long time. Somebody came and pounded on the door. I looked up and saw the black hat Darla had playfully donned just yesterday. I let the man outside knock and shout.

Mama mumbled something under her breath and the pounding stopped. She mumbled something else and the shadow on my glass turned and fell away.

“I reckon,” she said, after a long ragged breath. “I reckon you’ll be a goin’ after them what did this thing.”

I nodded a “yes”.

Mama squeezed her lips together so they wouldn’t quiver. “I reckon you got to,” she said, after a while. “I don’t reckon it matters none that I still see Death’s shadow, a hangin’ at your door?”

I nodded “no”.

Mama stood. I didn’t look up, didn’t see the tears, couldn’t watch another heart break that day.

“I reckon I can’t argue against that. I reckon them bastards got to die.”

I listened to the street. Yes, I thought. They’ve got to die. Again. And this time, they’re going to stay dead forever.

“Promise me one thing, boy. Promise me you won’t go nowhere, won’t do nothin’, till I get back.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I ain’t got no right to ask. Not after what I done. What I didn’t do.” I could hear her grind her teeth. “And I can’t make that up. But there’s one thing I can do. It ain’t right. It ain’t smart. And I reckon it might get us both kilt. But it might get some of them heartless bastards gutted, so I reckon it’s worth the price.”

I said nothing. I barely heard.

“Boy, you got to wait. Just this once. Please.”

I neither moved nor spoke. Everywhere I looked, there was blood-tiny flecks and drips, drying to the color of old rust.

Mama sobbed, stood, turned and left, and I was alone with all my newborn ghosts.

Evis himself came, soon after. In the daylight, no less.

He was swathed in yards of black-black that covered his black-gloved hands and his booted feet and his black-veiled face. He came and he knocked and he spoke, and I found myself at the door, throwing the bolt, more out of shock than any act of conscious will.

He bowed. “I came to extend my deepest sympathies. May I enter?”

I stepped aside. He straightened and darted in out of the sun.

I made my way back to my side of my desk and sat. I did not speak. After a moment, Evis sat too.

He pulled the cowl back, and the veil, and regarded me through his dark glasses. Even so covered, he grimaced in the dim light of my office.

“I confess we were unaware of any close associations. Aside from Mrs. Hog. And we considered her to be at little risk.”