The subway car was packed with monsters. A scaly sea thing. A pimple-beaked hag. A green cadaver with blood on its chin. And not a goddamned place to sit anywhere and she was so tired, so tired. She stood in the midst of them, clutching the hand strap. Swaying weakly into their malformed faces. There were spasms of pain running across her lower back. Sharp blades of it pierced her wounded head. She dangled from the strap with her eyes closed, her lips parted. Oh, Oliver … she thought dreamily. The thin bed in his garret was so soft as she waited naked for him …

The train stopped at West Fourth Street. Cackling, the creatures stormed the door. She was carried along with them before she knew it. Pushed out onto the platform. Surrounded by fangy grins and red-streaked eyes. She was jostled toward the stairs; stumbling with the pack, trying not to fall. They carried her upward toward a violet square of October night. She blinked, shaking her head, fighting to stay on her feet. Vaguely, she heard the harsh jangle of music above her. She crested the stairs, supported by the crush of goblins …

And then she was swept away.

An aspic tide of human beings washed her into darkness and noise. Harsh notes of music rained down on her like hailstones. A tangy human stench—hot breath and sweat and beer—enveloped her. The night sky whirled above her, alive with indigo and strobic light.

What the hell …? What the hell is happening?

She turned desperately this way and that. Eyes veiled in dominoes darted by her. Grinning rubber masks bore in on her, then swept away. Distorted faces, twisted bodies, spread out around her as far as she could see. Above her, somewhere, on a platform somewhere rimmed with purple neon, a hairy beast was dancing. He was the size of two men. He was gyrating to the rocking brass rhythms. Two women in leotards bent and swayed and slithered upward worshipfully at his sides. She stared at them. She was pushed on, stumbling, step by step, by the inexorable crowd.

A parade, she thought, breathlessly. It’s the Halloween Parade.

She closed her eyes hard and opened them. She fought to come awake, to come out of her confusion. The float with the dancing beast rolled past her. The crowd moved after it, traveling more slowly in the same direction. Uptown. They were going uptown.

No! she thought. No!

Cornelia Street was right near here. It was just across the avenue.

Eight o’clock. Eight o’clock.

She struggled, twisted, in the grip of the tide. It would not release her. Step by step, it carried her uptown. Farther and farther away from Cornelia. Away from Oliver.

“Let me through. Please!” she heard herself cry.

But everyone was laughing. All around her people were laughing. Paper horns were honking. Music blared. Her high, thin voice was blown away by it.

“Please,” she said.

She shouldered hard against the press of bodies. She tried to squeeze through the spaces between them. It was no good. She could hardly move except to trudge along, step by step, amid the mass. She ducked her head, trying to see where she was. The movement sent cold pain snaking down her spine. Her vision blurred for a moment. But vaguely, in glimpses, over people’s shoulders, around their heads, she saw the marchers, she saw the parade on the avenue. Screeching demons capered by with upraised arms. Wild-eyed androgynes rushed past, their silk capes flying. Dancers ground their hips. Clowns hurled confetti into the night sky. A zombie slowly hunkered along the curb, munching on a severed arm and slavering down at the children.

She felt her mouth go dry as she watched it. She felt her stomach sink. Everywhere, interspersed with the creatures in the giddy dance, mingling with them all up and down the block, there were stolid men: uniformed men with pale, expressionless faces. With heavy arms. With stares like ball bearings.

Cops.

They patrolled the edges of the crowd. They gazed, watchful, from under their black-brimmed caps. They scanned the screaming, laughing faces that pushed in at them over the barricades.

Jesus. So many cops, she thought. She felt dizzy, dreamy. Her knees were going weak. If she broke out toward the parade, would they spot her? Would they know who she was? Were all of them after her?

She twisted to the right. She craned her neck. Fought for a glimpse of the rest of the sidewalk.

But the police were there too. Lined up like staunch pickets, shoulder to shoulder. Cowled in shadow but shaped that cop-like shape. Unmistakable.

She let out a noise, a sob of frustration. She clutched her hair with one hand, trying to think. Oh, Oliver. She imagined him, stretched on his back, his mouth open, his sad eyes gaping blindly into space.

Eight o’clock! Eight o’clock!

She sank down heavily in the viscous tide. Step by step, she was forced along.

And then, the crowd reached the corner. She was carried right over the curb. She was dropped down into the street. There, finally, between one sidewalk and the next, the mass spread out and thinned a little.

Without thinking, she wriggled free of it. Elbowing between one person and another. Twisting into the spaces. Gasping for breath.

She fell out of the crowd, onto the sidestreet. She stumbled into the swift traffic of people heading to and from the avenue. Someone whacked her in the shoulder and she reeled back. Steadied herself. Crouched, braced, staring around her like an animal.

Cops.

There were two of them. On the southern sidewalk, leaning back against a diamond-link fence. They seemed to be watching her with their ball bearing stares. Breathless, she turned her back on them. Another cop strolled toward her, wandering along the edge of the sidestreet, through the sparser crowd.

She stood where she was, jostled by the passersby. The cop on the sidestreet came closer. The cops by the fence leaned their heads together and murmured through tight lips. Was everyone after her?

A shout rose to her over the noise of the crowd:

“Masks! Electric, blinking masks! Get your Halloween masks right here!”

She swiveled toward the voice, her knees screaming. There was a panther-man. He was standing at the corner of the sidestreet, where it met the avenue. The spangles in his black vest glittered out of the shadow of a brownstone wall. He was waving a domino mask above his head. It was edged with green and red and yellow lights, all of them blinking on and off.

“Get your Halloween masks right here!” he cried.

With a gasp, she limped through the crowd toward the masked panther. She reached into her pocket as she came, bringing out all the bills she had left.

“Here!” She had to shout. Another brass band was passing. The notes of the “Funeral March for a Marionette” were pounding at her, drowning her out.

The panther-man snatched the bills from her and handed her a blinking domino in return. She held it to her eyes, fixed its strap behind her head.

Masked then, she turned around.

The cop who had been strolling up the sidestreet strolled right past her. He pushed his way through the crowd, onto the avenue; he was swallowed up by the onlookers. The cops against the fence had now averted their gazes from her too.

All right, she thought, woozdly. All right. Downtown. Downtown to Oliver. All right. What first?

The avenue. She would have to cross the avenue. Slip through the parade. Then she could head over to Sheridan Square. Angle in to Cornelia without hitting the mob …

Squinting through the domino’s eyeholes, she staggered wearily back toward the crowd. The current caught her. It nearly toppled her as it tried to carry her back onto the sidewalk, back into the gelatinous uptown flow. But she turned her shoulder against it and fought her way through to the intersection. She stopped there. She tilted her head back, her mouth agape.

Look, she thought. She was mesmerized. Look, Oliver. A big pumpkin.

A jack-o’-lantern the size of a house was rolling past her, up the avenue. Its grin flickered down at her as if aflame. Flames danced in the triangular eyes and up through the cap. And up through the cap came a beauty queen, grinning broadly, waving happily through the paper flames.

A very … very … big …

She swayed on her feet. The pumpkin rolled on, uptown, as the crowds cheered and threw confetti in its wake. There was a break in the parade. The cops moved in to fill the intersection. They walked back and forth, their hands clasped behind them. A small cluster of people started out of the current to cross the avenue.

She almost let them go without her. Then she blinked herself to life. Staggered along with them. She ducked down to hide below their shoulders. Passed right under a patrolman’s nose. The little group hid her as she moved out into the center of the avenue. She was halfway across when she turned …

Good-bye, Mr. Pumpkin, good-bye …

She turned and looked up to watch the pumpkin roll away.

And she halted in her tracks. She straightened. She stared.

What …?

The cluster of people moved on to the far curb. Only she stood there, alone, exposed, gaping. She shook her head slowly.

There, against the purple sky, a castle of red brick rose up before her. Round towers rose to peaked roofs. Arched windows with stained glass traced in stone. A gray roof in jagged hips and valleys … She stared and stared and the music seemed to fade away from her. The cheering faded from her and the lights swam off into a dim periphery. She stared—and a cocoon of smoky silence seemed to twine itself around her …

I know that place. I’ve seen that place before.

It was the building from her dream. It was the asylum she had dreamed when they were taking her to Bellevue in the squad car. Her mouth hung open. A thin stream of drool hung down from it to her chin. She swayed. She stared. She remembered the long, green, empty corridor inside. The whispers coming to her from behind the doors.

“Naaancy. Naaaancy.” A chorus of whispers. “Nancy Kincaid …”

Where had she first heard that name? Who had first told it to her?

My name is Nancy Kincaid.

Who was it? Who had said that to her first?

She stood where she was in the middle of the avenue. Swaying. Staring at the silhouetted library through the domino’s eyeholes. Her stomach roiled, but even her nausea seemed far away. She remembered her dream: the asylum, the long corridor, full of whispers. The granite throne with King Death seated on it. Waiting for her.

That’s him, she thought. King Death. That’s who I have to find. But whose face was behind the mask? Whose voice had said to her:

My name is Nancy Kincaid. I’m twenty-two years old.

Oh, she could almost remember. Someone had sat there before her and told her that. Someone with the face of King Death. A person with a skull for a face had told her:

I work for Fernando Woodlawn. I’m his personal assistant. I live on Gramercy Park with my mom and dad …

Me, she thought dimly, it was supposed to be me. Oh, if she could just remember.

She stood there, staring. She heard nothing of the noise around her. The parade. The cheering crowd. She did not see the policeman who had spotted her now. Who was moving toward her now with his face set, his hand resting on his holster. If she could just pull the mask away, she thought. If she could just see the face behind the face of Death. Her fingers coiled at her side. She could feel the rubbery skin of the Death’s head as if it were in her hands.

My name is Nancy Kincaid, the skull’s voice whispered to her.

And then, in her mind, the mask of Death seemed suddenly to come away and she saw:

There was no head behind it. King Death had no head. Severed arteries and veins sprouted from the jagged neck like wires. Gore spewed in coughing gouts up from the ragged hole. The blood poured down over the front of the creature’s robes. The voice burbled out with the blood, like the blood, thick and liquid:

My name is Nancy Kincaid …

She felt the pavement tip beneath her feet. Darkness closed over her. Her eyes rolled up in her head.

Me. It was supposed to be me. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ME!

A frantic skirl of music flew up around her. A shout rose from the crowd. Her eyes went wide and faces—grinning, calling faces—rose and fell like waves on every side of her. She turned, stumbling. A street lamp’s bulb swung overhead. She tipped backward. She let out a terrified scream.

A Death’s head blotted out the sky above her.

“All hail!” A shout blew over her like wind. “All hail King Death!”

She staggered back. She held her head. She stared up at the huge skull that bore down on her out of the night, as if the moon itself had descended.

“Whoa,” she whispered.

The thing was just enormous. A human skeleton a city block long. Its grinning skull hovered just above her. Its spine undulated and wavered. Its bony arms waved in the air. Below, on the street, puppeteers in skull masks and black skeleton pajamas held the paper creature aloft on poles. They danced around in circles, making the arms spin, the legs kick crazily. They were heading toward her.

“All hail!” they shouted, their voices muffled in their masks. “All hail King Death!”

And the crowd took up the chant. They hurled confetti up under the streetlights. They pumped their fists over the blue barricades.

“All hail! All hail King Death!”

She saw him then. He was at the center of the puppeteers. He was right under the great paper icon that rolled and floated over them. He was not at all as he had been in her vision. He was not stately. He was not enthroned. He was a clown. He was capering. Prancing and skipping back and forth, waving the scepter in his hand like a baton. He was dressed in a colored quilt shirt and torn jeans, like a waif, like a vagabond. His head was covered with a skull mask and there was a paper crown wrapped around his brow. He tilted his head from side to side as he galloped up and down under the gigantic skeleton. He waved gleefully to the crowd.

That’s him, she thought. She staggered again, uncertain on her feet. She felt her stomach roll over, and a lifeless cold radiated out from the center of her. It came into her arms, into her legs, her fingers. She was going under …

It’s too late, she thought. She grabbed a handful of her own hair, as if to hold herself up. It’s too late …

“That’s him,” she whispered.

She stared at the masked, capering little waif. Her other hand rose up again. She pointed at him.

“That’s him!” she called. Tears blurred her vision. “Look.”

“All hail!” The crowd’s happy roar drowned her out. “All hail the King of Death!”

She called louder. “That’s him! That’s him! Oh Christ, it’s already happening.” She jabbed her finger at him. “That’s him! Please! Somebody!”

The giant skeleton was passing above her now. The puppeteers were all around her, dancing, holding their poles. King Death was capering toward her, spinning, his arms flung wide. She could see the light through his eyeholes when he turned to her. She could see the glint in his dark eyes. He waved to the crowd on either side of her. They shouted out to him.

“All hail!”

She covered her mouth. “Oh God! Oliver …”

And suddenly, an iron hand gripped her. Fingers dug into her upper arm. She looked up. A pale, steel-eyed face glared down at her. The cop’s black cap brim jutted toward her eyes. She pointed at King Death.

“Officer,” she shrieked. “Officer, arrest that skull!”

“Come on, lady,” said the cop. “Move out of the way, willya.”

But with an enormous effort, she wrenched her arm free. She staggered forward a step toward the prancing king. She clutched her hair.

“Won’t anybody listen to me? That’s him! It’s happening! That’s the one!”

King Death spun full circle, his arms stretched wide, his knees rising high. He came full around and faced her.

And he pulled up short.

His hands were still out from his sides. His head was slightly forward. The eyes in the eyeholes were staring out at her where she stood not three yards away from him.

Everything else went on. The rapid rhythms of Danse Macabre pattered into the night. The crowd’s shouts rose and fell and rose again. Confetti burst and sparkled overhead. And the great skeleton passed over the sky like a storm cloud. But King Death stood and stared and she stood and stared back at him. The scepter fell from Death’s hand and clattered on the pavement.

And then King Death broke and ran.

He dashed between two puppeteers and lit for the western intersection. Confused, the crowd laughed and applauded. There was another chant of “Hail!” but it fell away. A few more scattered voices raised an ironic cheer. King Death lowered his white skull and charged the crowd, running like blazes. In another moment, he had slipped through a break in the current of human traffic. He was vanishing behind the closing masses.

For a second, the woman in the domino mask could only stand and watch him. She felt a black pool of sweet sleep spreading at her feet, widening all around her. She wanted more than anything to sink down into it, to drift away.

King Death rushed off, down the sidestreet, toward Sheridan Square.

The woman in the domino mask gave a single hoarse cry of pain, and took off after him.

On Seventh Avenue, the traffic was jammed. Car horns sounded again and again in the night air. Costumed strollers went slowly along the sidewalk under a pall of exhaust. Some paused at the windows of magazine stands and antique stores. Others, in ragged streams, still trickled up the sidestreets toward the parade.

The Perkins brothers came jogging uptown from Sheridan Square. They wove through the pedestrians, Oliver in the lead sometimes and sometimes Zach. Sometimes they split apart, running through the open ground at either edge of the sidewalk. Sometimes one of them fell to a fast walk to catch his breath, then started running again.

Zach clutched his red bag by the handles and it trailed behind him as he ran. His boyish face was flushed, his dark eyes were hectic. There was something disheveled and confused in his expression, as if he had just gotten off a plane and didn’t quite know where he was.

Oliver didn’t look at him much though. He just ran. He ran and there was the rhythm of his feet on the sidewalk. He listened to the rhythm and to the staccato of his breath. Let us. Let us go, he thought. Let us go then. You and I. Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat … He ran and felt the rhythm of his heart inside his chest. He felt the emptiness in his chest. Let us go then you and I … The suffocating shroud of exhaust hung over the fender-to-fender traffic; he felt it poisoning the autumn air. The pinkish white of streetlight globes passed above him. Let us go then. He saw Avis sitting on his bed this morning, when she had gently stroked his brow. Let us go. Pat. Pat. The furniture in the passing display windows was like an empty room begging for company. He remembered how Avis’s head had wobbled on its neck only minutes ago. Let us. Let us.

The two brothers turned up Christopher Street and jogged toward the library. They were shoulder to shoulder, both breathless. Perkins stared ahead and ran and saw the library’s turrets above the trees. They were lit by spotlights now. The clocktower brushed at the bottom of the moon. It was almost eight o’clock. Let us go then. He ran and did not think, except in flashes of remembering. The thin, snowy cold against his cheeks as the sled rushed downhill. The weight of his little brother leaning against him on the sled. The library came closer. Let us go. He saw its thin-necked dragon gargoyles jutting into the empty air. He could feel Zachary running beside him.

A cluster of sycamores rose from the library’s back lot. Now, in the shadow of their yellow leaves, he could see the parade on Sixth Avenue. A rolling stage, outlined in purple neon, was passing at the intersection. He saw a hairy giant gyrate on the stage, with attendant dancing girls on either side of him. The music, at this distance, melding with the traffic horns, sounded sour and discordant. They ran toward it, Oliver and Zach, side by side. Oliver carried the black weight in his stomach as he ran. His mind was black and heavy. He did not understand what had happened, how it had happened; how it had come to this. His mind was empty except for images. Avis holding her baby in her arms. The baby reaching out for him. “Pah!” The crowd grew thicker as they got near the parade.

Here, Oliver had to slow again. They both slowed, panting. They turned their shoulders to squeeze past the massing people, who were trying to squeeze their way, in turn, into the avenue crowd. Zach went first. Oliver followed him. Oliver’s sweater was torn, his chest exposed. The sweater and his jeans were wet with Avis’s blood. He could feel it, damp on his thighs, and his hands were sticky with it. He stared straight ahead, at the heads and faces of the crowd, as he pushed toward the library. Let us go then, you and I, he thought. Let us go then, you and I. He breathed through his open mouth. He did not care what happened. He wanted to get to the library fast. He wished he was there now. He would hold Tiffany until the police arrived. He did not care.

The crowd surrounded them, pressed in on them. They were near the corner. Near the library steps. The dancing beast was rolling past on his purple neon float, but the music was louder than ever. Oliver felt it drilling at his temple. He narrowed his eyes against it, twisting and turning in the crowd, forcing himself through, toward the steps. He saw Zachie’s cap turning and pushing forward in the tide ahead of them. Then Zach was rising, up the steps, through the people there, toward the library doors. Oliver reached the steps too. He came up behind Zach. He had held the baby on his chest that morning, he thought. The pots had clanked as Avis made him breakfast in the kitchen. He reached into the pocket of his damp jeans. He brought out his library key.

Zach was already at the doors, the Invisible Zach in his coat and hat. He was waiting beside the black glass doors that were traced in stone. Oliver joined him, and Zach gazed hard at him with his frantic eyes. Zach licked his lips, waiting, while Oliver found the key he wanted. Oliver thought about sledding down the hill outside their house on Long Island.

Oliver pushed his key into the door. In the jangle of music, above the roar of the crowd, he heard the whirling strains of Danse Macabre. He looked up to his left as he turned his key. Let us go, he thought. He saw a giant paper skeleton, a puppet in the parade. It was grinning and bobbing and dancing in the sky above the avenue. The sight made his gorge rise. He shuddered and turned away. He pushed the door open and stepped into the library.

He turned. He saw Zach follow him over the threshold. The door stood open for a moment behind him. He saw the people on the steps. He heard the music, still loud. He heard the voices of the people on the street. And he saw Zachary’s shadowy figure on the spotlit night with the great puppet skeleton floating up the avenue behind him.

Zachary smiled a little, nervously, almost apologetically. “We better hurry,” he said softly.

Oh, do not ask what is it, Oliver thought. Let us go and make our visit.

The library door hissed shut, unlocked now. The noise of the parade grew dim. The Perkins brothers stood in darkness together. They listened to one another’s breathing.

Death slithered through the crowd like a silverfish. The woman in the mask stumbled after.

Me. Supposed to be me, she thought dimly. Her vision had gone all misty red. It was hemmed in by the black of the mask. She panted and staggered, her arms wheeling. Me. Supposed to be me.

On the busy sidestreet, the costumed people milled and scuffled. There were shouts and barks of laughter on every side of her. Scarred faces swirled by, tortured with hilarity. Rouged lips grinned. Elbows levered up and down as masks sucked at bottles of beer.

She staggered through it all. Her breath came out of her lungs like dragon fire. Lances of pain went up her legs with every step. Her back twisted like a wrung rag. She ricocheted off the shoulder of a garrulous monster and nearly fell. A man, painted black and draped in red, snatched at her. A woman in spangles fell back a step and cried out “Hey!” She reeled drunkenly past.

Ahead, the swift, zigzagging figure of King Death drew farther and farther away. She saw the shiny white skull dodging this way and that, the colorful quilted shirt billowing. The running figure drew closer and closer to the intersection at Christopher Street, where Christopher slanted back up toward the parade. Me! the woman in the domino mask thought desperately. The spittle poured over her lips as she tumbled through the night, as she clawed at the night with her fingers. Supposed to be me! She peered at the dodging figure of Death through the thickening red haze. Nausea made her head spin, made her legs go wobbly. Supposed to be … Oh shit! she thought. She was going under. No doubt about it, fans. She was going down. Her staggering progress slowed. She was falling from each step to the next, bent forward. She was gasping hoarsely, hotly, for breath. The long corridor. Dimly, she remembered it. Crawling over the floor, the carpet against her belly …

He’s getting away! King Death was at Christopher Street now, just at the corner, just about to rush into the intersection. The woman in the flashing domino was still half a block behind him. Still pushing against the wall of pain, another step and another. She was stumbling past the corner of Gay Street now, a small doglegged Village lane to her right. She was remembering the long corridor. The murmuring voice at the end of the hall. Eight o’clock. You have to be there. She had dragged herself down the hall, over the brown carpet that scraped softly at her belly … She remembered the voice murmuring: King Death. The library. You won’t forget now.

“Oh God!” she rasped suddenly. The street and its revelers were swirling away from her in a sickening vortex. She fell. Dropped to her knees at the corner of Gay Street. She wavered there for a moment, her mouth open, the slobber dangling from her lip. Then she pitched forward to the pavement.

“Whoa there, lady!” said a long-haired boy above her. “I mean: party on!”

“Getting away,” she tried to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. She lifted herself on scraped palms. She could see him, the flash of his moving jeans. King Death had shot past the Christopher Street corner now. The strange, small, waiflike creature was braking at the curb, heels braced against the sidewalk. Around him, the clusters of masked people cheered and laughed and staggered aimlessly. Their elbows went up and down, their bag-covered beer bottles tilted up and down. King Death paused among them for only a moment. Then he dodged around the corner and he was gone, out of sight.

Prone on the pavement, her face barely raised, the woman in the domino mask stared at the spot where Death had been. To the right, she thought. He had gone to the right. He had gone up Christopher Street. He was slanting up toward the junction with Sixth, back toward the parade. Up toward that castle of a building she had seen in her dreams. And also, of course, back toward …

Gay Street.

He would have to go past the corner of Christopher and Gay.

“Oh,” she said hoarsely. “Oh.” She was trying to breathe. Trying to talk, to call for help. King Death had made a mistake. She still had a chance. She could still catch him. If she could just get up … She could run down Gay Street. She could cut him off. If she could just get to her feet …

“Help me. Help me,” she whispered.

A hand slid under her arms. Hot beery breath washed over her cheeks. “Whoa! Whoa!” It was the long-haired teen. He yanked up on her. She struggled to get her knees on the pavement. She braced herself against him as he hauled her to her feet. “Party on, Dudette. I mean, party hearty! I mean … Jesus Christ holy shit!”

The woman in the domino mask had reached into the waist of her jeans and pulled out her .38. The long-haired teen fell back from her, his eyes wide, his chin glistening with drooled beer. He stared at the weapon.

“Whoa,” he said solemnly.

The woman in the domino mask staggered backward a step. “Me …” she explained to him panting. “It was supposed to be me.” Then she groaned. A gritty burst of vomit filled her mouth. The brick high rises around her tilted across the sky. The sky swung back up until it was overhead again. She swallowed what puke she could and spat out the rest. Now where the hell was Gay Street? She turned unsteadily, blinking hard behind the mask.

There. There it was.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” she gasped as the agony went through her legs again. She pushed off and started running.

At the end of the hallway, she remembered, lay the body on the bed.

The little doglegged lane was lined with quaint brown-stones. It was washed in the misty light of a single street lamp. There were fewer partyers here. The woman in the electric domino stumbled past them swiftly, giving little cries of pain and anguish. She tore around the bend with her gun raised up beside her ear. She could hardly see anything now. Just a blur of light and shadow. She felt the wet on her cheek, in her mask, but she hardly knew that she was crying. She only wished she could tear her head open; that she could reach into her mind and rip out the throbbing memory of that body. That headless body. She had seen it from the doorway. She had dragged herself into the doorway. She had dragged herself up along the jamb and then she had seen and she had reeled back, her arms before her eyes. The sight of the headless corpse had hit her in the head like a baseball bat. Oh God, God, God, she thought, I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to be her, to be Nancy Kincaid, so she’d be safe! If anything happened, it was supposed to happen to me I It was supposed to be me.’

Now, ahead, yawing under the tilted sky, the junction with Christopher Street came into view. She could see the thicker, swifter packs of revelers there. She could hear their shouts. She could hear the Danse Macabre again, the hammering music of the parade. One step more, she thought, hauling in the air as she stumbled to the corner. One step—and then another … She pushed herself on, the gun up by her ear, the muzzle up beside her flashing mask.

And then she was there, in the intersection. Plunging out of the little alley onto the broader, slanting street. And there was King Death, right there, his skull gleaming white amidst the blackened and reddened faces all around him. He was running right toward her. He was looking back over his shoulder, as if he thought she must still be behind him. The woman in the domino mask halted. She swung around. She lowered the pistol, brought the muzzle to bear on the onrushing skull. A woman screamed somewhere, and then another. A man shouted, “Watch out.”

Death collided with her head-on. He never even looked around; he just ran right into her. She was knocked off her feet, her gun hand flying wide. She went sprawling backward. Her back slammed into the pavement. Her breath went out of her with a loud “whoof.” Still, she reached out, her hands like claws. She clutched desperately at the quilted shirt. She threw her arm around the frail figure of the King. The two of them went down together, clutched together, rolling on the pavement. King Death broke away. Struggled to his hands and knees. With a loud shout, the woman in the domino pushed up too. She was on her knees, both hands wrapped around the gun. She pointed the gun at the death’s head.

“Aa-aa—ah,” she said. It was all she could get out. Her whole body heaved and buckled with her breathing.

A crowd of people was gathering around them. No one said anything. The parade music filtered into the silence. The silence seemed bizarre. They could hear the wind blowing in the dying leaves.

Slowly, the death’s head turned. The woman in the domino saw the pale blue eyes in the skull’s sockets. She heard the heavy breathing beneath the mask.

“Dead,” the King whispered—it was a strange, high whisper, almost melodious. “You’re dead. You’re supposed to be dead.”

And then he began to cry. It sounded that way, at least. He stayed on his hands and his knees, his skull hanging down, his shoulders hunched. The sounds that came out from beneath the mask sounded very much like sobbing.

The woman in the domino let go of the gun with her left hand. Just as she had in her dream, she reached out for the mask.

Me, she thought.

She felt the fleshy latex in her grip. She tugged it, almost pulling the figure forward. She tugged again. The mask started coming off. On the third pull, the skull was pulled away.

There was a cascade of black hair. The hair was streaked with silver. It spilled forward, hiding the face beneath. Then the figure sank to the pavement, rolled miserably onto its side. The woman in the domino looked on, appalled. It was not him. It was not the face she had thought to see. It was a woman. A woman with a lovely, porcelain face, her rose cheeks splotched with tears. A stranger.

The black-haired woman stared at the woman in the domino and shook her head, sniffling.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” she complained, and she shook her head bitterly.

At first, the woman in the domino did not answer. She stared at the other. Slowly then, she brought her left hand back to the gun. She pulled back the gun’s hammer. People in the crowd gasped and stepped back as the hammer clicked. The woman in the domino trained the revolver at the other’s head. She was still gasping for breath, but she managed to speak clearly.

“Tell me where Oliver is or I’m going to kill you,” she said.

The black-haired woman cried harder, staring into the gun’s muzzle. Her whole body shook.

She said: “At the library.”

On the word, a bell tolled sonorously in the library tower. It was finally eight o’clock.