Suddenly I had a thought that blinded me by its sheer serendipity. I would ask Amelia to return to Bon Temps with me, and there I would ask her to repeat this procedure in my yard; then I would know what had happened to poor Gladiola. I felt much better once I'd had this idea, and I made myself pay attention to the here and now.

Amelia called out "Begin!" and immediately began reciting words, I suppose in Latin. I heard a faint echo come up from the stairs and the courtyard as the other witches joined in.

We didn't know what to expect, and it was oddly boring to hear the chanting continue after a couple of minutes. I began to wonder what would happen to me if the queen got very bored.

Then my cousin Hadley walked into the living room.

I was so shocked, I almost spoke to her. When I looked for just a second longer, I could tell it wasn't really Hadley. It had the shape of her, and it moved like her, but this simulacrum was only washed with color. Her hair was not a true dark, but a glistening impression of dark. She looked like tinted water, walking. You could see the surface's shimmer. I looked at her eagerly: it had been so long since we'd seen each other. Hadley looked older, of course. She looked harder, too, with a sardonic set to her mouth and a skeptical look to her eyes.

Oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room, the reconstruction went over to the loveseat, picked up a phantom remote control, and turned on the television. I actually glanced at the screen to see if it would show anything, but of course, it didn't.

I felt a movement beside me and I glanced at the queen. If I had been shocked, she was electrified. I had never really thought the queen could have truly loved Hadley, but I saw now that she had, as much as she was able.

We watched Hadley glance at the television from time to time while she painted her toenails, drank a phantom glass of blood, and made a phone call. We couldn't hear her. We could only see, and that within a limited range. The object she reached for would appear the minute her hand touched it, but not before, so you could be sure of what she had only when she began to use it. When she leaned forward to replace the glass of blood on the table, and her hand was still holding the glass, we'd see the glass, the table with its other objects, and Hadley, all at once, all with that glistening patina. The ghost table was imposed over the real table, which was still in almost exactly the same space as it had been that night, just to make it weirder. When Hadley let go of the glass, both glass and table winked out of existence.

Andre's eyes were wide and staring when I glanced back at him, and it was the most expression I'd seen on his face. If the queen was grieving and I was fascinated and sad, Andre was simply freaked out.

We stood through a few more minutes of this until Hadley evidently heard a knock at the door. (Her head turned toward the door, and she looked surprised.) She rose (the phantom loveseat, perhaps two inches to the right of the real one, became nonexistent) and padded across the floor. She stepped through my sneakers, which were sitting side by side next to the loveseat.

Okay, that was weird. This whole thing was weird, but fascinating.

Presumably the people in the courtyard had watched the caller come up the outside stairs, since I heard a loud curse from one of the Berts—Wybert, I thought. When Hadley opened a phantom door, Patsy, who'd been stationed outside on the gallery, pushed open the real door so we could see. From Amelia's chagrined face, I could tell she hadn't thought that one through ahead of time.

Standing at the door was (phantom) Waldo, a vampire who had been with the queen for years. He had been much punished in the years before his death, and it had left him with permanently wrinkled skin. Since Waldo had been an ultrathin albino before this punishment, he'd looked awful the one and only night I'd known him. As a watery ghost creature, he looked better, actually.

Hadley looked surprised to see him. That expression was strong enough to be easily recognizable. Then she looked disgusted. But she stepped back to let him in.

When she strolled back to the table to pick up her glass, Waldo glanced around him, as if to see if anyone else was there. The temptation to warn Hadley was so strong it was almost irresistible.

After some conversation, which of course we couldn't understand, Hadley shrugged and seemed to agree to some plan. Presumably, this was the idea Waldo had told me about the night he'd confessed to killing my cousin. He'd said it had been Hadley's idea to go to St. Louis Cemetery Number One to raise the ghost of voodooienne Marie Laveau, but from this evidence it seemed Waldo was the one who had suggested the excursion.

"What's that in his hand?" Amelia said, as quietly as she could, and Patsy stepped in from the gallery to check.

"Brochure," she called to Amelia, trying to use equally hushed tones. "About Marie Laveau."

Hadley looked at the watch on her wrist and said something to Waldo. It was something unkind, judging by Hadley's expression and the jerk of her head as she indicated the door. She was saying "No," as clearly as body language could say it.

And yet the next night she had gone with him. What had happened to change her mind?

Hadley walked back to her bedroom and we followed her. Looking back, we watched Waldo leave the apartment, putting the brochure on the table by the door as he departed.

It felt oddly voyeuristic to stand in Hadley's bedroom with Amelia, the queen, and Andre, watching Hadley take off a bathrobe and put on a very fancy dress.

"She wore that to the party the night before the wedding," the queen said quietly. It was a skintight, cut-down-to-here red dress decked with darker red sequins and some gorgeous alligator pumps. Hadley was going to make the queen regret what she was losing, evidently.

We watched Hadley primp in the mirror, do her hair two different ways, and mull her choice of lipsticks for a very long time. The novelty was wearing off the process, and I was willing to fast-forward, but the queen just couldn't get enough of seeing her beloved again. I sure wasn't going to protest, especially since the queen was footing the bill.

Hadley turned back and forth in front of her full-length mirror, appeared satisfied with what she saw, then burst into tears.

"Oh, my dear," the queen said quietly. "I am so sorry."

I knew exactly how Hadley felt, and for the first time I felt the kinship with my cousin I'd lost through the years of separation. In this reconstruction, it was the night before the queen's wedding, and Hadley was going to have to go to a party and watch the queen and her fiance be a couple. And the next night she would have to attend their wedding; or so she thought. She didn't know that she'd be dead by then; finally, definitely dead.

"Someone coming up," called Bob the witch. His voice wafted through the open French windows onto the gallery. In the phantom, ghostly world, the doorbell must have rung, because Hadley stiffened, gave herself a last look in the mirror (right through us, since we were standing in front of it) and visibly braced herself. When Hadley walked down the hall, she had a familiar sway to her hips and her watery face was set in a cold half smile.

She pulled open the door. Since the witch Patsy had left the actual door open after Waldo had "arrived," we could see this happening. Jake Purifoy was dressed in a tux, and he looked very good, as Amelia had said. I glanced at Amelia when he stepped into the apartment, and she was eyeing the phantasm regretfully.

He didn't care for being sent to pick up the queen's honeybun, you could tell, but he was too politic and too courteous to take that out on Hadley. He stood patiently while she got a tiny purse and gave her hair a final combing, and then the two were out the door.