He buttoned on a blue cotton-polyester shirt, and then almost cried at how much it hurt to tuck it in evenly. He went back to the mirror then, to stare, to comb his hair, to stare again, calling to Her as She had taught him. She didn't answer.

He had to show Her. He went to the dresser,moved the careful stack of tee shirts again, and took out the gun, feeling the weight in his hand. He'd have to show Her, just like he'd showed his dad and mom.He tmom.He once of the look on his dad's face when Timothy had said, "I'll show you who's a pussy,"and pulled the trigger. But then he remembered his mom, and how she'd turned on him, how she'd screamed and run to the telephone, and started saying, "Hello, police, hello, police," and kept right on screaming it, even after he'd shot her twice. She'd turned her back on him. Just like the Lady.

No. No, She wouldn't, he'd show Her, he'd takeout the old lady, and then he'd go after the Gypsy man, and She'd see. She'd be so proud. She wouldn't tease him and call him Little Timmy, She'd put Her long slender hands against his face and call him Her big, strong man, yes, and She'd kiss him with those full red lips, kiss the knife marks on his stomach,too…

He stood still for a moment, thinking about that,letting it stir him, and then took his jacket from its hook in the closet. The gun felt nice in the pocket, he could hold it as he walked, pass people on the street,knowing that, if he wanted to, he could do for them but good. He shut off the lights and locked his door carefully and then walked slowly down the hallway,gun in his hidden hand as smooth and cold as mirror glass.

Watch the storm clouds,

they're telling me to run

I hear the wind say to hide;

A thousand accusations

of all the things I've done,

Are after me demanding I be tried.

"LANNAM SIDHE"

He pried his eyelids open a crack. White. White sheets,white walls, white noise, all overlaid with soft shadows.shadows. Evenht that came in the small window of the door was a friendless white. And the smell. As if all the smells in the world had been killed, and their remains scrubbed up with alcohol and bleach. A fine place to die. Then they could scrub him up with alcohol and bleach. And the damn gypsies could walk home.

The Coachman let his eyes fall shut. He could feel the bandage tight around his stomach, was aware of every stitch in his thigh. No. He wasn't going to die. Dying would have been too easy; nothing had been that easy since he'd found the gypsies in the first place. Or they'd found him. Which was it? It hardly mattered. And now the Owl's words came back to him. Tekata, tekata, tekata, like a fine matched team trotting, like his own heart beating. He pulled his eyes open again. Whatever they'd given him for pain dragged at him, promising the warmth and softness of sleep. But the insistent rhythm of a tambourine pulled against it, sat him up in his bed.

The rest of the world was quiet. Someone had forgotten a television set in the comer, and its screen showed nothing as it whispered white. Its bluish light lit men sleeping or pain-drugged to stillness, shone on a few flat empty beds. The Coachman shivered as he pushed the thin blankets aside and swung his legs stiffly over the edge of the bed. The cold floor bit his bare feet. Would his clothes be in that drawer?

They weren't, and he remembered then, how they had cut them off him, the bright scissors s nicking along and against his flesh. He longed to crawl back into bed,but he forced himself to step softly down the ward until he came to a sleeping man about his height and build.Nobuild. No ask, he excused himself, for it wouldn't belong before men in ties with clipboards came, to question him, over and over and over. So far he had told no one anything, not even a name. He had pretended to be too drunk, too dazed, too much in shock to talk. Very little of it had been pretense. But morning would come soon,and with it questions he had no time to answer.

The checked flannel shirt was missing two buttons,and the jeans were too big in the waist, but they would do. He found his pocket knife, calk, hoof pick, and some change in his nightstand drawer. His boots were beneath it. The laborious task of stooping down to get them and the agony of actually pulling them on unmanned him fora time. He sat on the edge of that flat white bed, trying to breathe the pain away in deep slow breaths. He wiped the sweat from his face with the corner of the sheet. He wasn't going to get very far under his own power. The few dollars he had would buy him a short cab ride.Wheride.Where? his cheap room, where Daniel, perhaps,was still waiting? That might be best. Then Daniel could find Raymond. He briefly considered going back to Madam Moria's. But the thought that she might once more shut the door in his face decided him.

Getting out of the hospital was easier than he had expected. Even walking crabbed over, with one hand pressed against the bandages under his shirt, he drew little attention. The three nurses he saw were all tired and harassed. He got past them by asking for himself and being told that visiting hours were over, whereupon he sighed and went back out; none of them noticed that he'd come from the wrong direction. The area around the admissions desk looked like a bus station. A man held a bloody cloth to the side of his head while his woman chattered earnestly at the admissions nurse in a language the Coachman didn't recognize. A heavy woman sat rocking a screaming baby while three small children clustered around her. Two teenage boys sat next to a girl who stared straight ahead, eyes all pupils. The Coachman threaded his way out into the dark and cold.

The air on his face helped him push aside the confusion the pain medication made, but the chill tightened his skin. He was aware of the too-large jeans rasping against the bandage on his thigh with every step he took. The hospital was on a hill, and the surrounding neighborhood was dark. He walked two painful blocks past the hospital's park-like "quiet" zone before he felt the telltale warmth begin on his stomach. He walked another two blocks, counting each painful step, before he came to the bus-stop. It boasted a roofed enclosure, a single yellow bulb of light encased in a heavy metal cage, and a pay telephone with no handset. The Coachman sat down heavily on the cold concrete bench. The next bus, he promised himself and Raymond, no matter where it was going. He'd get on the next bus, into light and warmth, and get off when he was in some section of town that was still awake. He pressed his fist gently against his stomach wound and tried not to cough.

A drop, a rise. a jump, a spin;

Let the music lead you.

Keep the sunlight at your back;

There's someone there who needs you.

"GYPSY DANCE"

"I think there's a piece of glass in here… What the hell did he hit you with, anyway?"

The gypsy who called himself Daniel didn't answer. Stepovich glanced back into Ed's kitchen,thinking that the scene looked like something from a bad movie. Daniel sat in one of Ed's straight-backed kitchen chairs, his hands still cuffed behind him. His dark head drooped exhaustedly forward on his chest.Blchest.Blood down the back of his neck and stained his green shirt. Anyone who walked in here, Stepovich thought, would think we were torturing him. But Ed's big hands handled the tweezers as if he were tying fishing flies. Durand's face showed only a mild queasiness as he held the flashlight. Twice now, Durand had raised questions about the legality of what they were doing, in frantic whispers that Daniel wasn't supposed to hear. Twice Ed had growled and shut him up.