"Shall we talk, Pilgrim?" he asked.

Whitehead was shivering, despite the heat. His teeth chattered.

"Yes," he said.

"Quietly? With dignity and politeness?"

Again: "Yes."

"You didn't like what you saw."

Whitehead ran his fingers across his pasty face, his thumb and forefinger digging into the pits at the bridge of his nose, as if to push the sights out. "No, damn you," he said. The images would not be dislodged. Not now, not ever.

"Perhaps we could talk somewhere else," the European suggested. "Don't you have a room we could retire to?"

"I heard Carys. She screamed."

Mamoulian closed his eyes for a moment, fetching a thought from the girl. "She's quite all right," he said.

"Don't hurt her. Please. She's all I've got."

"There's no harm done. She simply found a piece of my friend's handiwork."

Breer had not only skinned the dog, he'd disemboweled it. Carys had slipped in the muck of its innards, and the scream had escaped before she could stop herself. When its reverberations died she listened for the butcher's footsteps. Somebody was running in her direction.

"Carys!" It was Marty's voice.

"I'm over here."

He found her staring down at the dog's skinned head.

"Who the fuck did this?" he snapped.

"He's here," she said. "He followed me out."

He touched her face. "Are you all right?"

"It's only a dead dog," she said. "It was just a shock."

As they returned to the house, she remembered the dream she'd woken from. There'd been a faceless man crossing this very lawn-were they treading in his footprints now?-with a surf of shit at his heels.

"There's somebody else here," she said, with absolute certainty, "besides the dog-killer."

"Sure."

She nodded, face stony, then took Marty's arm. "This one's worse, babe."

"I've got a gun. It's in my room."

They'd come to the kitchen door; the dog's skin still lay discarded beside it.

"Do you know who they are?" he asked her. She shook her head.

"He's fat," was all she could say. "Stupid-looking."

"And the other one. You know him?"

The other? Of course she knew him: he was as familiar as her own face. She had thought of him a thousand times a day in the last weeks; something told her she had always known him. He was the Architect who paraded in her sleep, who dabbled his fingers at her neck, who had come now to unleash the flood of filth that had followed him across the lawn. Was there ever a time when she hadn't lived in his shadow?

"What are you thinking?"

He was giving her such a sweet look, trying to put a heroic face on his confusion.

"I'll tell you sometime," she said. "Now we should get that damn gun."

They threaded their way through the house. It was absolutely still. No bloody footsteps, no cries. He fetched the gun from his room.

"Now for Papa," he said. "Check that he's all right."

With the dog-killer still loose the search was stealthy, and therefore slow. Whitehead wasn't in any of the bedrooms, or his dressing rooms. The bathrooms, the library, the study and the lounges were similarly deserted. It was Carys who suggested the sauna.

Marty flung the door of the steam room open. A wall of humid heat met his face, and steam curled out into the hallway. The place had certainly been used recently. But the steam room, the Jacuzzi and solarium were all empty. When he'd made a quick search of the rooms he came back to find Carys leaning unsteadily on the doorjamb.

"... I suddenly feel sick," she said. "It just came over me."

Marty supported her as her legs gave.

"Sit down for a minute." He guided her across to a bench. There was a gun on it, sweating.

"I'm all right," she insisted. "You go and find Papa, I'll stay here."

"You look bloody awful."

"Thank you," she said. "Now will you please go? I'd prefer to throw up with nobody watching, if you don't mind."

"You sure?"

"Go on, damn you. Leave me be. I'll be fine."

"Lock the door after me," he stressed.

"Yes, sir," she said, throwing him a queasy look. He left her in the steam room, and waited until he heard the bolt drawn across. It didn't completely reassure him, but it was better than nothing.

He cautiously made his way back into the vestibule, and decided to take a quick look around the front of the house. The lawn lights were on, and if the old man were there he'd soon be picked out. That made Marty an easy target too, of course, but at least he was armed. He unlocked the front door and stepped out onto the gravel. The floodlights poured unflinching illumination down. It was whiter than sunlight, but curiously dead. He scanned the lawn to right and left. There was no sign of the old man.

Behind him, in the hallway, Breer watched the hero stride out in search of his master. Only when he was well out of sight did the Razor-Eater slouch out of hiding and lope, bloody-handed, toward his heart's desire.

Having bolted the door Carys returned, groggily, to the bench and concentrated on controlling her mutinous system. She wasn't certain what had brought the nausea on, but she was determined to get the better of it. When she had, she'd go after Marty and help him search for Papa. The old man had been here recently, that much was apparent. That he'd left without his gun did not augur well.

An insinuating voice stirred her from her meditation, and she looked up. There was a smudge in the steam, in front of her, a paleness projected onto the air. She squinted to try to make sense of it. It seemed to have the texture of white dots. She stood up, and-far from vanishing-the illusion strengthened. Filaments were spreading to connect one dot to the next, and she almost laughed with recognition as all at once the puzzle came clear. It was blossom she was looking at, brilliant white heads of it caught in sun or starlight. Twitched by some sourceless wind, the branches threw down flurries of petals. They seemed to graze her face, though when she put her fingers to the places there was nothing there.

In her years of addiction to H she'd never dreamed an image that was so superficially benign and yet so charged with threat. It wasn't hers, this tree. She hadn't made it from her own head. It belonged to someone who'd been here before her: the Architect, no doubt. He'd shown this spectacle to Papa, and its echoes lingered.

She tried to look away, around to the door, but her eyes were glued to the tree. She couldn't seem to unfix them. She had the impression that the blossom was swelling, as if more buds were coming into bloom. The blankness of the tree-its horrid purity-was filling her eyes, the whiteness congealing and fattening.

And then, somewhere beneath these swaying, laden branches, a figure moved. A woman with burning eyes lifted her broken head in Carys' direction. Her presence brought the nausea back. Carys felt faint. This wasn't the time to lose consciousness. Not with the blossom still bursting and the woman beneath the tree moving out of hiding toward her. She had been beautiful, this one: and used to admiration. But chance had intervened. The body had been cruelly maimed, the beauty spoiled. When, finally, she emerged from hiding, Carys knew her as her own.

"Mama."

Evangeline Whitehead opened her arms, and offered her daughter an embrace she had never offered while alive. In death, had she discovered the capacity to love as well as be loved? No. Never. The open arms were a trap, Carys knew it. If she fell into them the tree, and its Maker, would have her, forever.

Her head thundering, she forced herself to look away. Her limbs were like jelly; she wondered if she had the strength to move. Unsteadily, she craned her head toward the door. To her shock she saw that it was wide open. The bolt had been wrenched off as the door was beaten open.