And there was music too; a simple tune emerged from the box, played on a mechanism that she could not yet see. Enchanted, she delved further. Though one piece had been removed, the rest did not come readily. Each segment presented a fresh challenge to fingers and mind, the victories rewarded with a further filigree added to the tune.

She was coaxing the fourth section out by an elaborate series of turns and counter turns, when she heard the bell. She stopped working, and looked up.

Something was wrong. Either her weary eyes were playing tricks or the blizzard-white walls had moved subtly out of true. She put down the box, and slipped out of bed to go to the window. The bell still rang, a solemn tolling. She drew back the curtain a few inches. It was night, and windy. Leaves migrated across the hospital lawn; moths congregated in the lamplight. Unlikely as it seemed, the sound of the bell wasn't coming from outside. It was behind her. She let the curtain drop and turned back into the room.

As she did so, the bulb in the bedside light guttered like a living flame. Instinctively, she reached for the pieces of the box: they and these strange events were intertwined somehow. As her hand found the fragments, the light blew out.

She was not left in darkness however; nor was she alone. There was a soft phosphorescence at the end of the bed, and in its folds, a figure. The condition of its flesh beggared her imagination-the hooks, the scars. Yet its voice, when it spoke, was not that of a creature in pain.

"It's called the Lemarchand Configuration," it said, pointing at the box. She looked down; the pieces were no longer in her hand, but floating inches above her palm. Miraculously, the box was reassembling itself without visible aid, the pieces sliding back together as the whole construction turned over and over. As it did so she caught fresh glimpses of the polished interior, and seemed to see ghosts' faces-twisted as if by grief or bad glass-howling back at her. Then all but one of the segments was sealed up, and the visitor was claiming her attention afresh.

"The box is a means to break the surface of the real," it said. "A kind of invocation by which we

Cenobites can be notified-"

"Who?" she said.

"You did it in ignorance," the visitor said. "Am I right?"

"Yes."

"It's happened before," came the reply. "But there's no help for it. No way to seal the Schism, until we take what's ours..."

"This is a mistake," she said.

"Don't try to fight. It's quite beyond your control. You have to accompany me."

She shook her head. She'd had enough of bullying nightmares to last her a lifetime.

"I won't go with you," she said. "Damn you, I won't-"

As she spoke, the door opened. A nurse she didn't recognize-a member of the night shift presumably-was standing there.

"Did you call out?" she asked.

Kirsty looked at the Cenobite, then back at the nurse. They stood no more than a yard apart.

"She doesn't see me," it told her. "Nor hear me. I belong to you, Kirsty. And you to me.

"No," she said.

"Are you sure?" said the nurse. "I thought I heard-"

Kirsty shook her head. It was lunacy, all lunacy.

"You should be in bed," the nurse chided. "You'll catch your death."

The Cenobite tittered.

"I'll be back in five minutes," said the nurse. "Please go back to sleep."

And she was gone again.

"We'd better go," it said. "Leave them to their patchwork, eh? Such depressing places."

"You can't do this," she insisted.

It moved toward her nevertheless. A row of tiny bells, depending from the scraggy flesh of its neck, tinkled as it approached. The stink it gave off made her want to heave.

"Wait," she said.

"No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."

"The box," she said in desperation. "Don't you want to know where I got the box?"

"Not particularly."

"Frank Cotton," she said. "Does the name mean anything to you? Frank Cotton."

The Cenobite smiled.

"Oh yes. We know Frank."

"He solved the box too, am I right?"

"He wanted pleasure, until we gave it to him. Then he squirmed."

"If I took you to him..."

"He's alive then?"

"Very much alive."

"And you're proposing what? That I take him back instead of you?"

"Yes. Yes. Why not? Yes. "

The Cenobite moved away from her. The room sighed.

"I'm tempted," it said. Then: "But perhaps you're cheating me. Perhaps this is a lie, to buy you time."

"I know where he is, for God's sake," she said. "He did this to me!" She presented her slashed arms for its perusal.

"If you're lying"-it said-"if you're trying to squirm your way out of this-"

"I'm not."

"Deliver him alive to us then..."

She wanted to weep with relief.

"...make him confess himself. And maybe we won't tear your soul apart."

ELEVEN

1

Rory stood in the hallway and stared at Julia, his Julia, the woman he had once sworn to have and to hold till death did them part. It had not seemed such a difficult promise to keep at the time. He had idolized her for as long as he could remember, dreaming of her by night and spending the days composing love poems of wild ineptitude to her. But things had changed, and he had learned, as he watched them change, that the greatest torments were often the subtlest. There had been times of late when he would have preferred a death by wild horses to the itch of suspicion that had so degraded his joy.

Now, as he looked at her standing at the bottom of the stairs, it was impossible for him to even remember how good things had once been. All was doubt and dirt.

One thing he was glad of: she looked troubled. Maybe that meant there was a confession in the air, indiscretions that she would pour out and that he would forgive her for in a welter of tears and understanding.

"You look sad," he said.

She hesitated, then said: "It's difficult, Rory."

"What is?"

She seemed to want to give up before she began.

"What is?" he pressed.

"I've so much to tell you."

Her hand, he saw, was grasping the banister so tightly the knuckles burned white. "I'm listening," he said. He would love her again, if she'd just be honest with him. "Tell me," he said.

"I think maybe...maybe it would be easier if I showed you..." she told him, and so saying, led him upstairs.

2

The wind that harried the streets was not warm, to judge by the way the pedestrians drew their collars up and their faces down. But Kirsty didn't feel the chill. Was it her invisible companion who kept the cold from her, cloaking her with that fire the Ancients had conjured to burn sinners in? Either that, or she was too frightened to feel anything.

But then that wasn't how she felt; she wasn't frightened. The feeling in her gut was far more ambiguous. She had opened a door-the same door Rory's brother had opened-and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge. She would find the thing that had

torn her and tormented her, and make him feel the powerlessness that she had suffered. She would watch him squirm. More, she would enjoy it. Pain had made a sadist of her.

As she made her way along Lodovico Street, she looked round for a sign of the Cenobite, but he was nowhere to be seen. Undaunted, she approached the house. She had no plan in mind: there were too many variables to be juggled. For one, would Julia be there? And if so, how involved in all of this was she? Impossible to believe that she could be an innocent bystander, but perhaps she had acted out of terror of Frank; the next few minutes might furnish the answers. She rang the bell, and waited.

The door was answered by Julia. In her hand, a length of white lace.