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the blade.

'Just take it from the beginning,' said Simpkins. 'We got all kinds of time.'

Maybe not, thought Donnell; Jocundra was moving again, stopping, moving, stopping, and there was a purposefulness to her actions.

'The beginning's not the place to start,' he said, surprised to hear himself speak because he had been concentrating on Jocundra. Then he realized it had been his alter ego who had spoken, and this time he welcomed it. 'I saw a man die once. He was shot, lying on a restaurant floor. His heart had quit, his blood was everywhere, and yet he still wasn't dead. That's the place to start.'

He told them about the gros bon ange, about their specific incarnations of it, about his origins in the laboratories of Tulane, and was satisfied to see Downey and Clea exchange worried glances. The hunting knife hung loose in Papa Salvatino's hand, and his breath was ragged. Simpkins' Adam's apple bobbed. They were already nine-tenths convinced of the supernatural, and his account was serving to confirm their belief. He pitched his voice low and menacing to suit the mood created by the creaking timbers of the boat and began - again, to his surprise - to tell them of the world of Moselantja and the purple sun, the world of the gros bon ange. It was, he told them, a world whose every life had its counterpart in this one, joined to each other the way dreams are joined, winds merge and waters flow together; and whose every action also had its counterpart, though these did not always occur simultaneously due to the twisty interface between the worlds. And there were many worlds thus joined. In all of them the Yoalo had made inroads.

'To become Yoalo one must be gifted with the necessary psychic ability to integrate with the suits of black energy,' he said. 'And all here rank high in the cadres, servitors to one or another of the Invisible Ones, the rulers of Moselantja. Legba, Ogoun, Kalfu, Simbi, Damballa, Ghede or Baron Samedi, Erzulie, Aziyan. Men and women grown through much use of power to stand in relation to ordinary men as stone is to clay.'

The story he told did not come to him as invention, but as the memory of a legend ingrained from childhood, and in the manner of Yoalo balladeers - a manner he recalled vividly - he gestured with his right hand to illustrate matters of fact, with his left to embellish and indicate things beyond his knowledge. It was with a left-handed delivery, then, that he had begun to speak of his mission on behalf of the cadre of Ogoun, when Clea broke for the stairs.

'Where you goin,' sister?' Simpkins caught her by the arm.

'I ain't havin' nothin' to do with this,' she said, struggling.

'Me, either,' said Downey, moving toward the hatch.

'What the hell's wrong with you?' said Papa. 'You know he ain't walkin' away from here.'

'He'll come back,' said Clea, her voice rising to a squeak. 'He's already done it once.'

'In the cadre of Ogoun,' said Donnell, wondering with half his mind what Jocundra could be doing behind him, 'there is a song we call "The Song of Returning." Hear me, for it bears upon this moment.

'The sad earth breaks and lets me enter.

My dust falls like the ashes of a song

Down the long gray road to heaven.

Yet as do the souls of the fallen gather

And take shape from the smoke of battle,

Casting their frail weights into the fray,

Influencing by a mortal inch

The thrust and parry of their ancient foes,

So will I return to those who wrong me

And bring grave justice as reward.

To those who with honor treat me,

I will return with measured justice,

No more than is their due.

And those who have loved me, a few,

To them as well will I return,

And all those matters that now lie between us

Will then be full renewed.'

Cautiously, walking heel-and-toe so as not to be heard below decks, the Baron sneaked away from the hatch and back to Jocundra, who crouched in the prow.

'We need a diversion,' he said, wiping his brow. 'All four of 'em's down there, and both Simpkins and Papa gon' be packin' knives. That's too much for me.'

He looked around, and Jocundra followed suit. Something pink was sticking out from the door of the pilot house: a rag smeared with black paint. She peeked into the door. There was a box of rags against the wall, other rags scattered on the floor.

'Fire,' she said. 'We could start a fire.'

'I