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you back!"

Quentin turned in surprise to look at Bolt. Bolt looked angry, even ashamed. "She's lying," he whispered. "The old lady is brain dead. She's a vegetable."

"Bolt, I know that she's not, and so do you."

"She's dead," muttered Bolt. And he didn't come with Quentin back up the corridor.

Quentin paused in the doorway to meet Sally's gaze. "I wasn't lying, Sally," he said.

"I trust Mrs. Tyler as a judge of character," she answered softly. "Apparently you have the gift of bringing people back from the dead."

"Wouldn't that be nice."

"I'll leave you alone with her, but don't let Bolt in here, Quentin."

"I won't."

Then he went inside and closed the door behind him. Mrs. Tyler turned her head and looked at him. "Thank you for coming," she whispered.

Chapter 14. Old Lady Tyler

Her voice was husky from long disuse. When she gestured with her hand it seemed almost translucent in its frailty. She tried to roll over, and it looked as if her body was too heavy for anything to move it; then he helped her roll on her side, to face his chair, and he could feel how light she was, as if she had been shaped of air. Had she no bones? What was it that tied a creature so insubstantial to the earth? Gravity could not possibly hold her here.

"You've borne up well," she said.

He shook his head. "I've hardly been eating the last few days."

"Keep up your strength."

He didn't need motherly advice from this woman. He needed answers. But now that she was speaking to him, he couldn't think of what to ask.

"Why didn't you speak till now?"

"It's not safe for me to stay in my body," she said. "Eternal vigilance."

"That's the price of liberty, as I recall," said Quentin. "You don't look free to me."

"But I'm not dead."

"Who wants to kill you?"

"Rowena."

"Your own daughter?"

"We had a falling-out."

"I guess."

"She picked you, not me," said Mrs. Tyler.

"Picked me for what?" asked Quentin. "Why can't she just open the treasure box?"

"It's evil of her to call it that."

"What is it, then?"

"A coffin. A prison. The gate of hell."

"Yeah, I'm sure I would have opened it for her if she called it that."

"You must never, never open the box."

"Was it you that stopped me before?"

"I helped you stop."

"But I was trying to open it."

"You thought you were. But a wiser part of you was afraid to open it. A wiser part of you was already learning not to trust the succubus."

Until this moment it had not occurred to Quentin that that's what Madeleine had been all along. A succubus. An evil spirit sent to seduce a man in his sleep. He knew of the myths and legends, but he'd never heard of any stories in which the succubus stayed around long enough to marry the man.

"What's in the box?" he asked.

"Pray to God that you never have to know."

"That's not an answer."

"I didn't bring you here to answer your questions. You don't know enough to ask the questions that matter. And I can't stay long inside my body. It's too dangerous. Too much can happen while I'm not watching."

"All right, tell me what I need to know."

"Rowena keeps my body locked down on this bed, and when I send my spirit wandering, she shadows me. Wherever I roam, there she is, blocking me from this, blocking me from that. I try to watch her closely, but I didn't even know you existed until the succubus brought you to the house and she started raising the dead."

"Why me?" Quentin asked. "Do you know why?"

"All I can do is guess. Everything depends on how much she knows. Rowena was such a rebellious child. She hated me as soon as she was old enough to pluck memories out of my mind. She didn't understand what happened, and she wouldn't let me explain. She told me my mind was too loathsome for her ever to want to enter it again."

Daughters entering their mothers' minds. "What are you people?"

"Oh, Quentin, how dim are you really? We're witches. The real ones, not the silly ignorant women who prance naked and try to turn our affliction into a mystical religion. It's not something you can choose. Most people have only the faintest touch of the power. A glimmer now and then, that's all they get of the other side. But we grow up looking at the spirit as well as the body. We can see, we can touch everyone, both spirit and body. We hear words spoken aloud,