I say how I've been trying to find every copy of the poems book. I say how important it is that no one ever discovers the spell. After what happened to Duncan, I swear I'm going to burn all my notes and forget I ever knew the culling spell.

"And what if you can't forget it?" she says. "What if it stays in your head, repeating itself like one of those silly advertising songs? What if it's always there, like a loaded gun waiting for someone to annoy you?"

I won't use it.

"Hypothetically speaking, of course," she says, "what if I used to swear the same thing? Me. A woman you're saying accidentally killed her own child and husband, someone who's been tortured by the power of this curse. If someone like me eventually began using the song, what makes you think that you won't?"

I just won't.

"Of course you won't," she says, and then laughs without making a sound. She turns right, past a Biedermeier credenza, fast, then turns again past an Art Nouveau console, and for a minute she's out of sight.

I hurry to catch up, still lost, saying, if we're going to find our way out of this, I think we need to stay together.

Just ahead of us is a William and Mary bureau cabinet. Black lacquered pine with Persian scenes in silver gilt, round bun feet, and the pediment done up in a pile of carved curls and shells. And leading me deeper into the thicket of cabinets and closets and breakfronts and highboys, the rocking chairs and hall trees and bookcases, Helen Hoover Boyle says she needs to tell me a little story.

Chapter 10

Back at the newsroom, everybody's quiet. People are whisper ing around the coffeemaker. People are listening with their mouths hanging open. Nobody's crying.

Henderson catches me hanging my jacket and says, "You call Regent-Pacific Airlines about their crab lice?"