His reading glasses were folded by his place mat, and he thought to slip them on.

'Carrie wants you to come see her. At Kirby.'

His face was tight as he peered at me.

'It's her.'

He pointed at the letter.

'She's surfacing. I knew she would.' He spoke from a spirit that was tired.

'What's the dark light?' I asked, getting up because I could not sit a moment longer.

'Blood.' He seemed sure. 'When you stabbed Gault in the thigh, severing his femoral artery, and he bled to death. Or would have had the train not finished the job. Temple Gault.'

He took his glasses off again, because he was secretly agitated.

'As long as Carrie Grethen is around, so is he. The evil twins,' he added.

In fact, they were not twins, but had bleached their hair and shaved it close to their skulls. They were prepubescently thin and androgenously dressed alike when I last saw them in New York. They had committed murder together until we had captured her in the Bowery and I had killed him in the subway tunnel. I had not intended to touch him or see him or exchange one word with him, for it was not my mission in this life to apprehend criminals and commit judicial homicide. But Gault had willed it so. He had made it happen because to die by my hand was to bond me to him forever. I could not get away from Temple Gault, though he had been dead five years. In my mind were gory pieces of him scattered along gleaming steel rails and rats moiling out of dense shadows to attack his blood.

In bad dreams his eyes were ice blue with irises scattered like molecules, and I heard the thunder of trains with lights that were blinding full moons.