“No.”

“She talked sometimes as if you might even be a supernatural creature yourself.”

I laughed.

He did, too, after a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said then. “There’re lots of strange things in the world. They can’t all be right, but…”

I shrugged.

“Who knows? So you think she was looking for some system that would give her power to defend herself against me?”

“That was the impression I got.”

I took a drink of the wine.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I told him.

But even as I said it I knew that it was probably true. And if I had driven her into the path of whatever had destroyed her, then I was partly responsible for her death. I suddenly felt the burden along with the pain.

“Finish the story,” I said.

“That’s pretty much it,” he answered. “I got tired of people who wanted to discuss cosmic crap all the time and I split.”

“And that’s all? Did she find the right system, the right guru? What happened?”

He took a big drink and stared at me.

“I really liked her,” he said.

“I’m sure.”

“The Tarot, Caballa, Golden Dawn, Crowley, Fortune — that’s where she went next.”

“Did she stay?”

“I don’t know for sure. But I think so. I only heard this after a while.”

“Ritual magic, then?”

“Probably.”

“Who does it?”

“Lots of people.”

“I mean who did she find? Did you hear that?”

“I think it was Victor Melman.”

He looked at me expectantly. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the name.”

“Strange man,” he mused, taking a sip and leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his neck and bringing his elbows forward. He stared off into the lavatory. “I’ve heard it said — by a number of people, some of them fairly reliable — that he really has something going for him, that he has a hold on a piece of something, that he’s known a kind of enlightenment, has been initiated, has a sort of power and is sometimes a great teacher.