The lamplight could not penetrate the night below her, and from that darkness rose the smells of wet earth, cold stone, and rust. Interestingly, there was no smell of rats.

The light slithered wetly over a grille of metal bars. Lydia pressed herself to it, maneuvered the lamp through and held it up to illuminate what lay within. The bars were old, the lock on them new and expensive and beyond the capacity of either the skeleton key or the picklocks. The lamplight reached only partway into the catacomb beyond the bars, but far enough to show her wall niches, empty for the most part, or occupied with the suggestion of ghastly natures mortes: skulls, dust, and shreds of fallen hair.

On the right-hand wall the shadows all but hid a niche whose interior no amount of angling the lamp would reveal.

But hanging over the edge, like ivory against the dingy stone, was a man's hand: long- fingered, thin, ringed with gold. Darkness hid the rest, and though the white hand itself looked as perfect as if painted by Rubens or Holbein, Lydia knew that its owner had been dead for a long time.

It's true, she thought, her heartbeat fast and heavy with fright. Silly, she added, for she had known already that it was true... it was all true. She had met this man and seen others like him from a distance.

But knowing, she had learned this afternoon, was different from seeing, and she felt very naked, uncertain, and alone in the dark.

I'm doing this wrong.

Her breath made a little apricot smoke in the lamplight as she sat down on the steps. Laying her weapon across her knees and pushing up her spectacles with one forefinger, she settled herself to wait.