Kolabati nodded slowly. "I know I don't have your love, so I guess I'll have to settle for that." She stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. "Goodbye, Jack."
"Yeah," Jack said, his expression stricken. "Goodbye."
Glaeken lead Kolabati down to Carol's apartment—former apartment. Carol would not re-enter it. He guided her to the bedroom but did not turn on the light.
"It's quiet here. Safe and dark. No one will disturb you."
He heard the springs squeak as she sat on the bed.
"Will you stay with me?" she said in a small voice.
"I thought—?"
"That was Jack. I couldn't be comfortable with him here. But you're different. Your years stretch far beyond mine. I think you understand."
Glaeken found a chair and pulled it up beside the bed.
"I understand."
His sentiments echoed Jack's: this was a brave woman. He took her hand again as he had upstairs.
"Talk to me," he said. "Tell me about the India of your childhood—the temple, the rakoshi. Tell me how you spent your days before you came to wear the necklace."
"I seems that I was never young."
Glaeken sighed. "I know. But tell me what you can, and then I will tell you of my youth, what little I remember of it."
And so Kolabati spoke of her girlhood, of her parents, of her fear of the flesh-eating demons who roamed the tunnels beneath the Temple-in-the-Hills. But as she talked on, her voice grew hoarse, raspy. The air in the room grew moist and sour as her tissues returned their vital fluids to the world. Her voice continued to weaken until speech seemed a terrible effort. Finally…
"I'm so tired," she said, panting.
"Lie down," Glaeken told her.
He guided her to a recumbent position, gripping her shoulders and lifting her knees. Beneath her clothes her flesh felt wizened, perilously close to the bone.
"I'm cold," she said.
He covered her with a blanket.
"I'm so afraid," she said. "Please don't leave me."
He held her hand again.
"I won't."
"Not until it's completely over. Do you promise?"
"I promise."
She did not speak again. After a time her breathing became harsh and rapid, rising steadily to a ragged crescendo. Her bony fingers squeezed Glaeken's in a final spasm—
And then relaxed.
All was quiet.
Kolabati was gone.
Glaeken released her hand and stepped into the hall outside the apartment. Jack was there, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the door. He looked up at Glaeken.
"Is she—?"
Glaeken nodded and Jack lowered his head.
"Collect both necklaces and the blade fragments and be ready to leave as soon as it's light."
Jack nodded, still looking down. "Where?"
"I'll tell you later. I must remain with her a while longer."
Jack looked up again. His red-rimmed eyes questioned.
Glaeken said, "I promised I'd stay until the end."
Back in the bedroom, the scent of rot was vague in the air. He resumed his seat and found Kolabati's hand again. The skin was cold, dry, as flaky as filo dough. He clasped it until it crumbled to dust and ran through his fingers. And when the sky began to lighten, he drew the curtains, closed the door, and locked the apartment.
THURSDAY
The House at the End of the Road
MONROE, LONG ISLAND
"You sure these are the directions he gave you?"
Jack stopped Glaeken's old Mercedes in the middle of the road and peered about in the gloomy light. Bill Ryan sat in the passenger seat, a pair of shotguns propped between his knees. The two necklaces and the blade fragments sat between them in a carved wooden box. Bill peered at the hastily scribbled note in his hand.
"Positive," he said.
Jack would have preferred to have Ba along on this trek but he'd possessed neither the heart nor the nerve to ask the big guy to leave Sylvia and the boy again. But Bill seemed different today. There was a odd air of peace about him that Jack found strangely comforting.
"You grew up in Monroe, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but I've never been out here. I don't think I ever knew there was an out here. This is nowhere."
Nowhere. Perfect description, Jack thought. They were in the far northeast corner of Monroe, on a dirt road leading through the heart of a vast salt marsh. To their left, under a low, leaden, overcast sky, Monroe Harbor lay smooth and flat and still and gray as slate. Somewhere dead ahead was the Long Island Sound. Nothing moved. Not an insect, not a bird, not even a breeze to stir the reeds and tall grass lining the road. Like being caught in the middle of a monochrome marshscape.
The only break in the monotony was the file of utility poles marching along the east flank of the road and what looked like an oversized outhouse near the water at its far end.
"That's got to be the place," Bill said.
"Can't be."
"You see any other place around? We're supposed to follow this road out to the house at its end. That's the place. It's got to be."
Jack doubted it but put the Mercedes in gear again and started forward.
"I still say we made a wrong turn somewhere."
As they approached the shack, Jack noticed smoke rising from behind it.
"Whoever he is, he's got a fire going."
"I hope he builds a better fire than he builds a house," Bill said.
"Right. He must be the original crooked man and this must be the original crooked house."
The shack did not seem to have one true upright. The entire one-story structure was canted left, leaning against the peeling propane tank on its flank; its crumbling brick chimney was canted right; and the aerial atop that was canted left again.
But this had to be the place: the house at the end of the road.
An old Torino sat in front. Except for the fire in the back, the place looked deserted.
"You know," Bill said as they neared it, "that's not just a plain old fire in back there. I don't know much about that sort of thing, but it looks to me like he's got some kind of forge going full blast.
As Jack pulled into the small graveled front yard, he noticed that all the screens were ripped and tattered, all the windows smashed—like every other house they'd passed on their way out from the city.
"This doesn't look good."
Bill shrugged. "The fire's going, and Glaeken said…"
"Yeah. Glaeken said."
He parked and took the wooden box with him when he got out. Bill accompanied him to the door. To the right was what appeared to be a small vegetable garden, but nothing was growing. The front door opened before they reached the steps and a grizzled old man glared at them through the remnants of the screen in the upper half of the storm door.
"Took your time getting here, didn't you?"
His shock of gray hair stuck out in all directions. He needed a shave like his stained undershirt needed to be washed—or better yet, tossed out and replaced.
"You're expecting us?" Jack said. How could that be? The phones had been out for days.
"Yeah. You got the metal?"
Bill glanced at the note in his hand. "First we've got to know: Are you George Haskins?"
"'Course I am."
"May we come in?"
"I don't think they'd like that. You see—"
Jack heard a garbled babble from somewhere behind the solid lower half of the storm door. Haskins looked down and spoke toward the floor.
"All right, all right!" he said, then looked up at Jack again and thrust his hand through the opening. "They're real anxious to get started. Gimme the metal."