Jerks them open, awake, the lamp’s burning, someone, Ysabel’s leaning over her, “Wake up,” she’s shaking her shoulder. “I am awake,” says Jo.

“Come on,” says Ysabel, hushed, into the hall, opening the door to the right on a narrow bathroom, tile and fixtures barely a-gleam in the darkness. Ushering Jo inside, closing the door, Ysabel hunts about reaching, patting, finding the light switch, chipped gold trim, white tile, white sink, white toilet, lid of it covered by a plush brown cushion, a bathtub, dingily white.

“Go on,” says Ysabel, skinning her ivory nightgown up and off, awkwardly, with just the one hand. Dropping it to the floor, she reaches to tug at Jo’s sweatshirt, “Run a bath,” she says. “Get ready.” Her other hand closed about something. Jo kneels, skroink, skoink, adjusting the taps for water hot and cold. Fits the plug in place. Ysabel’s holding whatever she has in both hands, now, and watches. The sound of the water falling deepens as it fills, thickens, loses its trebled edge.

“Jo,” says Ysabel.

She looks up from the filling tub to Ysabel, up the bare brown length of her, black curls about her shoulders, the green of her cooly expectant gaze. Wrestles her way out of the sweatshirt, drops it to the floor, shoves off her briefs. Her one hand to her chest, she holds out the other, but Ysabel doesn’t take it, instead, she drops into it what she’s been holding, a weightily sodden handkerchief.

“That better not be,” says Jo, hoarsely wry.

“Don’t be a child,” murmurs Ysabel, stepping into the water, lowering herself with a hiss to sloshing sit, water gurgling, steaming, lips pursed, she looks to Jo, crouched beside the tub. “Show me,” she says.

“What?”

“Let me see it.”

The handkerchief still in her one hand, she lifts the other from over the nodule there, at the end of the long pale scar stitched from hip across belly up and up between her breasts to end in a whitened pucker about that thumb-sized gem, all of a single color now, a red so rich, so full, so very opaque.

“Oh,” says Ysabel. “It’s as dark as it was.”

“Believe me, I know.” That free hand reaching out, skroink, squonk, shutting off the water. Looking down, to Ysabel’s knees, “So,” she says, “what do I, just, squeeze, or,” and, annoyed, Ysabel says, “Yes, Jo. As you have done before. Pour the medhu, into the water, over me,” and “Yeah,” Jo says, “I know, I just” but “I need to know,” says Ysabel. “I don’t. And I need to be sure.”

“I get it,” says Jo. “I do. I was asking, I mean, logistically. Squeeze it, or, I could dunk it? Let it, seep out? We might get more,” but Ysabel’s shaking her head, “Squeeze,” she says. “Let it fall.”

Jo nods, both her hands together. A deep sigh. “Ready?”

Ysabel shakes her head, but closes her eyes, lowers herself, black curls spreading, a-float, till the water laps her chin. Jo squeezes, bundling the handkerchief more tightly in her grip, and squeezes. Oozing out from her clenched fingers a droplet, white of it dimmed by gold, swelling, trembling, dangling till it’s heavy enough to break free, to float, for a moment, in the air, beneath her hands, over the water, turning as it shivering starts to fall, followed quickly enough by a couple-few more in an uncertain trickle, pop-plop, splip. Milkiness unrolls from the impacts, spreading in thready tendrils through the water, over, around, about Ysabel’s lap.

“Maybe,” says Jo, shaking out the handkerchief, twisting it about, wringing another thin stream of milky droplets into the water, “I, ah,” says Jo, and then the world hiccups, and the tub is full of gold.

Ysabel sits up, squeak of dust about her hips, under her pressing hands, her shoulders rising, falling with each deep breath. Plop of the handkerchief dropping from Jo’s hands to the brightness. “Holy shit,” she says.

“Yes,” says Ysabel, muffled.

“No,” says Jo, “I mean, it’s not as much as, but, I mean, from just what, holy fucking shit.”

“Yes,” says Ysabel, holding up a hand. “Help me out.” Glittering shimmerfall of dust as she levers herself up, pulling on Jo’s offered hand, hiking a leg over the edge of the tub, dust falling with the unsteady shift of her foot on the water-slick floor, catching, floating, blackening to peppery flecks. Ysabel stands there, hands at her sides, looking back down at all that gold. Jo’s tugging her sweatshirt back on, “Hey,” she says, as her head appears, and gestures toward the discarded nightgown, but Ysabel reaches down to scoop up a handful of dust, turns to pour it out in a tidy little pile on the counter by the sink. Leans down to scoop up more. “Turn on the water,” she says.

“What?”

“I’ve portioned out what my court requires,” she says, and three piles now, set forlornly by the sink, “the rest, as we’ve been told, is but superfluous. It would be, imprudent? to leave it here, out in the open, where anyone might take it,” and then, when Jo doesn’t move, or open her mouth to say anything, “turn on,” snarls Ysabel, lunging for the faucets, “the blasted water,” twisting one with an horrific squeal, a sudden gush of water crashing into the golden dust with a hissing spitting whistling plosion of steam, “Jesus,” from Jo, knocked back, backing up, as Ysabel wrenches a lever around and, up, above, the showerhead gurgles, chugs, spurts out a strengthening widening fall of water splashing over rippled golden piles of popping blackening smoking shriveling dust.

Jerks them open, awake, sunlight shining low and indirect from the window there, but no one, not anyone else about, at all.

Sits up in that oversized sweatshirt, No Gods, No Billionaires, places her feet among the stacks and piles of books and papers, “Ysabel?” she says, barely disturbing the air.

In the hall she opens the door to the right on a sunlit bathroom, white tile, chipped gold trim, the tub she squints scummed over with a brackish slurry faintly steaming still she backs abruptly out, stifling a cough, “Ysabel,” she manages, blinking.

The door to the left.

The door to the left opens on a room filled with so many more books, a frozen turbulence piled and stacked to the walls, knee-high, hip-high under the windows there that look out over the flat green lawn, all about a wide bed, brass headboard and footboard, blankets and sheets all tangled about the one lone figure splayed across it, Marfisa, face down, her white-gold cloud of hair about her shoulders bare and back, rising and falling with a lustily rattling snore.

She pulls on tights, stars spangled over a midnight purple, shoves bare feet into running shoes, tightens the velcro straps, they’re a little unsteadily loose with every step out the front door and down the stairs, “Ysabel!” she calls, out onto the sidewalk, looking about, dark storefronts to either side, the brick garage across the street, high narrow windows blankly dark in the early light above a singular overhead door. Someone’s getting out of a car there, hard by the curb, a sleekly anonymous grey sedan. Blocks away down the hill a bus gathers itself for the climb. The street is otherwise empty. Down the sidewalk, past the sedan, windows of the storefront there say Monte Carlo in red letters freshly painted, Pizza, Steaks, around the corner, the façade of the warehouse stretching away down the gentling slope, the litter of the long-gone crowd, a lone police car at a somnolent angle before the loading dock, but otherwise the street, the block, the morning’s empty. Her hands press the heels of them to either side of her forehead. Shoulders rise and fall with shallowly accelerating breaths.

“She’s fine,” says someone behind her.

A woman, leaned back against the rear fender of that sedan, loosely tailored suit of pearly grey, amber aviators peering out from under the bleached brim of a jipijapa fedora set atop her corkscrew curls.

“Ysabel?” says Jo.

“She’s fine.”

“Where is she?” Soles slapping as she heads back up the sidewalk from the corner, “you know where she is, you fucking tell me,” but the woman lifts a hand, hold up, “She’s about her business. You should be about yours. It’s gotten heavier, hasn’t it.”

That hauls Jo up short. “What,” she says.

“Warmer, too, sometimes. Is the color changing, yet?”

“You’re,” says Jo, “Upchurch. That’s your name. Right?”

“Joliet Kendal Maguire,” says Mrs. Upchurch. “You need to deal with the qlifot.”

“Quicksmoke,” says Jo.

“Antethesis,” says Mrs. Upchurch. “So long as we’re listing names. Get in the car; I want to show you something.”

“Show me what,” says Jo.

“If I could just, tell you, I would. You need to see.” Opening the passenger door of the sedan. “Go on. Get in.”

“I’ve developed this complex, see? As to wizards, and second locations.”

“Luckily for us both,” says Mrs. Upchurch, heading around the front of the sedan to the other side. “I’m not a wizard.”

“She scares the shit out of you, doesn’t she,” says Jo.

Mrs. Upchurch opens the driver’s door, those carefully painted lips judiciously pursed. “That’s how you know she’ll be fine,” she says.

“That’s not,” says Jo, stepping toward the passenger door, “she’s not all I’m worried about.”

“I’ll take you right to her, when we’re done, if you want,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

Jo sits herself on the passenger seat. “Can you at least tell me,” she says, a hand on the seatbelt, “where it is we’re going?”

“Salem,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

“Oh,” says Jo. Fastening the buckle. She pulls the door shut.