1.

There was a choking sound as the car died.

Wade looked down, and saw the needle of the fuel gauge go limp, drooping down towards E. A panoply of lights on the console flared on for a second, and then went dead.

Stepping out of his car into the cold mountain air, he stretched his long limbs, and attempted to recede deeper into the light denim jacket he wore. Reaching inside, he grabbed a stocking cap and pulled it low over his sand-colored hair and went to pop the hood of his vehicle.

Narrowing his gray eyes, he examined the machinery inside the car.

He was hoping for some obvious yet reversible problem, such as a tree branch being stuck in a mechanism. Unfortunately, no such problem existed. To his untrained eyes, the mechanisms under the hood looked the same as they always had.

After he grabbed his backpack, he slammed the hood, he locked the car, and began to walk back towards the town that he'd seen, some way back.

2.

MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

August was cool in the mountains; he'd left home at the start of the month, with his inheritance sunk deep into his pockets. His parents had been sorry to see him go, but understood that he'd always wanted to travel.

For two weeks, he'd bounced from town to town, calling his parents every few days to let them know that things were going fine. His blue hatchback had been tuned up and checked over before he left.

Everything had been perfect, other than Uncle Georges' death. The old man had just given up the ghost, last May. Georges had been old, Wade knew, but it was still hard.

Now, he was walking against a flow of imaginary traffic, toward a town that may or may not have a gas station. He'd seen a few: small enclaves with green “NO SERVICES” signs slouched by the side of the highway.

He wondered, briefly, how a town with no services could survive.

The walk was long, and wound up and down the mountains, dipping several hundred feet before climbing the same distance all over again.

Turning off of the small state highway back onto the larger one, he checked directions and chose left. Twin lances of light stabbed through the darkness, as a van roared past, going from horizon to horizon in an effort to reach some unknown destination. Its roar faded to a trilling grumble, and finally to a mere memory of sound.

After a few heartbeats, it was impossible for Wade to recall what sort of van it had been.

For a while, he walked backwards, thumb out in the hitcher's salute. It was useless, though; his signal fell upon an empty highway.

His backpack slapped against his spine. A change of pants, three pairs of underwear, two t-shirts; two books, dog-eared copies of On the Road and The Grapes of Wrath; three-hundred dollars, cash, in four separate pockets, including one sewn into the lining of the sack.

He wore gray trousers and an unbuttoned flannel shirt over his T-shirt, onto which he had crudely ironed a patch that said “NOMAD.” Despite the open air, he had an unavoidable smell of sweat about him.

The pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket slapped against his chest, but he did not light one. In the thin, mountain air, he would be reduced to a wheezing mass in less than a minute.

For a long time, there was no sound save the crunch of the gravel and the whispering wind. The air smelled of pine and alkali, as well as another, undefined element that his nose couldn't identify.

Overhead, a congress of clouds seemed to gather, a flock of angry, iron-gray shadows that seemed to be debating whether to unleash their downpour over him or to move onward. A low rumble signaled that they might have made their decision. Wade could not smell the rain, but he knew that it was only a matter of time.

He tried to identify the mystery scent for the next fifteen minutes, when he encountered the first of the abandoned cars, an empty pickup truck. One of its tires had blown out.

Not five-hundred yards further on was a coupe that had run into a mile marker. The vehicle was probably serviceable, but its owner had left it abandoned where it had halted.

The town appeared when he crested the next hill, a collection of tiny houses and small shops. A sign proclaiming “GAS, NEXT EXIT” appeared on the other side of the road.

Smiling, Wade descended toward the town, only to find it dark.

The gas station was a burned out husk of a building, its broken windows boarded over. On the one remaining window pane was was spray-painted in crude lettering: “SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED.”

Below it was a note.

“Reopening in march.”

Cursing, he sat down and pulled out his copy of On the Road, and flipped through it until he found an underlined passage:

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when [He made life so sad.]

Resting a moment, he glanced around, realizing he was in one of those many lonely spots in the world that everyone was taught to fear when they were young. It wasn't the worst of those spots, by a long shot. He was alone in body as well as in mind.

For a long, drawn out moment, he thought about the quote. For a while, Wade considered its meaning, and the state of mind he had been in when he had marked the book.

Uncle Georges had given him the old copy when he was thirteen; the spry old man had told him briefly of his own itinerant phase, traveling the highways of America in search of some lost, meaningful thing that had eluded him all his days, until he finally returned home on the eve of his thirtieth year.

“I'll find it for you,” thirteen-year-old Wade had said, smiling.

“I'll find it for you,” Twenty-two-year-old Wade had said, grimacing.

Nine years separated the two strings of words, which were identical in form but so far apart in feeling and meaning.

After he had rested a bit, he walked back to the highway and began walking toward his car again. This time on the other side, with his thumb outstretched in a pleading, lonely manner.

Of course, after a long period of time, he made a startling and very important discovery:

Namely, that he was lost.

Part of him told him that the turn off was over the next rise; another part of him told him that it lay over the last.

Standing facing across the four empty highway lanes, he looked first one way, then the other.

Should I go forward? Should I go back? He wondered.

After a moment of indecision, he thought:

This was a mistake.

He listened to his heart beat, and looked the other way, which he had come to think of as “forward.”

From behind, he could hear the sound of an engine. By reflex, he stuck out his thumb, not expecting it to do any good, but wanting to take control of the situation. Wanting to make an effort, at least.

To his surprise, the vehicle stopped.

Turning, he saw a dark blue sedan, a late-model car that made him think of an electric razor.

The driver, a man only a few years Wade's senior, looked at him through horn-rimmed spectacles.

He gestured, with a bit of exasperation, for Wade to get in.

“I didn't actually think you'd stop,” he said, his voice scratchy, climbing in and settling into the leather seat. He set his backpack in his lap.

“A lone man, on the side of a highway, middle of the night?” the man said, the musical sound of his words contrasting with Wade's, “I couldn't just let you wander around the mountains, now could I?”

There was a moment of silence, as the man shifted into “drive.”

“I could've,” he confided, “but I wouldn't have liked doing it.”

Wade coughed.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don't mention it,” the bespectacled man said, not paying attention to his guest's gratitude.

The two sat in silence, as the car picked up speed.

“I don't know where I left my car,” Wade said, the edges of his consciousness growing fuzzy.

“These roads are tricky,” the man said, tilting his head down to stare at the road over his glasses. He accelerated up to sixty, and then leveled off.

“Think you can drop me off in the next town?” Wade asked, “I'd like to call Triple-A and track down my vehicle.”

“Sure thing,” the man said, “I'll let you know.”

Another long silence.

Wade then experienced that moment of disorientation that comes with an unexpected sleep.

He was alone in the car, and it was day out. The sky was still grayish, but patches of blue shone through.

A sharp, shallow pain throbbed in the back of his neck, and he ran his hand over it. A fresh scab sat there, squishing slightly when he touched it.

Glancing around, he found himself in a city, a veritable jungle of concrete and glass. A skyline rose out of the horizon to the West.

What cities are in this area? He wondered, trying to remember if a metropolis in southern Colorado or northern New Mexico had slipped through the cracks of his memory.

Nothing came to mind.

Getting out of the car, he shouldered his backpack, and pulled out his phone. The battery was dead; it had been low when he went to look for a gas station, and had been on all night in his pocket.

The first thing I need to do, he decided, is find a gas station or pay-phone. Are there pay-phones anymore? A gas station, then. He shut the door behind him, and checked it; locked.

It was definitely a city, and not just a town. The land was covered in rolling hills and scraggly trees lines the streets. People milled around, serious-faced dark-skinned men and women. Some watched him, with both a veiled hostility and a civil disinterest spread equally among them.

The streets were laid out in a twisting grid, like a checkerboard viewed through a haze of heat.

Keeping his eyes peeled for a gas station, he noticed that a small group of men were following him. The group was a mixture of races, but they dressed alike: durable sneakers, dark clothes, and black bandannas around their necks. A few of them wore sunglasses, but that was hardly the norm.

He kept walking, trying to ignore the cluster of shadows that padded along behind him. They kept their distance, at about a half-block.

To his surprise, he did manage to find a pay-phone outside a drugstore, and felt around in his pockets for a pair of quarters. He found nothing but his old car keys.

Sighing, he stepped into the store.

“Can I get change for a ten?” he asked the girl at the counter. Her name tag said “Nawal” and he stared at it for a moment while she retrieved the bills.

“Can I get that last one as some quarters?” he asked.

She looked at him for a moment.

“For the phone?” she asked.

He nodded.

“It doesn't work. Don't you have a cellphone?”

Smiling ruefully, he held up the brick of expensive technology.

“Ran out of juice. Know someplace I can find a phone?”

She shook her head.

“Not here...unless it's an immediate emergency. Is it?”

He shrugged.

“I'm not even really sure where I am, right now. My car died last night and I got a ride here, but I fell asleep. The Driver was gone when I woke up.”

Her expression was quizzical, and she looked at him with furrowed brows for a long period of time.

“You're in Valley City.”

“Valley City?” he asked.

“Yeah. On the state-line. Giordano River?”

Wade smiled, nervously.

“Geography's never been my strong suit,” he said, “but does it count as an emergency?”

She nodded.

“Can I see a phone book? I need to call my insurance company.”

She handed him a heavy volume with paper like onion-skin, and he began to wonder how he was unfamiliar with a city of this size.

Unfortunately, it seemed there was no branch office.

Screwing his eyes shut he sighed.

“Thanks, Nawal,” he said, “but I'm going to have to go find a way to charge my phone. I can't find the number in here.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, then smiled, “good luck.”

His shoulders slumped, he exited the convenience store.

Immediately, two men grabbed him. One on his left arm, one on his right; the darkly dressed men had pulled their bandannas up, and each held a small, thin knife in one hand.

3.

They dragged Wade into an alleyway, and threw him against the wall. There were five of them, and the three not restraining him grabbed his backpack and began to cut it open.

“It has a zipper,” he complained. One of the men holding him punched him in the stomach, and he slumped down.

They threw his clothes to the ground, and tossed his books aside like they were garbage, before they began rooting through the smaller pockets. One of the men searched him for a wallet or anything useful, he took the car keys, pocketing them.

With a burst of energy, Wade wrestled one arm free and elbowed the man still trying to restrain him in the nose, causing him to reel back.

He broke away from the other one, snatched at the backpack and ran.

The four men still standing followed, but began to lag behind. This was one of the most surprising moments in Wade's life, up until this point: presumably, the men were natives, and thus acclimated to the air. Wade was, and always had been, a flatlander, used to a much higher pressure.

But his limbs did not tire, and his blood did not thunder.

Unfortunately, he no longer knew where he was, and stopped. A hand landed on his shoulder, and turned him around.

A blond man with a black bandanna over his nose and mouth was looking at him, holding up one of the stiletto blades that his compatriots carried with them.

He pointed it at the spot where Wade's jaw met his neck.

The man paused for a moment, as if to savor the experience of having a man at his mercy.

Wade could see more approaching him out of the corner of his eye. They acted like a stereotype of a street gang, but they dressed in a radically different fashion.

“Thought you could run?” he said. His pronunciation was off, as if everything was shifted towards the back of his mouth in a guttural, soupy mess, “well you can't.”

There was a crack, and the man and Wade both turned to see what happened: a woman had struck one of the gangsters with a baseball bat, hooking his leg out from under him with a blow to the back of the leg. She swung the bat up and smashed into the back of his head, dropping him.

She turned, and hit the next one across the face, causing him to fall backward like fresh timber. Turning, the woman stalked toward the man holding the knife to Wade's throat, who watched her.

The woman was dark-skinned and statuesque, an inch or so taller than Wade, who was himself a bit above average. Her movements were neither particularly graceful or particularly fast, but there was a certain deliberate power to the way she placed her feet and swung her arms.

She was attractive, and her long, black hair was gathered in a tail behind her head.

While the thug was noting this, Wade grabbed his hand and stepped on his instep. The man yelped, and he connected his free elbow to the man's chin. The man folded up and fell backwards.

The standing gangsters scattered, moving off in different directions.

“What...uh...” Wade began.

“Little pricks,” the woman muttered, waving the baseball bat in the general direction that they had run, “I told them to stay off this block. Driving up property taxes and scaring away customers. Fucking hash-freaks.”

She turned to him.

“You okay, kid?”

“Yeah, yeah...thanks,” he said.

“Not from around here?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Not even exactly sure where here is,” he said.

She nodded, and looked around.

“Follow me,” she said, resting the baseball bat on her shoulder. Turning, she walked back the way he had come while running from his pursuers.

“Who were they?” he asked.

“Hashshishin,” she said, “they're usually harmless if you fight back, but things have a tendency to snowball, you know?”

He followed her for a bit longer, then spoke again.

“What's your name?” he asked.

She stopped and slapped a hand to her forehead.

“Sorry,” she said, planting the blunt end of her slightly bloodied baseball bat on the ground, “Where are my manners? My name's Mari.”

“Mari?” he asked.

“Short for 'Mariposa.'”

“Wade Larkin,” he said, holding out a hand.

She shook it, before turning and continuing to walk.

“Where are you from, Wade?” she asked.

“Back east a ways. Born in St. Louis, moved around a lot.”

When she stopped, he moved past her and went into the alleyway, collecting the muddy and dusty things that his assailants had strewn about. The books and clothing, the small trinkets he had thought to take with him when he left his car.

She stopped in front of a building with a sign hanging from the facade that read “UNREAL CITY.”

“What's the name mean?” he asked.

“It's from 'The Waste Land' by Eliot,” She said, “just about the only poem I remember reading and enjoying in school. It refers to London, but I like the ring of it.”

He nodded, as if understanding.

“I remember reading that, too. I don't really remember any of it, though.”

They stepped inside, and Wade continued to speak.

“Are you the owner?”

“Proprietor, but not exactly the owner. I rent the space. Been running it for five years, now.”

The room was low and dark, with light coming from neon signs strewn about the establishment, reflected off of yellowing mirrors. The bar was a long, low affair, with stools lined up in a regimented fashion. The floor was wooden, but unfinished, and quite sturdy, not creaking beneath their feet.

Above them whirled banks of ceiling fans, chilling the air and giving the impression of freshness to the room, which otherwise smelled of stale beer, greasy food, urine, and tobacco.

“Hungry?” she asked.

His stomach growled at him, indicating the answer.

“I'll get you a menu, then.”

4.

Algernon awoke with a start, pulling his singed fingers out of the ashtray.

“Fucker,” he growled, and moved to stand up, before he saw the crutch leaning against the desk, and remembered the car accident.

He was no a large man. The two terms an average observer would think of to describe him would be “sinewy” and “middle-aged.”

Straining, he grabbed the crutch, and made his way to the small bathroom that adjoined on his office. After he had rediscovered how to piss, flush, and wash his hands while leaning on his crutch (made much easier when he realized that he didn't actually need to wash the hand on the crutch) he returned to his office, and looked over it.

A strata of papers sat on his desk. Looseleaf with scrawled names, phone-numbers, and incomprehensible reminders, as well as various crude sketches of revenge fantasies and idle daydreams; print-offs from news services and blogs; type-written reports for his files; crumpled receipts and invoices; grease-smeared napkins from the bar downstairs.

He hobbled to the desk, picked up his paperweight and unscrewed the cap before taking a slug of whiskey.

Putting down the bottle of Old Granddad, he looked at the clock, and discovered that he'd fallen asleep in his office again. The whiskey soaked into his empty stomach, and he discovered that he was hungry.

Navigating the stairs was no less awkward than using the bathroom, and it took him a long time to get down to the first floor.

Mari stood at the bar, while a customer was looking at the food like it was some sort of strange new experience. She poured the customer a cup of coffee from the copper urn she kept behind the counter.

“Qahwa Arabiyy,” he said.

She retrieved him a cup.

“You can just say 'coffee,' Algy. I've only got the one kind,” Mari said, pouring.

“I had some phlegm to loosen,” he said.

Wade examined his plate. The food was an odd mixture of various traditions, put through the process of cooking commonly associated with greasy spoon diners.

The “sandwich” was something between a burrito and a gyro. Flat bread wrapped around lettuce, tomato, sour cream, cheese, a lentil paste and ground beef seasoned with cumin and lemon juice.

The rice was yellowed through the introduction of a spice he was unfamiliar with, and had a tomato-like paste atop it.

“How's your food?” Mari asked him, turning from Algernon.

“I've never had anything like it,” he said, quickly picking up the sandwich and biting into it. It wasn't bad, but it had an oily texture to it.

Algernon laughed at the comment.

“Your cook probably needs to clean the grill,” he said, “or at least use less grease.”

“It's called 'butter,'” Mari protested.

“Whatever it's called, it gave me the runs the last time I ate it.”

Mari looked at him, her jaw squared and her eyes murderous.

“Can I get a menu?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, her black mood broken by his request, “how's the leg?”

Algernon wagged his head back and forth.

“Aches a bit, and the bone itches.”

“Itches? Isn't that supposed to be good?” she asked, handing him a menu.

“I suppose,” he said, “seems like bone fitting back together would itch.”

He glanced over at Wade, who'd stopped eating, and was trying very hard to avoid looking over at them.

“Who's the kid?” Algernon asked, “I thought you didn't open until the lunch rush in an hour.”

“Traveler. Knocked the shit out of some hashshishin who were giving him trouble. He looked lost, so I got Mo to cook up some food for him.”

Algernon nodded.

“How's the Lentil soup?” he asked.

“Boneless.”

“I'll have that.”

Mari left to take the order back into the kitchen, where her cook waited.

Mohammad Jones was reading a copy of “Time” magazine when she came back into the cramped kitchen, he looked up, but did not stand.

“Lentil soup,” she said.

With out speaking, Mo ladled out a measure of lentil-based slop into a cup and handed it off to her before going back to his reading.

In the common area of the bar, the two men had begun a conversation:

“What's your name, kid?” Algernon asked.

“Wade Larkin,” he said, offering his hand.

“Algernon Heller,” was the response, though he winced when Wade's callused hand clamped down on the burn that had awoken him.

“What's your profession?” Algernon asked.

Wade shook his head.

“Nothing, really. I got my loans paid off, and decided to do some traveling.”

Algernon nodded.

“What's your degree in?”

“Philosophy. Got a minor in psychology.”

“On a quest for truth, eh?” Algernon asked, “should've studied journalism.”

Wade didn't laugh, but the expulsion of air through his nose could be construed as a laugh-like action.

“I thought about it. I never quite got the mode of writing down, though. I had a lot of trouble disentangling my self and my experiences from the facts. Why? Are you in Journalism?”

Algernon looked down at his coffee, and grimaced, placing his hands flat on the counter, to either side of the cup.

“No. I'm not in journalism.”

“What do you do, then?” Wade asked.

“The law gets kinda funny in places, makes it easier to work as a private investigator. Mostly just taking pictures, but some insurance policies around here pay to have a private investigator work on theft cases instead of the Municipal Police Department or the sheriff. They pay our bail and the fines for breaking and entering if we're apprehended while actually working, so long as we retrieve the object in question.”

Wade's brows furrowed.

“Doesn't that lead to corruption and the invasion of privacy?” he asked.

“You're definitely not from around here,” Algernon said, smiling, “it's a part of our...unique...legal system. An outgrowth of property-based fuzziness by the loosest squatting laws in the country.”

Mari returned, and set the soup down in front of Algernon.

“Talking shop?” she asked, frowning.

“It's an interesting topic,” Wade said, “I didn't know that there were private investigators in this part of the country.”

“It's none of that hard-boiled bullshit,” Algernon broke in, “there's a lot of paperwork and evidence you need to file if you break in.”

Wade picked up his fork and put some of the rice in his mouth.

“How'd you get here, Wade?” Mari asked, “did you drive in? Hitchhike?”

“A little from column A, a little from column B,” Wade said, pausing briefly to suck a rice grain from his teeth, “My car broke down late last night, I tried to find a gas station, but couldn't, and then managed to hitch a ride. I was hoping to get dropped off near where I left my car, but I fell asleep. Then, I woke up this morning, and the driver wasn't there. He just left me sitting in his car.”

Mari's brow furrowed.

“That is strange,” she replied, “What're you going to do?”

Wade shook his head and laughed.

“You've got the strangest attitude toward being suddenly lost in a strange city with no transportation and no place to stay, you know that, right?”

“I figure if I ended up here, then this is as good a place to stay as any. I wasn't going anyplace in particular before last night, but I arrived here.”

Mari looked over at Algernon, who was looking back at her with one eyebrow quirked upward.

“How long did the doctors tell you that you'd be in that cast?”

“Six weeks, if nothing happens,” Algernon said.

“Could you use an assistant to get some legwork done?”

Algernon rubbed his unshaven chin, and looked at Wade.

“Hold up your hands, kid,” he commanded.

Not understanding, Wade did as he was told, Algernon inspected them.

“Make fists,” he ordered, and Wade did.

“Yeah, you can probably take care of yourself. You'll have to get a license, but it's easier than getting a drivers' license, if you know who to talk to. You interested?”

Wade thought for a moment, holding his hands up in fists a second longer than he absolutely needed to. Looking down, he shook his head briefly, then shrugged, as if silently speaking with another person.

Would it be a good idea?

My family would probably be worried.

You need to get a phone charger or a phone card or something so you can call them, first thing.

But the only way out of here is probably by bus.

I hate the bus, but it would probably be the only way out of here, if I can't find my car.

What else are you going to do with your time?

“Sure,” he said, “but I'm also going to need a place to sleep.”

Algernon snapped the fingers on his right hand before pointing his index finger upward.

Mari looked at him.

“Old storage room,” he said.

Mari frowned and shook her head.

“Think about it,” Algernon said, “you want work for the kid, and this will give you justification for paying him a bit as a night watchman. It's near my office, right on the back stairway. If you and him can clean it out, it'd be perfect.”

Mari looked at Wade.

“What'a you think?”

He nodded his head.

“It sounds passable. I'll need to buy some things. Is there a bathroom up there?”

“Yeah,” Algernon said, “I even paid to have a shower put in when I started occasionally sleeping at the office.”

5.

Victor had left his car where he parked it that morning, but returned to retrieve his syringe. When he found that his passenger had awakened and left, he felt mildly irritated.

Of course, he had survived. That was good.

Victor unlocked the driver side door, and reached over with his left hand, and placed his black-lacquered cane in the passenger seat.

Pulling out of the parking space, he drove south and west, out of Little Masyaf, where the Palestinos lived.

Next south was Old Gaol, where the slums were being replaced by apartment buildings, all centered around the great, blunt hill that had once held a prison, but was now crowned with the lawns and statuary of the park.

Strains of a group of street musicians playing sand-walk jazz pierced into the vehicle, and he turned on the radio, drowning out the amateur playing with Led Zeppelin.

At least it isn't Scorpion, he thought, distastefully.

He crossed the bridge over the Giordano river, and slowly climbed University Hill, toward VCU, which had been CU until 2002. He grimaced at the collection of buildings, thinking about the opportunistic intelligences that guided the actions of the college.

Driving past, he descended the viaduct toward Venburg and its rows and rows of creaking old houses. Children ran and played, but shied back from Victor's car.

They sensed he might have stopped too late.

After passing through the middle-class neighborhood, Victor began climbing up the hill to Grimsby, where his destination lay.
As he climbed, he passed rows and rows of houses that grew larger and finer, until the streets and driveways were indistinguishable, up to the top. He drove past the empty gatehouse: No one came here anymore.

Victor pulled his car to a stop, and stood, resting his weight on the cane.

He began to circle the house, looking at it from all angles.

The Carver Manor, the home of the family that had exerted an irresistible influence over Valley City for years. The influence, as all such things were, was born of money, charisma, and mystery.

No Carver ever held public office, but they all demanded respect.

But Victor wasn't interested in their political or economic power; the money and charisma meant nothing to him.

A giant house, a chimeric hybrid of Regency architecture and Victorian, with additions in a variety of styles.

There was the sunroom, built in the Edwardian style. Rows of simple, straight columns buttressing the trapezoidal roof.

Looming above it was the Library added in the early 1960s, done in a brutalist style: all planes of concrete and harsh geometries.

Above it all, though, was the “watchtower,” a turret with a lightning rod stuck into it. Victor knew that lightning rod, and new that it did not ground, but was connected to a bank of machinery beneath the house.

Victor smiled, as he walked up to the door. He rang the doorbell, and settled himself so that the sunlight glinted off of his horn-rimmed glasses, and that the tip of his cane was perfectly centered between his feet.

After a moment, the door opened, and one of the two caretakers answered; an old anglo woman. She had her hair tied back in a bun, and was dressed in jeans and a pale, colorless blouse. In her right hand was a dustrag.

“Good afternoon, Madame,” Victor said, moving past her into the house, “My name is Victor Carver. I assume you are Miz Sanchez?”

“Missus, yes,” she said, “are you one of the cousins from England?”

“Not as such, no,” Victor said, casting his eyes across the entry hall. He stood beneath the painting of Charles Carver, his Great-Grandfather, and faced towards the caretaker. The resemblance should have been overwhelming.

“You look--”

“I am the son of Anastas Carver, who sends his regards, and thus the grandson of Alexander Carver. That makes me a main-line descendant.”

Her eyes widened.

“You and your husband...Sayid, was it?” he said, “are welcome to stay, but I'm afraid I'll have to set some ground rules.”

RETURN