in such excellent condition, these little portraits." He had sighed. "Ah, what a wonder 
it must have been in the 1840s when they learnt to take these pictures."
  "Oh, yes, my great-great uncle wrote all about it," she had said. "I don't know if 
anyone can read those pages anymore. They were crumbling to bits when Great Nananne first 
showed them to me. But as I was saying, these are all his pictures. Here, the tintypes, 
he did those too." She had a woman's weariness in her sigh, as though she'd lived it all. 
"He died very old, they say, with a house full of pictures, before his white nephews came 
and actually broke them up-but I'll come to that."
  I had been shocked and bruised by such a revelation, unable to excuse it. Broken 
daguerreotypes. Faces lost forever. She had gone on, lifting the small rectangles of tin, 
many unframed yet clear, from her cardboard treasure chest.
  "I open boxes sometimes from Great Nananne's rooms, and the paper is all little bits 
and pieces. I think the rats come and they eat the paper. Great Nananne says rats will 
eat your money and that's why you have to keep it in an iron box. Iron's magical, you 
know that. The sisters-I mean the nuns-they don't know that. That's why in the Bible you 
couldn't build with an iron shovel, because iron was mighty and you couldn't put the iron 
shovel above the bricks of the Lord's temple, not then, and not now."
  It seemed a bizarre intelligence, though she had been most technically correct.
  She'd let her words wander. "Iron and shovels. It goes way back. The King of Babylon 
held a shovel in his hand with which he laid the bricks of the temple. And the Masons, 
now they keep that idea in their Order, and on the one-dollar bill you see that broken 
pyramid of bricks."
  It had amazed me, the case with which she touched on these complex concepts. What had 
she known in her life, I wondered. What sort of woman would she prove to be?
  I remember that she'd been looking at me, as she'd said those words, gauging my 
reaction, perhaps, and it had only then become clear to me how much she needed to talk of 
the things she'd been taught, of the things she thought, of the things she'd heard.
  "But why are you so good?" she had asked, searching my face rather politely. "I know 
with priests and nuns why they're good to us. They come and bring food and clothes to us. 
But you, why are you good? Why did you let me in and give me a room here? Why do you let 
me do what I want? All day Saturday I looked at magazines and listened to the radio. Why 
do you feed me and try to get me to wear shoes?"
  "Child," Aaron had interjected. "We're almost as old as the Church of Rome. We're as 
old as the orders of the sisters and the priests who've visited you. Yes, older, I would 
say, than almost all."
  Still she had looked to me for an explanation.
  "We have our beliefs and our traditions," I had said. "It's common to be bad, to be 
greedy, to be corrupt and self-seeking. It's a rare thing to love. We love."
  Again, I had enjoyed our sense of purpose, our commitment-that we were the inviolate 
Talamasca, that we cared for the outcast, that we harbored the sorcerer and the seer, 
that we had saved witches from the stake and reached out even to the wandering spirits, 
yes, even to the shades whom others fear. We had done it for well over a thousand years.
  "But these little treasures-your family, your heritage," I'd hastened to explain. "They 
matter to us because they matter to you. And they will always be yours."
  She'd nodded. I had got it right.
  "Witchcraft's my calling card, Mr. Talbot," she'd said shrewdly, "but all this comes 
with me too."
  I had enjoyed the. fleeting enthusiasm which had illuminated her face.
  And now, some twenty years after, what had I done, seeking her out, finding her old 
house in New Orleans deserted, and spying upon her at Oak Haven, walking the broad 
upstairs galleries of Oak Haven like an old Penny Dreadful Vampire, looking into her very 
bedroom until she sat up and spoke my name in the darkness.
  I had done her evil, I knew it, and it was exciting, and I needed her, and I was 
selfish, and I missed her, and it was as plain as that.
  It had been only a week ago that I wrote to her.
  Alone in the town house in the Rue Royale, I'd written by hand in a style that hadn't 
changed with my fortunes:
  
  Dear Merrick,
  Yes, it was I whom you saw on the porch outside your room. 
  It was not my intention to frighten you but merely to solace myself by looking at you, 
playing the guardian angel, I must confess, if you will forgive me, as I hovered outside 
the window for the better part of the night.
  I have a request for you, which I make from my soul to yours. I cannot tell you what it 
is in this letter. I ask that you meet me in some place that is public, where you will 
feel safe from me, a place that you yourself choose. Answer at this post box, and I'll be 
prompt in replying. Merrick, forgive me. If you advise the Elders or the Superior General 
of this contact, they will in all likelihood forbid you to meet with me. Please give me 
this little while to speak with you before you take such a step.
  Yours in the Talamasca forever,
  David Talbot.
  
  What audacity and egoism to have written such a note and delivered it into the iron 
mailbox at the end of the drive in the hours before dawn.
  She'd written back, a note rather tantalizing in its details, full of undeserved 
affection.
  
  I cannot wait to talk with you. Be assured, whatever shocks this meeting will hold in 
store for me, I seek you inside the mystery--David, whom I have always loved. You were my 
Father when I needed you, and my friend ever after. And I have glimpsed you since your 
metamorphosis, perhaps more often than you know.
  I know what happened to you. I know of those with whom you live. The Cafe of the Lion. 
Rue St. Anne. Do you remember it? Years ago, before we ever went to Central America, we 
ate a quick lunch there. You were so wary of us setting out for those jungles. Do you 
remember how you argued? I think I used a witch's charms to persuade you. I always 
thought you knew. I'll come early each evening for several nights in hopes that you'll be 
there.
  
  She had signed the note exactly as I had signed my own:
  "Yours in the Talamasca forever."
  I had put myself before my love of her, and my duty to her. I was relieved that the 
deed was done.
  Back then, when she'd been the orphan in the storm, such a thing had been unthinkable. 
She was my duty, this little wanderer who had come so surprisingly, on her own, one 
evening to knock on our door.
  "Our motives are the same as your motives," Aaron had said to her most directly on that 
long ago night at Oak Haven. He'd reached out and lifted her soft brown hair back from 
her shoulder, as if he were her elder brother. "We want to preserve knowledge. We want to 
save history. We want to study and we hope to understand."
  He had made another soft sigh, so unlike him.