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ghouls cried out and backed away from the figure, who glowed like an avenging angel.
    “Out!” he cried, and swung the staff one more time. The ghouls broke and scurried away, whimpering and whining. I could hear the sounds of their retreat fade into the distance as I looked up at my shining savior with little or no comprehension of what had just happened. At that point, I still wasn’t sure the whole thing wasn’t just a bliss-induced hallucination.
    A gentle hand touched my shoulder and I heard the stranger whisper, “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. You’re safe now.” He started to sing in a low and quiet tone. As I tried to follow the tune, I drifted off to sleep, feeling very safe and secure.
    I awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. Bed? I was in a bed, a real bed. There was a brightly colored Indian blanket thrown over me. The bliss hangover was gone and I was still weak and sore, but I felt better than I had in weeks.
    I looked around the room. It was the main room of a small apartment. Most of the wall space was taken up by rows of bookshelves made of old bricks and scraps of wood and construction plastic. On those shelves were more books than I had ever seen in my whole life, dozens of them. Real hardcopy books, not just optical chips or CDs, although I saw a small stack of those, too, next to a small chip-reader.
    The rest of the place was done in soothing tones of tan and brown and gold. There were a couple of chairs and a small table that looked like a desk. The bed where I sat looked like it served most of its time as a sofa.
    I began to wonder how I had gotten here, then I remembered the shining stranger and the weird song he sang. I glanced over as the door swung open and a young man entered, carrying a steaming earthenware bowl on a tray.
    He was in his early twenties, I’d say, with a thatch of unruly black hair. He had a pointed chin, an easy smile, and a small scattering of freckles across his straight nose that all hinted at an Irish ancestor. His eyes were a shade of sea green that made them seem to look right through you. He was wearing a pair of well-worn black jeans and a white T-shirt with something written in bold red Japanese characters on the front. Hanging from a black cord around his neck was a small five-pointed star within a circle, made of silver.
    “Well.” he said, “good to see you up. Try and drink some of this. It will help you get your strength back.” He set the tray holding the bowl of steaming broth down nearby. I looked at him for a moment and wondered if I should trust him. He could be a pimp—someone who picked up squatter kids and then got them hooked so that they would work for him—but this place didn’t look like the kind of doss where a pusher or pimp would live, nor did he really look the type.
    “Don’t worry. It’s not spiked or anything.” he said as if reading my mind. “I spent too much effort getting you clean just to try and hook you on something again.” To prove it, he took a sip from the bowl and put it back on the tray. I took the broth and drank it slowly. It seemed like the best thing I’d ever tasted and it did make me feel better. The mysterious stranger just sat silently in a chair and watched me as I finished it off.
    “Who are you.” I asked, “and why are you helping me?”
    He smiled and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You don’t recognize me, do you? But then you probably wouldn’t. I looked somewhat different last night.”
    I stared closer at his face and I could see the shadow of the shining man. The hair had been a bit longer, and the face more refined, but it was definitely the same face. He wore different clothes and there was no staff. No halo of light surrounded him, but I was sure he was the same person.
    “You saved me from the ghouls.” I said slowly.
    “Yes.” he said, making a face. “I don’t like ghouls in general, but I especially don’t like ones who hunt people in the