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squeezing her chest, as though Lucy’s hand had slipped inside her ribs to clutch her heart.
    It was Susannah’s memory that was doing the squeezing.
    It wasn’t her time, she wasn’t due until the harvest, but her baby was coming now. When she could breathe after each contraction, she screamed for pity, for a midwife to help her give birth, for someone to save the life of her baby.
    The woman on the floor behind her was crying alone in the dark for someone to help her give birth, and to undo her husband’s death. Susannah could help with only one of those things.
    Walk away. Run away. This is just an assignment, like other times.
    Her feet seemed to be out of her control. Susannah walked over and knelt by the woman, who was in mid-contraction. When the contraction eased, Lucy looked up at her. Her eyes boiled with hatred.
    “You did it, didn’t you? You killed Johnny. Get away from me!”
    What am I doing? She doesn’t want me here. I’m not the healer I used to be.
    Susannah stood up to leave, when another contraction came and Lucy pushed hard. Susannah could see the crown of the baby’s head emerging, and with it, something that made her heart sink: a glimpse of umbilical cord. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Vivid memories flooded back of the times she helped deliver such babies. Many of them culminated in a funeral with a tiny coffin, sometimes accompanied by a larger one.
    If I leave, Rabishu gets two lives for the price of one. Damn him, and me.
    “Your baby may die if I leave. The cord’s wrapped around his neck. He’ll be strangled.”
    “Get out!” It was a snarl, a feral order from a female protecting herself and her young at their most vulnerable time.
    A contraction rippled through Lucy’s body. The tendons in her neck stuck out, every muscle of her body shook with the effort, and sweat poured into her eyes. She screamed. When it was over, she let out her breath explosively. Lucy was panting, her chest rising and falling like the breast of a captured bird whose heart beat wildly. Then her breathing slowed and she focused on Susannah.
    “Damn you to hell,” she growled. Then, in a defeated whisper: “Don’t let my baby die.”
    Afterward, Susannah wouldn’t acknowledge the feeling of holding Lucy’s baby, flush with life, in her arms. For her, there were only memories of Constanta, and dealing in death.

    A fter 263 years of killing in servitude to the demon Rabishu, Susannah’s work was lying heavily on her heart. She marveled at the Louvre visitors who walked by her as she sat on the bench and didn’t gasp in alarm at the foul stench that surely exuded from her. It was the same way that Rabishu announced his presence, with the odor of the Underworld clinging to him. Lately she’d had that smell caught in her nostrils, even while strolling in a garden, even while swimming in the warm, azure waters of the Mediterranean, even while making love.
    My mind is trying to tell me something. My heart is rotting.
    She touched her dress above the circular wound between her breasts, the place where Rabishu had placed his claw and drawn blood to sign her contract. It was warm under her finger, even through the cloth. When no one was around, she peeked down the front of her dress. That spot writhed with a whirl of black and green, and her skin pulsed in an irregular way.
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    2009-08-25 02:50

    Like some nasty little creature pushing to burrow in deeper, or even worse, break through from the inside.
    Yet no one else saw things that way. Her current lover would surely have noticed such a flaw on her body, and the smell, too.
    And what about my eyes?
    Lately she’d seen in the mirror that there was an unfamiliar darkness in her green eyes. The irises were barely lighter than her black pupils.
    Will I continue to grow wretched in my own view, yet remain attractive to others?
    A thought struck her that left her breathless and stunned by the horrid uncertainty of it.
    What if my senses