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her off again. He was a weak and selfish man. That’s what addicts are, Niko, weak and selfish people. That view kept you safe inside a bottle or a needle for a good long time, didn’t it?
    What he’d done instead was try to keep the status quo. He’d told himself as long as you don’t marry Jem she’s safe. Keep her hidden in a camouflage of unimportance and the retribution that is rightly yours will pass her by. It’s your name on the line, not hers.
    And now outside the Crossroads of the World where he had begged for Jemma’s life and failed he gripped the leatherwrapped wheel of his expensive car and understood at last that he had only fooled himself. Had hung her fate on technicalities and semantics. As if to get away with this through turn of phrase. But in truth he knew his contract to the comma and there was no escaping that, spoken vows or not, the union of their souls itself had set Jem’s path indelibly with his.
    Ah god. Ah god. He’d been so sure. So certain he would get away with this. Scam his way through and land on his feet the way he got through everything else. But it just didn’t work out that way did it old boy? And there’s nothing you can do about it now and nowhere else to shift the blame. Jemma’s sickness is the very confirmation of your love. And it will kill her. And more than merely kill her will consign her to some unknown awful and eternal punishment against which mere oblivion is a mercy.
    The enormity of what he’d done towered before him. The arrogance of it. The unequivocal truth was unbearable. How do you like hitting the wall of the immutable, asshole? How’s it feel to know that you can’t charm your way out of this one? What’s the next lie you’ll tell yourself? Your king’s surrounded and your pieces are gone and still you sit here planning your next move. Nobody would give a good goddamn if it was just you dying here. Who’ll miss one more alcoholic junky guitar player? There’s no lack of washed-out rockstars in this town. You could form a union. But you’ve got Jem’s blood on you now. And you still don’t even have the stones to tell her why she’s really dying.
    And now at last he was afraid, mortally afraid.
    He started the car. Some old song was on the radio and he poked it off. He massaged his face.
    But even so. Even so. I won’t just give her up without a fight. I won’t give up until I’ve nothing left to give. Until I’ve truly lost instead of merely stopped. Now will I draw careful plans and strategies and place myself upon the stage to act against the power that is taking what it has no right to take.
    There’s nothing I can do while Jem’s alive. Okay. Fine. But after that?
    After that.
    Niko clenched the steering wheel and felt a desperate notion born. If I can call them up then I can hunt them down. If I can’t stop them taking her then I’ll pursue her. I will find her and I’ll bring her back. However far it takes me. Whatever price it costs.
    Seen from outside he was a man woolgathering in his car a few minutes after lunch before returning to his busy world. The unsuspected battles within each of us.
    Niko banged a fist upon the steering wheel. A plan then. An objective. Some faint hope. He put the car in gear and then he stopped. Gawking through the windshield like some mislanded astronaut. In front of him lay broken glass and boarded windows. Sagging beams and peeling handbills over dirty stucco tagged with spraypaint. Crossroads of the World was long abandoned and well fallen into ruin.
     
     

 
    III.
     
    SHE’S GONE
     
     
    SEVERAL TIMES THE private nurse buzzed at the gate and startled him awake on the chaise lounge he had dragged beside Jem’s bed. Their bed. These last few weeks Jem had become so sensitive to light and sound and touch she couldn’t bear to sleep beside him. She had always liked to hold his hand at movies and public events, would lightly rest a hand upon his ankle on a sunchair in the garden drinking