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a heavy iron sash loaded with bullets, and carrying what looked like an AK-47. She gave Mimi a pat-down to check for weapons. “What’s this?” she asked, her hand on Mimi’s back.
    Amazing that the troll had found the needle Mimi kept pinned to her bra. “It’s my sword.”
    “You’ll have to leave it here. You can have it back when you finish with Helda.”
    Mimi complied and handed over her needle, pulling it out from underneath her shirt. “Can I go in now?”
    The troll nodded and kicked the door open.
    Helda did not look pleased to see her. The Queen of the Dead was an older woman dressed in severe black, her hair in a tight gray bun. Her face was wrinkled and drawn, and she had the thin, puckered lips of a lifelong smoker, as well as the hard beady eyes of a gambler who had spent her last dollar on a losing horse. She looked nothing like her niece in North Hampton. There was something cruel and ancient about her, as if she had seen the world at its worst and had merely shrugged. She sat behind a desk that was messy with ledgers, receipts, crumpled notes, and torn envelopes. It looked like the desk of a harried accountant, which, when Mimi thought about it, was what Helda was, since the Kingdom of the Dead was a little like a bureaucracy that collected souls instead of taxes. “You’re back,” she said flatly.
    “Thanks to your niece,” Mimi said.
    “Which one?”
    “Erda.”
    “How disappointing. Erda was always the smarter one.
    Freya, she would do it just to spite me.” Helda regarded Mimi coolly. Mimi thought Helda was not unlike one of those rich women who ran the charity committees and took pleasure in excluding social climbers from the group. “So. What do you seek from my domain, Azrael?”
    “You know what I want. The same thing I wanted last time. I’ve come to retrieve a soul from beyond the subvertio .”
    “Back for Araquiel, are you? Shame. He’s been an asset down here; a great help keeping the demons in line. There’s no way I can dissuade you from your quest?”
    Mimi shook her head. Did Helda expect her to believe that crap? Kingsley was suffering down here. Who knew what kind of tortures and agonies he’d endured. She didn’t know what kind of game Helda was playing, but she decided to keep her mouth shut so the old bird would let her pass.
    “You are prepared this time. You have your barter?”
    Helda asked.
    “I do,” Mimi said, motioning to the window.
    Helda observed Oliver trying to lean as far away from the trolls as possible without looking like he was avoiding them. “I see,” she sighed. “A human’s a poor substitute for the soul you’re taking from me. But very well. If you are able to convince Araquiel to return with you, you may have him.”

NINE
    Studio Session
    The address that the gallery assistant had left on her answering machine brought Allegra to a warehouse near market Street. She took a creaky factory elevator to a loft on the top floor.
    Last night she had spent the remainder of the party re-miniscing about high school with her old friends, many of whom were starting their lives in the world: newly minted investment bankers and law students, a scattering of television PA’s and cub reporters, along with fashion assistants and the self-described ladies and gentlemen of leisure who had come into their inheritances and were whiling away their days on the social circuit—their lives a succession of parties and benefits and festivals; a jet-setting crowd who frequented Wimble-don, Art Basel, and the Venice Film Festival. Her friends had cooed over her new haircut and wanted to know why she had disappeared from their lives without an explanation. People like Allegra were not supposed to do such disagreeable things.
    Their kind kept in touch out of habit, forever recounting the glory days when one had been a scrapper at St. Paul’s or Endicott. She had apologized profusely and promised to have them all over, in New York, once they were finished with