Vikki seated herself on the couch. Mark put his bag on the coffee table in front of her, then collapsed into the chair across from the couch.

Vikki opened the bag and began to spread the loot on the coffee table

"I wonder if he's dead," Mark said.

"We'll read about it in the papers."

"You hit him pretty hard."

Vicki shrugged. "Hard enough."

She held up a couple of the jade figurines and turned them in the light. "Good stuff. I bet Frankie'll just eat it up."

"You liked knocking him over, didn't you? You didn't have to hit him."

"You'd rather be in jail right now?" She pulled Cowden's revolver out of the bag. "Or maybe you'd rather he shot us?"

"No."

"Then quit griping. I didn't have any choice."

"We could have gotten away from him. You know that."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Okay. I'm sorry. All right? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hit him so hard."

"No more rough stuff on the job."

Vicki sat the gun on the table and stared at him. "You can always work without me, you know. Is that what you want?"

Mark rubbed his forehead and sighed.

"If you don't want me around, we can just end it now," she insisted.

"No, that's not what I want."

She picked up the gun and pointed it at him. His eyes widened. She grinned. "That was the right answer."

Mark got up and headed for the kitchen while Vikki finished lining up the loot in front of her.

When he got back with beers for both of them and a sandwich for himself, she had placed a small bottle in front of her. It wasn't the same shape as the one they took from the shelf at Cowden's place, but it was the same color and general size and had a mouth and lid the same shape.

She looked at him, puzzled. "Did you get this?"

Mark shrugged.

She fingered the bottle, then rolled it between her hands. "The other one isn't here."

"Hmmm." He bit into the sandwich, then held it out to her. "You want some?"

"No, thanks."

"I don't know why, but I'm always hungry after a job."

She laughed while she tried to score the sealing wax with a fingernail. "And before a job. And during a job. The only time you won't be hungry is when you're dead." The wax was hard enough to turn the edge of her fingernail.

Vikki traced her fingers over the outside of the bottle, then tried to open it. She picked up the silver dagger and chipped away at the black wax. Then she grasped the top and body again and pulled hard.

The top came off with startling ease and her elbow knocked over her beer, which dropped off the edge of the table and onto the carpet.

"Wonderful, wonderful," she muttered.

She quickly set the jade bottle and top down and scrambled to pick up the beer bottle. She looked back toward the kitchen and nodded to Mark.

"Get me a towel?"

When he returned from the kitchen, Vikki still held the beer bottle gingerly. She set it down on the coffee table and caught the dish-towel that he tossed to her.

As she dried her hands, a glowing, sparkling blue mist foamed out of the top of the bottle.

They both watched it flow, slowly, liquidly, into a pool on the surface of the coffee table, then gradually sink into the wood and vanish, leaving no trace of its existence. They watched the table in silence for a few more seconds, waiting for something further to occur. Nothing did.

Vicki looked under the coffee table. "It's gone."

"That was . . . unusual."

Vikki made an exaggeratedly surprised face. "Weee-oooooh." She touched the bottle tentatively, then turned it upside down.

It was empty.

They went to bed an hour later. Mark thought Vicki would be unresponsive after the events of the night. He was wrong.

Halfway through, he looked over his shoulder at her dim outline, crouched above his body. She clawed his back lightly.

"Love me?" she murmured.

He nodded. She spread his legs further apart and moved between them.

"Think I love you?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"You're so wrong, sweetheart. If I didn't love you . . . ." She reached to the foot of the bed and picked up the small leather bag. She undid the drawstring and pulled out the silver dagger. She held it up.

He flinched and she laid her hand in the small of his back to still him.

"If I didn't love you, would I be so nice to you?"

He moaned when the point traced fire along his flesh.

She bent forward to kiss away the new blood.

"Up on your knees, now, lover." She reversed the dagger, revealing the knob-tipped haft.

"Yes, dear."

The sound of wood groaning brought him from deep sleep to near-consciousness. He shifted to turn over as his eyes opened drowsily. His eyes widened. He grunted and convulsively shoved himself and Vicki off opposite sides of the bed.

He caught in the sheets, and by the time he managed to struggle upright and look across the bed, Vicki had bounced into a tensely aggressive kokutsu-dachi, wearing only a loose pajama top.

Mark turned on the lamp beside him and staring horrified at the bed. It hadn't been a dream.

Vicki moved back two steps involuntarily. The heavy oaken headboard had contorted fantastically. Two motionless, huge taloned hands, protruded seamlessly from it. The hands were curving downward, as if to enclose whoever was in the bed. A light blue glow faded from the hands as they watched.

"My god," Vicki said slowly. "What the hell is that?"

"I don't know. I heard something. When I opened my eyes they were there."

Mark picked up a shoe and tapped the heel against one of the wooden hands. Nothing happened. Gingerly, he looked behind the headboard. Shook his head when he didn't see anything. He dropped the shoe and examined the juncture of headboard and hands.

"It's like it grew out of the wood."