The woman who called herself Ife Taariq looked disguisted and unimpressed, but whether this was because of the nature of the ceremony, the present company or the nature of the venue was impossible to tell. She was a smart severe woman of perhaps 35, her exceptionally curly hair was forced into a tight bun without a single strand out of place, she wore small tasteful earrings that may have been gold and a dress that complimented her figure that was perhaps a little too ample for western tastes. In short she looked perfectly out of place in the small windowless shack with its packed mud and rushes floor that served as their present meeting place. The strong smoky smell could have been the reason for her wrinkled nose, but the half cured cat-skins and free range snakes were a more likely cause. If subtle feminine disapproval could be distilled Ife Taariq's would eat through concrete.

"Ma'am you did ask for evidence." The hougan, an ancient wrinkled man with precious few curls of white hair left, reminded her gently.

"Oh get on with it Denzel, the sooner you get rid of that thing the better."

She gestured to the white woman's corpse which was propped in a corner beside the alter of all the possible blasphemies. For a moment they stared at each other, the mambo's cold glare against the hougan's sad smile, then Akanke Lara gave a snorting snore from the room's only chair and Ife went to wake her.

Denzel Johnson sighed, fully aware that Ife Taariq's acid disapproval had just passed the mark to wear through titanium. From a hot hammered into the driftwood roof he took a chipped mug and filled it with a generous portion of rum before placing it carefully in the center of the intricate pattern traced in powder on the floor. Traditionally it should have been chalk or powdered eggshells, but Denzel knew the Guede wouldn't mind his not entirely traditional approach. According to the true method he should also have put aside tobacco for the spirit and sung and danced, but the young were not interested in religion anymore, donations had been few and he was not as young as he used to be. So a short chant in a wavering voice and a few kicks to scuff the veve in important places would have to do.

He was not disappointed. He had only looked away for a moment and the spirit was there, the Guede that at some point in the distant past had been Denzel's ancestor. He looked like a Jamaican artful Dodger, if the Artful Dodger had gone to a funeral in a suit two sizes too big and got so thoroughly inebriated that he'd spent the next three days sleeping in an empty grave. Guido Johnson downed the rum in one quick mouthful and adjusted the battered excuse for a top hat on his head.

"The answer's yes." He said, his voice sounded like six weeks of hangovers.

The hougan seemed mildly surprised. "It is?"

"Don't ask me why, Boss'll do what he likes after all, and who am I to argue? That the bird?"

"That is the girl, yes." Denzel replied following the spirit's eyes to the corpse. "We needed one that was still….capable of giving evidence. Most of the victims were missing their heads or their throats were slits."

"Know your enemy an' all." The spirit agreed, kneeling over the corpse and examining her face. "She was shot in the gut, and the chest. Her lung's punctured and her stomach's such a mess I'm surprised you got most of her here, must have been intestines all over the place."

"It was a painful death?"

"Excruciating," The spirit said with relish. "Took her hours to die. She was only 23."

There was a muttering outside and Ife Taariq returned with Miss Lara, still half asleep at her side. Lara, oh Lara, Denzel thought, why couldn't she have chosen a more opportune time to look after her granddaughter?Guido Johnson rose and bowed towards the two ladies, he received a glare from Ife for his trouble but it only seemed to improve his mood.

"And now for your entertainment and amusement I shall raise the dead!" He declared with a drunken giggle. "Miss Lara if you would be so kind? You remember the words I assume? Denzel! Got any more of that rum? My testicles are cold!"

The long dead Guido Johnson gulped down a second mugful of rum. Miss Lara sang in beautiful untrained voice. And the corpse in the corner stirred and for the next hour answered questions on the attack that had caused its death.

And Grace dreamed. If she had been more awake she would have realized that her dreams meant she was still alive which would have put her into the kind of ecstatic mood that is usually drug induced. As it happened she was too caught up in the dream to register that happy fact. She dreamed of heavy rains, or lying in muddy puddles with water beating down at her face and dark shapes flitting across the moonlight. She dreamed of gunshots. She dreamed of screams and bloodied bodies. She saw ghosts and monsters. She saw Mexicans with machetes, and a tall ragged haired Cherokee man with animal-black eyes and a dangerous smile staring down at her. He was wearing a leather jacket and feathers in his hair. Then he was gone. There was a woman, a young fierce faced black woman with twisted pale scars dabbed on her face like war paint. And Grace was moving. The woman with the scar-painted face was dragging her away to a place out of the mud, where the thick trees blocked the moonlight and it was dark.

The dream was dark for a long time, dark and cold. For a while the dreams faded, there was a numbness of flesh that didn't want to feel anymore, there was silence. She thought for a moment that she saw a pale light, then the music stopped and it all faded away.