The pistol went off, the noise surprisingly shocking. He saw the flame from the gunpowder, the bullet graceful in its slow arc across the room toward him, trailing smoke as it went. It had taken years for this bullet to find him. He reached out for it with his mind, tried to catch it in his hand. It scorched his flesh before piercing through his skin and lodging in his shoulder. Pain flooded him like water from a dam; He slumped down by the workbench. Milkeye was now coming toward him, the pistol reloaded, his finger on the trigger. Yann felt the folds of a taffeta skirt fall around him as one of them bent over to take the bullet in her back. Her stiff and dusty hair had fallen in his face. Her blazing eyes looked straight at him. “We,” she said, “are the Seven Sisters Macabre. One of our party is missing. What is your name?” “Yann Margoza,” he managed to say, as blood - black curtains threatened to close in front of him. “Calico and corpses,” she said, and her graveyard breath brought him to his senses. Once more he experienced the feeling of leaving his body, as he had done before in the forest. Now he stood in the middle of the room, a puppet-master of the threads of light. At his command, the Sisters Macabre began to walk toward Milkeye, the dusty taffeta of their skirts trailing behind them like waves upon a shore. Milkeye loaded his pistol for the third time and fired at the oncoming automata. I t did not stop them. Yann dragged himself up near the workbench, feeling that he was ten feet tall and invincible. He pulled at the threads of light, lifted a chair, and brought it down on Milkeye’s head, then picked up another chair and another, until Milkeye let out a grunt and collapsed on the floor. Yann felt a cold wax hand touch his face, and with a start became conscious of one of the Sisters Macabre standing next to him. “We are his experiments. He believes that in us he can find the secret of perpetual youth. He believes he can hold time back for himself. We have been robbed of our lives. We have been robbed of our rest. What is it you want of us?” “Letters, love letters written by Armand . . .” The name, what was the name? Why couldn’t he remember . . . “de . . .” “Villeduval,” said all the Sisters together. “All you had to do was ask.” If only the pain would stop, thought Yann, I could think straight. “Is this what you came for?” asked a Sister. The fabric of her dress tore apart, and where the womb should have been two doors sprang open to reveal a blood red empty chamber. She reached in with her white wax hands and handed Yann a bundle of letters. A second Sister pulled out a blood red drawer from where her stomach should have been, and handed him a black book. “This is for you. It is the Book of Tears. It is bound with our flesh.” “He stole our lives. He stole our hearts. He stole our deaths,”whispered the Sisters Macabre together as they gathered around Yann, making sure that the letters and the book were safely in his coat pocket before they lined up once more against the back wall, their eyes closing, their mouths whispering. “Velvet and violence. Brocade and blood. Damask and death.” Yann was still clinging to the bench when he became aware of the grisly contents of the jars. They were filled with parts of bodies: in one, a head; in another, limbs; in another, a stack of hearts.