"I don't know about Ramon, but Nectar? I've heard of Nectar."

"What do you know about it?"

"It's great stuff," she says. "Makes you feel great. Like uppers but better. Doesn't make you twitchy, doesn't drive you loco. You can take one dose and work for hours. I use it when I'm translating."

"How do you get it? Who's dealing, where do they get it from? I know what it's like, I need to find these other guys."

"I don't know the details, but I can introduce you to my guy," she says.

And then they talk until it is time to see Samson Trammel.

Lacie's foster father has lunch with her in the small dining room on the second floor, where he normally takes his more intimate meals. One of his large Mexican guards escorts her to the dining room.

"Sit! Sit, my dear girl. What brings you to LA? I thought you were in New York doing magic tricks."

"A eccentric old woman is paying me a lot of money to look into her late father's affairs. I think she was more impressed by the seances than was warranted."

"Well," he says. "Perhaps your seances are more impressive than I thought. Mastered your table-rapping technique, have you?"

"It's gotten some practice. Would you like a demonstration?"

"I'm sure I'll do fine without it."

A maid brings them a light lunch: a salade niçoise (mixed greens tossed with potatoes, green beans, tuna, boiled egg, and olives, and topped with anchovies); steamed mussels with white wine, shallots, and butter; and a plate of expensive cheeses.

"And I expect you don't want your palms read or your tarot spread done, either," she says, smirking. "Unfortunately I left my crystal ball at home. What have you been up to? Not magic tricks, I suppose. Sometimes I beg updates from Oswald but he only talks about the financial side of things, you know he's very boring that way."

He smiles paternally. "Business is going quite well. I've had to transition into... alternate revenue streams... with the end of Prohibition. Not that I am opposed to the end of Prohibition, of course. I may be a bootlegger but I have no interest in allying with the Baptists."

The maid pours both Lacie and Samson a cup of excellent wine.

"Oh don't you be boring too. Business this, numbers that, if I didn't know any better I'd think you boys did nothing but stare at bottom lines." It's a bit of a risk but she's teasing him, right, she's paying him a compliment really, and she knows he likes talking about his shadowy intellectual forays.

"You women have no head for numbers," he says indulgently. "But money is one of the most important things in life. It might seem like boring numbers to you, but money is what gives you strength. Power. With my bank account I command my dozen servants, yes. But what is more, I can command that the fruits of the Indies be flown to my table, that thousands of men work night and day to make machines that bring me pleasure, that my will be worked in the world." He smiles at her. "But I suppose men get power through their work and women get power through seducing those in power."

She smiles. "Now there's something I know I have the head for."

"Indeed," and his smile is less paternal, more predatory.

"I've got to be somewhere this afternoon," she says absently, turning back to her food. "I was wondering if you could tell me more about some of those matters that I haven't mastered yet. I may have my tricks, but you're the true occultist here; and I've missed sitting with you in the library most dearly."

(This is a change of subject, but it's also not; the library is private, and has a lock.)

"What questions do you have, my love?"

"Lately I've been getting interested about those off foreign mysteries. Primitive rites to old gods and exotic blood rituals. Have you ever heard of Nyarlathotep, or Gol-Goroth, or Ahtu? They're wonderfully strange."

"Those are dark things to get into, my dear," Samson says. "Dark, dark things. They will rend the sanity of the unprepared mind." 'Like yours' goes unstated. "Wouldn't you prefer to stick to your ghosts?"

"Should I take bliss in my ignorance, then?" She's still smiling. "Run from the dark secrets of the world and curl up safe under the covers? Perhaps I am wrong about the world, perhaps I am ignorant and naive, perhaps I have only seen but a small percent of what this world has to offer, but at least by remaining stupid I have not had to be overwhelmed." This is essentially a condemnation of cowardice which she's dressed up in intellectual clothing, but he is an intellectual and she is not a coward.

Not, at least, when it comes to her own mind.

"Well, I can protect you from anything truly dangerous," he says. "What do you know of Nyarlathotep?"

"This and that. The ramblings about him were quite incoherent." She says it with the kind of mild contempt one might use for a bad writer.

"I am curious how you stumbled across the name at all. It is not the sort of name you'll find in the books of the Theosophists and other claptrap."

"A digression in a series of unrelated writings. It soon became obvious that a god was being discussed, or something some naive peoples believed to be a god, perhaps some Egyptian cult, but the whole thing was very disjointed and vague. I was hoping for a writer that actually knew how to describe."